With a Vengeance

From the 19th century onward, trains have occupied a central place in literature, not just as a mode of travel but as a rich symbolic setting. Their enclosed spaces bring together strangers of different backgrounds, creating a natural stage for tension, intimacy, and conflict. At the same time, the forward motion of the train often mirrors the narrative drive of the story itself: a journey with a fixed beginning and end, hurtling toward revelation or catastrophe.

Classic examples highlight these dual qualities. In Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (1934), the opulent train becomes a claustrophobic container for mystery and moral ambiguity, its physical confinement forcing characters to confront one another. In Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877), trains symbolize both modern progress and destructive inevitability, culminating in the novel’s tragic conclusion. Later works such as Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train (1950) exploit the anonymity of train travel to explore psychological suspense and moral compromise.

Riley Sager’s With a Vengeance inherits this tradition. By setting the novel aboard the fictional luxury train the Philadelphia Phoenix, Sager draws on the glamour and peril associated with rail travel during its golden age while also using the train’s confinement to heighten suspense.