Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie
Murder on the Orient Express is, perhaps, the most recognized of Agatha Christie's mystery novels. Successful versions of the book have graced the big screen as well as the television sets of mystery fans all over the globe. Published in 1934, the novel pits the "little gray cells" of Hercule Poirot against an engaging and divergent cast of characters in a variation on a 'locked room' mystery.
The luxurious passenger train, the Orient Express, is winding it's way from Istanbul to Calais when it is silently and suddenly halted by a winter blizzard. A short pause in a pristine snowdrift shouldn't be a cause for alarm. However, when a wealthy American passenger, Mr. Ractchett, is found stabbed a dozen times in his first class compartment, it is a stroke luck that Hercule Poirot is also aboard to investigate the murder!
Poirot must discover who among the other elite passengers could have wanted Ratchett murdered. Could it be the aristocratic Countess Helena Maria Andrenyi? Perhaps the quiet and saintly Greta Ohlsson? What about Colonel Arbuthnot? The problem is a tangled web of deceit and red herrings that point in all directions to lead Poirot off of the murder trail.
Inspired in part by the tragedy of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932, Christie is at the top of her form in this wonderful classic mystery. In 1974, the book was adapted into an all-star film starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot. In 2001, CBS television gave new life to the story with a revival starring Alfred Molino as the eccentric Belgian detective.
Read our biography of Agatha Christie.
