Ten people, each invited under a different pretext by a host none of them has met, travel to a mansion on an island off the coast of Devon. They include a retired judge, a doctor, a former police officer, a young governess, a pious spinster, an ex-army general, a mercenary, a playboy and a married pair of servants. Their host never appears.
After dinner on the first night, a gramophone record accuses each guest of having caused a death and escaped justice. Then the guests begin to die, in ways that echo a grim nursery rhyme framed in every bedroom, while china figurines vanish from the dining table one by one. Cut off from the mainland by a storm, the survivors realise the killer must be among them.
Christie constructed the story with exceptional precision, building suspicion around every character and stripping away the comforts of a detective who arrives to explain everything. It is regarded as her masterpiece and one of the best-selling novels ever written, and its closed-circle formula has been imitated countless times in books, films and television.
Book details
| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| First published | 1939 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Mystery |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 272 |
| Setting | Soldier Island, off the coast of Devon, England, late 1930s |
Themes
- Guilt
- Justice
- Paranoia
- Punishment
- Isolation
Who should read it
Mystery lovers who want the classic locked-island puzzle that inspired a whole genre.