Murder on the Orient Express

 Agatha Christie was made a Dame for a reason and I think Murder on the Orient Express was that reason. 

Complete strangers board a train, mingle for a few hours or days, and then go their separate ways. But then a murder happens and those who have nothing to do with each other are then all suspected to have murdered a horrendous man. So many clues. Too many clues. It was one of them, but which one? 

Murder on the Orient Express  has been made into many movies and so the story wasn't new to me. It was one that I wanted to read to say that I'd done it.  I am a major fan of Kenneth Branagh as he is a fantastic actor and brings so much more to each character he portrays (whether it is Hercule, Professor Lockhart, or King Henry IV), so to hear him give this presentation for all the many nationalities here was a treat. 

I enjoyed all the characters that were present here. There were many and at times could have been hard to keep track of, but Agatha Christie was able to keep them all fairly well clear. And while there were many clues and twists and turns throughout the story, she gave them to us in ways the kept it concise clear though we had to use our "little gray cells" to get the other ending like Poirot did--if people are that awesome to be able to actually do that anyway. 

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the games and movies that came out of this series. Well done Agatha. Well done. 

Magic Steps

Magic Steps by Tamora Pierce is the first book in The Circle Opens series, which is also the sequel series to The Circle of Magic. 
 

The four children, now middling teenagers, have now gone their separate ways with their teachers. Tris and Niko, Daja and Frostpine, Briar and Rosethorn have all left Winding Circle temple to go see the world and learn more about their magics leaving Sandry and Lark at home. Sandry goes to look after her uncle who had a heart attack and doesn't know the meaning of rest. After a bit of recovery and a small horse ride, they spy a boy performing magic by dancing. Pasco has a family of Herriers, the city guards, and his family thinks his dancing is a useless waste of time because none of them knew it was magic. Now that Sandry has found this boy who needs to be taught and none of the teachers at Winding Circle know Dance Magic, she has now become Pasco's teacher. To compound her troubles, there has been murder in the city by invisible hands that are using an almost unheard of type of magic-- Unmagic. Magic the devours magic like a whirlpool sinking boats. 

This was well written and had a very good plot to it. It was well plotted out and was easy to follow along without getting to tangled with new evidences and procedures that were given to us. 

Pasco irked me at the beginning for being a lazy teenage boy with all the excuses and trying intentionally to make things hard for Sandry--though this has my own heavy biases and is probably actually okay. Sandry's arch in becoming a teacher though unwanted at the beginning was well done and made for an interesting background alongside the murders in the city. The mystery of the murders and Unmagic was engaging as well and kept me wanting to come back for more. 

The audiobook was also read by Tammy and a whole cast of voice actors who did a pretty good job for the most part. There was one actor, though, who was very obnoxious because he sounded robotic--thankfully he only had a few lines though. 

I enjoyed this book. It reminded me very much of Daja's Book in that the plot and characters were gold. It was, again, very well done. 

I can't wait to get onto the next one. 

Third Girl

The only other Agatha Christie book I've read was And Then There Were None, which was fantastic and I've recently dived into most of the BBC from 1989-2013 tv series and loved it very much. So, here we are at trying the novels. 

 

This novel is about a girl who comes to Hercule Poirot's office and says that she thinks she's killed someone, but then before any real investigation can happen she vanishes. Who is she, who's been murdered, and why did it happen? With the help of a mystery writer friend who is a notorious socialite, he finds out that she is the daughter of a rich man who's just returned from Africa with his new wife and that Nora, the young woman, is living as a "third girl" at a small flat in London to help with boarding expensive. But for as far as Poirot can figure, no murder has occurred that is connected to young Nora. 

This book wasn't particularly my favorite, though I don't have much to compare it too. The mystery was good and I enjoy Poirot as a character, but I do feel there were some problems. 

The reader of this audiobook was awesome, which is why I give it a generous 4 stars, because Hugh Fraser is the Hercule Poirot's friend and sometimes assistant in the BBC Tv series, Captain Hastings. It was a treat to listen to him voice the narrations and Poirot himself. 

I think I struggled with this one because it seemed so redundant. Different characters repeated so  much of the same things about Nora or her father or other situations that it kind of bogged me down. If I was reading it myself I probably would have put it down or had a far harder time getting through it. I don't know if this is the case of other of Hercule Poirot books or others of her books in general--it sure wasn't the case in And Then There Were None. It made it kind of hard to get through all the information, because it kept being repeated, relentlessly. So in trying to find out for myself what was going on and who was actually murdered, was more difficult than it should have been. 

I will listen to another or two, especially if it is by Hugh Fraser, but it might be some time before that actually happens.