Tolog Review: And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None
by Agatha Christie
reviewed by Fiona Stayton

Eight very different people are happily traveling to a private island in the beginning of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. A judge, an adventurer, a doctor and a spinster among them, all have received rather mysterious letters of invitation, some to a holiday, others to a job. They do not know each other, they don’t seem to have anything in common beyond not quite understanding who is paying for their trip the mysteriously glamorous Indian Island and why. 

They soon discover the why, if not the who, and the answer may spell their doom.
In her most famous novel, Christie spins a story of suspense full of hair-raising moments and an ongoing mood of dread. When I first picked up the book, it looked like a burden to read. However, the minute I started reading the first page, I was hooked.

The novel begins by showing each point of view of the ten main characters. Six men and two women, all strangers, receive the same letter inviting them to go to Indian Island by someone with the initials U.N. and a last name that begins with “O.” Vera Claythorne, Emily Brent, Mr. Justice Wargrave, Captain Philip Lombard, General Macarthur, Dr. Armstrong, Anthony Marston and Mr. Blore are all greeted by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers when they first step onto Indian Island. 

Thinking they are going to be greeted by party lights and alcohol they are surprised when instead met by fear and suspicion. A record Mr. Rogers has been instructed to play announces that the now-ten occupants of Indian Island are not so different. Each character has a guilty secret, each has committed a crime, and that crime will now be avenged according to the creepy verses of the nursery rhyme “Ten Little Indians.”

While reading this novel, I got this sense as if someone was watching me and getting chills from every page I turned. I began to try and piece together the haunting question, who is U.N. Owen? While the frantic characters lived through the horrors Indian Island had to offer, I was experiencing it along side them. The individual commentary from each character expressing who they thought was Owen, along with the tension between the lightness of the rhyme and the actions it dictated, heightened the emotion of the novel.

One of Christie’s strengths as a writer is her ability to create a weird variety of very believable characters in a short amount of time. With just a few sentences she makes you see the stiff spine of Emily Brent, the watchful eyes of Justice Wargrave, and the nervous beauty of Vera Claythorne. The reader keeps waiting for someone to solve the crime before it’s too late, but Christie is as ruthless as she is skilled, and she carries her story through to the end.