Death in the Clouds (1935)
(in America as Death in the Air)
Blurb:
My review:
An ingenious little puzzle, well characterised and amusing, and which can be said to inaugurate Christie's classic period. Mme. Giselle, a moneylender and one of Christie's power-hungry women, is poisoned with boomslang venom apparently fired from a blowpipe onboard the noonday flight from Paris to Croydon; a cunning parody of those writers, like Edgar Wallace, who concoct sensationally silly murders. While she parodies, she also sets a most intriguing puzzle, for the crime was committed before ten people, none of whom saw a thing. Although Poirot is on board, he sleeps through the murder, and waits until reaching terra firma before assisting the British and French police in their inquiries. The three principal clues are excellent, and the solution is an ingenious variation on Chesterton's "The Queer Feet" and "The Arrow of Heaven."