Books like “Murder on the Orient Express”

What to read after “Murder on the Orient Express” by Agatha Christie: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe · 1841
Same genre: “Detective fiction”
In a locked Paris apartment, a woman and her daughter are found brutally murdered with no sign of how the killer entered or left. The reclusive, eccentric C. Auguste Dupin takes up the case and solves it by pure reasoning, in the story often called the first detective tale.
2
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Agatha Christie · 1926
Same genre: “Detective fiction” and “Golden Age mystery”
- Eccentric Detective
- Twist Ending
In the village of King's Abbot, the wealthy Roger Ackroyd is stabbed hours after learning a secret. Hercule Poirot, retired nearby to grow marrows, is drawn into the case, where everyone, including the narrator, seems to be telling less than the whole truth.
3
The Three Coffins
John Dickson Carr · 1935
Same genre: “Detective fiction”
On a foggy London evening a professor is shot dead inside a room locked from within, with fresh snow outside showing no footprints. Dr. Gideon Fell investigates the impossible killing and, along the way, explains how a locked-room murder can be done.
4
Whose Body?
Dorothy L. Sayers · 1923
Same genre: “Detective fiction” and “Golden Age mystery”
- Eccentric Detective
Lord Peter Wimsey is intrigued when a corpse is found in a bathtub wearing nothing but a pair of gold pince-nez, while a financier has gone missing. Aided by his butler Bunter and a Scotland Yard inspector, he works out how the body came to be there.
5
The Innocence of Father Brown
G. K. Chesterton · 1911
Same genre: “Detective fiction”
A quiet Catholic priest with a mild manner and an eye for human nature solves impossible crimes that baffle the police. Across twelve stories he uncovers murderers, thieves and impostors, often relying on ordinary details that everyone else has overlooked.
6
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Agatha Christie · 1920
Same genre: “Detective fiction”
- Locked Room Mystery
- Eccentric Detective
When wealthy Emily Inglethorp is fatally poisoned at her country estate, the household is sealed off with a killer among the guests. Captain Hastings, home from the war, brings in his old acquaintance Hercule Poirot, a Belgian refugee detective, to work out who could have reached her locked bedroom.
7
The Leavenworth Case
Anna Katharine Green · 1878
Same genre: “Detective fiction”
- Locked Room Mystery
- Twist Ending
When a retired merchant is shot in the library of his locked Manhattan mansion, no one could have left before the body was found. Detective Ebenezer Gryce and a young lawyer weigh the two nieces, the servants and a missing will in one of the first American detective novels.
8
The Red House Mystery
A. A. Milne · 1922
Same genre: “Detective fiction”
- Locked Room Mystery
- Twist Ending
At a country house party, the host's brother is found shot in a locked room and the host has vanished. Antony Gillingham, a guest with a taste for detective stories, and his friend Bill play at being Holmes and Watson, poking into the household's secrets before the police arrive.
9
The Poisoned Chocolates Case
Anthony Berkeley · 1929
Same genre: “Detective fiction”
- Eccentric Detective
- Twist Ending
A box of poisoned chocolates kills a man at his club, and the police can find no culprit. Six members of the Crimes Circle, an armchair detective society, each offer a different solution to the same murder, until amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham tests their theories against the facts.
10
Too Many Cooks
Rex Stout · 1938
Same genre: “Detective fiction” and “Golden Age mystery”
- Eccentric Detective
Nero Wolfe is lured out of his brownstone to a gathering of the world's great chefs, and one of them is poisoned. When the killer turns toward Wolfe himself, he and Archie Goodwin must sort through the guests of a secretive culinary society to name the murderer.
11
The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins · 1868
Same genre: “Detective fiction”
- Eccentric Detective
- Twist Ending
A priceless yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple is left to Rachel Verinder on her birthday, and vanishes the same night. Family, servants, doctors and a famous detective each tell their part of the story as suspicion moves from one person to another.
12
The Nine Tailors
Dorothy L. Sayers · 1934
Same genre: “Detective fiction”
- Eccentric Detective
Lord Peter Wimsey is stranded by floods in the fenland village of Fenchurch St Paul over New Year. Months later a battered body is found in a newly opened grave, and Wimsey must read the village's bell-ringing lore and an old jewel theft to give the dead man a name.