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Review
“It will be a very acute reader who does not receive a complete surprise at the end.”
Times Literary Supplement
Review
"It will be a very acute reader who does not receive a complete surprise at the end." Times Literary Supplement
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'Death in the Clouds' was written in 1935 and as such one might well think it would be rather dated. Not a bit of it, in fact, after reading it I was very surprised to find it was so long ago. In it Agatha Christie does a 'Houdini' type trick by confining a murder to a passenger section on an aircraft going to Croydon from Le Bourgot Airport.As it happened Hercule Poirot was on board and immediately to his embarassment even became a suspect.However it was a mytery suitable to his preference for sitting and thinking things out..giving so few possibilities this was not easy.. yet he comes up with several ingenious ideas and of course the correct answer which evaded me until end.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Agatha Christie sells herself short with this remark--the most interesting thing about this case is the fun that Christie herself has with the mystery! Setting up a "closed room" murder, which in this case takes place on an airplane traveling between Paris and Croyden, she plays with the reader's expectations, parodies the exotic murders in other mysteries of the period, and provides a large cast of easily remembered characters whose lives come under scrutiny for their possible relationship with the deceased.
The victim is Mme. Giselle, a French money-lender who ensures repayment by keeping a black book of blackmail information. When she is killed with a poisoned dart shot from a blowpipe while the plane is in the air, no one, including Hecule Poirot, sees the murder take place. Poirot teams up with Inspector Japp to interview the passengers--a motley assortment, including a pair of French archaeologists, a London doctor, a mystery writer (a hack who finds real murder even more exciting than his own novels), a young hairdresser on vacation, a dentist, and the actress wife of an English lord, a woman who is a compulsive gambler.
Christie's ingénue, Jane Grey, the hairdresser, is attracted to both the dentist (Norman Gale) and to the younger of the archaeologists (Jean Dupont), providing some warmth and emotional connection in this mystery, and two of the passengers work with Poirot to try to solve the mystery. How did someone use a blowpipe to kill Mme Giselle without being seen? How would someone get the rare snake venom used on the tip of the dart? Who is Mme Giselle's daughter, a girl brought up in an orphanage in England? Which of those on whom Mme Giselle had blackmail information had an opportunity to kill her?
A challenging mystery for the reader, the novel is also amusing for its emphasis on the exotic and its deliberate romantic excess. Written in 1935, when Christie, Margery Allingham, and Dorothy Sayers were all the rage, this novel is a delightful example of the popular genre, highlighted with some tongue-in-cheek pokes at herself and her fellow writers. n Mary Whipple
The victim is Mme. Giselle, a French money-lender who ensures repayment by keeping a black book of blackmail information. When she is killed with a poisoned dart shot from a blowpipe while the plane is in the air, no one, including Hecule Poirot, sees the murder take place. Poirot teams up with Inspector Japp to interview the passengers--a motley assortment, including a pair of French archaeologists, a London doctor, a mystery writer (a hack who finds real murder even more exciting than his own novels), a young hairdresser on vacation, a dentist, and the actress wife of an English lord, a woman who is a compulsive gambler.
Christie's ingénue, Jane Grey, the hairdresser, is attracted to both the dentist (Norman Gale) and to the younger of the archaeologists (Jean Dupont), providing some warmth and emotional connection in this mystery, and two of the passengers work with Poirot to try to solve the mystery. How did someone use a blowpipe to kill Mme Giselle without being seen? How would someone get the rare snake venom used on the tip of the dart? Who is Mme Giselle's daughter, a girl brought up in an orphanage in England? Which of those on whom Mme Giselle had blackmail information had an opportunity to kill her?
A challenging mystery for the reader, the novel is also amusing for its emphasis on the exotic and its deliberate romantic excess. Written in 1935, when Christie, Margery Allingham, and Dorothy Sayers were all the rage, this novel is a delightful example of the popular genre, highlighted with some tongue-in-cheek pokes at herself and her fellow writers. n Mary Whipple
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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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Most Recent Customer Reviews
An enjoyable Poirot mystery
Death in the Clouds, first published in 1935, is one of Agatha Christie's many novels featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Read more
Published 11 months ago by H. Skinner
You'll never guess....
I really enjoyed reading this book. Its one of Christies/ Poirot's best. The characters were all well developped and I was really surprised when I found out who the murderer was. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Alice in Wonderland
Invincible Hercule!
Very enjoyable, an easy listen. TV version was excellent, but you always get a bit more on audio CD. Excellent value for money, I have listened to it on many occasions. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Elizabeth-Anne
A classic detective read
Its been a while since I read any of Agatha Christie's novels. I enjoyed them then and I enjoyed them now. Read more
Published 16 months ago by The Bookworm
Funny, well-executed, interesting and easy read
This Poirot novel, set in 1935, has an interestingly different tone. Poirot is on the plane with the murderer, and so the case is something of a closed box in that all the suspects... Read more
Published 17 months ago by J. R. Johnson-Rollings
Hercule Poirot, Angel of Death
Death in the Clouds is my first foray into the world of Hercule Poirot, a man for whom death, murder and intrigue are rarely far behind. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Eponymist
Poirot takes to the air!
In its time, I expect the thought of Poirot flying in the air liner Prometheus (albeit to Croydon) was quite exotic. Read more
Published on 4 Nov 2008 by A. Butterfield
A Classic
Death in the Clouds is classic Christie: a closed group of suspects, an ingenious plot, and some extra fun for fans in the shape of one character, Daniel Clancy, a detective... Read more
Published on 16 Feb 2008 by Jay Gregory
Enjoyable Read
I don't always listen to other peoples reviews on books, and to me this prooved me right. I thought this was an enjoyable read indeed. Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2008 by Webdevil
Far from Poirot's finest hour
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... Read more
I felt that the story would have been improved had more time been spent on... Read more
Published on 27 May 2007 by Ms. MacNeill
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