Murder on the Orient Express - Supernormal Reads

336 pages

English language

Published 2004 by Berkley Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-425-20045-2

(2 reviews)

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.

55 editions

ralentina reviewed Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Moderately fun

3 stars

Content warning Minor spoilers

This was the first time I read Agatha Christie - somehow, I could not see why I'd want to do that. I was pleasantly surprised. Like any murder mystery worth its salt, MotOE compels you to read further until you know the solution to the riddle. Unlike its more contemporary progeny, the book does not venture into minute psychological characterizations, or social commentary: the plot is completely at the service of the riddle, scattered with clues - true and false ones - meant to lead and mislead the readers to the murderer, almost setting them up in a race with Monsieur Poirot as to who gets there first.

As a side note, peoples are stereotyped is pretty hilarious (and perhaps a reminder of just how ridiculous stereotypes are, once we are able to lack back at them from an outsider perspective). For example, all Brits are uptight and clever, and all Americans are friendly and loud. Oh, and Poirot literally acquits an Italian on the ground that the crime is thought-through too well to be the product of an impulsive, Latin mind.

Johnny reviewed Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Neat puzzle

4 stars

Murder on the Orient Express is certainly a decent "whodunnit", although at this point the conclusion of the story is so well-known that I can't really judge how well it was executed from the viewpoint of a reader without that prior knowledge. It's a quick, fluent read once you get used to Christie's vocabulary and style of writing, which is (unsurprisingly) rather antiquated in some passages. I was a little surprised at the untranslated French interjections and phrases; people who don't know at least a little French might stumble upon them.

All in all I found it to be a great book to read for fun in 2 days. Some of the details and the general way the pieces of the puzzle fit together ended up being pretty satisfying and less one-dimensional than I remembered from whatever movie adaptation I watched ages ago.