The Mystery of Three Quarters

June 25, 2018
Bestseller Hannah’s third Hercule Poirot pastiche (after 2016’s Closed Casket) offers Agatha Christie fans another ingeniously deceptive puzzle. The premise is especially clever—someone, posing as Poirot, has sent letters to four people accusing each of them of having murdered Barnabas Pandy. Pandy, a 94-year-old, was found drowned in his bathtub in Combingham Hall three months earlier—a death that was universally accepted as a tragic accident. Two of the recipients of the letters confront Poirot angrily, professing to have no idea who Pandy was, but the third, Annabel Treadway, distraught at the accusation, discloses that Pandy was her grandfather and insists that no one in the household could possibly have killed him. Aided again by Insp. Edward Catchpool, an enigmatic Scotland Yarder, Poirot uses his “little gray cells” to ascertain who has been impersonating him, whether Pandy was in fact the victim of foul play, and if so, whodunit. The gratifying reveal is a neat variation on one of Christie’s own solutions and demonstrates Hannah’s facility at combining her own plotting gifts with another author’s creation.

August 1, 2018

Hercule Poirot isn't surprised when he's recognized on the street in front of Whitehaven Mansions, but he is taken aback by the venom and anger directed at him by a woman named Sylvia Rule. She has a letter written by Poirot saying she murdered Barnabus Pandy, someone she has not even met, and she demands that he recuse this slander. Then three more people accuse him of the same thing. Poirot asks his friend Inspector Catchpool to determine the forger, why these four strangers are accused of the same murder, and whether Pandy's death was murder or tragic accident. Resurrecting a character as famous and beloved as Poirot is not for the faint-of-heart writer, and Hannah's third installment in her reboot (after The Monogram Murders and Closed Casket) is her best yet. It rings true to Agatha Christie's original writing, capturing the character of Poirot. VERDICT Enthusiastically recommended for fans of Hannah's other Poirot novels and detective fiction and Christie's original works. [See Prepub Alert, 2/19/18.]--Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2018
Hercule Poirot gets pulled into a mystery in the most awkward possible way when someone signing himself Hercule Poirot writes four letters accusing four different people of the same murder.Not only did she not kill Barnabas Pandy, a furious Sylvia Rule assures the famous detective; she's never even heard of him. Neither has John McCrodden, who assumes that his father, Rowland, whose fierce advocacy of the death penalty has won him the sobriquet "Rowland Rope," conspired with Poirot to accuse his long-estranged son of murdering Pandy. Annabel Treadway has certainly heard of Pandy--he was her grandfather, after all--but she tearfully claims that she didn't kill him either, though at least she's willing to listen to Poirot's own protestations of innocence. So is ebullient Turville School housemaster Hugo Dockerill, who passes the accusation off as a joke despite his own connection to Pandy, whose great-grandson, Timothy, Annabel's nephew, is a pupil of his. With all due respect to the obvious questions he shares with his "friend and occasional helper," Scotland Yard Inspector Edward Catchpool--which, if any, of these suspects actually killed Pandy? Why would anyone trouble to drown a 94-year-old slate magnate, no matter how wealthy has was, in his bathtub? Who wrote the letters?--Poirot is fascinated by a more puzzling question: Why would anyone want to write those four letters in the first place? A series of variously edgy conversations, a proffer of alibis, and another sudden death will intervene before Poirot, skillfully exploiting his trademark fondness for neat patterns, is able to make good on his uncharacteristically rash promise to reveal all in a roundup of the unusual suspects only a week later.As in her two earlier Agatha Christie pastiches (Closed Casket, 2016, etc.), Hannah is content to supply boundless ingenuity in place of more 1930s detail, this time adding a divinely inspired denouement that seems to go on for longer than the week that leads up to it.

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Starred review from June 1, 2018
It's a puzzle worthy of the skills of legendary detective Hercule Poirot: four persons receive letters accusing them of the murder of one Barnabas Pandy, letters ostensibly sent by Poirot himself. Two of the recipients, who have never heard of Pandy, are furious: Sylvia Rule believes her daughter's fianc�, a man she hates, to be behind this scheme, while John McCrodden suspects his disapproving solicitor father. The other two?Annabel Treadway, Pandy's granddaughter, who lives in his house, and Hugh Dockerill, housemaster at Pandy's great-grandson's school?regret what they know to be an error, for the 94-year-old Pandy accidentally drowned in his bath three months earlier. Recruiting Scotland Yard detective Edward Catchpool for assistance, Poirot starts with just one clue, a flaw in the letter e on the typewriter used by the accuser. Then the intuitive sleuthing begins, as Poirot looks for connections between Pandy and the four recipients, and among the recipients themselves, scheduling his customary reveal with all parties present before he cracks the case, to put pressure on himself, with a slice of an ingeniously constructed cake at the center. In her third Poirot mystery, Hannah, authorized to continue the series by Agatha Christie's estate, once again nails the style and substance of her beloved predecessor, producing another treat for Christie fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)