Assassinio sull'Orient Express

216 pages

Italian language

Published 2020 by Mondadori.

(2 reviews)

Pubblicato nel 1934, Assassinio sull'Orient Express è da molti considerato il capolavoro di Agatha Christie, ed è sicuramente uno dei gialli più noti e letti in tutto il mondo.

L'Orient Express, il leggendario treno delle spie e degli avventurieri internazionali, occupa un posto importante nell'immaginario degli appassionati di letteratura. Il merito è di questo libro. In quella che probabilmente è la più celebre delle sue imprese, Hercule Poirot, salito a bordo di un vagone di prima classe partito da Istanbul e diretto a Calais, è costretto a occuparsi di un efferato delitto: mentre il treno è bloccato dalla neve sui Balcani, qualcuno tra i passeggeri pugnala a morte il signor Ratchett, un ricco quanto insopportabile cittadino americano. L'assassino deve per forza nascondersi tra i viaggiatori, ma nessuno di loro sembra avere un movente. Almeno in apparenza...

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.