And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie weaves a unique and intriguing mystery in And Then There Were None. I didn't find the deaths contrite and I loved the use of the nursery rhyme to give clues not only to the reader, but the characters in the book. Modern mystery writes could certainly use her works as a beacon of how to write true mystery with well developed characters and plot twists that leave the reader guessing. What seems obvious is often not, what seems insignificant is of major consequence and that is how a mystery should be. Certainly a "good read!"

A slow burner... very knives out, clue, who done it. If thats your thing, this books for you. Personally, it bored me.

it was a cool book to read if you read it from the standpoint of “what would you do in this situation?” but as far as the writing style, it was structurally flawed in many ways which I guess could be credited to the time. Agatha did a great job, but maybe this writing style is somewhat obsolete in its approach. I could imagine that in 1929, this was monumental, though, given the state of the world at the time and how women were treated. She created a universe out of her own imagination. Even if it isn’t my favorite book, I have to respect the craft. The sheer effort and creativity.

The most extraordinary book I have ever read captivated my heart and mind for days.

The book and its plot are among the finest examples of mystery writing, and I can see why Agatha Christie is still known as the Queen of Crime. Now that that’s out of the way, what I really want to talk about is how I first read this. Almost all of Christie’s books I’ve read, all 66 detective works, were borrowed from libraries when I was still in school. So my first reading of this book had a different title and poem – swapping soldiers from the Ten Little Soldiers poem with one or other racist slur in the new editions. So I was curious to test how that would land with me now. In both the older and the new versions, I didn’t see these themes as the author endorsing those views. Instead, they felt like a reflection of the upper-middle-class British society in which Christie was writing. In this book, for example, the characters who express racist, xenophobic, sexist, and even rigid religious views are meant to be despicable, dislikable, or villainous, and I remember that as largely true for her other books, too. I may still enjoy re-reading more of her books.