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S1 E1 / Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast, a podcast covering mysteries in all of their forms from classic Golden Age novels to contemporary cozies. I’m mystery author Sara Rosett and this is Season One, Episode One, and it's all about Murder on the Orient Express. Full show notes at https://www.sararosett.com/mbps1e1/This is probably the most famous traditional mystery out there. It was written by Agatha Christie and published in 1934 with many, many, many adaptations. Until recently, the most well-known one was the 1974 movie with a ton of big name stars like Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud and Vanessa Redgrave. Then in 2017, a new feature film adaptation was made with Kenneth Branagh and his controversial mustaches, which I think is just pitch perfect for cozy and traditional mystery lovers. It's the interpretation of Poirot’s facial hair that got everyone talking when the trailer first came out. This movie also had tons of star power with Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench and Penelope Cruz, to name just a few. That's the great thing about this book. It has a huge cast. You can get lots of big stars in it when you make it into a movie. This movie adaptation made quite a few changes to the original story. So we will talk about that later. Right now, we're going to focus on the book and some facts about it, some interesting things related to the writing of it. And we'll look at themes and tropes and then we'll look at the adaptations.