Murder on the Links
Encyclopedia
The Murder on the Links is a work of detective fiction
by Agatha Christie
and first published in the UK by The Bodley Head
in May 1923 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company
in of the same year.
It features Hercule Poirot
and Arthur Hastings
. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence
(7/6) and the US edition at $
1.75.
The book is notable for a subplot in which Hastings meets his future wife, Dulcie Duveen, a development "greatly desired on Agatha's part … parcelling off Hastings to wedded bliss in the Argentine."
. But Poirot is busy sorting his mail, impatiently tossing aside bills and banal requests "recovering lost lap dogs for fashionable ladies". Then he finds an extraordinary letter from the south of France: "For God's sake, come!" writes Monsieur Paul Renauld. Poirot decides to investigate and he takes Hastings to France and the Villa Genevieve in Merlinville-sur-Mer on the northern French coast where Renauld wrote from. Asking for directions near the Villa Genevieve, they are watched by a young girl outside another smaller villa who has "anxious eyes".
Arriving at Renauld's house, they find they are too late: Renauld is dead. He and his wife were attacked in their rooms at 2.00 in the night by two masked men. Madame Renauld was tied up and her husband taken away by the men wanting to know "the secret". They appear to have got in to the house through the open front door with no sign of forced entry. His body was found stabbed in a newly dug open grave on the edge of a nearby golf course
which is under construction and next to the placing of a bunker
which was due to be dug that day. The Renaulds' son, Jack, had just been sent away on business to South America and Renauld also gave the chauffeur an unexpected holiday leaving just three female servants in the house who heard nothing. The eldest of the three servants tells Poirot and the police that quite often, after Madame Renauld has retired to bed for the night, her husband has been visited by a neighbour, Madame Daubreuil, who is the mother of the girl with the "anxious eyes", Marthe Daubreuil.
The dead man changed his will
just two weeks before, leaving almost everything to his wife and nothing to his son. There is a smashed watch at the scene of the kidnap which is still running but has somehow gained two hours. The widow inspects the body to identify it. She loses her composure and collapses with grief at the sight of her dead husband.
Poirot is puzzled by some of these findings—why is the watch running fast? Why did the servants hear nothing? Why was the body found somewhere where it was bound to be quickly discovered? Why is there a piece of lead piping near the body? Poirot is hampered in his investigations by the attitude of Monsieur Giraud of the Sûreté
who plainly believes the elderly Belgian is too set in his old-fashioned ways to solve the mystery. The local Examining Magistrate, Monsieur Hautet, is more helpful and tells Poirot that he has found out that the Renaulds' neighbour at the Villa Marguerite, Madame Daubreuil, has paid two hundred thousand francs
into her bank account in recent weeks: was she Monsieur Renauld's mistress? They visit the lady who is furious when the suggestion is put to her and throws them out. Having now met Madame Daubreuil for the first time, Poirot tells Hastings that he recognises her from a murder case going back some twenty years.
Soon after, Jack Renauld arrives back; his trip to Santiago
was delayed enabling him to return when he heard of his father's murder. Jack admits to rowing with his father over who he wanted to marry, hence the change of will. Poirot suspects that Marthe Daubreuil is the girl in question and feels that the answer to the problem lies in Paris. He goes there to investigate. Whilst he is away another body is found in a shed on the golf course. No one recognises the man who by his hands could be a tramp but is dressed in finer clothes. The strangest thing is that the man has been dead for forty-eight hours and thus died before Monsieur Renauld's murder. No one recognises the new corpse.
Poirot returns from Paris and, without being told details beforehand, staggers Hastings by correctly guessing the age of the man, place of death, and manner of death, despite having ben clearly shocked when Hastings originally told him of this new development. He examines the new corpse with the doctor. Poirot sees foam on his lips and the doctor realises the man died of an epileptic fit and was then stabbed after death.
When alone, Poirot tells Hastings that his investigations in Paris have borne fruit and that Madame Daubreuil is in fact a Madame Beroldy who was put on trial twenty years previously for the death of her elderly husband. He too was murdered by, supposedly, two masked men who broke into their house at night wanting to know "the secret". Madame Beroldy had a young lover, Georges Conneau, who absconded from justice but wrote a letter to the police admitting to the crime; there were no masked men and he stabbed Monsieur Beroldy himself. Madame Beroldy managed a tearfully-convincing performance in the witness box, convincing the jury of her innocence, but leaving most people suspicious. She then disappeared herself.
