Christie, Agatha - Murder on the Orient Express

"Murder on the Orient Express" is a novel written by the British author Agatha Christie. The novel was published in 1934.

The Murder of Ratchett

The protagonist is the investigator Hercule Poirot, who travels on the famous Orient Express. Ratchett, an American gentleman from Istanbul and headed to London, is killed in the train.

The murder happens while the train is stuck in the snow so Poirot deduces that the killer is on the train.
On the train there are numerous characters, very different from each other.

But later, a slip of paper, found in the victim's compartment, indicates that Mr. Ratchett was the infamous bandit Cassetti, who had kidnapped a little girl demanding a ransom of $ 3 million.

The Truth Revealed

After analyzing the evidence we find out that the victim's real name is Cassetti, the organizer of the kidnapping of little Daisy Armstrong that ends with the death of 5 people. All passengers are interrogated but nothing is discovered. Later, the genius mind of Poirot manages to connect everything that happened: all 12 passengers on the train were linked to the Armstrong family, so each of them launched a dagger stroke to the victim so they explain the very different wounds. In the end it will be decided to give the police a different solution: that a stranger entered the train, stabbed Ratchett and then escaped during the night.

Poirot's Theories

At the end of the book brings together all the passengers in the restaurant wagon where he exposes two theories: the first in which he says that the killer was an unknown person getting on the train to take revenge on Ratchett, in the second he says that the killers were all present in the hall and that they had killed Mr. Ratchett for revenge.