The Wheel Spins is the novel upon which the many versions of the movie The Lady Vanishes are based. Although I am familiar with the story in all its incarnations, I still found the book exciting.
Iris Carr is on holiday with a group of her friends in a Balkan country, possibly Romania. Rich and spoiled, the friends have been cheerfully disrupting their small hotel, leading the other English guests to dislike them. The last day, she finds she is tired of them herself, so she decides to stay a day longer than the others. When she does leave, she has a touch of sunstroke and has to be helped. The train is crowded, so the porter crams her into a compartment for six as the seventh person.
In the compartment are a commanding woman in black who turns out to be a baroness, a family of three, a cold blonde lady, and a nondescript middle-aged woman in tweeds. Iris isn’t feeling well because of her sunstroke, but the nondescript woman turns out to be English, Miss Froy, and takes her to the dining car for lunch. There she prattles about returning to England to her elderly parents and dog, her job as governess for the baroness, and her next job for the baron’s political opponent.
Back in the train compartment, Iris falls asleep. When she wakes up, Miss Froy is gone. When she doesn’t appear, Iris searches the train for her, but she doesn’t seem to be on it. In growing alarm, she finds her compartment companions denying that Miss Froy ever was there. On her way to the dining room, Miss Froy met some of the English people from the hotel, but when Iris speaks to them, some have not seen her and others lie for their own reasons. So, even though a young man named Hare and the professor with him try to help her, Hare believes she has hallucinated because of her sun stroke, and the professor thinks she is hysterical.
As the train nears Trieste, Iris begins to fear Miss Froy is in danger, but what can she do about it? This all makes an thrilling novel.
Missing from the movie adaptations are passages that visit Miss Froy’s elderly parents and dog as they await her coming. In a way, they are unnecessary, but they make the ending much more touching, especially the dog.
I received this novel from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.
What? Me Read? 
Sounds a lot like an Agatha Christie take-off.
Did you find any similarities to The Blue Train or Orient Express or The 4:50 from Paddington?
You didn’t mention any likenesses in your review, so perhaps any such don’t take away from the story. . .
Thanks!
Sue
No, not really. A person is killed on the train in 4:50 from Paddington, and on this one, someone disappears. That’s sort of a similarity. I don’t know if I’ve read The Blue Train. It’s not ringing any bells.
I liked the passages about Miss Froy’s parents too – they really did give it an emotional edge. I love the Hitchcock film too, but the tone is entirely different, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. Plus, there are two different Hitchock films that are very different. The older one, I think, starts with everyone at a ski resort. I am pretty sure they are both Hitchcocks, one done when he still lived in England and the other one when he moved here.
That’s interesting – I didn’t know there were two Hitchcock versions! The one I know is the Margaret Lockwood version – must check if I can track down the other!
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen two. I’m only finding one in 1938, though. But I think my husband bought me an old VHS collection that had a different version on it. Well, I guess I’m wrong. The other versions are more modern. But I had seen it before and didn’t remember anything about it starting at a ski resort. I wonder if Hitchcock could have done the same story under another name.
Well, there you go. I guess I only remembered the part on the train. I just looked at his filmography and it isn’t on there twice.
Strange! I know there was a much later version with Cybill Shepherd. I don’t think it was all that highly regarded but I must admit I enjoyed it – again there was much more humour in it than there was in the book.
You know, I am sure I watched it long ago on TV, and then I saw it a year or so again. My guess is that some TV station shaved off the beginning at the ski slope, so I saw it starting in the train. Or, I came in on it after it started. It used to be before cable and satellite TV that TV stations would cut parts of movies out to have room for commercials. I could see why that beginning part wouldn’t have much to do with the movie except making some of the people who were at the resort mad at her group of friends.
Yes, I never knew at the time that movies were often cut for TV – comes as a surprise if you see the whole thing and it’s not as you remembered it!
I know, or if you’re familiar with the movie and waiting for a particular scene, and it doesn’t come!