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Seicho Matsumoto's Points and Lines (1958) has been called a drawing room mystery in the tradition of Agatha Christie but the novel's lineage runs deeper than that. Specifically, to trains which were intrinsic to Sherlock Holmes stories: think how many of those hinge on the catching of, the scheduling of travel, the back-and-forth. This is not the single-track journey of Jonathan Harker's passage into darkness in Dracula, but the criss-cross confusion of the modern world only clever investigators can navigate. In Matusmoto's novel it is the killer who masters the schedule and the detective who unpicks it. The clinical exposition – the commuter denouement – runs for many pages. 

It's no coincidence that one of Agatha Christie's best novels is set on a train. How Poirot gets on the carriage is the most thrilling half of Murder on the Orient Express. He urgently requires travel; the train is fully booked – unusual, for the season; Bouc, a friend and the director of the railway wrangles the detective a second-class berth; a threat is made to one of the passengers; and that night, out of further courtesy, Bouc moves Poirot into the last first-class cabin on the carriage, inadvertently putting him at the center of the action.