And Then There Were None
by Agatha Christie · first published 1939
23% recommend73% neutral5% critical
Why HN recommends it
One of Agatha Christie's best, this slow-building murder mystery unfolds on an isolated island, and its reveal at the end lands hard. A strong pick for new Christie readers or fans of classic whodunits.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, described by her as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers, after the children's counting rhyme and minstrel song, which serves as a major element of the plot. A US edition was released in January 1940 with the title And Then There Were None, which is taken from the last five words of the song. All successive American reprints and adaptations use that title, except for the Pocket Books paperbacks p
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For anyone who has never read Agatha Christie, I highly recommend the following: - And Then There Were None - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Murder on the Orient Express - The A.B.C. Murders The books are usually "slow burns", meaning they slowly build up to the big reveal at the end of the book. Agatha…
on “Killing time with Agatha Christie” ↗…Shawn Otto - Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell - A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson - The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan - The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier Fiction: - And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson - The Magicians by Lev Grossman The non-fiction books were all incredible and highly recommended. I especially appreciate The War on Science…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗Not Poirot, but still Christie: And Then There Were None / 9 Little Indians (same novel) was one of my favorites
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗If you read these three Agatha Christie novels you'll never think about mysteries, in any form, the same way again. I recommend this order: The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd And Then There Were None (also titled Ten Little Indians) Murder on the Orient Express
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗For whatever reason I've suddenly gotten deep into murder mystery books. In the last 3 weeks I've read a bunch of Agatha Christie classics: - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - And then there were none - Evil under the sun All brilliant in their own right but the first is a masterpiece. Don't google any of these because spoilers come up, but I've had a lot more fun and been a lot more active reading…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024” ↗…same formula as most Christie books: slow burn all the way to a huge pay off. The slow burn is usually too much of a slog for me. Two of her books are exceptions to that formula though - ABC Murders and And Then There Were None. Because those two aren't slow burns, they are my favorite Christie books.
on “Drinking with Agatha Christie” ↗…under the name Ten Little N⸺s, and in that edition the location was named “N⸺ Island.” For obvious reasons, that title was considered unsuitable for sale in America, so American editions were renamed to And Then There Were None, and the island and poem were changed to reference (depending on edition) Indians or soldiers instead. Most editions these days have settled upon soldiers. Incidentally, Wikipedia mentions one use of…
on “Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley review” ↗…case I think he was involved personally. The Oompa-Lompas were changed from being dark-skinned ("He's made people out of chocolate!") to being orange-skinned, and the original title of Agatha Christie's "And then there were none" was considered too offensive in the US even in 1939.
on “Agatha Christie novels reworked to remove potentially offensive language” ↗…published books,[5] behind only Shakespeare's works and the Bible. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author – having been translated into at least 103 languages.[6] And Then There Were None is Christie's best-selling novel, with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time. ]
on “Ask HN: What are some great books that are relatively unknown in the US?” ↗"And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guin "This Is How You Lose The Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar "Priestdaddy" by Patricia Lockwood "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" by Marlon James…
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗> Though this is the first time the content of Christie’s novels has been changed, her 1939 novel And Then There Were None was previously published under a different title that included a racist term, which was last used in 1977. A little confusingly worded. They mean that the title was last used in 1977, and not, unfortunately,…
on “Agatha Christie novels reworked to remove potentially offensive language” ↗…The most impressive to date, IMO, has been Umineko no Naku Koro ni ("When the Seagulls Cry"), a murder mystery reminiscent of a cross between The Last Express, The Usual Suspects, and Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Even more unusually, it has no decision tree at all: it is completely linear. The "gameplay" is the author's challenge to the players--to solve his mystery before he reveals the true answer in the…
on “Who Needs Domain Experts” ↗…the wrong way. It depletes a language and nibbles its users of variety. Come to think of it - one of Agatha Christie's novels was renamed twice due to insensitivities. The current name is, I believe, "And then there were none".
on “Replaced occurrences of master/slave terminology with leader/follower” ↗In such a masterpiece as "and then there were none", which is by far the most sold mystery book ever, Christie chose to ignore 4 of these rules, at the very least. For instance (I mention this one because this is not a spoiler), there is no detective…
on “Rules for Writing Detective Stories by S.S. Van Dine (1928)” ↗…“Ursula N. Owen”, thinking perhaps she was an assistant of Knuth’s back in the 90s. It turns out that it’s a pseudonym sometimes used by Knuth himself, and is a reference to “U.N. Owen”, a character from And Then There Were None, a best-selling Agatha Christie novel first published in 1939 and one of the best-selling books of all time. The name “UN Owen” itself is a play on “unknown”, and I like to think of Donald chuckling to…
on “Knuth versus Email (1999)” ↗