The best murder mystery ever

On the night of March 1, 1932, tragedy struck the family of famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and his wife Anne. Their infant son Charles Jr. was kidnapped by a petty criminal named Bruno Richard Hauptman. He left a ransom note demanding $50,000 for the return of their son. However, Charles Jr. was killed that same night.  Why we will never know.    The case was a sensation as soon as the news was flashed around the country by radio. When Hauptman was captured a year later, the sensation was hailed as “The Crime of the Century.” The case also wound up being the inspiration for what is perhaps the greatest murder mystery ever written: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

Christie built her mystery around a fictional case modeled after Lindbergh’s. The family was re-named Armstrong; a daughter named Daisy was the kidnap victim. Like Charles Jr., Daisy was killed.    But Christie added a twist when it came to those responsible.   Instead of it being the work of a lone lowlife, she created a kidnapper and a mastermind behind it. The law got the kidnapper, but the mastermind took the Armstrong ransom money and ran.  

But the Armstrong family does not hire Hercule Poirot to find him. Indeed, they could not hire him. Mrs. Armstrong died of shock after hearing of Daisy’s death. Worse, she was pregnant at the time with their second child. The shock also caused her to go into premature labor, which ended with a stillborn birth. This so devastated her husband, Colonel Armstrong, that he shot himself.   To cap it all, a maid falsely accused of complicity in the crime also committed suicide.

The mastermind behind the crime had left a total of five dead behind him.   A far worse aftermath in fiction than that Charles Lindbergh and his family faced in real life. While Anne was pregnant with her own second child at the time of the kidnapping, she did not go into shock when Charles Jr. was found. Their second child was born healthy.

Where does Poirot come into all this? He comes into it quite by chance during a trip from Istanbul to Calais on a through-coach that is part of the fabled Orient Express.   On his way home from another case, the train is snowbound in Yugoslavia. The same night it is stopped, a man is murdered in the Calais coach. It does not take Poirot long to figure out the man was traveling under a false identity. He soon deduces his real one: None other than the mastermind behind Daisy Armstrong’s kidnapping and murder!

This is the first thing that wins it the nomination of greatest mystery novel ever. The victim is not a helpless innocent, but a ruthless scum criminal. Christie was brilliant to add that twist to her novel.

The second thing that gets it the best mystery ever nom is its sleuth. Poirot is one of the most famous detectives in the annals of mystery literature. The case is both fit for Poirot’s intellect and challenging at the same time. It especially challenges him because no matter where he turns, there seems to be yet another person in the Calais coach with a motive.

The third and final thing that wins it the nomination is the setting. The Orient Express is one of the most famous trains in the world. Elegant, scrupulously maintained, and with a romantic-sounding route at the time Christie wrote her book. That route was Istanbul to Paris, with connections for London via a coach to Calais.

Image courtesy Wikimedia.

It took a while for the movies to put their lenses on Murder, but in 1974 an all-star cast adaptation closely adapted from the novel premiered. In 2001, an adaptation set in the modern-day came to television. It did not have the same feel as the 1974 period piece adaptation. Thankfully, the Poirot series starring David Suchet arrived on the small screen in 2010. Though some changes were made (chiefly due to length and the faithfulness of the 1974 film) it too did the novel justice.

There are murder mysteries, and then there are murder mysteries. Christie’s most famous whodunit is not only one of those, but perhaps the best murder mystery ever written.   Unless, that is, somebody here can name another candidate?

Main image courtesy Wikimedia.