September 3rd, 2013, The Times of London
"Hercule Poirot was laid to rest 39 years ago when Agatha Christie killed him off with a heart attack at the end of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, but the Belgian detective will return next year in a new adventure authorised by the author’s grandson.
Mathew Prichard, whose grandmother gave him the royalties to her play The Mousetrap on his ninth birthday, granted permission for a “continuation novel” by Sophie Hannah, a poet and thriller writer."
September 3rd, 2013, The Guardian
"There are a few clues to exercise the little grey cells – it will be set vaguely in the late 1920s, after the shocking French train strangling business and before the well-timed fireworks at End House in Cornwall; and there will be no Captain Hastings. It is bound to have a twist and it will certainly be the first and perhaps only Poirot book not written by Agatha Christie.
The author's estate and publisher HarperCollins has announced plans to follow the examples of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes by reviving one of British fiction's most-loved characters in the hands of a new writer.
Sophie Hannah, the bestselling writer of contemporary psychological crime thrillers, is to write a new Poirot novel 93 years after Christie first introduced him in The Mysterious Affair at Styles and 38 years after she killed him off in Curtain.
Hannah admitted feeling nerves. "Anyone who wasn't daunted by a project like this would have to be insane," she said. "Agatha Christie is the greatest crime writer of all time and it is a huge, huge honour for me to be the person chosen to do this. I do have a sense of trepidation but I don't think I'd be able to write the best possible book if I didn't, if I was at all complacent about it. The fact I wake up every day knowing I have this incredibly important mission to fulfil will hopefully make me write a better book."
Hannah said she'd had a crime plot twist idea for about two years but had not been able to make it work in a contemporary thriller – but it could work, she hoped, in a Poirot-esque detective novel.
She won approval after presenting a detailed 100-page outline to the publishers and Christie estate; the book, yet to be titled, is to be released in September 2014."
This is exciting to me, as a big fan of Christie, Poirot, and Sophie Hannah. I'll see you in the mean time but also for sure next September!
Posted by: Kari | September 11, 2013 at 10:35 PM