Murder on the Orient Express

Author: Agatha Christie
Genre: Detective Fiction
My rating: 5/5

In Murder on the Orient Express, a brutal killing takes place, the train is stuck in a snow bank and everybody is trapped.

Hercule Poirot is on the Orient Express on his way from Syria.

A man named Samuel Ratchett, comes up to the Belgian detective and asks him to work for him because his life is threatened, but Hercule refuses to take his case. The next morning, the man is found dead in his compartment, stabbed 12 times.

Poirot, his old friend M. Bouc, and Dr. Constantine investigate the case.

Although the window of Mr. Ratchett’s compartment is open, there are no fingerprints on it. The murderer is inside the train, among all the 13 suspects.

After interviewing each of the suspects Poirot discovers that Mr. Rachett’s real name is Cascetti, the man responsible for the kidnapping and murder of a little girl named Daisy Armstrong, and that the suspects have a sort of connection with the Armstrong case.

He considers the bizarre clues (which lead to more than one killer) and triggers his little gray brain cells before exposing the mystery.

Was it an evil unjust murder or a justice-serving execution?

After reading this story, I found it very satisfying and intriguingly clever.

It’s a must-read!

image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Murder_on_the_Orient_Express_First_Edition_Cover_1934.jpg