Book Review: The Last Death of the Year (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #6) by Sophie Hannah

The Last Death of the Year (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #6) by Sophie Hannah and Agatha Christie opens with Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool arriving on the island of Lamperos in Greece on New Year's Eve in 1932. Poirot has been requested by the leader of a religious community to investigate the threat against one of its members, but just a short while later, another resident is found dead after a New Year's game threatened this member's life.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and William Morrow for approving my request for an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of this mystery. I've been a long time fan of Agatha Christie and her Hercule Poirot series, so learning I'd receive a copy of Sophie Hannah's new book based on this series made me absolutely giddy. A digital copy was provided to me in exchange for my honest review.

Sophie Hannah has done a fabulous job of recreating Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot series and keeping a similar style of writing, utilizing a modern style of writing and introducing new characters such as Inspector Catchpool as Poirot's new sidekick ... a new Watson to Poirot's Holmes if you will. Being as this is the sixth novel in the series, Catchpool may have been in the previous installments by the author, but he is new to me. I was hoping that Hastings would be brought back as I loved his character in the original series but that wasn't to be. With that being said, the two characters are very similar in personality and their thought processes. Catchpool is a bit naïve and takes a bit longer to connect the dots than others.

However, the same could've been said about me when it came to using my little gray cells to figuring out the identity of the murderer or murderers. A lot of the characters were quite unlikeable, and I didn't really find myself rooting for any of them to be cleared of murder. At the beginning of the book, we're given a list of characters and their New Year Resolutions. We're supposed to be able to figure out who the culprit is from that list, but I don't really see how that was supposed to be feasible. Even so, Hannah did a remarkable job of having multiple red herrings that kept me guessing, but my top three suspects were Austin Lion, Pearl Sanjger, and Olive Hasslop. Did I figure out the killer? You'll have to read the book yourself to find out.

There were things that I liked and disliked about The Last Death of the Year. What I enjoyed about the story is that the author kept relatively true to the character of Hercule Poirot, although he wasn't in the book as much as I would have liked. Additionally, I had trouble figuring out "whodunnit" like I always did with Agatha Christie; I didn't want it to be easier with Sophie Hannah being the author. The story has a similar pacing as Christie's original stories, which I enjoyed as well. That said, there were times that conversations overheard seemed contrived and stilted; this took away from my enjoyment and pulled me out of the story. And, finally, the ending of the book felt a bit rushed after all the buildup.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Death of the Year (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #6) by Sophie Hannah. Four out of five stars is what I rated this novel, and I look forward to reading more books in this series.

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