Which Agatha Christie novel features a murder on the Orient Express?

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The Agatha Christie novel featuring a murder on the Orient Express is Murder on the Orient Express.

Published in 1934, the novel follows Hercule Poirot during a train journey from Istanbul toward London. Heavy snowfall stops the train in Yugoslavia, and the discovery of a murdered passenger turns the stranded passengers into a closed circle of suspects. With no easy way for anyone to leave, Poirot must reconstruct the crime from conflicting statements, motives, and carefully planted clues.

The story was influenced by Christie's own travels on the Orient Express and by a real incident in which snow halted the train near Çerkezköy, Turkey. The plot also draws on the 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's son, although Christie transformed those elements into fiction.

The novel was published in the United Kingdom under its familiar title. Its American edition originally used the title Murder in the Calais Coach, partly to avoid confusion with Graham Greene's novel Stamboul Train, which had been marketed in the United States as Orient Express. The book remains one of Poirot's best-known investigations.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Aug. 2026

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