Poirot returns for his second appearance in this story. Between this book and The Mysterious Affair at Styles there were some short stories published in magazines featuring Poirot and Hastings, but these weren’t collected and published as a book until 1924 (Poirot Investigates). Several of those stories, however, show Poirot establishing himself as a private detective in London. He has obviously become known in England as a detective by the start of Murder on the Links.

The mystery starts when Poirot receives a letter from a wealthy business man, begging for help. He asks Poirot to travel immediately to his villa in France, saying that he is threatened by something from his past. Poirot and Hastings set out by the first available boat, but arrive to find that the man was murdered in the night. His body was discovered that morning on the golf course being built next door to the villa. This sets up a fun little murder mystery, with twists and turns galore, even if some astounding coincidences are needed for it all to work. There are plenty of suspects for Poirot to consider, and numerous clues. Many of those clues of course have been planted deliberately to mislead the police, but Poirot sees through the false stories and soon unravels the mystery for us.

Poirot is up against not only the murderer this time, but also a cocky young French detective, Giraud of the Sûreté. Giraud arrogantly dismisses the aging Poirot, saying when they meet “You cut quite a figure in the old days, didn’t you? But methods are very different now.” Poirot is polite in his reply, but he goes on to prove himself correct and Giraud wrong over and over throughout the book. As they enter their relationship we expect this outcome, but it’s still satisfying to watch it play out. This battle between the detectives is not the only generational squabble in the book. We also have several parents sounding off against their children, with conflicts between a father and son, a mother and son, and a mother and daughter. These people, plus a couple of others, form our suspect pool.

Hastings is again our narrator, and again plays a bumbling Watson role to Poirot’s Holmes. Strictly speaking, Poirot is never very Holmes-like: he prefers to use his “little grey cells” to solve crimes, rather than crawling over the ground like a bloodhound to search for clues, as is Holmes’ habit, where a case could turn on a miniscule amount of cigar ash. It is Giraud who behaves more like Holmes as this exchange between Poirot and Hastings demonstrates:

‘At last you have seen the detective you admire – the human foxhound! Is it not so, my friend?’

‘At any rate, he’s doing something,’ I said, with asperity. ‘If there’s anything to find, he’ll find it. Now you –’

‘Eh bien! I also have found something! A piece of lead-piping.’

‘Nonsense Poirot. You know very well that’s got nothing to do with it. I meant little things – traces that may lead us infallibly to the murderers.’

‘Mon ami, a clue of two feet long is every bit as valuable as one measuring two millimetres! But it is the romantic idea that all important clues must be infinitesimal.’

It gets mentioned at the beginning that Hastings actually has a job as private secretary to an MP, but this quickly gets forgotten about, as Hastings travels to France without hesitation and stays there to assist Poirot without ever mentioning that he might need to pop into work at some time. His MP must be particularly laid back about staff workplace presence! Hastings is also mooning after a woman again, something that seems to happen frequently with him in these stories. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles he makes a play first for his friend’s wife, then for a young woman who lives in the house, neither of which works out for him. In this book he falls for a mysterious young woman he meets on a train in the opening chapter, then feels conflicted when she becomes a murder suspect later in the book. Christie might be able to plot good murders, but she does fall down a bit with the romance side of her books, with Hastings’ romantic interests coming across as more creepy than anything else. The woman he falls for in this book must be about half his age.

Despite Hastings’ regrettable romance (it results in him marrying the girl and moving to Argentina, leaving Poirot alone in the next book), this is an enjoyable mystery. The murder is clever but it depends very much on chance and not on planning. It’s not one of Christie’s best mysteries, but it’s not her worst, either. I can dismiss all of the coincidences which are needed for the plot to work, because I can read this just as light entertainment. But don’t read it if you want one of Christie’s superlative mysteries, like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.