Book of the Week

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Recommended by Kian Kamshad

And Then There Were None was one of the books that I read which I couldn’t put down. I have always enjoyed Christie’s style of murder mystery, and this was no exception. The book was captivating, thrilling, and at the same time, terrifying.

One aspect of this book that really made it stand out was the plot. The main theme of this book was the poem of the Ten Little Soldier Boys. The book is about ten people on an island near Devon. Their hosts, Mr Ulick Norman Owen and his wife Mrs Una Nancy Owen have not yet arrived. When a loudspeaker accuses them all of different murders, they come the the conclusion that their host doesn’t exist, and that U.N.Owen could be abbreviated to unknown. One by one, they start dying the same way the soldier boys do, and they conclude that they are being killed and that the killer is one of them.
Also, every time someone is killed, one of the ten soldier boy statues are broken. They are trapped on the island because the boatman is now dead, and the tide is too high to sail across anyway. Trying to guess who the killer is, and who will die next is one of the aspects of this book that really makes it terrifying. Also, the suspense that this creates is one of the things that keeps you reading the book.

The book is written in a rather formal style at the beginning, with a clear structure and the features one might expect in most books such as setting the scene and introducing characters. However, as the book goes on, and matters become more chaotic, the style of the writing becomes less formal, and I think that this is one of the aspects of Agatha Christie’s writing that can really make her books more gripping. The vocabulary used is quite advanced, but not to the point where one must constantly stop and check the dictionary for the meaning of words.

There are ten main characters; these are the ‘guests’ who are stuck on the island. They are all guilty of killing someone in a way that is described as ‘within the law’ by the book. However, most of them deny this in a scene where they are all accused of having done these things. Usually, when you read a Christie book, the killer ends up being the person you expect the least. However, when I read this book, the person I suspected first was the killer, but then I changed my mind, and ended up being wrong. One thing to note is that the killer is revealed in the epilogue rather than an actual chapter, and I almost missed this final section.

Christie usually introduces a detective in her books, and she is famous for her Poirot and Miss Marple books. However, although one of the guests on the island is a minor police detective, this book does not have the same feel to it as one of Christie’s detective books. Nonetheless, the atmosphere achieved makes this her masterpiece.

All in all, I think this is a fantastic book. I really enjoyed the gripping plot, and I genuinely couldn’t stop reading. I was terrified, but in a way that I wanted to read more, and satisfy the urge to find out who the killer was. I think that the characters are very well developed, and their backstories were very helpful in terms of understanding the situation that they were in. The contrast to her other books in some aspects, rather than having the same concept again, really helped to engage me.

Intrigued by this review? Wondering how Christie matches up to other writers? Why not take a look at Conrad Barclay's post comparing And Then There Were None with Truman Capote's true crime classic In Cold Blood here.