Death In The Air by QUEEN Agatha Christie (1935).
This
is
12th
MIGHTY HERCULE POIROT MYSTERY
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layers. – Mighty Hercule
Poirot. The
second best detective in the history of human race, next only to God
himself,
SHERLOCK HOLMES!!
As Holmes bases almost all his
deduction on hard evidence (a scientist,
he is), Poirot puts emphasis on exploring and manipulating the human mind
(Psychologist).
This is entirely my guess, but I
think Christie intentionally tries to create a detective who is completely
polar opposite of Sherlock Holmes.
Their physical appearance
(Holmes, tall, athletic and hawk-face, Poirot, short, round and egg-head) and
character (Holmes, in-human, machine-like emotion, Poirot, kind, gentle and
talkative) couldn’t e more different, except for the fact that they both easily
manage to annoy anyone around them without much effort.
Also, not like seclusive and
secretive Holmes, Poirot just loves attention and publicity (FAME)!!!
He loves sweat (Hot chocolate)
and beautiful women, and firmly believes that hot inside-air fixes all the
problems, so he tries really hard to keep his home intolerably hot.
Unfortunately, there is no
appearance of his lovable and brave sidekick Arthur Hastings in this book.
Pity.
He is tidy to the point of
obsession. When something on the table or desk or book shelves out of its
places, he notices it right away and put it back to the right place
immediately, sometime unconsciously too. This kind of tendency to pay attention
to the smallest possible detail helps him a lot for his cases because he never
misses anything out of their places.
Bottom line is Poirot is a kind,
gentle, thoughtful hero (Genius) who passionately hates crimes/murderers and
deeply cares for innocent and troubled souls.
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lace. – Christie’s book open explores various exotic locations
(she is an amateur Archeologist, I think).
Egypt, India or
anywhere near the Middle Eastern country. However in this book, the crime is
committed inside the airplane. So the location is airplane’s destination which
is from London to Paris.
Christie often describes the
cities with up most details just like Poirot explaining his method to
spectators, you feel like looking at the pictures sometime.
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lot. –This book contains all the classic Christie
elements.
1. En-closed area (airplane) with
bunch of completely different characters from completely different background.
2. Incompetent inspector (Japp, in
this case) with an attitude of spoiled tyrant.
3. Exotic location with impossible
murder (South African blow-gun with deadly snake poison!!).
4. And the final, MASTER DETECTIVE!!
In this case,
HERCULE POIROT!!
Poirot, despite of his comical
looks is actually fearful/ruthless hunter when it gets down to murder business.
Almost always he puts himself
around suspects, and sets up the trap between them, patiently waiting out and
luring them into the deadly trap without criminals realizing it. He calls this
psychological trap,
“his
little experiment”
Again, because of his peculiar/crazy
manner and outrageously funny look (egg-head with magnificent beard), nobody, I
mean including police, ever suspect his intention, EVER!! He lays out the same
trick in this book and, well, you know the rest.
Also, he so-well knows how to
encourage people to fulfill, so called, “fundamental need of human nature”
which is, of course, “need to talk”.
He is genius at letting others
talk about themselves and from there, finding the pieces to his case and
putting them all together neatly at the end.
As much as he hates murderer, he
also cares a lot about innocents who get involved with murder.
Most of the time, he really helps
out others at the end, like resolving difference between couples, clearing the
misunderstanding, and healing the old wound.
Come to think of it, he is a
perfect counselor to a lot of suffering souls because at the end, he literally
knows everything and thinks out the best possible solution to every possible
trouble surrounding the case.
Ever since teenager kid, I’ve
always wanted to have uncle like him.
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erdict. – What can I say? You can’t say
anything bad about the QUEEN Christie and certainly not to
Mighty
Hercule Poirot!!
This book comes out from probably
Christie’s most creative period and simply put, just wonderful book to be
included in your collection.
One
of those beautiful books ages magnificently with time.
Timeless
classic.
