Sophie Hannah has done an excellent job continuing the tale of Hercule Poirot! This story is taking place one snowy winter of 1930s and pulls the reader into an intricate web of lies. So good!

Very entertaining, lots of suspense and surprises at every turn. I haven't read other books by this author previously, but will definitely be searching for more.

In this newest installment of Sophie Hannah’s New Hercule Poirot mysteries we follow Poirot and Catchpool to the Norfolk coast after Catchpool’s mother begrudgingly convinced them to spend their Christmas holiday helping her dying friend—Arthur Laurier—solve a murder as his last wish. What they find there is as usual a fun, seemingly impossible mystery to solve. I’m really appreciative of Hannah’s ability to capture Poirot’s snark in a really pleasant and effective way. Set during the Christmas season, this is perfect to pick up this time of year.

Sophie Hannah is brilliant!!!! Sophie Hannah does no wrong!! Sophie Hannah is so easy to recommend to library-goers!! I am such a huge fan, and this was fantastic.

This book is SO GOOD! It is gripping, full of twists and turns, mysterious, suspenseful, intriguing, and so much more! Whenever I picked up "Hercule Poirot's Silent Night", I was whisked back in time as I put on my sleuthing hat, and went on such a journey with this story.

This is the fifth book in Sophie Hannah's "Hercule Poirot Mysteries" series, based around the character Hercule Poirot from many of Agatha Christie's novels! Ms. Hannah's respect for Ms. Christie's character is so clear, and I think she does a wonderful job in this book! I look forward to going back to read the other books in this series as well!

I do not want to say too much about this book due to spoilers, but, I will say, this book kept me turning the pages into the early hours of the morning to see what was going to happen next, and how everything would work out. A man is murdered in the hospital, and a woman whose husband will be going there soon thinks her husband will be murdered too.

How was a man killed in a hospital? What happened? What exactly is going on? Is there more than one mystery, and, if so, are they connected? You will just have to read to find out.

If you enjoy Historical Mysteries, I highly recommend this book! I look forward to reading what Ms. Hannah writes next.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC of this book! All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Thoroughly enjoyed this mystery following Hercule Poirot and his adoring, faithful sidekick, Edward Catchpool. We also get some exposure to Catchpool’s mother, Cynthia, who is kind of a pain in the behind. A murder has occurred and Cynthia shows up manipulating our detectives into traveling to a mansion on the coast to solve it. The family that lives there is complicated and dysfunctional As we learn the backstory of the various characters. Poirot and Catchpool need to work quickly or someone else may be next. I don’t want to reveal the twists and surprises. Enjoy for yourself. Fun read.

HERCULE POIROT'S SILENT NIGHT by Sophie Hannah is the fifth mystery she has written about Agatha Christie's intrepid detective, but the first that I have had the pleasure to read. This novel takes place at an old mansion which is literally about to crumble into the sea as the cliff it sits upon is eroding. It seems that the family who lives there is disintegrating, too – there is much animosity between the two sisters (married to two brothers), their parents, and in-laws. The patriarch is gravely ill and about to enter hospital, but his wife is certain that he will be killed after another patient is murdered. Temporary guests Poirot and his friend, Edward Catchpool, are caught up in the drama and preparations for Christmas festivities. In fact, many clues emerge as Catchpool unobtrusively interviews suspects while decorating Christmas trees. The key is past transgressions and as Poirot notes, "without the determination to keep the terrible secret at all costs there would have been no motive to commit any murders at all." Readers will be surprised and entertained by this holiday-themed tale.

I've had an unlucky reading streak recently, with a succession of disappointing books, so I found myself approaching this book concerned that I might be predisposed to scrutinize it too strictly and therefore tried to compensate by taking a more magnanimous stance as I read than was strictly warranted. Hence, I gave this book much more benefit and much less doubt than necessary, and I found myself violating my own rule to stop reading a book I'm not enjoying and persevered long past the point where it was clear that I was not having a good time. I made it to 60% before finally conceding the point, and skimming ahead to the final chapters to see how it ended. I should have done it sooner.

I was determined to find things to like about this book, and I will say that the prose is quite nice - it's clear and intelligent, and the setting and dialogue are period appropriate - but the story itself is annoying. The plot is nonsensical, the characters are all grating, unreasonable, and obnoxious, and their behaviour and motivations don't make any sense. Catchpool behaves like a sulky teenager, and Poirot seems like a pale imitation - surprised by clues and observations Catchpool noticed but Poirot missed, and easily browbeaten and bossed around by pretty much everyone. It's also annoyingly preachy, with characters being described as good Christians, un-Christian, and talk of blessings and divine intervention to spare a character yet another family squabble. And worst of all, it was boring. To explain in any more detail, I will have to give away spoilers, so proceed at your own risk beyond this point.

