Cards on the Table

The Collins Crime Club published Cards on the Table in November 1936, and Dodd, Mead brought it out in America the year after. It sold for seven shillings and sixpence in Britain and two dollars in the United States, and it was well reviewed when it appeared.

The book brings together a set of Christie's recurring investigators: Hercule Poirot, Colonel Race and Superintendent Battle, with Ariadne Oliver, the crime writer, appearing in a Poirot novel for the first time. Their host is a man called Mr Shaitana, who collects murders the way other people collect paintings.

At a dinner he arranges, four detectives are seated at one table and four people he believes to be killers at another; the evening's play is bridge, and afterwards Shaitana is found dead. As Christie presents it, the identification of the murderer rests on nothing but the psychology of the guests, and the puzzle is worked out from the way each of them played their cards. The book has since been adapted for television, and it remains one of the titles in which its author's interest in psychology is most visible.