Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
Take the English cozy murder mystery and set it on a train, while having the justice-meting detective let the guilty go free because he decides the murder itself was justice. That’s what Christie does with this classic Hercule Poirot mystery. Christie’s detective is an expert at reading human nature, and the novel tests and plays on the reader’s ability to read detective fiction. The book is oddly secular. The murderers aren’t acting in the stead of God; they’re working in the stead of the State. Covenantally, the book is about SANCTIONS (as is most crime fiction).
RECOMMENDED as a follow-up to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Experiments in Criticism 