Plot:

Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the famous Orient Express in its tracks as it travels through the mountainous Balkans. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year but, by the morning, it is one passenger fewer. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside.

One of the passengers is none other than detective Hercule Poirot. On vacation.

Isolated and with a killer on board, Poirot must identify the murderer—in case he or she decides to strike again.

Review:

This is a classic, locked-room mystery.

A train passenger has been killed, the train is snowed in, and one of the surviving passengers has to be the culprit. Fortunately, inspector Hercule Poirot is riding the train. He jumps into action and begins a methodical investigation of the mysterious murder. Poirot creates a list of questions to be answered. He believes that if the answers are revealed, he will be able to discover the identity of the killer.

In a brisk couple hundred of pages, Agatha Christie presents a meticulously plotted mystery that will keep even veteran readers of the genre guessing. With the static setting of the stalled train, Christie uses her charismatic hero and his incremental revelations to bring depth to her novel. However after about 150 pages in it began to feel very repetitive and I just wanted it to get to the point already.

Overall though, over eighty years after being published, Murder on the Orient Express is still a thrilling read with a surprise ending that makes it one of the best that’s ever been written.

4/5 Stars