Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot Mysteries) | Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot Mysteries) | Agatha Christie | A brilliant "locked room" classic!

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Murder on the Orie...

	Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot Mysteries) Agatha Christie Berkley, 2004 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 201 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of the best ever

The plot is intricate, fascinating and suspense filled. You will find yourself turning page after page to discover what could possible happen next. The plot moves fast and the conversations are full of clues. Pay close attention. Enjoy.

If you are new to the mystery genre or if you have never read this book, even if you have seen the movie -- you must read this book. It is a true masterpiece of mystery writing.

A brilliant "locked room" classic!

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" might be the locked room mystery that holds down honours for being the novel in which Agatha Christie introduced Hercule Poirot to a grateful reading public. But it is "Murder on the Orient Express" that showcases a confident, polished Hercule at the height of his powers. Standing tall beside Sherlock Holmes and Auguste Dupin, Poirot is arguably the most widely read and best known detective in literature and "Murder on the Orient Express" is certainly one of the finest examples of the mystery genre. In a brilliant variation of the typical British drawing room mystery, Christie places her cast of thirteen suspects together with the victim and Poirot on the Orient Express en route from Istanbul to Calais.

Mr Ratchett, an unsavory looking man who obviously has some dark secrets in his past, approaches Poirot as the train leaves Istanbul with the offer of a very fat fee asking for his services to help protect his life from enemies he knows are out to kill him. Poirot, seeing this as a very uninteresting exercise from a cerebral point of view, politely declines. But when the train is stopped in its proverbial tracks by a huge snow storm and Ratchett is killed in his locked berth, stabbed no less than twelve times, Poirot is pressed into service to solve the case by his long time friend Bouc who is also a director of the corporation that owns the train.

Through the simple process gathering clues by interviewing the thirteen suspects - a wildly disparate lot that in modern terms would almost certainly be referred to as a "motley crue" - Poirot employs "the little gray cells" and intuits a positively brilliant solution. In that time honoured literary tradition of gathering all of the suspects into a single room, a somewhat less than humble Poirot puts on a flashy show of summarizing the case and revealing the identity of the perpetrator in a brilliant twist that only Poirot could fathom and only Dame Christie could create.

There is nothing about "Murder on the Orient Express" that does not deserve high praise - dialogue; the hilarious mis-translation of idiomatic French into spoken English; the less than subtle but accurate use of class distinctions and behavioural stereotypes unique to different nationalities; characterization; colourful narrative description; plot; suspense; red herrings; and, of course, a brilliant solution that deftly ties up every conceivable loose thread. And all of that is in an all too short package that can be read in the brief space of three or four thoroughly enjoyable hours. Read and enjoy, pass the book onto your best friend but, for goodness sake, keep your lip zipped about that brilliant ending!

Paul Weiss

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The various voices of David Suchet

Excellent audio version of the Christie classic.
David Suchet uses all his talents to create a listener's delight.
He deftly maneuvers from the lilt of the female Swedish missionary to the strident tones of the American businessman.
And of course among all this he delights us with his "Poirot" voice that we've all come to love and admire.
Top rating for this audio item. Highly recommended

Christie and Poirot at their best

Murder on the Orient Express is almost certainly the most famous Agatha Christie novel and may well be the best-known novel from the entire mystery genre. Despite the fact that I had been told the solution to the case many years ago, I decided to go ahead and finally read the book and am very glad that I did.

The basic plot, for any who don't already know, involves a murder on board a train with a small, but colorful, group of passengers. It becomes apparent relatively quickly that no one could have possibly committed the murder but Poirot has no option except to exercise his little gray cells to their utmost in an effort to solve the case. The story moves along at a nice clip and the cast is varied and interesting. My favorite aspect of any Poirot novel tends to be the little Belgian himself and he is in fine form here.

It is a tribute to Agatha Christie's writing that I could enjoy reading a mystery novel so much on my first read even knowing the murderer before starting. The book is an excellent choice whether you are an old Poirot fan who hasn't gotten around to it yet or a first-time Christie reader.

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Enjoy one of literature's most famous train rides

"Murder on the Orient Express" is a clean, fast, invigorating reading experience, just as enjoyable as its most famous adaptation: the 1974 film by Sidney Lumet starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot. Interestingly, the elegance of the "Orient Express" experience was a thematic addition to the film. Here, the now famous traveling experience is described as little more than a long train ride laced with the usual inconveniences of an extended trip. Either the Orient Express wasn't in reality all that sumptuous or such richness was taken for granted when Christie wrote her book.

The details and resolution more or less play out as they do in the movie, though the book has a few extra layers of detail and a few small differences in the murder's solution, though there's nothing hugely different in either case. The book, in fact, makes one appreciate the movie even more, in that was it able to faithfully tell the book's story with only a minimum of simplification and consolidation.

As the years go by, however, the book has gained one added literary benefit beyond the pleasures of its mystery story: with its dozen or so characters who represent many nationalities and political positions, "Murder on the Orient Express" presents to the modern reader a sharp snapshot of the world stage just prior to the outbreak of World War II. Sometimes the best time capsules are those that never aspired to be such, and that's certainly the case here. So, while modern readers will certainly enjoy the mystery story on hand, I think many will also be fascinated with the journey back to a period when the clouds of war were still somewhat in the distance, but- as personified by the uneasy comments and offhand worries of one character about another- were nevertheless slowly creeping closer.

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