Murder on the Orient Express is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on January 1, 1934 and in the U.S. by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year under the title of Murder in the Calais Coach.
The book features the great Belgian detective , Hercule Poirot.
Murder is committed in one of the sleeping compartments on the Istanbul-Calais coach of the famous Orient Express train; almost the entire action takes place in that coach and in the restaurant car following. Poirot is returning on the train from Syria (where he has just solved a crime for the French government), and when the train is forced to halt in Yugoslavia by a snowstorm just after the murder, Poirot is prevailed upon by the railway director, M. Bouc, to investigate. The murder victim is an American businessman named Ratchett. The suspects are an international collection of travellers: Mrs. Hubbard, a loquacious American; the Princess Dragomiroff, an exotic Russian travelling with her maid; the Count and Countess Andrenyi, Hungarian diplomat and wife; Mary Debenham, an English governess; the British Colonel Arbuthnot, returning from India; Greta Ohlsson, a Swedish missionary, and a few others---many of whom are not what they seem. Poirot's final solution is among the most audacious of Christie's plots (in fact, he puts forward two theories and allows M. Bouc to choose between them). A well-known film was made of the story in 1974, at the time the most profitable British film ever made.
It starts on a slow note and slowly it starts gaining momenum.
It expresses the age old theme of revenge and its just impossible to guess the climax till you get to the last chapter. The ending is a revoutionary step in the mystery novels genre.
Agatha Christie took one of the most famous kidnapping and murder case of her time and worked it into a novel. The Armstrong kidnapping case was based on the actual kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's son in 1932, just before the book was written.
The characterizations are vividly drawn.She draws a meticulous picture in the reader's mind of each character by portraying the appearance, personality, and voice through her book.
The most interesting part is where a critical piece of missing evidence , the scarlet kimono worn by an unknown woman on the night of the murder, is found in Poirot's luggage.
Each and every moment in the book is gripping and you can't speculate as to who might have committed the crime.The case is pictured as very complex but at the end it turns out to be very simple.
Its one of my personal favorites among Christie's novels and I highly recommend it to anyone who has'nt read it.