The Orient Express, itself, connotes a time where passengers dressed for dinner, slept in luxurious compartments, and travelled undisturbed from Calais to Damascus. Ashford captures the excitement and elegance of travel aboard this train starting with her depiction of the moment Christie decides to take this trip. It was at a dinner party, one of the few that Christie attended as a newly single woman. After learning that one of the guests, a military man, had been stationed in Iraq not far from a famous archeological dig, Christie exclaimed, "I've always been fascinated by archaeology, I do envy you, living there. I’d love to visit Baghdad.” His response, "Oh, you must go! You can get there by the Orient Express," had a "magical effect" on Christie and she told the guest that the Orient Express represented a pinnacle of elegance to her ever since she "had seen this train as a child, catching sight of the distinctive blue-and-gold livery when her mother took her to live in France before the war. She had watched men and women walking along the platform with rapturous faces, greeted by immaculate stewards standing to attention outside every carriage. She saw boxes of oysters glistening on ice, whole sides of bacon slung on hooks, and cartloads of every kind of fruit being loaded on board."
Aboard the Orient Express, Christie learns that she is not the only one hiding secrets behind the luxury of the Wagons-Lits train cars. A loner most of her life, she finds herself befriending two women whose friendship will change her life. It is through the eyes of these three friends that Ashford shows us parts of Middle East as it was in 1928, a time when Aleppo and Baghdad were busy, whole and cosmopolitan, and the Yezidis live peacefully on their mountain- Jebel Sinjar.
As Christie cleverly demonstrated in her mystery novels, dark secrets can be harmful. Ashford brings such dark secrets to light when Christie is called upon to solve real life mysteries involving her friends. Never having solved a real life mystery before, Christie screws her courage to the sticking place and thinks, "what would her little Belgian detective do in a situation like this? The answer came back in a flash. You must use the little gray cells."
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| Agatha Christie as a young woman |
Through this fictionalized biography, Ashford paints a magnificent portrait of Christie as a woman of great depths, with a plethora of emotions and moods. This is a novel that will engage both your heart and your little gray cells.
(I received an advance review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
Paperback: 330 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (September 20, 2016)
Language: English
