Christie, Agatha - Cards on the Table (1936)

Review by Nick Fuller

5/5

Agatha Christie's twentieth novel is a landmark, for this is, to quote Gillian Gill, "the detective novelist's detective novel". The plot is deceptively simple: there are only four people, all of whom are murderers, and one of whom is the murderer — and yet the reader will find it almost impossible to spot the murderer. The look at the background and psychology of a murderer is fascinating, recalling Christie's 1939 classic Ten Little Niggers, and, from other authors, Anthony Berkeley's Panic Party and John Dickson Carr's Death in Five Boxes. All the clues (including a pair of silk stockings and a superb clue in the form of bridge scores) are psychological / character-based—the suspects' reactions, how they play bridge, how they notice a room, how they may think, and, by extension, how they would commit a murder — and it is natural that the mystery be solved by the amateur psychologist Hercule Poirot, aided by his fellow guests at Mr. Shaitana's dinner-party, Superintendent Battle, Colonel Race, and that amusing and intelligent self-parody Mrs. Oliver.

See also http://www.classicmysteries.net/2012/10/cards-on-the-table.html.