Death in the Clouds

by Agatha Christie

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: Hercule Poirot (10)

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Mentions
3,837	66	3,244	(3.6)	145
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)

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English (62) Spanish (2) French (1) Dutch (1) Danish (1) All languages (67)

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Showing 1-5 of 62 (next | show all)

Another solid Poirot mystery. The murder method seems too sensational, but give it a chance and it will make sense. This time there is no famous twist ending, but the solution is unexpected although fairly clued, as usual. Poirot has to travel a bit more looking for clues here, and he also helps in the budding romance between two of the young people in the list of suspects. Dame Agatha also pokes some fun at her own trade with the character of the mystery novel writer. (

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jcm790 | May 26, 2024 |

One of my favorite aspects of this Poirot adventure is the way Christie writes the first fourth or so of it, particularly the parts where she goes inside each of the passengers minds as they are getting ready to take off and in the air. Christie has SUCH a sharp way of capturing humans and their habits in even just a couple of sentences and I just love how she winds together all their crossing paths and motivations.
The plot gets a touch laggy around the halfway point, but nothing too bad. There are plenty of red herrings in here, too; it's so enjoyable to poke at them and follow my own little trains of thoughts to see what I can come up with! It may not always be the right answer but it's fun either way. (

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deborahee | Feb 23, 2024 |

I had a hard time keeping track of who was who, which isn't necessarily uncommon for me with Christie's books.

It was especially difficult when the audiobook narrator did very similar accents for two characters speaking to one another and there weren't always speech tags to help with the distinction.

I had no idea who the culprit was or how they did it, and I'm not sure if I would have done any better with a print version.

Note: There was some profanity, including God's name misused. (

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RachelRachelRachel | Nov 21, 2023 |

Finally dragged myself to the local library and realized that it was easier than I'd expected to get a library card. Should have done that years ago! Better late than never. As my first borrow I decided to get this Agatha Christie book out. It's been a while, and she's really easy to read. Exceptionally so, actually - I devoured this book over two days flat. Nothing special, just formulaic pulp, but I think I needed something easy to read after slogging through the Iliad. (

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finlaaaay | Aug 1, 2023 |

So... I didn't work out who was the culprit, but I did work out *quite* early on that there was a very important character missing from the discussions of whodunnit. No one was ever mentioning this person, and it didn't take a detective to deduce that this person had another identity that would prove to be very important indeed.
I'm not used to a gap that glaring from Agatha Christie... usually she covers all bases and doesn't give you room to think she's skipping anything. But I'll allow it, seeing as how it wasn't actually the culprit. :) (But was still part of the solution.) (

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Alishadt | Feb 25, 2023 |

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Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Christie, Agatha	—	primary author	all editions	confirmed
Bebber, Otto Alfred von	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Champon, Alexis	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Fraser, Hugh	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Griffini, Grazia Maria	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Kankaanpää, Jaakko	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Kattelus, Kirsti	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Postif, Louis	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Series and work relationships

Belongs to Series

Hercule Poirot (10)

Belongs to Publisher Series

The Albatross Crime Club (No. 147)

I classici del giallo [Mondadori] (441)

Collins Crime Club (White Circle No. 51)

Delfinserien (621)

Fontana (3422)

G. P. Putnam's Sons Winterbrook Edition

— 8 more

Goldmann (43947)

I grandi gialli di Agatha Christie [Hachette]

I libri gialli [Mondadori] (134)

Gli Oscar Mondadori - Gialli (154)

SaPo (347)

Weltbild SammlerEditionen (4841)

En Zebra-bok (138)

Öölane (42)

Is contained in

Murder on Board: Three Complete Mystery Novels: The Mystery of the Blue Train / What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw / Death in the Air by Agatha Christie

Murder in Three Acts / Death in the Clouds / The A.B.C. Murders / Murder in Mesopotamia / Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd [and] Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

Death in the Clouds / Hickory Dickory Dock / Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie Crime Collection: Murder on the Orient Express / Death in the Clouds / Why Didn't They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie

Death in the Clouds [and] Why Didn't They ask Evans? by Agatha Christie

(show 9 more)

After the Funeral / Death in the Clouds / Murder on the Orient Express / Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie

The Pale Horse [and] Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

Poirot: The French Collection: Death in the Clouds / The Mystery of the Blue Train / The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie

Taken at the Flood [and] Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

Appointment With Death / The Man in the Brown Suit / Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

Five Little Pigs / Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express / Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

Os Crimes do ABC + Morte nas Nuvens by Agatha Christie

Death in the clouds ; Taken at the flood by Agatha Christie

Has the adaptation

Agatha Christie's Poirot: Death in the Clouds [1992 TV episode] by Stephen Whittaker

Poirot: The Movie Collection by Andrew Grieve

Death in the Clouds: A BBC Full-Cast Radio Drama by Agatha Christie

Death in the Clouds [Japanese comic book adaptation] by アガサ・クリスティー

Is abridged in

Death in the Clouds [Abridged Audiobook] by Agatha Christie

Has as a study

Dialogues in classical detective novels: an analysis of male and female dialogues in Agatha Christies "Death in the clouds" by Bojana Maljukanovic

▾Awards and Honors

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▾Common Knowledge

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Canonical title

Death in the Clouds

Original title

Death in the Clouds

Alternative titles

Death in the Air

Original publication date

People/Characters

Marie Morisot, known as Madame Giselle

James Ryder

(show all 14 items)

Important places

Information from the German Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.

London, England, UK

Paris, France

Important events

Related movies

Information from the German Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.

Death in the Clouds (1992 | IMDb)

Epigraph

Dedication

To
Ormond Beadle

First words

The September sun beat down hotly on Le Bourget aerodrome as the passengers crossed the ground and climbed into the air liner Prometheus, due to depart for Croydon in a few minutes' time.

Quotations

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

aka Death in the Air

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Original language

English UK

Canonical DDC/MDS

Canonical LCC

▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

▾Book descriptions

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

▾Library descriptions

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▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

The classic locked-room mystery gets a lift from Dame Agatha, as Hercule Poirot is called on to solve a murder committed during an airplane flight from France to England.

Haiku summary

Poirot is among
the passengers on a plane
when woman is killed.
(passion4reading)