Poirot deduces that Paul Renauld was in fact Georges Conneau. He fled to Canada
and then South America where he made his fortune and gained a wife and a son. When they returned to France, by great misfortune, the immediate neighbour of the house he bought was Madame Beroldy, now Daubreuil, who started to blackmail
him. When a tramp died on his grounds of an epileptic fit, Renauld saw a chance to duplicate the ruse of twenty years earlier by faking his own death and escaping his blackmailer with his wife's cooperation. His plan was to send his son away on business, give his chauffeur a holiday, and stage a kidnapping by tying his wife up and disappearing. After leaving the house he would go to the golf course and dig a grave where he knew it would be discovered; he would then put the tramp into the grave after destroying his features with the lead pipe. The plan was for this to happen at midnight, giving Renauld the chance to get away from the local station on the last train and use the smashed watch to create an alibi. Unfortunately, the smashing of the watch did not stop it, so the deception failed on Poirot at least. What then went wrong was that Renauld was stabbed by someone else after he finished digging the grave but before he could fetch the body of the tramp, hence his wife's faint when she saw that the body actually was her husband's.
Jack is proven innocent by another girl he was also in love with and as far as Poirot is concerned that leaves only one suspect who had anything to gain by Renauld dying: Marthe Daubreuil, who did not know of the change of will disinheriting Jack and thought that by killing his father she would gain his fortune when she married his son. She overheard the Renaulds discussing using the dead tramp as a ruse and stabbed Renauld on the golf course after he had dug the grave. Marthe dies when she tries to kill Madame Renauld. Her mother disappears again. Jack and his mother go to South America and Hastings ends up with Dulcie Duveen, the sister of the girl who was able to prove Jack's innocence. She is also the woman he met on the train at the beginning of the novel.
At the Villa Geneviève
At the Villa Marguerite
Merlinville and Parisian Police
Others
reviewed the novel in its issue of 7 June 1923. The review compared the methods of detection of Poirot to Sherlock Holmes
and concluded favourably that the book "provides the reader with an enthralling mystery of an unusual kind".
The New York Times Book Review
of 25 March 1923 began, “Here is a remarkably good detective story which can be warmly commended to those who like that kind of fiction.” After detailing the set-up of the story the review continued, “The plot has peculiar complications and the reader will have to be very astute indeed if he guesses who the criminal is until the last complexity has been unravelled. The author is notably ingenious in the construction and unravelling of the mystery, which develops fresh interests and new entanglements at every turn. She deserves commendation also for the care with which the story is worked out and the good craftsmanship with which it is written. Although there is not much endeavour to portray character, except in the case of M. Poirot, several of the personages are depicted with swiftly made expressive and distinctive lines.”
The unnamed reviewer in The Observer
of 10 June 1923 said, "When Conan Doyle
popularised Sherlock Holmes
in the Strand
of the 'nineties he lit such a candle as the publishers will not willingly let out. Not a week passes which does not bring a 'detective' story from one quarter or another, and several of the popular magazines rely mainly on that commodity. Among the later cultivators of this anything but lonely furrow the name of Agatha Christie is well in the front. If she has not the touch of artistry which made The Speckled Band
and The Hound of the Baskervilles
things of real horror, she has an unusual gift of mechanical complication." The reviewer went on to compare the novel with The Mysterious Affair at Styles
which they called, "a remarkable piece of work" but warned that, "it is a mistake to carry the art of bewilderment to the point of making the brain reel." They did admit that, "No solution could be more surprising" and stated that the character of Poirot was, "a pleasant contrast to most of his lurid competitors; and one even suspects a touch of satire in him."
Robert Barnard
: "Super-complicated early whodunit, set in the northerly fringes of France so beloved of the English bankrupt. Poirot pits his wits against a sneering sophisticate of a French policeman while Hastings lets his wander after an auburn-haired female acrobat. Entertaining for most of its length, but the solution is one of those 'once revealed, instantly forgotten' ones, where ingenuity has triumphed over common sense".
Some additional blurb
s regarding the book, and used by The Bodley Head for advertising subsequent print runs, are as follows:
In a modern work of literary criticism, Christie biographer Laura Thompson writes:
on 15 September 1990, the centenary of Christie's birth. It was repeated on 8 July 1991. John Moffatt
starred as Poirot. The play's recording took place on 21 June 1989 at Broadcasting House
.
Adaptor: Michael Bakewell
Producer/Director: Enyd Williams
Cast:
John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot
Jeremy Clyde
as Captain Hastings
Madeline Smith
as Dulcee Duveen
Vincent Brimble as Inspector Giraud
Geoffrey Whitehead
as Inspector Bex
Joan Matheson as Madame Renauld
Stephen Tompkinson
as Jack Renauld
David King as Judge Hautet
Petra Davies
as Madame Daubreuil
Francesca Buller
as Marthe Daubreuil
Barbara Atkinson
as Françoise
Joanna Mackie as Léoine
Danny Schiller as Hotel Receptionist
Ken Cumberlidge as Sergeant of Police
Brian Miller as the Doctor
as a ninety-four-minute drama and transmitted on ITV
in the UK on Sunday, 11 February 1996 as a special episode in their series Agatha Christie's Poirot
.
