4 reviews for Closed Casket
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Closed Casket
by Sophie Hannah
Description:
Hercule Poirot returns in another brilliant murder mystery that can be solved only by the eponymous Belgian detective and his ‘little grey cells’.
‘What I intend to say to you will come as a shock….’
Lady Athelinda Playford has planned a house party at her mansion in Clonakilty, County Cork, but it is no ordinary gathering. As guests arrive, Lady Playford summons her lawyer to make an urgent change to her will – one she intends to announce at dinner that night. She has decided to cut off her two children without a penny and leave her fortune to someone who has only weeks to live….
Among Lady Playford’s guests are two men she has never met – the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard. Neither knows why he has been invited…until Poirot starts to wonder if Lady Playford expects a murderer to strike. But why does she seem so determined to provoke in the presence of a possible killer?
When the crime is committed in spite of Poirot’s best efforts to stop it, and the victim is not who he expected it to be, will he be able to find the culprit and solve the mystery?
Following the phenomenal global success of The Monogram Murders, which was published to critical acclaim following a coordinated international launch in September 2014, international best-selling crime writer Sophie Hannah has been commissioned by Agatha Christie Limited to pen a second fully authorised Poirot novel. The new audiobook marks the centenary of the creation of Christie’s world-famous detective, Hercule Poirot, introduced in her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
About The Author
Sophie Hannah was born in Manchester, England; her father was the academic Norman Geras and her mother is the author Adèle Geras. She attended Beaver Road Primary School in Didsbury and the University of Manchester. She published her first book of poems, The Hero and the Girl Next Door, at the age of 24. Her style is often compared to the light verse of Wendy Cope and the surrealism of Lewis Carroll. Her poems’ subjects tend toward the personal, utilizing classic rhyme schemes with understated wit, humour and warmth. She has published five previous collections of poetry with Carcanet Press. In 2004, she was named one of the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation poets. Her poems are studied at GCSE, A-level and degree level across the UK.
Hannah is also the author of a book for children and several psychological crime novels. Her first novel, Little Face, was published in 2006 and has sold more than 100,000 copies. Her fifth crime novel, Lasting Damage, was published in the UK on 17 February 2011. Kind of Cruel, her seventh psychological thriller to feature the characters Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer, was published in 2012.
Her 2008 novel The Point of Rescue was produced for TV as the two-part drama Case Sensitive and shown on 2 and 3 May 2011 on the UK’s ITV network. It stars Olivia Williams in the lead role of DS Charlie Zailer and Darren Boyd as DC Simon Waterhouse. Its first showing had 5.4 million viewers. A second two-part story based on The Other Half Lives was shown on 12 and 13 July 2012.
Skryf Review
“Good Reading”
Tisha
I won this book and the opportunity to read it. I really liked it. It definitely had the Agatha Christie feel to it although I would have liked to have more of Poirot actually featured in the book. The setting was an Irish Estate with the usual wealthy (and some not so wealthy)British subjects attending a get together given by a famous British mystery writer, Lady Playford. I must say she starts the party off just the right way when she announces she is leaving all her money to her dying personal secretary instead of her children. Chaos and murder soon ensues. I think any Agatha Christie fan will eat this book up.
Shrawan
.I openly admit to being a massive fan of all things Agatha Christie, so was excited to get the opportunity to read this early. Following on from Monogram Murders which introduced us to Edward Catchpool, Closed Casket finds Catchpool and Poirot in Ireland at the home of Lady Platform but why are they there. Is murder afoot ?Written in a style that you would find hard to differentiate from a Christie novel, with classic plotting, a cast of characters who all hold secrets that only Poirots little grey cells can unlock, Sophie Hannah has delivered a novel in the grandest traditions of the golden age for todays readers, which will appeal to die hard Christie fans and todays modern crime readers.
Krushali
Given that I have no memory of anything from The Monogram Murders, I can’t make any comparisons to it. Besides that it didn’t really feel like a Poirot mystery. Since I don’t even remember the murder, I can’t tell you why. That’s just how it felt to me.However, I can honestly say, this felt like a genuine Poirot mystery. I could hear his voice in my head. I could see the mystery exactly. It just felt authentic to me, and, when you’re writing any sort of pastiche, that’s key. You have to capture the key people, the era, and the tone. In the case with mysteries, you have to capture the specific sort of mystery. If it’s a cozy mystery, you can’t just go and make it some crazy violent story. You have to stick with it, or you’re going to lose people.On that note, the mystery was great. I thought it was inventive and it had twists that were completely like ones Agatha Christie made. Yet, I didn’t guess it. I sort of had a feeling, but I definitely didn’t know until they revealed it. It was delightful. Perfectly gruesome, but nothing insane. I really liked it, and I’m definitely going to have to keep an eye out for more in this series because, with this one, Hannah hit her stride.