Murder on the Orient Express review – a first-class ride all the way

A different sort of fun … Laura Rogers as Countess Andrenyi, Henry Goodman as Poirot andPatrick Robinson as Monsieur Bouc in Murder on the Orient Express. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express, making a crime scene of the upper classes’ first-class form of European travel, has a final twist that numbers – along with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Mousetrap – among her very best.

Successive generations have protected these ingenious denouements for the pleasure of new viewers. But even for those who know its audacious pay-off, Murder on the Orient Express remains a joy for the author’s exemplary plotting – it’s a different sort of fun to be in on where Christie is leading and misleading us – and the latest actor inhabiting Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot.