Mystery roundup: A new Hercule Poirot tale

Agatha Christie's adored detective Hercule Poirot is back in business; meanwhile, crimes are being committed in West Virginia, Scandinavia and on a cruise ship Charles Finch, author of the Charles Lenox series, opens the book on a fresh crop of mysteries.

The Monogram Murders

By Sophie Hannah and Agatha Christie

William Morrow, 302 pp.

***½ out of four

We're in the midst of an epidemic of celebrity pastiche novels, with results ranging from the dire (Sebastian Faulks as P.G. Wodehouse) to the passable (Sebastian Faulks as Ian Fleming), their dignified forewords about "estate approval" never quite drowning out the chime of cash registers. The best I've read in the genus is this one – the British thriller writer Sophie Hannah does an egoless, silky job of reviving Agatha Christie's beloved Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Three people at a swish hotel in London are murdered on the same evening, monogrammed cufflinks placed in their mouths. A helpfully dim Scotland Yarder, Catchpool, narrates Poirot's investigation into the past that ties the three, and the puzzle is eerie and well-made enough to match a middling entry from Dame Agatha. That's high praise, believe me – enough so to hope that Hannah turns to Miss Marple next, or even Soldier Island.

Summer of the Dead

By Julia Keller

Minotaur, 354 pp.

***

What particularly distinguishes Julia Keller's series about Bell Elkins, a West Virginia prosecutor, is its sense of social conscience – not enough to make for good fiction, as numerous well-intentioned Victorian writers proved beyond dispute, but powerfully affecting when matched with the right character and story. In this third installment, the most surely plotted yet, the murder of an old coal miner is the start of a bloody dig into the past. But that's secondary in importance to Bell's protective love for her proud and desperate part of the country, embodied here by her difficult sister, Shirley. Keller's writing can sometimes feel overheated, its distinctive turns of phrase diminishing in power because they proliferate so freely. But that's not a serious trespass, and it's wonderful to see mystery series as literary and reflective as this one flourish.

De Potter's Grand Tour

By Joanna Scott

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 272 pp.

***½

Most readers would probably prefer to have fewer images in front of them, not more. In this odd and moving book, however, the erratically placed black-and-white photographs are the only indication of the personal connection that Scott – winner of a MacArthur grant – has to this fictionalized tale of her ancestor, Armand de Potter. De Potter, a bit of a fabulist, but a successful collector of antiquities and leader of tour groups from America back to his native Europe, disappears from a cruise in 1905. There were money troubles; has he run, killed himself? Scott's truest character is de Potter's faithful but clear-eyed American wife, Aimée, and her presence elevates the occasionally sluggish narrative to art – De Potter's Grand Tour is a descendant of the work of Penelope Fitzgerald and W.G. Sebald, with their sensitivity to how unknowable life is, and yet how worth trying to know.

The Marco Effect

By Jussi Adler-Olsen

Dutton, 496 pp.

***

A fine entry in an uneven, occasionally unputdownable series, The Marco Effect brings us again into the world of Carl Mørck, head of the Copenhagen police department's oddball Department Q. Why is he so hellishly grumpy? Because that's the form – Scandinavian antihero detectives have been smoothed into shape by repetition over the last decades, their drinking, prickliness and secret decency now entirely predictable. Given that, the story had better be good; fortunately this one is. Marco, a bright teenager put to work as a panhandler by his loveless criminal family, manages to escape them, but only after learning dangerous information about a murder committed by his uncle. Mørck is investigating from the other end, looking into the victim's ties to financial crimes in Africa. Sometimes this book feels labored, but the way Adler-Olsen draws together the parallel narratives of Marco and Mørck (no Mindy here, alas) makes for a tense, pleasurable read.

Charles Finch writes the Charles Lenox mystery series.