Transcript
Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast, a podcast covering mysteries in all of their forms from classic Golden Age novels to contemporary cozies. I’m mystery author Sara Rosett and this is Season One, Episode One, and it’s all about Murder on the Orient Express. This is probably the most famous traditional mystery out there. It was written by Agatha Christie and published in 1934 with many, many, many adaptations. Until recently, the most well-known one was the 1974 movie with a ton of big name stars like Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud and Vanessa Redgrave. Then in 2017, a new feature film adaptation was made with Kenneth Branagh and his controversial mustaches, which I think is just pitch perfect for cozy and traditional mystery lovers. It’s the interpretation of Poirot’s facial hair that got everyone talking when the trailer first came out. This movie also had tons of star power with Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench and Penelope Cruz, to name just a few. That’s the great thing about this book. It has a huge cast. You can get lots of big stars in it when you make it into a movie. This movie adaptation made quite a few changes to the original story. So we will talk about that later. Right now, we’re going to focus on the book and some facts about it, some interesting things related to the writing of it. And we’ll look at themes and tropes and then we’ll look at the adaptations.
Book Blurb
So first, let’s look at the book blurb. “Just after midnight, a snowstorm stops the Orient Express dead in its tracks. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for this time of year, but by morning there is one passenger less. Hercule Poirot is also on board, having arrived in the nick of time to claim a second class compartment and the most astounding case of his illustrious career.”
Story Behind the Story
Some fun facts about Murder on the Orient Express. The book opens with Poirot in Syria waiting for the Tarsus Express, and he’s just solved a case. He travels to Istanbul, or Istanbul as it’s called in the book, where he stays in a hotel and meets several people who will show up later. In the book, a message recalls him into London, and he books passage last minute on the Orient Express. The Orient Express has traveled several different routes since its first journey in 1883. You can take the Orient Express today on a London, Paris, Venice trip, but it’s a different route than the train journey took in the book. In the book, The journey goes through Yugoslavia, which is where the train gets stuck in a snowdrift. I thought it was interesting to learn that Agatha Christie often traveled to and from the Middle East to help her husband, who was an archaeologist, and she would go to his digs. She wrote Murder on the Orient Express in room 114 of the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul. And according to an article in the Vintage News, Christie was once stranded on the train for a day because of heavy rain. And she heard about the snowstorms that had delayed the train for days. So that kind of gave her the jumping off point of the What If for her story on the Orient Express.
The mystery revolves around a case very similar to the Charles Lindbergh baby kidnapping case, which was big in the news in 1932. I did think of the Lindbergh kidnapping as I was reading the book. It brought that to mind, but there were very few references to the news of the day itself from the thirties. And I think that may be one reason the book continues to be popular is the story is not centered on a specific case of the day. It’s a fictional case that’s made up and it’s similar to that. And if you know of the Charles Lindbergh case, it may remind you of it, but it’s not specifically tied to a true crime case.
There were a few references that I found difficult to understand: a thing about a hat box and some of the expressions I didn’t understand. There’s an excellent website that annotates and explains all of these references, and I will link to that in the show notes.
Themes and Tropes
So let’s talk about themes. I think Murder on the Orient Express has some really interesting explorations of themes, and that’s another reason that it has endured, and it’s still interesting to people today. One of the themes is Stereotypes in Appearances. Now, these can be tropes, too. You’ve got the Uncouth American, the Governess, the Princess, the English Military Man. But as you read the story, you find out information about each one of these characters, and they are not what they seem. And so I think that’s why it makes it interesting. And then there’s also an exploration of the justice system and the jury system in a theme of Good Versus Evil. So all of those are kind of unpacked as the story goes on.
Now, let’s talk tropes. So many tropes and so many twists on tropes in Murder on the Orient Express! It’s such fun to explore this. So you’ve got the trope of the Consulting Detective like Sherlock and Poirot. So if you like detective stories, this will be one that will appeal to you. And you’ve got Mystery on a Train trope. Now, I think that this book probably launched that trope. Agatha Christie had written other books with train travel. She’d written Murder on the Blue Train, which also has a train involved in the story. But for some reason, this one just hit that chord with the public. And it has launched many, many books set on trains. And it’s kind of become a little sub-genre of the traditional mystery. You have other tropes like the Uncouth American that I mentioned before, and that is Mrs. Hubbard. But as you get to the end of the story, you find out that there’s a lot more to her than just being annoying. Then you also have the Locked Room trope, but it’s a new twist. And this is what Agatha Christie did instead of having a country home that’s snowed in or cut off by weather. She’s put all of her characters on a snow bound train, so that essentially moves the locked room trope to a new location and gives it a new twist.
