BooksOfTheMoon

The Murder on the Links (Hercule Poirot, #2)

By Agatha Christie

Rating: 3 stars

The second Poirot novel starts with Hastings on his way back to England to meet up with his friend when he runs into a young lady on the train. In what will become a theme throughout the book, he’s arrogant and chauvinistic towards her before she escapes at Paris. The main plot involves Poirot being asked to come to a village in France to help protect a client, but by the time he arrives, the client is already dead.

Much of the fun of an Agatha Christie for me is in following along with the clues and seeing if I could figure it out myself (narrator: he never can), but with this one, I’m not sure that we were given enough clues to figure it out. That takes a bit of the fun away, but it’s always great seeing Hercule Poirot at work, disdaining the Holmesian method of physical investigation, here propounded by the police inspector Giraud. Poirot relies on psychology and using his famous Little Grey Cells and, of course, they don’t let him down.

So the mystery part of it was fun and I enjoyed it, but Hastings was pretty unbearable in this one. Maybe I’m too used to Hugh Fraser’s loveable bumbling sidekick in the TV series, but between chasing anything in a skirt and the chauvinism, I wanted to shake some sense into him.

So a good murder mystery, but beware the creepy sidekick.

Book details

ISBN: 9780061749940
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Year of publication: 2004

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