Most of you will recognize the name of our guest reviewer, Dana Stabenow. Stabenow is the author of the award-winning, bestselling Kate Shugak series. The first book in the series, A Cold Day for Murder, received an Edgar Award. Now, Stabenow is reviewing some of the backlist from The Poisoned Pen. Check the Webstore here to order a copy of Lindsay Jayne Ashford’s The Woman on the Orient Express. https://bit.ly/4gqCcA1.
Full disclosure: I distrust most novels that feature real world famous people. The writers are too often excessively deferential toward their main character, resulting in more of a hagiography than a novel about a real person.
But I’m happy to report that this is not that book. It’s 1928 and Agatha Christie is on the run from her failed first marriage and the crushing attention from the press that came with it. She is planning to escape to the Caribbean and then she sees an article about Leonard Woolley’s archeological discoveries in Syria. So she boards the fabled Orient Express train from Paris to Istanbul, with Damascus as her final destination.
I do love me a great setting, and Ashford might have been the set designer for the 1974 film of the Christie novel.
The excitement of boarding the train gave way to exquisite relief as she climbed up a tapestry-covered ladder and slipped between damask sheets…
The headwaiter seated Agatha with her back to the engine and asked whether she would prefer Indian or Chinese tea. He went to fetch it while she perused the menu: eggs Benedict, kedgeree, or pancakes with maple syrup?…The newspaper, carefully ironed, was laid out beside silver cutlery that glinted where the sun caught it…
I mean, lead me to it. But Agatha isn’t the only single woman traveling on the Orient Express.
As she lifted the monogrammed porcelain cup to her lips, she spotted a girl at the table opposite.
In fact there are two other women traveling alone on that journey, all bound for Damascus, and each of them have deep-held secrets that will radically change all three of their lives, some for the better, and some…not.
She thought abut how she had pleaded with Archie to stay when he told her about his affair. How she had begged him to give their marriage another chance, to stay for three more months before making a decision. She remembered awful that had been, how cold he was toward her and the rows they had had. Things had become to bad that if she entered a room, he would get up and leave…Eventually, she saw that by trying to cling to him, all she had done was prolong the agony. There were no half measures with Archie.I can’t stand not having what I want, and I can’t stand not being happy. Everybody can’t be happy–somebody has got be unhappy. He’d said it time and again during those three months.
Which tells us everything we need to know about Archie, but all three women are suffering from one man-related malady or another. Suffice it to say that the male character you would least expect to show up does, and does so in whole-hearted and heart-warming style.
Ashford waxes even more lyrical about the desert landscape of the Middle East than she does about the Wagon-Lits service on board the train.
“Oh, look!” Katharine knelt up in bed, her nose against the glass. “It’s the Cilician Gates!…It’s the pass through the Taurus Mountains. Alexander the Great brough his army through here in 333 BC, and Saint Paul passed through his way to visit the Galatians. The train always stops to let people get out and admire the view.”…
“It’s like standing on the rim of the world!” Nancy took Agatha’s arm. The rock beneath their feet dropped almost vertically. They were looking out at a vast plain, hazy with mist in the early sunshine…As she gazed at the vast plain below, the colors changed before her eyes, from a milky violet blue to smoky gray to a pale yellow green.
and
There was something about being in the desert, at daybreak, with the colors of the dawn–pale pinks, corals, and blues–and the pure, cool air that gave everything a sense of wonder…This was what she had dreamed of. Here, in this barren landscape, she was truly away from everything–with the silent morning air, the rising sun, the sand for a seat, and the taste of sausages and tea.
Part tripartite romance, part travelogue, partly a short version of Bonehead Archeology, and a thoroughly enjoyable read, after which you will as I did google for images of the Cilician Gates and Bahr al Milh and Ukhaidir.
Dana Stabenow
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