Murder on the Links

“I think Murder on the Links was a moderately good example of its kind – though rather melodramatic. This time I provided a love affair for Hastings…Truth to tell, I think I was getting a little tired of him.”

-Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

Murder on the Links begins with Hastings meeting a beautiful and mysterious young woman on a train. She gives her name as “Cinderella” and slips away before Hastings can engager her further. This is not the last we see of Cinderella, although she does turn up in a most unexpected place.

Hercule Poirot returns in Agatha Christie’s third mystery novel. An urgent note from Paul Renauld explaining that he has a secret and his life is in danger takes Poirot and Hastings to the south of France. Upon their arrival just a day later, they find they are too late. Renauld is dead.

Renauld’s wife tells the story of the events leading up to the murder. She claims two thugs entered their bedroom, bound and gagged her, and led her husband in his underclothes and overcoat outside. He is found the next morning stabbed in the back and buried in a shallow grave on a golf course adjoining the Renauld property.

While Mrs. Renauld stands to benefit fully from her husband’s will, Poirot isn’t convinced of her guilt despite her strong motive. The Renauld’s son, Jack, emerges as a prime suspect after it’s discovered that he planned to marry the neighbor’s beautiful daughter Marthe despite his father’s strong objections. Jack was also unaware that his father had cut him out of his will just weeks before his murder. And then there’s Marthe’s mother, Madame Daubreuil, who is said to be a frequent visitor to Renauld’s house when his wife is absent and whose bank account has grown tremendously in recent months. Poirot also discovers what appears to be a love note from an unknown Bella Duveen in the dead man’s pocket.

Hastings reconnects with Cinderella on the golf course near the grave site and finds that she has a morbid fascination with Renauld’s murder. It takes the appearance of a second body for Poirot to recall the elusive memory that dogs him from the beginning of the case and allows him to narrowly avert a third murder.

Murder on the Links has been my favorite Christie mystery so far, albeit I have 63 more to go!, but I did tire a bit of Hastings and his emotional turmoil, although I generally enjoy his interaction with Poirot. While he usually brings level-headedness to the case, this time Hastings loses his heart to Cinderella. Curiously, a Have Your Say posting on Agatha Christie’s official website, which asks the question “Is Hastings Married?” cites Cinderella as Hastings’ wife (post contains spoilers to Murder on the Links).

I give Murder on the Links four of out five stars.

The Secret Adversary

“That, I thought, would make a good beginning to a story – a name overheard at a tea shop – an unusual name, so that whoever heard it remembered it.” -An Autobiography by Agatha Christie

The name is Jane Finn and it is thrown out casually by Miss Tuppence Cowley as her cover during the first client meeting of The Young Adventurers, Ltd., with dire results. The name, overheard by her partner Tommy Beresford during tea, proves to be at the heart of a post-World War I plot by revolutionaries to spark international unrest.

The Secret Adversary, published in 1922, features the debut of Tommy and Tuppence, childhood friends who are reunited after the war and decide to embark on a partnership dedicated to adventure to overcome their financial woes.

Their first client, Mr. Whittington, is interested in hiring Tuppence to travel to Paris and impersonate an American. When Whittington asks her name, she startles him by saying the first name that pops into her head – Jane Finn. That just happens to be the woman Whittington wants her to impersonate, but he vanishes before Tuppence has a chance to question him further. A newspaper ad, placed by the adventurous pair, asking for information about Jane Finn, introduces them to American millionaire Julius Hersheimmer, who claims to be looking for his missing cousin Jane Finn, and Mr. A. Carter, a secret service operative who explains that Jane Finn was given very important papers during the sinking of the Lusitania and promptly disappeared after landing with the survivors. His agency and the revolutionists, headed by the mysterious and elusive Mr. Brown, are both in a race to find Jane Finn and the documents. Carter hires Tommy and Tuppence to join the chase.

I have never read any of Agatha’s Tommy and Tuppence mysteries until I opened The Secret Adversary. I find it curious that Agatha departed so quickly from Hercule Poirot in her second mystery novel, but have to admit, that Tommy and Tuppence both gained my admiration quickly, and I enjoyed the true sense of adventure they brought to the story. While Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple rely more on dialogue and the analysis of clues, Tommy and Tuppence were faced with going undercover, imprisonment and death threats, gunshots, and car chases.

Without playing spoiler, I was able to narrow it down to two suspects who could possibly be Mr. Brown, but I was unsure until the final chapter of who he actually was and where Jane Finn, and the documents, were hiding.