The Three major changes in this version from the book were:
The episode was filmed on location in Deauville
, France
Adaptor: Anthony Horowitz
Director: Andrew Grieve
Cast:
David Suchet
as Hercule Poirot
Hugh Fraser
as Arthur Hastings
Bill Moody as Giraud
Damien Thomas
as Paul Renauld
Sophie Linfield as Marthe Daubreuil
Katherine Fahey as Bernadette Daubreuil
Jacinta Mulcahy as Bella Duveen
Bernard Latham as Lucien Bex
Ben Pullen as Jack Renauld
Diana Fletcher as Eloise Renauld
Terence Beesley as Stonor
Andrew Melville as Dr Hautet
Henrietta Voigts as Leonie
James Vaughan as Adam Letts
Ray Gatenby as a Station Master
Randal Herley as the Judge
Peter Yapp as a Lawyer
Terry Raven as a Tramp
Margaret Clifton as a Concierge
Tim Berrington as a Golfer
Howard Lee as a Golfer
Joseph Morton as a Policeman
Christopher Hammond as a Policeman
Belinda Stewart-Wilson
as a Dubbing Secretary
Richard Bebb as a Newsreader
Laurence Richardson
as a Golfer
as a graphic novel
adaptation on 16 July 2007, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Marc Piskic (ISBN 0-00-725057-6). This was translated from the edition first published in France by Emmanuel Proust éditions in 2003 under the title of Le Crime du Golf.
The novel received its first true publication as a four-part serialisation in the Grand Magazine from December 1922 to March 1923 (Issues 214 – 217) under the title of The Girl with the Anxious Eyes before it was issued in book form by The Bodley Head in May 1923. This was Christie's first published work for the Grand Magazine which went on to publish many of her short stories throughout the 1920s.
Christie's Autobiography
recounts how she objected to the illustration of the dustjacket of the UK first edition stating that it was both badly drawn and unrepresentative of the plot. It was the first of many such objections she raised with her publishers over the dustjacket. It would appear that Christie won her argument over the dustjacket as the one she describes and objected to ("a man in his pyjamas, dying of an epileptic fit on a golf course") does not resemble the actual jacket (illustrated above) which shows Monsieur Renauld digging the open grave on the golf course at night.
"TO MY HUSBAND. A fellow enthusiast for detective stories and to whom I am indebted for much helpful advice and criticism".
Christie refers here to her first husband, Archibald Christie (1890–1962) from whom she was divorced in 1928. This dedication has not appeared in most editions for many years since.
. Instead it carried quotes of reviews for The Mysterious Affair at Styles whilst the back jacket flap carried similar quotes for The Secret Adversary
.
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
and first published in the UK by The Bodley Head
The Bodley Head
The Bodley Head is an English publishing house, founded in 1887 and existing as an independent entity until the 1970s. The name has been used as an imprint of Random House Children's Books since 1987...
in May 1923 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company
Dodd, Mead and Company
Dodd, Mead and Company was one of the pioneer publishing houses of the United States, based in New York City. Under several names, the firm operated from 1839 until 1990. Its history properly began in 1870, with the retirement of its founder, Moses Woodruff Dodd. Control passed to his son Frank...
in of the same year.
It features Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
and Arthur Hastings
Arthur Hastings
Captain Arthur Hastings, OBE, is a fictional character, the amateur sleuthing partner and best friend of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot...
. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence
British sixpence coin
The sixpence, known colloquially as the tanner, or half-shilling, was a British pre-decimal coin, worth six pence, or 1/40th of a pound sterling....
(7/6) and the US edition at $
Dollar sign
The dollar or peso sign is a symbol primarily used to indicate the various peso and dollar units of currency around the world.- Origin :...
1.75.
The book is notable for a subplot in which Hastings meets his future wife, Dulcie Duveen, a development "greatly desired on Agatha's part … parcelling off Hastings to wedded bliss in the Argentine."
Plot summary
Captain Hastings arrives in the flat that he now shares with Poirot in London, eager to tell the Belgian detective about a woman with whom he has fallen hopelessly in love on the train from Paris to CalaisCalais
Calais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
. But Poirot is busy sorting his mail, impatiently tossing aside bills and banal requests "recovering lost lap dogs for fashionable ladies". Then he finds an extraordinary letter from the south of France: "For God's sake, come!" writes Monsieur Paul Renauld. Poirot decides to investigate and he takes Hastings to France and the Villa Genevieve in Merlinville-sur-Mer on the northern French coast where Renauld wrote from. Asking for directions near the Villa Genevieve, they are watched by a young girl outside another smaller villa who has "anxious eyes".
