Key themes
- Justice versus the law
- The reliability of testimony
- The mystery as moral puzzle
About this book
Hercule Poirot boards the Orient Express snowbound in Yugoslavia and wakes to find a fellow passenger has been murdered. Everyone on the train is a suspect. Christie's most famous novel turns the conventions of the whodunit inside out with a solution that raises genuine moral questions about justice and collective vengeance.
Published in 1934, Murder on the Orient Express was written after Christie herself was delayed on the famous train for several days due to snowdrifts.
Discussion questions
- The novel's famous solution upends our assumptions about what a detective story is for. Without spoiling it here: once you know the ending, how do you re-read what came before?
- Poirot's final choice — to withhold information from the authorities — is a significant moral decision. Do you agree with what he does, and what does it say about his view of justice?
- Every passenger has something to hide. Is Christie making a point about the universality of guilt, or simply creating a mechanism for the plot?
- The solution depends on the perpetrators having acted in concert, with perfect coordination and mutual trust. Is this plausible — and does the novel want you to find it touching or disturbing?
- Christie wrote dozens of detective novels but this is among the most famous. What do you think makes it endure beyond the genre — is it the puzzle, the setting, the moral question, or Poirot?
Get the book
Links open an Amazon search. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Read together or read next
Books that make a good pairing or natural follow-up.
This is a set text
Murder on the Orient Express appears on the following curriculum reading lists.
Reading it with your group?
Get Murder on the Orient Express
As an Amazon Associate and Bookshop.org affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases.