Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Journey Begins
Chapter 2 A Cruel and Dangerous Man
Chapter 3 A Red Dressing Gown and a Metal Button
Chapter 4 An Open Door
Chapter 5 The Man with a Woman’s Voice
Chapter 6 The Sponge Bag
Chapter 7 Which of Them?
Chapter 8 Two Solutions
Activities
Introduction
To
solve a case, a man just has to lie back in his chair and think/
A train journey from Turkey to France is delayed by thick snow.
When a passenger is found murdered in his bed, it is the perfect
opportunity for Agatha Christie’s famous private detective,
Hercule Poirot, to prove his ability and solve the crime using
the power of his brain.
Like all great murder mysteries,
Murder on the Orient Express
keeps us guessing until the final pages. Look for clues as you
read, but be prepared for more than a few surprises!
Born in the town of Torquay in the south of England on
15 September 1890, Agatha Christie was the leading British
writer of murder mysteries during her lifetime. She has continued
to be popular since her death in 1976, and more copies of her
books have been sold than of any other novelist in history. They
have been translated into more than forty-five languages, and
her play
The Mousetrap
has been on stage in London for more
than fifty years without a break. How did the ‘Queen of Crime’
become so successful?
Her parents, a rich American businessman and his English
wife, did not send Agatha to school as a child. She had a governess
who taught her at home, allowing her to choose her own books
and form her own ideas. She attended her first formal school
at the age of sixteen, when she went to Paris to study singing
and piano.
Although Agatha had not planned to be a writer, her writing
skills were noticed at an early age. By the time she was eleven,
one of her poems had been printed in the local newspaper.
Before she was twenty several more of her poems had appeared
v
in print and she had also written a number of short stories.
In 1914 the First World War began and Agatha married
Colonel Archibald Christie. She worked in a hospital during the
war, which gave her a knowledge of medicine that later proved
useful in her work as a crime writer. The Christies’ only child,
Rosalind, was born in 1919. At about the same time, Agatha’s
sister Madge suggested that she should try to write a mystery
novel.
The young writer decided that she needed a detective. At the
time, her home town was full of Belgians who had been soldiers
in the First World War, and Agatha decided that one of them
would make the perfect model for Hercule Poirot. He starred
in her first detective novel,
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
(1920),
and later became the central character in thirty-three novels and
fifty-four short stories.
Over the years Agatha Christie wrote about several different
detectives, but Poirot had no equal in the hearts of her readers
until she invented Miss Marple, who had much in common with
her own grandmother. She did not plan to put Miss Marple into
more than one book, but the public loved her and she eventually
appeared in twelve Christie novels and twenty short stories.
Agatha Christie produced no fewer than sixty-six murder
mystery novels, among the best of which are
The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd
(1926),
Murder on the Orient Express
(1934) and
Death on
the Nile
(1937). She also wrote several plays in addition to the
record-breaking
The Mousetrap
, and six romantic novels using
the name Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie’s other great interest was travel. In the early
1920s she went round the world by sea with her first husband.
After they separated in 1926, she continued to travel, alone and
then with her second husband, Max Mallowan, who she married
in 1930. She travelled several times on the Orient Express, which
she described as ‘the train of my dreams’.
Her enormous success was the result of a simple method:
Christie wrote about the world that she knew. Working-class
characters are rarely central to her stories, although plenty of
servants
appear; the books typically describe the lives of rich
Englishmen and women like herself, and international tourists
of the sort that she met on her travels. An idea for a new mystery
could come into her head when she was taking a walk or
shopping for a new hat; she filled piles of notebooks with ideas
for stories and characters. She was, as her grandson M athew
Prichard has described her, \ .. a person who listened more than
she talked, who saw more than she was seen.’
Murder on the Orient Express
was written while Agatha Christie
was staying in a hotel in Syria. It includes everything that her
admirers like best in her stories: murder, confusing clues, a group
of interesting characters, and a surprising solution by the clever
detective, Hercule Poirot.
It is easy to understand why Christie’s writing continues to
entertain millions of readers around the world. The popularity
of her stories goes beyond the printed page. There have been
many television and film productions of
Murder on the Orient
Express
and other Christie mysteries, and now there are video
games too. Doubtless Agatha Christie’s work will continue to
excite readers and viewers for many, many years.
He looked quickly towards M . Poirot
—
at his enormous, curled
moustache and strange, egg-shaped head — then looked away.
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