The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

Writer’s eighth novel is far from ‘disappointing’

The cover of the 2015 edition
published by HarperCollins

Six years before Agatha Christie’s famous novel, Murder on the Orient Express, was published, the Queen of Crime wrote another Hercule Poirot mystery where a murder is committed on a train.

Unfortunately for the killer, Hercule Poirot happens to be on the train at the time, travelling from England to the French Riviera on the famous ‘train bleu.’

The Mystery of the Blue Train, which was published in 1928, is reputed to have been Christie’s least favourite story. Nevertheless, the book received a positive reaction from the Times Literary Supplement at the time, who stated that ‘the reader would ‘not be disappointed.’  The distinguished Belgian detective uses psychological reasoning to dispute the guilt of the original suspect arrested by the police and, in the words of the review, ‘lands his fish to the surprise of everyone.’

The murder victim is Ruth Kettering, an unhappily married American heiress, who is travelling to France to meet her lover. On the train, she meets Katherine Grey, who for the last ten years has been a companion to an old lady living in the village of St Mary Mead. The old lady had just died and left her a substantial inheritance and Katherine is enjoying her first chance to travel abroad.

The two women have a conversation over lunch and Ruth invites Katherine back to her compartment, where she confides in her that she has misgivings about what she is about to do and doesn’t feel happy about having deceived her own father about her trip.

Christie's detective Hercule Poirot, as
famously portrayed by David Suchet

Katherine does not see Ruth again and that evening finds herself seated opposite Hercule Poirot for dinner. The next morning, Katherine discovers that Ruth has been found dead in her compartment, having been strangled during the night.

It transpires that a famous ruby, ‘Heart of Fire,’ that has recently been given to Ruth by her wealthy father, is now missing. Later, Poirot is persuaded by Ruth’s father to take on the case and find his daughter’s murderer for him. The little Belgian detective doubts that the French police have arrested the right person and, helped by Katherine, uncovers the truth.

The Mystery of the Blue Train was priced at seven shillings and sixpence when it first went on sale in the UK.

The novel contained the first ever mention of the fictional village of St Mary Mead, which was to be the home of another of Agatha Christie’s detective, Miss Marple.

Agatha Christie is reputed to have found writing the book an ordeal, as the story did not come easily to her. At that time, she was staying in the Canary Islands while recovering from the death of her mother, her husband’s infidelity, and her own mental breakdown. In her autobiography, she stated that she had always hated the novel.

I particularly enjoyed the parts of the story set in the south of France and found the plot to be ingenious. If, like me, you are a Christie fan, you will find it well worth reading.

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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

An award winning masterpiece by the Queen of Crime

The latest HarperCollins reprint
of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Agatha Christies’s sixth novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was voted ‘the best crime novel ever’ by the British Crime Writers’ Association in 2013.

Published in 1926, the book remains Agatha’s best known and most controversial novel because of its ingenious final twist, which had a significant impact on the detective fiction genre and has been imitated by many other writers since.

Agatha, who died on 12 January, 1976 - 47 years ago today - has become famous for being the supreme exponent of the old-fashioned English crime novel. Her skill in constructing complex and puzzling plots and her ability to deceive readers until the very last page, or paragraph, are unequalled.

But this third Poirot novel, narrated by the local physician, Doctor Sheppard, in the absence of Captain Hastings, who has gone to start a new life in the Argentine, is considered by many readers and critics to be her masterpiece.

Wealthy businessman turned country squire Roger Ackroyd lives in a charming English country village, where dark secrets and dangerous emotions lurk beneath the apparently calm surface.

When Ackroyd is murdered, stabbed in the neck while sitting in his study after a dinner party at his home, there are, as usual, plenty of suspects.  

Poirot, who has just come to live in the village, after retiring to grow marrows, lives next door to Dr Sheppard. He is asked by a member of Ackroyd’s family to investigate the murder because they are worried the police will get it wrong. Suspicion has fallen on Ackroyd’s stepson, Ralph, who is a popular young man locally.

Agatha Christie died 47 years
ago today at the age of 85

After many twists and turns, Poirot gathers all the suspects together in his sitting room after dinner one night and reveals the extraordinary and unexpected identity of the killer.

According to The Home of Agatha Christie, the author’s own website, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was ‘the book that changed Agatha Christie’s career’. It was the first of her novels to be published by William Collins, which later became part of HarperCollins, who remain Agatha’s publishers today and attracted enormous attention in the media at the time.

Following her death, Agatha Christie's body was buried four days later after a service at St Mary’s Church in the village of Cholsey in Oxfordshire.

The inscription on her tombstone is a quotation from Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queen:

‘Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,

Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.’

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is available from or

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The Murder on the Links

Second Poirot novel sees the detective triumph over his Parisian rival

Agatha Christie's second Poirot novel takes her
Belgian detective to the coast of northern France

An urgent appeal for help from a mysterious millionaire brings detective Hercule Poirot to France. But he finds he is too late. He is told on arrival that his client has been brutally stabbed to death. The victim has been left in an open grave on the golf links near his villa, where a new bunker was in the process of being dug

The Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie’s third detective novel, was published in March 1923 in the US and in May the same year in the UK, where it was put on sale for seven shillings and sixpence.

It was the second novel to feature Poirot, the little Belgian detective, and his sidekick, Captain Arthur Hastings. They had formed a somewhat unequal sleuthing partnership in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha’s debut crime novel.

In his second case, Poirot finds himself up against the illustrious Monsieur Giraud, a detective from the Paris Sûretè. Giraud resents Poirot’s involvement in the investigation and will not listen to the experienced Belgian detective’s opinions.

But Poirot knows the case is not all that it seems and looks carefully into the strange circumstances surrounding the murder. He discovers that the motive for the murder is connected to a crime committed more than 20 years before.

Poirot uses his understanding of human nature to help him solve the crime, citing a serial wife killer who used the same method each time, believing that what had once succeeded would succeed again. He says that eventually the killer paid the penalty for his lack of originality!

The latest reprint of The 
Murder on the Links

Reviews when the book was first published compared Agatha and Poirot favourably with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes mysteries. One reviewer said Poirot was ‘a pleasant contrast to most of his lurid competitors’ and that they suspected he had ‘a touch of satire in him.’

Having embarked on the mammoth task of reading all Agatha’s 76 detective novels in chronological order, I recently read The Murder on the Links for the second time. It was many years after I had read it for the first time and I expected the novel to seem dated and far simpler than I actually found it to be. I was amazed at how complicated the plot was and how skilfully Agatha encourages the reader to believe one thing, whereas the opposite is in fact the case.

Agatha Christie’s biographer, Laura Thompson, has said of The Murder on the Links: ‘It is very French, not just in setting but in tone, which reeks of Gaston Leroux.’ Agatha had read and been influenced by Leroux’s 1907 novel, The Mystery of the Yellow Room, one of the most celebrated locked room mysteries.

Laura also notes that the book is notable for a subplot in which Hastings falls in love, allowing the author to pack him off to wedded bliss in 'the Argentine', a development that was apparently greatly desired by Agatha.

To the relief of Hastings fans, the author did bring him back from 'the Argentine' from time to time to assist Poirot with his future cases.

The Murder on the Links sees Poirot triumph over his arrogant sleuthing rival, Monsieur Giraud, and gives us a good idea of why the Belgian detective was always to succeed in finding out whodunnit for the next 50 years. I think the novel is well worth reading, or even rereading.

(Picture of French resort by Peter H via Pixabay)

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