I give The Secret Adversary four out of five stars and look forward to Tommy and Tuppence’s next adventure.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles features a cast of suspects, most of whom had reason to want Emily Inglethorp dead. Her two stepsons, John and Lawrence Cavendish, who both relied on Mrs. Inglethorp for their financial security after she inherited their father’s fortune; the enigmatical Mary Cavendish, John’s wife, who is often out in the woods with the mysterious Dr. Bauerstein, Cynthia Murdoch, Mrs. Inglethorp’s protégé, the no-nonsense and loyal secretary Evelyn Howard, and Alfred Inglethorp, the murder victim’s younger husband who the family believes to be nothing more than a gold digger.

The death occurs nearly two weeks after our narrator, Hastings, arrives at Styles Court to recuperate from his war wounds at the request of his friend John Cavendish. At first, it appears that Emily Inglethorp died of violent seizures, but it’s Dr. Bauerstein, a worldwide expert on poisons, who declares her death suspicious and the police are called in.

Much to Hastings’ surprise and delight his old friend, Monsieur Hercule Poirot, who in his time had been a celebrated Belgian detective, is staying in town as a refugee of the war at the charity of the murder victim. He is immediately engaged by Hastings to investigate the crime scene and collects a series of clues before the inspectors from Scotland Yard arrive at the inquest. After a series of twists and finger pointing, Poirot makes the first of what will become many drawing room revelations of “who done it.”

I enjoyed the story being told from Hastings’ point of view and the first incarnation of Poirot and his penchant for incredible neatness, his famed and lovingly tended moustache, and his little grey cells, which were put to the test by this seemingly impossible case of a dead body found poisoned in a room locked from the inside.

I was in the dark until the very end as not one, not two, but three seemingly guilty suspects were accused and cleared of the crime. It’s hard to believe this was Agatha’s debut mystery as she already demonstrates she’s a master of deception when it comes to clues, motives, and most importantly, suspects. The reader is left with a nagging suspicion about nearly every character presented in the story, but in the end, it all comes full circle as double meanings, incorrect assumptions and misinterpretations are unraveled to reveal the true killer.

I give The Mysterious Affair at Styles four out of five stars, but the real thrill was knowing that Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christie had only just begun.

The Mystery Begins...

“I had been dared to write a detective story; I had written a detective story; it had been accepted, and was going to appear in print. There, as far as I was concerned, the matter ended. Certainly at that moment I did not envisage writing any more books.”

-An Autobiography by Agatha Christie

It all started with a dare.

Agatha worked in a hospital and eventually was promoted to assistant in the dispensary. It was there that she conceived the idea of writing a detective story – something she had been dared by her older sister Madge to do a year or two earlier. Since she was surrounded by poisons, what better method for murder than a poisoning case? And the plot?

“The whole point of a good detective story was that it must be somebody obvious but at the same time, for some reason, you would then find that it was not obvious, that he could not possibly have done it” (The New Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie).

And so became the premise of Agatha Christie’s first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and the birth of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

The book was written in 1915, but took five years to reach publication. Although Agatha made meager royalties because of the contract she had signed as a “raw and innocent author,” luckily for us, she was encouraged enough to continue penning mysteries.

A Year of Mystery Begins...

I love Agatha Christie. And that is why I’m attempting to read all 66 of her detective novels in a year.

I first started reading her mysteries over 20 years ago at my local library after making my way through Nancy Drew, Boxcar Children and Trixie Belden. I was immediately drawn to Hercule Poirot and his “little grey cells,” and Miss Jane Marple and her unassuming, but sharp-as-a-knife, character.

But most of all, I loved the challenge of the mystery that Agatha presents in each of her books – a colorful cast of characters (each usually with a motive), a brilliant detective who takes you along for the ride but doesn’t show their hand, the clues and hints embedded throughout the narrative and conversations, and the conclusion where the guilty party is found out (usually in a drawing room) and often leaves me saying, “Of course!, Why didn’t I see it?”

So this year, just a few days after my 35^th birthday, I am going to dedicate myself to getting to know Agatha Christie a little better. I’m going to enjoy all of her detective novels (short stories and romances written under Mary Westmacott not included) in chronological order of when they were published. I’m going to research the stories behind each story, and learn more about what made Agatha Christie such a beloved and enduring author.

If I pull this off, my husband has promised to take me to England next year for my birthday to visit Greenway and see The Mousetrap. Added incentive!

So join me. Whether you want to take the challenge with me, or weigh in on your favorite Agatha Christie novels, I’d love to have other fans along for the journey.

And with that…let A Year of Mystery begin.