(The following review is rated Spoiler Level: Mid-Low. It discusses the premise of the novel, and some events that occur later on, but does not touch on the solution to the mystery except in the most general sort of way.)
I first read Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (also published under the title Ten Little Indians, and another title that I will not type here) back in high school, which was …
(does math)
… gosh, a depressing number of years ago. And I adored the book – it combined the cerebral, puzzle-solving pleasures of a classic murder mystery with the riveting suspense of a trapped-alone-with-a-murderer thriller, creating such an enthralling gestalt, it became my go-to answer when asked for my favorite mystery novel.
Despite that love, I hadn’t revisited And Then They Were None since then. At least, not directly. The premise of the book (people at an isolated location are being murdered one-by-one, and need to find out which of them is the killer) is one of those plots that’s been endlessly copied since, on page and stage and screen. In rereading the novel now, I’m coming to it having seen its core idea reworked a dozen different ways by a dozen different creators, including in one of my all-time favorite movies, the madcap comedy Clue.
With the nostalgia goggles stripped away, and faced with such stiff competition, does And Then There Were None hold up?
Wow, That Was Quick!
My biggest surprise upon revisiting the novel was just how short it is. The edition I read was 300 pages, but that’s with a fairly large typeface and lots of very short paragraphs. Consider, much of the dialogue is formatted thusly:
General Macarthur said:
“You’ll be glad, too, when the end comes.”
Vera got up. She said sharply:
“I don’t know what you mean!”
He said:
“I know, my child. I know …”
This leads to the number of words-per-page being quite small – even a not-all-that-speedy reader could probably finish the book in a day. In my memory, the story was such a long and nerve-wracking experience, it was shocking to have it all breeze by so fast.
That said, I can’t say the short length hurts the novel. The cast of characters is large, but they’re all established with remarkable efficiency – bopping from one person’s POV to another’s, each conveying their own distinct outlook and personality to the reader right away. And that same POV hopping technique ensures the suspense starts from the word “GO” – long before the characters realize anything dangerous is afoot, the reader can see that they’ve each been fed false and conflicting stories about why they’re gathering together, priming us to search for the master manipulator behind it all.
The story works wonderfully within its short word count – I may wish it were longer, but only because I want more of it.
Of Its Time
Talking about the offensive content in And Then There Were None is a bit tricky. In its original publication, not only did the title contain a racial slur, but the nursery rhyme the killer themes their murders around was effectively a minstrel show in poem form. However, the edition I read (published in 2011 by Harper Collins), edits both the title and said nursery rhyme to remove their racist language. Our characters no longer go to N***** Island and find a rhyme about “Ten Little N***** Boys” – now it’s Soldier Island and “Ten Little Soldier Boys”.
That edition didn’t eliminate all instances of racism – the character Philip Lombard has some very unkind things to say about Jews and Africans. However, Philip Lombard is not meant to be nice person, and the presence of other characters who push back on their bigotry makes it feel like this is meant to be a character detail, not something the book itself advocates.
The same goes for the period-typical sexism, where the men are the ones to investigate danger while the women are expected to stay safe behind locked doors. The characters may all buy into these gender dynamics, but there are several moments indicating they’re being unwise in underestimating the women so.
No, what really stuck out to me on this reread was the classism.
Of the ten people gathered on this remote island, eight were invited there as party guests by a mysterious host, while two were hired-on as servants by a mysterious employer. Once the murders begin, and it becomes clear the servants’ employer only hired them as a ruse to lure them to the killing field, you’d expect that to end their employment – no reason to keep on cooking the guests’ meals and chopping their firewood, not when the person paying you is now trying to kill you.
But that’s not the attitude the book takes. Everyone in it, guest and servant alike, takes it as a given that the servants will continue waiting on their social betters even as the bodies start piling up – even when one of the servants loses a spouse to the murderer, they’re still expected to keep on with their duties. And when everyone gathers together to discuss how to handle this deadly situation, they exclude the servants from the discussion unless there’s some particular task they need to be called in for.
