Death in the clouds
Death in the Clouds (original title Death in the Clouds ) is the 17th detective novel by Agatha Christie . It first appeared on March 10, 1935 in the USA with Dodd, Mead and Company under the title Death in the Air and in July of the same year in the UK under its original title in the Collins Crime Club. The German first edition was published in 1937 by Goldmann Verlag in the translation by Otto Albrecht van Bebber, which is still used today.
Hercule Poirot and Chief Inspector Japp are investigating .
action
During a flight from Le Bourget Airport in Paris to London-Croydon dies in the rear compartment of the aircraft, the moneylender Madame Giselle aka Marie Morisot - as it seems, by a wasp sting , but actually by a poisoned arrow, apparently from a blow pipe comes . Only a steward or a passenger can be responsible. The blowpipe is found behind Poirot's seat. Poirot decides to clear the case. Later it turns out that the victim was not killed, as one might have expected, from the South American arrow poison curare , but from the virtually instantaneous poison of a South African tree snake, Dispholidus typus . In addition to Poirot, both the French and British police are investigating. The burgeoning love story of the suspect Jane Gray, a hairdresser from England, with the dentist Norman Gale and later with the French archaeologist Jean Dupont, who is also on board, is part of the crime story.
It turns out that Madame Giselle blackmailed some of her customers with knowledge of unpleasant details about their lives in order to secure the repayment of sums loaned. Therefore, the investigative work focuses on who of the passengers had any kind of relationship with the murdered person. It turns out that Countess Cicely Horbury actually owed and was pressured by the moneylender. Eventually Poirot unmasked the dentist Norman Gale as the culprit. He was the (recently married) secret husband of Madame Giselle's daughter Anne Morisot, who, as Countess Horbury's maid, was also on the plane (which, however, ran counter to Gale's plans that she should be on a train at the same time, so as not to be suspected of murder yourself). Gale had put on his white dentist's clothes in the toilet, which could easily be mistaken for the uniformly colored clothes of a steward , had rushed to the victim with a (supposedly forgotten) coffee spoon and had then murdered Madame Giselle - but not, as based on those found at the crime scene Objects suspected with a blowpipe. Instead, he put the poison dart right down her throat. The blowgun served to widen the circle of suspects because it suggested that the perpetrator did not need to come into the immediate vicinity of the murdered. Later, Anne Morisot is also killed by Gale - he forcibly administered hydrogen cyanide to her on the train to the ferry back to France. Norman Gale is finally arrested in a final scene in which Poirot clears up the murder in great detail. In the end, Jane, who had also flirted with the murderer for a while, and Jean may become a couple - with Poirot's help, who arranges a trip for the two of them and thus plays " Cupid ". However, this future for both of them lies beyond the time horizon of history.
people
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian master detective
- James Japp, Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard and friend of Poirot
- Monsieur Fournier, official of the Paris Sûreté
- Henry Mitchell, Chief Steward
- Albert Davis, steward
- Marie Morisot, moneylender
- Anne Morisot, her estranged daughter
- Dr. Bryant, ear, nose and throat specialist
- Jane Gray, hairdresser
- Norman Gale, dentist
- Countess Cicely Horbury, wife of Count Horbury
- Count Stephen Horbury, husband of Countess Horbury
- Venetia Kerr, daughter of an English lord, neighbor and lover of Count Horbury
- Mr. Clancy, crime novel writer
- James Ryder, British businessman
- Armand Dupont, French archaeologist
- Jean Dupont, Armand's son
References to other works
In this novel, Christie first introduces the character of a crime writer with Mr. Clancy, who works as a hobby detective to solve the case. Later she was to develop this type of character in the character of Ariadne Oliver , who also writes crime novels and likes to play hobby detective, and make it an important secondary character in some Poirot novels and also the main character investigating, for example in With Open Cards and The Pale Horse . Christie draws both characters humorously and with self-deprecating allusions to her own profession.
In a later Poirot story, Four Women and a Murder (1952), Agatha Christie's alter ego Ariadne Oliver mentions that in one of her novels she described a 30 cm blowpipe , but then learned that real Native American blowpipes were much longer are about 1.80 m. With that, Christie admitted that there was a fundamental flaw in the plot of Death in the Clouds .
Major expenses
- 1935 first edition USA Dodd Mead and Company (New York)
- 1935 first edition UK Collins Crime Club (London)
- 1937 German first edition, translation by Otto Albrecht van Bebber, Leipzig: Goldmann Verlag
- 2012 New translation by Sabine Herting, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag
Film adaptations
This novel was filmed in 1992 for the English television series Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet . The script adheres closely to the original, except for a few small changes. There is only one archaeologist, no doctor, and Jane is a stewardess here and is not, as in the novel, paired up with the young archaeologist.
The German dubbed version appeared under the title Die Wespe as the 2nd episode of the 4th season.
Audio books
- 2006 Death in the Clouds (3 CDs). Abridged version by Angela Thomae. Translated from the English by Tanja Handels. Read by Rainer Bock. Director: Caroline Neven Du Mont. The Hörverlag Munich.
- 2008 Death in the Clouds (5 CDs): only unabridged reading. Speaker: Martin Maria Schwarz . Director: Hans Eckardt. Translated from the English by Otto Albrecht van Bebber. Publishing house and studio for audio book productions in Marburg.
Web links
- Death in the Clouds on the official Agatha Christie website
- Death in the Clouds (1992) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
- ↑ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions . Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
- ^ German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
- ^ Audiobook (licensed) in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Audiobook (complete) in the catalog of the German National Library