Bestselling British crime novelist Sophie Hannah will revive Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot in a new novel due out next year.

When Hannah's agent told her he had suggested to publisher HarperCollins that they ask her to write a continuation­ novel, an idea she had been trying to turn into a novel for years suddenly­ took shape, the author told Reuters.

"As soon as he said 'Agatha Christie novel' I thought that idea would work perfectly as a story set in the 1920s," said Hannah, a life-long Christie devotee.

When she met the Christie­ family, the decision­ on whether it would be Poirot or her other famous character, Miss Marple, was still up in the air.

"The Poirot novels were the first ones that I read," she said. "From my point of view, the particular plot idea that I had, I could just see it as a Poirot, totally."

The Christie family readily­ agreed.

"Her idea for a plot line was so compelling and her passion for my grandmother's work so strong, that we felt that the time was right for a new Christie­ to be written,"­ Agatha Christie­ Limited Chairman and grandson of the famous novelist, Mathew Prichard, said in a statement from publishers­ HarperCollins­.

Hannah's story will be set in the interwar "golden age," but the dapper Belgian sleuth who Christie introduced­ in The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920 will have to make do without his usual sidekicks Hastings and Inspector Japp in the as-yet-untitled­ book.

"I think we all felt that if Hastings and Japp were in it, it would be too much like trying to write an Agatha Christie novel," she said. "What I'm trying to do is write a Poirot novel that both fits in with the other novels, but does its own thing as well."

The announcement of Poirot's return follows the success of other novels reviving­ iconic characters from 20th century fiction.

Christie, dubbed the "Queen of Crime," has sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in other languages and is only outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare.

Hannah, bestselling author­ of The Carrier (2013), is also working on a new novel in her own genre due out in April 2014.

Reuters