At the end of Murder in Mesopotamia, the narrator reveals that Poirot got caught up in a murder on the famous train on the way home, and a character in Appointment with Death also is aware of some of the secrets behind the Orient Express crime.ĥ. Poirot obliquely reveals the solution to the story in Cards on the Table when he shows a young woman the murder weapon from that crime (so don’t read Cards on the Table before you read Murder on the Orient Express!). Christie mentioned Murder on the Orient Express in other books. because the publishers thought that title would reach a better audience than the original British title of Stamboul Train. This was done so the book would not be mistaken for the Graham Green novel Orient Express, which received that title in the U.S. When the novel was first published in the United States, it was re-titled Murder on the Calais Coach. Many details from the Armstrong case mirror the real-life crime, including a wrongly accused servant killing herself, though Charles and his wife Anne lived for decades after the kidnapping. Charles Lindbergh rose to fame by flying across the Atlantic Ocean, but he was in the headlines for a much more terrible reason some years later when his young son was kidnapped and later found murdered. The Daisy Armstrong case was inspired by a real-life crime. Also, Christie endured delays caused by flooding wiping out train tracks during other travels, and there was a real-life case where the Orient Express was caught in a snowdrift, though Christie was not aboard the train at that time.Ģ. In 1931, Christie travelled home from the Middle East on the Orient Express, Christie noted all of the different nationalities of her fellow passengers, and some of them became prototypes of Murder on the Orient Express characters. Christie got her inspiration from her own travels. Agatha Christie expert Chris Chan reveals some lesser-known facts about one of Christie's most famous works.ġ.

Murder on the calais coach