And Then There Were None
SynopsisPlot
Ten people, each with something to hide and something to fear, are invited to an isolated mansion on Indian Island by a host who, surprisingly, fails to appear. On the island they are cut off from everything but each other and the inescapable shadows of their own past lives. One by one, the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts. And one by one, they die… Which among them is the killer and will any of them survive?
Story
About this book
Ten strangers receive invitations to a mansion on a small island off the Devon coast of England. Their host, known only by the initials U.N. Owen, never appears. Instead, during dinner, a recorded voice announces that each guest carries responsibility for a past death. Before the night ends, one of the ten is dead.
A storm cuts the island off from the mainland, and no help can reach the group. A framed nursery rhyme hanging in each bedroom describes ten figures disappearing one after another, and the deaths on the island begin to follow its pattern. Suspicion shifts constantly. Every guest has a reason to hide something, and every guest has a reason to fear the others. The setting is confined and the tension methodical, built less on physical danger than on the question of who among the group is responsible.
Agatha Christie published the novel in 1939, and it became the best-selling mystery novel of all time. The story has been adapted many times for stage, film, and television. Its structure, placing a closed group of suspects in an isolated location with no outside contact, became one of the most widely imitated setups in crime fiction.