Arriving at Renauld's house, they find they are too late: Renauld is dead. He and his wife were attacked in their rooms at 2.00 in the night by two masked men. Madame Renauld was tied up and her husband taken away by the men wanting to know "the secret". They appear to have got in to the house through the open front door with no sign of forced entry. His body was found stabbed in a newly dug open grave on the edge of a nearby golf course
Golf course
A golf course comprises a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, fairway, rough and other hazards, and a green with a flagstick and cup, all designed for the game of golf. A standard round of golf consists of playing 18 holes, thus most golf courses have this number of holes...
which is under construction and next to the placing of a bunker
Bunker (golf)
A hazard is an area of a golf course in the sport of golf which provides a difficult obstacle. which may be of three types: water hazards such as lakes and rivers; man-made hazards such as bunkers; and natural hazards such as dense vegetation. Special rules apply to playing balls that fall in a...
which was due to be dug that day. The Renaulds' son, Jack, had just been sent away on business to South America and Renauld also gave the chauffeur an unexpected holiday leaving just three female servants in the house who heard nothing. The eldest of the three servants tells Poirot and the police that quite often, after Madame Renauld has retired to bed for the night, her husband has been visited by a neighbour, Madame Daubreuil, who is the mother of the girl with the "anxious eyes", Marthe Daubreuil.
The dead man changed his will
Will (law)
A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...
just two weeks before, leaving almost everything to his wife and nothing to his son. There is a smashed watch at the scene of the kidnap which is still running but has somehow gained two hours. The widow inspects the body to identify it. She loses her composure and collapses with grief at the sight of her dead husband.
Poirot is puzzled by some of these findings—why is the watch running fast? Why did the servants hear nothing? Why was the body found somewhere where it was bound to be quickly discovered? Why is there a piece of lead piping near the body? Poirot is hampered in his investigations by the attitude of Monsieur Giraud of the Sûreté
Sûreté
Sûreté is a term used in French speaking countries or regions in the organizational title of a civil police force, especially the detective branch thereof.-France:...
who plainly believes the elderly Belgian is too set in his old-fashioned ways to solve the mystery. The local Examining Magistrate, Monsieur Hautet, is more helpful and tells Poirot that he has found out that the Renaulds' neighbour at the Villa Marguerite, Madame Daubreuil, has paid two hundred thousand francs
French franc
The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
into her bank account in recent weeks: was she Monsieur Renauld's mistress? They visit the lady who is furious when the suggestion is put to her and throws them out. Having now met Madame Daubreuil for the first time, Poirot tells Hastings that he recognises her from a murder case going back some twenty years.
Soon after, Jack Renauld arrives back; his trip to Santiago
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...
was delayed enabling him to return when he heard of his father's murder. Jack admits to rowing with his father over who he wanted to marry, hence the change of will. Poirot suspects that Marthe Daubreuil is the girl in question and feels that the answer to the problem lies in Paris. He goes there to investigate. Whilst he is away another body is found in a shed on the golf course. No one recognises the man who by his hands could be a tramp but is dressed in finer clothes. The strangest thing is that the man has been dead for forty-eight hours and thus died before Monsieur Renauld's murder. No one recognises the new corpse.
Poirot returns from Paris and, without being told details beforehand, staggers Hastings by correctly guessing the age of the man, place of death, and manner of death, despite having ben clearly shocked when Hastings originally told him of this new development. He examines the new corpse with the doctor. Poirot sees foam on his lips and the doctor realises the man died of an epileptic fit and was then stabbed after death.
When alone, Poirot tells Hastings that his investigations in Paris have borne fruit and that Madame Daubreuil is in fact a Madame Beroldy who was put on trial twenty years previously for the death of her elderly husband. He too was murdered by, supposedly, two masked men who broke into their house at night wanting to know "the secret". Madame Beroldy had a young lover, Georges Conneau, who absconded from justice but wrote a letter to the police admitting to the crime; there were no masked men and he stabbed Monsieur Beroldy himself. Madame Beroldy managed a tearfully-convincing performance in the witness box, convincing the jury of her innocence, but leaving most people suspicious. She then disappeared herself.
Poirot deduces that Paul Renauld was in fact Georges Conneau. He fled to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and then South America where he made his fortune and gained a wife and a son. When they returned to France, by great misfortune, the immediate neighbour of the house he bought was Madame Beroldy, now Daubreuil, who started to blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
him. When a tramp died on his grounds of an epileptic fit, Renauld saw a chance to duplicate the ruse of twenty years earlier by faking his own death and escaping his blackmailer with his wife's cooperation. His plan was to send his son away on business, give his chauffeur a holiday, and stage a kidnapping by tying his wife up and disappearing. After leaving the house he would go to the golf course and dig a grave where he knew it would be discovered; he would then put the tramp into the grave after destroying his features with the lead pipe. The plan was for this to happen at midnight, giving Renauld the chance to get away from the local station on the last train and use the smashed watch to create an alibi. Unfortunately, the smashing of the watch did not stop it, so the deception failed on Poirot at least. What then went wrong was that Renauld was stabbed by someone else after he finished digging the grave but before he could fetch the body of the tramp, hence his wife's faint when she saw that the body actually was her husband's.
