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I have to keep reminding myself that Agatha Christie wrote this novel in 1935. She didn’t grow up watching Murder She Wrote, or reruns of Matlock or any of the CSI programs. She couldn’t just Google how to get away with murder, or research rare artifacts, weapons, toxins and how to obtain them. She didn’t have PBS to watch all the National Geographic programs or any of those travelogues that take you around the world while sitting in your living room, and yet she managed to scribe interesting novels that take you on multicultural adventures with reams of international characters holding flaws and schemes and histories and secrets and she does it all in a concise and intriguing mystery, sprinkled with humour and drama.

While this is only the second novel of hers that I have read they both have possessed the attributes described above. This seemed to be an otherwise a regular whodunnit ... a dozen or so passengers on a plane and one dies an unnatural death....but the the prose and dialogue with which she tells it keeps you interested and guessing until the very end. There is always that list of characters with those you eliminate quickly as suspects, only to find something turning up to implicate them later on. There are of course the obvious suspects who seem to flit in and out of suspicion until the end. Then there are all those wafflers, the ones who on one page are written off and brought back on the next as the prime suspect, only to be written off and brought back three more times.

And of course M. Poirot is most charming and engaging, why he could sell you on any idea, and he does. He has a rousing way of uncovering the facts.

The story moves quickly and the characters develop along the way, the plot twists and turns, until the big reveal at the end ... and you reach the moment when the murderer is none other than..... you’ve got to kidding!😲

An enjoyable read. Would readily recommend it and will read more AC over time....