Murder on the Orient Express

First published in 1934, this detective novel places Hercule Poirot on the Istanbul-Calais coach of the Orient Express when a snowdrift stops the train in Yugoslavia. In a nearby compartment the American Samuel Ratchett is found stabbed. The passengers form a closed list: a widow, a missionary, a princess's companion, an Italian, an English colonel, a Swedish nurse, and others whose stories Poirot takes down in the dining car. The murder belongs to an older American kidnapping case that several of them seem to remember. The book is a sealed-train puzzle whose solution depends on the composition of the passenger list.

Bound in blue blocked buckram.