What do You think about And Then There Were None (2004)?
A group of strangers is invited to a deserted island by a mysterious host they do not know. When they arrive they immediately 1. dislike each other2. figure out that no one knows who the host is3. discern that each person is hiding a dark secret4. realize they were all blackmailed into comingThen one by one, the guests begin to disappear. A short verse about 10 Little Indians appears at each crime scene. Those remaining frantically try to figure out what is going on.This is my all-time favorite Agatha Christie mystery. The reason I liked it so much was that I could not figure out the ending until the last page, so it left me stunned! Many of her other novels (and I have read most of them!) were suspenseful but not this much of a nail-biter.
—Heather
Podsetila si me koliko u stvari volim Agatu Kristi. Ako razmisljas sta bi od nje citala sledece, mogu da ti preporucim Ubistvo Rodzera Akrojda. Secam se da mi se mnogo svidelo i planiram da procitam ponovo.
—Jadranka
I admit I am a late, reluctant and suspicious convert to Christie. I avoided her studiously as an adolescent, because dozens and dozens of her paperbacks were always on sale with equally cheap indistinguishable romances and other 'women's books,' and I wanted no part of those. I read Chandler, not Christie; Hammett, not Sayers; James, not Marsh. I even read a few Spillane books, for Chrissakes, at a friend's urging (UGH), but still no Christie. Those endless TV adaptations, with the dotty Miss Marple and dorky Poirot, didn't help either. I had her books written off - predictable - cozy - tricksy - unreal - feminine. I liked Patricia Cornwell and noir. Show me a grisly procedural and I'll sink into it like a warm bath.The result of this prejudice, of course, was that I never saw what was actually there and only cheated myself. But matters weren't helped when I took a (delightful) genre studies course in graduate school (The Singing Sands, Ashenden, Knight's Gambit, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Poe, Doyle....) and we had to read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, about whom legendary snob Edmund Wilson famously asked: Who Cares? Not me. (Not that I cared for Wilson either.) I hated that book.But during that course I ran across something interesting. For my final topic I chose the work of P.D. James (and read all of her books published up til then - through Original Sin - in about a month; dizzying but v fun) and you couldn't miss emblazoned on all her paperbacks at the time, THE NEW QUEEN OF CRIME, SHE USURPS CHRISTIE'S THRONE, CAGEMATCH BETWEEN PHYLLIS AND AGATHA, TWO BITCHES ENTER ONE NOVELIST LEAVES, &c &c you get the picture. This was mainly very stupid marketing because James and Christie have almost nothing in common (even tho James's first, derivative novel had the classic locked-room scenario). But I read a lot of interviews with James, and while she was polite about Christie (well, she's British) I sensed something else: respect. Apparently her tone's changed a bit in her most recent nonfiction book about mysteries, but then she said something like: 'She is a conjurer with those cards, and each time you think you know which one she is turning face-up, and each time you are wrong.' Well, now that was interesting. Every time? And I discovered the answer is, yes, pretty much. Call it a trick, call it a gimmick, call it masterful puzzle-plotting, call it a kind of genius, whatever it is, it's frighteningly consistent. It is what Stephen King terms the 'gotta' in Misery raised almost to an art form. It is what Magnus Eisengrim describes in Robertson Davies' World of Wonders as what makes a great magician: 'A man who can stand stark naked in the middle of a crowd and keep it gaping for an hour while he manipulates a few coins, or cards, or billiard balls.'This would have been a far, far better book for me to read in that class that was almost fifteen years ago now (gosh). For one thing, it has a sharp, strong, original female central character (she's not quite a heroine); its gimmick is equally as good as Ackroyd's; and it is a dazzling distinctive example of the One-Of-Us-is-a-Murderer-But-Which-One plot. Even better, there is no trace of that horrific Socratic bore Hercule Poirot or any of his little grey cells. For all that critics harp on Christie's cardboard characters and outlandish setups, this book depends largely on characterization and atmosphere. Each of the ten people brought to a deserted, barren island is guilty to a greater or lesser degree of causing the death of another person, and the book becomes almost a meditation on - what is guilt? What is responsibility? The murderer isn't just randomly cutting people down, but manipulating them, and enjoying it. Even if they are all as guilty as she or he thinks they are, do they deserve to be picked off and psychologically tortured? What justifies passing sentence on someone else? These are not easy questions and Christie does not give easy answers.(Also trying to write a spoiler-free review of this is hard, yeesh.)
—Moira Russell
