Murder on the Links

The Kouri Richins case - a guilty verdict built on poisoning, forged documents, mounting debt, and insurance fraud - laid bare how methodically financial motive can drive a murder and how painstakingly investigators must trace each thread to prove it.

Agatha Christie constructed exactly that kind of puzzle decades earlier in this early Hercule Poirot novel.

When a body turns up on a golf course in Normandy, Poirot is drawn into a case where an oversized jacket on the corpse, a concealed love letter, forged correspondence, and tangled financial motives make every suspect's alibi suspect.

The clues point in contradictory directions, and before he can resolve the first killing, a second body appears - forcing Poirot to dismantle an intricate web of deception layered over inheritance, identity, and betrayal.