A man is found dead on a golf course. Shockingly, he didn't die of boredom. 'Twas a knife in the back instead. Which, given this is an Agatha Christie mystery, is really not that unexpected. Enter Poirot. He does come across as smug a lot of the time, and I can see why Hastings is irritated by that, but on the whole it's entertaining enough. There were lots of twists and turns that I didn't see coming (and the odd one that I did), but as satisfying as the mystery was, the story itself rested on a number of romantic subplots and pairings, none of which were remotely believable. Seriously, none of them. Luckily they were mostly in the background, and let's hope in future mysteries they mostly stay there, because I'm not interested in reading about Hastings contaminating a crime scene by showing off to a girl ever again. It makes him seem like a dunce, and while Poirot needs a normal sort of companion to balance him out, it's hard to see him wandering around with someone who's truly thick.