** spoiler alert ** 
 This was my first ever Agatha Christie book and I do understand why plenty of people enjoy her work. As for me, it wasn't my cup of tea. 
 Pros: 
 1) The mystery itself was very clever and well executed. Had me guessing all the way till the end. 
 2) The setting was imaginative and unique and well defined without being laboriously over explained. I found that I could picture each scene with plenty of detail without her ever launching into descriptive rants about the room or someone's attire. 
 3) I enjoyed seeing the story unfold from almost everyone's perspective instead of one main character. 
 4) Audiobook specific: It was a very straight forward easy "read" and unlike most of my audio books that range from 10 hours to 20, this book came in just over five. 
 5) Audiobook specific: Hugh Fraser did a great job with narrating this book and his very clean British accent gave the whole thing a deeper sense of a period drama. I enjoyed his narration from start to finish and for having a deeper voice he did well with the female pitches. 
 Cons: 
 1) I found myself constantly picking out minor details, analyzing them, and slotting most of them into the, "I really don't care for that" category. I understand her writing style is of an older generation and I understand that is most likely the reason for my distaste. However, because of this it was difficult for me to lose myself in the book. 
 2) (view spoiler)[The beginning was such a jumble of head hopping, I found I was extremely confused on who was who until at least two murders in. (hide spoiler)] 
 3) She didn't stick to one title per character and that made it very difficult to remember who was who. Sometimes she used a working title such as the judge or the doctor. While other times she used both first and last names, while still other times she would only use one name, either first or last. 
 4) As I said previously, because of this inconsistency I found it difficult to really understand who was who and why certain things were significant 
 5) (view spoiler)[ The Judge's role. The judge shooting himself at the end really irked me. Not because it was a suicide, that actually made perfect sense given the circumstances, but because of how clean it was. A revolver would have shot out the back of his head and left a mess on the wall and pillows being a dead give away that he didn't die in the parlor like previously believed. I get that the rattled and shaken "participants" of the experiment might not have noticed that in the dim candle light and so one but the police not noticing something like that makes little sense. 
 a ) Also, knowing the ending it really bothered me that the author used such obvious deception to throw us off the "scent" of the true killer. At the very beginning we see inside The Judge's head and all the things he is thinking about Soldier Island and what a thing this is and the letter he received and so on and so forth. I understand why Christie did this but it felt extremely dishonest. Slide of hand is an author's prerogative to misdirect and create drama or suspense but to out right lie to your reader at the very beginning of a book left a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak. If a killer was on his way to follow through with ten murders, one being his own suicide, he would not be thinking abstract misleading, misdirecting, random and incongruous thoughts. He would be thinking about a lot of other things but not the same type of thoughts that the others were having. Don't get me wrong, I like good suspense in a plot but what Christie did was boldface lie to her readers and that put me off this book. Of course I didn't know it was a bold faced lie until the very very end so that makes me even more glad it was so short. (hide spoiler)] 
 All in all it was an interesting book and if you like suspense thrillers and you want something to read in an afternoon, this is a decent choice but as I said at the beginning, not my cup of tea.