Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Just Finished Reading Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express
Perhaps the most well-known of legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie's stories is her 1934 Murder on the Orient Express, but I never did get around to reading it until just now...resisting the temptation to watch either the 1974, 2001 or 2017 movie adaptations. It's another Hercule Poirot novel, featuring the amiable but psychologically discerning Belgian detective as this time he is traveling on a train though the Balkans toward his eventual destination of England. In his coach are several passengers, including a disagreeable wealthy American man who is fearful for his life and who earlier had unsuccessfully tried to hire Poirot to protect him. His true identity...and his subsequent murder as the train gets stuck late at night in a snowdrift...exposes the other passengers to scrutiny as to their own identities, backgrounds and possible motivations as the murderer. Poirot questions each one differently and sees important clues...some as seemingly insignificant as a grease smudge on a Hungarian countess's passport or an offhand comment by an official about the unusual diversity among the passengers...as he comes to an amazing conclusion about the guilty party. In the movies this story has been a vehicle to present all-star casts...that was especially the case in the 1974 version, which I'm planning to watch now that I've read the book. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend it...I'll need to watch the film adaptations first before I endorse any of them. Speaking of movies, I can think offhand of only four other train-based films I've enjoyed: Terror by Night with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, Silver Streak with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, From Russia with Love featuring Sean Connery as James Bond, and my favorite, The Polar Express with Tom Hanks in multiple roles. I never did see Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train...can you come up with some "train" films you liked?
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