Mysteries are a special kind of journey. One picks them up knowing that something bad—probably fatal—will happen to one or more of the characters. Yet most readers don’t tune in for those details. Instead, we read them to indulge in—and then when in the hands of a master, admire—the circuitous journey to get to the answer.

The satisfaction in reading murder mysteries comes from a well-crafted journey and, perhaps most of all, the solutions. Having a believable answer is more important than the type of murder or who solves it. A column by Amanda Taub in the New York Times, which I referenced recently here and here, described the appeal perfectly. “The heart of this genre is not the murders that precipitate the plot,” wrote Taub, “but the process by which they are solved—and, above all, the promise that they will be.”

No one was better at delivering on this promise than Agatha Christie, even when she reportedly hated getting there.

The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) by Agatha Christie finds famed detective Hercule Poirot, now semi-retired, on the luxurious Blue Train running from London to the Riviera. Another passenger, the pampered millionaire’s daughter Ruth Kettering, is murdered en route and her expensive jewels are missing. Kettering is one half of an unhappy couple, each having an affair and each on the train, although they are unaware of that fact upon departure. A cast of eccentric characters are also along for the ride including an international jewel thief; a scoundrel who is attractive to women; a venerable dealer in unique antiques; Ruth’s father, a hard-wired American businessman; his resourceful male secretary; Ruth’s maid who has only taken up the job two months before the fateful train ride; an exotic dancer; and a thoughtful and grey-eyed woman who has a new fortune, thanks to the generosity of the elderly spinster she has faithfully served over the years.

The story was derived from the 1923 Poirot short story The Plymouth Express. Christie suggested that the novel did not come easily to her, but the readers and critics of the time loved it. While perhaps not among her best, The Mystery of the Blue Train was not a disappointment in Christie’s original written form. What I did object to is the complete reworking of the story for the television adaptation in 2006 with David Suchet as Poirot. After finishing the book, I sat down and watched the two-hour version, reset in the late 1930s to match the rest of the Poirot TV series. The adaption by Guy Andrews lost much of the nuance and subtlety of Christie’s original, dropped storylines that were important elements from the book, and added a much too dramatic ending. Katherine Grey, the grey-eyed companion and clearly a favorite of Poirot in Christie’s telling, is rewritten into a cardboard figure for the television series, which also features a large and overbearing Elliott Gould as Rufus Van Aldin, the American millionaire and Ruth’s father.

Crafting a journey that one wants to follow takes time and talent. As Poirot says to Katherine Grey and her cousin’s daughter, Lenox Tamplin, late in the novel, things take their course and cannot be hurried. The journey and a believable solution require time and craft. While perhaps not in the top tier of Christie novels, The Mystery of the Blue Train is nonetheless worth the ride.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo by Elimende Inagella on Unsplash