Hercule Poirot is travelling on the Orient Express. While on the journey, Poirot meets a very close friend Bouc, who works for the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. The train is stopped when a landslide blocks the line on the second night out from Istanbul, and American millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett is found stabbed to death the next morning.
Since no footprints are visible around the train and the doors to the other cars were locked, it seems that the murderer must still be among the passengers in Ratchett's car. Poirot and Bouc work together to solve the case. They are aided by Pierre Michel, the middle-aged French conductor of the car.
A key to the solution is Ratchett's revealed involvement in the Armstrong tragedy in the United States several years earlier, in which a baby was kidnapped and then murdered. (The fictitious Armstrong case, inspired by the real-life kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby boy.)
Filming started on 6 February 2001 in Leeds.[2][3] A replica of an Orient Express buffet car was built at Horsforth's newly opened Transformer Studios, where the majority of the filming took place.[2] Filming also took place in Kingston upon Hull, Bury, and Istanbul.[3][5]
Murder Mystery is a 2019 film produced and distributed by Netflix is inspired by the book, but set on a first-class yacht rather than a express locomotive, starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston as Nick and Audrey Spitz. Despite the similar plot, Murder Mystery is not a direct adaptation of the book, rather distilling and revamping the story into a contemporary setting with different characters.