The Blue Train

the blue Train ( in The Mystery off the Blue Train , in the original edition British in English) is a Detective novel of Agatha Christie, published in March 1928, putting in scene the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

The intrigue of the novel

Hercule Poirot wanted to spend a few holidays on the Riviera. Holidays? Not exactly, because it will have to deploy faculties which it deploys normally only with work: its art to solve the enigmas. Indeed, Ruth Kettering, girl of the richissime Mr. Van Aldin are assassinated during the voyage while his rubies are stolen to him.

Comments

The basic idea of the novel was directly transposed of its former news the Express train of Plymouth ( The Plymouth Express ), published initially in collection with the the United States in 1926 in the collection The Underdog and Other Stories , taken again in 1951 in the collections British ( The Underdog ) and French ( Oppressed the ), taken again in reviews under new titles in 1955 ( The Girl in Electric Blue ) and 1957 ( the Woman in blue ), to be finally reinstated, under the titles oforigin, in the collection Poirot' S Early Boxes (1974) and the Ball of the Victoire (1981).

In its Autobiography , Agatha Christie always writes “to have hated the blue Train ” and adds elsewhere than it is about “a banal novel, full with stereotypes, with an intrigue without interest. ” The novel is certainly very minor in the work of the Lady of Torquay, but undoubtedly does not deserve this severe judgment, the author having, seems it, very marked by the simultaneous shipwreck of its marriage with Archibald Christie.

Agatha Christie did not have any difficulty in write a book being held in France, because it went on many journeys there, and had in particular travelled in the blue Train between Calais and the Riviera.

Editions

1928 : in The Mystery off the Blue Train - Hakes, London
1928: in The Mystery off the Blue Train - Dodd Mead, New York
1932: the blue Train - Bookstore of the Fields-Élysées, coll. The Mask n° 122, Paris, in a translation of Louis Postif
1992: the blue Train - Bookstore of the Fields-Élysées, coll. Integral volume 2 (the years 1926-1930) , Paris, in a new translation of Etienne Lethel

Televised adaptation

The novel was the object, in 2005, of a televised adaptation under the same title , within the framework of the televised series Hercule Poirot , with David Suchet in the role of the Belgian detective.

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