Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Publication Date:  January 1, 1934
Publisher:  HarperCollins
Pages:  322
Series:  Hercule Poirot #10
Genre:  Mystery
Synopsis:  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.

Review:  It all begins, as it always does, with a murder.  The setting of this particular homicide is aboard a train--one that has been stuck due to the snow, leaving no escape from the killer than still lurks somewhere on the train.

The murderer is with us--on the train now...

Despite the concise, straightforward approach to writing, Agatha Christie still manages to drive you mad attempting to solve the mystery before you reach the end.  The very moment you begin to suspect that you have acquired and analyzed all the pieces, another revelation is thrown into the mix, and you realize that you were never once ahead of the game.  

Imagine being trapped in aboard a train in a foreign country where a dead body has just been discovered--a man, stabbed in the night.  Imagine knowing quite well that the murderer is, in all probability, still on that very train with you.  It is all a matter of figuring out who, and why, and how, and when.   

That is the trick of Agatha Christie's writing--so clear cut that when the clues are laid out before your own eyes, you cannot recognize them for what they are.  They're just another detail, another facet to an engrossing story that will have you at a loss when you are given the truth--for how could you have possibly missed it?

I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.

Hercule Poirot is an vivacious man with a flair for the dramatic.  He also happens to be a fine detective.  To Sherlock's horror, I am sure, Poirot prefers to utilize imagination and psychology rather than specified observation  and logic in order to deduce the killer. It makes for a daring guessing game--and a brilliant one at that.

It would be assumed, considering the pressurized setting, that the story would unfold with a certain intensity.  And it did, that is certain, but it had a tendency towards lightheartedness, with a dash of humor sprinkled in--mostly due to Poirot himself.

The cast of characters in this novel fall in a range of categories:  young, old, British, American, Italian, etc.  I cannot say too much for fear of giving everything away, but it was mind boggling to discover how they all come together.

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.

The ending is, as a good mystery should be, entirely shocking, utterly impossible, and yet undoubtedly true.  It is the kind that leads to you waking up family members in the dead of night to mumble incoherently about how in the world it could possibly have worked out that way without you noticing.

Agatha Christie can spin a mystery like no other.  The only case in which she would be thinking inside the box would be if that box were the TARDIS, straight out of Doctor Who.  All in all, I would not be surprised if in another life the cunning author was a Time Lord herself.  She is certainly clever enough.