Cards on the Table

Mr Shaitana collects murderers. The sinister, wealthy host has gathered eight guests in his opulent London apartment for a night of bridge: four of them have killed before and got away with it, and the other four are detectives, Poirot among them. It is a party game with a body count. Shaitana enjoys the evening enormously, right up until someone ends it for him. When the bridge party host turns up dead, the detective half of the table is left with a room full of people who all have form.

The trick of the story is that the suspect list is fixed from the start. The four guests with past murders are Major Despard, Dr Roberts, Mrs Lorrimer and Miss Meredith, and Poirot's job is to decide who killed tonight. But the bridge table itself supplies the alibis, which makes the case as much about card games as about crime, and the four detectives take their turns at the puzzle while Poirot takes his time. With four killers in the room, the question is less about capability than about nerve.

Alex Jennings plays Dr Roberts, with Tristan Gemmill as Major Despard, Lesley Manville as Mrs Lorrimer and Lyndsey Marshal as Miss Meredith. Philip Bowen and Cordelia Bugeja are the Luxmores, Zigi Ellison is Mrs Craddock, Lucy Liemann is Miss Burgess and James Alper is Shaitana's butler. Agatha Christie wrote it with Nick Dear, and Sarah Harding directed. David Suchet is Poirot.

The conceit is one of Christie's best: the murderer's identity matters less than the question of which of these four guilty people finally got caught. It turns the usual mystery upside down and gives the cast something to sink their teeth into. The puzzle is psychological rather than mechanical, which is why it still works. The result is a drawing-room puzzle with a quiet, nasty streak.