The Mystery of the Blue Train
1928
- crimes against
- detective and mystery stories
- divorce
- divorce in fiction
- fiction
- hercule poirot (fictitious character)
- jewelry theft
- jewelry theft in fiction
- married women
- married women in fiction
The story
Bound for the Riviera, detective Hercule Poirot has boarded Le Train Bleu, an elegant, leisurely means of travel, free of intrigue. Then he meets Ruth Kettering. The American heiress bailing out of a doomed marriage is en route to reconcile with her former lover. But by morning, her private affairs are made public when she is found murdered in her luxury compartment. The rumour of a strange man loitering in the victim's shadow is all Poirot has to go on. Until Mrs. Kettering's secret life begins to unfold...
What it’s like
Clipped, period-bound prose with the brisk elegance of 1920s travel writing: the Riviera express rendered as a world of linen, dining-car silver, lamplit corridors and the rhythmic clatter of wheels through the night. The mood is brightly genteel at first, all wry social observation and sunny southern anticipation, then tightens into a closed-room unease once the train is shut in darkness and a body turns up behind a locked door. Chapters move quickly, with short scenes, interrogations in cramped compartments, and the methodical pleasure of a puzzle laid out piece by piece. Intensity is low: one violent death, off the page, with no gore and no graphic detail, though its aftermath carries some cold dread. Characters are sketched with sharp, sometimes sardonic strokes; the emotional register stays cool and observational rather than tender. Suited to a long train journey or a late-evening read with a cup of tea, and to readers who enjoy a locked-compartment puzzle, golden-age snobbery and a dry, witty narrator rather than anything warm or cosy.
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