Closed Casket

October 3, 2016
Hannah’s second estate-sanctioned addition to Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot finds the brilliant, amusingly self-centered Belgian sleuth in 1929, attending a house party from hell. Neither he nor Scotland Yard Insp. Edward Catchpool, the novel’s thoughtful narrator and Poirot’s friend, know why they’ve been invited by Lady Athelinda Playford to
her County Cork mansion in the Irish
Free State. Other guests include Athie’s children, their significant others, her attorneys, and her ailing secretary. When Athie announces she’s drafted a new will leaving everything to her secretary, Poirot and Catchpool realize their presence is intended to keep the peace. Someone commits murder regardless, and the detecting duo must determine whodunit. Hannah’s entertaining pastiche is brim-full of character interactions, backstories, smart chat, and diabolical twists of plot, most of which Rhind-Tutt, performing as Catchpool, delivers in the cool, measured voice of a professional Yard observer. There are moments, however, when the inspector’s almost steely British reserve gives way to self-doubt, anger, sorrow, and even petulance, and Rhind-Tutt shifts his narration accordingly. As for Poirot, Rhind-Tutt’s rendition resembles that of the sleuth’s longtime television interpreter, David Suchet. A wise man doesn’t meddle with perfection. A Morrow hardcover.

June 20, 2016
Set in October 1929, bestseller Hannah’s captivating sequel to 2014’s The Monogram Murders finds Hercule Poirot and Scotland Yard’s Insp. Edward Catchpool visiting Lady Athelinda Playford’s mansion in Clonakilty, County Cork, in the Irish Free State. Other guests include Athie’s children, their significant others, her attorneys, and her ailing secretary. At first, Poirot and Catchpool can’t figure out why they were invited, but then Athie announces she’s drafted a new will leaving everything to her secretary, and they realize their presence is intended to keep the peace. Someone commits murder regardless, and the detecting duo must determine whodunit. An intriguing setup, colorful characters, and witty dialogue elevate this classic manor house mystery. Fiendish schemes and an abundance of interpersonal conflict foster tension and drive plot, while outrageous twists and juicy red herrings confound readers. This Christie estate–sanctioned pastiche isn’t perfect—Hannah’s Poirot is too subdued and the killer’s machinations prove preposterous—but overall, this endeavor confirms that the Queen of Crime’s legacy is in capable hands.

April 15, 2016

Here's Hannah's second Hercule Poirot novel (after the well-reviewed The Monogram Murders; "Christie herself, some might say, could do no better," said the Washington Post). No news on the plot, but there's a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2016
A famous Irish author of children's mysteries announces that she's just disinherited her family before a gathering that includes those very family members--along with Hercule Poirot.Invited for unknown reasons to spend a week in Lady Athelinda Playford's home, Lillieoak, in County Cork, Poirot and his new Watson, Scotland Yard detective Edward Catchpool, can only watch in astonishment as she tells her dinner guests that she's leaving her entire estate to Joseph Scotcher, her secretary. Viscount Harry Playford, his wife, Dorothy, his older sister, Claudia, and her fiance, pathologist Randall Kimpton, are all aghast at the news that they'll be cut off without a farthing. But Poirot and Catchpool are even more surprised that Lady Playford has disinherited them all in favor of a man with Bright's disease who's been given only a short time to live--a man who greets the news of his unexpected windfall by instantly proposing marriage to his nurse, Sophie Bourlet. Whatever the reason for Lady Playford's quixotic decision, her children and their significant others, it turns out, have nothing to worry about, for Joseph Scotcher is murdered within hours of the disclosure, leaving the guests, one of whom immediately claims that she saw another one actually committing the murder, in the bullying grasp of Inspector Arthur Conree, who maintains that he hasn't sought this job but that he'll brook no interference in conducting it, setting the stage for a dizzying series of surprises that will reveal that everything anyone ever thought about Scotcher was wrong. As in The Monogram Murders (2014), Hannah provides both less and more than Agatha Christie ever baked into any of her tales. But the climactic revelation that establishes the killer's motive is every bit as brilliant and improbable as any of Christie's own decorous thunderclaps.

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Starred review from August 1, 2016
Even Tolstoy's All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way is no match for the Playfords, a rich, dysfunctional clan that finds itself in need of smelling salts over an inheritance gone very wrong. Lady Playford, whose family lives in Ireland but is very much of England, writes children's fiction of the Enid Blyton, jolly-good sort. After she summons Hercule Poirot and Edward Catchpool, a Scotland Yard detective, to a showdown with her family, the tale seems to be shaping up like a domestic murder mystery, but then it branches further afieldboth geographically and in terms of plot twists. Poirot's and Catchpool's sleuthing skills are put to the test as Hannah's spot-on take on Agatha Christie's milieu and writing moves toward an unpredictable and satisfying finale. Hannah's second Christie novel, after The Monogram Murders (2014), will be devoured by readers of that title and of Christie's original works (the new versions thankfully forego the anti-Semitism found in the earlier ones). The book is ideal, too, for fans of Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher novels and the related TV show, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteriesand for library programs featuring the board game Clue.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)