Murder on the Orient Express
Agatha Christie's 1934 novel begins in Istanbul, where the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot has been recalled to London on urgent business and boards the Orient Express on a wintry December evening. The train is improbably full for the season, and Poirot finds himself forced to share a coach with a bizarre cross-section of European and American passengers. In the night, the train is stopped by a snowdrift in the Yugoslavian mountains, and in the morning a wealthy American named Ratchett is found dead in his locked compartment, stabbed twelve times by what appear to be different hands. With the train going nowhere and a Yugoslav police force days away, Poirot is asked to identify the murderer before the snow clears. The novel is the canonical locked-room mystery and the source of one of the most audacious solutions in the history of detective fiction.
Themes & atmosphere
Also by Agatha Christie
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What you might want to know about Murder on the Orient Express
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Hercule Poirot boards the Orient Express on his way home from Istanbul. Snowdrifts strand the train. A passenger is found dead in his locked cabin with twelve stab wounds. The other passengers all have alibis.
Yes, multiple times. Notable versions include the 1974 Sidney Lumet film starring Albert Finney, the 2001 TV movie with Alfred Molina, and Kenneth Branagh's 2017 film. Each takes a different approach to Christie's locked-train premise.
Murder on the Orient Express was published in 1934. Copyright varies by country; it is not yet in the U.S. public domain. Free editions are available in countries where the term has expired.
Murder on the Orient Express was written by Agatha Christie, published in 1933 by АСТ.
Murder on the Orient Express is 240 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Murder on the Orient Express takes most readers 4 to 5 hours to finish.
Murder on the Orient Express is a standalone novel by Agatha Christie, not part of a series.
Murder on the Orient Express is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.