Murder on the Orient Express

No cover — Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (1976, Pocket Books)

Paperback

English language

Published Aug. 8, 1976 by Pocket Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-671-80018-5

(1 review)

While en route from Syria to Paris, in the middle of a freezing winter's night, the Orient Express is stopped dead in its tracks by a snowdrift. Passengers awake to find the train still stranded and to discover that a wealthy American has been brutally stabbed to death in his private compartment. Incredibly, that compartment is locked from the inside. With no escape into the wintery landscape the killer must still be on board. Fortunately, the brilliant Belgian inspector Hercule Poirot is also on board, having booked the last available berth.

Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels, owing no doubt to a combination of its romantic setting and the ingeniousness of its plot; its non-exploitative reference to the sensational kidnapping and murder of the infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh only two years prior; and a popular 1974 film adaptation, …

While en route from Syria to Paris, in the middle of a freezing winter's night, the Orient Express is stopped dead in its tracks by a snowdrift. Passengers awake to find the train still stranded and to discover that a wealthy American has been brutally stabbed to death in his private compartment. Incredibly, that compartment is locked from the inside. With no escape into the wintery landscape the killer must still be on board. Fortunately, the brilliant Belgian inspector Hercule Poirot is also on board, having booked the last available berth.

Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels, owing no doubt to a combination of its romantic setting and the ingeniousness of its plot; its non-exploitative reference to the sensational kidnapping and murder of the infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh only two years prior; and a popular 1974 film adaptation, starring Albert Finney as Poirot - one of the few cinematic versions of a Christie work that met with the approval, however mild, of the author herself.

95 editions

nerd teacher [books] reviewed Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot)

Christie had better works.

3 stars

This book is probably one of her most well-known novels with a dozen or so adaptations, and I personally find it to be the most bland (in terms of writing) but most interesting (in terms of its adaptations).

In terms of writing a mystery, I find many of the clues too subtle to even be recognisable. Some of that is due to the audience she was clearly writing for, with Americanisms being far less common in daily speech (such as the clue of an English person who uses the phrasing of 'long distance' rather than 'trunk call', which wouldn't really even seem like a clue to many people today). Some of it is due to things that, probably as a person from the United States reading this book, I find to be more perplexing than useful as clues because they also felt wrong for us (like an American actress playing …

This book is probably one of her most well-known novels with a dozen or so adaptations, and I personally find it to be the most bland (in terms of writing) but most interesting (in terms of its adaptations).

In terms of writing a mystery, I find many of the clues too subtle to even be recognisable. Some of that is due to the audience she was clearly writing for, with Americanisms being far less common in daily speech (such as the clue of an English person who uses the phrasing of 'long distance' rather than 'trunk call', which wouldn't really even seem like a clue to many people today). Some of it is due to things that, probably as a person from the United States reading this book, I find to be more perplexing than useful as clues because they also felt wrong for us (like an American actress playing up an accent and Christie choosing to write this dialogue as 'kinder' [kinda], vurry, and Parrus... which all feel wrong, but are probably recognisable to a British audience who says 'er' as 'ah').

Other clues are sentences that would be more noticeable as stage directions, and I think this is why more people really engage with this story through a visual medium. The glances between characters that you're supposed to take note of are easier to recognise in the way cameras can follow a character's glance. It truly is a story that, I think, is boring to read on the page but is more engaging on-screen (even if, for some reason, one adaptation has Poirot losing his cool over everyone lying to him, which feels super out of character).

I also think this kind of story would be better if removed from the aristocracy. The aristocracy often receives what they feel is justice, and it's incredibly rare that they don't. It's also absurd to think that every single person in a household (particularly those often labeled as 'the help') would fawn over the same small child. It feels incredibly unrealistic and is clearly a story that comes from someone who... would see the world in that manner.

I think it'd be a better kind of story in the hands of, for example, victims of abuses that almost never receive any consequences. Maybe if someone like Brock Turner were the Ratchett/Cassetti character, it'd actually be very good.