Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

Poirot must draw from all his resources to find the killer of a most-loathed man from among thirteen passengers on the Orient Express.

This book had one of the most surprising endings of any mystery book I’ve ever read. I definitely recommend reading the book if you’ve only seen the movie. While I loved Kenneth Branagh’s recent film adaptation, the book’s resolution is much more satisfying. This is one of Christie’s most famous novels, and for good reason.

Read more Agatha Christie reviews on my blog at bigdipperbooks.com ( )

There are a lot of reviews about this book already, so I'll keep it short. It was interesting mystery but I wasn't very much surprised by the ending and it was over a bit too sudden for my liking. The story goes quite slow and then all of a sudden at the end it speeds through the explanation and that's it. I found a lot of story a bit one dimensional. The characters never really became real for me. I disliked all the untranslated French sentences. I sucked at French in high school and I got tired of looking them up. All in all, I don't regret reading it and it was mildly interesting, but I don't know if I'll read more books by Agatha Christie anytime soon. ( )

01/13/2018
What a finale!!!! RTC

01/25/2018
(You can also find this review on my blog.)

I’ll be honest — I was a little nervous going into this book. Classics (this is kind of a classic, right?) tend to be hit or miss for me, and mostly miss. I just find the writing so difficult to get into. Luckily for me, Agatha Christie truly is a master of the mystery genre.

The story did start off pretty slow for me, but I loved how witty and sarcastic Poirot was. I found myself cackling at his commentary more than once. I actually sent most of my friends a picture of this line:

Poirot rose. “If you forgive me for being personal — I do not like your face, M. Ratchett,” he said.

And with that he left the restaurant car.

My biggest issue was probably the number of characters. I lost track of everyone almost immediately and got extremely lost trying to figure out who was who. To be fair, there is a list at the beginning of the book, but I didn’t want to keep flipping back and forth or taking notes.

Things picked up a lot toward the end and I flew through the pages, eager to find out who the killer was. The finale honestly blew me away. Obviously I can’t say anything without giving away spoilers, but Agatha Christie did an incredible job of pulling it all together. It helps that Poirot has a flair for the dramatic.

I would definitely recommend this book to someone who is interested in reading something by Christie, or anyone interested in solving the Murder on the Orient Express! ( )

Colonel Mustard in the library with a dagger... ( )

The passengers on the Calais Coach wake to find themselves trapped by a snowdrift… and something far worse.

Returning home from the Middle East, Hercule Poirot – by sheer coincidence and his connections – manages to get the last berth on the Calais Coach of the Orient Express, wherein he is quickly approached by a wealthy passenger, Mr. Ratchett who wants Poirot to keep watch for people who may be trying to kill him. Poirot refuses the commission and, to his dismay, learns the next morning that Ratchett has been killed in cold blood. With the train trapped due to a snowblock, Poirot and his assistants, Monsieur Bouc and Dr. Constantine, must gather the clues and untangle a web of deceit which has ensnared the thirteen suspects on board the train.

Murder on the Orient Express is quintessential Christie, make no mistake. The closed-off location, the multitude of suspects, the straightforward analytical way in which Poirot is able to handle the matter. (Indeed, due to the circumstances of the crime, he must surely have relished this, as rarely does he get to be so methodical). Within this format, Christie has the perfect outlet for her contrivances, for the red herrings and mistaken identities, for the lies and suspicions and paranoia that flow from the initial murder. In fact, Murder on the Orient Express reads somewhat like an amalgam of other great Christies. Like Death in the Clouds, we have a limited number of suspects, and a crime which somehow was not witnessed. Like Ordeal by Innocence, we’re aware of the increasing paranoia and the shortened length of time in which the crime must be solved. And structurally, the novel couldn’t be better: the set-up is clean and simple, the murder endlessly complex, and the interviews methodical yet fascinating. And it all leads up to a devastating denouement in which Poirot gathers the passengers to give them not one, but two solutions, and must make a moral decision unique in the books – at least until he made a far greater one in his final case, Curtain.

There isn’t a line out of place in this novel. The endless array of clues – smudges on passports, mysterious handkerchiefs, disappearing women in kimonos and buttons belonging to nobody – are all perfectly explained, and each raises a question: legitimate clue, accidental red herring or deliberate red herring? Not everyone will enjoy the way that Dame Agatha twists and tailors the plot to her needs, but helpless Poirot fans like myself are rendered inert by the sheer technical perfection of the way things are carried out. All plotting, after all, is contrivance, by its very nature. What makes some work better than others is in not letting the strings show. And just when you’re about to complain about one plot element ringing false, Christie goes and makes it part of the plot all along!

Okay, to be honest, there may be one tiny niggling weakness: a couple of the suspects are very sketchily drawn, appearing mainly to shore up the numbers in the train (which has to be full for one element of the story to work). This becomes equally notable in both the major film adaptations, but – given how many of the characters do come across strongly – I’ll let it slide. Miraculously, every character comes across as more than just an archetype; there are no stodgy vicars, cruel matriarchs or the like here. Instead, even the most stereotypical characters transcend their tropes, with backgrounds and motivations far beyond what we expect, given how common the ‘stock characters stuck together become suspects of murder’ formula is.

Orient Express is a lovely example of a book that fully deserves its notoriety. It is the finest of Christie’s detective stories, taking a basic plot device that was already hoary in 1934, and somehow being both classical and innovative. There’s just no wonder that Poirot’s investigative methods are the stuff of legend, and that nearly any murder mystery is now compared to this novel. It’s a quintessential piece of the ‘Golden Age’: in that the plan comes together perfectly and only Poirot’s presence can reveal the murderers’ devious scheme (the 2010 film’s greatest strength is how it does a modern spin on this, by making the scheme much more haphazard, and allowing Poirot to come off as something far more human).

Poirot ranking: 2nd of 38 ( )