Customer Reviews

CARDS ON THE TABLE COMPLETE & UNABRIDGED

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mr. Shaitana, a wealthy collector of objets d'art, has an unusual idea for a dinner party after a chance meeting with Hercule Poirot in an art gallery. He invites to dinner four detectives plus four people he suspects may have gotten away with murder.

Along with Poirot are two detectives we have met in earlier Christie works: Colonel Race, the trouble-shooter from the Foreign Office, and Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard. Introduced in this book is Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, a best-selling mystery writer, who has been compared to Christie herself. Like Mrs. Christie, Mrs. Oliver eats large quantities of apples while writing and Mrs. Oliver's books are about a quirky Finn who is not unlike Mrs. Christie's quirky Belgian. Mrs. Oliver will return in six additional novels.

The other four guests that evening are: Dr. Roberts, a successful physician; Mrs. Lorrimer, an affluent widow who loves to play bridge; Major Despard, an African and South American explorer and guide; and Miss Anne Meredith, a young lady Shaitana met in Switzerland.

After dinner, a game of bridge is arranged. Shaitana directs the four detectives to one room while the other four guests play in a separate room. The host says he does not like the game so sits and dozes by the fire in the room where the four possible murderers are playing. When the guests prepare to leave later, it is discovered that Shaitana has been fatally stabbed at some point in the evening.

All four detectives tackle this case in their own way. Bridge players will delight in the way Poirot handles the case. He concentrates on the game itself, the hands that were dealt, and the method of scoring. If you pay attention to the game, you just might guess the murderer.

This is one of Christie's classic surprise endings and, in my opinion, one of her best works.

Agatha Christie's preface to this book says it all. In most mystery novels, finding the murderer is easy; one merely has to focus upon the person who was least likely to have commited the crime. Needless to say, this is not that kind of book.

The incomparable Hercule Poirot has always boasted of his insight into the criminal mind. And in this book, he discovers, perhaps, the case most suited to his method. Four murderers, thrown together by a slightly sardonic host. Each had a motive. An oppourtunity. At the end of a bridge game, the host was found dead, and one of the four did it.

Hercule Poirot, once again, delves into the psychology of crime and exercises his "little gray cells". A note: At one time or another during the book, all of the suspects will seem the least likely, and most likely to have done it. Perhaps the most obvious candidate for murder is the one that is guilty. I am saying nothing more.

This book, with its initial copyright in 1936, shows Christie at the height of her powers.

One of the coziest things about a Christie mystery - especially those which were written earlier - is that they are set before so many of the great advances in forensics. There's no mention of computer databanks or DNA, no fiber analysis nor hair samples. Now, I'm all for the wonderful things that can be done with forensics for capturing criminals in the real world, and these can make for fascinating reading, too. But novels are sometimes more pleasant when they don't deal with the technical side of things, but let the readers ponder, along with Christie's detective Hercule Poirot, the psychology behind the murder.

In Cards on the Table, Christie sets up an imaginative, elegant, albeit implausible scenario. Four murderers - successful ones, those who have gotten away with it - are invited to dinner by Mr Shaitana, a rich eccentric who collects only the best - including collections of people. To the same dinner party this Shaitana invites four specialists in crime - a policeman, a man in the Secret Service, a writer of detective novels and of course our protagonist, Hercule Poirot. The dinner is excellent and Shaitana then makes some provocative remarks, putting the wind up in his quartet of murderers. The two groups - murderers and crime specialists - then divide into two different rooms and play bridge for the rest of the evening. Shaitana does not play, but sits in an armchair by the fire in the same room as the murderers. The evening continues until late. The crime specialists come to bid their host farewell, when lo! - to their great surprise, they find that their host has been murdered in the chair. The deed must have been committed by one of the four bridge players during the course of the evening.

