CULTURE CLUB
Life’s Great Mysteries BRUTAL BETRAYALS, CONSPIRING COUPLES AND TWISTS TO SAVOUR – MIRIAM BALANESCU SPEAKS TO LOCAL AUTHOR SOPHIE HANNAH ABOUT HER LATEST WHODUNNIT AUTHOR’S NOTES
he Couple at the Table opens with a letter, addressed to “Whoever Killed Jane Brinkwood”, written by a woman deeply wronged by
the deceased. In this unsettling and self- indulgent correspondence, Lucy seeks a connection with the murderer – the only person, she imagines, who could truly understand her own hatred of Jane. The murder takes place in July 2019 and remains unsolved six months later, not long before the onset of Covid-19. The circumstances surrounding this misdeed still have a lockdown feel: six couples holiday at an exclusive, sequestered resort, and each has a bone to pick with Jane. Lucy, the ex-wife of Jane’s new husband William, has seemingly gatecrashed the newly-weds’ honeymoon, while Jane simultaneously receives two ominous, anonymous notes, one reading “beware of the couple at the table nearest to yours”. When tensions simmer over and Jane is
© ONUR PINAR
INTERNATIONAL REACH Sophie’s work has been published in 49 languages, in 51 territories. In 2013, she won the crime thriller of the year award in the Specsavers National Book Awards, for the novel The Carrier
other couples. Alongside this series, the prolific author has been handed the reins for the authorised Poirot collection (for which a fifth book is pending), and has dabbled in musicals, co-writing all-singing, all-dancing The Mystery of Mr. E , which is now being adapted for film. This literary somersaulting is no problem for Sophie, however. “Each genre calls for the flexing of different imaginative muscles and it’s creatively refreshing to be constantly moving between these different forms,” she explains. “If I sit down to write a Poirot, my Poirot-writing brain is magically there, ready and waiting. Whatever I’m writing, I’m writing as myself, so there’s no massive shift required.” In fact, Sophie began her career with a poetry collection, The Hero and the Girl Next Door . Eleven years later, her first crime novel, Little Face , was born out of
stabbed, DS Charlie Zailer and DC Simon Waterhouse – Sophie Hannah’s spousal detectives (coincidentally on a break at the resort) – are confronted with an impossible murder. “It was partly inspired by Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile , which I reread in anticipation of the new Kenneth Branagh movie,” Cambridge-based crime writer Sophie says. “I loved the novel so much that I decided I wanted to write a modern ‘poisonous-love-triangle’ mystery – one that was a classic puzzle in the Christie vein – although absolutely contemporary in tone and feel.” An intruder entering the resort has been ruled out and, while all the couples have a motive, everyone has an alibi. The 12th novel in the bestselling Simon and Charlie series, Sophie’s latest sees the detectives’ strange marriage thrown into perspective by the knotty dynamics of the
A CLASSIC PUZZLE IN THE CHRISTIE VEIN
32 MARCH 2022 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
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