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Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express

ClassicsCrime
Pages
272
Published
2002
Language
English

Synopsis

Returning from the Middle East aboard the famed Orient Express, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot expects a quiet three-day journey across Europe. The train is unusually full for the season, carrying a cross-section of strangers: an English governess, a stiff army colonel, a voluble American widow, an aging Russian princess, a wealthy man's young secretary, and a businessman named Ratchett who confides to Poirot that his life has been threatened and tries to hire him as a bodyguard. Poirot refuses. In the night the train runs into a snowdrift in the wilds of Yugoslavia and stops dead, cut off from the world. By morning Ratchett lies dead in his locked compartment, stabbed a dozen times, and the killer can only be one of the passengers still trapped aboard. At the request of his friend M. Bouc, a director of the railway line, Poirot agrees to investigate. With no police, no escape, and the snow holding everyone in place, he questions each traveller and weighs a tangle of contradictory clues, false alibis, and a scrap of evidence pointing to an old American tragedy. As the accounts refuse to align, Poirot must reason his way toward a solution that tests his own sense of justice.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

MysteriousTense
Writing4.5Impact4.0Characters3.5Plot4.0Atmosphere3.5

Genres

Classics Crime Thriller Mystery Graphic Novels

About the author

A
Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is the best-selling novelist of all time and the writer the world calls the "Queen of Crime." Born Agatha Miller in Torquay, Devon, she came to fiction on a dare: her sister Madge bet she could not write a convincing detective story, and the result, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Her dispensing work in a hospital pharmacy during the First World War, repeated again during the Second, gave her the expert knowledge...

Characters

Hercule PoirotProtagonist

The Belgian detective drawn into investigating a murder aboard a snowbound train.

M. BoucSupporting

A director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits and an old friend of Poirot, who asks him to take the case.

Samuel Edward RatchettSupporting

A secretive, intimidating American businessman who fears for his life and is found stabbed in his compartment.

Mary DebenhamSupporting

A composed young Englishwoman working as a governess, controlled and guarded under questioning.

Colonel ArbuthnotSupporting

A reserved British army officer returning from India, formal and slow to trust outsiders.

All characters in Murder on the Orient Express

Frequently asked questions

  • Was Murder on the Orient Express based on a real event?

    In part. Christie drew on real snowbound delays of the Orient Express, including a 1929 blizzard that stranded the train for days near the Turkish border and a 1931 journey of her own that was held up by flooding and washed-out track. The novel's Armstrong kidnapping backstory was inspired by the 1932 Lindbergh baby kidnapping in the United States.

  • What inspired the kidnapping subplot in the book?

    The fictional kidnapping and murder of the Armstrong child closely mirror the real 1932 Lindbergh case: in both, a ransom was paid but the child was killed, and an innocent servant was wrongly suspected and driven to suicide.

  • Why does the book have a different American title?

    When first published in the United States in 1934, it appeared as Murder in the Calais Coach, reportedly to avoid confusion with Graham Greene's novel Stamboul Train, which had been released in America as Orient Express.

  • When and where was the novel first published?

    It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934, and in the United States later that year under the title Murder in the Calais Coach.

  • Where does this book fall in the Hercule Poirot series?

    It is the tenth Hercule Poirot novel. It is frequently listed as one of Christie's most famous and acclaimed mysteries.

  • Has Murder on the Orient Express been adapted for film and television?

    Yes, several times. Notable versions include Sidney Lumet's 1974 film with Albert Finney as Poirot, a 2010 episode of the ITV series Agatha Christie's Poirot starring David Suchet, and Kenneth Branagh's 2017 film, which he both directed and starred in.

  • Do I need to read other Poirot books first?

    No. The mystery stands fully on its own, and the central case requires no knowledge of earlier titles, so it is a common starting point for new readers.

  • Is this a locked-room style mystery?

    Yes. The victim is found stabbed in a locked compartment on a train stranded in the snow, leaving a closed circle of suspects with no way on or off, which is a hallmark of the form.

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