Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: Before I read this book, I wasn't too much into mystery books. As a matter of fact, I was assigned to read this book for my English class. But suprisingly, I had an incredible time reading it! I couldn't put the book down. Overall the book is exciting, and I would recommend it to any mystery lover.

Rating:
Summary: A great, surprising detective novel!
Review: The book is very interesting, and with every chapter's end you want to go on. It really makes you think and guess a lot, and the ending is very surprising.
This is a MUST for detective story lovers.

Rating:
Summary: A classic in Mystery
Review: If you are a mystery reader, this is a classic must-read. The ending is strong, and unexpected. The characters are well developed. The pace of the book is never slow

Rating:
Summary: It was good, but it could have a few changes.
Review: It was a real entertaining novel, but the ending was childish. It was almost as if Ms. Christie "wussed out" at the conclusion which I won't tell (you'll have to read it yourself). But if you liked this novel, an even better novel is "And Then There Were None" by the same author

Rating:
Summary: A true "who dunnit!"
Review: One of Agatha Christie's best. You never really know who the real culprit is until the end. The reader suspects each suspect until we learn the truth.....

Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: This is the best book in the Agatha Christie Series. It is about Hercule Poirot going on a journey on the Orient Express and on the train finds out that a guy has been murdered. Hercule Poirot interviews the passengers, searches their luggage and uses his little gray cells to solve this nearly impossible murder mystery. As he is interviewing the passangers the reader sees no way out of this mystery until the end where Poirot comes up with the most surprising comclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Murder On the Orient Express
Review: This is, closely followed by "ABC Murders", the best book I have ever read. Amazingly well written, unpredictable and genious are the right words to describe it. I didn't really like the beginning so I was quite tempted to put it off but the story gets really interesting after a few chapters. Who is the murder? Every person that is involved seems to have strong alibi and it looks like it has been made a perfect crime. A murder without mistakes. That's the way it has to look like. But once again Hercule Poirot menages to find the missing pieces and recreates the spectacular and incredible plain of the murder ...

Rating:
Summary: Sleeper Car
Review: I read about 60 Agatha Christie mysteries in my teens. It took me about a year to realize that she's a mediocre writer. It seems like she owes her fame to the lower demands placed on escapism in a different era. I can't imagine that if she started her career today the results would be the same. She's not real challenging. I don't remember much about them, except that she averaged one good book for every 15 I read. The 4 that still distinguish themselves in my memory are Crooked House, Towards Zero, Roger Aykroyd and this.

This generally reads like an outline. I mentally checked out after about three pages. That's how I recall her, years later; an author that "checks out" once she gave the formula a crank. The middle of this book has been described as "inert." Each page offers slim reasons to continue on. A crime occurs followed by a long sequence of interviews. That's just not very engaging and probably causes the books main problem; It doesn't build. Only in the last three chapters does Poirot get things moving again. Her writing doesn't draw you in. It doesn't offer much to envision. Her characterization is not strong. She avoids writing in which characters aren't speaking.

(Spoiler)
You actually do have a better chance of guessing the solution here than in the 1974 movie (which is enjoyable for other reasons). Remember until the last few pages of the book the red herrings are all a reader has, and it's a long trip though those phoned-in middle chapters. The apparent mystery is just not interesting and it's solved with about ten seconds of thought, so why waste 23 chapters on it? It would have been a better book if she had constructed those middle chapters with more complexity.

People probably don't admire this book for the writing. Ignoring the fact that these characters probably would not have been able to assemble anonymously, the book is a clever solution that deserves a better lead-up

Side note: It seems like you'd have to have some very poor taste, to include the Lindbergh kidnapping (`32) as a major plot point just two years after it occurred.

Rating:
Summary: Classic mystery
Review: An unusual crime takes place in a unique setting: a train car where no one can get on or off, yet the murderer remains a mystery. I listened to the audio version and the narrator was one of the best I have heard. He takes on the character of Poirot with total enthusiasm and convinving emotion. This is a classic that is anything but typical.

Rating:
Summary: Famous classic whodunit aboard train -- many suspects !!
Review: Possibly one of the most famous (possibly due to the fine movie of the same title) in the Hercule Poirot series, this classic little mystery has survived since its first publication in 1933 -- maybe that says it all! The plot is fairly familiar -- during the night on a several day train trip across lower Europe, Poirot's seemingly unpopular sleeping car neighbor is murdered. Rather than little or no clues or suspects, almost everybody aboard the train is a suspect; plenty of clues float around besides. Since the train is totally stalled due to a heavy snow, no resources other than sheer brainpower are available to our intellectual Belgian sleuth. Poirot gets by without his familiar sidekick, Capt. Hastings, but "adopts" a railroad executive and the traveling doctor as foils upon which to foist his evolving theories. After Poirot very cleverly determines that the victim is a hated child kidnapper/killer from America, the plot thickens as the interrogations proceed -- first one and then another and then another of the passengers seem to be related somehow to that long ago famous case. Could it be a conspiracy? You'll be turning the 200 pages rapidly to find out!

As usual, Christie's "economy" of words dwells on little but the straightforward story telling, but we're soon cast under her spell. Like most of her stories, there are more than ample pointers for we readers to take a decent stab at the solution ourselves, but we suspect it will be a rare person who beats Poirot to the task! The book concludes with an unexpected conspiracy of another sort -- will a murderer be tried and convicted or will justice prevail through some other method? Try this entertaining story for a wonderful, perplexing, and charming whodunit !!