So...
...when will the inevitable Poirot reboot directed by JJ Abrams be released?
El Reg bookworms Mark Diston and Lucy Orr pore over the latest book releases. Owen Jones, author of Chavs , has a pop at the establishment, Maureen Callahan gets right under the skin of the fashion world's excesses in the 1990s, and Sophie Hannah's new work is the supposed "literary event of the year" – a brand new Poirot …
Owen Jones is one of a dwindling species, someone from a working class background
Not everyone from Sheffield who can put on a south Yorkshire accent is working class. His father was a very senior trade unionist and his mother was a university lecturer. He was parachuted as a policy research wonk into the Labour party, and has never done a day's work in his life. None of us can do much about our origins, but if Owen Jones is working class, I'm Marie of Romania. His only purpose on The Guardian is to make George Moonbat and Polly Twaddle look like intellectuals. This review, like the book itself, is very poor sixth-form stuff. For a better one, you could do much worse than to look here.
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Sometimes authors can get it right when they write a follow-up using characters created by a dead author - Jill Paton Walsh has done a few good books in the Peter Wimsey series, (some based on papers/drafts by Dorothy Sayers admittedly). If they work well then they can help tie up loose ends in the story of a long-lasting character.
While I've not read every single Poirot book, I'm not sure there are that many loose ends to tie up - Christie herself did a decent enough job with Curtain - originally intended to be released after her death but eventually released before it.
I've a sneaking suspicion they want to get a few more novels out to get made for TV as Suchet is still able to deliver...