Hey everybody! I know. It’s been a month. Bad Meagan! I had my reasons? (No, not really.)
All righty. Book number three is a book Iv’e been meaning to read since I saw the Doctor Who episode “The Unicorn and the Wasp,” which is all about Agatha Christie and how awesome she is. And, after reading Murder on the Orient Express, I have to concur.
This is a pretty famous book with a pretty famous ending, but if you don’t know what happens, caution ahead.
So. Murder on the Orient Express is a mystery set entirely on a train going from Istanbul to Paris. Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective, has just finished solving a case and is making his way home, when the train is stalled in a snow bank, and a body is discovered in one of the train compartments, the body of Mr. Ratchett. The victim has been stabbed a dozen different times, seemingly by both a right handed and a left handed man, and a strong man and a weak man. Poirot is asked to solve the case by the passengers and the train conductor, and spends most of the book interviewing the thirteen others on the train, as well as reviewing the evidence.
The structure of Murder on the Orient Express is very straightforward. Unlike some modern mysteries, where crucial evidence or facts could be obscured from the reader, absolutely everything you need to figure out the solution is laid out in the text – the reader stays with Poirot as he reviews every piece of evidence, interviews every passenger and crew member, and talks over the facts with his companions Monsieur Bouc and Dr. Constantine. This sounds like a boring and repetitive structure on paper, but in Christie’s extremely capable hands, the mystery stays fresh enough to keep every question interesting.
Even if you already know what the infamous ending is (‘everybody did it”), the mystery of just how, or more importantly, why this is the solution is enough to keep you reading. I read this straight through in one sitting, and found the conclusion to be more than satisfactory in this regard. Details that seemed insignificant earlier on prove to be keys to the case. But more interesting than that is the way that Poirot handles the revelation that all of the passengers are guilty – his reaction isn’t, perhaps, the one you would expect.
The Murder on the Orient Express was, interestingly enough, inspired by several real life events. Agatha Christie was snowed in on the Orient Express when she was coming back from visiting her husband’s archeological dig, and the story of the Armstrong’s child’s murder is similar to the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindberg’s son in 1932.
Murder on the Orient Express was also fun to read because I’ve never lived in an area where train travel was a very popular or easily accessible form of transportation (I didn’t even ride a subway until I was fourteen), and this book provides a picture of what travel was commonly like before trains. People from all across Europe met and mingled in the dining car, trains could be stuck on the tracks for days and days because of bad rain, and second class passengers had to share rooms with complete strangers.
All in all, a completely satisfying book. Modern mysteries often leave me wanting, but this was just right, especially for a chilly night or a snow day. It’s not actually that long ( as I said, I finished it in one sitting), and is a refreshing antidote to too many Law and Order reruns on tv. Agatha Christie is a master storyteller, and everyone should read at least one of her books.
Do you read mysteries? If so, which ones? Do you have a favorite Agatha Christie book?
