And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie

Average Rating 7/10 (1 Review)

1939. Europe teeters on the brink of war. Ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. Cut off from the mainland, with their generous hosts Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen mysteriously absent, they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly they realise they may be harbouring a murderer among their number.

The 10 strangers include a reckless playboy, a troubled Harley Street doctor, a formidable judge, an uncouth detective, an unscrupulous mercenary, a God-fearing spinster, two restless servants, a highly decorated general and an anxious secretary. One by one they are picked off. Who will survive? And who is the killer? Copies of an ominous nursery rhyme hang in each room, the murders mimicking the awful fates of its 'Ten Little Soldier Boys'.

'One of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies.'

Review by Ben Macnair (010123) Rating (7/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 7/10
By now, we know what to expect from Agatha Christie. Good writing, an ear for dialogue and characterisation. People and motives that are both timeless and timely. We read Agatha Christie because of the comfort in her books. There is death, but it is never gory or gratuitous.

There is violence, but it makes a point, rather than being the point. Social and class divides are well drawn. The detectives solving the crimes are small and diminutive, unlikely to attract attention, but still well-known and well respected by authority, for their unerring way of getting to the truth, of cracking the case.

And Then There Were None that doesn’t feature Christie’s two best-known characters, Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, because, by the end of the book, the crime is obvious to the reader, but not to the people who find the bodies on Soldier Island.

Summoned there by a mysterious letter, ten strangers find themselves on Soldier Island. Their reasons for being there only known to the mysterious figure who invited them all. The island or the Devon coast is accessible only by boat, and when they are dropped there, to be met by the housekeeper, their fate, all of their fates are sealed.

One by one, each of the characters is killed off. The secrets and the evils that they have committed, that have singled them out for their fate, known only to themselves, the reader and the murderer. As one by one they die, paranoia amongst the rest of them escalates, they have to be together at all times, and people have to watch as food is made, and tea is served. The sense of claustrophobia within the book is palpable at times, the febrile situation, and the knowledge that none of them is going to get off the island only add to the despair that they all feel.

The denouement of the book is well handled, and the killer makes sense at the conclusion of the book. The book was published in 1939, and obviously uses some of the language of the time, and espouses some of the same values, but as a murder mystery story, written by one of the most successful and acclaimed mystery writers of recent times, it stands up to scrutiny more than 80 years later.
Ben Macnair (1st January 2023)