Today we will be reviewing a beloved mystery novel by the queen of mystery. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie follows Hercule Poirot as he gets caught up in a murder on a train. Find out why you should add this book to your reading list!
Murder on the Orient Express Summary
Private detective Hercule Poirot boards a train where he has a second-class compartment since the first class were all booked. On the train, he meets several passengers and one of them, an American businessman named Samuel Ratchett, wants to hire Poirot because he has received death threats. Poirot is repulsed by him and thus refuses.
A couple of days later, Poirot is told that Ratchett has been found murdered and that the murderer is still on the train because of the snow that has prevented anybody from leaving. Because there are no police aboard, Poirot is asked to solve the murder.
A clue left behind gives Poirot a motive for the murder as it is tied to a kidnapping and a murder of a child in the United States. Ratchett wasn’t who he said he was and Poirot is not the only one who knows that. Using the clues left behind and of happenstence, Poirot tackles the murder on the Orient Express.
About the Book and Author
The novel was originally released under a different title in the United States. It was called Murder in the Calais Coach because another novel used the title Orient Express at the time. The novel was inspired by the real-life case of the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s son in 1932.
Many people know Christie as the queen of mystery and that is no exaggeration. She wrote over 60 novels and 14 short stories in her long career. She has been listed as the best-selling mystery author of all time by Guinness World Records with over two billion copies sold.
Her writing career started off slow after getting rejected six consecutive times. Her luck turned around in 1920 when her novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles featuring detective Hercule Poirot was published. Besides her writing, Christie is also famous for disappearing for 11 days in 1926 due to her marriage.
Christie enlisted in both World Wars and served in hospital dispensaries where she learned about poisons which have been featured in her books often. Her second marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930 led to her learning new stuff that was also included in her books.
Agatha Christie is the most translated individual author according to UNESCO. Her novel And Then There Were None is one of the highest selling novels of all time with over a 100 million copies sold. It is not only her books that set impressive records as Christie stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run.
Conclusion
Christie isn’t called the queen of mystery for no reason. This novel is a fun read and you try to guess who the murderer is and hopefully you didn’t get it wrong like I did. Either way, this was a great book and I haven’t read a bad Hercule Poirot novel yet!
One of my favorite mysteries! I was burned out from reading but when I picked it up I couldn’t put it down. It takes place in an interesting setting, and even though I tried to put clues together to predict who did it, I still found the ending surprising
Yea, it’s set up to confuse us. Its usually who you suspect at first 😅