More Poirot brilliance!!! It is his hobby to know things, and good thing for the world that he has time to indulge it as he says on page 128. You must tell him the truth though, or he can do nothing. Oh we were born too late for the Blue Train and we are so sad, but fabulously glad to read about it through Agatha Christie! This is her sixth book and we liked it the best so far.
Previously on Whom You Know, Agatha Christie has earned accolades:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
Writing this during personal challenges, Christie is even more impressive considering them because the story is simply excellent. It is exactly what you need for a rainy day in Manhattan or even a sunny one: the adventure is stimulating and will add pizazz to your quiet Covid life (and there's even a MASK wearing Marquis)! Can you imagine hopping on a luxury train in London and having it take you to the South of France?!?! Sign us up. And there are jewels to boot.
For all the dog lovers out there we like that she dedicated it to her help and her dog (OFD=Order of Faithful Dogs not to be confused with Order of Rats.) People are not always what they seem, and so she appropriately dedicated this and took that idea and applied it to this entire book.
Note The Blue Train comes before The Orient Express in the order of Agatha Christie's writing although it seems in reality the Orient Express was first in real life. Obviously if you have read The Orient Express you are going to love this one! We are working up to that one and based on what we know now we think we will love it.
The details are many and the characters are sublime. If you are like us you may be reading it a second time to capture every essence of excellence that you might have missed because Christie writes so well and omits what makes sense to produce the best mystery so cleverly. When you go back you'll see inbetween the lines what might not be straightforward and it is just as exciting the second time! The plot unfolding is superlative and evidences why Christie is the novelists of all novelists and only is outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare.
For those that are keeping track of characters, we are assuming Emma and Jane Harfield (p. 46 and p. 54) are one and the same.
Also fantastic is the vocabulary you'll learn in both English and French.
Cheese paring = Stingy
Vis-a-vis = Face to face
Roman Policier = Detective story
Sobriquet = Nickname
There's an American millionaire who is a darling Dad and the apple of his eye and his spitting image is his daughter Ruth who lives in lovely Mairfair: Curzon Street. The Blue Train is Ruth's tale-her trip. Both human emotion and motivation are central to the storyline in this great work, and if you are a real New Yorker you know that Bloomingdale's used to have a restaurant called The Blue Train on its roof. We regret that we never made it especially now!
Old loves, new loves, lost loves and secret loves all contribute to this amazing plot that unwinds as another character, Katherine, comes into a fortune and is living this high life for the first time. She meets both Ruth and Poirot (his green eyes meet some grey ones!), separately, in this legendary Choo Choo. "The palm trees, the deep blue of the sea, the bright yellow mimosa came with all the charm of novelty to the woman who for fourteen years had only known the drab winters of England." (p.85) Katherine's cousin Lenox is also a real hoot and one smart cookie.
You should block out time to read this cover to cover: it's that amazing. Trust the train.
The Blue Train has Earned Our Highest Recommendation in all its timeless glory.
Bravo Agatha Christie!!!
Born in Torquay in 1890, Agatha Christie became, and remains, the best-selling novelist of all time.
She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world’s longest-running play – The Mousetrap. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation.
