cover image The Killings at Kingfisher Hill: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery

The Killings at Kingfisher Hill: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery

Sophie Hannah. Morrow, $27.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-279237-2

Bestseller Hannah displays her superior ability to devise mind-blowing setups in her fourth authorized continuation of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot series (after 2018’s The Mystery of Three Quarters). In 1931, Poirot agrees to come to Kingfisher Hill, the country estate of the Devonport family in Surrey, at the request of Richard Devonport. The previous year, Richard’s older brother, Frank, died from a fall at Kingfisher Hill, and Frank’s fiancée, Helen Acton, who confessed to intentionally pushing him, has a date with a hangman. Richard, who’s Helen’s current fiancé, believes she’s innocent, and has arranged for Poirot and Scotland Yard’s Insp. Edward Catchpool to visit the estate and investigate under the pretense of being interested in a board game Richard’s father has invented. On the luxury motor coach from London to Kingfisher Hill, the pair encounter a distraught woman, who, when forced to sit in the one available seat, declares that a man told her that to sit there would mean her death. Then another passenger confesses to a murder. Hannah provides logical and reasonable answers to every oddity. Fans of classic fair-play puzzle mysteries will clamor for more. (Sept.)