By CHRIS SURPRENANT
Arts Editor
Murder on the Orient Express
This week, death is working on the railroad. Agatha Christie places her famous Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, aboard the Orient Express, where, of course, a murder takes place. What better place to kill someone than aboard a train? With an impressive suspect pool, Christie creates a tense novel that allows the reader to think he has it all figured out. Surprise, surprise, that’s not the case at all.
Poirot boards the train in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), where he is in the company of several interesting characters. During his first night on the train, Poirot is disturbed by a noise in the compartment of the sour-tempered Samuel Ratchett. Peeking out from his own berth, Poirot sees the conductor asking if Ratchett is all right. A voice replies in the affirmative, and Poirot returns to bed, still uneasy about the scene he witnessed.
Still unable to sleep, Poirot later heard a thump on his door. When he answers, no one is there, only seeing a woman in a scarlet kimono escape down the corridor. The following day, Ratchett is discovered, stabbed to death twelve times. Not only is there a murderer on the loose, but the train had stopped due to a snowstorm. Fun stuff.
What would appear to be an average, tension-filled story turns into one heck of head-scratching problem. Christie drops several clues for Poirot to find, yet, none of them seem to point to one particular person, leading the reader to believe that the great Hercule Poirot has met his match. Several of the passengers are found to have a connection to Ratchett, everyone from his secretary Hector MacQueen to the dour princess Natalia Dragomiroff. To add an extra element of confusion, Christie throws in a pesky American back story that further complicates matters.
The cast of characters throughout Christie’s novel is extensive, and they are vividly portrayed. On occasion, Christie tends to create flat characters in favor a complex plot. Part of the fun of this novel is the outlandish titles of the suspects. In one novel, Christie is able to include a princess, a countess, and a woman named Hildegarde Schmidt. How much better could it get? Here, Christie gives each suspect a distinct personality. Characteristically, Poirot is able to tailor his charm to each of them, making for a lot of interesting dialogue.
What makes this one of Christie’s best novels is the fact that the reader believes he has it all figured out. There is a point where the culprit seems so straightforward, that the reader will feel let down that Christie hasn’t crafted a better novel. One would be wrong to assume that of Dame Agatha. Christie is able to twist convention in such a way that the reader will feel so ashamed that the solution was staring him in the face the whole time. When it comes down to it, the key to the crime is so incredibly simple.
The average reader is going to over-think this, and will be frustrated from cover to cover. That, my friends, is the best kind of mystery.
