Author and poet Sophie Hannah – who rose to fame while living in Keighley – has been chosen by the estate of Agatha Christie to write a brand new novel featuring the much-loved detective Hercule Poirot.

Sophie has written a string of psychological thrillers and a series of crime novels featuring detectives Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer, which have been adapted for ITV for the series Case Sensitive.

Although now living in Cambridge, she wrote her crime novels while living in Utley, and prior to that lived in Bingley and Saltaire.

The as-yet untitled book, which will be published next September, comes more than 90 years after Christie introduced Poirot in her first novel, The Mysterious Affair At Styles.

Christie’s grandson, Mathew Prichard, said: “It was pure serendipity that led to Sophie Hannah being commissioned to write this book.

“Her agent happened to approach HarperCollins in exactly the same week my colleagues and I had started discussing a new Christie book. Her idea for a plot line was so compelling and her passion for my grandmother’s work so strong, we felt the time was right for a new Christie to be written.”

Hannah, whose crime fiction is published in 24 countries, said Christie was the writer who made her “fall in love with mystery fiction” when she was 13.

She added: “I read and collected all her novels within a year, and have been a passionately – some might even say obsessively – devoted fan ever since.

“It was Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple who, between them, made me want to devote my working life to crime fiction, and it was Christie’s brilliant plotting and deep understanding of the human psyche that shaped my identity as a crime writer.

“Therefore, it is almost impossible to put into words how honoured I am to have been entrusted with this amazing project – in fact, I still can’t quite believe this is really happening! I hope to create a puzzle that will confound and frustrate the incomparable Hercule Poirot for at least a good few chapters.”

Two of the writer’s novels have been adapted for television, and her poetry collection, Pessimism for Beginners, was shortlisted for the 2007 T S Eliot Award.

Christie, who died in 1976, has sold more than two billion books, which have been adapted countless times for the stage, television and film.

Poirot is not the first fictional character to develop a life after the death of their creator. A new Jeeves and Wooster novel is due out this year written by Sebastian Faulks, who is one of several writers to pen a James Bond novel.