Mystery review: Cards on the Table presents an interesting premise: four detectives meet four suspects, and Christie has a lot of fun with it. She doesn't want the readers to become too attached to the victim so names him Satan. She then introduces inspired mystery writer Ariadne Oliver, clearly intended as a stand-in for Christie -- both Oliver and Christie wrote novels titled The Body in the Library. (Dorothy Sayers had previously introduced her own alter ego in four novels with Harriet Vane.) The detectives and suspects were playing two tables of bridge at the time of the homicide and Poirot delves deep into the psychology of the suspects, finding numerous signifiers in their pattern and practice of play. Bridge was a big deal back in the day, as we learn from Edith Wharton among others (does anyone still know how to play?). Since the players' game scores are given in the frontispiece I thought Cards on the Table would be a purely puzzle kind of mystery, but it's more thoughtful and better developed than that. How Christie constructs her characters is an art: just as deep and as mildly exaggerated as they need to be, but no more and no less. More than cardboard but less than flesh, yet credible and a reasonable facsimile thereof. She's also at her twisty turny best here, providing a veritable school of red herrings. There are many false summits before the end, which is somewhat ironic as "cards on the table" is a synonym for being open and honest. Christie may have been loling all the way with Ariadne Oliver but Cards on the Table is one of the better Poirot outings. [4★]
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