Monogram Murders

I really wanted to like the Monogram Murders; the idea of someone taking Agatha Christie's beloved Poirot and doing him justice with new stories was very appealing. Unfortunately this book was a great disappointment.

The central plot is certainly intricately constructed, but unfortunately it is extremely convoluted and ultimately tedious & unbelievable. The final 4 chapters of 25 involve a very lengthy explanation of how the crime was committed, with numerous twists and turns. However I was already long passed caring and just wanted the book to end by the time we reached this protracted denouement.

There are multiple problems beyond the convoluted plot, but the main one is the narrator and sidekick Inspector Catchpool. He is incredibly irritating from the start, which builds quickly to help totally spoil enjoyment of the book. He is supposed to be a police officer but from the get-go appears ludicrously incompetent (minor spoiler: at the start of the book he literally leaves 3 corpses in a hotel overnight because he is squeamish about dead bodies, for a reason cryptically alluded to throughout the book), and he is written in an overly heavy handed matter as a foil to Poirot. But instead of occasionally challenging Poirot or disbelieving him to help misdirect, he seems to spend every moment disparaging and dismissing Poirot, contradicting him on every single page. The negativity and hollow observations get tiresome fast, and the characters generally miserable personality add to the doom and gloom. I quickly found myself hoping the murderer would bump this character off but (spoiler alert) was disappointed he made it to the very last page.

Following in Agatha Christie's foot steps is obviously very difficult, and credit to the Author for trying. Unfortunately this comes no where near catching the magic of a Christie novel, with an overly convoluted plot and a terrible sidekick in particular making this a painful read.