And Then There Were 59: The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

All About Agatha Christie

Catherine Brobeck & Kemper Donovan

Tv & Film, Books, Film Reviews, Arts

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2017

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tell people you're reading a Christie novel set on a train--a Poirot, no less--and they'll almost definitely think you're reading Murder on The Orient Express. And you might be! But you might also be reading The Mystery of the Blue Train, which predates its much more famous sibling by a few years.... Climb aboard with us and traverse not just the French countryside but a hybrid whodunit/thriller centered on murder, adultery, priceless jewels, and a 33-year-old woman who is apparently in the "autumn" of her life (!!). This one definitely was not Christie's favorite, but we found a lot to enjoy here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to All About Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking every single
0:10.8	mystery novel written by the Queen of Crime,
0:13.6	Dym Agatha Christie.
0:15.2	I'm Catherine Brobach.
0:16.7	And I'm Kemper Donovan.
0:18.1	And this week we are taking on the mystery of the blue train.
0:23.0	A novel at long last, so exciting.
0:26.0	This was originally published on March 29th,
0:30.0	1928, but it's actually an expansion of the short story, The Mystery of the Plymouth Express,
0:37.1	which was published in the sketch, obviously, on April 4th, 1923.
0:42.8	So just like with the Big Four,
0:45.4	we have a case here where Agathicristy was not
0:48.4	writing the novel from scratch.
0:50.6	She basically was just getting by, just trying to create something to make money a reminder
0:56.8	that the big four was the first book that was published after her infamous disappearance,
1:01.5	which of course we spoke about in our last episode, but the Big Four had actually been written or compiled for the most part before that disappearance episode took place.
1:11.4	We believe the timing of all this gets a little hazy. But this was the first
1:15.8	book that Christie finished writing after the disappearance and for that reason we
1:21.8	noted that she called the Big Four That Rotten Book,
1:24.4	and she actually referred to the Mystery of the Blue Train as that wretched book.
1:29.3	And I just think it's interesting to read out just her feelings and her thoughts about this book.
1:36.0	To begin with, I had no joy in writing, no Elan.
	...

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