Not.
"The Murder on the Links" is Agatha Christie's second published book. Now, a million years ago in the 90s when I was a college student I spent a summer working in a bookstore. An enormous one in a former Wal-Mart in Little Rock. I thought it would be rough because there would be so many amazing, awesome books inside that I'd want to read them. HA! Guess again! We had about a million copies of "Who Moved My Cheese," and they were displayed in these elaborate pinwheels that rose from the floor. We did this with basically all the bestsellers. The genre sections were also quite large. And as I was an uptight, snooty college student, I did not then care too much to read completely brain-dead books, so I was basically out of luck when it came to inspiring reading material there.
What I'm getting around to saying is this: There was a whole corner of the store dedicated to golfing junk. "A Good Walk Spoiled" was another floor-based pinwheel of a book, but there were clearly a lot of golf-based titles that had been rushed to press and tons of golfy knick-knacks in this area, which was almost as big as the Bible and flanker Bible section, which in Arkansas is saying something. There are entire mystery series dedicated to golf (tired of those links yet?).
And Agatha Christie seems to have figured this out as early as 1923, which is when "TMOTL" was first published. Christie also seems to realize how deadly golf actually is, in the sense that it will kill you of boredom, so besides the dead man being found on a golf course that is going up next door to his house, golf does not figure into this mystery. Indeed, of the construction of a golf course in smalltown France, one would think would make a kind of development-based mystery, because those things are expensive and often their cost is offset by building expensive, tacky homes (of the sort the French would revile) around the course. And what rich guy (like M. Renauld, the dead man) wants to live next to a bunch of nouveau riches! Incitement to murder, yes, I can see the motive now! But Christie was probably not used to that sort of development, the second half of the 20th Century not having happened at that time.
So Christie sets us up with a meet-cute on a train to Calais between Hastings and "Cinderella," a cute girl who is a tad too tart for Hastings. And by that I mean she's basically not going to faint into a dead swoon when he looks at her. Also, she's a stage performer -- the kind who sings and dances and (horrors!) does acrobatics in performances with her twin sister (raunchy!). And I believe this is still an age where copping to being a woman who performs onstage also basically means copping to taking money for sex.
Because if a woman enjoys attention that much, she must be a prostitute, right? Yeah, I don't follow the logic either.
But don't worry -- Hastings follows this "logic" completely because he is not about questioning the dominant paradigm. So when he gets back to the London apartment he is sharing with Hercule Poirot (like THAT doesn't sound suggestive, even though Hastings is very quick to mention he has a whole separate room, he's probably only doing it so he sounds rich, not like he's in love with Poirot), he believes a note that Poirot has received, begging the help of this famous detective by a rich man saying he needs help, is totally legit. But Poirot assures him that no, the handwritten, "For God's sake, come!" at the bottom is a calculated ploy. And calculation always gets Poirot's juices flowing.
So it is back to France for Hastings. On a rich man's dime. Lucky, silly Hastings.
Well, immediately on arrival Poirot and Hastings learn that the Renauld son (as they say in France, Renauld fils) has been cut out of the will because it looks like he wants to marry the penniless girl next door, whose mother might be Renauld's lover. Already, I can think of some "Lone Star"-y, "Chinatown"-y reasons this union might not be so eagerly desired, but to her credit (or something) Christie is not going to go there.
Dang it.
Okay, again, she gets in some nice twists, and even has Hastings kind of figuring out stuff a little (but not all the way, that is for Hercule to do), and underestimating women like mad. As I recall from childhood, Hastings' constant undervaluation of women's capacity to be smart, conniving and athletic leads him to not solving mysteries.
Before the book ends, marriages will be saved, others will be thwarted, identities will be revealed, the French police will look like fools and, of course, the golf is completely irrelevant.
But if Hercule Poirot is supposed to be so smart, why did he spend the 500 francs he wagered with the French policeman on a statue of a dog for his mantlepiece?
The mystery never ends. Ever.
