REVIEW: The Plymouth Express (Agatha Christie)

The Plymouth Express
Author: Agatha Christie

This story is the 5th Hercule Poirot short story. It was first published in the UK in April 1923 in The Sketch magazine. US publication followed in January 1924 (The Blue Book magazine). Christie later fleshed out the plot a bit, changed characters and some basics to form the novel The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

Christie lived such an interesting life. These first short stories featuring Poirot were written while on a 10-month around-the-world promotional tour for the British Empire Exhibition. Some of the incidents and people she encountered during this tour were used in her novel The Man in the Brown Suit (published in 1924).  What a life!

In this story, a naval officer travelling by train gets a nasty shock when he discovers something gruesome stuffed under the seat of his compartment......the dead body of a woman! Poirot is soon on the case (of course) to discover the why, when and how.

I can understand why nasty goings-on aboard trains are a recurrent occurrence in Christie's writing (and a lot of other golden age detective novelists). It's the perfect "locked room'' scenario. Moving train. Strangers thrown together. Lots of strange places to have clandestine meetings, commit a gruesome murder, etc. Rounding out the top five of great places to have a golden age murder mystery would have to be: on board a ship at sea, on an island accessible only by boat, inside an isolated country mansion (especially during bad weather like a snow storm), and in the dark recesses of some slightly romantic locale like a large museum/pyramid/ancient ruin.

I enjoyed this story.  Very short, but interesting! I like these tales even better now that I know Christie was writing them while on an adventure of her own. There is a book that recounts her stories about her trip, The Grand Tour: Letters and Photographs from the British Empire Exposition. Learning all sorts of new things about my favorite author while reading through her works in publication order. I'm having the best time! :)

The long-running television series, Agatha Christie's Poirot, made an episode based on this story (Series 3, episode 3). It was first broadcast in 1991. The episode is very good, but the script adds/changes quite a bit to flesh the story out to 50 minutes. The basic plot line is still there though....very well done!

On to the next story: The Adventure of the Western Star!