Hercule Poirot, the fastidious Belgian detective, boards the Orient Express in Istanbul, heading home after a case. The train is unusually full for winter. One passenger, an American businessman named Ratchett, asks Poirot to protect him from threats he has received; Poirot declines, finding the man distasteful. During the night the train is stopped by heavy snow in Yugoslavia.
In the morning Ratchett is found dead in his compartment, stabbed repeatedly. With no way for anyone to have come or gone through the snow, the killer must be aboard. Poirot interviews a strikingly diverse set of passengers, from a Russian princess and a Hungarian count to an English colonel, a governess and a talkative American matron, and discovers a link to a notorious crime in the United States.
Christie was inspired partly by the real Lindbergh kidnapping case and by her own experience of a train stranded by floods. The novel is a showcase for Poirot's method of sifting statements and psychology. Its solution is among the most famous in crime fiction, and it has been filmed several times, notably in 1974 and 2017.
Book details
| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| First published | 1934 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Mystery |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 256 |
| Setting | The Orient Express, snowbound in Yugoslavia, 1930s |
Themes
- Justice versus law
- Revenge
- Deception
- Morality
- Logic
Who should read it
Readers who want a perfectly constructed puzzle and an introduction to Hercule Poirot.