Finally, on my journey through crime (and it has been a category which has taken in a wide range of different things for me, more than I thought at the beginning), I arrive at the Grand Old Dame of them all: Agatha Christie. And if you're going to do Agatha Christie, you may as well do Murder on the Orient Express, right? Such was my thinking anyway, when it was neatly displayed on the library shelf, pleading with me to pick it up.
So Poirot, then. My first encounter with one of the few Belgians of note. Created by and English lady, but never mind. And I actually like Belgium, the bits I've seen and the people I've met, though I fear I may be wandering off the point somewhat. The style, very much from the so-called Golden Age of detective fiction, was direct, to the point and gripping. Much like Sherlock Holmes (who I love), the general pacing of information being revealed and Poirot's powers of deduction and detection was very well done. it was carefully plotted and compelling – I whizzed through it quicker than you could vanish a scarlet dressing gown.
The structure initially seemed a little odd, being set up in terms of the action in the first part, the evidence in the second part and the deduction in the third, yet it all flowed nicely and didn't seem formulaic in the way I feared it might. And as strictly unbelievable as it is in a real sense, Christie does a very good job of making it seem plausible and normal. Which is exactly what she was supposed to be doing. I liked the little moral question at the end too, fitting for a work that is clearly a great of the genre for good reason. Quick, easy to read and thoroughly absorbing, I'll be coming back for more.
Book number: 32
Title: Murder on the Orient Express
Author: Agatha Christie
Category: Crime
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