Just Finished Reading Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie

Death in the Clouds is a 1935 mystery novel by English author Agatha Christie (1890-1976), featuring the mustachioed, soft-spoken Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, more widely known in stories like Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile (neither of which I've read).  It's a pretty standard story in this genre, with the setting and the particulars of the characters being the innovations: someone is murdered and there is a list of people who could have been culpable, some more suspicious than others.  After going through the different clues revealed over time, Detective Poirot comes up with the unlikely murderer and reveals his train of thought in solving the mystery...totally different than what the author had been leading us poor reader dupes to believe.  In Death in the Clouds, the crime takes place on a plane flight from France to England, in the rear passenger compartment involving only eleven possible people.  One of the passengers, a woman with a cryptic past who has recently made a fortune lending money, is found dead by one of the stewards...a wasp had been seen flying around, could she have died from its sting?  But Poirot discovers a poisoned dart beneath her seat, and this turns out to be the murder weapon.  But who blew it...all sorts of misdirection ensues, with the good detective himself being suspected by some...

Death in the Clouds is not intended as much to enlighten us about history, society, philosophy, human nature, relationships, or the other sorts of themes present in great literature.  Instead it serves as an enjoyable game, a puzzle to be solved.  The trick is to catch on to the trail of the guilty party before Poirot spills the beans...I admit that this time Hercule beat me to it.  Still, I got a kick out of this story, and plan to delve further into Agatha Christie's bibliography, in which many other tales have been written around Hercule Poirot and another detective, Miss Marple.  Other than a short story I read many years ago, it's amazing that I'd never gotten around to Agatha Christie's large collection of works before...