Book Review: The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

The Mystery of the Blue Train (Hercule Poirot #6). Agatha Christie. Harper Collins (2001) (First Published 1928). 383 pages. Genre: Mystery.

First Line: "It was close to midnight when a man crossed the Place de la Concorde."

Summary:  An American millionaire acquires the three largest rubies in the world.  He has purchased them as a gift for his married daughter.  Ruth Van Aldin always gets her way and her father loves to spoil her.   She has begun to suspect her husband is seeing another woman.  Her father thinks he is a bad seed and advises her to divorce him.

In the meantime, Ruth has a trip to the Riviera planned.  As the divorce proceedings will take time, she decides to go ahead with her plans.  Her father advises her not to take the rubies on her trip, because, "We don't want to have you robbed and murdered for the sake of 'Heart of Fire'".  Unfortunately, Ruth doesn't listen to her father and takes the rubies with her.  She is riding the luxurious Blue Train to Nice.  When the train arrives at its destination, the conductor finds Ruth murdered in her cabin.  The rubies have also disappeared.  

Coincidentally, several people connected to Ruth are also riding the Blue Train, including her husband.  He is the primary suspect, but claims he didn't know his wife was on the train.  Hercule Poirot doubts Ruth's husband is the murderer.  He will have to use his little gray cells to sort through the greed and deception surrounding Ruth's murder and the robbery of the rubies.

My thoughts:  I will admit I had a hard time keeping people straight in the first part of the book.  There is a lot of set up before the crime is committed and Hercule Poirot comes on the scene.  After finishing the book and looking back at the chapter titles, it makes a lot more sense. 

It is fascinating how Agatha Christie can take so many characters and weave their stories together.  As always, it is so much fun to solve the mystery along with Poirot.  He sees things that I never see and I love to try to learn from him.

The mystery is complex as is often the case, especially when greed and love are involved. This time Poirot teams up with an unlikely assistant.  Katherine Grey has worked as a companion to an older woman.  When the woman dies, she leaves her savings to Katherine.  That is how she found herself on the Blue Train.  Poirot sees something in her and asks for her assistance with his thought processes.  

"I am not clever like you, Monsieur Poirot.  Half the things that you have been telling me don't seem to me to point anywhere at all. The ideas that came to me came from such an entirely different angle -"

And yet, in the end they both come to the same conclusion.  I really enjoyed this mystery.  I wish I could say I solved the mystery before Poirot, but that would not be true.  It was Poirot who had to explain it to me.