• Author: Agatha Christie
• Series: Hercule Poirot #10
• Genre: Murder Mystery
• No. of pages: 274
• Dates read: 07.12.2021 – 11.12.2021
• Star Rating: 3 stars

Plot: Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year, but by the morning it is one passenger fewer. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Isolated and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must identify the murderer—in case he or she decides to strike again. 

Well, here we are! The last review of 2021! What a year it has been. As I write this post I have about 3 more books left in my TBR before I move onto my 2022 reads! But I knew I wanted to sneak one last Poirot novel in before the year finally closes for good.

Now, I have complicated thoughts on this book. Going into this novel I knew the ending. I knew who the murderer was, why they did it and how they did it. I had seen numerous film/tv adaptations of this novel. Normally, like with my experience with Peril at End House, I don’t mind knowing these things as I always find some enjoyment in the novel despite being spoiled. This book however was not enjoyable.

Everything in this novel, in my opinion, hinges on you not knowing the ending. There is no real re-readability with this novel like there are with some of her other books, i.e. Peril at End House. The entirety of this novel is more or less characters just sitting at a table dumping information on to the reader. Now I am not going to say that this isn’t an impactful book in it’s genre or that the ending is bad. The story is absolutely incredible but you can only enjoy it that one time and that is what happened to me.

I found this read-through to be pretty boring. I wasn’t invested at all in the investigation, the characters or Poirot himself even. I felt the writing was pretty dull and it didn’t capture my attention. And I put this completely down to the fact that I knew the ending. Sitting down and reading info dumps from a variety of characters was just not interesting to me personally and even if you aren’t a fan of this kind of writing it’s completely worth it at the end when you get that killer ending but it just doesn’t feel the same when you know how it ends.

I am so sad this story fell flat to me as I was looking forward to it for ages. Apologies that this is a short and negative review but I don’t have any thoughts other than that I’m afraid.

TLDR: I knew the ending so the book was underwhelming because of that!

The next set of posts from now until about halfway through January will now be End of the Year/Beginning of the Year posts which are my favourite to write so please stay tuned!