Just after midnight, a snowdrift stopped the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train was surprisingly full for the time of the 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.

With tension mounting, detective Hercule Poirot comes up with not one, but two solutions to the crime.

The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile was shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway had been shot through the head. She was young, stylish and beautiful. A girl who had everything … until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalled an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ‘I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.’ Yet in this exotic setting nothing was ever quite what it seemed …

There’s a serial killer on the loose, bent on working his way through the alphabet. And as a macabre calling card he leaves beside each victim’s corpe the ABC Railway Guide open at the name of the town where the murder has taken place.

Having begun with Andover, Bexhill and then Churston, there seems little chance of the murderer being caught – until he makes the crucial and vain mistake of challenging Hercule Poirot to frustrate his plans…

Ve vlaku je náhodným cestujícím objevena pod sedadlem mrtvola mladé ženy. Zoufalý otec zavražděné, podezírající nenáviděného zetě, se obrátí na Hercula Poirota. Zdá se, že tentokrát se nejedná o velkou záhadu... Ale nebyla by to Agatha Christie, aby čtenáře záhy nepřekvapila nečekanými zvraty ve vyšetřování (Expres do Plymouthu). Greenshawova kratochvíle: tak zvláštně nazývají sousedé jeden bizarní dům, obývaný stejně bizarní starou dámou. Jednoho dne je tato podivínka při práci na zahradě zastřelena -- šípem, a to je lákavý oříšek pro slečnu Marplovou. Poslední povídka (Dům v Šírázu) nás i pana Parkera Pynea zavede do orientálního Šírázu za jednou tajemnou anglickou lady.