Jack is proven innocent by another girl he was also in love with and as far as Poirot is concerned that leaves only one suspect who had anything to gain by Renauld dying: Marthe Daubreuil, who did not know of the change of will disinheriting Jack and thought that by killing his father she would gain his fortune when she married his son. She overheard the Renaulds discussing using the dead tramp as a ruse and stabbed Renauld on the golf course after he had dug the grave. Marthe dies when she tries to kill Madame Renauld. Her mother disappears again. Jack and his mother go to South America and Hastings ends up with Dulcie Duveen, the sister of the girl who was able to prove Jack's innocence. She is also the woman he met on the train at the beginning of the novel.
Characters in "The Murder on the Links"
- Hercule Poirot
- Captain Arthur Hastings
At the Villa Geneviève
- Paul Renauld – formerly Georges Conneau
- Eloise Renauld – his wife
- Jack Renauld – their son
- Françoise Arrichet – elderly servant in M. Renauld's house
- Léonie Oulard – a young maid in M. Renauld's house
- Denise Oulard – her sister and also a maid in M. Renauld's house
- Auguste – gardener at M. Renauld's house
- Gabriel Stonor – M. Renauld's secretary
At the Villa Marguerite
- Madame Daubreuil – neighbour of Paul Renauld, formerly Madame Jeanne Beroldy
- Marthe Daubreuil – her daughter
Merlinville and Parisian Police
- Lucien Bex – Commissary of Police
- Monsieur Hautet – Examining Magistrate
- Dr Durand – the local doctor in Merlinville
- Monsieur Giraud of the Paris Sûreté
- M. Marchaud – Sergent de Ville
- Magistrate at Merlinville
Others
- Joseph Aarons – British theatrical agent
- Bella Duveen – fiancé of Jack Renauld and stage performer
- Dulcie Duveen – sister of Bella and part of her stage act – known to Hastings as "Cinderella"
- Maître Grosier – Jack Renauld's counsel
Literary significance and reception
The Times Literary SupplementThe Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
reviewed the novel in its issue of 7 June 1923. The review compared the methods of detection of Poirot to Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
and concluded favourably that the book "provides the reader with an enthralling mystery of an unusual kind".
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
of 25 March 1923 began, “Here is a remarkably good detective story which can be warmly commended to those who like that kind of fiction.” After detailing the set-up of the story the review continued, “The plot has peculiar complications and the reader will have to be very astute indeed if he guesses who the criminal is until the last complexity has been unravelled. The author is notably ingenious in the construction and unravelling of the mystery, which develops fresh interests and new entanglements at every turn. She deserves commendation also for the care with which the story is worked out and the good craftsmanship with which it is written. Although there is not much endeavour to portray character, except in the case of M. Poirot, several of the personages are depicted with swiftly made expressive and distinctive lines.”
The unnamed reviewer in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
of 10 June 1923 said, "When Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
popularised Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
in the Strand
Strand Magazine
The Strand Magazine was a monthly magazine composed of fictional stories and factual articles founded by George Newnes. It was first published in the United Kingdom from January 1891 to March 1950 running to 711 issues, though the first issue was on sale well before Christmas 1890.Its immediate...
of the 'nineties he lit such a candle as the publishers will not willingly let out. Not a week passes which does not bring a 'detective' story from one quarter or another, and several of the popular magazines rely mainly on that commodity. Among the later cultivators of this anything but lonely furrow the name of Agatha Christie is well in the front. If she has not the touch of artistry which made The Speckled Band
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the eighth of the twelve stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It is one of four Sherlock Holmes stories that can be classified as a locked...
and The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of four crime novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an...
things of real horror, she has an unusual gift of mechanical complication." The reviewer went on to compare the novel with The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by Agatha Christie. It was written in 1916 and was first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head on January 21, 1921. The U.S...
which they called, "a remarkable piece of work" but warned that, "it is a mistake to carry the art of bewilderment to the point of making the brain reel." They did admit that, "No solution could be more surprising" and stated that the character of Poirot was, "a pleasant contrast to most of his lurid competitors; and one even suspects a touch of satire in him."
Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard is an English crime writer, critic and lecturer.- Life and work :Born in Essex, Barnard was educated at the Colchester Royal Grammar School and at Balliol College in Oxford....
: "Super-complicated early whodunit, set in the northerly fringes of France so beloved of the English bankrupt. Poirot pits his wits against a sneering sophisticate of a French policeman while Hastings lets his wander after an auburn-haired female acrobat. Entertaining for most of its length, but the solution is one of those 'once revealed, instantly forgotten' ones, where ingenuity has triumphed over common sense".
Some additional blurb
Blurb
A blurb is a short summary or some words of praise accompanying a creative work, usually used on books without giving away any details, that is usually referring to the words on the back of the book jacket but also commonly seen on DVD and video cases, web portals, and news websites.- History :The...
s regarding the book, and used by The Bodley Head for advertising subsequent print runs, are as follows:
- "One of the best mystery stories I have read." – S.P.B. Mais in The Daily Express.
