Sophie Hannah is a writer I admire. I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything she’s written, starting with Little Face and, most recently, Did You See Melody. But it’s one thing to build your own world in fiction, to create your own characters, and quite another to breathe new life into someone else’s creation.  With Poirot and Agatha Christie, that’s a very tall order indeed.

As a teenager, I devoured all the Agatha Christie books I found in my grandmother’s house, loving the descriptions, the pace and the language.  As an adult, like everyone else, I have been absorbed by different TV adaptations, and believe David Suchet’s performance caught Poirot better than anyone. You know, when you read a book and then see it on screen, and the person on screen is exactly, completely, the person you had in your head.

How much harder and more daunting must it be, then, to be tasked with continuing the story of someone who is so familiar to us all? Now, I don’t know if Sophie Hannah binge-watched back to back Poirot before she sat down to write this latest Poirot adventure, but I tell you what, I could hear his voice in my head as I read it. Wonderfully done, she has captured the rhythm and cadence of Poirot’s speech and thought processes, whilst creating a suitably tangled plotline. Three books in, the relationship between the two key protagonists is rounded and well-realised, and it was a smart move on her part to create a new sidekick in the shape of Edward Catchpool rather than setting herself the additional hurdle of writing Inspector Japp and Captain Hastings into the story.

It’s not a bonkers grippy read, it has the same pace and slightly soothing quality of an original Christie, ideal for a quiet Sunday afternoon (which is when I read it), or a long train journey. More please.