And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is an excellent novel sending readers of the book through a thrilling adventure of murder and mystery. Agatha Christie puts clues and interesting twists in the novel to give the reader a desire to continue reading and finish the story. And Then There Were None can be classified as a good mystery novel because of its suspenseful plot, its suspicious characters and its believable solutions to questions formed. A good mystery novel must have a suspenseful plot to keep the reader hooked and focused; And Then There Were None completes this task.

After the guests sail to the island from the mainland, the visitors go to their rooms and each discovers a poem titled Ten Little Indians in a frame. The poem explains how ten little indians are all killed off, one by one. The main plot of the novel starts after they all meet each other over dinner and sit down in the home’s study to have a drink. All of the guests then find out that they are all connected because they are in some way connected to the murder of someone.

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The guests in the house then are murdered one by one, each following the line of the poem. Agatha Christie creates a sense of suspense as each of the characters is murdered by showing the feelings and thoughts of each of the remaining guests. The characters tend to lose their sense of civility as each other is murdered leading to more and more accusations. The successful plot in And Then There Were None helped this novel become and help continue to keep it an excellent mystery novel.

Mystery novels almost always have the suspicious characters that could have either done the “dirty deed” or be completely innocent and just look guilty. And Then There Were None has plenty of these characters that fit the bill. Justice Wargrave, Dr. Armstrong, and Vera Claythorne are three of them. Wargrave, from the beginning, creates a sense of uneasiness around the other guests from the point they all arrive on the island. He lies to each of them and fakes his own death to help find the “murderer”.

Wargrave is also a quiet sort of man helping build his sense of suspiciousness. Dr. Armstrong, after being accused of committing murder in the study, immediately comes clean and says that he operated on an elderly woman while drunk and the nurses covered for him. By saying this, he then becomes a suspicious character in the eyes of the other guests because he heavily drinks most of the time and could be a murderous, violent man while intoxicated. Vera Claythorne, a young bustling woman, is a suspicious character. She is onstantly thinking about how she wasn’t able to keep a young boy, named Cyril, from drowning and is constantly writing in a journal about it. The other guests see this and sort of back off. Suspicious characters help a mystery novel by throwing the reader off; these three characters in And Then There Were None do this. In almost every mystery novel questions are created about who “committed the crime” or “Is he/she really the one that killed him/her? ” All of these questions need believable solutions that the reader can accept as being true.

All of the questions formed in And Then There Were None, about whom is the killer and why he/she did it, are answered. In the end, Justice Wargrave is found to be the killer of the ten people, including himself. He then explains how he kills everyone, including himself, and how all of the plans on carrying out the killings work out perfectly. Questions that are formed must have a believable solution for the reader to accept this as true. In And Then There Were None these questions are answered.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is an excellent read if you are looking for a fast-paced mystery novel that leaves you wanting to read more till the very end. The author has cleverly placed clues throughout the novel to keep the reader in suspense. And Then There Were None can be successfully classified as a mystery novel because of the suspenseful plot, the suspicious characters, and the acceptable solutions to the questions formed. I think that the novel is an excellent read and would recommend it to anyone.



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