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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Murder at the hands of Hercule Poirot?, 10 Oct 2002
The mid 1930s were some of the best years of the so-called “Golden Age of Detective Fiction” in Britain. Most practitioners belonged to the Detection Club, they reviewed and promoted one another’s books publically and privately they shared and re-worked one another’s ideas. An example of this literary cross-fertilization may be seen when Freeman Wills Crofts’ “The 12.30 From Croydon”, 1934, and “Agatha Christie’s “Death In the Clouds”, 1935, are compared. Both books begin with a passenger plane flight across the English Channel. In the former novel, a passenger is found to be dead at the end of Chapter One when the plane touches down in Paris. In the latter, a passenger is found to be dead at the end of Chapter One when a plane touches down in London. Thereafter, and indeed in the titling of the two books, each writer develops the idea differently. Agatha Christie devises a whodunit puzzle. Characters are displayed in terms of how they appear physically, in their dialogue, by reputation or hearsay. Clues and significant red herrings are tossed about so that the murderer might mislead everybody else, and the writer might mislead the reader. Just how misleading appearances might be, is cleverly contrived at one point in this book when a jury at an inquest into the passenger’s death return a unanimous verdict of murder at the hands of another passenger, namely Hercule Poirot. Agatha Christie, who lived to become the world’s best-selling author, presents her puzzle in immensely readable but unsophisticated prose. The two dimensional characters are somehow easy to keep in mind as you strive to guess the murderer’s identity and, of course, there is Hercule Poirot to unerringly point the finger. He can also voice a note of compassion with his oft repeated, “Ah, yes, life can be terribly cruel”. “Death In the Clouds” is recommended for reading during prolonged international flights or sleepless nights as an escape from stressful reality. Don’t begin it, however, if you need a full night’s sleep. It is possible you will want to keep reading through to the last page.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Far from Poirot's finest hour, 27 May 2007
Not anywhere close to being Christie's best Poirot novel, which was rather a disappointment.
I felt that the story would have been improved had more time been spent on the plane, with Poirot perhaps even having to solve the mystery while in the air. Of course, this perhaps might give it too much in common with (the far superior) "Murder on the Orient Express". However, the murder has been got over with by the end of chapter two, by which time the plane has reached the airport, and the rest of the story is spent on land. I did feel that this was a mistake on Christie's part, as the "solve a mystery in an aeroplane" plot is unusual, if not unique, and I for one would have found it much more entertaining than what does take place.
Unusually for Christie (who tends to be quite apt at handing large casts of characters), I found myself often getting lost and confused by the throng she throws at the reader here. Too much time is spent with a few characters, while others are developed quite considerably for a chapter or so and then barely mentioned again. This is quite frustrating. Although Christie is not known for her excellent character-crafting, she usually manages to make her main suspects comic or interesting in some way. "Death in the Clouds", however, features characters who are watery stereotypes who are hard to care about, or even like.
Furthermore, the murder has an unsatisfactory resolution, with both Poirot and Christie keeping a number of key facts back from the reader. With such a muddle of events going on, I found myself becoming quite annoyed by the end that the murderer hadn't thought to kill off everyone on board and thus save me the bother of eliminating all the other candidates.
All is not lost. As the previous reviewer says, there are some amusing jabs by Christie at herself and the genre as a whole, what with Daniel Clancy the mystery writer (clearly an early prototype of Ariadne Oliver) and the device of the snake poison as method of murder. The story does also pick up the pace a little after the first hundred pages, which was a relief - although still not enough to allow me to feel invested in any of the characters.
Try it if you're a fan, but readers new to Poirot would be better off sticking to the oft-recommended "Death on the Nile", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Murder of Roger Ackroyd", and "Cards on the Table".
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
BBC Radio Collection - Death In The Clouds - Agatha Christie, 12 Jun 2004
The latest release in an impressive series of adaptations featuring John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot, first broadcast on Radio 4.Moffatt first played Poirot back in the 1980's and is as definitive on radio as David Suchet is on television. Christie wrote this story during the mid 1930's and whilst it is not in the first rank of titles published during this period, such as Murder On The Orient Express or Death On The Nile, it is a solid second division yarn. A point of interest is the appearance of Philip Jackson as Japp, who is well known for the same role opposite Suchet in the ITV series.
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