Kavi Reads

The Mystery of the Blue Train is an Agatha Christie detective fiction novel featuring her most famous character, Hercule Poirot. After the slightly more bizarre series of events in The Big Four, it was nice to go back to a more normal Poirot mystery, where he works on solving a good-old murder of a rich heiress with her priceless jewels missing. And while the premise sounds like the most typical detective story ever, the characters involved add a lot more complication and depth to the story, making it a quite enjoyable ride, as Poirot carries on his investigation.

No Spoilers

Aboard the French luxury express known as the Blue Train, a girl named Katherine Grey makes some new friends. A girl named Ruth Kettering, an American heiress leaving her unhappy marriage to meet her lover opens her heart our to Katherine, finding comfort in the stranger. And later, during dinner, an interesting character amuses Katherine with his conversation as she comments on how events that happen in her roman policier rarely happen in real life, to which the man responds with his prediction that one can never know what life brings and they might end up in a roman policier themselves. Surely enough, the next morning, Ruth Kettering is found dead, and Katherine’s dinner companion reveals himself to be Hercule Poirot and offers his services to the police.

Given, as I said above, the story is so typical, the beauty of this Poirot mystery is in the characters. And this goes beyond Poirot. The prime suspects in the story are Ruth’s current husband, Derek, who was to gain millions from Ruth’s inheritance money, and Ruth’s lover, the Comte de la Roche (whatever that means), who knew about the precious rubies Ruth was carrying. Each character was given a solid background and characterization in proportion with the amount of time we spent with them. Particularly, we learn a lot about Katherine Grey and Derek Kettering as they become central to the story. Christie avoids the mystery turning into a one-dimensional story of a greedy man marrying an innocent little rich girl and killing her for her money by introducing ideas such as Ruth being equally responsible for the failed marriage and Derek might not be as villainous as he may have initially appeared.

Overall, this is an excellent Poirot mystery and while I was a tad disappointed with the ending, I thoroughly enjoyed the book anyway. Poirot’s methods and plans were amazing to see as he produces the correct villain with his usual panache showing precisely how each event took place that led to the unfortunate murder.

Spoilers Ahead

I wanted to add this section just to talk about what I found disappointing about the ending. Typically, when reading a mystery, especially one such as this, where each character is given the proper attention, it is expected that someone we have been following for so long would end up as the murderer. It might be the person we least expect, but in the end, the reveal of the murderer should generate certain emotions in the reader. However, when the murderer ends up being a complete stranger, the whole thing loses that emotional element. As we got closer to the end of The Mystery of the Blue Train, we started getting introduced to more and more minor characters, and in the end, the murderer ended up being a famous jewel thief, known as The Marquis, who was simply after the ruby. And while it was Major Knighton, who was revealed to be the Marquis, the lack of passion in the motive, was my only objection with an otherwise perfect book.