As it is ultimately Agatha Christie month (solely because I could not bring myself to read Animal Farm so near to struggling through 1984), we have her third novel, Murder on the Links.
I remember reading this when I went to Cheltenham on a solo trip to see my friend for his birthday, it was rather a lot to keep up with along with trying to keep my guard up in a new environment alone. There were so many characters to keep track of and multiple identity switches that I really had to think about it in order to keep track and it wasn't the relaxing holiday book I had pictured.
There was a fair amount of twists and turns in this one, no one was actually who they said they were, everyone was connected to someone else, too many secrets among different people, and it was set in France. Hastings ends up with a love interest who is known only as Cinderella for the majority of the book and is suspected of murder for some of it as she steals the murder weapon, but does that stop our love sick fool? Of course not.
Our detecting duo are invited to France to assist Mr Renauld but when they arrive they are informed that he is dead. Of course Poirot sticks around to find out why this has happened as it is odd that he has been summoned by a dead man. As a rough summary there are several people with motive, his son Jack who has been disinherited, his neighbour who has been blackmailing him, his son's secret lover who wishes to marry him, and potentially an outside source from his shady past.
Poirot comes to odds with the French police who keep arresting the wrong people based on motive alone. He presents why they could not have done such a thing and then reveals their secrets adding the twists to the narratives that you have to keep up with. Turns out the neighbour is Renauld's old lover who had to go on the run, as did he, when they killed her husband, his son is in love with a different woman who is not his current lover which is actually the daughter of his father's ex mistress, and the original plan was to fake Renauld's death so he could go on the run but this was scuppered when the real murderer killed him first. I wont spoil who they are, might be an oldie but it is still worth reading.
Aside from the obvious confusion, which to be fair was really down to my external factors as trying to read in a busy place is hard at the best of times, but reading a complicated crime novel over a hotel breakfast in the hustle and bustle of Cheltenham is perhaps not the best decision, the book is really quite clever. I still prefer Tommy & Tuppence, but this seemed like a book that flowed much more compared to the first Poirot. The characters still haven't grown on me yet, quite frankly I think Hastings is an idiot who thinks with another part of his body and not his brain, but I am hopeful that this will change, especially as I already have a second-hand affection for at least 3 of the 4 on screen Poirot's I tend to view in my spare time.
Overall then, I'm giving Murder on the Links a 7/10. If I believed in decimal point ratings it really would be a 6.5, but I dont, so it's a 7 for being an improvement of the first novel, but not quite as engaging as her second. As I grow older and lean into Christie's works I'm finding I enjoy them more, but when I first read the Poirot books a few years ago it was a bit of a struggle. I'm glad to see my brain is finally able to appreciate classic literature fully now.
Join me next week as I delve into The Disappointed Sprites by Enid Blyton. It's my birthday month so either side of it I've decided to read books which are personal to me. I've long aspired to have the full Blyton collection and this is going to help me achieve that goal...eventually.
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