It is my experience that no one, in the course of conversation, can fail to give themselves away sooner or later…Everyone has an irresistible urge to talk about themselves.
Death in the Clouds
by Agatha Christie
Genre: Murder Mystery
About: A passenger is killed during a flight to Croydon and the murder weapon is, incredibly, a blowpipe. But there are more strange details. Aside from the poison dart flying around, a wasp was seen buzzing among the passengers. And the suspects have strange details themselves; a crime writer who has featured a blowpipe as a murder weapon in one of his novels, two archaeologists, a doctor carrying a flute, a high society lady who owed the victim money, a orphaned girl trying not to make eyes with the dentist, an actor, and Hercule Poirot.
Thoughts
This, for me, is definitely up there with Agatha Christie's better mysteries. You have a small pool of suspects, a lot of strange details, a tonne of red herrings, and no annoying characters or whiplash romances. Of course there are romances but these ones didn't make me side-eye and actually worked well for the mystery in giving people motives to kill.
And there's no Hastings. That's always an improvement in my opinion. I also liked the detectives put on the case as, although you know Poirot is the one who is going to solve the crime, neither the French detective nor the English detective were stupid in their ideas. They tried and I appreciated that.
I also tried and I did go into this thinking I had solved it very early on, and then readjusting my ideas to a new suspect. Both times they felt like elephants in the room - it seemed so obvious and yet because no one was suspecting them or going down that path of thought, I assumed that meant I was right. Well I was wrong. On both counts. And I love that. Hercule Poirot's speech at the end had me hooked. It seemed all so simple and yet who else but Poirot could have solved it?
This is a mystery that runs circles around its readers. There are many elements to intrigue and Poirot teases everyone from first to last with seemingly mundane details that are easy to dismiss but to which he would simply say, 'ah, you do not see the significance?'
A thoroughly entertaining read.
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