I like a fun police procedural for the whodunnit part. I watch Castle because my grandma introduced me to it, Nathan Fillion is adorable, and there’s usually a clever twist. But I’ve never been big on mystery novels. Why? It’s a mystery to me! (See what I did there?) I’ve tried a few historical mystery series with strong female leads (Amelia Peabody, Sally Lockhart and Urusla Blanchard), but I’ve never tapped into the classics, the standards for today’s crime-solving characters. So I thought I start with the queen of mystery–Agatha Christie.
But where to begin? Just because I’ve never read Christie doesn’t mean I’m completely unaware of her oeuvre. I worked in a bookstore for most of a decade, for criminy’s sake, I ought to have re-shelved dozens, tens of dozens of her books in my time. So I pulled a title out of my head–And Then There Were None. I did a quick search to make sure this wasn’t part of a series, and I found out so much more!
The controversial title of the original British publication was changed to the current title as of the first American printing. But then, somewhere along the way (and including the second film adaptation of the novel in 1965), the title changed to a third, only slightly less offensive title. And then back to the original American title again as both British and American publishers began to understand the offense those titles cause.
Expecting the editors to have removed all early-twentieth-century racial speech from the text after all that rigamarole with the title, I was shocked to read the physical and character description of the one Jewish character in the book. It’s full of stereotypes and mild disgust on the part of the character who works with the man, which was seriously off-putting. I was worried about how the rest of the book would play out, and how much the 1939 publication might still contain that was racist and bigoted. The good news is that the only other reference to racism came along with a critique. And, as you are likely to know, the plot involves the murder of many people, including the anti-Semite and the man who treated non-white people as less than human during his travels abroad.
The work that Christie put into crafting that plot–and in the meantime creating the prototype for mysteries tales ever since–is evident all along the novel. The dialogue is short, to the point, and leads the story along at a nice pace. Certain characters take up the mantel of puzzle solvers, flexing their logic muscles (aka brains) in concert with others as the group of island guests tries to stop getting picked off one by one.
I particularly appreciated the recording which sets the murders in motion, in which a voice reads out a list of crimes committed–but not prosecuted–by all of those present. The doubt and fear sown by this list of wrongdoings provides for a good number of inner monologues and out-loud accusations as each person becomes a suspect in turn.
In the end, Christie created the perfect murder. And although my curiosity was quelled, my imagination was irked when she spelled out the who, what, when, where and how of the crime–something the police would have never solved on their own.
