And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None  
And Then There Were None First Edition Cover 1939.jpg
Cover of first edition featuring the original title, Ten Little Niggers
Author Agatha Christie
Original title Ten Little Indians
Cover artist Stephen Bellman
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Crime novel
Publisher Collins Crime Club
Publication date 6 November 1939
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 256 pp (first edition, hardback) 173 pp (latest edition, hardback)
ISBN 978-0-00-713683-4
Preceded by The Regatta Mystery
Followed by Sad Cypress

And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939[1] under the title Ten Little Niggers[2][3] and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 under the title And Then There Were None.[4] In the novel, ten people, who have previously been complicit in the deaths of others but have escaped notice or punishment, are tricked into coming onto an island. Even though the guests are the only people on the island, they are all mysteriously murdered one by one, in a manner paralleling, inexorably and sometimes grotesquely, the old nursery rhyme, "Ten Little Indians". The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6)[2] and the US edition at $2.00.[4] The novel has also been published and filmed under the title Ten Little Indians.

It is Christie's best-selling novel with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever, and one of the most-printed books of all time (Publications International lists it as 7th most-printed).[5] It has been adapted into several plays, films, and a video game.

Contents

Plot summary

Ten people of different social classes have been invited to a mansion on the fictional Soldier Island ("Nigger Island" in the original 1939 UK publication, "Indian Island" in the 1940 US publication), which is based upon Burgh Island off the coast of Devon.[6] Upon arriving, they are told that their hosts, a Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen (Ulick Norman Owen and Una Nancy Owen ), are currently away, but that the guests will be attended to by Thomas and Ethel Rogers. Each guest finds in his or her room an odd bit of bric-a-brac and a framed copy of the nursery rhyme "Ten Little Soldiers" ("Niggers" or "Indians" in respective earlier editions) hanging on the wall.

Ten little Soldier boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.

Nine little Soldier boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.

Eight little Soldier boys traveling in Devon;
One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.

Seven little Soldier boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.

Six little Soldier boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.

Five little Soldier boys going in for law;
One got in Chancery and then there were four.

Four little Soldier boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.

Three little Soldier boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.

Two Little Soldier boys sitting in the sun;
One got frizzled up and then there was one.[7]

One little Soldier boy left all alone;
He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

Before dinner that evening, the guests notice ten soldier boy figurines on the dining room table. During the meal, a gramophone record plays, accusing each of the ten of murder. Each guest acknowledges an awareness of (and, in some cases, involvement with) the deaths of the persons mentioned, but denies either malice and/or legal culpability.

The guests realize they have been tricked into coming to the island, but find that they cannot leave: the boat which regularly delivers supplies has stopped arriving. They are murdered one by one, each murder paralleling a verse of the nursery rhyme, with one of the ten figurines being removed after each murder.

First to die is Anthony Marston, whose drink is poisoned with cyanide ("one choked his little self"). That night, Thomas Rogers notices that a figurine is missing from the dining table. Mrs. Rogers dies in her sleep that night, which Dr. Armstrong attributes to a fatal overdose of sleeping draught ("one overslept himself"). General MacArthur fatalistically predicts that no one will leave the island alive, and at lunch, is indeed found dead from a blow to the back of the skull ("one said he'd stay there"). Meanwhile, two more figurines have disappeared from the dining room. In growing panic, the survivors search the island in vain for the murderer. Justice Wargrave establishes himself as a decisive leader of the group and asserts that one of them must be the murderer playing a sadistic game with the rest. The killer's twisted humor is evidenced by the names of their "hosts": "U.N. Owen" is a pun and a homophone for "unknown". The next morning, Rogers is missing, as is another figurine. He is found dead in the woodshed, struck in the back of the head with an axe ("one chopped himself in halves"). Later that day, Emily Brent is killed in the kitchen by an injection of potassium cyanide that leaves a mark on her neck ("A bumblebee stung one"), that, at first, appears to be a sting from a bumble bee placed in the room. The hypodermic needle is found outside her window next to a smashed china figurine. The five survivors — Dr. Armstrong, Justice Wargrave, Philip Lombard, Vera Claythorne, and ex-Inspector Blore — become increasingly frightened and almost frantic.

Wargrave suggests they lock up any potential weapons, including Armstrong's medical equipment and the judge's own sleeping pills. Lombard admits to bringing a revolver to the island, but says it has gone missing. Resolved to keep the killer from catching anyone alone, they gather in the drawing room and only leave one at a time. Vera goes up to her room and discovers a strand of seaweed: an allusion to the boy the gramophone alleged that she had drowned. Her screams attract the attention of Blore, Lombard, and Armstrong, who rush to her aid. When they return to the drawing room, they find Wargrave in a mockery of a judicial wig and gown with a gunshot wound in his forehead ("one got into Chancery"). Armstrong confirms the death, and they lay Wargrave's body in his room and cover it with a sheet. Shortly afterward, Lombard discovers his revolver has been returned.