- "A clinking yarn, most ingeniously contrived and skilfully evolved … there is not a superfluous word or a dull one from start to finish … the very best of this sort of fiction." – Winnifred Blatchford in The ClarionThe ClarionThe Clarion was a weekly newspaper published by Robert Blatchford, based in the United Kingdom. It was a socialist publication though adopting a British-focused rather than internationalist perspective on political affairs, as seen in its support of the British involvement in the Anglo-Boer Wars...
.
- "A thrilling and accomplished book." – ObserverThe ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
.
- "Mrs. Christie has a surprising gift of keeping the reader's tension unslacked, of heaping excitement on excitement, and of always having a surprise up her sleeve." – Daily MailDaily MailThe Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
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- "Unhesitatingly we recommend ‘The Murder on the Links’ to every lover of such tales, and every non-lover likewise we advise to read it and thereupon reconsider their previous opinion." – QueenQueen (magazine)Queen magazine was a British society publication established by Samuel Beeton in 1861. In 1958, the magazine was sold to Jocelyn Stevens, who dropped the prefix "The" and used it as his vehicle to represent the younger side of the British Establishment, sometimes referred to as the "Chelsea Set"...
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- "A godsend to hardened readers of fiction." – Illustrated London NewsIllustrated London NewsThe Illustrated London News was the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper; the first issue appeared on Saturday 14 May 1842. It was published weekly until 1971 and then increasingly less frequently until publication ceased in 2003.-History:...
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- "A very convincing and most readable book." – Challenge.
- "A really good detective story." – TatlerTatlerTatler has been the name of several British journals and magazines, each of which has viewed itself as the successor of the original literary and society journal founded by Richard Steele in 1709. The current incarnation, founded in 1901, is a glossy magazine published by Condé Nast Publications...
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- "A capital story, cleverly designed, briskly told." – BookmanThe Bookman (London)The Bookman was a monthly magazine published in London from 1891 until 1934 by Hodder & Stoughton. It was a catalogue of their current publications that also contained reviews, advertising and illustrations....
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- "None can say that Mrs. Christie is lacking either in imagination or the ability to tell a good story." – Daily GraphicThe GraphicThe Graphic was a British weekly illustrated newspaper, first published on 4 December 1869 by William Luson Thomas's company Illustrated Newspapers Limited....
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- "A rattling, ingenious mystery yarn." – London Opinion.
In a modern work of literary criticism, Christie biographer Laura Thompson writes:
Murder on the Links was as different from its predecessor as that had been from Styles. It is very French; not just in setting but in tone, which reeks of Gaston LerouxGaston LerouxGaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera , which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon...
and, at times, RacineJean RacineJean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...
… Agatha admitted that she had written it in a "high-flown, fanciful" manner. She had also based the book too closely upon a real-life French murder case, which gives the story a kind of non-artistic complexity.
…
But Poirot is magnificently himself. What originality there is in Murder on the Links comes straight from his thought processes. For example he deduces the modus operandi of the crime because it is a repeat, essentially, of an earlier murder; this proves his favourite theory that human nature does not change, even when the human in question is a killer: "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 day. But he obeyed the common dictates of human nature, arguing that what had once succeeded would succeed again, and he paid the penalty of his lack of originality."
Saturday Night Theatre (BBC Radio 4)
The Murder on the Links was presented as a one-hour, thirty-minute radio play in the Saturday Night Theatre strand on BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
on 15 September 1990, the centenary of Christie's birth. It was repeated on 8 July 1991. John Moffatt
John Moffatt (actor)
John Moffatt is an English actor and playwright, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Hercule Poirot on BBC Radio....
starred as Poirot. The play's recording took place on 21 June 1989 at Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House is the headquarters and registered office of the BBC in Portland Place and Langham Place, London.The building includes the BBC Radio Theatre from where music and speech programmes are recorded in front of a studio audience...
.
Adaptor: Michael Bakewell
Michael Bakewell
Michael Bakewell is a British television producer. He is best known for his work during the 1960s, when he was the first Head of Plays at the BBC after Sydney Newman divided the drama department into separate series, serials and plays divisions in 1963...
Producer/Director: Enyd Williams
Cast:
John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot
Jeremy Clyde
Jeremy Clyde
Michael Thomas Jeremy Clyde is an English actor and musician. The son of Lady Elizabeth Wellesley, he made his first public appearance as a pageboy at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom in 1953...
as Captain Hastings
Madeline Smith
Madeline Smith
Madeline Smith is an English actress and comedienne. She was a model in the 1960s, and appeared in many comedy films Madeline Smith (born 2 August 1949 in Hartfield, Sussex) is an English actress and comedienne. She was a model in the 1960s, and appeared in many comedy films Madeline Smith (born 2...
as Dulcee Duveen
Vincent Brimble as Inspector Giraud
Geoffrey Whitehead
Geoffrey Whitehead
Geoffrey Whitehead is an English actor. He has appeared in a huge range of television, film and radio roles. In the theatre, he has played at the Shakespeare Globe, St...