Christie then proceeds to reveal much about the murderers and their history. She does her best to be fair during the course of the book, putting her own cards on the table. And of course the pool of those who could have committed the crime is also limited - in another sense, the cards are also on the table. Finally, the bridge game plays a role in the assisting Poirot in figuring out whodunit. You can enjoy this book if you don't know bridge, but it helps if you do.

Another advantage of this book is that there's also no appearance of the dim Arthur Hastings, for which I'm grateful.

The psychology, in my opinion, is spot on in this book, and makes it one of Christie's best. My only question - and one which she did not have to answer - is to wonder if Shaitana had any plans for the end of the evening, assuming that he had survived? But Christie is not obliged to answer this question, and she does not.

Think of it- four suspects, all with an equal oppertunity and motive to have killed the mysterious Mr.Shaitana. At several points, it seems as though you know exactly who has done it- until you find out that it was not them, but another suspect. A brilliant, though sometimes confusing plot, all come into focus by the charming personality of Hercule Poirot.

In my personal opinion, this Christie is virtually flawless. I think it is her best book.

I espceially love the beginning of the book. It is almost ritualstic, like a Japanese dance. Quite unlike, say, Ackroyd or Express.

The solution is not a trick (unlike both the previous); and it is based purely on psychology. Very good characterisation, an almost surrealistic atmosphere, and a devious, devious Poirot!

The only comparison to this novel is And Then There Were None, which is even more devious, but less of a joy to read. Ackroyd I still admire greatly.

But this book is, overall, the best of Christie I have read.

Jonathan Lim

I was extremely pleased with Cards on the Table. The premise for the book was duly intriguing, with perhaps one of the more creative plot ideas to boot. The sleuths were intelligent and delightful, the possible murderers all sufficiently suspicious, and the victim a person who played his role to the nines.

Dame Agatha made a point to say during the prologue that because you knew right away who the four possible murderers were, the element of surprise during the unmasking would be slightly less than if suspicion were cast on a whole room-full of people. True, perhaps, although not the common thread in ALL mediums.

Cards on the Table, despite its aforesaid lack of surprise, does manage a neat, nice, maybe even SHOCKING unmasking of the murderer. It has no qualms about turning you around, giving you the classic Christie twist that makes you suspect each of the four in turn--and all in one chapter! You then realize that the true murderer is none other than the per! son you least suspected most--and that is perhaps one reason why Poirot was known to say it was his FAVORITE case, after all.

Nobody really knows Mr. Shaitana's true origins but he's clearly a suave man-about-town, if a bit of a nefarious and prickly character, who LOVES to observe human nature. He has a discussion about this very topic with Hercule Poirot at an aristocratic soiree and says that he'd like to sponsor a little dinner party where there are four "detectives" pitted against four potential murderers.

Poirot warns Shaitana against such a frivolous endeavor but Shaitana is insistent and sets up his small party just as he had described -- and, of course, Hercule Poirot is one of the detective-guests as are three other folks that we've run across in other Christie tales: (mystery author) Mrs. Ariadne Oliver; Scotland Yard Superintendent Battle; and, Colonel Race, the adventurer.

The evening focus is a card (bridge) party for eight guests total, with the host, Mr. Shaitana, remaining on the sidelines, walking about and reveling in his unique idea until he eventually tires and retreats to a fireside chair for a rest... where he is subsequently found dead!

Which of the four prospective murderers did it? Of course, Superintendent Battle is in charge of the case but he's shrewd enough to enlist the aide of his co-detectives.

This is one of my favorite Christie mysteries, especially since it involves a number of good detectives whom we already know from her other works. "Cards on the Table" was originally published in 1936 so it's a fairly early Christie entry.

While not quite up to the caliber of either "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" or "Death on the Nile," I can still highly recommend this one to any fan of a good cosy murder mystery.

