Murder on the Orient Express, part 1

Tea, Tonic & Toxin

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Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. Once you read Murder on the Orient Express (1934), you’ll understand why.

Read: Buy it used or new on Amazon.

Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Welcome our guest, Emily Schwartz!
Emily Schwartz was the Artistic Director of, and Resident Playwright for the immersive (and mostly macabre) theater company, The Strange Tree Group from 2003 to 2014. For the Trees she penned the Jeff Award-winning The Three Faces of Doctor Crippen, which also won the New York Fringe excellence award. When it was performed at Steppenwolf in 2011 the forensic scientist who discovered that the remains of Cora Crippen might not be Cora Crippen after all came to opening night where Emily debated him on what actually happened with the murder.

Other critically acclaimed productions include The Dastardly Ficus and Other Comedic Tales of Woe and Misery, Mr. Spacky, the Man Who Was Continuously Followed by Wolves, The Mysterious Elephant, and more. You can still find productions of her work across the country. The local Denver theater group The Catamounts, have performed both Dr. Crippen and Mr. Spacky, and the Three Faces of Doctor Crippen has a performance in the planning stages for 2024.

Currently Emily is mostly a professional event planner and mom to four year old Henry to whom she is passing on her love of the strange and unusual. She recently wrote an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for the Latin school of Chicago, and is working on a children's book. Emily has known Sarah for approximately 50 or 60 years

Here are some conversation starters and questions to get you thinking about the book!

The story was partly inspired by the shocking real-life kidnapping case involving the Charles Lindbergh baby. In 1932, aviator Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month old son was held for a $50,000 ransom. The ransom was paid, but Lindbergh’s son was later found dead. The case captivated and outraged the American public. What are the similarities and differences between the real-life story and the fictional account in this book?

Which character did you identify with most in Murder on the Orient Express? If you had to choose to be one of the characters on the Orient Express, who would you choose, and why? Or would you choose another alias altogether?

One of the early assumptions that Dr. Constantine, the Greek doctor, and M. Bouc make about the murderer is that it must have been either a woman or Antonio Foscarelli, the American of Italian descent. The narrator even says Foscarelli has a “typical looking Italian face, sunny looking and swarthy.” What role do stereotypes play in the novel?

The characters in Murder on the Orient Express are traveling from Syria to Istanbul and on to Calais and then London. Why did Agatha Christie set the murder on a train? What does the train symbolize in the novel?

The characters constantly reference America. Colonel Arbuthnot calls Americans “sentimental and idealistic.” Mr. Hardman says, “Europe wants waking up. She’s half asleep.” What does America symbolize in the book? How does diversity shape American culture? How is this diversity shown through the passengers, and how does it affect Poirot’s investigation of the case?

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