And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie; narrated by Hugh Fraser | 2012; originally published 1939 | HarperAudio | Audiobook $ 19.99
First, there were ten — a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they’re unwilling to reveal — and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder.
I haven’t read much out of the crime fiction genre, so I was eager to add a few titles that fall under that heading to my list for Classics Club. Alas, I’ve been basically unimpressed by most of them so far. And Then There Were None broke that disappointing streak and has given me more hope for mystery novels again!
I found myself wondering whodunnit right up until the reveal at the very end. The sense that the answer was just around the corner was heightened by the story being told from multiple characters’ points of view — including tantalizingly vague hints that one of them was indeed the perpetrator of the ongoing killing spree… but all of them were guilty, generally speaking, and all could perhaps be capable of this particular crime more specifically.
It might be interesting to re-read this one after knowing the reveal, to see if I could pick up any major missed hints. That’s one of the only downsides to listening to a book like this on audio; it’s impossible to flip back through the pages to previous passages to check on your suspicions or review certain scenes for more clues.
I had a lot of fun with this one. I’m lucky in that I somehow managed to avoid spoilers for it — and let’s be real, spoilers for an 85-year-old mystery story that happens to be one of the best-selling books of all time aren’t hard to come by. I’ve seen various film or television adaptations of stories from the author’s more popular detective series; perhaps this work being a stand-alone made it easier to miss any version of it in other media. And of course the basic framework of a closed circle mystery set in a fancy-yet-remote house is perennially popular; one of my favorite comedy movies, Clue, is an example of this — and having now read And Then There Were None, it (+ of course the board game it’s based on) clearly draws a lot of inspiration from Agatha Christie.
I guess the only thing I didn’t much care for was the tendency towards hysteria of one of the primary female characters. Her mental instability ultimately plays a big role in her fate, but… well, it’s difficult for me to describe my irritation with that without entirely giving away the game, but suffice it to say that even for the time period the book was written in, this woman’s unhingedness seems like an almost comical exaggeration in an otherwise straightforwardly grim story. Didn’t make the mystery any less interesting overall, though!
I would recommend this book to anyone else who, like me, wants to give mystery novels a fair shot; it’s clearly one of the best examples of the genre. I suppose that the story might not be such a puzzle to regular readers of modern mysteries, packed full of tropes as it is (dwindling party, locked room murder, an entire aquarium of red herrings, etc.), but you have to remember that it was one of the originators of said tropes.
Speaking of tropes! While looking for more perspectives on this book in the process of putting together this review, I spent some time exploring the entry for it at TV Tropes. I mention this because it includes a note that the full cast audio version of the book actually spoils the ending about halfway through due to a certain section which includes a self-incriminating statement from one of the characters; on the page, the inner thoughts of multiple characters are sort of jumbled together with no indication of who’s thinking what, but in the full cast recording each voice is necessarily distinct. For this reason, I specifically recommend listening to one of the single-narrator versions of the audiobook.
Links:
- Biography of Agatha Christie from Agatha Christie Ltd.
- Obituary of Agatha Christie from The Guardian
- Agatha Christie creator page at TV Tropes
Publication information: Christie, Agatha. And then there were none. New York, NY: HarperAudio, 2012. Audiobook.
Source: Public library, via Hoopla.
Disclaimer: I am not compensated, monetarily or otherwise, for reviews of books or other products.
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