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Rating: Someone (I don't remember exactly who) wrote in a preface that reading an Agatha Christie novel is like watching the famous "three-card" game.
And who doesn't know it? But let's go over the rules a bit. The "dealer," the one conducting the game, shows us three different cards, we observe them closely, trying to memorize them. Then he points to one: the one we need to find. After that, the dealer flips the cards and begins to shuffle them, until he places them back on the ground.
But our eye is a good observer, attentive and focused: it has perfectly followed the trajectory of the card, and we are sure it is the one on the right. We point to it, the dealer turns it over: but it's not the one we were looking for. Then he turns over the one on the left and, oh, yes, it is indeed that one. Exactly on the opposite side where we had "spotted" it. So, our eye was too slow compared to the dealer's trained hands, which managed to deceive us.
Many say they can identify the murderer in an Agatha story already from the first pages because Christie always uses the same "psychological pattern" in all her novels: just as the dealer uses the same trick to swindle us out of money.
This statement is partly true, in my opinion. But it's certain that Christie uses her own pattern, her own way of moving the characters repeatedly.
Christie plays the part of the dealer. In the very first chapters (those preceding the crime, which is always found much further into the reading of one of her novels) Agatha presents the cards to us, and just before the crime seems to tell us: "Well, now you have all the psychological elements to understand who the murderer is, I have made each of them talk at length and if you have been attentive, you can do it." And she dishes out a nice crime, in some way creating a mystery: she covers the cards for us.
Those cards that will then be shuffled: this phase corresponds to everything that happens after the "incident" (the investigation, the interrogations, possible other murders, the clues, etc.)
Finally, we reach the penultimate chapter. And we have understood everything, the murderer is him, no one else could have done it. We point the finger at him. And Christie often makes us believe this, letting us read a "false final solution" which in reality serves only to unmask the real murderer. A person we had never (ever) suspected!
And we remain stunned because if our explanation was more than good, Christie's is perfect, without the slightest flaw. How did we forget about that detail? That sentence? That expression? It was all written before the crime happened, it was obvious that it was him. Yet we never suspected it.
This is because, as the dealer does with his speed, Agatha deceives us: the narrative is not limited to the crime itself but is an intertwining of parallel stories, which confuses our ideas.
One of the most striking examples of this method, of this pattern is "Cards on the Table", yet another adventure of the great Poirot.
A story suspended on a wire, a refined crime, an almost impossible crime, few suspects, few clues. The death of the mysterious Mr. Shaitana during a game of the "noble Bridge" in which there are four detectives and four people who in the past have had a connection to a murder. An (apparently) banal conversation about how a crime can be disguised, hinted at by Shaitana himself: but someone is afraid, afraid that Shaitana knows something more about their own crime, and then what happens? Well, discover it yourself by reading this thrilling novel by the one and only Queen of Crime.
P.S.: I have read almost all of Christie's books and despite being sure of the use of this pattern, I have never understood who the murderer was. Never. I apologize.
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