We’ve had Sebastian Faulks channelling Fleming’s Bond, and Anthony Horowitz returning to the world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. So it’s no surprise that the latest act of literary ventriloquism should involve the bestselling novelist of all time, Agatha Christie. And crime-writer Sophie Hannah seems a fine choice to revive Hercule Poirot.

Except that the ingenuity we expect from modern crime fiction – and which characterised her last novel, The Telling Error – is missing in The Monogram Murders. It feels a little like it’s been written to order when three bodies are found in a fashionable London hotel, each of their mouths containing a mysterious monogrammed cufflink. Poirot suspects a connection with a strangely animated woman he happens across, exclaims “Exactement!” when his entertainingly baffled sidekick, Catchpool, finally understands the workings of the Belgian’s “little grey cells”, and we’re off and running.

Running for a considerable distance, in fact. Christie’s majesty was in her economy of scale – perhaps why Poirot adapted so well to television. But the modern thriller, it seems, must be a doorstop, which often means something is lost in the desire to revel in the complications of what the jacket trumpets as a “diabolically clever puzzle”. Still, Hannah certainly has fun with Poirot, and fans will undoubtedly lap up the chance to return to the 1920s.

The Monogram Murders is published by HarperCollins (£18.99). Click here to buy it for £14.99 with free UK p&p