It was boring.
This might stun some people. How could I say this about the great Agatha Christie, best selling author of all time? Quite easily, as it happens.
The book lacked a lot. There was no real excitement. There was no charm, no warmth. No energy.
Christie actually considered this to be one of her worst books.
It probably all has something to do with the fact that it was written around the drama that was the breakdown of her marriage, her disappearance and subsequent seclusion and divorce. That's the only reason it sold so well on it's initial release. Because people were intrigued, obsessed, by what had happened. I think, from what I remember was said in a program about her life, she started this book before she disappeared and, afterwards, when she was divorced and had custody of her daughter, she simply had to get the book finished. It seems that she had no interest. She hated it. The title is rather uninspired.
It's a Poirot mystery but I felt that Poirot didn't have much of a part in the whole thing. To be quite honest, I was bored by the plot and it became a case of I didn't really take in much that was happening.
There was infidelity, betrayal. Possibly reflective of how Agatha Christie was feeling at the time. It's a rather strange circumstance of who was on the train, what they did, when, why. I worked out a couple of things rather quickly.
It felt like Poirot was just around. The books were far better when Hastings was narrating as he added more warmth and looked up to Poirot. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was something rather different, narrated by another character who found Poirot baffling. But that added a warmer element because you're seeing the detective in a slightly comical light, even though we know he's a genius. Here, Poirot seemed almost a background character.
There isn't really a lot to say. There's a married couple who seem to only have been together for material reasons. There's a murder on the blue train. A robbery. There are the witnesses and there's always someone supposedly in love with someone else. It follows the typically high class lifestyle that Christie was so often writing about.
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