“Every lie on Kingfisher Hill seemed to cast a longer shadow than the one before.”

Dear diary,

This book is undeniably thrilling, filled with twists that keep you turning pages. This book shows Sophie Hannah’s portrayal of Hercule Poirot, which differs notably from Agatha Christie’s. While Christie’s mysteries often unfold with a seamless, almost effortless elegance, Hannah’s plotting feels more jarring, complex, and deliberately twisted.

Hercule Poirot is travelling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate, where he’s been summoned by Richard Devonport to prove the innocence of his fiancée- Helen- for the murder of his brother(Frank) and save her from being hanged. However, there is a strange condition attached to this: he and Catchpool( his friend and a police inspector at Scotland Yard) must conceal their true identity for being there from the rest of the Devonport family.

The coach is forced to stop when a distressed woman insists that if she stays on her seat she’ll be murdered. While the rest of the journey passes by without any harm, Poirot’s curiosity is aroused and his fears later confirmed when a dead body is discovered with a morbid note attached…

Could this new murder, the peculiar incident on the coach and Frank’s murder all be related? Could they be clues to solve one another? And if Helen is innocent, can Poirot find the real murder in time and save her from being hanged?

Overall this was a very gripping book which gave away almost nothing until the end. It kept me reading and thinking, trying to make sense of who the murder could be. However, the plot did feel stretched at certain instances and more twisted than it was required to be

read-o-meter rating: 3.7/5

Age rating: 14+

Until next time… dear reader of my book diary:)