Book that Blew My Mind

I read Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express" when I was an impressionable 16-year-old teenager - and it has been one of my favourite books ever since. At the risk of giving too much away, suffice it to say that the detective, Hercule Poirot, proposed not one, but TWO solutions at the end of his sleuthing. I was completely stunned and thrilled as Agatha Christie injected something ambitiously novel into this novel - and pulled it off!

It also got me hooked on the idea of internationalisation. The characters included "an Italian chauffeur, and English governess, a Swedish nurse, a French lady's maid and so on" (pg 253). Reading about their idiosyncrasies made me long to land myself in such a situation where I could interact with people of diverse nationalities and cultures. (I eventually did, since I joined the Japan Exchange Teaching Program but there's another story for another day. 😁)

Now that the movie version of "Murder on the Orient Express" (incidentally featuring a star-studded cast of Johnny Depp! Michelle Pfeiffer! Penelope Cruz!) is slated to be released this November, it's high time I revisit this old favourite. Except that I searched high and low for my personal copy at my house - to no avail 😅😢. So I made visiting the public library a priority and eventually found this at the 3rd library I visited! This is how much I endorse this book: regardless of whether you like or hate it, you won't regret reading it. And what better time to read "Murder on the Orient Express" but now so that you can engross yourself in the age-old conundrum - "Which is better, the book or the movie?”