Lisa Barger

When a fellow passenger is murdered on Poirot’s flight from Paris to London, he’s (mostly) content to let Chief Inspector Japp handle it. But when he overhears a stranger muse that he, himself, might have murdered Madame Giselle–what with Poirot being a foreigner and all–he takes on the case and vows to clear his name.

The Story In Death In The Clouds

Poirot books a midday flight from Paris to London with 10 other passengers and 2 crew members in his cabin. The passengers include a father-and-son archeology team, a hairdresser who spent her contest winnings on a short vacation, a novelist, a businessman and a dentist. There’s also the very wealthy Countess Cicely, The Honourable Venetia, a physician and a well-known moneylender.

Just as the plane is scheduled to land, a crew member discovers that the moneylender, Madame Giselle, is dead; she has a small puncture wound on her neck. At first the death is blamed on a sting from the wasp that had been buzzing around the cabin, but Poirot immediately finds a small dart, like one you might use in a blowpipe, on the floor. He and the physician speculate that the dart may have been tipped with some sort of fast-acting poison.

The cabin is searched and a small blowpipe is found stuffed into Poirot’s seat. (He had moved to that seat at the request of another traveler.) But Chief Inspector James Japp immediately dismisses Poirot as a suspect. The public is less convinced, however, and one day Poirot overhears himself being speculated as the true culprit. He teams up with the young hairdresser from the flight and attempts to clear his name by identifying the real murderer.

My Thoughts On Death In The Clouds

Once again, Agatha Christie breaks with the classic English manor house murder mystery, setting Death In The Clouds in an airplane and limiting the suspect list to only those passenger who flew in that particular cabin, the flight attendants and the wealthy woman’s maid.

Japp had a little more to do here than in previous novels, and that’s always nice. (He’ll only feature in one more Poirot novel.) Every time Japp shows up, my appreciation for Christie’s artistic restraint grows. How easy it would be to make Japp a foil for Poirot but Christie resists, making him (almost) an intellectual equal to our star.

Poirot’s penchant for matchmaking rears its head again, and, yet again, it doesn’t feel quite authentic. It isn’t as bad as a couple of his previous efforts, but it just didn’t ring completely true.

Over all, I enjoyed Death In The Clouds but I kept thinking how completely and utterly delicious it would be if Poirot has actually been framed for the murder, instead of simply being unlucky with his last-minute seat change. We’ve seen his hackles rise at the very idea of murder and we’ve seen his narcissistic view of his own abilities. So how would he act if he–the great Hercule Poirot– were treated like a serious suspect?

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