Review: The Mystery of Three Quarters

The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The tone is similar to that of Agatha Christie, not too similar though. It’s as if Poirot has suddenly become loquacious and the narrator a little too wordy for no particular reason. That’s something to be careful care of when writing a pastiche. But the characterisation of Poirot himself was within the same vein.

Coming to the story itself it was good. I felt the motive was a little weak-ish, but the story itself progressed well except for a small digression which it feels the author introduced to later let Poirot justify the name of the mystery, ‘The mystery of three quarters’. There was no clever misdirection, none, nada. It's as straight a plot as it can get despite an old flashback revealing some links in the end. For such a straight linear plot the overall length need to be a lot leaner.

A good read but wouldn't call it a must-read.

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