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Hercule Poirot er ombord på en flyvning Paris - London. Madame Giselle, med det rigtige navn Marie Angélique Morisot - en berømt pengeudlåner - dør ombord og Poirot opdager en lille pusterørspil med gift på spidsen. Pusterøret bliver fundet bag hans eget sæde og ved
De øvrige passagerer er James Ryder, Monsieur Armand Dupont, Monsieur Jean Dupont, Daniel Clancy, Doctor Bryant, Norman Gale, Hertuginden af Horbury, Jane Grey og Venetia Kerr.
Poirot, inspektør Japp og den franske politimand Fournier (som har hørt om Poirot gennem M. Giraud) efterforsker Madame Giselle's forskellige kunder. Giselle havde altid en klemme på sine kunder og brugte den, hvis de ikke ville betale.
Madame Giselle's datter Anne Morisot dukker op, blot for kort efter at blive dræbt af sin mand James Richards alias Norman Gale. Poirot afslører dette og har hele tiden mistænkt Norman fordi han havde en lille æske med på flyet.
Oveni opklaringen spiller Poirot giftekniv for Jane Grey og Jean Dupont, og for lord Horbury og Venetia Kerr.
Glimrende Poirot mysterie.
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Fiction. Mystery. Historical Fiction. HTML: Hercule Poirot must solve a perplexing case of midair murder in Death in the Clouds when he discovers that the woman in seat two of the airborne aeroplane he's traveling on is quite unexpectedly�??and unnaturally�??deceased. From seat No. 9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers on the short flight from Paris to London. 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 writer of detective fiction was being troubled by an aggressive wasp. Yes, Poirot is almost ideally placed to take it all in, except what he did not yet realize was that behind him, in seat No. 2, sat the slumped, lifeless body of a woman. Murdered, and likely by someone in Poirot's immediate proximity… (more)
User reviews
Agatha Christie
To start with, because of its setting, it is very obviously a "locked room" mystery. If Mme Giselle's death is murder then the murderer has to have been on the plane. Hercule Poirot, that inveterate sufferer from mal-de-mer, is
For air travellers amongst us, travel on this plane was very different, and much more in keeping with travelling by train or by steamer. To start with luggage, rugs and other paraphernalia are heaped rather untidily at the end of the cabin, which Agatha Christie keeps calling a "car".
At the front of the book is a diagram of the rear "car" of the plane Prometheus, which clearly shows that some of the seats are arranged in "facing" sets of 4.
And just a final point about this setting - the windows of the plane have little air vents, big enough to have passed a blow pipe through. They obviously didn't fly at 37,000 feet.
The investigation of the murder is jointly conducted by Poirot, the French detective Fournier and Inspector Japp from Scotland Yard, and each brings a different quality to its conduct. Poirot and Fournier are both interested in the psychology of crime.
In the following Poirot, Fournier and Japp are talking about perception, and how we interpret what happens in the light of other observations (or perhaps what we don't notice)
Fournier says .... when a lady dies suddenly of heart failure, if a man is to drop his handkerchief and stoop to pick it up, who will notice the action or think twice about it?
I really enjoyed the interaction between these 3.
Finally we see a further development of the romantic side of Hercule Poirot's character, when he lets a society lady off lightly and gives a young orphan a gentle push towards love.
DEATH IN THE CLOUDS sees the infamous Hercule Poirot
For me, there is no greater crime writer than Agatha Christie. All of her mysteries keep me glued to every page. I'm always wanting to read "just one more page!" DEATH IN THE CLOUDS is no exception to this. I was completely glued to the story, as Hercule Poirot, with the assistance of Inspector Japp and another passenger, Jane Grey, tried to find out the answer to this crime.
I have a love/hate relationship with Hercules Poirot. I do favour Miss Marple, and find that sometimes Poirot's ego gets the better of him. However, DEATH IN THE CLOUDS might be the exception to that. Poirot's ego didn't hardly make much of an appearance, and it was all in all a reading experience, alongside Poirot. For fan's of Poirot, there is were definitely many Poirot-ism's, but without the ultra ego trip he usually plays.
I highly recommend DEATH IN THE CLOUDS to mystery/crime fans. It will definitely keep you guessing to the last page. Even though I did guess the murderer close to the end, I was hanging onto the very last sentence to see how it all intertwined together. As I said no-one writes a complex, interesting mystery like Agatha Christie does.
