Murder on the Orient Express- Quite the Journey!

Published on by theorangutanlibrarian

murder-on-the-orient-express-agatha-christieSo I don’t know if you guys remember my Bookish Confessions where I said “I’ve never read an Agatha Christie book and I don’t plan to”… well apparently I lied. Not intentionally, but because of a few eager comments on that post, my curiosity was sparked. And then, thanks to a *brilliant* review by my friend Lashaan over at Bookidote, I knew I had to read it!! I ended up picking it up in a bookshop, thinking “let’s see what all the fuss is about”, and, one thing led to another, I got hooked!

No word of a lie- I’m actually experiencing a bit of a slump here, so I hardly expected a murder mystery written over 80 years ago to do anything  about that- yet I couldn’t for the life of me bring myself to put this book down.

First of all, I enjoyed the intriguing, somewhat atmospheric start. I found the characters vivid and delightfully drawn. I even found some of Poirot’s line’s chuckle worthy:

i do not like your face.png

(I know in context it’s just to show how perceptive Poirot is- but c’mon, what a 21st century insult- I was instantly rooting for him after that)

I will admit, not being a big mystery reader, I was pretty clueless about what was going on in the middle and I won’t pretend I followed a lot of it. For me personally, I felt it lagged a little. Even so, plotwise, I wouldn’t criticise it for that, because in the end…

WOW what a finale!! It made everything worth it!! I can’t say anything because you *do not* want to be spoilt for it. But even I, as a mystery virgin, found myself going “ohhh” as the clues slotted into place. Little things that had me frowning early on suddenly had me smiling as it all made sense. What’s even more impressive is for a book of its age, it felt fresh and completely not what I expected. I never saw that coming.

Unbelievably (at least for me), reading this has completely changed my mind about checking out Christie’s work. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rating: 4/5 bananas

small bananasmall bananasmall bananasmall banana

Have you read this? Did you enjoy it? And- I can’t believe I’m asking this- any other Agatha Christie books you can recommend? Let me know in the comments!

97 thoughts on “Murder on the Orient Express- Quite the Journey!”

  5. This was a really great read. I’m not one for murder mysteries either, but this book really took it to a whole new level. A very good read, and not dated at all. Another novel by Christie that you might thoroughly enjoy (I know I did it was a real page turner) is ” And then there were none”. Also a terrific novel that will keep you guessing until the end and with a twist that you will never see coming 😊😊

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  9. Great review for this book, and I am so glad you enjoyed it especially after you said you’d never pick up an Agatha Christie book! 😀 I’ve never read an Agatha Christie book either but I’ve always thought I’d end up picking one up one day because I do enjoy mystery/thriller reads every now and again. Granted it’s mainly YA but my mum loves Agatha Christie’s books so maybe I should eventually pick one up as well. 🙂
    Again great review! 😀 ❤

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  11. My grandmother got me into these books when I was pretty young. I’ll never forget the first one a read called “Sleeping Murder”. It still makes me shudder!

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    1. hehe don’t worry, this is my first and I’ve been shocking people with the fact that I defiantly wouldn’t read her books for years… I guess now I have to eat my words bahaha 😉

      I think I saw that cover- it was GORGEOUS! and it’s why i picked it up in the bookshop (ended up going for a cheaper second hand version in the end though 😉 )

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  13. I once attempted to read this but gave up because I couldn’t follow the mysteries and couldn’t even remember their alibis. lol But this one is definitely on my TBR!

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  15. I read this recently too! (wanted to see the movie lol) I’m also a bit of a mystery virgin because I tend to find most mysteries very similar to one another, but this one was terrific as you say! I found Poirot really adorable for some reason or another…:D

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  16. You go girl!!! Still super glad that you ended up picking it up. ❤ Thank you so much again for the shout-out. I laughed at that comment by Poirot too!!! I honestly didn't see it coming and I think I was also hooked to his personality from that moment on. 😛 I totally understand the whole laggy part though. The part where there's a train map of all the cabins? I can totally see how it could've lost a couple of readers. I found it so much to go back and forth just to follow what was going on. It might just be my inner puzzle-solving self that found it fun though hahah Great review as always!!! Now we've both checked out 1 book by Christie. 😀 Hope your next one, whenever it is, will be just as good or better. 😉

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    1. Aww thank you!! ❤ Me too 😊 You're welcome!! hehe I know right- I wondered if I was the only one that found that funny 😉 absolutely agree! hehe yes, I liked that in a sort of theoretical way, but I honestly I couldn't keep track of where everyone was and all the alibis, so I stopped trying to figure things out. hehehe I get that! Thank you so much!! hehe you too 😉

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  18. Great review, and another vote for “And Then There Were None” (also found under a couple other names depending on how far back you go and how tolerant people were of racial slurs at the time). I’m not a huge Christie fan (when I read a mystery I prefer the hardboiled detective variety), but it’s well worth reading.

