Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

13^th May 2023.

This is another masterful lesson in deduction, red herrings and false trails as Poirot investigates the baffling murder of Giselle, a French money lender, on a flight to England. She was killed by a poisoned dart, delivered from a blowpipe. But how was the murder committed in the confines of an aircraft without anyone seeing it happen?

Poirot assists both the French police and Scotland Yard to solve the murder. The investigation soon reveals motives for some of the people on board, but the deeper Poirot digs, the more difficult it becomes to work out how the killer carried out the murder.

But Poirot never gives up, and with a little help from a couple of the passengers, he begins to knit the details together to reveal the killer and the method with his usual style and arrogance.

The plotting is superlative, the characters crisply drawn and described and for most of the story, it looks like the case will not be solved. But then the breakthrough comes and everything falls into place and makes sense, leaving you with a smile of your face and admiration for Agatha Christie’s skill and delivery.

Description

A woman is killed by a poisoned dart in the enclosed confines of a commercial passenger plane…

From seat No.9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No.13, sat a Countess with a poorly-concealed cocaine habit; across the gangway in seat No.8, a detective writer was being troubled by an aggressive wasp.

What Poirot did not yet realize was that behind him, in seat No.2, sat the slumped, lifeless body of a woman.