The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

The Killings at Kingfisher Hill (a New Hercule Poirot Mystery)

By Sophie Hannah

Hercule Poirot is traveling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned the renowned detective to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. Poirot will have only days to investigate before Helen is hanged, but there is one strange condition attached: he must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family.

The coach is forced to stop when a distressed woman demands to get off, insisting that if she stays in her seat, she will be murdered. Although the rest of the journey passes without anyone being harmed, Poirot’s curiosity is aroused, and his fears are later confirmed when a body is discovered with a macabre note attached . . .

Could this new murder and the peculiar incident on the coach be clues to solving the mystery of who killed Frank Devonport? And if Helen is innocent, can Poirot find the true culprit in time to save her from the gallows?

 

I started reserving these at the library because I was out of new Agatha Christie novels and these had good reviews.  Unfortunately, now I've read the first and fourth ones and I will not be reading anymore.  Hannah just doesn't capture the wit and tight plotting of the originals.  And frankly, her choice of  narrators is baffling.  While, yes, I may accept that Poirot needs a sidekick, to be awed and amazed (and also do some legwork), the originals used Captain Hastings, a genial man and former soldier who had no especial detecting skills other than an ability to rush in where angels feared to tread, and a weakness for hot dames.  

As perhaps an ill-advised attempt to distance herself from similarities, Hannah's narrator, Edward Catchpool, is a constantly griping inspector from Scotland Yard - but his greatest sin is being as shitty a detective as Hastings was, even though he's ostensibly an elite detective himself.  I mean, at one point in Kingfisher he complains about having to question witnesses in his role as chief detective, and would rather Poirot just take over the whole thing in both name and spirit.  I don't want to read any books this guy narrates.  He's awful.  Poirot "twinkles" at him, but I honestly cannot see why Poirot has any affection for this guy, he's dumb and mean, a killing combination.

The plot also suffers from an excessive of red herrings and dropped mysteries, and a fatal dose of "yeah, right" coincidences.  Maybe I'm looking at this through rose-colored glasses, but I feel like Christie's genius was in making each "clue" either integral to the mystery or integral to the characters.  Here, we're just adding shit to add it.  For example, much is made of the fact that Helen, the confessed murderer, sent her engagement ring back to her fiance, and then it pops up on the finger of her fiance's sister.  And? It's just dropped - not a clue, not a relevant answer to a character's beating heart, just one more thing meant to confuse us.  Or how about the changing of the house name from "Kingfisher BlahBlah" to "Little Key" - apparently the dead son did it.  OKAY.  Way to add to that word count!  And there's much made about the fact that Frank and Helen met alone with his parents for several hours while everyone else was banished.  The answer to this mystery? Well, because that's just how his parents wanted things arranged!  How satisfying!  So glad we spent so much time dissecting that one in minute detail! Now let's talk about the rest of the plot!

So Poirot and Catchpool are called to a house where the oldest son died, and his fiance confessed to pushing him.  And on the way there, they JUST HAPPEN to be on the same bus as another daughter of the family is traveling along with her friend and maid.  Apparently, on the spur of the moment, the daughter JUST HAPPENS to decide to confess to pushing her brother, first to her maid (why?) and then concocts a HIGHLY complex scheme to sit next to Poirot in order to confess to him too, but gets alarmed when she realizes he's actually going to her house.  So she's brilliant enough to trump up some mishegas about a fake warning of death depending on what seat her maid is sitting in (don't ask) and then convolute herself through TWO different versions of why she'd want to kill her brother and a fake murder on the bus, but is too dumb to realize that Poirot and she are traveling in the same direction and perhaps, JUST MAYBE he is on his way to solve the recent murder that occurred at her house? And don't get me started on the "Midnight Gathering" book nonsense.  The bus journey, by the way, takes up like a third of the book, but feels endless.  

So THEN, having made it through, hmm, two-thirds of an evening at the house before their cover is blown, Poirot and Catchpool then have to go back and re-investigate now that the sisters made her own confession.  Then the maid turns up dead, and I swear this is the real reason: because the sister's fiance thought that the sister's confession to the maid was more convincing than her confession to Poirot so he killed the maid to shut her up, EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE BASICALLY THE SAME CONFESSION.  The difference was essentially quibbling about word choices, like her confession to Poirot was that she fell for her parents' BS about her brother being no good for the family, and her confession to her maid was that she wanted revenge against her parents for their BS about her brother being no good for the family.  

BUT it doesn't matter, since both her confessions were just made up (she's also a secret author, so it's okay that she's ZANY! *jazz hands* and no one takes this as the serious cry for psychiatric help that they should) and the actual killer is Helen, the person who confessed before the book began.  And the reason Helen killed her own fiance, whom she loved deeply is....drumroll please! Because she once helped the sister's fiance Kevorkian her dying student and she panicked that the sister's fiance would tell her fiance, so she...pushed her fiance off the balcony.  Wow.  Where do I start? With the AMAZING coincidence that both killers JUST HAPPENED to be engaged to two members of the same family without knowing it? Or perhaps that the answer to this whole thing comes WAY out of left field from information we're not privy to as readers (Poirot questions a doctor who refused to assist in the assisted suicide off-page, as a result from a clue that sister's fiance felt bad about some lady who he blamed for his problems).  Or that after she (rightfully) confessed to killing her fiance, she lies and tells people it's because she fell in love with his brother even though she met his brother like, an hour ago, and then his brother proposes to her and she accepts.  It's like that scene in Zoolander where Mugatu screams, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" Just tell people you had a fight about his awful parents. 

I can't even with this book.  I mean, there's so much GUFF in it.  Apparently Frank's parents moved into a house sold by their business partners and the business partners hate them and it's treated as THIS BIG REVEAL when really, it's like a side note to a side note to the main murder.  We just waste all this time on stupid shit like that, and then the real mystery is solved without any clues to the readers, so we're not given the chance.  I suppose, that if we were given the clues, it would be too simple though.  I know I've mentioned that I'm not the greatest mystery solver in the world, but even I figured out that the sister and the maid knew each other on the bus and colluded together, but apparently Inspector "Not Even Sure Why They Pay Me" Catchpool doesn't catch on until Poirot gathers them all together for the Big Reveal.  I suppose I could make a list like Catchpool does, of all the things that bother me about this, but I will leave it at: no more "New Hercule Poirot Mysteries" for me.  Unlike the wacky confessing sister, I don't have a brain injury.