Murder in the Calais Coach [Murder on the Orient Express]; in: The Saturday Evening Post

Philadelphia: Curtis, 1933. First Edition. Wrappers. Very good. 6 vols. 1st appearance anywhere of Murder on the Orient Express, under its original title, Murder in the Calais Coach, in 6 issues of The Saturday Evening Post from Sep. 30 to Nov. 4, 1933 (illustrated by William Hoople). It precedes British serialization in Grand Magazine (Mar. to May 1934), and both book editions (London, Jan. 1, 1934, and NY, Feb. 28, 1934). Original wrappers, very good and well preserved, and these are fragile paper ephemera so any other set is likely to look like a plush toy washed on hot, and have a murky description ignoring its wounds, like The Black Knight in Monty Python, his arm cut off and gushing blood, saying, "Tis but a scratch.". A rousing Christie showpiece circling an assassination on a moving train that soon becomes snowbound. There is a first-class coach filled with passengers using aliases, false clues, and convincing alibies, but it is a collaborative kabuki dance quickly penetrated by Hercule Poirot's discovery that all 12 passengers and the conductor are guilty of a painstakingly plotted murder for revenge. Poirot reflects that some things blow up and some things blow over, and after deciding that the earlier crime (kidnapping and murder) was justly redressed, he lets the 13 assassins go free. Fiction is the most fertile of arts because it encompasses everything that didn't happen, and reading it provides peaceful, private, and quiet escape from everything that did.