Murder on the Orient Express...

Hercule Poirot...that French-accented English speaking Belgian detective...Agatha Christie...that wonderful weaver of mystery yarn....aah...the joy of reading the books.

Spoiler alert: Note, if you have not yet read the book "Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie" or watched the movie of same name starring Albert Finney as Poirot, I suggest you get off this posting immediately....don't tell me later that I didn't warn you.

Perhaps one of the finest mystery/crime detective novels ever written, this is a story of kidnapping for ransom, murder, and an eventually elaborate and protracted plot for revenge.

Set aboard the surreal-sounding "Orient Express", that trans-European train of luxury and wealth, it is begins rather simply with Monsieur Poirot on his way back to London to tend to a pending case...little does he realize that he is going to be close in hand as a horrific murder is perpetrated on one of the travelers, just as the train is held up by a heavy wall of drifting snow in 'Jugo Slavia' (emphasis mine).

That begins the story of Poirot's genius as he uses his wiliness and cleverness, and unabashedly come to the rather astounding conclusion (well, when I read the book the first time, and watched the movie the first time, it was astounding in the scope and depth of the plot and the scheming and planning that went into making all the things fall into place at the same time and place....a train in a desolate and freezing rural area of Jugoslavia.) as he (Poirot, of course) puts to use the little gray cells in his brain and lies down in his chair and solves the murder.

Without divulging too much, it has to be said though that the case of a certain Daisy Armstrong and her family is centerpiece to the whole case.

It is indeed appreciable that Agatha Christie even conjured up this mystery, and it is that much more appreciable that she came up with a detective who would, how shall we say....crack the case open just by using the gray matter. And her characterization of the people involved in the case....ah...sheer genius.

As an aside..it has been said that it takes a crook to nab a crook....and Poirot gets to the bottom of the murder mystery by just analyzing clues at the scene of crime and with a few interviews. So does that make Poirot a good criminal mastermind? And what of Agatha Christie? Yes, she is the author, but she did conjure up the plot in the first place and then wrote a book that was essentially how to solve it...Perhaps, she is a great criminal mastermind herself :P