Ten people are called to a remote island, with a luxurious mansion set on it. One by one, they are murdered for their past crimes-- and they have no idea who the one hunting them is. 
 That chilling premise is all there is of "And Then There Were None," Agatha Christie's classic novel that completely subverted all ideas of what a murder mystery was like. There's no detectives. No innocent people. No clues. There are only people accused of terrible crimes, alone on an island.... and slowly being killed off as they descend into a cold, clammy mire of paranoia and terror, before blindsiding the audience with a truly shocking ending. 
 Eight strangers are called to the remote Soldier Island (the original name is unprintably offensive now): a former governess, a callous soldier of fortune, an elderly judge, an alcoholic doctor, a prim spinster, a former soldier, a playboy and a disguised private investigator. Two servants -- who seem to have their own skeletons in the closet -- are already waiting in the mansion to serve them. All were summoned here for various reasons by the mysterious Mr. and Mrs. U. N. Owen (GET IT?), who are oddly absent during the first night's dinner. 
 And we soon learn why, as a recorded message addresses them all, and lists the murders they have committed. Each one is a killer, ranging from vehicular manslaughter to the murder of African tribesman, from drowning a child to condemning an innocent man to death. Even the servants are guilty. 
 And almost immediately, people start dying in the same way as the "Ten Little Soldier Boys" poem, which is posted in every bedroom. With every death, one of the ten china figurines on the table goes missing. With no way on or off the island, the rapidly-dwindling group realizes that one of them is the murderer -- and soon paranoia, suspicions and even madness begin to afflict them. Who is the person who is punishing them all, and can they figure out his or her identity before all of them are dead? 
 One of the most striking aspects of "And Then There Were None" is that it smoothly shucks off most of the trappings you expect from a murder mystery -- there is no detective to serve as the conduit for the audience, none of the characters on the island is actually a good person, and there is no reassurance that at the end there will be a tidy sum-up before most of the characters go on their own way. It has all the darkness, the nameless horror that is at the core of every Christie story, along with her knowledge of the evil in human hearts. 
 And somehow her spare, lean prose and ordinary dialogue make the horror of the situation even more pronounced -- even the most mundane scenes are threaded with a sense of unease, right from the very beginning of the book. After the record plays, Christie stirs up a powerful sense of paranoia and fear, growing more intense with every passing chapter until it reaches nightmarish fervor in the final chapters. ("Why did I never see his face properly before? A wolf--that's what it is--a wolf 's face ... Those horrible teeth...."). The penultimate chapter is almost hallucinatory, as the seeming last survivor succumbs to madness. 
 And since she has no one chapter to rest her narrative upon, Christie darted from one character to another -- little glimpses into their heads to show how their thoughts unravel as the specter of death looms over them. But though all this, Christie never loses her brilliant and logical method of plotting her mystery -- a cool-headed and logical examination of the suspects would reveal the murderer, but most of her characters are too freaked-out to actually manage such thoughts. 
 Perhaps the most petrifying aspect of "And Then There Were None" is that the killers in this book are "ordinary" people -- none of them are crazed serial-killers, but ordinary people with ordinary jobs. And yet, they had an opportunity to help themselves through murder, and they did it... and worst of all, they easily live with it. Sure, their consciences twinge them subconsciously every now and then, but clearly most of their days are untroubled by the thoughts that they drove people to their deaths, both directly (Rogers) and indirectly (Brent), deliberately (Lombard) and accidentally (Dr. Armstrong). 
 These are the people we could meet on the street any day, and never think of the rotten, oozing darkness in their hearts, and that is the horror of it. Human beings like to think that "good" or "respectable" people can't secretly be awful people, but Christie clearly saw the ugliness that can fester inside them. Yes, some of these people inspire more sympathy than others, such as Macarthur, who seems haunted by his crime and its repercussions. But there is no one here who hasn't done something terribly wrong... or else, they wouldn't be here. 
 Slow-building and painfully intense, "And Then There Were None" is one of the greatest and most creative murder mysteries that Christie ever penned -- no heroes, no innocence, only a terrible march of death upon those who have harmed others. Brilliant and hard-edged as a diamond.