Death In The Clouds: A Hercule Poirot Mystery [Paperback]

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.

Air travel in its infancy was neither a preferred nor a classy mode of transportation. The infamous air-sickness was the major drawback of airplanes in the 1930s. But Poirot, desperate to go back to London, had no other choice, and had to board an airplane. All was well, except for a major air sickness in Poirot's part. When they touched down in London they realised that one of their passengers had died during the flight, and much to Poirot's anger, sat a few seats from him!

Agatha Christie was fine here, playing with Poirot's sense of pride that a murder had occured under his own nose and could have done nothing to stop it. And he had a premonition that another murder will happen unless he could unmask this killer...

Told with her usual wry humour, the solution won't make you jump in your seat, but rather you'll be, like, "Oh, so that's why it happens." You'll enjoy watching Poirot gets angry.