Paper trails
CHAPTER 1 In which our heroine boards a 1930s steam train and gives chase to Hercule Poirot
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS is the story of a journey to nowhere. Its hero Hercule Poirot boards at Istanbul and is destined for London, but the train is soon at a standstill, stuck in a snowdrift near Vinkovci, a station then in Yugoslavia. Agatha Christie is indifferent to the scenery along one of the most famous rail routes in the world, and instead looks inwards to the mannered environment of a ’30s first-class sleeper carriage.