Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Who can argue with classic Christie? The Queen of Detective Fiction. Also the prime example of the locked room mystery.
But it was a little too far-fetched for the solution to be satisfying to me. It was impressive that Poirot could figure it out. Also impressive that Christie could weave such an intricate plot. But the kind of conspiracy it depicts seems outside the range of likely human behavior. Christie is at her best when she’s excavating the murder that lies in each of our hearts. When I’ve got a little bit of the villain in me. That just didn’t seem to me to be the case here.
Funny story: Part of the backstory for this novel is based on the Lindbergh kidnapping. Just a few months after reading it, I heard an old story from my mom’s side of the family. They’re Swedish, and as a child, my grandfather had had very blond, curly hair. On a car trip from Washington, D.C. to North Carolina, they were pulled over by the police and had no end of trouble proving that my grandpa wasn’t the Lindbergh baby. So that’s a weird little codicil to my few words on Murder on the Orient Express.