And Then There Were None: Ten Strangers, an Island and a Nursery Rhyme That Kills
Ten people receive letters signed by a stranger, a Mr Owen, inviting them to spend a few days at his mansion off the coast of Devon. On the first night, after dinner, a voice accuses each and every one of them of a guilty past. Only an old nursery rhyme seems to hold the key to a growing nightmare.
Author: Agatha Christie (1890–1976)
Title: And Then There Were None (1939)
Format: English paperback (HarperCollins), 256 pages
Scope: Standalone mystery; the best-selling crime novel of all time
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0008123209 (ASIN 0008123209)
Ten Guests
Having received their letters, the guests arrive on 8 August at the appointed place, from where they are taken to the island on which the house stands. There they meet a pair of servants, Mr and Mrs Rogers, who make up the group of ten together with young Anthony Marston, Miss Emily Brent, General Macarthur, Judge Lawrence Wargrave, Dr Armstrong, the detective William Henry Blore, the adventurer Philip Lombard and the young Vera Claythorne.
Uncertainty spreads when they learn that they will be alone on the island. The guests talk among themselves, trying to get to know one another. The voice frightens everyone, and they search for where it could have come from. From then on, they begin to fear their helpless situation.
One by One
The worst begins when they find the first body: someone has been poisoned. The characters grow more and more uneasy and frightened in the house, where murders will now be committed every day. The deaths are quick and baffling, since no one understands how they are being carried out or who the killer is, so they decide to organise themselves, guided by Judge Wargrave’s experience.
Despite their new system of investigation, the murders go on. As time passes, there are fewer and fewer survivors. They search the whole island for the killer without success, and conclude that the murderer must be one of them. The remaining guests distrust each other, since no one knows who the real killer is.
The Rhyme and the Figures
The structure of the book is a stroke of genius. A framed copy of an old nursery rhyme about ten little soldier boys, each disappearing in a different way, hangs in every guest’s bedroom, and ten little china figures stand on the dining table. After each death, one figure is found broken or missing, and each death mirrors a line of the rhyme. The guests, cut off from the mainland by bad weather, realise that the killer must be one of them, and suspicion turns every meal into an ordeal.
A Book With No Detective
There is no Poirot or Miss Marple to reassure the reader, and no one can be trusted. Christie wrote in her autobiography that she was drawn to the book because it was so difficult to write: ten people had to die without the solution becoming either ridiculous or obvious. The final explanation comes in an epilogue in the form of a document found after the events, a device that keeps the reader in suspense to the very last pages.
Titles and Adaptations
The novel was published in 1939 under a title now recognised as deeply offensive, and it has long been known as And Then There Were None, the title used in the United States from 1940. Christie adapted it for the stage in 1943 with a different, less bleak ending, and René Clair’s 1945 film followed the play. The BBC’s 2015 miniseries kept the novel’s original ending, and many readers consider it the most faithful version.
Why Read It
It is Christie’s most famous novel and one of the most perfectly constructed mysteries ever written. The tension never lets up, and the solution is as ingenious as it is chilling. I will not say more about the ending.
As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases.
Part of the reading recommendations featured on books.sapiensverbum.com.
