IshikaA's Reviews > And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie, is about ten strangers who are summoned to Soldier Island by a mysterious U.N Owen. When they arrive, in each of their rooms a poem about ten soldier boys who all die in different ways is hung on the wall. That night, a gramophone recording plays and accuses all of them of murder, and later, a man named Anthony Marston suddenly dies of asphyxiation. As the days go by, they begin to die, one by one, according to how the soldier boys die in the poem. The theme of this book is to work together to solve your problems. Throughout this book, the characters suspect one another as the murderer, which causes tension between them. Although they tried to solve the mystery, they never stuck together and looked out for each other, which made it easier for the murderer to kill them.

This book has a lot of suspense. It always made me want to keep reading, to see who would be the next to die. The way the murders followed the nursery rhyme was very spooky and mysterious. One example of this is Emily Brent’s death. She was sitting alone in the dining room and watching a bumble bee; “On the windowpane the bee was buzzing-buzzing…. And then she felt the prick. The bee sting on the side of her neck….”(163). The prick that Emily Brent felt was not a bee sting, it was a hypodermic syringe filled with potassium cyanide, which instantly kills you. This murder corresponds with the fifth stanza of the poem, “Six little soldier boys playing with a hive, A bumble bee stung one and then there were five.” The way the murderer kils according to the poem is very creepy, but it makes you want to keep reading. One thing I did not like about this book is that it tells the story from everyone’s point of view which makes it a little confusing in the beginning. Otherwise it is a great read and I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good mystery.