And Then There Were None

It is Agatha Christie at her best. It is Crime-Thriller at it's best.

This is quite different from all her stories. DARKER! WAY DARKER! This lends it to the story, overall! This mystery story cleverly recounts the murders of 10 guests at an opulent mansion on a sporadic ocean island from which retreat is rendered impossible by the stormy weather which further contributes to the crepitating atmosphere. Each guest has a dark secret which makes them an inevitable victim and their mysterious host has not yet arrived, so which one is the murderer?

You'll NEVER guess it, even if you do, you'll never guess the ending! Because it's absolutely genius!

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

I do not think I will ever be a Christie fan. I'd read a couple of the early ones and was not impressed. So I wanted to try this, some say her masterpiece, and found it similarly ho-hum. I don't think it's just that the premise is so well known that the element of surprise is lost; I simply don't care about any of the characters, they are so clearly mere shadows made to hang the puzzle on. I enjoy mystery stories where, however preposterous the plot, the people ring true to me and I can feel some kind of connection to them. With this one, they were as anonymous as the china figures that got lost or smashed each time one died.

I'm going to try Murder on the Orient Express since I picked up a free copy of that, and maybe a Miss Marple story, and if those don't turn out to be better, I'm done.

The book made for a pleasant reading, but so far I have found it hard to give more then two stars for the mystery novels I've read.

The story is very short, but luckily to the point. Most of the book is devoted to develop the main plot, exposing enough of each characters past and personality in order to give them life, a somewhat plausible murderer and overall at least one reason for deserving to be a victim of one.

I did not care for the epilogue explaining the whole mystery. It was good, but a little too far fetched. I was expecting something more interesting and exceptional. I would rather have more time dedicated to creating a fearful atmosphere among the characters, giving each of them more presence since they died too quickly.

Also the story made very little room for making me guessing who the real killer was, and when it is revealed there were of course, no way to predict the culprit.

My first Christie book, and it did not disappoint.

As kids one of my closest friends would read Agatha Christie like it was going out of fashion and I would struggle to read just a few single pages from a comic or magazine. As an adult I've finally found my way to read (using a Kindle with the right font, size and line height) and have finally entered the world of Christie.

I was quite surprised at how easy this book was to read (written in 1939), how easy it was to just keep reading and how it kept my interest. A wonderful murder mystery that initially had me guessing and unsure, then around half way decided that I knew who ‘dun it, and by 75% I was at a loss again.

The book doesn't go deeply into word prose, but keeps the pace on who would end up under the chopping block next leaving us guessing: who, when and how!

I do also wonder how much of modern day media bases it's murder mystery on Chritie's work as I could conjure up images of the characters and the scenes quite easily in my mind.

Good stuff. Will be adding some of her popular books to my reading list.

Have you ever been invited to a short weekend away, only to find that you are playing for your life!? Ten people are invited to an island, some for work, and some under the guise of visiting with old friends and acquaintances. However, once they arrive, they learn that they are being charged with crimes that could not be prosecuted in the courts at home. As they begin to die one by one, the nursery rhyme that hangs in each of their rooms becomes real. Will they be able to survive the island.. or each other??

Join Agatha Christie as she spins a web so complete and evasive that you begin to wonder if you really did figure out who did it, or if it was just your imagination. No book has ever been able to captivate you this way, or keep you enthralled from page one until the very last sentence is complete. Her mysteries are of the finest caliber and should be celebrated for their genius and foresight. She is the reigning queen of mystery! Grab your copy and dive into Indian Island for your weekend stay!

Three Agatha Christie books in 1 ... And Then There Were None, Crooked House, and Endless Night.

Christie will never be my favorite author, but drawing room mysteries will never be my favorite genre either, so...

I joke that you should do a shot every time Christie is racist. Don't come at me. She was a product of her time, and the original title of And Then There Were None could not be any more eye-poppingly horrible. I've never read a Christie novel without a racist moment or moments. I accept these are the price of admission, or baked into the cake, or something.

I did like that each novel was genuinely different, felt genuinely different, than every other novel. That's amazing, really. Crooked House was my favorite, but I would say Endless Night holds up the best in having tropes and twists that would still be used, and work, today. At the same time, this is what also makes it perhaps most predictable – the things you would assume in a modern novel are the things you can assume here, making the murderer so obvious that you immediately dismiss this person as being too obvious. And then, yeah. Even with that, I appreciated that there was clues I missed. I figured out the general thing, but there were other details in plain sight I only got when it was all laid out.

And Then There Were None was my least favorite, and felt the most dated for me. I cared about and rooted for no one, which in all fairness makes sense as everyone was meant to be a villain. Still, none of the characters came alive for me, and it was the epitome of plot at the expense of character, and I'm a fan of character above all.

surprisingly i enjoyed this book a lot. I am not the type to like mystery however Agatha has changed my mind. This is a selection of the book club I'm a part of at work and I was honestly very annoyed that this was the next book we would read as a group... turns out i was wrong and i'm glad i have given this book a chance.