Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
And then there were few better than this., 24 Dec 2004
Surely everyone in the world has read this book by now! Surely it tops the best-selling list of a best-selling author! Older readers may not recognize it by its current title, its original and a later replacement having been deemed too racist. Nothing racist, I hope, was picked in my school English classes, where I used it to help develop pupils' appetite for reading. Agatha Christie's achievement is remarkable. She creates ten characters, all suspected of murder, who are lured to an island. She has them meet their deaths one by one as nominated in the nursery rhyme "Ten Little Indians" which is displayed in their rooms. She has each murder occur in a situation where almost all the other island guests might have had opportunity to commit it. As if devising all this were not enough, she also frequently takes us into the minds of the various characters - something that the whole nature of detective fiction usually prohibits. This construction is not only intricate but also compact; it is one of her shorter novels. Built on this scheme, the book must exclude Mrs Christie's regular sleuths, Poirot and Miss Marple. Instead, the dwindling number of island guests generate their own investigation. So here is a book that offers double the pleasure that murder mysteries provide. As well as challenging you to solve the mystery, it also amazes you that so ingenious a mystery could be contrived.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely un-put-downable!, 20 Aug 2002
By A Customer
A group of people find themselves invited to an island off the English coast. Their host is not present and a storm is fast approaching. After two people die, the guests quickly realise that what seemed like two accidents in succession is in fact the work of a killer on the island. I found this to be one of the most enjoyable and genuinely chilling mysteries I have ever read. Christie's handling of the narrative and the suspense scenes is nothing short of masterly, and she manages to conjure up an amazingly tense atmosphere. Thoroughly engrossing and beautifully written, this classic novel will leave you guessing literally until the end.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An All-Time Crime Classic, 1 Mar 2003
This classic Christie whodunit has borne three different titles, which has been the source of some confusion. Originally published in England under the title "Ten Little Niggers" in 1939, it was retitled "And Then There Were None" for its 1940 American edition for obvious reasons. However, the English stage version of 1943 retained the "Niggers" title while the American stage version ran as "Ten Little Indians." Even more confusingly, the first film version, released in 1945, bore the American "And Then There Were None" title, while the three subsequent adaptations (1965, 1975, and 1989) took the "Ten Little Indians" title! The original offensive title comes from a Victorian-era music-hall song, which itself was a rip-off of an American song by Septimus Winner, circa 1868. All of which is neither here nor there, but only to help clear up any confusion. I would note that the most recent French edition bears the title "Dix petit negres", which somehow does not surprise me... As for the actual novel, it's perhaps the ultimate whodunit of the "locked house" variety. Ten people are summoned to an island off the Devon coast, none of them know each other or their ostensible host. The story starts by showing the ten en route to the island and provides a brief character sketch of each as background. I have to confess that at first, some of the men kind of blend together, and it takes little time to keep straight who is who. Once on the island, the eight guests and two servants wait for their host, who never shows up. Completely cut off from the mainland, they grow restless until one of them dies. When another dies, it can be no mere coincidence, and they realize that one amongst them must be a killer. The rest of the book plays this cat and mouse game all the way out, leaving the reader guessing until the very end. Because of the number of characters, there's not a whole lot of depth to any of them, but the story is obviously plot-driven as opposed to character-driven, so that should come as no surprise. It's an incredibly elaborate (and thus slightly contrived) web that is woven, but great fun, especially in bleak, stormy weather!
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