And Then There Were None

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  Most of the Agatha Christie books I've read have been awesomely bad, but this book is just awesome. Ten strangers trapped on an island, being slowly murdered by one of their own for their past crimes. In true Agatha Christie fashion, when you take a step back and look at how many coincidences had to work out just right for all of the pieces of the killer's plan to work, it's an absurd concept, but internally, it's consistent. Considering that there are only about 200 pages and ten main cha... (show more)

  Most of the Agatha Christie books I've read have been awesomely bad, but this book is just awesome. Ten strangers trapped on an island, being slowly murdered by one of their own for their past crimes. In true Agatha Christie fashion, when you take a step back and look at how many coincidences had to work out just right for all of the pieces of the killer's plan to work, it's an absurd concept, but internally, it's consistent. Considering that there are only about 200 pages and ten main characters, Christie does an admirable job drawing out the complexities and personalities of her characters, and the tense scenes after the suspect list narrows to four are especially well done. Christie even manages to avoid most of the rampant classism so present in her other works (although there is a fair amount of gratuitous anti-Semitism - the killer's henchman is Jewish, so of course everyone needs to bring that up in a derogatory way when they talk about him). Yes, the whole thing is a little ludicrous, but it's a great quick read, and I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks he doesn't like reading mysteries. This one is a classic that has earned its reputation. (show less)

   

   

  by Facebook-användare on Dec 18, 2009 at 03:59PM

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  Its creepy, completely unrealistic, and intense. People are picked off one by one in increasingly dramatic deaths until the last "killer" remains standing. It's just so over the top I understand why they made a Bollywood version. And the plot twist and dramatic irony is great-- Christie took on a genre that was originally male-dominated, surpassed her award-winning novelist sister, and wrote about people dying in a house on an island, until they were all corpses laying in their beds... (show more)

  Its creepy, completely unrealistic, and intense. People are picked off one by one in increasingly dramatic deaths until the last "killer" remains standing. It's just so over the top I understand why they made a Bollywood version. And the plot twist and dramatic irony is great-- Christie took on a genre that was originally male-dominated, surpassed her award-winning novelist sister, and wrote about people dying in a house on an island, until they were all corpses laying in their beds, waiting for someone to find them. The imagery is startling, and that's what makes it so great. The "victims" are all criminals who were lucky enough to escape the courts, but greedy enough to come to an island for the lust of money. It's human nature to it's lowest common denominator--we do stupid shit for money, and sometimes it backfires. Christie wrote a masterpiece. Popularity and quality do not have an inverse relationship as some literary snobs would have you believe (show less)

   

  by Kunjika Singh on Nov 02, 2009 at 06:48AM

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