The Murder on the Links is Agatha Christie’s second Poirot novel, featuring the brilliant Belgian detective and his sidekick, Captain Hastings.

In this characteristic whodunit, Poirot is summoned to a seaside town in northern France by a desperate letter from a rich businessman, who fears that he is being stalked. Poirot arrives to find the businessman already dead, his body lying facedown in an open grave on a golf course, a knife in his back—the victim of a mysterious murder. Over the coming days Poirot clashes wits with an arrogant Parisian detective, Giraud, while Hastings finds himself pining after a beautiful but shadowy American expatriate known to him only as “Cinderella.” Together, Poirot and Hastings unravel the intricate web of mystery and deceit behind the murder.

Christie based this mystery after a real-life French murder case, and it’s believed that this is the first detective novel to use the phrase “the scene of the crime.”