He invites Poirot to a dinner party to meet them. Scoffing at the idea of collecting mere artefacts, Shaitana explains that he collects only the best exhibits: criminals who have evaded justice.

Mr Shaitana, a flamboyant collector, meets Hercule Poirot by chance at an art exhibition and brags about his personal crime-related collection. A later reviewer considered the book to stand at the very top rung of her novels, while another appreciated the brilliant surprise ending. The novel was well received, the critics noting its humour, the subtlety and tightness of the writing, and the good clueing. Identifying the murderer, according to the author, depends wholly on discerning the psychology of the suspects. At the end of the evening, Mr Shaitana is discovered murdered. The four detectives and four possible suspects play bridge after dinner with Mr Shaitana. The book features the recurring characters of Hercule Poirot, Colonel Race, Superintendent Battle, with the crime writer Ariadne Oliver making her first appearance in a Poirot novel. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00. Overall, this might not be the best place to start, but it is worth getting to not long after you get started.Cards on the Table is a detective fiction novel by the English author Agatha Christie, 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.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind figuring out the solution before the big reveal at the end, but it does add a little something to the experience if you’re just as in the dark as the police force and the list of suspects. I was also pleased with the solution to the mystery as a whole because even though there was a limited pool of suspects, I wasn’t able to guess it. I also thought that the pacing and the actual mystery itself were well done, and I can already tell that I’m going to remember this book for a while, even though it’s far from my favourite of Agatha Christie’s books.

Hercule Poirot is along for the ride, and so is Ariadne Oliver. Shaitan, and after twenty pages of setup or so, we get to work on solving the mystery. Luckily, we quickly get to the murder of Mr. I seem to recall reading a James Bond book that went on for about forty pages during a game of golf and I was worried that this was going to be the same. I was hesitant about this book at first, because in the opening chapters a lot of time is given over to a card game, which I’ve never really enjoyed reading about in literature.

Cards on the table by agatha christie