Published in 1932, this spy thriller unfolds aboard the Orient Express as it crosses Europe from Ostend to Constantinople. Weaving a web of subterfuge, murder and politics along the way, it focuses upon the disturbing relationship between Myatt, the pragmatic Jew, and chorus girl, Coral Musker.

Probably not one of Greene's best, but still a cracking read, with the story framed neatly by the progress of the train to Constantinople.

The characters are memorable, even though they are stereotypes, we have a Jew, a Chorus Girl, a Girl On the Go (who hasn't got there yet), a Lesbian (complete with cropped hair), a Small-Time Crook who has just murdered his first man).

An oddly satisfying read, the story is neatly wrapped up, and all the lives continue smoothly, heading into the infinite future, rather like all 30's fiction. ( )

This is the first novel by Greene I've read and I've enjoyed it immensely - so much so that I'll be keeping an eye out for anything else by him I can lay hand on.

"Stamboul Train", set on the Orient Express around 1930, is stuffed with period atmosphere and a sense of a world, especially in Central Europe and the Balkans, soon to be swept away by the rise of Nazism and by WWII. One of the themes which Greene examines in the novel is the profound anti-semitism experienced by Myatt, the Jewish merchant, including amongst the British passengers on the train. He is especially brought face to face with the visceral nature of hatred towards the Jews in Central and Eastern Europe by the attitude of a soldier just itching for an excuse to kill him. One cannot escape the feeling that Greene was truly prescient in his handling of this theme.

Running throughout the novel is the story of the Serbian communist agitator Richard Czinner who fled into exile some 5 years previously and is now on his way back to support a planned communist coup, only to find that it has broken out too early and hence failed. Greene explores Czinner's political idealism and the extent to which that ultimately leads him to personal disaster.

However his most memorable character is Mabel Warren, an aging, alcoholic, predatory, spiteful, butch dyke of a journalist who's prepared not only to sacrifice a man's life to get her story but to ensure that he is sent to his death for no other reason than the fact that he was a man. ( )

It's never just 'an entertainment' when Graham Greene has written it. This novel about strangers on a train tries to cover a lot of ground about relationships and fate. His characters are very fleshed out, even if some of the plot is a little specious or a major character is simply an anti-semitic stereotype. Carleton Myatt, a Jewish merchant, makes one think that Greene had not ever met a Jew. He is totally unrealistic and rather offensive, not out of particular venom (I think Greene tries to be sympathetic to Myatt) but out of a routine anti-semitism of the age. ( )

ORIENT EXPRESS differentiates from other Graham Greene's works, which are normally considered literary fiction of a serious writer, in its entertaining nature. It reads like an adventurous story whose every little detail exuded demands one's undivided attention in order to piece it all together. As the Orient Express hurtles across Europe on its three-day journey from Ostend to Constantinople, the driven lives of several of its passengers become bound together in a fateful interlock. The curious skein of characters include a beautiful chorus girl enroute to a performance, a rich Jewish businessman bound for a business deal, a mysterious, sinister-looking but kind doctor returning to his native Belgrade after being fugitive for five years, a cunning murderous burglar who had fled a crime, and a spiteful journalist who contrived to make the headline story.

Given the nature of these various characters and a backdrop that constitutes to a curious sense of suspension in a confined, onrushing train, ORIENT EXPRESS, though a less literary work, does not fail to combine the exotic and the romantic with the sordid and the banal. These passengers, who have little or nothing in common with one another that they will probably never overlap have they not been assigned in the same car, retain their own life drama, conditions and secrets under the changing skies. The meanness of everyday existence is found at the bottom of every suitcase, and has in fact been packed along with everything else.

It doesn't seem obvious at first that ORIENT EXPRESS bespeaks self-sacrifice and betrayal. It is the usual case when people are far from home and routine that they will stair to make an unwonted exertion of the spirit or the will. The book, though its contrariety of style to Greene's other works, turns out to be a useful if not fortunate failure in containing the themes of self-sacrifice and betrayal. It is almost unexpected that the train, the passengers, and the direction to which the train steered symbolize a time period and the revolution. ( )