Christie is often regarded as the Queen of the Golden Age detective and mystery novels.

Murder on The
Orient Express, written in 1934, is considered a Golden Age, between-the wars, or classic mystery novel.
As in Murder on The Orient Express, also known as Murder on the Calais Coach, Christie's novels
accurately portray the life of upper-middle class, British men and women of this period. Her novels put
little emphasis on the working class; the books typically describe the lives of leisure class, rich tourists. In
her later work, she attempted to script the lifestyles of the coffee bar, beat generation kids, but with
less success.

Murder on The Orient Express was favorably reviewed and praised in England. It was made into a film in
1974 and is one of the most successful British films ever made. Even Agatha, who generally expressed
dislike for film versions of her books, expressed appreciation. In 1981, a girl was murdered in Bamberg,
West Germany, in the same manner Ratchett is killed in the novel and film. The murder was considered
a "carbon copy" of the crime in Christie's novel.

Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie's most famous novels. In it, we find the Belgian
detective Hercule Poirot on a steam engine traveling from Syria to London. Everything's fine and dandy,
until the train is caught in a snowdrift and one of the passengers is murdered. Cut off from the police,
the little Belgian detective is pressed to take the case. He must collect evidence and interrogate the
passengers in order to decide who among the strangers on the train would have been driven to murder.

Readers follow along with Poirot's investigation and get the chance to use their powers of observation.
(Or their "little grey cells," as Poirot would say.) We think you've got a good chance at cracking the case,
though the American crime writer Raymond Chandler once cheekily remarked that "only a halfwit could
guess it."

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.[1] In the United States, it was published February 28, 1934,[2]:213[3] under the title of Murder in
the Calais Coach, by Dodd, Mead and Company.[4][5] The U.K. edition retailed at seven shillings and
sixpence (7/6)[6] and the U.S. edition at $2.00.[5]

Just after midnight, a snowdrift stopped the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train was
surprisingly full for the time of the year. But by the morning there was one passenger fewer. A
passenger lay dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside.
Murder on the Orient Express is split into three parts: The Facts, The Evidence and Hercule Poirot Sits
Back and Thinks (i.e. The Solution). And each piece of evidence is laid out for us clearly: The Evidence of
the Secretary, The Evidence of the Valet, The Evidence of the American Lady, etc. I loved that the novel
was set out in this way; I loved knowing in advance what I was going to get from each chapter, but that
doesn’t make it any easier to guess who the murderer is.

This classic detective novel tells the story of a murder committed in the middle of the night on a train
traveling from the Far East to Europe. While the train is stuck in a snowdrift, the identities, motives and
alibis of the passengers/suspects are investigated by the renowned Belgian detective Hercule Poirot,
traveling to England on business. As Poirot delves into the mystery of what happened that fateful night,
the novel explores themes relating to the nature of justice, the power of family ties, and the inevitable
triumph of logic.

A man called Ratchett is murdered on the Orient Express.

He turns out to be a gangster known as Cassetti, who

killed three members of the same family (the Armstrongs)

and one of their employees. A Belgian detective, Poirot,

investigates. There are many confusing clues, but

he eventually discovers that all the passengers and a

conductor are in some way connected to the Armstrong

family and twelve of them are guilty of the murder. Poirot

decides not to tell the police, however, presumably because

he believes they are justified in their actions.

A group of passengers trapped on the Orient Express in a snow storm with a murdered body and a
Belgian detective to keep them company: Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie’s most
famous stories. It's an intricate mystery revolving around a group of characters cut off from the world
and Poirot exhibits not only the power of his little grey cells but his concern and compassion for
humanity.
The underlying plot of the story was one Agatha Christie pulled from the headlines at the time, the
abduction of Charles Lindbergh’s son, a traumatic real-life mystery involving murder and extortion that
had yet to be solved when Murder on the Orient Express was published. As for the setting, Christie had
long professed a love of the Orient Express, finally achieving her dream of travelling on it in 1928 with
her first solo trip abroad. In writing the story, she painstakingly noted the details of the carriages; clues
such as the position of door handles would prove vital to Poirot’s investigation. Several fans, in fact,
have followed in Christie’s footsteps, double-checking her descriptions.

Murder on the Orient Express has seen many different incarnations since it was serialised in The
Saturday Evening Post in 1933 under the title Murder on the Calais Coach. It became a novel in 1934 and
the first, and perhaps most successful adaptation, was the award-winning 1974 film featuring an all-star
cast and Albert Finney as Poirot. Other stars included Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, and Ingrid Bergman,
who won an Oscar for her role as Greta Ohlsson. The film won nine awards in total and had an
additional sixteen nominations in 1975. It was remade for TV in 2001, with Alfred Molina as Poirot.

The story was adapted in 2004 by BBC Radio 4, with John Moffatt in the role of Poirot and 2006 saw the
story become a PC game. Playing as a new character, Antoinette Marceau, gamers work alongside Poirot
to solve the mystery of Ratchett’s death. In 2007 the story became a graphic novel, adapted by François
Rivière, but it wasn’t until 2010 that David Suchet finally appeared on the famous train. David Suchet
also did the Poirot voiceover in the PC game. Although generally faithful to the original novel, this TV
film emphasised the religious and moral themes of the story as Poirot grappled with the nature of
justice, clearly struggling with his final decision.