Murder on the Orient Express

1. Murder on the Orient Express Ariana Figueroa Austin Hicks Mrs. Nardelli 3B

2. Vocabulary • Lovelorn- adjective. Being without love; forsaken by one’s lover. • Hymeneal- adjective. Of or pertaining to marriage. • Par- noun. A level of equality. • Pretenses- noun. A false show of something • Pother-noun. Commotion • Expenditure-noun. The act of expending something especially funds; disbursements; consumption. • Metaphysics-noun. The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality.

3. Vocabulary Continued • Ab initio- adverb. At the beginning. • Camorras- noun. A mafia type criminal organization. • Verisimilitude- noun. The quality of appearing to be true or real.

4. Van Dine’s 20 Rules • 1. The reader and detective have the same chances of solving the mystery. Clues are visible to readers. • 2. No trick may be played to confuse the reader except of the ones that the criminal plays on the detective himself. • 3. Love should not interfere with the justice needed to be served. • 4. The person looking to resolve the case should never be the antagonist. • 5.Facts and deduction should be used to solve the case.

5. Van Dine’s 20 Rules Continued • 6. Every mystery novel must have a detective in it that gathers clues to locate the culprit. • 7. There must be a dead body in every mystery novel. 300 pages is too much commotion for a crime other than murder. • 8. A problem in a mystery should be detected using natural means. • 9. There must be no more than one detective or protagonist because if not the reader can get confused. • 10. The guilty person, must be one who the reader is familiar with, and is interested in.

6. Van Dine’s 20 Rules Continued • 11. The criminal must not be the person who serves the victim because it is far too predictable. • 12. The murderer can have a few helpers, but only one main murderer can be selected as the culprit. • 13. A murder is spoiled if there are secret societies, camorras, or mafias involved. • 14.There must be a scientific mean for solving the case. • 15.The reader must be able to detect the truth throughout the novel if they reread the novel.

7. Van Dine’s 20 Rules Continued • 16. There should be no long and descriptive parts in a detective novel. For there to be too many details would defeat the purpose of a mystery. • 17. A murderer who is smart and clever should never show guilt for a crime in a detective story. • 18. The crime in a detective story should never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. • 19. Motives of murderers should be personal and not war-like. It should express everyday experiences. • 20. Clues that are too overused should not be used in a detective story.

8. Rule #4 “Twenty rules for writing detective stories” “4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It’s false pretenses.” (Van Dine) Explanation: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express follows Van Dine’s rule #4 well. This particular rule states that the detective should never turn out to be the culprit. In Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot is not the murderer, and it is later discovered that the murderers were the 12 passengers. Murder on the Orient Express: “…A jury is composed of twelve people ̶there were twelve passengers ̶̶ Ratchett was stabbed twelve times..”

9. Rule #12 “Twenty rules for writing detective stories” “12.There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature.” (Van Dine) Explanation: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express follows Rule #12 very well. In the novel, there are 12 murderers, however Mrs. Hubbard, or Linda Arden, tells Poirot to view her as the only culprit of the case. Van Dine’s rule states that there could be helpers but only one should be the guilty culprit. For Linda to accept the charges as a culprit, shows just how Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express follows Van Dine’s 12th rule. Murder on the Orient Express: “Well,” she said, “you know everything now, M. Poirot. What are you going to do about it? If it must all come out, can’t you lay the blame upon me and me only? I would have stabbed that man twelve times willingly…” (Christie 244,245)

10. Rule #14 “Twenty rules for writing detective stories” “14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bound of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure.” (Van Dine) Explanation: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express shows how Monsieur Poirot uses scientific means to solve the case. This particular rule by Van Dine expresses that a murder must be committed and solved using scientific and rational means. An example of this is when Poirot finds the burnt letter and he uses the hatbox to discover the message in that letter. Without science, Poirot wouldn’t of have discovered the true identity of Mr. Ratchett (Cassetti);therefore, the case couldn’t of have been solved. Murder on the Orient Express: “See you, my dear doctor, me, I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash. But in this case I would welcome a little scientific assistance…” (Christie 60)

11. Rule #16 “Twenty rules for writing detective stories” “16. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no “atmospheric” preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude.” (Van Dine) Explanation: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express seems to go against Van Dine’s rule #16. This rule states that “no subtly worked-out character analyses” should be included in a detective novel, however Christie uses stereotypes to describe and analyze some of the characters, for example Antonio Foscarelli. He is seen as the big Italian who uses knives, and is, at a point, a main suspect to M. Bouc. He is then not seen as a suspect because it would be too obvious for the big Italian who uses knives to be the murderer in this particular case. When the case is resolved, you discover that the Italian was the one who suggested the use of knives in this particular murder and you see how stereotypes play an important role in this story. Murder on the Orient Express: "He has been a long time in America," said M. Bouc, "and he is an Italian, and Italians use the knife! And they are great liars! I do not like Italians." (Christie 133)

12. Rule #6 “Twenty rules for writing detective stories” “6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analyses of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic. Explanation: Christie's Murder on the Orient Express follows Van Dine’s 6th rule well. The rule states that a detective must detect and Poirot’s job was to detect. He noticed the importance of simple statements or objects when nobody else did. A statement that he found important was MacQueen’s, when he said “but surely..” Poirot noticed the hesitation and that shows how good at detecting he really is. Murder on the Orient Express: “Now I could feel that that was not what he had started out to say. Supposing what he had meant to say was ‘But surely that was burnt!’ In which case MacQueen knew of the note and its destruction..” (Christie 235)

13. Works Cited • Christie, Agatha. Murder on the Orient Express. Toronto: Bantam, 1983. Print. • Van Dine, S. S. "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories." n.d.: n. pag. Web.