Orient Express Travel in the Interwar Years, 1919–1939

The services popularly grouped under the name Orient Express linked Paris and other western European cities with central Europe, the Balkans and Istanbul. Sleeping cars, restaurant cars and coordinated international timetables made the train a symbol of cosmopolitan luxury, even though routes and termini changed repeatedly after World War I.

Interwar passengers crossed new national frontiers created by the post-war settlements and encountered passports, customs controls and political suspicion alongside first-class comfort. Diplomats, business travellers, tourists, refugees and intelligence agents could occupy the same narrow corridor, making the train a vivid image of both international connection and uncertainty.

First Class Murder places Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong aboard the train in 1935. Its locked compartment, multilingual passengers, valuable jewellery and rumours of espionage adapt the real prestige of interwar rail travel into a closed-circle mystery.