Cards on the Table

Name: Cards on the Table
Rating: 4.39 (75455 reviews)
Author: Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot • Book 15

by Agatha Christie

Narrated by Hugh Fraser

4.39 ABR Score (75.5K ratings)

★ 3.96 Goodreads (73.8K) ★ 4.72 Audible (1.6K)

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Why Listen to This Audiobook?

Hugh Fraser didn't just narrate this — he played Hastings opposite David Suchet for years, and you can hear it.

Great if you want: a tight, logical puzzle with only four possible suspects
Listening experience: refined parlor-room pacing — unhurried, cerebral, satisfyingly contained
Narration: Fraser's years in Poirot's world give this an insider warmth
Skip if: you prefer action or sprawling casts over armchair deduction

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About This Audiobook

Mr. Shaitana is a flamboyant, widely feared host who collects murderers the way other men collect art, and he has invited Hercule Poirot to a dinner party to display his latest acquisitions. The evening's entertainment is bridge, four tables of it, with four suspected killers sitting across from four investigators, including Poirot. When Shaitana is found dead in his chair at the end of the evening, killed while everyone was playing cards, Poirot must deduce which of four equally plausible suspects committed the crime.

Hugh Fraser brings the particular pleasure of a performer deeply embedded in the Poirot tradition, his voice shaped by years of portraying Captain Hastings in the television adaptations. His narration gives the novel's puzzle-box structure a theatrical quality, modulating between Poirot's careful observations and the social performances of characters who are hiding far more than they reveal. The compact runtime suits the book's elegant single-premise construction beautifully.