Title: Murder on the Orient Express
Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: HarperCollins Publisher
Publish Date: 2011 (Original: 1934)
Rating: 4.8/5
Summary: Just after midnight, the Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, one passenger is found dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozed times and the door locked from the inside. The great detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among his fellow passengers...
**This book review contains spoilers for this book. If you still want to read the review, go ahead. However, I strongly recommend you to read this book before reading my review.**
I first found this book in a secondhand bookstore, and upon seeing this title I immediately bought it because a) it was an acclaimed title by an acclaimed author, b) my friend had been reading it and I was curious about the storyline, and c) it was so cheap- they had a 70% discount on the book!
Anyways, after I got home with this book (and nine other books), I started reading Murder on the Orient Express first.
I have never seen any of the adaptations of this book and this is my first Agatha Christie book, so I had no idea of the plot or what Hercule Poirot is like. All I knew before reading this book was that a murder occurred on a train, and that was just from the front cover.
I basically love everything in Murder on the Orient Express. First of all, the book has an amazing plotline. The story starts with a narrative following Hercule Poirot until the morning of the discovery of Ratchett's murder, then switches to each chapter being associated with a particular piece of evidence or an interview with someone on the train coach. Being a renowned detective, Poirot has astute observational and deductional skills. For example, later in the book, some descriptions I had not heeded very much (such as MacQueen mentioning that Ratchett could not speak French) comes into play when Poirot uses them to rule out some theories.
This kind of vaguely cinematic structure of the novel actually worked well for me to comprehensively understand all the information given from the diverse array of passengers on board the Stamboul-Calais coach. It also helps to emphasize how Poirot solves the case, the narration following his thought process and mood.
The novel itself had many surprising plot twists, with the assumptions of the side characters M. Bouc and Dr. Constantine leading the reader off on many different (and wrong) theories. I loved the plot twist at the end, but had half-guessed it; in the middle of the book I had a vague idea that everyone had conspired for the murders, but soon abandoned he theory as it seemed very unlikely. However, at the end, Poirot brings all the evidence together to claim that everybody assisted in the murder, which is ultimately correct.
The conclusion of the novel was also very satisfying, as Poirot put forth two solutions. The second solution- that every passenger on that coach collaborated for the murder- was correct, and the first, incorrect solution was put to use for presenting it to the Yugoslavian police in order to protect the twelve conspirators who had killed Ratchett. Poirot obviously intends to do this, as he tells the passengers "do not abandon [the first theory] too abruptly. You may agree with it later."
Aside from the plot, the cast of characters in the story is impressive. Each fellow passenger on the train is distinct and believable, and each person's character is revealed little by little as Poirot interviews them. The passengers come from a diverse array of backgrounds (which is also key to Poirot solving the mystery) and I liked how each person was different and had their own 'vibe'. However, Poirot and his fellow investigators often judge the passengers by their nationalities- M. Bouc says that it must be the Italian because "an Italian’s weapon is the
knife, and he stabs not once but several times", and Poirot makes many assumptions about people such as "she's cool-minded because she's English" and "he couldn't have done it because he's French". This may be due to the passage of time, as this book was originally published in 1934, nearly 90 years ago.
This is the first time I encountered Poirot, and he seems to be quite a distinct character. I have read many of the Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels, and he and Poirot seem to differ in many aspects. Holmes mainly deals with science and intellectual deductions, and devotes less time on figuring out the psychology of the people involved. In The Adventure of the Dancing Men, Holmes deciphers the code using frequency analysis, and in other cases he also uses science to figure out the criminal. By contrast, Poirot says himself that he is "not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the
psychology [he seeks], not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash." Poirot will often look for a motive for why people would do the things they did, and this leads Poirot to conclude that the pipe cleaner and the handkerchief are all designed to be misleading evidence.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would have read it in one sitting had schoolwork not interfered. I loved the characters and the numerous plot twists, and am expecting to read more Poirot novels in the near future (if I have the time, that is)!
I would recommend this book to anyone old enough to understand the language, basically anyone from about 5th~6th grade and up. There are a few French phrases scattered throughout, but you can figure out what they mean most of the time.
Rating: I would give this book 4.8/5.
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