Welcome to all about Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking every single

mystery novel written by the Queen of Crime Dame Agatha Christie.

I'm Catherine Brobeck and I'm Kemper Donovan and we are very excited to be doing a novel and it is a Poiro novel and it is cards on the table.

Cards on the table.

Cards on the table.

Let's talk really briefly about the publication history because it is pretty straightforward.

This novel was first

published on November 2nd, 1936 by the Collins Crime Club in the UK and one year

later in 1937 by Dodd Mead in the US. Let's jump right in and talk about our victim, Catherine.

There's more than one victim.

Oh, and how?

And how?

There's really only one victim that we can talk about up front. However...

Right, that's Mr. Chaitana, and he's an incredibly rich collector,

and he throws a very fine party,

and he rubs many people the very wrong way and he's exotic quote-unquote

kind of and mefestophilian which is a word man it gets used a lot in this story.

Sure does.

He stabbed death with a jeweled stiletto

at his own dinner party.

As we are told three pages into the novel,

every healthy Englishman longed to kick him which happens to be the first

...