Poirot receives a letter from Monsieur Paul Renauld with a plea for help as he feels his life is in danger. Poirot and Captain Hastings rush off to France only to find it too late to prevent the murder. The victim is found in an open grave stabbed in the back with his own dagger. The case includes a mess of cover-ups, lies and deceits to divert the investigation, thoroughly testing Poirot’s skills.

Frensh Detective Investigator Girault tries to undermine Poirot. He tries to consider him a silly little man. Using an arrogant, condescending and patronizing manner, it doesn’t seem to get Poirot off his game. He focuses on his task, ignoring Girault’s attitude. He even mocks and teases Giroult by pointing out weaknesses in his investigation.

This is Story #2 of the Hercule Poirot Mysteries, when Poirot has no become famous. It is told from Captain Hastings’ perspective from a time when he doesn’t quite believe Poirot will be able to bring about a successful outcome. Poirot gets on Hastings’ nerves with his neat, methodical methods. But as the story progresses, he becomes impressed by Poirot and develops more trust in his skills.

We get to follow Poirot and Hastings’ relationship in the earliest stages when Hastings gets irritated with Poirot’s talks about “the little great cells” and analyzing methods. That doesn’t happen in the later stories. With his army background, Hastings seems to prefer to act instead of analyze too much. He comes across as a rather impulsive character who gets side-tracked by feelings, particularly regarding women, which put spanners in the works of Poirot’s investigation.

There is an interesting mix of characters who don’t exactly make it easy for Poirot to dig out the real truth. A veil of mystery surrounds some of the characters. Some consistently lie and cover up to divert the investigation, while others openly resist and do some great acting to deceive the detectives, but Poirot doesn’t buy it. He walks to the beat of his own drum, and methodically follows the evidence which ends up solving the murder. Must say I was quite surprised by the result as I felt the culprit was sprung on me. I normally pick up on clues along the way, but not this time.

All in all I enjoyed this story by Agatha Christie a lot like I always do. In The Murder in The Links I particularly liked the parts about the relationship between Poirot and Hastings. These descriptions set it apart from later works where it seems their relationship has developed into more fixed detective vs assistant roles where they have learned how to go about solving cases most effectively way.

Fans of Agatha Christie will enjoy The Murder in The Links. It is also recommended for readers of crime fiction.

All opinions in this review are my own.
My rating: 4 starts / 5