Review: Murder On The Orient Express

Murder On The Orient Express, Agatha Christie[ "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie (first published by William Collins and Sons 1934). A classic detective story from the "Golden Age of the Detective Novel". ]

This month and the next we decided to tackle some classic novels. Generally “Murder On The Orient Express” is associated for me with the 1974 film with Albert Finney as the well-oiled precise super detective Hercule Poirot. The complexity of detail in the plot in this film, is much reduced when compared to the book. Although the very structured sequence of Poirot’s investigation makes this manageable. Knowing the structure of the plot from the film, I enjoyed spotting the clues dotted in the text.

Agatha Christie presents the classic closed country house murder scenario, translated to a snow bound luxury railway carriage. It diverges from similar novels, in breaking the principal focus and assumption of the detective novel, about “the identity of the murderer” in two ways. Arising from this she wrong foots the reader in the other focus, of detecting whose evidence is reliable. Essential to the enjoyment of the detective novel, is a credible plot outcome, which this novel supplies. Her 1950s play “Witness for the Prosecution” (later made into a film with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton) also experimented with the structure of the classical crime plot, and inspired John le Carré’s famous spy novel “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold”.

Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel is still very readable for a modern audience, when compared to the jarring prejudices that startle in the texts of other novelists of the “Golden Age of the Detective Novel” (1930s). Thinking here of Dorothy L Sayers, and a recently rediscovered author J Jefferson Farjeon (see “Mystery In White” 1937). Christie’s upper class characters in “Murder on the Orient Express” are stronger than her other lower class characters, but she at least gives some sense that this is due to work and economic insecurity. She creates multi-dimensional female characters, who Poirot treats according to character rather than chivalry. He interviews Mary Debenham quite roughly, because he knows she is a strong defiant character, who combines the role of spinster governess with inner passion. There is national stereotyping in the novel, with a truly evil American, balanced against the comic eccentricities of Mrs Hubbard and Mr Hardman.

There is a serious theme that emerged from the novel about the nature or justice and revenge. We did not resolve this one, but outlined the main questions. The novel is partly based on the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping case. There was an irony that sympathy for Lindbergh was later overturned for English audiences, by Charles Lindhberg’s fascist sympathies and his involvement with the America First isolationist movement. His racism was shared with his father, and appeared in an earlier novel the group read “The Plot against America” by Philip Roth.

Overall “Murder on the Orient Express” was a surprisingly good read, even taking into account familiarity with the many film versions.