How long does it take to read Murder on the Orient Express?
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie takes about 4 hours 24 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Book 9 of Canon of Hercule Poirot
Previous: Lord Edgware Dies Next: Three Act Tragedy
About 4 hours 24 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1933. 240 pages, about 66,000 words. Written for children.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 20 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 24 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 45 minutes |
The page count is the median across 248 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
While en route from Syria to Paris, in the middle of a freezing winter's night, the Orient Express is stopped dead in its tracks by a snowdrift. Passengers awake to find the train still stranded and to discover that a wealthy American has been brutally stabbed to death in his private compartment. Incredibly, that compartment is locked from the inside. With no escape into the wintery landscape the killer must still be on board. Fortunately, the brilliant Belgian inspector Hercule Poirot is also on board, having booked the last available berth. Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels, owing no doubt to a combination of its romantic setting and the ingeniousness of its plot; its non-exploitative reference to the sensational kidnapping and murder of the infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh only two years prior; and a popular 1974 film adaptation, starring Albert Finney as Poirot - one of the few cinematic versions of a Christie work that met with the approval, however mild, of the author herself.
Content warnings (AI-checked, may be incomplete)
- violence
- death of a child
- suicide
Subjects: Agatha Christie, Private investigator, P.I., Hercule Poirot, Detective, Murder
