Her fans hail Agatha Christie as the Queen of Crime for her gripping stories written during the golden period of detective fiction. I am a fan of her stories. The way she develops the character and sets up the stage for her detective to shine is commendable. Among all her sleuths, Poirot has caught my eyes and mind the most. Legendary David Suchet has done such a wonderful job of bringing Monsieur Poirot to life. He will get a big part of my fascination towards this small Belgian gent.

But this doesn’t make the experience of reading the books any less enjoyable. I started reading Poirot from the first title in series, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. I was blown away with the story. This lead to the reading of subsequent Poirot books in all formats available, paperback, kindle eBooks and on Audible. And I reached to this title of “Cards on the table”

What to expect from this?

The reason I am talking about this book is very simple. First of all I liked the book, and secondly, the title starts with “C”, the third letter in A2Z challenge. Story of this begins with the Poirot getting invitation to a collector, Mr. Shaitana who collects a rare exhibits. He has a habit of collecting the criminals who has evaded the justice. Invitation to Poirot is of a dinner party to meet them. Guests for the party are four people who has a connection with crime solving and four others who are murderers in Shaitana’s eyes. During dinner, Shaitana taunts his suspect with comments which only concerned person will understand.

After dinner a game of bridge is proposed and as the game progresses, Mr. Shaitana is found dead in his chair by fireplace. Four crime professionals, a Secret Serviceman, Scotland Yard Superintendent, a mystery writer and Poirot himself make their own queries to solve this brain scratching crime.

Agatha uses all her magic to make these investigations interesting and nail-biting. But what made the experience of this story much more fascinating is the narration of this audiobook. Hugh Fraser, who plays a part of Captain Hastings in the television series with Sir David. His familiar voice took the experience one notch up and made it more interesting.

This post is a part of #BlogchatterA2Z 2023. For more about my views on books, click here.