"Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie

“Murder On the Orient Express” was an incredibly unique experience because I cannot recall whether I’ve read it before or not. Regardless of how I was familiar with the story, the fact is that I knew how the story ended before this read-through. I’m left with a question that I find really interesting: is this story better or worse if experienced for the first time while knowing how it ends? It’s not something that I’ve come up with a solid answer to, despite taking quite a while to think it over. It is also unfortunately not realistic to test; I cannot exactly forget everything and read it again. If I were to hazard a guess, I had not read the book before, but experienced either an adaptation or ‘themed recreation’ of the story in an audio drama when I was younger.

Speculation aside, the important part of the aforementioned question is why I felt compelled to ask it. It really comes down to the fact of how much I enjoyed watching relevant details trickle through, and saw Poirot start piecing everything together. I’m inclined to say — just from how much I enjoyed reading the book — that I had a better experience knowing the solution than if I had been trying to piece it together myself from the start. This is so interesting because I have a feeling I’m in the minority on that opinion. I’ve never cared that much about spoilers — and had many of my favorite pieces of media spoiled before I consumed them — although conceptually I understand why they spark conflict. This train (ha) of thought is something I’d like to look back at some other time because the question of what makes media worth experiencing is a really interesting one.

I should also make a quick note that I am not much of a reader of mystery novels, so I’m speaking as an outsider to the genre. My experience only runs as deep as “And Then There Were None” and “Murder on the Orient Express.”

It is also worth mentioning that “Murder on the Orient Express” is actually the tenth novel of the series. I did not find it to be a barrier to entry: outside of the opening segment showing him leaving the location where (I assume) the previous book took place, anything that needs to be inferred about Poirot’s character can be done from his own statements and the ways in which his compatriots treat him. It’s a bit of an understatement to call this a classic — with how many references and riffs off it there have been over the last ninety years — and I do think it has held up quite well. My personal cutoff for where I start finding books harrowing is around the 1920s, so this is well within my own personal ‘safe’ range. I suppose my final conclusion and overall thoughts can be summarized as: whether you’ve seen the movie(s), experienced it some other way, or just have been told how the story ends, it’s well worth the read regardless.