Murder On the Orient Express Vaughn Jones Grant Howard Mrs. Nardelli Block 1B

Vocabulary  Concocter, Verb- to prepare or make by combining ingredients  Expenditure, Noun- the act of expending something, especially funds  Irremediably, Adjective- Incurable  Delineation, Noun- The act or process of delineating  Verisimilitude, Noun- The appearance of truth; likelihood  Sleuthing, Verb- Investigating  Gemutlich, Adjective-Comfortable and pleasant; cozy  Credo, Noun-Any creed or formula of belief  Ineptitude, Noun-Quality or condition of being inept  Cipher, Noun-Any of the Arabic numerals of figures

Van Dine’s 20 Rules 1. Whoever is reading the story must have the same chance of solving the crime as anybody in the book. All clues must be put forward and readable by the reader. 2. No trickery can be played in the story that may destroy the chances of the reader solving the crime and the characters in the story can still solve it, despite a disturbance that does not affect them. 3. There can be no love in the story. Meaning that the sole purpose is to not unite a couple because of a criminal trying to separate them. 4. The main investigator can never be the criminal. 5. The culprit that is chosen has to make sense. It can not be a character that appears at the very end of the story, chosen from random. 6. There must be a detective. 7. There must be a body. 8. The criminal must be found by logical means. 9. There must be only one detective. 10. The culprit must be somebody who has been involved in the story.

Van Dine’s 20 Rules 11. The criminal must be somebody who would otherwise look purely innocent. 12. There must be only one criminal, no matter how many crimes are committed. 13. There can be no cults. 14. The murder of the victim must be realistic. 15. The truth must be visible throughout the entire book. You should be able to point out obvious clues after reading the book over again 16. There can be no long side stories that have nothing to do with the story. It leads the reader off track. 17. A criminal who knows what he or she is doing should never crack under guilt. 18. The murder of a victim should never be accidental or a suicide. This results in a waste of the reader’s times after reading the book. 19. Motives should be personally related to them. It can never be a random kill. 20. Make the story original. Do not steal something that has been used before or just seems like an old literary tool in a detective story.

The Classic List of Rules for the Detective Story Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express fits Van Dine’s formula for a detective story when it comes to rule #4. Rule number 4 says that the writer of the story cannot make the culprit in the story the detective or any official working on the case. If this were to happen then there would be no story to it. The story would end up never being solved and there is no story in that. The detective being the culprit he/she would sabotage them and would never be caught. “It was so arranged that, if suspicion should fall on any one person, the evidence of one or more of the others would clear the accused person and confuse the issue” (Christie 239). 4) The detective himself, or one of the official investigation, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald tricky, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It’s false pretenses.

The Classic List of Rules for the Detective Story Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express doesn’t Van Dine’s formula for a detective story when it comes to rule #12. Rule number 12 says that there cannot be more than one culprit only people who help he or she. Murder on the Orient Express doesn’t fit because in he story there were 12 different people who murdered Ratchett; each one of them stabbed him. “I saw it as a perfect mosaic, each person playing his or her allotted part” (Christie 239). 12) There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit my, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter, bet 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.

The Classic list of rules for a detective story. 15) The truth of the problem must be apparent– provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation of the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face– that all the clues really pointed to the culprit– and that, if he had been as clever as the detective, he could have solved the mystery himself without going on to the final chapter. That the clever reader does often thus solve the problem goes without saying. Christie's Murder On the Orient Express follows this rule in a very well played manner. Through the section of the story where Poirot interviews the passengers, the typical reader does not recognize that they were all related to the Daisy Armstrong case. They were all on Daisy’s side and sought revenge against Rattchett. Part Two: The Evidence (Christie )

The Classic List of Rules for the Detective Story Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express fits Van Dine’s formula for a detective story when it comes to rule #18. Rule number 19 says that the murder can never end up being an accident or a suicide because that us a waste of the readers time. This is true because no one want to read a story thinking it is going to be a mystery and have a great ending with a cool well planed out plan. This is a big waste of time because again there is no point in reading a mystery story about and accident. Yes there is a wonder about why they committed suicide and there is a story in that but may people don’t see it as a good one with many cliffhangers. “And now a passenger lies dead in his berth stabbed” (Christie 39). 18) A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-climax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader.

The Classic list of rules for a detective story. 19) The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International plottings and war politics belong in a different category of fiction—in secret service tales, for instance. But a murder story must be kept gemutlich, so to speak. It must reflect the reader’s everyday experiences, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions. Murder on the Orient Express illustrates this rules perfectly. All of the murderers are related to the Daisy-Armstrong case and wish to kill Ratchett for what he has done to Daisy. “Poirot Sits Back and Thinks: Poirot Propounds Two Solutions” (Christie )

Work Sited  Christie, Agatha. Murder on the Orient Express. Toronto: Bantam Books, Print.  Van Dine, S.S. "Twenty Rules for Writing Detctive Stories." American Magazine, Sept Web. 16 Nov