The Murder on the Links: A Hercule Poirot Novel

Front Cover
Penguin Publishing Group, 1923 - Fiction - 240 pages
Monsieur Renauld dies on a golf course just days after sending a plea for help to detective Poirot. Since Renauld possessed a plundered fortune, a scorned wife, a mistress, and an estranged son, there is no lack of suspects. It's up to Poirot to put the police onto the culprit before more murders occur.
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 17 - I swore to myself that she was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. As we swung up the rough road, I turned my head to look after her. "By Jove, Pbirot," I exclaimed, "did you see that young goddess.
Page 7 - Method" were his gods. He had a certain disdain for tangible evidence, such as footprints and cigarette ash, and would maintain that, taken by themselves, they would never enable a detective to solve a problem.
Page 36 - ... tendency is equally in evidence in her attitude towards the body. After Poirot has viewed the corpse of M. Renauld, the chapter concludes with a parody of religious observance that clearly indicates the distance between Christie's contemporary rituals and pre-war rites of death: Poirot lingered for a moment, looking back towards the body. I thought for a moment that he was going to apostrophize it, to declare aloud his determination never to rest till he had discovered the murderer. But when...
Page 95 - I decided that the only thing to do was to make a clean breast of it. "M. le juge,
Page 78 - Man is an unoriginal animal, unoriginal within the law in his daily respectable life , equally unoriginal outside the law. If a man commits a crime, any other crime he commits will resemble it closely. The English murderer who disposed of his wives in succession by drowning them in their baths was a case in point. Had he varied his methods he might have escaped detection to this...
Page 220 - Could it be so? Was this nonsense, or could it, perhaps, be true? Mrs. Packington gazed at him hopefully. "Shall we diagnose your case?" said Mr. Parker Pyne, smiling. He leaned back in his chair and brought the tips of his fingers together. "The trouble concerns your husband. You have had, on the whole, a happy married life. Your husband has, I think, prospered. I think there is a young lady concerned in the case — perhaps a young lady in your husband's office.
Page 100 - ... things like listening at keyholes, reading other people's letters, and above all, boasting. He belongs to the breed of detective who keep their deductions to themselves until the last chapter, sometimes hinting at them in a tantalising way. As Captain Hastings, his aide in the earlier books, complains, 'You make all these confounded mysteries and it's useless asking you to explain. You always like keeping something up your sleeve.
Page 161 - I thought you were just saying it for the sake of saying something," I confessed. "Ah, quelle idee! Later you observed me measuring the overcoat of M. Jack Renauld. Eh bien, M. Jack Renauld wears his overcoat very short. Put those two facts together with a third, namely that M.
Page 70 - ... several boxes of Kotex for all the girls. The others in the room shifted uneasily in their chairs. Then she said she had also bought her daughters some clothes and some shoes. She had the cash register receipt for the purchase. Choosing my words carefully, I asked why she had needed to buy the new shoes. She looked at me for a moment with an expression that I couldn't read. Then she stated, quite emphatically, that they were Sunday shoes that she had bought with the money. The girls already had...

About the author (1923)

One of the most successful and beloved writer of mystery stories, Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was born in 1890 in Torquay, County Devon, England. She wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920, launching a literary career that spanned decades. In her lifetime, she authored 79 crime novels and a short story collection, 19 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language with another billion in 44 foreign languages. Some of her most famous titles include Murder on the Orient Express, Mystery of the Blue Train, And Then There Were None, 13 at Dinner and The Sittaford Mystery. Noted for clever and surprising twists of plot, many of Christie's mysteries feature two unconventional fictional detectives named Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. Poirot, in particular, plays the hero of many of her works, including the classic, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), and Curtain (1975), one of her last works in which the famed detective dies. Over the years, her travels took her to the Middle East where she met noted English archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. They married in 1930. Christie accompanied Mallowan on annual expeditions to Iraq and Syria, which served as material for Murder in Mesopotamia (1930), Death on the Nile (1937), and Appointment with Death (1938). Christie's credits also include the plays, The Mousetrap and Witness for the Prosecution (1953; film 1957). Christie received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for 1954-1955 for Witness. She was also named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1971. Christie died in 1976.