as Inspector Bex
Joan Matheson as Madame Renauld
Stephen Tompkinson
Stephen Tompkinson
Stephen Tompkinson is a British actor. He is best known for his work in comedy and drama productions such as Drop the Dead Donkey, Ballykissangel, Grafters, In Deep, Wild at Heart and DCI Banks....
as Jack Renauld
David King as Judge Hautet
Petra Davies
Petra Davies
Petra Davies is a British actress. She trained at Rada between 1947 - 1949. She has had many television appearances and has worked in films and theatre....
as Madame Daubreuil
Francesca Buller
Francesca Buller
Francesca Buller is an English actress best known for her portrayal of various characters in the TV series Farscape, most notably that of War Minister Ahkna...
as Marthe Daubreuil
Barbara Atkinson
Barbara Atkinson
Barbara Atkinson is an actress from Manchester, England. Her first professional appearance was at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in December 1945. Atkinson has appeared in various television episodes since 1965.-Biography:...
as Françoise
Joanna Mackie as Léoine
Danny Schiller as Hotel Receptionist
Ken Cumberlidge as Sergeant of Police
Brian Miller as the Doctor
Agatha Christie's Poirot
The book was also adapted by Carnival FilmsCarnival Films
Carnival Films is a British television production company, founded by Brian Eastman in 1978 as Picture Partnership Productions Limited and run by Gareth Neame since 2005. The company swiftly built up a strong reputation as an independent production company of theatre, film and television drama...
as a ninety-four-minute drama and transmitted on ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
in the UK on Sunday, 11 February 1996 as a special episode in their series Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...
.
The Three major changes in this version from the book were:
- In the book, Hercule Poirot is invited by Paul Renauld while in the adaptation Poirot is on holiday with Hastings in DeauvilleDeauvilleDeauville is a commune in the Calvados département in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.With its racecourse, harbour, international film festival, marinas, conference centre, villas, Grand Casino and sumptuous hotels, Deauville is regarded as the "queen of the Norman beaches" and...
and the hotel they are staying is owned by Paul. It is in the hotel that Paul and Poirot meet. - Paul Renauld's murder takes place only 10 years after the Berodly murder (instead of 20 in the book) and as a result the character of Jack Renauld is changed to a stepson, with a strong motive to kill him.
- The characters of Dulcie and Bella Duveen were merged. In this adaptation, Hastings does not meet Bella on the train. Rather he meets her in France. The final scene shows them kissing by the beach.
The episode was filmed on location in Deauville
Deauville
Deauville is a commune in the Calvados département in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.With its racecourse, harbour, international film festival, marinas, conference centre, villas, Grand Casino and sumptuous hotels, Deauville is regarded as the "queen of the Norman beaches" and...
, France
Adaptor: Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Craig Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter. He has written many children's novels, including The Power of Five, Alex Rider and The Diamond Brothers series and has written over fifty books. He has also written extensively for television, adapting many of Agatha Christie's...
Director: Andrew Grieve
Cast:
David Suchet
David Suchet
David Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy...
as Hercule Poirot
Hugh Fraser
Hugh Fraser (actor)
Hugh Fraser is an English actor and theatre director.-Early life:Born in London but raised in the East Midlands, Fraser studied acting at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art...
as Arthur Hastings
Bill Moody as Giraud
Damien Thomas
Damien Thomas
Damien Thomas is a British actor noted for his roles in British films and television, such as his role as Richard Mason in the 1983 BBC production of Jane Eyre....
as Paul Renauld
Sophie Linfield as Marthe Daubreuil
Katherine Fahey as Bernadette Daubreuil
Jacinta Mulcahy as Bella Duveen
Bernard Latham as Lucien Bex
Ben Pullen as Jack Renauld
Diana Fletcher as Eloise Renauld
Terence Beesley as Stonor
Andrew Melville as Dr Hautet
Henrietta Voigts as Leonie
James Vaughan as Adam Letts
Ray Gatenby as a Station Master
Randal Herley as the Judge
Peter Yapp as a Lawyer
Terry Raven as a Tramp
Margaret Clifton as a Concierge
Tim Berrington as a Golfer
Howard Lee as a Golfer
Joseph Morton as a Policeman
Christopher Hammond as a Policeman
Belinda Stewart-Wilson
Belinda Stewart-Wilson
Belinda Stewart-Wilson is an English actress, best known for her role in the TV sitcom The Inbetweeners as Polly McKenzie.-Early life:The daughter of Sir Blair Stewart-Wilson, a British Army officer, Stewart-Wilson grew up on military postings in the UK, Germany, and Austria before her family...
as a Dubbing Secretary
Richard Bebb as a Newsreader
Laurence Richardson
Laurence Richardson
Laurence Richardson is an English actor. He began his career in 1994 with small appearances in two episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot: Hercule Poirot's Christmas and Murder on the Links.-Television work:* Eastenders...
as a Golfer
Graphic novel adaptation
The Murder on the Links was released by HarperCollinsHarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
as a graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
adaptation on 16 July 2007, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Marc Piskic (ISBN 0-00-725057-6). This was translated from the edition first published in France by Emmanuel Proust éditions in 2003 under the title of Le Crime du Golf.