*****

The story opens with Catchpool's insufferably domineering mother showing up under a fake name to bully her son and Poirot into a last minute change of holiday plans to travel to Frellingsloe "Frelly" House to humour a dying man's wish to play detective - but Arnold Laurier wants to solve the murder himself, he just likes the idea of having Poirot around twiddling his thumbs for the holidays. Mrs. Catchpool wants Poirot to come solve the case anyway, because she's a guest for Christmas there too, and is worried about her dear friend Vivienne, Arnold's theatrically maudlin widow-to-be. Poirot makes a weak attempt to protest but is completely carried along by the sheer force of Mrs. Catchpool's personality.

SO MANY THINGS DON'T MAKE SENSE!

- It's somehow perfectly reasonable for the two sisters to hate each other. One because her sister had the nerve to marry her husband's brother. The other because, having married into the family she now sees everything about it as hers, and resents her sister for "getting there first".

- The sisters' parents, the in-laws of the Laurier family, were inexplicably terrified that two sisters married to two brothers will be predictably disastrous and oppose the second sister's marriage until Arnold, the father of the two brothers, encourages them to embrace love over fear. The once loving sisters turn overnight into sniping shrews who despise each other, and the Surtees parents blame that bastard Arnold for his horrific advice.

- Both families appear to be wealthy, but for some unknown reason, the Surteeses ask to come stay with the Lauriers for a few months to sort their feuding daughters out, and the sweet and sunny Arnold demands in exchange for hosting the visit that his in-laws become their unpaid servants, AND THEY AGREE! They are bitter and resentful of their "master" and their forced subservience, but it never occurs to them to walk out on the deal. Instead they choose malicious compliance, serving up ghastly and inedible meals and being generally disgruntled.

- Arnold Laurier, who has been told he has only months to live but shows no outward sign of illness or infirmity, is scheduled to go to the hospital in the new year, but they've been holding a room empty for him since the beginning of September - you know, as hospitals do, because it's not like anyone else might need it in the interim. They also get their choice of rooms, and the siblings bicker furiously and at length, repeatedly, for MONTHS, about whether or not a view of the courtyard is a good thing or a terrible thing. If they're really looking for something to fight about, one of them should consider sleeping with the other one's spouse, just to make the beef seem more legitimate.

- It's only a few days until Christmas, but the multiple trees sit in various rooms of the stately manor house, undecorated, and "wretched and forlorn". The Lauriers are extremely wealthy but also extremely cheap - they fire all paid household staff to save money for the heirs, and instead invite guests to their house and put them to work for free instead. The job of decorating is pushed onto Catchpool, with micromanagement from many family members, and the many pages spent describing this task are probably meant to feel festive but just end up feeling tedious.

- Someone slips a 2 page note under Poirot's door one night, which takes up 11 pages of the book at standard font size.

- Hercule is poisoned while at Frelly, and is admitted to the hospital to sleep it off, and the staff never consider that he might have been poisoned even though he is adamant that he has been poisoned. Silly detectives! They're always collapsing for no reason after being served a drink in the house of murder suspects. Pffft, poison... what nonsense. Also, Mrs. Catchpool poisoned Poirot for getting too close to solving the case? After dragging him there specifically to solve the case? And there's no consequence for poisoning Poirot, even from her cop son? (I'm pretty sure there was no consequence - I stopped reading after Catchpool wrote the fact in his notebook at the end, and I don't care enough to go back and keep reading to make sure).

- An engaged couple unexpectedly find out they're expecting a baby, but the wedding isn't planned for another year. Their perfectly reasonable parents fly into rage, fire their son from his job, and pressure their daughter to put the baby up for adoption. Instead of just... moving up the date of the wedding if it's that important to them? And instead of simply eloping, or telling both sets of parents to kick rocks, the young fiance commits suicide. The girl's parents suddenly have a change of heart, forgiving the pregnant daughter but disowning their other daughter who spilled the beans. Because she's the bad guy in all this. The shunned daughter changes her name, marries a wealthy man named Arnold Laurier, has a kooky family, and then, suddenly discovering her sister is a nurse at the same hospital (even though they've been living in the same town for all these years) where her husband has a room booked, she goes on a killing spree, murdering a random patient and her own beloved husband, all to prevent her sister from recognizing her. Yikes.

