Murder on the Orient Express

I will begin this review with a bit of a caveat: I am not normally a mystery reader. I just can't usually keep all of the names straight, let alone the facts that each character keeps spouting and trying to think about who may have either fudged their story to make them look good, or downright lied to cover up the murder. I decided to change that be beginning with some classic mysteries and this was my start.

This novel was a good thing to listen to while I did chores around the house, as the main character, Detective Hercule Poirot was an interesting man to read about for the brief time we got to know him before the crime occurred. His meditation to think about the crime and who committed the murder was something that surprised me, as it seemed so uncommon to see today. Another advantage for me was the format of the mystery was how the possible killers were all trapped together in one place. Perhaps I have been watching too much Law and Order, but I am so used to watching mysteries where one person gives up one guy, who gives up another, and then the next and so on, so this made for a nice change. An aspect that I enjoyed about this novel was that you could read this book as a standalone without having read any other's in the series.

There are a few negatives for me. One was that there was such a lack of description in this book. Having a murder on the Orient Express should have made for a fascinating setting, but it is only used for the barest of details as they relate to the murder and little more. Then there was how the narrator switched from French to English in the audiobook production. This was something was unusual for me, and so I had to adjust to, and it bothered me more than I think it should have, given the narrator.

Still, I thought that this novel was good, and I did not expect the ending, though I will admit that this probably had more to do with my inexperience with mysteries than the author's talents, so you be the judge. In either case, I give this book a three out of five.