The couple at the table: A modern Agatha Christie

The couple at the table is my first go at a Sophie Hannah psychological crime novel. Hannah is an award-winning British poet and novelist. Two of her novels have been adapted for television and her poetry is studied at senior high school levels across the UK.

The couple at the table | Published January 2022 | Read February 2024

The couple at the table is book 11 in the Spilling CID series. Simon Waterhouse is the DC in charge of a band or eccentric crime solvers, along with his wife, Sergeant Charlie Zailer. Spilling is a fictional rural district in England.

There is a murder at a posh couples-only woodland resort on a made-up estate in a fictional valley in the UK in The couple at the table. Jane Brinkwood, the murder victim, had received an anonymous note prior to her death, warning her to beware of the couple at the table "nearest yours". Over dinner one night, Jane and her new husband, William, return to their cabin after an altercation in the dining room and Jane is subsequently stabbed to death. Who could have murdered Jane and how? The list of suspects includes William, who was in the cabin with her, the manager of the resort, Anita Kattou, and the five other couples, all of whom were pretty much equal distance away from Jane and William's table that evening at dinner. So, what does the note mean?

The couple at the table is a locked room crime, where it seems impossible that someone could have entered Jane's cabin, murdered her, and left the scene undetected. This is a situation that cannot possibly be true, and yet almost everyone is a suspect. One of the couples staying at the resort when Jane was murdered is DC Simon Waterhouse and his wife, Sergeant Charlie Zailer. Simon sets about to find the identity of the killer (assuming he and Charlie did not do it!).

The books is steeped in the Agatha Christie tradition. Each couple has a reason to wish harm on Jane Brinkwood, who was nasty, self-centred and privileged, and each couple lies to Simon during the course of his investigation and to each other. There is a web of complicated relationships to unravel, but it is Lucy Dean who comes out on top of the suspect pool. She was at the resort with her new fiance, Pete, after being left with a newborn daughter when her first husband, William, began an affair with Jane, her doula.

The plot is complex although there are really only a couple of viable suspects. It is not so much who murdered Jane, but how. The intrigue in the book lies in the Miss Marple-like way that Simon approaches the investigation, right down to the final chapters when he assembles the gang from the evening of the murder and runs through each suspect before revealing whodunnit. It is a quirky story and the characters are all a little eccentric. The action does move at a fairly slow pace, narrated by multiple players across two timelines. That said, all the couples and all the theories about what happened to Jane I found quite interesting even though there was a lot to keep up with.

I liked the bonkers suspect pool and Simon, a dour, introverted character, is a nice departure from the usual charismatic, lovable fictional detective. The whole thing is outrageous, but I ploughed through the novel, keen to see how it all panned out.

The couple at the table will not be everyone's cup of tea, but give it a go if you like quirky reads that avoid twisty, left-field endings and go for a seemingly unsolvable mystery peppered with clues and red herrings.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Post update:

Since posting my review of The couple at the table, I have read book 10 in the series, published in 2016. The narrow bed (also known as The next to die) is more outrageous than book 11. It follows the case dubbed Billy Dead Mates for the seemingly bizarre motive of the murderer to kill pairs of friends. The novel follows the same Agatha Christie-like format as book 11 so I assume that is how all the books in the series are framed. I quite like this unique angle and I love the eccentric team of detectives, especially Simon and Charlie.

The narrow bed is worth reading for Simon alone, a fascinating character with a whole bunch of quirks and idiosyncrasies. His methodical and slightly batty way of working through a case is the best part of the series. In this installment of the series, I loved Kim Tribbeck, the stand-up comedian at the centre of the case. I just wish Sophie Hannah had focussed more on these two characters as the rest of the players were either uninspiring or stereotyped. The subplot of Charlie investigating her sister's secretive behaviour was pointless and sadly, the motive behind the murders was quite ridiculous and somewhat bland.

The premise was interesting and Simon and Kim alone could have carried the story through. The novel started with promise but fizzled out. That said, it was strangely enjoyable, despite the flaws.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