Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
 You can skip the 4:50 October 16, 2008
Agatha Christie is a phenomenal crime fiction writer, however I was slightly disappointed with this novel. Miss Marple's aged, feeble detective efforts hardly impress, and the main character does not accomplish much outside of a fantastic pudding and roast.
I would refer readers to other mind-bender classics such as And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express.
 WILL SOMEONE LET THE WOMAN SPEAK? May 15, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
What "improvements" have been made for the Bantam edition? There are already major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins (4:50 FROM PADDINGTON) and Dodd Mead editions of this novel. There are further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further additions still in the Signet, Berkley, and Black Dog & Leventhal editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.
 Old ladies and dead people on trains April 22, 2008
- it must be Agatha Christie.
On the train ride home from shopping, Mrs. McGillicuddy sees a man strangling a woman in a train running parallel to her own. Being a woman of some age, when no corroborating evidence quickly comes to light, Mrs. McGillicuddy's concerns are dismissed by all who are informed. Not, however, by the famed Jane Marple. Convinced of that her friend correctly interpreted what she saw, Miss Marple sets out to determine how the murder was so effectively disguised. In finding first the body, then the killer, Miss Marple assigns crack domestic Lucy Eyelesbarrow to Rutherford Hall, home of the dysfunctional Crackenthorpes. Each of the family members, we soon learn, has reason to kill, a sketchy alibi and questionable character. Then, more people start dying.
This book combines two settings well known to Agatha Christie fans - trains and giant, old countryside homes. Many aspects of the plot, too, are quite familiar - dysfunctional families, money payable on death, hidden identities, etc. This book will, thus, no doubt please many of Ms. Christie's fans. I, however, found little to separate this book from Ms. Christie's other books. Indeed, I never really became engaged with this book because, it seems to me, the characters were pretty flat and the story felt about half told. A few interesting ideas here, but not, in my opinion, one of Agatha's best.
Agatha Christie at her best! October 17, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book keeps you guessing until the end. Ms. Christie shows her truly amazing skills of knowing people, creating intrigue and suspense. Worth a read any time!
Trains, trays, tablets, and tittle-tattle. September 16, 2005
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Old and new readers of Agatha Christie's whodunits will not be disappointed with her 1957 puzzler. It has an unforgettable opening sequence, an ingenious denouement, and an interesting sleuth, especially created for the occasion, named Lucy Eylesbarrow. Although it is the elderly Jane Marple who exerts her powers of detection, she does it by remote control while her much younger friend does the spadework - or the domestic work. As Agatha Christie explains, "The point about Lucy Eylesbarrow was that all worry, anxiety, and hard work went out of a house when she came into it." Accordingly, the tertiary-trained domestic, Lucy, is soon installed in Rutherford Hall, where Jane Marple believes a body thrown from a train might be hidden.
Surprises, further murders, gossip, marriage proposals, and poisonings follow in rapid succession, so that before you know it, the hours have sped by, the murderer is revealed, and you admit that once again you were quite unable to guess whodunit.
Agatha Christie adds to the usual cozy elements of her murder mysteries a heavy involvement with passenger trains, timetables and railway matters so beloved of the British. Otherwise you'll find the book fits into the pattern of the dysfunctional family's struggles being worked out with a particularly stubborn, callous and crusty old man as the family's head.
Feature film and TV adaptations of this novel have been made, the most faithful to the text featuring Joan Hickson who also can be heard in an unabridged reading on audiotapes.
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