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  21. I played the pc game version of this book and thoroughly enjoyed it. I would also recommend ‘the secret adversary’ the first book of the tommy and tuppence series.

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  24. Just be aware, that after this and “10 Little Indians”, the original name for “And Then There were None”, I haven’t read one of hers that matched. So you are kind of starting at the peak. Now it’s all down hill 😉

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  26. So happy to see this! I am a huge fan of Dame Christie and there is very little from her impressive body of work I haven’t liked. I want to watch the new movie on this book. Try The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It’s different from this one in terms of POV and presentation. Waiting to hear more from you on Poirot. Planning to try Marple, Tommy and Tuppence?

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  27. I was a huge Agatha Christie fan when I was in junior high school. Her books turned me on to Margaret Atwood who turned me on to Mary Higgins Clark, who turned me on to Kazuo Ishiguro and on and on and on . . .

    Great post!

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  28. Oh, I’m so glad you liked it. I loved this book. It has one of the greatest plot twists ever. I can’t wait to see the movie. I used to love to watch the old Poirot shows on the BBC. They were awesome and I miss them!

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  30. YAAAAAS YOU F I N A L L Y PICKED UP A CHRISTIE BOOK. GOOD FOR YOU. DUDE. READ ‘AND THEN THERE WERE NONE’ . I LOVED ORIENT EXPRESS BUT ATTWN TOPS THE CHART FOR ME.

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  33. I laughed so much at the bananas rating hahaha I have never read something by this author… so I want to do the same and hop in the train of her books hahaha sorry just joking XD I like mysteries a lot and she seems to be the queen of mysteries, so I think I will consider this one or another one!

    Thank you very much for sharing! Great review! Amazing blog!

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    1. hehee thank you!! 😀
      hahaha nice!! 😉 I love puns! 😀 Awesome- I definitely think it’ll be worth checking out then, cos I’m really not a mystery read and I thoroughly enjoyed it, so I’m sure you’ll get even more out of it 😀
      Thanks so much for your lovely comment!

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  34. Ahhhh I’m so glad to see you liked this one! I really, really enjoy Agatha Christie’s stories and I feel really defensive of her because people will knock her for flat characters or lackluster prose, and while those criticisms are justified with some of her stories (The Big Four, to name one… just don’t even try), when she hits a mystery, she absolutely nails it, in my not-very-humble opinion. Plus she does a really good job of making sure you understand what went down in the murder, which is not something every mystery writer is great at. Poirot is my favorite of her detectives, even though Miss Marple was my gateway drug for her stuff. But some of Christie’s most memorable stuff to me are those that don’t feature either Miss Marple or Poirot- I really like The Murder at Hazelmoor (that one has a bunch of titles, basically table-turning ends up predicting a murder), Towards Zero is incredible (that one mentions Poirot tangentially) and then of course And Then There Were None. But really with her stuff I’m reading because she tricks me every time and I enjoy the process of being tricked- and then having the trick revealed.

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    1. I really did! I actually liked her prose- I thought it was crisp without being colourless. I won’t say it was the best prose I’ve ever read, but she was unafraid to be descriptive and it created the right effect for what it was. So true! I really liked Poirot as a detective 😀 Oh cool- I will have to check that out- especially and then there were none, which I’ve been recommended a lot now! I definitely get that- I love when a book/author manages to completely have me fooled and Christie definitely did that here!

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  35. I love this book, so I am glad to see you liked it. As for other recommendations…well, I am still in the middle of a comprehensive Christie re-read, so there are a few to recommend: And Then There Were None, Murder at the Vicarage, Endless Night to list just a few of the great ones.

    Whatever you pick up next of hers, don’t read Curtain until you’ve read the other Poirots. There is a reason it is the last in the series.

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      1. Oh, don’t mention it.

        Endless Night is one of the stand-alones that people tend to forget (or haven’t heard about). It is dark, but quite well done.

        Oh, and I would stay clear of the following until you figure out if you like Christie:

        Passenger to Frankfurt, the Tommy and Tuppence Series, Destination Unknown, The Big Four, the Secret of Chimneys.

        These are some of the worst books I have read by her.

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  38. Pingback: The #NotAll Book Tag – the orang-utan librarian

  40. Honestly one of my favorite mysteries of all time. Agatha Christie is awesome in the way that outlines the plot of this book and I’d have to say that it places a close second to Sherlock Holmes. I did recently see the new remake movie that came out, and was a bit disappointed. However, the original movie was pretty good and the book is a good read. Nice post!

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