Mr. Shaitana, an acquaintance of Poirot's, invited him to a party to meet four people who he though got away with murder. An Inspector from the Scotland Yard, a British Secret Service and a murder fiction writer were also invited to the party. Mr. Shaitana challenged the investigators to figure out what murders the suspects had committed. The suspects, Dr. Roberts, Major Despard, Mrs. Lorrimer, and Miss Meredith, all were in the room playing bridge when Mr. Shaitana was murdered. The four investigators began working on clues using their own techniques to solve the crime. Which one of the suspects murdered Mr. Shaitana in fear of Mr. Shaitana telling the police about their crime and were they all crime that Mr. Shaitana thought? I would rate this book a 5 out of 5. All four suspects seem to be guilty and them seemed to be innocent. You don't know who did it until the end. I've always like Agatha Christie books since I saw the remake of Murder on the Orient Express on TV. Since then I've read about 13 Agatha Christie books.

This has to be one of my favorite books; it ranks right up there with The Murder of Roger Akroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, And then There Were None, and Death on the Nile. The characters were extremely well drawn, especially Rhoda and Ann. I love Mrs. Oliver! :-)

However, you should definatley read Murder on the Orient Express first, because Poirot rather carelessly reveals the solution to that book in Cards on the Table. Read it; you won't regret it.

If you love Agatha Christies too, please email me!

Written at the height of her powers, "Cards on the Table" contains one of Christie's most intriguing set ups. The mysterious Mr Shaitana (who is repeatedly described as Mephistophelian) is a purveyor of odd collectibles, and approaches Poirot to invite him to a dinner party with a difference. The assembled guests are Poirot, Colonel Race, a Secret Service agent, Inspector Battle of Scotland Yard, and the mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver, as well as Mrs Lorrimer, a composed widow, Anne Meredith, a young ingénue, Major Despard, a big-game safari hunter, and Doctor Roberts, a personable physician. The former group are all investigators of some kind or another; the latter are a more disparate group, but when Shaitana separates the two into bridge parties and falls asleep in a chair by the fire, none are prepared for what happens next.

When Poirot and his group finish up the game and enter the drawing room, they are horrified to discover that Mr Shaitana is sitting dead in his chair, stabbed to death with a stiletto. Any of the four sitting in the room could have done it, and it soon becomes obvious that all are equally suspect. Shaitana had previously made hints to Poirot that he "collected" murderers who had gotten away with their crimes, and Poirot realizes that his death is exactly what Shaitana had planned for his dinner party.

It's four detectives pitted against four murderers: each one of them had the motive and the opportunity, but only one of them is guilty. Whilst the other three detectives go about the usual methods of deduction, Poirot takes an interest in the psychological aspect of the bridge game that the would-be killers were playing.

"Cards on the Table" is one of the few mysteries that contains a foreword by the author, in which Christie explains that too often she's been told by her readers that most of the time all they have to do to identify the killer is to find the least-likely suspect. In this case however, all four suspects are *already* guilty of a crime, with an equal interest in committing another. As Christie herself says: "they are four wildly divergent types; the motive that drives each one of them to crime is peculiar to that person, and each one would employ a different method. The deduction must, therefore, be entirely psychological." Perhaps more than any other Christie mystery, the solution to the murder is found in Poirot's insight into the criminal mind.

Readers who are unfamiliar with the game of bridge may be a little cross-eyed at the constant references to the bridge game, though it should not impede the possibility of deducing who the killer is. Christie still "plays by the rules," and does not overly rely on specialized knowledge. She does - as the title implies - puts all the cards on the table.

This also marks the first appearance of Ariadne Oliver, who is a very transparent fictional version of Christie herself. With her tendency to eat apples while she's writing and her frustration toward her fictional detective Sven, Christie takes the opportunity to poke fun at several aspects of her writing career - including fastidious readers, the complications in getting a plot underway, and the distaste she has for several of her own novels. She's a great character, and pops up often in subsequent mysteries.

"Cards on the Table" is one of the best Christie mysteries out there, with Poirot at the top of his game.