Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express, first published in 1934, is a mystery by Agatha Christie featuring one of her most famous characters, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. A locked-room mystery, the novel unfolds in a train, the Orient Express, which has become stranded in a snowstorm. Poirot happens to be on the train when a man named Mr. Ratchett is murdered. Poirot is called upon to solve the case, and the book follows his investigation.

Christie, an English writer, lived from 1890 to 1976 and wrote some 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections in her career. She has been called the “Queen of Crime,” and many of her books, like Murder on the Orient Express, have become best-sellers, including Death on the Nile (1937) and And Then There Were None (1939). Murder on the Orient Express has multiple film adaptations, the most recent in 2017. This guide refers to the 2015 Harper Collins paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text contains depictions of murder, death by suicide, death of a child, kidnapping, xenophobia, and racism.

Plot Summary

Murder on the Orient Express is told from the

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