If you pretend this isn't Poirot, but a character original to Sophie Hannah who simply bears a passing resemblance to that most famous of literary Belgians, The Monogram Murders is...well, it's still a pretty bad novel, but at least it feels less blasphemous. It's one thing to write a lousy murder mystery - it's another to inflict it upon the beloved Poirot canon.

Edward Catchpool is possibly the worst fictional detective to ever try his feeble hand at detecting. He leaves the crime scene overnight without putting any procedures in place to deal with the bodies - just leaves them lying there on hotel room floors so he can go home and angst, as if he's never seen a dead body before in his police career; he totally fails to interview almost anyone, including one witness because he made some asinine promise not to pester the man (and, why? The absurdly named Dr. Flowerday seems hearty enough to handle it, and that stupid suicide/accident lie felt tacked on); he starts out whining about Poirot taking over his case, but then immediately just gives up and lets Poirot do everything; he does virtually no actual investigating, no interviews of witnesses beyond Margaret Ernst (who isn't a real witness), no digging into the victims' or suspects' pasts. At one point, he literally thinks, "No one was interested in my ideas." Well, Catchpool, maybe that's because you have no ideas?

His complete empty-headedness can be summed up by the fact that he's apparently been working on this same crossword puzzle "for months" and yet can't come up with a 6-letter word for death that begins with a D. Also, why all the pages spent on his Tragic Backstory, especially since nothing came of either the dead relative or the un-subtle hints at closeted homosexuality? Why not just use Hastings, or Japp, or Ariadne Oliver, or for the love of god, anyone else? Why did Catchpool even have to be the cop in charge of this case? It would all have made considerably more sense had Poirot, a famous detective often consulted by Scotland Yard at this point in his chronology, been called in on his own merits? Why did he have to interfere and let Catchpool pretend to be annoyed at his job being taken over? What is going on? Why is this book so bad?

I have so many questions.

The mystery itself is convoluted, bizarre, and full of holes big enough to pull Rafal Bobak's laundry cart through. The denouement reads like a parody of a classic whodunnit - it seems Poirot issued a general invitation to all of London and Great Holling to be there. When a couple of minor characters (are we supposed to think them real suspects? There was never any reason to, not that reason is much at play here) try to offer Poirot vital new information at the beginning of the scene, he shuts them down because he already knows (without hearing what it is they want to say, of course) - not that that's supremely out of character for the arrogant Hercule Poirot, but it just adds to the sense that the whole scene is a spoof. The revelatory italics are over the top, simply ever single piece of information revealed is written to be dramatic! This, again, feels like a parody of Christie, rather than an homage or remake.

The denouement is even TWO CHAPTERS LONG. Two! It's even longer than this review! Somehow, that feels particularly offensive to me when connected with Agatha Christie, whose best work was in concise plotting and tight little puzzles.

And what was up with the monogrammed cufflinks, anyway? They're supposedly significant enough that the book is named after them and they appear (inaccurately depicted) on the cover of the edition I read, and everyone keeps focusing on them... but they literally don't matter at all. They weren't even Patrick Ive's real cufflinks. Their sole purpose was to indicate Ive's initials to point toward the connection between the victims, but that could have been done by the fact that all three hailed from the same village - a fact that would have come up anyway, had Catchpool done the bare minimum of his job and investigated a single damn thing. Seriously, I cannot get over what an actively bad detective he is.

The conclusions to which Poirot leaps in the course of this mystery are staggering. With absolutely zero evidence or reason to see a connection, he decides a scared woman he encounters in a coffee-shop in one part of London MUST be a potential fourth victim of a killer who went to town at a ritzy hotel. Why? Because cufflinks come in pairs, and she used "their" as a singular. That's literally all the evidence he offers. Of course, he's right. And, infuriatingly, it turns out the murderous plot was based on the presumption that he would reach just this conclusion! I suppose that's still better than Edward Catchpool, who couldn't leap to a conclusion if he tried, because that would require having a thought or being a detective at all.

I'm not asking for Sophie Hannah, or anyone, to try to re-create Agatha Christie's iconic style. I picked up The Monogram Murders looking for a good detective story with, perhaps, the treat of some beloved characters present in name, at least. Unfortunately, it's one of the most nonsensical, illogical, and overwrought whodunnits I've ever read.