6 December 2016

Review #567: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie



My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can't do that because it has had so little experience. A grown-up person knows the word because they've seen it often before.”

----Agatha Christie


Agatha Christie, the queen of crime fiction, has penned a tremendously spellbinding and constantly challenging thriller called, And Then There Were None. Originally published with the title Ten Little Niggers in the UK, is a mystery revolving around a group of eight strangers lured to a lavish house for a paid holiday by the owner located on an abandoned island followed by the unpredictable death one after another. This novel is based on a nursery rhyme named Ten Little Soldiers and it sold over 100 million copies world wide and is listed among the world's top-ten bestselling books.


Synopsis:

First, there were ten - a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal - and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion.


Eight guests arrive on an isolated island off the coast of England on an August day. They were invited by their hosts on their house manned by two married servants. Each room of the guests is adorned with a framed picture of the popular nursery rhyme Ten Little Soldiers. And upon their arrival one after another guest along with the two servants start to drop dead as per the nursery rhyme's flow. Baffled by the puzzle, the remaining guests, begin to suspect one another, yet that too could not stop from the guests being killed in a strange way by some invisible killer. So who is behind all those deaths? Is there any living soul present on that deserted island of ten dead men and women.

Words will fall short to pen up my exact feelings about this book that I read "I do not know how many times" in my life, yet every time, I felt clueless and helpless like the characters from the book and left anticipating for the mystery. Only a genius mastermind like Christie can only chalk up such a mystery where along with the readers too will be bound to feel the tension and the fear of the unavoidable death. **Taking a bow**
She deserves a standing ovation as she is one of the greatest crime writers of all time and the world now rarely presents us with an author of Christie's talents.

Christie is, no doubt, a master story teller, who knows where, how and when to throw her readers right in the center of a dark and complex puzzle that they sure can never figure out a way out of the maze, unless Christie helps them. Well that does not mean that her overconfidence reflects in each and every pages from this book, instead Christie gives enough clues to her readers so that they can at least guess. But not even a smart or seasoned readers can point their finger on the identity of the culprit. Yes, trust me, I've tried it ample of times and every time I fail to figure out the major clues that Christie left in a striking manner.

Firstly the setting of this book plays a major role in the minds of the readers to make them adapt with the intensity of darkness and the fear of death lurking right at the corner. And that the author has done brilliantly with her unmatched skills to portray a lavish house filled with antiques whose owners are away and are taken care of by two house servants located on an isolated and cold English island where the only means of transport if by a ferry that comes once in a day. The vividness with which the author has painted such a quaint yet terrifying image of the backdrop will instantly give a bone chilling feel to the readers, and surprisingly that fear will not once abandon the minds of the readers until the turn of the very last page.

The characters are depicted extremely flawlessly through the darkest nature of their souls and through their ugliest flaws and dirtiest secrets. The author, here, has explored the dark side of a human being and that she has done strikingly. The realism and the emotional state of the characters are genuinely projected and will make the readers comprehend with their demeanor. The characters will psychologically grip the readers and will not once let them go of that hold till the very last. Even though the characters are guilt of something in their lives, yet the readers are bound to commiserate with their tragic fate.

In a nutshell, this chilling, tense and adrenaline rushing thriller will make the readers turn the pages of this book frantically.

Verdict: A book to be worshiped by readers of all ages from around the world!
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Author Info:
Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.
Agatha Christie is the best-selling author of all time. She wrote eighty crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and several other books. Her books have sold roughly four billion copies and have been translated into 45 languages. She is the creator of the two most enduring figures in crime literature-Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple-and author of The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theatre.
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, England, U.K., as the youngest of three. The Millers had two other children: Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, who was eleven years Agatha's senior, and Louis Montant Miller (1880–1929), called Monty, ten years older than Agatha.
During the First World War, she worked at a hospital as a nurse; later working at a hospital pharmacy, a job that influenced her work, as many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison.
On Christmas Eve 1914 Agatha married Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks. They divorced in 1928, two years after Christie discovered her husband was having an affair.
Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, came out in 1920. During this marriage, Agatha published six novels, a collection of short stories, and a number of short stories in magazines.
In late 1926, Agatha's husband, Archie, revealed that he was in love with another woman, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. On 8 December 1926 the couple quarreled, and Archie Christie left their house Styles in Sunningdale, Berkshire, to spend the weekend with his mistress at Godalming, Surrey. That same evening Agatha disappeared from her home, leaving behind a letter for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire. Her disappearance caused an outcry from the public, many of whom were admirers of her novels. Despite a massive manhunt, she was not found for eleven days.
In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan (Sir Max from 1968) after joining him in an archaeological dig. Their marriage was especially happy in the early years and remained so until Christie's death in 1976. In 1977, Mallowan married his longtime associate, Barbara Parker.
Christie frequently used familiar settings for her stories. Christie's travels with Mallowan contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set in and around Torquay, where she was born. Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Hotel Pera Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railway. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author. The Greenway Estate in Devon, acquired by the couple as a summer residence in 1938, is now in the care of the National Trust.
Christie often stayed at Abney Hall in Cheshire, which was owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts. She based at least two of her stories on the hall: the short story The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, which is in the story collection of the same name, and the novel After the Funeral. "Abney became Agatha's greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all the servants and grandeur which have been woven into her plots.
During the Second World War, Christie worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital of University College, London, where she acquired a knowledge of poisons that she put to good use in her post-war crime novels.
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1 comment:

  1. I was awestruck by And Then There Were None too. Agatha Christie really is the Queen of Crime.

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