#ReadThis @AgathaChristie @HarperCollins @Morrow_PB #DeathintheClouds by #AgathaChristie #Eleventh #11 #HerculePoirot #Mystery
This post is for all our friends in the aviation industry. You know who you are!
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Not only is Agatha Christie the Queen of Mystery but also she's becoming the Queen of this column. We don't think we've featured anyone else eleven times! Previously on Whom You Know we featured the great detective Hercule Poirot beaucoup de times:
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Peril at End House
https://www.whomyouknow.com/2020/11/readthis.agathachristie.perilatendhouse.peachydeegan.harpercollins.williammorrow.html#.X7lGvGhKg2w
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three Act Tragedy
and we took a break from only him and did him with others in Midwinter Murder:
Take us away! Death in the Clouds has come just at the right time as the vaccine is being distributed and we all want to be inspired to get away. Until then, you know what you should be reading and Agatha Christie's reach from the grave is going even further than we knew before in our last review; it influenced The Head by HBO Max: read our review here.
It is the eleventh Hercule Poirot mystery and bien sur mes amies as the title indicates, it takes place on a plane. Considering this was written in 1935 she was way ahead of her time. TSA workers should read this especially!
As usual, you will be constantly questioning whether everyone is exactly what they say they are, and red herrings swim in the pages. Like Poirot says, everyone keeps something back! (p.99) Agatha draws on her firsthand experience with poisons again here and even Poirot himself is questioned as the murderer. Love, money and murder, Death in the Clouds has it all!
We wonder if Agatha read The Sun Also Rises from 1926. On p. 130 of Death in the Clouds there's a reference to "we could have a marvelous live together..." which naturally to us echoes p. 198 of Hemingway here: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"
We will not explain the quotes here because the point is for you to read it and for us not to give it away. Some gems include:
"'Oh well,' she said. 'I think I'd rather be regarded as a mere luxury and self-indulgence, than regarded sternly as a First Duty. I'd rather a man felt that he was enjoying himself looking after me than that he should feel I was a duty to be attended to.'" (p. 141)
"'Meekness doesn't pay in this life- but I don't think we're either of us troubled by too much of that." (p. 136)
of course she uses WHOM correctly:
"'I am old-fashioned in my methods. I follow the old adage: seek whom the crime benefits.'" (p. 158)
Read carefully. See if statements agree. Use your grey cells and your eyes to read between the lines. All becomes clear with the wave of the Christie wand at the conclusion giving the reader supreme satisfaction, as always.
Death the Clouds is Highly Recommended by Whom You Know!
Epatant!
About the Author
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only in the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, around thirty plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott
She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now-legendary Hercule Prior with her debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In 1930, Miss Jane Marple made her first full-length novel appearance in The Murder at the Vicarage, quickly becoming another beloved and enduring character to rival Poirot's popularity. Additional series characters include the husband-and wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.
Many of Christie's novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap opened in 1952 and is the longest running play in history. Academy Award-nominated actor and director Kenneth Branagh helmed the acclaimed major motion picture Murder on the Orient Express in 2017 and its sequel, Death on the Nile, starring in both films as the Belgian detective. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.
Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain's highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. The one-hundred-year anniversary of Agatha Christie stories and the debut of Hercule Poirot was celebrated around the world in 2020. Whom You Know will never stop celebrating it!
