Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

 Author- Agatha Christie was born in 1890 in England and raised by a wealthy American father and English mother. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in 44 foreign languages. She is the author of 78 crime novels and was made a dame in 1971. She was married twice, her second husband being an archeologist whom she often traveled with on his archeological exhibitions to the Middle East. This gave her an understanding of that part of the world, which she used in this story. Agatha Christie died in 1976 in her home in England.

 Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express in 1934 and based it on two events that actually occurred.

-A very cold winter in Europe in 1928 to 1929 when the Orient Express was stuck in a snowdrift near the Turkish border for six days and the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in the United States in 1932 which Agatha called the Armstrong family.

The Armstrong case was a kidnapping performed by a gangster named Casetti who kidnapped the daughter of the extremely rich American Armstrong family but instead of returning her when the ransom was paid instead left her to die. This is the most vital clue in the whole case as once the murdered Mr Ratchett is connected to being Casetti Hercule Poirot easily unravels the suspects true identities.

 Genre- the genre of Murder on the Orient Express I think is a detective murder mystery as the murder seems as though it will never be logically solved.

 Setting

 Orient Express- is one of the world's most famous luxury trains, which made its maiden voyage from Paris in 1883 to Istanbul; its last regular scheduled servi...

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... the Armstrong family. The theme morals occurs when the decision of which solution should be given to Yugoslavian police is decided on the morals of Dr Constantine and Monsieur Bouc.

 Conclusion

I enjoyed this story and whislt reading it I wondered if it was a good detectivew story and therefore I compared it to W.H. Audens description of a detective story. Which is "A murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies." While a murder does occur and many are suspected but that is were the similarity ends. Because the suspects are not eliminated down to a single criminal and a murderer is not arrested or dies. Perhaps this is because Agatha Christie believed that the outcome does not always have to do justice in accordance with the law and rather that it is morally right.