• Author: Sophie Hannah
• Series: New Hercule Poirot Mysteries
• Genre: Historical Mystery
• No. of pages: 335
• Dates read: 19.04.2022 – 23.04.2022
• Star Rating: 3 stars

Plot: Hercule Poirot is travelling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate, where Richard Devonport has summoned him to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. But there is a strange condition attached to this request: Poirot must conceal his true reason for being there. 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? 

Ok, so this post was originally supposed to go out on Thursday but i have been so busy with work that it got delayed but no matter. Here we are!

I have now offically read all the New Hercule Poriot mystery books that Sophie Hannah has ever written. I am unaware if she will be writing anymore. My thoughts on this series was that they were enjoyable but not amazing. I felt the series peaked with book 2. I loved the ending of book 2 but I found all the others to be lacking and let me explain it with this book.

I felt this book was on the road to 5 star territory. I was engaged from the very beginning and I found the premise of the book to be super interesting.

I did feel certain chapters were very exposition heavy, which I actually like, but that is a warning to people who don’t really like info dumps.

The characters and their family dynamic was super interesting though and was the highlight of the book for me. This novel explored in depth the different factors of living in a toxic household which I thought really interesting and I liked seeing how this household affected people in different ways. I thought the ending would have some kind of link to this. How living in this household brought a character to do an awful thing but the ending was so anti-climatic. I literally said out loud, ‘Is that it?’. Very underwhelming and I felt like I had wasted my time slightly after reading the ending.

This series has been incredibly hit and miss for me and I am not sure if I will continue if the author brings out any more books.