Murder On The Orient Express

Agatha Christie

This blog is about a great play I saw yesterday Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express. This is probably one of my all time favorite Christie mysteries featuring her little Belgium detective Hercule Poirot

Both cerebral and comic it takes place aboard The Orient Express it’s 1934 and the train is leaving Istanbul and at midnight the train gets caught in a snowdrift and aboard the train is the evil kidnapper and murderer Ratchett and seven wonderful suspects.

Christie wrote this novel partly based on the Charles Lindbergh case, a real life case involving his 20 month year old son being held for a 50,000 dollar ransom which he paid and his son was never returned, Charles Lindbergh was an international hero at the time

The book Murder On The Orient Express is dedicated to Christie’s second husband, who she would go on these archeological digs with, it’s more than likely the story was drafted on a dig her and her husband Max where on in Iraq, even thou The Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul has a Agatha Christie room where they claim she wrote Murder on the Orient Express, by the way you can watch The Pera Palace Hotel on Netflix it’s interesting I’ve been watching it.

Christie has traveled many times on the Orient Express and she payed so much attention to detail that she knew every door handle and dinning car etc which came through in the story

To me it’s one of her most atmospheric mysteries written, the snow and the snowdrift, the dining car, the clothing the whole 1934 era which takes us back to a different time in history, it’s hard to imagine this was written 88 yrs ago a simpler time, but with Christie’s writing which was always ahead of it’s time she was not afraid to write about things that where considered taboo at the time.

Their have been many productions of Murder On The Orient Express I just saw the play version at the Drury Lane the stage was set to perfection , the train the dining car etc the atmosphere and most of all Hercule Poirot

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