- It's not clearly stated but heavily implied that Vivienne/Iris has multiple personality disorder or disassociative personality disorder, and that it caused her murderiness, which is kind of gross.

- The jealous 60-something doctor finds it preposterous that the 30 year old curate might have a crush on Vivienne, a woman old enough to be his mother, while the doctor himself is engaged to marry a woman young enough to be his daughter, because that's totally normal and not at all preposterous.

- The same woman who was so desperate to keep her identity secret that she murdered two helpless, sick old men, one of whom her own husband, was awfully quick to abandon pretense and adopt a sly villain monologue and admit everything as soon as she was suspected. I knew it was her as soon as Poirot and Catchpool arrived on the scene.

The story didn't capture my interest. There is no rising tension, no believable conflicts or motives, no effective red herrings. A lot of case details show up in Catchpool's notes without seeming to come out in the story. And there is no satisfying resolution. The book actually often addresses its own logical flaws, and I think these inconsistencies are meant to be clues and to come off as compellingly building the mystery, but to be honest I just found them annoying. The book tries hard to set up scenarios for drama without considering whether they are plausible.

The fact that the Christie estate granted permission for the use of these characters by another author isn't necessarily indicative that the new franchise will do justice to the canon - I'm pretty sure Mike Myers had permission from the Suess estate to make the Cat In The Hat movie too.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a free advance reader copy of the book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie Hannah is the fifth entry in the “New Hercule Poirot Mysteries” series. Hannah is already an accomplished mystery writer and she has been officially authorized to write these stories by the Agatha Christie estate. I can see why, since this novel is skillfully plotted and written in an authentic voice of Christie’s era.
Poirot is obviously the protagonist, but his sidekick also features prominently as a quirky companion and narrator, Inspector Catchpool, who chronicles Poirot’s cases and solutions (think Holmes and his Dr. Watson.)
It is December 19, 1931, and the famous detective is begged by Catchpool’s mother, Enid, to travel to Norfolk and identify the killer of her old friend Stanley Niven. In typical Poirot fashion, all the suspects and side characters are interviewed and considered, using Mssr. Poirot’s “little grey cells,” as he solves the mystery in time to return to London for Christmas!
This is a worthy effort and is true enough to the originals to be entertaining for fans of these period mysteries.

Thank you to William Morrow Scene of the Crime group and NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.

Sophie Hannah has done it again. Poirot comes to life with his sidekick, Catchpool, investigating a murder. I particularly enjoyed the addition of Catchpool's mother, who was so easy to dislike at first. Grab a copy and read it for Christmas.

I have been a fan of Hercule Poirot since I was a little girl and my mom shared Agatha Christie mysteries with me. I was excited to discover this author who is carrying on the tradition and style of Christie’s books. Sophie Hannah writes so wonderfully and I was instantly hooked and intrigued from the beginning. The new story Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night was a great mystery with all the things I love about him and his little gray cells. This is one of those mysteries that keeps you guessing and on the edge of your seat. When Poirot is expecting a calm retreat of course what else could happen but murder and he has to be the one to solve it. He also has to do it fast before the next victim is taken. You will love this new version of Poirot with the perfect story and characters you come to love. The mystery is just what you need. Enjoy this adventure. I received this as an ARC but will be adding it to my collection for sure.

One of the difficult things about these series that attempt to reproduce the work of a beloved author is that it’s hard to decide what we want out of them as readers: Do we want someone who attempts to mimic the original works so closely that it feels like one of them? Or do we want a fresh spin that pays homage to the original?

This book attempts to do both and mostly disappoints on both counts. The attempt to reinvent a new version of Poirot and the style of Christie writing about Poirot is the larger miss here. For the most part there isn’t enough difference to convince readers that this is a new interpretation, and what we do get that’s truly different doesn’t fit the style (for example, the borderline inept sidekick and smattering of odd detail on Poirot’s current whereabouts and activities outside of the central mystery).

As far as the attempt to simply mimic, I think the book does the job plot-wise, but it’s missing the visual imagery and atmosphere that Christie does so well. And Poirot’s dialogue sounds more like someone playing Poirot as a character in a piece of meta fiction than Poirot himself. “Little gray cells” has always been a borderline annoying phrase, and here it’s repeated over and over, as if to hit the reader over the head with the idea that THIS IS POIROT SPEAKING. We know. We got it.

And the mystery itself just isn’t anything special. This was my first read of this series, and probably my last. Just read the originals. There are a lot of them.

