The killings at Kingfisher Hill

In her fourth Hercule Poirot novel (after The Mystery of Three Quarters, 2018), Hannah again portrays Agatha Christie's Belgian sleuth and his long-suffering sidekick, Inspector Edward Catchpool, solving a tea-and-crumpets-laced whodunit. This time the tale starts with a bus ride on which a woman admits committing the very murder that the partners are en route to solve. She's not the only claimant to the crime, though, and when Poirot and Catchpool reach Little Key in Belgiusm, where the son of the bullying owner has been murdered by either his fiancée or his sister, another murder is committed. Readers will feel steeped in the environs of upper-middle-class England of days past, the chill emanating from a dysfunctional family, and the torture of doing the wrong thing for the right reasons as they enjoy Catchpool's exasperation and Poirot's genius-at-work sensibilities. Two characters are the inventors of Peepers, a board game that they hope will push Monopoly off its perch, so recommend this to board-game aficionados as well as to fans of Christie and Hannah.

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.)

In Hannah's next mystery starring the Agatha Christie favorite, Poirot has a prophetic encounter on the train as he travels to the Kingfisher Hill estate of Richard Devonport, who wants him to prove his fiancée innocent of murder (30,000-copy first printing).