Mystery Review: Murder on the Orient Express finds Poirot traveling by train through Yugoslavia on his way to London, until the train becomes stuck in a blizzard. That night in the compartment next door to Poirot, an American businessman is murdered. To help his friend, the director of the train company, Poirot takes on the case. He combines what he heard and saw during the night with clues from the murder scene and begins interviewing the passengers, since the murderer must still be on the train. After a healthy communion with his little gray cells Poirot gathers the passengers and proposes two solutions, one simple but improbable, one complex but painful. The director of the train company makes the choice and the matter is resolved, or at least closed. Some consider the solution impossible but it's only improbable, and Christie (just barely) makes it seem plausible, which is the real test. She worked hard on this one. Murder on the Orient Express is one of Christie's best known works and probably many people who haven't read the book still know the solution, especially as two well-known, star-studded films were made in 1974 and 2017. Also known as Murder in the Calais Coach, to avoid confusion with similarly titled novel. [4★]
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