In Sophie Hannah's "refreshed" Hecule Poirot series the "sidekick" is a 30ish Scotland Yard Inspector named Edward Catchpool. The two friends are planning to spend a quiet Christmas together in London when Catchpool's domineering mother hijacks them to solve a mystery in Norfolk. A hospital patient has been killed but there doesn't seem to be a motive. And their hostess is convinced that her husband will be the next victim. Can Poirot solve this quickly so they can escape back to London for the quiet Christmas they had planned?
Thanks to NetGalley for an eGalley of this title.

Author Sophie Hannah continues the mysterious adventures of Hercule Poirot in the classic Agatha Christie style.. In this story, Poirot and his sidekick Inspector Catchpool leave London just before Christmas and try to solve a murder in order to get back to London for Christmas. Chock full of many quirky and unusual characters who could all be suspects, Poirot will figure this out before the readers do.

Another enjoyable story of Hercule Poirot and his friend Edward Catchpool. This is Sophie Hannah’s fifth book in the Poirot series. She does a great job of continuing on for Agatha Christie. As the title suggests, this story takes place around the Christmas holiday. Two men are murdered without having any connection between them.
The writing fits the time period and the characters fit right in. Poirot throws in the occasional French word and he has the local inspector who constantly calls him Mr. Prarrow. This is a well written cozy mystery with our favorite detective.
I hope Ms. Hannah continues on in this series. I will also continue to read her other mystery/thriller books.
Thank you to NetGalley and @WilliamMorrow for my early copy of this ebook.

As always I loved this Hercule Poirot mystery, to mean when I read the first book in the series the tone didn’t sit tight with me, but then I had to remind myself, it’s not why has writing it’s going to feel different and it grew on me.. at first the story started our slow for me and I kinda wasn’t feeling it (catchpools mother annoyed me) but I pushed threw and started enjoying the story.. I can honestly say I never guess who the murderer was..

Thank you netgalley for allowing me to read the lastest installment of the series

I received a free copy of, Hercule Poirot's Silent Night, by Sophie Hannah, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Whenever I picture Hercules Poirot I picture David Suchet, from the pbs version. It's December 1931 and Hercules Poirot is on the case. This is a great mystery, I really enjoyed it, Poirot is like no one else.

This book is the fifth of the new Poirot mysteries written by Sophie Hannah. I've read all of them and have enjoyed the interesting plots. I think she does an excellent job of capturing the essence of Hercule Poirot. I also like the new character of Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard, who assists Poriot and narrates the stories.

In this book, Poirot and Catchpool have less than a week to solve a murder before Christmastime, but some of the witnesses - including Catchpool's mother - are making it harder than it should be. This book gets off to a somewhat slow start, but picks up in the middle building to a surprising and satisfying ending. Hercule Poirot is one of my all-time favorite detectives so I am so glad Sophie Hannah has continued this series challenging Poirot with new cases.

I received an advance copy of this ebook at no cost from NetGalley and William Morrow Books, but my review is voluntary and unbiased.

Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie Hannah harkens to the Gold Age of Mystery with her depiction of Poirot as right on as that of Agatha Christie. It is a compelling tale of a man who is killed in hospital akin to the hospice of today. Vivienne Laurier’s husband was dying. Of that there was no doubt. Her angst takes over when it is her dying husband who feels the need to solve the crime since he will shortly be a resident at the crime scene. She is beside herself so her good friend, Cynthia Catchpool, yes, the mother of Poirot’s sidekick, arrives in London to convince Poirot to come and solve this crime. He was Arthur Laurier’s hero and would surely not want to see him investigate as he was dying. It was Christmas and so she insisted that her son and Poirot spend Christmas at Munby-on-the-Sea, after Poirot had solved the crime. Insisting that they would not spend Christmas, they did hurry to catch the train and arrived to find people there to meet them. Cynthia had been that certain of their acquiescence.

The characters, Poirot included, are exactly as you would expect them to be, although there were odd quirks about each and every one of the members of the household. The Laurier’s two sons were present, as were their wives, sisters and children of the Surtees. The sisters were as different as different could be and their mother was doing the cooking. Sadly, she shouldn’t have been. She was a terrible cook. Her husband was the gardener. The house was slowly falling into the sea. A fact all of them had accepted, which led to the additional discomfort of the gathering. Poirot got two clues from Laurier and started to look into the death. It was an enjoyable read with a good plot and interesting characters. If you are a fan of Christie, you will love it.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by William Morrow through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #WilliamMorrow #SophieHannah #HerculePoirotsSilentNight

A must-read for Agatha Christie fans!

Sophie Hannah takes a beloved Agatha Christie character and puts her own twist to the character while staying true to the Agatha Christie style/vibe that readers know and love.