The card game in Agatha Christie’s Cards on the Table is bridge. In the novel, four detectives and four suspects play bridge after dinner at the home of the flamboyant collector Mr Shaitana.
The game is not merely background decoration. Christie uses the bridge table to structure the mystery: the professional investigators play in one room while the suspected criminals play in another, leaving Shaitana alone by the fire. When the guests regroup, he has been stabbed with a stiletto from his own collection.
Published in 1936, the novel features Hercule Poirot alongside Colonel Race, Superintendent Battle and the crime writer Ariadne Oliver. It is also notable as Oliver’s first appearance in a Poirot novel. Poirot’s solution depends less on physical clues than on reading the psychology and behaviour of the four players.
Readers sometimes confuse bridge with whist because both are traditional trick-taking card games, but Christie specifically names bridge. The title refers to the cards and the game’s competitive setting, while the central puzzle turns on what each player’s conduct reveals.