Review: The Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie

I mentioned a while back that Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason books are, for me, a surefire cure for an impending reading funk. Well, so are Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels, and feeling dissatisfaction with a couple of books I attempted to read, I turned instead to THE MURDER ON THE LINKS, originally published in 1923 as the second book in the Poirot series. It's been reprinted many times, and there are several different e-book and print editions available on Amazon since it's now in public domain.

In this one, Poirot and his friend Captain Hastings are summoned to France by an urgent message from a wealthy English businessman who has a villa near Calais. It seems that the man made his fortune in South America, and now some mysterious threat from his past has cropped up. He mentions Santiago, Chile, but doesn’t go into any details, just asks Poirot to come to France and help him, promising to pay any fee Poirot requests. Poirot and Hastings answer this plea for help, but they’re too late. When they arrive, they find that the man has been murdered, stabbed in the back and left next to an open grave on a golf course that’s under construction next door—hence the title.

Well, not surprisingly, not everything is as it seems. Even though his would-be client is dead, Poirot investigates and along the way clashes with an arrogant French detective. Several beautiful women have to be questioned, including the dead man’s wife, his possible mistress, the possible mistress’s daughter, and a lovely but mysterious theatrical performer Hastings encounters several times. A number of pieces of possible evidence have to be examined, among them a broken watch. We get a disappearing murder weapon that reappears lodged in the chest of a second victim. We get discussions of train schedules. (Cozy mysteries love them some train schedules.) We get our intrepid pair of detectives shuttling back and forth from England to France as the trail leads hither and yon. And then we get the solution to the mystery . . . no, wait, that’s not it, this is the solution . . . no, wait, that’s not right, either. This is the real solution . . . I think.

Some of this might get a little bit tiresome if not for the fact that Christie was such a good writer. The pace crackles right along even when people are just standing around talking. Poirot is a fascinating character, as always, and the dialogue is excellent. Hastings is dense but likable in his role as Watson. I sometimes think Poirot is a little too mean to him, but there’s not much of that in this book.

In the end, I really enjoyed THE MURDER ON THE LINKS. I don’t know how it’s regarded by Christie fans. I wouldn’t put it in the top rank of Poirot novels because the plot seems a little more far-fetched and melodramatic than usual, not surprising since it’s only the second book in the series and Christie was probably still figuring out what she was doing. But it’s still a solid yarn and very entertaining. I even figured out a pretty good chunk of the plot as I went along, although I didn’t have the murderer’s identity pinned down. I’ll probably read another one before too much longer.

Peril at End House - Agatha Christie

I read a bunch of Agatha Christie novels when I was in junior high and high school, beginning with THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY, which I checked out of the school library when I was in the sixth grade. (Just for the record, that’s the same year I read GOLDFINGER by Ian Fleming and THE DEEP by Mickey Spillane. My reading tastes were nothing if not varied.) At any rate, my favorites of Christie’s work have always been the Hercule Poirot novels. There are a number of them I’ve never read, so I pick one up now and then and revisit an old friend.

Which brings us to PERIL AT END HOUSE, originally published in 1932. It’s the sixth novel in the series, and as it opens, Poirot is already talking about being retired. He and Captain Hastings, his friend/Watson/narrator, are vacationing at a resort hotel on the southern coast of England. Visible from the hotel’s terrace is a big, old house set on a point of land that juts out into the sea. That’s the End House of the title, of course. On a pleasant afternoon, Poirot and Hastings are sitting on the terrace when they see an attractive young woman cutting through the garden between the hotel and End House. Then somebody takes a shot at her, narrowly missing her. She doesn’t even realize how close she has come to death, but Poirot does, and when he questions her, he discovers that this is the fourth attempt on her life in as many days.

Well, Poirot can’t stand to see such villainy right under his mustaches, of course, so he sets out to discover who wants the young woman dead. That leads him and Hastings into a complex plot involving drugs, a missing will, fireworks, poisoned chocolates, a secret chamber, a large fortune, a séance, and, naturally, murder.

Christie is famous for her plotting, and justly so, but I’ll be honest, I figured out all but a few details in this one well before the end, including the murderer’s identity. That didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the book, though. Christie writes really well, with good characterizations, some sharp social commentary (her books are usually considerably darker than what you think of when you think about cozy mysteries), and a really fast pace, especially when you consider the fact that the books consist mainly of people standing around talking to each other. (There’s a little action, and some books have more of it than others.) The banter between Poirot and Hastings always leaves me feeling a little sorry for Hastings, but at the same time you get a sense of the deep friendship between the two of them.

I had a really good time reading PERIL AT END HOUSE. It took me back to those long-ago days when I was devouring Christie novels. I may just read more of them. The past is looking more and more appealing to me.