The Murder on the Links

The Murder on the Links is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, published in the United States in March 1923 and in Britain two months later.

It is the second novel to feature Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings, and Christie set it abroad to give her detective an opponent rather than a colleague: the investigating officer from the Paris Sûreté has his own theory of the case and no interest in the opinions of a Belgian civilian. Poirot's habit of remembering earlier crimes, which turns out to be the thing that settles this one, is used more deliberately here than in the first book, and the plot is arranged around a set of physical clues — a grave, an overcoat, a length of lead pipe — that the reader can follow. Christie also gives Hastings something to do besides take notes, since he falls in love during the investigation, a subplot she deliberately arranged. Contemporary reviews compared her favourably with Arthur Conan Doyle, and Poirot, still a new character in 1923, was described by one reviewer as a pleasant contrast to the more lurid detectives of the period.