Murder on The Links (TSS)

Title: Murder on the Links
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication Year: 1923
Pages: 215
Genre: Mystery
Count for Year: 5

How I discovered

I have joined Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise with her Agatha Christie Reading Challenge and this is the third book that Christie wrote and third in that challenge. Like the last one, I don’t believe I have read this one previously.

The setup

Monsieur Renauld dies on a golf course just days after sending a plea for help to detective Poirot. Since Renauld possessed a plundered fortune, a scorned wife, a mistress, and an estranged son, there is no lack of suspects. It’s up to Poirot to put the police onto the culprit before more murders occur.

– from Barnes & Nobles (click on cover for more information)

After going slightly off track with The Secret Adversary, Dame Christie returned to form with a tale with her most famous character Hercule Poirot, the one with whom she started in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. I’ll be honest I needed Poirot after the extremely light fare of the characters of Tommy and Tuppence.

Once again Capt. John Hastings, who accompanied Poirot in at least the first few Poirot novels, is the narrator of the story. As in the first one, Hastings describes Poirot, but with a few more details this time, upon our first introduction of him in the novel:

Elsewhere, I have described Hercule Poirot. An extraordinary little man! Height, five feet four inches, egg-shaped head carried a little to one side, eyes that shone green when he was excited, stiff military mustache, air of dignity immense! He was neat and dandified in appearance. For neatness of any kind he had an absolute passion. To see an ornament set crooked, or a speck of dust, or a slight disarray in one’s attire was torture to the little man until he could ease his feelings by remedying the matter. “Order” and “Method” were his gods. He has a certain disdain for tangible evidence, such as footprints and cigarette ash, and would maintain that, taken by themselves, they would never enable a detective to solve a problem. Then he would tap his egg-shaped head with absurd complacency, and remark with great satisfaction, “The true work, it is done from within. The little gray cells– remember, always the little gray cells, mon ami!“

As in the first one, in a side story, Hastings is in search of a mate. However, the real story, of course, is Poirot as he goes about solving the murder of Monsieur Paul Renauld, whose body is found with a knife sticking out of his back in a shallow grave on a golf course at his estate. Along the way, the reader is given many a red herring, and as Dame Christie was apt to do, another murder to throw him off the course, pun intended.

Plus Christie introduces a rival detective in M. Girard, who relies on what Poirot disdains: “tangible evidence.” Although I have not looked anywhere online, I have no doubt that the reader will encounter Girard again. I seem to vaguely remember a rivalry between Poirot and another detective. Personally, after this encounter, I will be pleased to see Poirot defeat him once again.

I would say more, but as with any mystery, I would be remiss if I gave away too much. That is why it is called a mystery.

My rating: a 4. I almost gave it a 5, but I believe I may have been influenced unduly by being so disappointed in the second Christie novel, plus I have no doubt that Christie will spin much better tales than this with Poirot in future novels.

My rating system:

5- Classic, must read
4- Worth owning a copy
3- Worth picking up at library
2- Worth skimming at the bookstore
1- Worth being a doorstop

P.S. Later today, as I promised last week, but this time, I’ll really do it :), I will return to The Sunday Salon as I discuss The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1962 for the novel about an alcoholic priest.

The O’connor book also will count toward the ongoing challenge, The Pulitzer Project.