Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie — Review
on Book Review
The impossible could not have happened; therefore, the impossible must be possible despite appearances. — Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
REVENGE is a powerful word. It’s like a shadow consuming you in its own darkness. But then, it’s not right to forgive every time. That regret, anger, anxiety makes every moment of your life miserable. How would you live when you’re already dead inside… All you want is JUSTICE, but if it’s not done, some might cease to live, but others might give the fracture of their souls away to the poison of the deep grief until one crime becomes another.
Murder on the Orient Express is undoubtedly Agatha Christie’s excellent work. It’s a Poirot novel, which is a great thing in itself. I mean, who doesn’t like Poirot, using his grey cells to solve the mystery. So the crux of the story is, there’s something about this tangle of strangers pressed together for days on end, with nothing in common, but they need to go from one place to another. They’ll never see each other again… But a murder happens. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Due to weather conditions, the orient express is isolated, and a murderer is among them. Poirot sure should find out the killer because he/she who commit a crime won’t hesitate to kill again.
Alibis sure are essential detail in any thriller novel. I’m always thrilled to observe how they play their part; some are true; some might lie. Christie blends it well in her novels. There’s a notorious abundance of shreds of evidence throughout the novel that’s very unlikely and gives an uncanny feeling of something subtly wrong, but as Poirot says, “You’ll tell your lies, and you think no one will know, but there are two people who’ll know, your God and Hercule Poirot.”
Christie has painstakingly presented the details of orient express, thanks to her solo trip abroad in 1928. The pace of the novel is comparatively fast than in her subsequent novels. I found the film also very promising, though they modernized the characters and the setting a bit.