6. The Disciple of Las Vegas

By Ian Hamilton

I swear if I read another mention of the pairing of a Giordiano t-shirt with Adidas track pants, I was going to rip it right off the book. And what’s with the Brooks Brothers shirt? According to Olman, this was pretty typical of the Ian Fleming books when describing the lifestyle of James Bond. He couldn’t just have gin, it had to be a certain brand of gin. Etc. Etc.

Every possession was designer-branded (Chanel purse, watch, etc.) but curiously, Ava would just open up “her computer”, or take out “her cellphone”. I was rather surprised Hamilton did not call it her MacBook Pro, or iPhone. It was not like this would date the book, as he had no problems mentioning Ava’s fondness for Starbucks VIA instant coffee multiple times throughout the book.

The problem with Hamilton's over-abundant use of designer brand names was that they were what a conservative white male would imagine a young professional Chinese woman would purchase.  Yes, the typical well-off Chinese woman tends to gravitate to luxury designer brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci. Very safe, unimaginative and boring.  But the more casual brands like Brooks Brothers? Is Ava going to the country club for a round of golf?  Wouldn't Burberry or DKNY make more sense? 

5. Murder on the Orient Express

By Agatha Christie

My first Agatha Christie book, if you can believe it, so this makes me a newby to the murder mystery genre.  I always thought that part of the fun of reading murder mysteries is to guess who the culprit is based on what the investigator discovers and observes, but I find this limiting as you can only deduce based on what the author chooses to reveal in the narrative.  So the reader always has an unfair advantage, especially if you’re dealing with an implausible story.

I was initially misled that MotOE would have a logical outcome because a quarter way into the book there was an illustrated plan of the Calais Coach explaining which cabin had been assigned to which passenger.  Cool, I thought, this was to help the reader figure out who could have potentially murdered Ratchett, the American businessman!   

So imagine my disappointment when I discovered that MoTOE had an implausible storyline!

If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie adaptations, you can stop here as I’m going to reveal the spoiler...  

So at some point in the middle of Hercule Poirot’s investigation, I said aloud to Olman, it is just preposterous that so many people on this train are connected to the Daisy kidnapping unless there is some kind of conspiracy, but that would make it even more preposterous!  

It turns out that my intuition was correct!  Woot!

Despite all that, I did enjoy reading MotOE.  The “locked room” setting of a train snowbound in the middle of nowhere in Croatia was great, as were all the characters and how it was written. 

I’m writing this up in January 2021 as I’m retroactively adding entries to my blog, but I thought I’d prioritize this after having recently watched Sidney Lumet’s 1974 film on Prime with its star-studded cast and an almost unrecognizable Albert Finney as Poirot.  Lumet's version was quite faithful to its source and it really helped to jog my memory of what went down in the book.