Murder on the Orient Express

a Hercule Poirot mystery

267 pages

English language

Published Oct. 4, 2011 by Harper.

ISBN:
978-0-373-00304-4
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OCLC Number:
956952108

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4 stars (1 review)

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.

45 editions

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.

Subjects

  • Private investigators
  • Orient Express (Express train)
  • Fiction

Places

  • England