#23 - Cards on the Table
Cards on the Table is sharp in every way!
This one actually had a forward written by Christie herself, warning the reader that there would not be the normal set of clues that would allow them to guess, and that the solution was based on psychology. I don’t know about you (I’m not psychologist, after all), but that just made me want to guess at it even more, which may have been the point.
Here’s the premise: Mr. Shaitana invites M. Poirot to a bridge party. The party includes four guests that Shaitana expects have committed murders in the past and four sleuths: Poirot, Superintendent Battle (Seven Dials), Colonel Race (Death on the Nile), and my favourite meta wordsmith Ariadne Oliver, who we’ll talk about in a moment. One of the nine will not leave the party alive...
As it turns out, Agatha was right about my investigative abilities. Of the four suspects, I suspected all of them at one point or another. In fact, I was sure I had it figured out three separate times, and was wrong on all, which means I was sure of the guilt of everyone except the killer! I was jolted left, right, and centre, and the answer ended up being above. Christie definitely employed one of her more popular strategies of seeming to rule out or write off the killer before bringing them back in and revealing their guilt at the end.
The entire way through the book, Poirot asks each suspect about their bridge habits and the tendencies of their fellow-suspect opponents. Now, I don’t know anything about bridge, so I couldn’t help but question why Poirot was doing this, but it’s important, and it was one of those “hit-you-in-the-face” moments when it’s revealed why.
This is another book in which Ariadne Oliver truly shines! This energetic, eccentric, egalitarian portrayal of Christie’s maybe-alter-ego is so entertaining. Interestingly enough, she uses one of her own future book titles as the title of one of Oliver’s mysteries, so she must have been fond of it! Oliver has so many dashes of the real Christie here, but I think my favourite is their shared love of apples. It’s a little detail that’s sweet and cozy and fitting!
Apparently this book has its detractors, but I cannot understand why. If not quite in my top 10, it is certainly in my top 15 (I am keeping track as we go). It’s a great portrayal of Poirot and a brilliant concept, with an impressively developed cast of characters. It gets an 8/10, and the colour is a deep, devilish sort of red. Like one of Mrs. Oliver’s apples!
