Novels set on board the Orient Express

6th October 2016

Novels set on board the Orient Express.

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to travel on board the Venice Simplon Orient Express? Many of us can only guess and fantasise how wonderfully luxurious it might be to travel from the UK and on to exotic destinations… Venice, Istanbul, Paris, Budapest and Vienna. And in reverse.

It is an institution that goes back a very long way. It’s maiden voyage was from Paris to Istanbul in 1883, and has been a magnet for travellers ever since. The carriages in use now are originals from the 1920s and 30s and add a touch of old world glamour.

At London’s Victoria Station passengers board the dark umber and cream carriages of the Belmond British Pullman and at Calais, Paris or Venice the blue and gold carriages of the Continental Wagons-Lit await. It is truly a stunning experience.

We have brought together 4 top novels that are set on board the VSOE that will transport you via fiction and enable you to experience the feel of a bygone era through a good story. Enjoy!

Stamboul Train by Graham Greene is one of his early novels and charts the comings and goings of a wonderful panoply of people.

Carleton Myatt meets Coral Musker, a naïve English chorus girl, aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe to Constantinople. As their relationship develops, they find themselves caught up in the fates of the other passengers and drawn into a web of espionage, murder and lies…

Another classic is of course Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.  Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year, but by the morning it is one passenger fewer. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Isolated and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must identify the murderer — in case he or she decides to strike again.

Veronica Henry penned her novel set on The Train whilst she was Writer in Residence. A Night on the Orient Express. A gathering of people from all walks of life, and all with different backstories board this vintage train in Northern Europe to rattle down to Venice in luxurious and charming style. Track the passengers through the Garden of England, to Calais and down to Lake Zurich and on to Innsbruck and on to Italy and past vineyards, “pink buildings with roofs…square towers and campaniles….” (are you there already in your mind’s eye?).

The Woman on the Orient Express by Lindsay Jayne Ashford has Agatha Christie boarding the train in disguise. But unlike her famous detective Hercule Poirot, she can’t neatly unravel the mysteries she encounters on this fateful journey. Many of the passengers have secrets, there’s her cabinmate Katharine and Nancy who is newly married but carrying another man’s child….and as the train rolls along, the parallel courses of their lives shift to intersect—with lasting repercussions.

Filled with evocative imagery, suspense, and emotional complexity, The Woman on the Orient Express explores the bonds of sisterhood forged by shared pain and the power of secrets.

If you have any more books set in the Orient Express that we can add to our database, please just flag them below in the Comments!

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