Oh, my dear friend, it is impossible not to give oneself away - unless one never opens one's mouth! Speech is the deadliest of revealers.
Cards on the Table
by Agatha Christie
Genre: Murder Mystery
About: A game of cards is played by four perfect strangers, their only connection is that they have been 'collected' by Mr Shaitana who believes they have all accomplished the greatest of arts: they have all gotten away with murder. But as the game is played and Mr Shaitana sleeps nearby, one of the four strikes and kills their gloating host. To discover the murderer, Poirot must delve back into their past crimes and see the pattern the police have missed...
Thoughts
This is a solid Christie read. If I was comparing it to contemporary mystery thrillers, it'd be an easy five star as it does the conventions of a mystery to perfection. There are genuine suspects, red herrings, physical clues, interesting psychoanalysis, and puzzles for the reader to solve. The hints are all there but Christie still makes you doubt each and every suspect so that you're never quite sure of the truth until Poirot lays it all out before you. This ability to tease the reader, while still satisfying them at the end, is a skill not many mystery thriller writers have these days and is why Christie is the Queen of Crime.
So, while this is a great example of how to fool the reader, Christie set a high bar for herself and I don't see this as one of her most memorable ones. The murder victim, for one, is someone we don't meet for very long and seems dead on the page from his first conversation with Poirot. And while it was interesting to go back over the past crimes of each suspect, there is obviously less sense of immediacy to murders that happened many years ago. The stakes feel quite low.
What I enjoyed the most was Poirot's methods. Analysing the suspects as card players (even if I have no idea how Bridge is played) was a great way to separate them. As was asking them what they remembered about the room. It's these kinds of conversations that make you pay attention because you want to be as clever as Poirot and unravel something deeper to the seemingly innocuous questions.
There were so many tricks in this story. I'm too embarrassed to say who I initially thought was the murderer but needless to say I was wrong, and I also did change my suspicions throughout, probably at the exact moments Christie meant the reader to. It's cleverly and (with Miss Oliver around) self-deprecatingly done.
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