Talk:The Mystery of the Blue Train/Archive 1

Archive 1

VfD

On April 12, 2005, this article was nominated for deletion. The result was keep. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/The Mystery of the Blue Train for a record of the discussion. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 04:12, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As the novel is the inspiration for the just released on TV film, perhaps the piece could be expanded slightly (eg reference to Josette Simon.

Jackiespeel 22:42, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Christie Mistake?

The article contains the following paragraph, as a section titled Christie Mistake. It is completely unsupported by any references and appears to consist entirely of original research and speculation. I've copied the full text of the section below:

Agatha Christie made a literary mistake, whether she'd known it or not, in the eleventh chapter when, after discovering the murder, a Compagnie International des Wagon-Lits conductor is questioned, and we are told his name is Pierre Michel. Pierre Michel, however, is also the name of the conductor in Murder on the Orient Express, another train, at the time, owned and operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Whether this is the same man or not is not revealed. Hercule Poirot, in Murder on the Orient Express, which was written six years after this book was written, does not express any change in temperament or reveal to us that he has met this man before when he meets Pierre Michel. We therefore assume Christie had forgotten she'd used the name previously, or that Hercule Poirot has forgotten this man, a completely uncharacteristic trait of the little, Belgian detective.

Its supposedly noteworthy revelation of a mistake is based on the unfounded assumption that Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits could not have two different employees with the not uncommon name Pierre Michel working as conductors on different trains. In such a case, Poirot would not be expected to recognize a conductor he had not met before who simply happened to have the same unremarkable name as one he had met six years earlier.

Although the observation that Christie reused a minor character's name is interesting and possibly was a mistake of sorts, it is not particularly noteworthy. This section is not well written and, in my opinion, it adds nothing of value to the article.

I think this section should be removed completely. If there's been no objection posted here in a week or so, I'm going to remove it.--Jim10701 (talk) 23:49, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed.--Jtomlin1uk (talk) 15:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)