Reading through mediocre(which this book isn't quite) books generally sets the bar low, and bam, there you have your acquired taste.
The abridged audiobook is well edited, and ably read by Timson, but as always suffers somewhat from the abridgement. I enjoyed listening to it even though I haven't read the novel in decades and remembered nothing about it; but I am minded to try the unabridged version read by Hugh Fraser the next time I want to listen to it.
Many details of the story are jokes. I assume that the ending is sarcastic self-parody,
(The boomslang is real. The name is cognate to the words beam schlong. The venom is quite different from what is described in the novel. She just made that up. She became a poisons expert during WWI. That was part of the reason she started writing detective stories.)
That's why it's only a 3 from me, and no 4 this time.
Imaging Hercule sleeping through a murder! Suffering from air-sickness, indeed he did....
Upon landing in London on a trip back from France, Madame Giselle, a famous & highly reputable Parisienne money lender is found to be dead in her seat of an apparent wasp sting,
There were less than a dozen people on the flight, several of whom had dealings with Mdme. Giselle, and with that group a few who did not want to pay her back. Mdme Giselle had her ways, as collateral she collected "information" on her clients, information that they would loathe to be known.
Unfortunately upon her death, Le Surete was loathe to find that Mdme. Giselle's maid (per previous instructions) burned all of Mdme. Giselle's moneylending records and was not able to provide any information regarding possible enemies. However, left behind (quite by accident) was Mdme. Giselle's daily black book which contained appointments in code, this the maid handed over to M. Poirot....
I was not able to decipher the clues, so I was unable to figure out who murdered Mdme. Giselle. But there were many with motive and few if any had opportunity.... Afterall it was in a small enclosed space, with the weapon of choice a blowpipe thorn.
Yes, there was one mention of prejudice, a few Red Herrings, an overlooked passenger, and even a romance (that M. Poirot helped along). But what I found unbelievable was the type of poison used.... Boomslang venom, really? That particular venom is not only very uncommon, but up until the very end, not one of the suspects seemed to have had access to it.
No one was seen attacking the victim, no one could have done it, the weapon, is so exotic that it points to only two people, and the entire thing is a total mystery. Except to Poirot.
There is flirtation, there is drama, red herrings to fill a fish market, a romance sparks and a cold blooded killer sits amount the innocent. Is it the dentist, the crime writer, the archeologists, the countess, or one of the others? All are shown to have the possibility of a motive, but only one could have struck the deadly blow.
An intriguing puzzle set in an impossible situation, but fortunately Poirot is on the case. It is imperative that he solve as, after all, Is was the one best suited and situated to actually have done the deed. Who better to save him from the gallows than himself.
"They disliked loud voices, noisy restaurants and negroes ... It seemed almost miraculous that two people should have so many points of agreement."
It was also very interesting to read about air travel in the 1930s, which made me enjoy the novel even more (although there still is racism and also sexism in this text and it's not ok).
Inspector Japp and Poirot work together on this case digging into the lives and background of the passengers and as always there were plenty of red herrings to throw the reader off the track. Eventually Poirot was able to put all the pieces together and the book reaches a very satisfactory end with his big reveal which outlines his suspicions, his thought processes and how he zeroed in on the murderer.
Death in the Clouds has one of the most ingenious methods of murder. It also has plenty of humor, particularly pointed at one of the passengers, a writer of mystery novels. The story moves quickly and even Poirot’s attempt at matchmaking was interesting. I will long remember this whimsically strange and outrageous story.
I thought that only Agatha Christie could come up with a locked-room murder set on an aeroplane. While it has all the usual ingredients of a Poirot murder mystery, I was able to discover the who, later most of the how and finally the why by using my own method of deduction, i.e. reading carefully and knowing Dame Agatha's own modus operandi. Still a lot of fun and a good brain teaser, though, even if the characters don't have a lot of psychological depth to them.
Please note: there are a couple of incidences of casual racism and sexism in the novel.
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Omslaget viser en hveps
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Oversat fra engelsk "Death in the clouds" af Poul Ib Liebe
De trestjernede kriminalromaner, Agatha Christie, bind 4
Side 136: Hertuginden af Horbury's ægteskab er som hund og kat. Hun er som regel aldrig hjemme og synes at manden skulle have taget Venetia Kerr, som ligner en hest. - Man kommer helt til at tænke på Prince Charles og Lady Diana.
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823.912 |