Item #334 Murder on the Orient Express. Agatha Christie.

Murder on the Orient Express

London: Collins, 1934. First Edition. Hardcover. 1st edition of Christie’s astonishing tour de force, wherein Hercule Poirot uncovers an assassination, on a moving, but soon snowbound, train in which all 13 passengers and the conductor are guilty of a carefully plotted murder for revenge. Poirot deduces the complex truth, and then decides the crime was justified and lets all the killers go free. It is her greatest and most inventive novel, and despite the arguments of some for And Then There Were None, it is Orient Express that has always been her highest demand 1st edition among collectors. Original orange cloth, spine and a strip of the back cover irregularly faded (almost always the case with these orange Collins bindings, even underneath the jacket), 1 fox spot on title, else very good in a very good, unrepaired 1st printing dustjacket (priced 7/6, the identifier of 1st printing). Fine half morocco case. A small 1st printing was published on Jan. 1 in the pits of the depression, and sold out instantly. It was reprinted the same month and continuously thereafter, and 1st printings in jacket have been rare since collectors began looking for them in the 1950s. No sales in jacket at auction. This is only the 3rd copy in jacket I have seen and the 2nd I have owned. It divides Christie’s novels. All her Bodley Head and Collins London 1st editions before Orient Express (1934) are rare and expensive in their 1st printing dustjackets, all those after it are not. Very good / very good. Item #334

Price: $45,000.00

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