I hadn't read this book in many years but it hasn't lost anything over time. In spite of first being published in 1932 it is still a modern book. You can see where a lot of contemporary writers looked for influence, including the late, great Elmore Leonard. It is amazing that Agatha Christie published Murder on the Orient Express the same year. It is not that I don't like Christie once in a while, especially Poirot with his leetle grey cells, but in time they seem miles away.

I simply adore the movies… and while this novel had some of that panache, it is a much darker, harsher world.

Is that disappointing? Well, yes.