Stamboul Train is the second significant novel by Graham Greene. Set on a train journey from Ostend to Istanbul, the book was renamed Orient Express when it was published in the United States. The novel appeared in 1932 and was Greene's first true success. It was taken on by the Book Society and in 1934 adapted as the film Orient Express. Introduction Stamboul Train is one of a number that the author classed as an "entertainment". But though some elements in the novel have been described as "melodramatic incidents that could find a place in the most conventional of thrillers", Greene's aim is to use them to go beyond their basic paradigm in order "to produce work that can be taken as art while also reaching a large audience". His book followed two unsuccessful novels that Greene later disowned, The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1932). Writing in his autobiography, he describes how "for the first and last time in my life I deliberately set out to write a book to please, one which with luck might be made into a film". Among the preparations for writing his book, he mentions taking notes on a train journey to Cologne – "you may be sure the allotments outside Bruges were just where I placed them in April, 1931". He also plotted key scenes in which the characters were to be established through dialogue and he put himself in the mood by daily playing Arthur Honegger's "Pacific 231" on his gramophone at home. The characters include a businessman, a lesbian, and a revolutionary intellectual. The character of a self-regarding popular author Q. C. Savory got Greene into trouble even before the book appeared. J. B. Priestley was given a review copy and, coming to the conclusion that Savory was based upon him, threatened a libel suit and also to leave their joint publisher, Heinemann. Greene was therefore forced to make changes that involved the replacement of some twenty pages. Plot summary The novel focuses on the lives of individuals aboard a luxury express making a three-day journey from Ostend to Istanbul (although Greene uses the old name for the city, Constantinople). The novel opens on board the ferry, on which several of the novel's major characters have travelled from England. Mabel Warren and Janet Pardoe join the train later in Cologne and Josef Grünlich joins it in Vienna. Although