Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, published in 1935. It features Hercule Poirot and Chief Inspector Japp, and it is a closed-circle mystery in which the culprit has to be one of the people who were there.

Poirot is a passenger on the midday flight from Le Bourget airfield in Paris to Croydon in London, in the rear compartment with eleven other people. They include the mystery writer Daniel Clancy; the French archaeologists Armand Dupont and his son Jean; a dentist called Norman Gale; Doctor Bryant; a French moneylender named Madame Giselle; the businessman James Ryder; Cicely, Countess of Horbury; the Honourable Venetia Kerr; and a hairdresser called Jane Grey.

As the aircraft comes in to land, a wasp is spotted flying around the rear compartment, and then the steward finds that Madame Giselle is dead. The general assumption is that the wasp stung her, and Poirot, who has slept through most of the flight, dismisses it and points out a mark on the body that does not fit a sting at all. The question then is which of the eleven people around him killed her, and how it was managed in a cabin full of witnesses. The book was first published in the United States under the title Death in the Air.