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A review by misskitty14
And Then There Were None and Other Classic Mysteries by Agatha Christie
3.0
It is interesting that And Then There Were None is the selling point of the book and the most well-known of the three, because I found it to be the weakest. My favorite was The Crooked House, the second story in the collection, followed by Endless Night.
And Then There Were None is really emblematic of classic mystery novels in that the answers to our questions are info-dumped at the end. There are so few clues for the reader to pick up on that they require the infodump to provide them with all the knowledge deliberately kept from them by the author. After completing the first story, I was not excited to continue with Christie.
Fortunately, The Crooked House proved to be much better. She admits that this was her favorite novel to write and I do believe it is because she changed up her style. She offers the reader far more breadcrumbs to follow which makes the revelation all the more satisfying.
The third novel, Endless Night, was unexpected. It is presented as a tragic love story only to evolve into something more mysterious and supernatural. Of all the novels, I found the characters in this one to be the most fleshed. While there is a couple driving some of the plot in The Crooked House, I really didn't care about them; for whatever reason, I found her annoying and him boring. The reason why Endless Night doesn't edge out The Crooked House is because the third act also relies on an infodump. Granted it was done so in a far more sophisticated and intriguing way.
Overall, I enjoyed reading the novels, but I don't expect to dive deeper into Christie's catalog. I would recommend this book as a starting point for reading Christie as it offers a nice sampling of her style.
And Then There Were None is really emblematic of classic mystery novels in that the answers to our questions are info-dumped at the end. There are so few clues for the reader to pick up on that they require the infodump to provide them with all the knowledge deliberately kept from them by the author. After completing the first story, I was not excited to continue with Christie.
Fortunately, The Crooked House proved to be much better. She admits that this was her favorite novel to write and I do believe it is because she changed up her style. She offers the reader far more breadcrumbs to follow which makes the revelation all the more satisfying.
The third novel, Endless Night, was unexpected. It is presented as a tragic love story only to evolve into something more mysterious and supernatural. Of all the novels, I found the characters in this one to be the most fleshed. While there is a couple driving some of the plot in The Crooked House, I really didn't care about them; for whatever reason, I found her annoying and him boring. The reason why Endless Night doesn't edge out The Crooked House is because the third act also relies on an infodump. Granted it was done so in a far more sophisticated and intriguing way.
Overall, I enjoyed reading the novels, but I don't expect to dive deeper into Christie's catalog. I would recommend this book as a starting point for reading Christie as it offers a nice sampling of her style.