Just after midnight, a snowdrift stopped the Orient Ecpress in its tracks. The luxurious train was surprisingly full for the time of year, but by the morning there was one passenger fewer. An American lay dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside...Red herrings galore are put in the path of Hercule Poirot to try to keep him off the scent, but in adramtic denouement he succeeds in coming up with not one but two solutions to the crime.