Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: When was the book Murder on the Orient Express released?
Murder on the Orient Express is a detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934. In the United States, it was published on 28 February 1934,[1][2] under the title of Murder in the Calais Coach, by Dodd, Mead and Company.[3][4] The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6)[5] and the U.S. edition at $2.00.[4]
Murder on the Orient Express is a 2001 made-for-television mystery film directed by Carl Schenkel based on the 1934 novel "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie, featuring Hercule Poirot. This version is set in the present day and has a smaller cast than the novel. The screenplay was written by Stephen Harrigan and the original music score was composed by Christopher Franke.
During the Second World War, Christie wrote two novels, Curtain and Sleeping Murder, intended as the last cases of these two great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Both books were sealed in a bank vault for over thirty years and were released for publication by Christie only at the end of her life, when she realised that she could not write any more novels. These publications came on the heels of the success of the film version of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974.
Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express is a 2006 adventure game developed by AWE Productions and published by The Adventure Company for Microsoft Windows. It is the second installment in The Adventure Company's "Agatha Christie series". The setting is five years before the events in "", with a largely unrelated storyline. The plot follows an amateur sleuth, Antoinette Marceau, and her investigation of a murder with twelve possible suspects aboard the Orient Express, which has been blocked by an avalanche in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during 1934. She is aided by famous detective Hercule Poirot.
"Murder on the Orient Express " was released theatrically in the UK on 24 November 1974. The film was a success at the box office, given its tight budget of $1.4 million, earning $36 million in North America, making it the 11th highest-grossing film of 1974. Nat Cohen claimed it was the first film completely financed by a British company to make the top of the weekly US box office charts in "Variety".
Since its release, "Murder on the Orient Express" has received widely differing reviews. GameRankings gave it a score of 65.22%, while Metacritic gave it 60 out of 100.
"Murder on the Orient Express" received some praise for graphical improvements over its predecessor. Among the aspects of the game which received positive reactions were the game's environments. Just Adventure called the game environments "head and shoulders above "And Then There Were None"," describing the train's carriages on the Orient Express as oozing with elegance, and a faithful and accurate recreation of the 1930s. The site criticized the game for suffering graphically in later stages, but praised it overall for improving on the graphics of "And Then There Were None". Game Chronicles was less enthusiastic, calling the graphics above average, but standard fare for a current adventure game. Character models were another aspect of "Murder on the Orient Express" which received positive attention. Quandary described the character modelling as much improved from "And Then There Were None", and while still a tinge woody, "all the characters feel as if they just stepped out of the book." Adventure Gamers called the characters "some of the best seen in recent adventure games," saying that each character has a unique design and costume perfect for the game's setting. The reviewer also pointed out several small touches added to the characters, such as the main character shivering when she is outside the train in the cold weather, and also brushing lint off her clothing while waiting for the player to decide what to do next. Adventure Gamers also complimented AWE Productions for lighting effects in the game, and for creating a "very soft glow to the scenes, which give a much more lifelike look to the characters." IGN agreed that the interior of the Orient Express is quite sharp, but complained that character models lack detail and are animated awkwardly. Another complaint from IGN was that the compression used for cutscenes causes the animations to look "washed out and blocky," and that this problem continues as the cutscenes are noticeably pixelated throughout "Murder on the Orient Express".
The Taurus Express is featured in Agatha Christie's crime novel "Murder on the Orient Express" (1934). While the main body of the story takes place on the another of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits trains, the Simplon-Orient Express, the opening chapter of the book takes place on the Taurus Express.
The official site for "Murder on the Orient Express" was unveiled in September 2006, and contains screenshots, character biographies and photos, environment artwork, trailers, demos, music, wallpaper and contests. "Murder on the Orient Express" was released on November 14, 2006 in North America. The Adventure Company held a launch party for the gaming press two days after the game was shipped. Among the guests were the development team of "Murder on the Orient Express", and actors portraying the game's various characters. The demo for "Murder on the Orient Express" was released on December 20, 2006, and contained a small portion of the game which has the player exploring the train.
Vinkovci, though it is spelled Vincovci in the book, and its rail station are featured in Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express" as the place near which the Orient Express breaks down.
"Murder on the Orient Express" retains the main plot elements of Agatha Christie's novel of the same name. An additional ending is presented in the game which differs from the conclusion of Christie's novel. As with "And Then There Were None", Christie's novel is bundled with the game. Some reviewers of "Murder on the Orient Express" criticized the game because of the repetitive nature of tasks the player must complete, and also complained about the inefficient and cumbersome inventory system. Others have praised it for improved graphics compared to "And Then There Were None", as well as convincing voice acting and audio effects. "Murder on the Orient Express" is followed by "", the third installment in the "Agatha Christie series".
The point and click computer game Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express was released in November 2006 for Windows and expanded on Agatha Christie's original story with a new playable central character as Hercule Poirot (voiced by David Suchet) is ill and recovering in his train compartment.
