Murder on the Orient Express: A spoiler-free review of the book

    I have recently been trying my hand at reading more. I've always found it quite hard to find books that actually interested me, since I have a short patience when it comes to novels. I want something that gets me involved with the characters and the world. Something that paints a vivid picture, but also doesn't spend page after page after page after page discussing how a character looks or the scenery. In case you're wondering, Yes, I HAVE read Ivanhoe, and I can't actually remember anything except that it took ninety-something pages just to properly introduce the guy the book was named after. Oh, and that Robin Hood was in it, but he was kind of a jerk. He also wasn't a fox, and that was kinda weird.

Oodelaly.

     However, while I was browsing our kinda local library. (I'd rather not talk about libraries at this point as I am libel to start throwing things) when I was directed by my mother to Agatha Christie's collection of Mystery Novels. Being an avid fan of the great detective Sherlock Holmes, I warned her that I had high standards for mystery novels, but she convinced me to try one. I quickly scanned through the available stories to see if one of the titles jumped out at me. That's when I spotted Murder on the Orient Express. Although I couldn't quite place where I had heard this title before, it seemed familiar. Besides, it indicated that this would take place on a train, and I'm a sucker for any mystery that takes place on a train. When I got home, I read one of my other books first. (I'm in the middle of the Percy Jackson series. So far, I'm rather fond of it.) I then decided to give Ms. Christie a shot.
    I admit it took me a bit to get into the book, it took a couple chapters to get going. But I immediately loved it's precise structuring. The book was laid out into three segments. The setup and murder, the examination of the testimonies and evidence, and finally the final revelations and the summation of the case. The testimonies were especially well structured as each one was contained in a chapter of around six or seven pages each. And the climax, though apparently famous, is something I actually didn't see coming. Too many novels twist and turn to try to surprise you, but this one succeeds with pulling an answer totally out of left field, and yet completely consistent with the evidence presented before hand. It really felt, if I had a pen and paper while reading that I could have solved this mystery before Poirot (the hero) announced it, and that is what makes for a great mystery novel.  After I finished reading (which I stayed up quite late to finish. And I mean late for me. So that's really late) I looked a few key pieces of evidence up to see if they were consistent with the ending and, in fact, they were completely consistent and a major clue that I had not even given a second glance on my first read-through. I also want to point out how well Ms. Christie wrote her varied cast of characters. There are a lot of characters from a lot of places (and that, like everything else in this flipping book is actually important to solving the case) and she writes them all very distinctively. You can really tell the personalities of these characters from their brief appearances throughout the book, no matter how minor. Every character speaks like you would expect them to each time they appear, with their unique conversational styles well represented.
    In the end, I am now brimming with new found respect for Ms. Agatha Christie, as a master of mystery stories. I'm actually looking forward to reading another of her novels with a mixture of excitement and dread, my fear being that whatever I read next can't meet the standard that Murder on the Orient Express sets.

Random Notes:

~I plan on watching the movie adaptation of this book pretty soon. I've discovered that it was the only film adaptation of any of Agatha Christie's works made in her lifetime that she actually liked. Plus... it has Sean Connery. Those are good signs, folks.

~I didn't talk much about Poirot or any other of the characters other than the fact that they were all well written, and that's mainly because the story was the main attraction here. But Poirot struck me as an interesting character, he's just a little odd, and he's has some very interesting standards for taking cases. Some of his characteristics are a tad cliche, but I still liked him.