Cards on the Table

Cards on the Table I have to confess I did deduce who the murder was in this book but there were still plenty of surprises. Poirot is invited to a dinner that includes one of my favorite characters Mrs. Oliver. Also included are Superintendent Battle and Colonel Race two characters from other books. The other characters at the dinner are believed by the host to be murderers. After dinner, the different parties set down to bridge. Of course, when the party starts to break up it is discovered that the host who was sitting across the room in the same room with the four suspected murderers is found dead. Now the question to be solved is not just which of the four suspects killed their host but also the past deeds will be looked into by Poirot and company. I love the premise behind this book four people in a room when a murder happened but no one claims to have seen anything. This is on my list of favorite Agatha Christie books and always will be.

This is one of my favorite Poirot mysteries. A murder is commited during a dinner party that Poirot attends. I love the set up with four murderers vs four sleuths. Each suspect looks guilty and just when you think you know which one it is, something comes along to change your mind again and then, of course, Poirot comes along at the end to make some amazing revelation.

This is an excellent story with multiple murders, murderers and murderesses. Of the four people suspected of killing a high-society blackmailer who is much hated and feared, all have suspicious sudden deaths lurking in the background. As Poirot investigates, more murders or murder attempts occur. None of the four are safe from one another as Poirot closes in, using his little grey cells to great advantage. This book is highly recommended.

Been reading & re-reading Christie for 50 years. Classic cozy British mysteries and this is one of my favortites. She should be read in the order in which she wrote the books, the characters age & circumstances change but the detectives (Hercule Poirot & Miss Marple, principally) are forever themselves. Christie is the best at misdirecting the reader and she outstrips every other author in terms of volume! Highly recommend reading her: she\’s a classic. And so is Cards on the Table.

In the Foreword that Agatha Christie wrote for her 1936 Poirot novel \”Poirot, Book 13: Cards on the Table\” , she says: \”… Hastings, however, when Poirot described it [this case] to him, considered it very dull!\” Well, Hastings was right. If Christie had removed all the detailed Bridge blow-by-blows from the book and drastically removed much of the first 80% of it, this probably would have made a pretty good short story. But, since there exists neither evidence nor witnesses to the murder, all the detailed travails of the detectives are just boring. Once things start to break, the story picks right up and becomes nicely interesting. But, that just can\’t make up for the tedium of most of the book. I\’ll also mention that this is also considered to be the third Superintendent Battle book. And, oddly, even though it\’s officially classified as a Poirot book, Battle does do quite a bit here. Which is pretty amazing considering that in the other books of his series I\’ve read (1, 2 and 4), he basically doesn\’t exist. Anyway, if this had been cut down to be a short story, I\’d have rated this very good. But, as a novel, I\’ve got to go with a Pretty Bad 2 stars out of 5.

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