And Then There Were None
(CHRISTIE, AGATHA)
ABSTRACT ? CHRISTIE, AGATHA ? AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. The darkest and gloomiest of Christie?s many whodunits (do keep in mind that this review will divulge the ending). This is the one with no detective, in which the main villain actually gets away with his crimes. Controversially, the book was originally sold under the title ?Ten Little Niggers?, a reference to the nursery rhyme about ten unfortunate people getting killed one by one until they had all perished (a macabre take on Ten Green Bottles). The poem echoes the events in the book in which ten people are invited to a remote island. None of them know each other or why they have been invited. As they question one another, the murders start. One by one, the guests are killed off. As no one else is on the Island, the survivors are driven to increasing paranoia about the other people around them. Soon, there are only two people left. Each of them accuses the other of being the killer, and when one of them is murdered, the other one, a woman, is extremely frightened and confused. She knows she is not the murderer. In fact, the killer faked his own death earlier and they all assumed he was an early victim of his own killing spree. The killer hangs the last victim, and then, quite insane, writes down his story in the first person. He adds at he end that he will now kill himself too, and puts the letter in a bottle which he throws into the sea. The story only comes to light when the bottle is found. This is a chilling story. Film versions often fall short of killing the last victim in order to have someone survive. The killer having faked his own death has itself been much imitated. This is a true classic and possibly a unique detective story.
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