Early in the morning, when everyone went to the dining car to enjoy breakfast, they were told that the train had to stop in the outskirts of Yugoslavia because of the snowstorm. At the same time, Bono also learned a terrible news, the American who had asked him for help. , Samuel Edward Ratchett, a wealthy American businessman with a gloomy face, was stabbed to death in his room in the early morning, and was stabbed twelve times on his body. Bono raised his eyebrows, a cruel murderer. When everyone on the train was summoned to the dining car by Bono and told that the murderer was still on the train, fear gripped the whole train. Twelve passengers of different identities were worried, suspicious of each other, trying to excuse themselves, and scrambling to get to Bono. Nuo revealed the secret he learned or pretended to be calm and didn't care about anything... Bono seemed to have found some clues during the face-to-face interrogation, but he vaguely sensed that something was wrong. The murderer appears to be a mysterious woman wearing a red scarf. Everyone insisted that her characteristics and the time of her appearance coincided with the murder everywhere. The woman is now missing, and the train has not stopped from beginning to end.
Could it be that the only explanation is that after stabbing Ratchett twelve times, the woman in red hurried away in the heavy snow, and has since disappeared. The confessions of the twelve people were surprisingly consistent. It seemed that this was just a simple murder case, and the solution was imminent. However, in this strange agreement, Bono noticed something unusual. Ratchett's true identity is finally revealed when Bono discovers a charred slip of paper.
It turned out that the deceased Samuel Ratchett, whose real name was Cassetti, was a notorious gangster who committed a horrific kidnapping and murder case in the United States. He kidnapped Daisy Armstrong, a 3-year-old wealthy daughter, and successfully extorted a huge ransom. But the police later discovered that the little girl had already been killed. The pregnant mother was unbearable. After giving birth to a dead baby boy prematurely, she also died. The desperate father committed suicide by drinking bullets. The crime sparked public outrage, and Cassetti was arrested six months later, but after his mysterious escape from prison he fled to Europe, changing his name and becoming a well-dressed JP Samuel Ratchett.
Bono observed everything with suspicion. There must be a conspiracy hidden in the too strange coincidence. I also gasped when the truth was finally revealed. It turned out that the twelve people on the train, all related to little Daisy Armstrong, boarded the two Orient Express together and planned a sophisticated revenge. There were twelve knife cuts on Ratchett's body, all of which were bleeding with sticky blood, and the scarlet blood soaked Ratchett's shirt.
I think that in this Agatha's most famous novel, the wonderful thing is not the author's meticulous description of the process of solving the case - the interlocking of reasoning is not the unexpectedness of the final truth, but Agatha's The torture of justice and love in this novel.
When legal justice cannot satisfy people's psychological justice, which one should we choose between legal theory and personal feelings, reason and emotion, justice and justice?
The dead man on the Orient Express was a notorious kidnapper who brutally let a three-year-old girl die in fear. Like Satan in the dark night, he destroyed a family. However, the shortcomings of the law have forgiven him in disguise, allowing him to have fun with his new identity. Kind and innocent people can only watch him helplessly, but they can't do anything. This is the sadness of the law and the sadness of justice. The law should represent justice, but now justice bends its back in front of the so-called justice. The Twelve Avengers do not recognize justice, what they need is justice, even if the means to regain justice is to make themselves unjust.
In my opinion, the book shows two contradictions: one is the way of revenge of the twelve Avengers, killing Ratchett was revenge but at the same time made himself the same murderer as him; the other is Bono's choice, the choice Handing over the Twelve Avengers to the police or covering up their revenge is one side of reason and one side of emotion.
The blizzard on the outskirts of Yugoslavia was violent and frantic. The snow fluttered across the sky and fell on the ground like a heavy wool blanket, gently covering all the blood, violence and fear. Revenge, for a righteous reason, to kill the enemy, the twelve avengers made a careful plan to follow Ratchett on the Orient Express, twelve shared a bayonet, and one knife was drawn on the murderer. With knife marks of different depths, they judge the murderer with a sneer and sneer full of anger and joy of victory. "Society has sentenced him to death; we're just executing the sentence" - says the Avengers. They pleaded guilty, they were at ease, they accepted Bono's conviction with a smile, as if it was not themselves who had committed the crime but Bono the Judge.
Bono was also caught in a crisis of faith like never before. He's a detective, and he's supposed to obey the law, but the power of emotion is like the hand of a drunken man, turning his life upside down. In the face of law and justice, whichever one chooses makes him extremely painful. Choosing the law is tantamount to burying the weak moans of justice, condoning the crime of the murderer, and betraying the morality of the heart; choosing justice is tantamount to disregarding the law, and covering up the murder that happened in front of you is tantamount to covering up ten The murder of two Avengers. Whichever one chooses, it is sinful.
In this world, there is no pure karma, no so-called end of good and evil, because originally good and evil are a vague concept that is difficult to define. Who knows what is good and what is evil. And what is the definition of evil?
At the end of the book, Bono finally acquiesced to another "truth" with other people after cracking the mystery. The warmth of his thoughts and the full of human touch satisfy people's good hope that good and evil will be rewarded. However, I prefer the ending of the movie Murder on the New Orient Express (2010): Bono speaks loudly to the confessed Avengers, "The rule of law must be above all else, and even if it's not fair, it must be restored to make it last forever. Once the legal belief collapses, the civilized society will have no place to live.” However, when he held the cross in his pocket, his face suddenly filled with pain - God chose justice, and finally he acquiesced to the revenge of the Avengers, but when He finally took out the frame from his pocket and walked in the snow, clutching it tightly. The sadness and tangle on his face were suffocating, and he shed tears, which was his repentance to the law he had betrayed.
When the law cannot punish evil, is justice outside the courtroom right? Whether to choose morality or obey the law has always been an unsolved proposition. When people are struggling in the quagmire of harsh laws, dazed in the labyrinth of justice, justice has nowhere to appeal, and good and evil cannot be defined, do those so-called "criteria" still have meaning, but what exactly can be called "criteria" "Woolen cloth!
I can't say I like this story because the inconsistency in this story scares me. I was terrified of the snow and the smoke from the steam. I fear Bono's torture of justice. I was terrified of Bono's sharp eyes. Because if it were me, I would choose to kill the sinner, even if I fear the unpleasant resistance and blood that the bayonet stabbed in his chest.
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