More than forty years I've been reading, yet I'd never read an Agatha Christie mystery until just this month. "They're too innocent," I thought to myself (when I bothered to think about it at all). Too naive, I naively believed. What could a traditional mystery give to me that I couldn't get--and with more gristle, gore, sex, and rough language--from a thousand more contemporary sources?

Originality of thought, for one thing. Purity of execution and elegance of style. Crystalline characters written with swift, spare strokes of the pen and plot devices that, although they have long since become hoary and cliched, because of Christie's mastery read as fresh as the day she invented them.

Last year when I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo I was blown away by what I perceived to be a modern twist on the traditional locked room mystery. It was set on an island, and during the commission of the crime there was no way on or off the island. Not only that, but none of the characters was particularly sympathetic and pretty much any of them could have done it. How embarrassed was I to discover that Agatha Christie did it in 1939 in And Then There Were None? And better.

Sure, Raymond Chandler, offended to have been compared to her on at least one occasion decried her work as contrived, overly mannered, unrealistic. So? It's fun. It's well-written. It's clever. And, when you get right down to it, the dirty little truths of human nature as revealed by Dame Agatha are just as hard-hitting and incisive as those revealed by Chandler...and might even be a bit more shocking, when hidden deep within the psyche of a spinster school teacher, a judge, a doctor... ( )

Up to Agatha's great standard. I read it as a teenager many years ago and this is still the only novel that has been responsible for a nightmare (following a late night read that ended with the incident in the wood shed). ( )

Justice by Elimination

A group of not very nice people are lured to an island. This is for the case of taking poetic justice somewhat more literally. All of them have been killer types in the past - so now they get theirs.

The twist is that they are killed by methods associated with the rhyme 'Ten Little Indians.'.

A rather delicious setup, and one of her best, easily.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/11... ( )

When people ask me what my favorite book of all time is, I say that I can never pick just one, but this is at the top. I have read this book I don't know how many times since I was about 11, and I love it every time. This is murder mystery at its best. ( )

This was my first foray into the Queen of Crime: Agatha Christie's extensive catalouge. The book is a little slow in the beginning to the point I almost put it down. Now that would have been a dreadful mistake because as soon as the cast of characters get on Indian Island I could not put the book down. Christie paints a vivid portrait that reveals how deadly secrets can be. Absolutely wonderful read and hope you pick it up and enjoy it as much as I did. ( )