… had Dame Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express" been made into a movie 40 years ago (when it was published here as "Murder on the Calais Coach"), it would have been photographed in black-and-white on a back lot in Burbank or Culver City, with one or two stars and a dozen character actors and studio contract players. Its running time would have been around 67 minutes and it could have been a very respectable B-picture. "Murder on the Orient Express" wasn't made into a movie 40 years ago, and after you see the Sidney Lumet production that opened yesterday at the Coronet, you may be both surprised and glad it wasn't. An earlier adaptation could have interfered with plans to produce this terrifically entertaining super-valentine to a kind of whodunit that may well be one of the last fixed points in our inflationary universe."
Christie later said that this and "Witness for the Prosecution" were the only adaptations of her books that she liked.
"Murder on the Orient Express" was announced in May 2006, as the second installment in The Adventure Company's "Agatha Christie series". As with the game's predecessor, "And Then There Were None", "Murder on the Orient Express" was developed by AWE Productions, in collaboration with producer The Adventure Company. The production team remained largely the same, with Lee Sheldon reprising his role as Lead Designer, and Scott Nixon from AWE Productions reprising his position as Managing Director.
Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Research was a major component of the developmental stages of "Murder on the Orient Express". Most of the research was focused on Yugoslavia in 1934, the game's setting. Sheldon focused on the political and scientific situation of this era, and explained his intensive research, saying "all of the puzzles have to be contextual. They all have to either help character, help story or define period." The developers also drew influence from a train museum outside Miami with an original Pullman carriage - the same as the carriages used on the Orient Express in the 1930s. The museum also contained a locomotive similar to the one the developers were looking for. The developers ended up using the train museum, several books about the Orient Express, the 1974 film version of Christie's novel, and the internet as research resources. With "Murder on the Orient Express" being the first Poirot game produced, Sheldon was careful that the game fitted into Christie's timeline of Poirot's exploits. The television series often took liberties with the time in which stories were set, but Sheldon was determined to keep everything in strict accordance with Christie's work. There are several references in the game to Poirot's earlier cases, all of which are chronologically accurate. This was partly so that Sheldon could use the culture of specific eras of time, and also so that in the future other Poirot-based games will be chronologically accurate.
"Murder on the Orient Express" grossed $102.8 million in North America, and $250 million overseas, for a worldwide total of $352.8 million, against a production budget of $55 million.
"Murder on the Orient Express" was released in the United Kingdom on November 3, 2017 and in the United States on November 10, 2017, by 20th Century Fox. The film was released on digital HD on February 20, 2018, and on Ultra HD Blu-ray, DVD and Blu-ray on February 27, 2018.
"Murder on the Orient Express" is set in the year 1934. The game is initially begins in Istanbul, while the remaining majority occurs within the carriages of the Orient Express, when it is blocked by an avalanche in Yugoslavia. However, the player has some opportunities to venture outside the train into the snowy exterior environment.
The UK serialisation appeared after book publication, appearing in three instalments in the Grand Magazine, in March, April, and May 1934 (Issues 349 to 351). This version was abridged from the book version (losing some 25% of the text), was without chapter divisions, and named the Russian princess as Dragiloff instead of Dragomiroff. Advertisements in the back pages of the UK first editions of The Listerdale Mystery, Why Didn't They Ask Evans, and Parker Pyne Investigates claimed that Murder on the Orient Express had proven to be Christie's best-selling book to date and the best-selling book published in the Collins Crime Club series.
The US title of Murder in the Calais Coach was used to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel Stamboul Train which had been published in the United States as Orient Express.[6]
A major difference between "And Then There Were None" and "Murder on the Orient Express" that Sheldon pointed out was that in the former, the premise of the novel was that no one solved the murder. This forced Sheldon to desperately try to find a way to integrate clues into the story so that the player could actually discover the murderer, although the game remained quite uninteractive. In "Murder on the Orient Express", the actual novel follows an investigation, so Sheldon could more easily integrate clues to lead to all three possible solutions. Sheldon also excised unnecessary puzzles from "Murder on the Orient Express", as they were an unpopular feature of its predecessor.
The elegant train of the 1930s, the Orient Express, is stopped by heavy snowfall, with many passengers. A murder is discovered, and Poirot's trip home to London from the Middle East is interrupted to solve the murder.
Agatha Christie's Poirot"Murder on the Orient Express" (2010)
"The Times"' film critic David Robinson had mixed feelings about the film. Although it was entertaining, and followed the formula of the "Murder on the Orient Express" film four years earlier, he found it a bit too long and not quite as good. He concluded that screenwriter Anthony Shaffer and director John Guillermin were not quite as suitable to handle Agatha Christie's rich material as Paul Dehn and Sidney Lumet had been when they worked on "Murder on the Orient Express".