Death in the Clouds (1935) by Agatha Christie.
I've been doing some nostalgia reading lately, as part of my ongoing fascination of all things Ngaio Marsh, I am reading works by her fellow Queens Of Crime, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Dorothy Sayers.
Death in the Clouds is a locked room murder mystery, a locked room ten thousand feet in the air! Hercule Poirot happens to be one of the passengers on the airliner Prometheus traveling from Le Bourget to Croydon when the flight takes a deadly turn and Madame Giselle, in seat number two, is discovered to be dead, not sleeping. Poison is declared to be the cause, but not just any poison, poison delivered with a blow pipe. Suspicion falls on everyone, including M Poirot.
This was an entertaining read, and worth it just to see how different air travel was in the nineteen thirties - sitting at tables, bone china cups and saucers, sets of fish knives and forks laid out and sharp objects allowed. Those were the days...
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2 comments:
Vanda - I'm so glad you liked this novel. Every time I re-read it I'm struck too by the difference between air travel when the novel was written and air travel now.
Oh poison dart aside, the idea of tea in bone china cups, and comfy chairs to knit in while I travel by plane sounds wonderful. I guess in reality they were loud and deafeningly noisy and slow by today's standards, which only gave mr Poiret more time to solve the mystery.
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