On this very rainy Sunday morning, I’m thinking about the folks in
Toronto who will be celebrating Word on the Street, and am hoping for their
sake that the rain stops. But for myself,
I would love the rain to continue so I could, without guilt, devote the whole
day to reading. For our Word on the
Street festival yesterday, we had nearly perfect weather. Unfortunately, during the time I was there,
the turnout seemed to be quite low… hopefully it picked up as the day went on. Speaking of Toronto, I am enjoying a Vanilla
Scone from Future Bakery that I picked up at the Kitchener Market yesterday. I may have mentioned these scones before, as
they are delicious. Future Bakery is
located in Toronto, but they have a stall at the market here on Saturdays,
which is awesome for me! I would highly
recommend these scones… not too sweet, with a subtle vanilla taste and a hint
of icing drizzled over the top… yum!
Note: the bakery in Toronto only
makes these scones on Fridays and Saturdays, so if you try to get one during
the week, you will be out of luck.
Last week I got a book from the library that I am so excited about,
the latest mystery in the “Hercule Poirot” series, The Monogram Murders
by Sophie Hannah. This novel is the
first Agatha Christie family-sanctioned addition to Christie’s extensive body of
work, and I think she did an excellent job.
I will admit that I had my misgivings. I've read a couple of Hannah’s psychological mysteries, and while I found
them gripping, I was not always so impressed with her writing skills, so when I
read the news about Hannah receiving this honour, I had my doubts. Having nearly reached the end of the novel, I feel that Hannah does indeed have the skills to take o this project and to meet and exceed this reader’s
expectations. In The Monogram Murders,
retired Belgian ex-detective Hercule Poirot is enjoying a short holiday in a
part of London where he is unlikely to run into anyone he knows, and
appreciating the finest cup of coffee in the whole city (according to his
opinion) at Pleasant’s Coffee House, when a woman rushes in, seemingly very agitated
and distressed. She exchanges a few
words with the waitress, then takes a table in the corner, where she stares out
the darkened window, possiibly watching for someone. Poirot moves to her table to join her, and in
the ensuing conversation, he learns that she, Jennie, is in fear of being
murdered, yet she does not seem willing to avert this event from
happening. Then she rushes out, leaving
Poirot to ponder this encounter as he finishes his coffee and fine dinner and
returns to the lodging house where he has chosen to spend his “stay-cation”. There he runs into his friend, Edward
Catchpool, a policeman with Scotland Yard, and learns that three people were
murdered that evening at the Bloxham Hotel.
Poirot immediately feels there is a connection between his encounter with Jennie
and the three murders, and insists on returning to the hotel with Catchpool to
investigate. The three who were
murdered, it is discovered, were originally from the same small village, where
something tragic occurred nearly twenty years earlier. Could these murders be connected to the
previous tragedy? Is Jennie telling the
truth when she says she is going to be murdered? And how can Poirot stop this inevitable murder
from taking place, and also solve the crime of the murders that have already
occurred? Have no fear – using his “little
grey cells”, Poirot will get to the truth and unmask the culprits, revealing
the connections of the whole cast of characters, but will keep Catchpool, and
the reader, guessing until the very end.
I’m not quite at the very end,
but I will be soon, and if I didn’t know better, I would swear that this was
written by Christie herself. I haven’t
read many of her books, but I have listened to quite a few, so as I’ve been
reading, whenever Poirot speaks, I “hear” him as if I was listening to an
audiobook, and have decided that Hannah has Poirot’s character and speech
patterns dead-on. The novel is set in
1929, and she does a good job of putting the story in that period realistically
without using too much description.
Catchpool serves Poirot much as Hastings did in previous novels, as a
sounding board and apprentice. I loved
that Hannah found ways to use the word “canoodle” at least twice in the novel,
and that Poirot referred many times to “the little grey cells”, giving
authenticity to the story. I don’t know
if there are plans for other “Hercule Poirot” novels, and if so, whether they
will be written by Hannah alone, or whether the Christie family would consider
giving other authors a go at this project, but I would give Hannah an A+ for
her work on this novel, and I look forward to checking out future works by this
author.
As I was nearing the end of The Monogram Murders, I was
thinking about what I would read next. I have review books to read, and a pile of books to read for my committee, and I
also have a book club meeting coming up, so I have plenty of factors that could potentially influence my reading selections (this is when reading starts to become a chore,
not a pleasure…). I headed off to the
library to pick up my hold, and was surprised and delighted to see that not one,
but two, books were ready for me to pick up, including Ian McEwan’s latest work,
The Children Act. I’m so excited, I’m very nearly shaking! I love McEwan’s works, which often present situations
and explore them in the most interesting and different ways, dragging the
reader into the moral and ethical dilemmas with which the characters are also
grappling. I can’t wait to start this
book, one that I will read entirely for the pleasure of it, a book that I will read “just for me”. Alas, the sun has come out, so it
may not be a guilt-free reading day after all… darn!
Bye for now…
Julie
Julie
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