‘ All the world has decided to travel today,’ says attendant Michel. It is only his friendship with the director of the company, Monsieur Bouc, that secures him a berth at all. To his dismay, he finds the first class on the Orient Express fully booked. Instead of enjoying a few days’ rest in Istanbul after the successful conclusion of a case, duty forces Hercule Poirot to return to England. At its heart is not the search for truth and justice alone, it also deals with miscarriage of justice, and its twist at the end is as ingenious as it is convincing. It is also one of her most unusual works. The book has never grown out of fashion since and is one of the most enduring of Christie’s whole canon. In the book, Christie combines her skills at a locked room mystery (in this case a locked train compartment, and a train stuck in the snow) with her love for travelling, and different cultures. She was a literary phenomenon that has created one of the most enduring sleuths of all times, pedantic, vain Belgian Hercule Poirot, famous for his outsized moustache and his unparalleled use of the little grey cells. When Murder on the Orient Express was published in 1934, Agatha Christie is already the Queen of Crime.
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