14. Agatha Christie used the Lindbergh kidnapping as a plot device in Murder on the Orient Express
Much like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, mystery writer Agatha Christie featured her character, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, in a series of stories and novels. Using her own life experiences and a famous American kidnapping case, Christie created one of her best-known tales, Murder on the Orient Express. In December 1931, Agatha Christie boarded the Orient Express to return home from her archaeologist husband’s excavation in Nineveh. She observed her fellow travelers, many of whom inspired the characters that appear in the novel.
Four months after Christie’s experience on the train, one of the most famous kidnapping cases in history made international news. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh’s successful solo transatlantic flight from New York to Paris made history. The army officer received the Medal of Honor, and he promoted air travel with his new fame. Unfortunately, that recognition made him a target. On March 1, 1932, his son Charles Jr. was kidnapped. Even though the Lindberghs paid the ransom, the abductors murdered the child and left his body almost five miles away from his home. A truck driver discovered Charles, Jr.’s body about ten weeks after he went missing. Charles Jr.’s fate captivated the nation, and several labeled his kidnapping and murder as the “Crime of the Century.”
News of the little boy’s fate reached Europe, as Lindbergh was a global celebrity. In letters to her husband, Christie confirmed that she had already begun drafting parts of her new novel, in which Poirot investigates a murder onboard a train. In Murder on the Orient Express, Christie documented the strange characters she encountered on the train a few months before. When Christie read the news of Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s death, she incorporated the American kidnapping case into the plot, connecting Poirot’s investigation to the kidnapping and murder of Daisy Armstrong.