Friday, October 6, 2017

Book #102: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

I read this a long time ago, and I'd seen the movie adaptation at some point, but it had been so long that I didn't remember any specifics of the story and had forgotten who the murderer was. All I remembered was the basic premise: that someone is killing people on this island one by one, and nobody can figure out who it is. So this was a fun book to revisit. This is apparently one of Agatha Christie's best-known novels (if not THE best-known) and I can see why--it's creepy and suggestive enough to get your heart rate up a little bit, and totally throws you off because there's no way to really figure out who did it. This is apparently a faux pas in the mystery-writing world; apparently you are supposed to drop hints here and there that the reader can look back on and say, "Ah! That's what that meant!" when they find out the ending. But not so in this book--you have no idea who it was until the epilogue. But I didn't mind that about this one; the story is so shocking and out-of-the-ordinary that you don't expect it to work like any other ordinary murder mysteries.

Definitely worth a read for anyone. It's short, fun, and exciting.

Note: I have a hard copy of this book, but I forgot about it when I started reading it (for book club this week), so I downloaded an e-book copy from the library. I'm glad I read the e-book because it helped me to not skip ahead and try to get a hint of who did it! It made it more satisfying at the end. For this book that really mattered.

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