Publication history
- 1923, John Lane (The Bodley Head), May 1923, Hardcover, 326 pp
- 1923, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1923, Hardcover, 298 pp
- 1928, John Lane (The Bodley Head), March 1928, Hardcover (Cheap edition – two shillings)
- 1931, John Lane (The Bodley Head, February 1931 (As part of the An Agatha Christie Omnibus along with The Mysterious Affair at StylesThe Mysterious Affair at StylesThe Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by Agatha Christie. It was written in 1916 and was first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head on January 21, 1921. The U.S...
and Poirot InvestigatesPoirot InvestigatesPoirot Investigates is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by The Bodley Head in March 1924. In the eleven stories, famed eccentric detective Hercule Poirot solves a variety of mysteries involving greed, jealousy and revenge. The American version of...
, Hardcover (Priced at seven shillings and sixpence, a cheaper edition at five shillings was published in October 1932). - 1932, John Lane (The Bodley Head), March 1932, Paperback (Ninepence)
- 1936, Penguin Books, March 1936, Paperback (sixpence) 254 pp
- 1949, Dell BooksDell PublishingDell Publishing, an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte, Jr.During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Dell was one of the largest publishers of magazines, including pulp magazines. Their line of humor magazines included 1000 Jokes, launched in...
, 1949, Dell number 454, Paperback, 224 pp - 1954, Corgi Books, 1954, Paperback, 222 pp
- 1960, Pan Books, 1960, Paperback (Great Pan G323), 224 pp
- 1977, Ulverscroft Large-print, 1977, Hardcover, 349 pp ISBN 0-85-456516-7
- 1978, Panther BooksPanther (publisher)Panther Books Ltd was a British publishing house especially active in the 1950s and 1960s, specialising in paperback fiction. It was established in May 1952 by Hamilton's Ltd and titles carried the line "A Panther Book" or "Panther Science Fiction" on the cover...
, 1978, Paperback, 224 pp - 1988, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 208 pp, ISBN 0-00-617477-9
- 2007, Facsimile of 1923 UK first edition (HarperCollins), 5 November 2007, Hardcover, 326 pp ISBN 0-00-726516-6
The novel received its first true publication as a four-part serialisation in the Grand Magazine from December 1922 to March 1923 (Issues 214 – 217) under the title of The Girl with the Anxious Eyes before it was issued in book form by The Bodley Head in May 1923. This was Christie's first published work for the Grand Magazine which went on to publish many of her short stories throughout the 1920s.
Christie's Autobiography
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
An Autobiography is the title of the recollections of crime writer Agatha Christie published posthumously by Collins in the UK and by Dodd, Mead & Company in the US in November 1977, almost two years after the writer’s death in January 1976. The UK edition retailed at £7.95 and the US edition at...
recounts how she objected to the illustration of the dustjacket of the UK first edition stating that it was both badly drawn and unrepresentative of the plot. It was the first of many such objections she raised with her publishers over the dustjacket. It would appear that Christie won her argument over the dustjacket as the one she describes and objected to ("a man in his pyjamas, dying of an epileptic fit on a golf course") does not resemble the actual jacket (illustrated above) which shows Monsieur Renauld digging the open grave on the golf course at night.
Book dedication
Christie dedicated her third book as follows:"TO MY HUSBAND. A fellow enthusiast for detective stories and to whom I am indebted for much helpful advice and criticism".
Christie refers here to her first husband, Archibald Christie (1890–1962) from whom she was divorced in 1928. This dedication has not appeared in most editions for many years since.
Dustjacket blurb
The dustjacket front flap of the first edition carried no specially written blurbBlurb
A blurb is a short summary or some words of praise accompanying a creative work, usually used on books without giving away any details, that is usually referring to the words on the back of the book jacket but also commonly seen on DVD and video cases, web portals, and news websites.- History :The...
. Instead it carried quotes of reviews for The Mysterious Affair at Styles whilst the back jacket flap carried similar quotes for The Secret Adversary
The Secret Adversary
The Secret Adversary is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head in January 1922 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company later in that same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition...
.
International titles
- Dutch: Moord op de golflinks (Murder on the Links)
- French: Le Crime du golf (The crime of golf)
- Hungarian: Az ijedt szemű lány (The Girl with the Anxious Eyes), Gyilkosság a golfpályán (Murder on the Links)
- Italian: Aiuto, Poirot! (Poirot, Help!)
- Spanish: Asesinato en el campo de golf (Murder on the Golf court)
- Indonesian : Lapangan Golf Maut (The Deadly Golf Court)
- Swedish: Vem var den Skyldige? (Who was the Guilty?)
External links
- The Murder on the Links at the official Agatha Christie website