And Then There Were None- Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None is no stranger to fans of crime novels. Written by the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, it is one of the books which have sold over a billion copies. In An Autobiography she admits that it (the book) was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated her. She confessed that the book required tremendous amount of planning, and that she was pleased with what she had made of it. Lastly she also admitted that it was well received and reviewed, but the person who was really pleased with it was herself.

The itch to write something that would please oneself is what inclines a writer to keep writing a story. If accomplished, it provides that writer with unending delight at which he/she marvels at every time it is read. Such an endeavour requires discipline incorporated in the work which is seen embedded in And Then There Were None. It can be read effortlessly thanks to that.

The summary of this would be quite straightforward, ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion by a mysterious person and one by one they are killed and as the title suggests, all die. That would pretty much sum it up. The question that would catch the reader’s attention wouldn’t be ‘who’, instead it would be ‘how’ and a ‘why’ after that. But the ‘why’ could be guessed to a certain extent.

The characters were quite different; each of them and it must have been pleasure writing about each one’s quirks. If you select one character, any one, you’d be able to paint that person’s personality in your mind till the last stroke. Basically the characters weren’t toyed with by her (Christie) but were worked with quite diligence and delicacy. This would make it easy to say that the characterisation was flawless which could’ve possibly given her a sense of satisfaction.

A crime novels usually prods the reader to keep guessing as to ‘who’ did it while this one pushes the hurdle a bit further with the ‘how’ , which proves to be hard to imagine by the reader himself. Putting to death each character that too by following the poem to the word must’ve been difficult to Christie and it is amazing that she managed to do it. How the murder before the penultimate one was executed, amazed me as it had to occur as a bear ‘hugging’ that person, when one wouldn’t be able to find a bear on an island off the Devon. The very last one was also quite something.

One of the things that would be noticed by the reader during the journey of walking through these pages would be how the book is driven by the urge to administer the long-overdue justice.  It all depends on how it is looked at. Some might say that a certain person shouldn’t be punished for neglect while some other might say that the very intent of that neglect is what brought upon the ending of. It is thus quite a relative matter. This is what stays on the minds of the reader for a long time after the postscript which has the ability to baffle the reader.

This story can found to be very much captivating and smartly executed. It could also be said that it is a specimen of mystery literature that should be read by lots. It really is an achievement worth a round of applause that she manages to make the reader wonder about ‘how’ rather than ‘who’. This really is a masterpiece by Christie and for the years after she wrote it, it must’ve always been on her mind to compete with her own creation and better it.