NEW DETECTIVE STORY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21716, 3 February 1934, Page 8 (Supplement)

NEW DETECTIVE STORY

HERCULE POIROT AGAIN An excellent detective story can always be relied upon from the pen of Mrs. Agatha Christie, and her latest publication, " Murder on the Orient Express," the book of the month chosen by the Crime Club, Limited, comes well up to the standard of her previous works. The French detective, Hercule Poirot, user of the " little grey cells," again makes his appearance and is as delightful as ever with his quaint conceits and brave, if mistaken, attempts to make use of English idioms. The story deals with the murder of an American passenger on the famous Orient Express, and Hercule Poirot, who is also a passenger, undertakes to solve the mystery. The train is snowbound in a desolate spot somewhere in the Balkans when the murder is discovered, so that the mystery has to be solved without the usual amenities of civilisation., It is impossible, for instance, to establish tho bona fides of any of the passengers travelling in the carriage in which the murder has been committed, and in these unusual and rather difficult circumstances M. Poirot " sits back and thinks," with excellent results The interest of the story is well sustained from the first to the last page, and, as can always be expected in Mrs. Christie's novels, tho denouement is as clever as at is unexpected. " Murder on the Orient Express," by Agatha Christie. (Collins.)