Book Review: The Murder on the Links, by Agatha Christie

There are few authors I can never tire reading. J K Rowling, Lee Child, Khaled Hosseini, Arthur Conan Doyle… and then there’s Agatha Christie. I discovered the beauty of crime fiction through Sherlock Holmes, but it was (and still is) Agatha Christie who continues to keep me hooked to that genre. Over the years, I’ve read and collected most of her works, and I was delighted when a book club I’m a part of decided on this book for its Book of the Month.

The Murder on the Links begins with Hastings meeting a mystery girl on a journey, but as always follows Poirot on his case. Poirot receives a call for help from someone in France. Though he hurries to his client’s home, he arrives too late to save him. The man’s brutally stabbed body lies in a shallow grave on a golf course. When the French police learn of the dead man summoning Poirot, they agree to Poirot’s assistance, with the Belgian detective’s reputation preceding him. Questions aplenty jump at Poirot from the crime scene, but before he finds the answer to them, another corpse, so similar in the method of murder, is discovered, leading to more uncertainty.

I love it when a crime fiction leads me one way and then another, getting a twist just at the moment I feel I have the solution to the mystery. Agatha Christie does that with her fiction. This novel is no different. I love the characters and the crime, how the questions that the crime scene brings are so many and open up a lot of threads. What made the book a bit more interesting than usual was the clash of egos, between the old style and the modern, the old Poirot and the young detective Giraud. It got a smile, but I was rooting for Poirot of course. What I did not like was the character of Hastings’ character in the novel, for he seemed to meddle when it was more important to solve the crime. A touch of romance in the midst of crime made it interesting, but I thought that it got on my nerves!

Is it among my favorite Poirot fictions? No, perhaps not. But I still enjoyed reading the novel and I would probably read it again as well.

Book Details
*Title:* The Murder on the Links	*Series:* Poirot #2
*Author(s):* Agatha Christie	*Genre:* Crime Fiction
*ISBN/ASIN:* 9780007282302	*Publisher:* Harper Collins

I own a copy of the book. The views expressed here are my own, frank and uninfluenced.

Author: Vinay Leo R.

Poetry and writing are to me, a breath of fresh air in a life that is sometimes covered by the smoke of sorrow or self doubt. They also become the sweets I share to celebrate when life offers me a reason to. But most of all, they are to me, my life. For each word I write is a piece of my heart, a thought that just had to find its way into the world. View All Posts