Reviving a legendary literary character can be a difficult task, and even more so if it’s Hercule Poirot, the iconic Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. But it was a challenge British author Sophie Hannah took up with gusto to publish The Monogram Murders last September, which took the world by storm, featuring in the top-ten bestseller list in about 15 countries, and catapulting her to worldwide fame.
While it is quite distinctly a Hannah book—she never really tried to replicate Christie’s voice—she did hear David Suchet in her head and pictured him while writing it.
A popular crime fiction writer and poet in her own right, Hannah made history when she was chosen by the Christie estate to pen a new Poirot novel—which she managed to do in an incredibly short span of eight months.
The retired policeman who exercised his little grey cells to solve some of the most intricate mysteries we’ve read with dramatic flourish is Christie’s most enduring legacy.
Mathew Prichard, Chairman of Agatha Christie Limited and Christie’s grandson, said, “Sophie’s idea for a plot line was so compelling and her passion for my grandmother’s work so strong, we felt that the time was right for a new Christie to be written.” The Belgian icon was written off in Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, which was published in 1975.
Soft spoken and full of cheer, it’s difficult to imagine Hannah churning out book after book of psychological thrillers that revolve around intensely warped and complex characters. “I am [ironically] a very happy person,” she tells Gulf News. “But what interests me is the philosophical question of how good and evil exist next to each other.”
There are distinct moral strands in her books as she examines the goriness of human nature, but not of the prescriptive kind.
In The Monogram Murders, for example, the actions of self-righteous parishioners who drive their vicar to death are at the heart of the story.
Hannah says, “The idea was based on a real story I heard of a self-righteous group of people who were intent on punishing someone for their actions to deliver judgment. That is not the kind of morality I consider right. Margaret Ernst, a character in the book puts it succintly: ‘I can forgive anything apart from the inability to forgive.’”
Every story that Hannah writes is based on something she has observed or chanced upon in real life. “I’ve met murderers, narcissists and neurotic individuals, and my books portray various versions of the people I’ve come across.”
Hannah is primarily known for her psychological thrillers on one hand and poetry on the other, although she has written children’s books, comedies and one horror story. But she is a self-confessed mystery addict, and passionate about solving anything mysterious that comes her way.
Growing up, she devoured every Christie book available—her father used to get them from second-hand book fairs – and is still deeply influenced by the queen of mystery, rereading them over and over. And she didn’t find it tough to don the queen’s hat, because, she says, “Christie was an ideas writer. When you read her books, you get tonnes of ideas about other books or scenarios or situations”.
Hannah also draws inspiration from Ruth Rendell, whose psychological crime fiction featuring unsettling, dysfunctional characters has a huge fan following. “We’re all weird under the surface” she says.
Starting her literary career with a book of poetry, which she wrote when she was a secretary at a library, Hannah was a festival circuit regular before becoming a writer at residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1997. “It was so great. I always thought my boss would fire me because I was waltzing off to literature festivals with my work,” she says. At Trinity she got a two-year salary and the space to hone her writing skills.
In 2006, she published her first Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer book, Little Face, to critical acclaim, and eight more featuring the detectives. “Waterhouse and Zailer are like characters in a literary novel, I’ve explored their relationship to such depths,” says Hannah.
“Sometimes people ask me, ‘Why do we have to know so much about them? Why can’t they just be normal detectives solving crime?’ But I can’t just skim the surface. I want to go into the hearts and minds of my characters.”
The Carrier, which was published in 2013 and features Zailer and Waterhouse married for the first time, won the Crime Thriller of the Year award at the Specsavers National Book Awards. In 2011 and 2012, The Point of Rescue and The Other Half Lives were adapted for a TV series called Case Sensitive, starring Olivia Williams as Zailer and Darren Boyd as Waterhouse.
More recently, Hannah published Pictures Or it Didn’t Happen as part of the Quickreads series—it aims to encourage reading among people who don’t like long books or don’t have much time – and is looking forward to a new book of poetry in May: Marrying the Ugly Millionaire. It features her previously-published poems as well as 25 new ones. A new standalone book, A Game for All the Family, is due in August, while Hurting Distance—Hannah’s second Zailer/Waterhouse book from 2007—is undergoing treatment for an onscreen adaptation.
Apart from being fanatical swimmer, she loves to spend her time getting massages, socialising with friends, taking her dog for walks, watching The Good Wife and House, and of course, reading crime fiction.
Incidentally, she loved The House of Silk—a Sherlock Holmes novel written by fellow British author Anthony Horowitz.
And she loves a good tease. Hannah’s most recent Zailer/Waterhouse book, The Telling Error, features an unsolved mystery, which is open to anyone who wants to have a go at solving it. Hannah will reveal the truth in her next book, which will be out in February 2016, and the correct guesser will have the novel dedicated to him or her.
The bigger question is, however, whether there’s another Poirot in the works. “Nothing has been finalised yet, but there is a good chance of another book being commissioned,” says Hannah. The fans can’t wait.
Marrying the Ugly Millionnaire is available on www.bookdepository.com for $16 (Dh59), and is delivered worldwide for free. A Game For All The Family will be out in August and The Telling Error will be out in 2016.
