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7/9/2010 11:14:40 AM
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The Editors
Posts 11
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With the summer travel season in full swing, some of our regular forum visitors may be on board trains, buses, ships, or planes. There's hardly any conveyance these days that takes its passengers out of cell phone or internet range. How inconvenient that is for mystery writers! In the past, an on-board murder scenario would often involve a closed circle of suspects with no means of communicating with the outside world. Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, in which the famous train is stopped by a snow drift, provides the classic example. What are your favorite travel mysteries?
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7/10/2010 5:15:10 AM
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Yoshinori Todo
Posts 232
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List of Agatha Christie travel mysteries!
Death on the Nile--Arguably the best travel mystery by this author. To Egypt; the characters take a trip down the famous Nile River.
A Caribbean Mystery--To the Caribbean; as far as we know, the only time Miss Marple ever left England.
Murder on the Orient Express--To Syria, then Istanbul, Turkey, and Belgrade, Yugoslavia (Serbia today).
Evil Under the Sun--To the fictional "Jolly Roger Hotel," somewhere off the Devon Coast, England.
Murder in Mesopotamia--To Mesopotamia, aka "the cradle of civilization," specifically Iraq.
They Came to Baghdad--To Baghdad, Iraq.
Appointment with Death--To the Middle East, specifically Jerusalem, Israel, and later Petra, Jordan.
Peril at End House--To Cornwall, England; Poirot and Hastings are on a holiday at the (fictional) seaside resort of St. Loo on the British Riviera.
And Then There Were None--To the fictional "Indian Island" or "Soldier Island" off the coast of Devon, England.
--
Josh
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7/10/2010 3:04:17 PM
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stanbrown
Posts 16
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One of my all-time favorites is The House without a Key by Earl Der Biggers--the book that introduced Charlie Chan. The book first centers, though, on a New England spinster in her 50s who is visiting her cousins in Hawaii for the first time in 30 years. The book was published in 1925, so her nostalgic remembrances of the Honolulu of 30 years before were the 1880s and the comic-opera pomp and circumstance of the royal court and the (then new) palace. Her family back in Boston become upset that she had extended her stay in Hawaii so long (several months) that they send over their young scion to bring her back home. John Greenleaf Winterslip is in his late 20s, or maybe around 30, but very stiff, conventional, conservative Back Bay Boston. He becomes the focus of the book, as he unwinds--first in his reactions to San Francisco, and then to Hawaii. Finally, he becomes the amateur detective who follows Charlie Chan (the official Honolulu police detective) around during the inevitable murder investigation.
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7/11/2010 11:00:46 PM
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Jeff Baker
Posts 132
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Then there's the classic of the detective going on vacation to escape crime and mystery and plunging headlong into, oh you know! It happened to Sherlock Holmes in Doyle's story "The Reigate Puzzle" and to the Ciccones in one of the best episodes of t.v.'s Seeing Things: "Seeing The Country." (Louie and Marge try to get away from murder in a rural town by the lake, but when they go fishing Louie reels in a skeleton and a vision of an old crime...)
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7/13/2010 10:17:00 AM
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Robert Lopresti
Posts 67
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Jeff, I LOVED Seeing THings. I thought you were going to bring up the episode at the ski resort. THe highlight was that Louis's ex-wife and Heather, the uptight corwn attorney were tied up by bad guys and in order to burn the ropes free they had to smoke a joint. Somewhat changed their personalities.
More on topic, ahem. First thing that comes to mind is Lawrence Block's "The Tulsa Experience," which is definitely about travel and the possibilities of crime.
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7/13/2010 6:57:11 PM
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Jeff Baker
Posts 132
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Rob, I'd forgotten that scene (from "Snow Blind") Loved it! There are a few episodes on You Tube, none on DVD.
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