A known crime fiction novel by millions, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express is not only intriguing, but initially a thrilling ride that keeps readers in tune and guessing up until the very last page (no pun intended on the "thrilling ride" comment). With the infamous protagonist Hercule Poirot taking charge on leading the investigation, the entire plot was based around a single man being murdered by a suspect (or suspects) on a train traveling throughout Europe. It was interesting being introduced to Hercule Poirot for the first time reading this, considering I've never read any Agatha Christie crime novels before. I find the steps that Poirot takes when solving a crime very strategical and can be recognized as a specific method used initially by him and him alone. This novel is structured into 3 parts: The Facts, The Evidence, and Hercule Poirot Sits Back and Thinks. I feel a majority of people are intimidated by the intellect a detective can hold when solving a crime and in today's society it might even seem foreign. These books were written in another time period, however, and display an intellectual detective who not only works with evidence and confessions, but intuition as well. The entire story revolves roughly around a dozen people who are suspects of the crime and Poirot weaves through each of them, taking into consideration their status, character, and background. As a reader, I was simply moving through the chapters attempting to guess at who Poirot suspected would be the culprit, but I was completely taken aback by the ending of the novel. I believe Poirot is not only an extraordinary detective, but a fair human being as well and that is displayed by the ending of this novel. I won't give away any spoilers, but it was a plot twist that slowly developed and came at me all at once. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in crime fiction--considering Agatha Christie has been outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, it is apparent that anyone and everyone should give her books a read.
Not the usual suspense-thriller synopsis I've become accustomed to when reading Lisa Jewell's novels, however, I was entranced by this novel from the get-co. The House We Grew Up In centers around a mother and her four children over the span of a decade. The mother, Lorelei, has an extensive hobby of collecting items that harbor a memory of time spent with her loved ones. Each and every memory-- meaning each and every item she just happens to come across. Lorelei is in fact a hoarder and it does not get better with time. It gets worse. In addition to Lorelei's intense and overbearing lifestyle, her children forego their relationship with their mother and each other in order to gain a sense of normalcy within their individual lives. One of Lorelei's children committed suicide at a ripe age of sixteen and her other three were simultaneously impacted by the act tremendously. Her other son took to finding a thrilling lifestyle in all the wrong places...
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