Some of the greatest criminals I have known had the faces of angels.
The Murder on the Links
by Agatha Christie
Genre: Mystery
About: Poirot receives a letter that requests his urgent help in France. Only when he arrives, the man who had sought his help has been found murdered. Feeling himself obligated to solving the crime, he works his little grey cells, uncovering mystery after mystery...
Thoughts
This has probably been my least favourite Christie book so far. The mystery element, as always, is still clever and compelling and there's a movie-like quality to the scenes, but I didn't enjoy the story overall.
One of the issues I had was that we never meet the murder victim, and we spend far more time with characters outside of his family so it's hard to really care what happened when we're missing that close connection.
The other problem I had was with Hastings. Usually I find him endearing but in this one he was frustratingly idiotic and his romance storyline was ridiculous. I don't know if Christie was encouraged to add in a romance in her stories, or if she just had fun doing so, but they very rarely work for me and come across more comedic and random than cute.
Overall, there was mystery, there was murder, Poirot even had some rivalry with another detective, but the story landed flat. I didn't care enough about the victim and I felt pretty annoyed listening to Hastings throughout his bumbling.
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