Book Review: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

As the detective Hercule Poirot boards the Orient Express to go on a holiday, the train seems unusually full of passengers at this time of the year. Nevertheless, he gets a compartment with the help of his director friend Bouc. The train travels through its usual route, but halts to a stop as a snowdrift comes in its way.

The dining-car that evening reveals passengers from different countries, cultures and classes. The diversity of its passengers includes an English lady, a Swedish lady, an elderly American woman, an American business tycoon with his secretary and valet, an Italian, an Indian Colonel, an English man, a Hungarian couple, a princess and her maid, among others.
The following morning, a search reveals that the American tycoon named Ratchett is dead in his compartment. What surprises the doctor the most is the way the man was murdered. The man’s body possessed not one, not two but nearly twelve stabs, which, by now were bleeding to wounds.
Being a famed detective, it was the onus of Poirot, to find the man’s murderer. With the help of Bouc and doctor, Poirot examined the dead body, collected the clues, interviewed all the passengers in the train, poozled through their baggages, took their witnessing accounts and jotted down all the evidences in his notebook. Despite being a mystery crackerjack, Poirot’s mind was wracked by several flies in the ointment. Since no one could have entered the train and no one could have left it either, he was perplexed by the realities that were forming in his mind based on the evidences gathered.
If no one entered or exited the train, then who murdered the man? And if there was a passenger involved in the murder, why was there no evidence against any passenger? And even if the murderer was hidden among the passengers, why did he (or she) stab the man in not one, not two but twelve places? What kind of a psychopathic scheme was going on here?
Exercising his brain beyond its capacity, Poirot listened to his instinctual guesses, which in the end turned out to be the truth. Evidently, it was not one person who was involved in the murder, but the entire train, all the twelve passengers, which was also the reason why everybody was acting as everybody else’s alibi, not giving away any real evidence during the search.
This is the second Agatha Christie mystery that I have read, and no wonder, it was as intriguing as chilling. A closed mystery set up in the atypical setting of a train, the book highlighted how masked can be the reality that we see with our eyes. What Poirot saw with his eyes puzzled him, but what he trusted with his instincts led him towards the solution of the murder mystery. So, watch out! ‘Cause everything you see is not always what it seems.
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