Cards on the Table
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
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Publication date
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2 November 1936 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 288 first edition, hardcover |
| Preceded by | Murder in Mesopotamia |
| Followed by | Murder in the Mews |
Cards on the Table is a detective novel by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 2 November 1936 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
The book features the recurring characters of Hercule Poirot, Colonel Race, Superintendent Battle and the bumbling crime writer Ariadne Oliver, making her first appearance in a Poirot novel. The four detectives and four possible suspects play bridge after dinner with Mr Shaitana. At the end of the evening, Mr Shaitana is discovered murdered. Identifying the murderer, per Mrs Christie, depends wholly on discerning the psychology of the suspects.
This novel was well received at first printing and in later reviews. It was noted for its humour, for the subtlety of the writing, good clueing and tight writing, showing continuing improvement in the author's writing style in this, her twentieth novel. One later reviewer considered this in the top rung of her novels, and another found it to be most original, with a brilliant surprise ending.
Mr Shaitana hosts an unusual dinner party, with four sleuths and four people he suspects have murder in their past as the guests. In a veiled statement of accusation, Shaitana lists the ways various people might commit murder based on their occupation. After the meal, he settles the latter four at one bridge table in the main room, and leads the four sleuths to a table in another room. He settles in a chair near the fireplace in the main room. When the sleuths end their game, two of them, Poirot and Colonel Race, in saying good night to their host, find the man dead in his chair, a fine weapon from his own collection in his chest. The two call Superintendent Battle to take over the situation.
Only Poirot knew Shaitana’s plan for the dinner party, he tells Battle, Race and Mrs Ariadne Oliver, the celebrated mystery author. The other four guests wait in a separate room while the police do their work, and remove the body. Battle questions each one by one. Dr Roberts, Mrs Lorrimer, young Anne Meredith, and explorer Major Despard each deny the murder. Poirot rescues the score sheets kept for the four rubbers of the game, which he uses both to mark the passage of time and the character of each player as the evening passed.
The investigation proceeds openly on the connection of each of the four to Shaitana, and quietly in finding if there is a death that could have been murder in their past, seeking motives and psychology for Shaitana's murder. Each sleuth uncovers a death: Battle finds that one client of Dr Roberts and her husband died separately, he of anthrax, she of a blood infection while in Egypt; Colonel Race learns that the botanist Luxmore while being guided through the Amazon by Despard died of fever, with rumours he was shot; Mrs Oliver learns that a woman who employed Anne as a companion died of accidental poisoning; while Poirot learns at the end that Mrs Lorrimer poisoned her husband. Colonel Race then leaves the country for his work in the Secret Service. During the investigation, tensions rise among the four guests. Anne is skittish and afraid, even with offers of support from Mrs Oliver and Mrs Lorrimer, an older woman who wants the young woman to be free of accusation. Despard engages a solicitor for himself and for Anne. Dr Roberts lives as before.
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