A man named U. N. Owen sends invitations to eight people to join him on an Island. They arrive, finding only two other people on the island, employed by Mr. Owen to serve as the butler and cook/housekeeper.

There is an old children’s rhyme posted in the rooms of the mansion that follows the form, “Ten little soldiers, [something happens], then there were nine.” Until there were none. When people start dying, the islanders band together for protection while simultaneously wondering who the murderer may be.

Agatha Christie is the master of this sort of “locked-room mystery,” where a crime is committed which is impossible to explain. The reader is left trying to figure out who did it, to decipher the literary clues. By the end of this story I was utterly stumped and grateful for the epilogue in which the murderer made his confession.

I listened to this as an audiobook and have to confess that being introduced to ten characters without the benefit of reading their names was a disadvantage. It was difficult to remember who’s who. By the later chapters, however, the field was significantly narrowed! And Then There Were None is a fascinating psychological murder-mystery that will keep you guessing your intuitions until the end.

Christie, Agatha. And Then There Were None. Narrated by Dan Stevens, audiobook ed., unabridged ed., HarperAudio, 2013.