And Then There Were None like it

What if I asked you what the most popular book ever written was? Off the top of your head. Think fast. Now you can feel smug if you thought the Bible, and even smugger if you got Shakespeare in second but what about third? Now we can quibble about figures but why don’t you take my word for it or, if you saw the same Reddit post, Reddit’s word for it. Published in November 1939, And Then There Were None is the story of a group of people who are lured to an island by an unknown host and are killed off one by one. You may have heard of it; it is the sort of book that you have heard about, perhaps due to its unfortunate, now unprintable, original name, or read parodies of. That is its legacy.

What makes the book so special is the way that it subverts tropes and genre harder than a WOC parliament. Most murder mysteries can be expected to have quota of one murderer with a potential feeble assistant and a superfluity of oh-so-innocent and going on virtuous souls all dedicated to the task of rooting out the one bad egg who is shown up at the end.

The Scooby-Doo reveal, while endlessly entertaining, has a long history, though it was previously associated with the church halls or market squares of Middle England rather than a haunted fairground. And Then There Were None throws this formula out of the window by making every one of the characters murderers.

The idea, so ridiculous as to literally deserve ridicule, is made to work by Christie by cutting the whole plot off from the rest of the world on an island which gives the whole experience a claustrophobic and dream like quality. Fact and fiction blur together as everyone suspects everyone else of being the ‘actual’ murderer and people go just a lot mad. Again. Sound familiar or clichéd? That is because it is, now. How many films, books, plays, video games feature this device of a group of people trapped together and then people start dying? Maybe the words ‘the black guy dies first’ will jog your memory? And it all started here. Christie didn’t even stop there; her original plan was for the reader never to find out who killed the ten people on Soldier Island. Unfortunately, this was thought to be a bit too radical for the time, and probably still is nowadays to be honest.

Next week, Dramsoc will be putting on a performance of And Then There Were None, directed by Ansh Bhatnagar and Olivia Revans. “We hope to live up to the legacy of the book and give our audience both a night to remember and a satisfying conclusion to the mystery on Soldier Island. We would love you to come. The play will be running from Wednesday to Saturday, tickets, on the Union website or on the door, are only 7 pounds for IC students and we should be finished just in time for Sports night. We, the cast, hope to see you there!”