There’s no hint of this being a commentary on classism, at least not that I could pick up. It reads simply as Christie not really thinking about the thoughts or motivations of the serving class, beyond their status as servants. That said, I don’t necessarily find this content offensive – it’s so ludicrously old-timey English, I found it to be a source of unintentional comedy.
Can’t Solve the Same Mystery Twice
When you reread a mystery novel, it can never be the same as reading it for the first time – not unless you’ve completely forgotten what happens in the book. But if it’s that unmemorable, you’re probably not gonna want to reread it.
When I read And Then There Were None in high school, it was a tense, exhilarating experience. Always it was surprising me, the plot a bizarre, twisty delight. I became truly invested in the characters’ fates, kept in endless suspense over who would die next. And, of course, I spent the whole thing trying to figure out the mystery, to piece together who could possibly be behind such an elaborate string of murders.
On this reread, things went differently. I went in already knowing whodunnit and howdeydunnit. I knew who was going to die, and more-or-less recalled the order they would die in. Faults in my memory meant there were still little moments here and there that surprised me, but all the big twists, those I now saw coming. With this change in vantage point, I found I approached the book from a more detached perspective – less invested in the characters’ peril, and more in analyzing the structure of the mystery, seeing if it all held together with the solution I knew was coming.
And, by Jove, it did! Despite having one of Christie’s more outlandish solutions, on rereading I could see that the book does indeed “play fair”. If you’re not accustomed to this sort of old-school whodunnit, you might find the notion that killer would and/or could pull all this off to be implausible, but within its own story logic, it holds together.
This is especially impressive because, as I mentioned earlier, the book hops around from one character’s POV to another’s. I kept expecting the killer’s POV sections to fumble the ball – either giving too-obvious hints that this is the killer, or having the character’s thoughts not fit what’s later revealed about them. But Christie’s writing is a masterpiece of precise wording: never giving the killer’s identity away, but crafted such that, knowing they’re the killer, all of their thoughts take on a double meaning.
I spent a good deal of my reread admiring the sheer craft on display, how it misleads the reader so expertly without ever actually lying to them. Just a bravo performance.
To Sum It All Up …
I said And Then There Were None used to be my go-to pick for Best Mystery Novel. Having given it a second look, I’m torn on whether to still give it that moniker. That first reading experience was definitely the most I’ve ever enjoyed a mystery book, but this second reading, while still quite enjoyable, provided pleasures more cerebral than visceral, and couldn’t reach the same heights.
But how much is that because I’m looking at the story with older, more experienced eyes, and how much is because, with all its twists revealed, the story can’t possibly have the same impact? If we go back to a crossword puzzle we’ve already completed, we don’t complain that the puzzle’s no longer as fun now that all the words are filled in – that’s no fault of the puzzle, but simply the nature of it being a puzzle.
Of course, not all mystery novels suffer this to the same degree. When I reread Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, it came a lot closer to matching the pleasure I had upon my first reading, due to being more about the adventures had while unraveling a mystery than the mystery itself. Is it a mark against And Then There Were None that it doesn’t hold up in the same way? Or, given most people who read it will only ever do so once, is it for the best that it focuses on making the initial reading experience as impactful as possible?
Plus, while the reread wasn’t as enjoyable as the first read through, it was still enjoyable … in different ways. Instead of complaining that it didn’t give me more of what I loved the first go around, should I instead praise it for offering me variety, providing two different ways to enjoy the same text?
If you’re expecting answers to any of these questions … tough. These are more grand, philosophical musings about the nature of art and entertainment, and go beyond what a single book review can hope to cover. So, to provide some sort of closure, I’ll end with this:
If you haven’t read And Then There Were None, do so – it’s a great book.
And if you have read it, consider giving it a reread some time, if you’re the sort who likes seeing how a mystery writer puts a puzzle together.
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