Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot #10) by Agatha Christie
Mystery
1934 (original copyright)
2013 HarperCollins Audio
Read by Dan Stevens
Finished on September 10, 2015
Rating: 3/5 (Good)
Publisher's Blurb:
"The murderer is with us - on the train now..."
Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers must be the murderer.
Isolated by the storm and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer amongst a dozen of the dead man's enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again...
I've become quite a fan of thrillers and mysteries since I began blogging 10 years ago and I love getting recommendations from other readers, whether for a new series or a standalone. Agatha Christie's crime novels have been around for almost 100 years and I've never read one single book! This past summer, I decided it was well past time to give this famous title a try. I enjoyed the audio (the reader was very good) and Christie kept me guessing and changing my mind about the identity of the killer until the very end. I was more than surprised by the denouement, as not only have I never read any of Christie's crime novels, I've never watched any of the movies based on her books, either. So, now to watch the 1974 film. With an all-star cast that includes Albert Finney, Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Anthony Perkins, Michael York, Jacqueline Bisset, Vanessa Redgrave, and Ingrid Bergman, to name a few, how can it possibly disappoint?
Interesting tidbits from Wikipedia:
Murder on the Orient Express is a detective novel by Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934. In the United States, it was published on 28 February 1934, under the title of Murder in the Calais Coach, by Dodd, Mead and Company. The U.K. edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the U.S. edition at $2.00.and
The U.S. title of Murder in the Calais Coach was used to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel Stamboul Train which had been published in the United States as Orient Express.
The Guinness Book of World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly 2 billion copies, and her estate claims that her works come third in the rankings of the world's most-widely published books, behind only Shakespeare's works and the Bible.
I prefer the original cover art to the updated version, don't you?
Final Thoughts:
I enjoyed Murder on the Orient Express and I look forward to reading more by Agatha Christie. Which Poirot should I read next?
