The Sleeping-Car Murders

Rating:
Summary: Slow and unimaginative
Review: Seemed I just kept putting this book down out of boredom, and maybe that's why the plot seemed so confusing--it just wasn't interesting enough for me to follow. The concept was good (that's why I bought the book) & it's the frist Japrisot I've read, but it was lacking in suspense. In the end, the only interest I had in who committed the murder was so I could put the darned thing down for good.

Rating:
Summary: Slow and unimaginative
Review: Seemed I just kept putting this book down out of boredom, and maybe that's why the plot seemed so confusing--it just wasn't interesting enough for me to follow. The concept was good (that's why I bought the book) & it's the frist Japrisot I've read, but it was lacking in suspense. In the end, the only interest I had in who committed the murder was so I could put the darned thing down for good.

Rating:
Summary: A good read but ... not everything one reads is "meaningful"
Review: The first Sebastien Japrisot I read was One Deadly Summer - a book that caused me to have too high expectations of The Sleeping-Car Murders. The Sleeping-Car Murders is best read as you would read any book by Agatha Christie, etc. etc. ... read as a book of the mystery genre the book is well plotted and has an excellent, surprising and realistic conclusion. However, the reader is unlikely to identify with the "detective"; rather it is easier to identify with the young woman coming to Paris for the first time. And unlike One Deadly Summer, most of the characters are painted sufficiently well to carry the story but not so well that the reader particularly cares what happens to them.

For a delightly, fun and casual read, I recommend the book.

Rating:
Summary: A good read but ... not everything one reads is "meaningful"
Review: The first Sebastien Japrisot I read was One Deadly Summer - a book that caused me to have too high expectations of The Sleeping-Car Murders. The Sleeping-Car Murders is best read as you would read any book by Agatha Christie, etc. etc. ... read as a book of the mystery genre the book is well plotted and has an excellent, surprising and realistic conclusion. However, the reader is unlikely to identify with the "detective"; rather it is easier to identify with the young woman coming to Paris for the first time. And unlike One Deadly Summer, most of the characters are painted sufficiently well to carry the story but not so well that the reader particularly cares what happens to them.

For a delightly, fun and casual read, I recommend the book.

Rating:
Summary: The first clue is in the title....
Review: This masterfully written novel opens with a terrific scene: the train porter wanders through the cars, picking up the detrius of a long night's travel. He finds a scarf, two raincoats, an umbrella, and a leak in the heating system. Then he finds the corpse and his discovery sets off the usual chain of events: ambulance, police, news reporters.

But the title is "The Sleeping-Car Murders": more than one. And indeed, the other passengers of car number 4 begin to die, violently and seemingly at random.

Underlying these deaths, though, are the corrupt, evil, and stupid motives of greed and ego. By the final pages, we realise that the incidents are not random--yet even then the denoument is darkly surprising.

Japrisot is a master writer. His prose is spare and evocative. He is able to create memorable characters and dark suspense in less than two hundred pages. He sweeps us up into a mystery which is intricate and twisted, and he leaves us shocked and saddened by the evil of human kind.