Below is the second internal page of the Spring 1934 Crime Club magazine
We have recreated it as a webpage rather than an huge scanned image
We have hyperlinked authors for those seeking further specific information
For general information and an overview see Collins Crime Club
| WE start the New Year with a new Poirot
story, and when we say it is the best Poirot that Agatha Christie has
yet written and the best detective story we have read for years, we are
making a perfectly sane and well-considered statement. One can often
judge the merits of a detective story by the amount of padding which the
author thinks it necessary to insert. Let us say at once that there is
not a scrap of padding from the first page of this book to the last ; it
is a mass of figures and facts so intriguing that no reader will be able
to resist making his own attempt to forestall Poirot in solving the
problem. It all happens on the famous Orient Express running from Istanbul right across Europe to Calais. Poirot takes the stage on the very first page. He is travelling back from the East where he has been helping the French Government to clear up a mystery of big political importance. On his journey back to London the murder is committed in the sleeping- |
car in which he is travelling. There happens to be
travelling in the same carriage a director of the Wagons Lits—a friend
of Poirot's of long standing, who immediately asks Poirot to undertake
the investigation of the case on the company's behalf. The murderer,
when planning the crime, had failed to take Nature into account. The
Orient Express runs into heavy snowdrifts and gets completely blocked up
so that escape for the murderer is out of the question. He or she must
be on the train. An examination of the body reveals only conflicting
evidence—there are, if anything, too many clues I Then comes the
examination of every passenger on the coach, one by one, and each
occupying a chapter. These examinations by Poirot are extraordinarily
well done and provide easily the best feature of the book. The whole
thing is a question of time. For hours on end Poirot cross-examines his
fellow-passengers, sifts and compares the evidence, but every tag end is
so brilliantly accounted for by the author that at times it looks as if
the redoubtable Poirot himself |
 |
RE-ENROL NOW ! Fill up the Enclosed Postcard
Go to page 3