You have the trope of the Interviewing the Suspects and Poirot gets the details and lies from each person, he has to sort those out. Now, this was an interesting book to read because the structure of it is really laid out in the table of contents. If you look at the way it’s structured, you can see that there’s the introduction where he meets some of the characters, he gets on the train, the murder happens, and then the majority of the book is just him talking to one character after another and trying to figure out who is telling the truth and who’s lying. So that’s essentially the structure of most classic mystery novels and cozy books, but this one is just really evident when you look at the table of contents.
Another trope, another mystery trope in this one is that Everyone has an Alibi, and so that’s a kind of fun one because obviously someone’s lying and Poirot has to figure out who it is. The next one is tied in with the theme. Christie uses a Mix of Classes and Countries that people are from, which at that time was a little more unusual. When people traveled, the wealthy traveled first class. People who weren’t so wealthy traveled in the other classes. So the way this is set up, you wouldn’t normally have some of these people traveling together. It’s a more democratic look at the world. She’s bringing in all the different classes and cultures together and plays on some of their prejudices that they have towards each other and uses that in the story.
And then you’ve got the trope of the Hidden Identities and Pasts. Each suspect is not who they seem, and they all have a connection to the case, but Poirot has to tease that out. And then at the end, you’ve got the Gathering in the Library trope. But this is the one, but this is another one that Christie gives a twist. Instead of gathering the library, they’re gathering in the dining car.
And then, of course, you also have a Twist Ending, which I think is another trope that Christie just blows out of the water here. She does the biggest twist of all, and I think that’s another reason that this book has endured because it was so surprising and so unusual that I won’t talk about it. So I won’t spoil it. One of the things that has made this book so famous. We’ve already touched on this a little bit.
Why is it so popular? I think partly because it hits on so many tropes and because the story is interwoven with the theme of justice. I think that hits on questions that we still have today about carrying out justice and that’s part of the reason it resonates. And then there’s the ending, another reason its popularity endures. Some people say it breaks all the rules . . . or did it? So you have to think through things. If you read it and you haven’t been spoiled, then you go, “Oh!” when you get to the end, and you may go back and reread it. I think those are the main reasons it’s endured.
Film adaptation
All right, so let’s talk about the 2017 film adaptation. There are many, many changes in these, including changes to the characters. Part of this, I think is that as you move from a book into a visual medium, you have to tell the story a different way. So it’s not surprising that they change things up. The filmmakers seem to feel they needed to add in more action. So instead of the train being stuck in a snowstorm, there’s a derailing. And I suppose that’s more cinematic. And it also allowed them to film certain sequences outdoors, so that may have been a decision for variety in the viewing of the movie. But there’s also a chase scene, and there’s some other dramatic things that happen that weren’t in the book, and they feel a little contrived to me. When I watched the movie, I was like, “Hmm. That’s not really what I signed up for,” but it’s probably because I’d read the book.
I think the biggest change they made was to Poirot. They try to give him a backstory, which he doesn’t really need. He’s a flat arc character. I talk about this in my How to Write a Series book. There are certain characters that they don’t really have a backstory. They don’t have an arc. They come in, they change the characters around them, and the characters around them change. Poirot changes the equation of the story just by being in the story. So that to me–it didn’t ring true to the Poirot books. We find out very little about Poirot and his history throughout the books, and there’s a reason for that. There’s a reason that certain characters like James Bond and Mary Poppins come in, they influence the story world, and then they leave.
They’re perfect for an episodic series because they come in, do their thing, and then they leave. And then they can come in again and do their thing and leave. So it works well for an episodic series. And apparently there are plans to make several new Poirot film adaptations. So that would be perfect. But there is a drive now for everyone to have a story and a backstory. I think that’s just one of the changes that they made because they felt that modern viewers would want that. And I didn’t feel that that worked that well in the movie. But I did enjoy seeing the train, the characters, and the story brought to life in a modern adaptation. I enjoyed that. I think that if you enjoy classic mysteries and you’ve read Murder on the Orient Express, you probably will find some of the changes interesting or annoying. I would actually recommend you read the book before you watch the movie, if you haven’t done that. And then if you’re looking for just a great mystery movie, a film I’d watch is Knives Out. I’d recommend that.
Quote
Let’s end with a quote. This is from the book, and it’s Poirot saying, “The impossible could not have happened. Therefore, the impossible must be possible in spite of the appearances.”
That is a quick overview of Murder on the Orient Express. I hope you enjoyed looking at the themes and tropes. I’ll post all the links that I mentioned in the show notes. And I’d love to know what you thought about Murder on the Orient Express. Did you figure it out? Have you seen the movie? Did you think that the movie was better or worse, a good adaptation or not? And also, did you think Christie played fair, or did she go too far with her solution to the crime?
Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the podcast and that it let you revisit a favorite book, or perhaps helped you to discover a new author to try. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast, tell a fellow mystery reader. Thank you!
Happy reading, and I’ll talk to you next time.
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