That night, Blore hears someone sneaking out of the house. He and Lombard investigate and, discovering Armstrong missing, assume the doctor is the killer. They wake Vera and the three spend the night outdoors. In the morning, Blore leaves for food and does not return. Vera and Lombard soon discover his body on the front lawn, skull crushed by a bear-shaped clock ("a big bear hugged one")—and on the shore, Armstrong, drowned ("a red herring swallowed one"). Paranoid, each assumes the other is the murderer. In the tense standoff that follows, Vera feigns compassion and has Lombard help her move Armstrong's body out of the water, using the opportunity to pick his revolver from his pocket. She kills Lombard with a shot through the heart on the beach ("sitting in the sun") and returns to the house. Dazed and disoriented with relief and drowsiness, Vera is unsurprised to find a noose prepared in her room. In a trance of exhaustion, guilt, and relief, she hangs herself, fulfilling the final verse of the rhyme.[8]

Epilogue

The detective in charge of the Soldier Island case, Inspector Maine, discusses the mystery with his Assistant Commissioner, Sir Thomas Legge, at Scotland Yard. There are no clues on the mainland—the man who arranged "U.N. Owen's" purchase of the island covered his tracks well, and was killed the day the party set sail—and while guests' diaries establish a partial timeline, the police cannot determine the order in which Blore, Armstrong, Lombard, and Vera were killed: Blore could not have dropped the clock on himself; Armstrong's body was dragged above the high-tide mark; Lombard was shot on the beach, but his revolver was found outside Wargrave's room. Lombard's gun having Vera's fingerprints and the clock that killed Blore came from her room point to Vera as "U.N.Owen"-yet evidence that someone was still alive after Vera's suicide is that the chair Vera used to hang herself had been righted and replaced against the wall. Inclement weather would have prevented the murderer from leaving or arriving separately from the guests: he or she must have been among them. Yet all the murders appear to be accounted for, and the inspectors are baffled and come up with no solutions.

Postscript

A fishing trawler finds a letter in a bottle just off the Devon coast; the confession of the late Justice Wargrave. He reveals a lifelong sadistic temperament juxtaposed uneasily with a fierce sense of justice: he wanted to torture, terrify, and kill, but could never justify harming an innocent. As a judge, he directed merciless summations and guilty verdicts, but limited himself to those cases in which he has satisfied himself of the guilt of the defendant(s), thrilling at the sight of the convicted person crippled with fear, facing their impending death. But the proxy of the bench was unsatisfying: Wargrave longed to commit murder by his own hand. Prompted to action by the discovery that he was terminally ill, he sought killers who had committed the act of murder but escaped justice. He proceeded to lure them to the island. As he killed them one by one, he reveled in the mounting terror of those who remained, their reactions to the murders confirming their guilt to his extensive judicial experience. He also kills the guests by order of their level of guilt, first killing those whose crimes were less direct or out of carelessness, or who felt some level of remorse, so that "they not suffer the prolonged mental strain and fear that the more cold-blooded offenders were to suffer", and saving the most cold-blooded killers for last.

Having disposed of the first five guests, the judge then persuaded the trusting Armstrong to fake Wargrave's own death, "the red herring", under the pretext that it would rattle or unnerve the "real murderer". That night, he met Armstrong on the cliffs and pushed him into the sea, knowing the doctor's disappearance would provoke the suspicions of the others. From Vera's room, Wargrave pushed the stone bear-shaped clock onto Blore, crushing his skull. He then watched Vera shoot Lombard. He also watched as Vera hanged herself. Wargrave pushed the chair she stood on against the wall, wrote out his confession, put the letter in a bottle and tossed it out the sea. Wargrave admits to craving posthumous recognition of his scheme. Even if his letter is not found (he decides there is about a 1 in 100 chance of it being found), he argues that three clues exist implicating him, although he surmises (correctly) that the mystery will not have been solved:

  1. Wargrave was the only one invited to the island who had not wrongfully caused someone's death. Edward Seton, whom the gramophone accused Wargrave of wrongfully sentencing to death, was, in fact, guilty of the murder for which he was convicted, and overwhelming proof emerged, albeit posthumously, of this. Thus, ironically, the only innocent guest must be the murderer.
  2. The "red herring" line in the poem suggests that Armstrong was tricked into his death by someone he trusted. Of the remaining guests, only the respectable Justice Wargrave would have inspired the doctor's confidence.
  3. The red mark on Wargrave's forehead that Armstrong confirmed as a bullet wound is similar to the one God bestowed upon Cain as punishment for killing his brother Abel.

Wargrave describes how he plans to kill himself: he will loop an elastic cord through the gun, tying one end of the cord to his eyeglasses, and looping the other around the doorknob of an open door. He will then wrap a handkerchief around the handle of the gun and shoot himself in the head. His body will fall back as though laid there by Armstrong. The gun's recoil will send it to the doorknob and out into the hallway, detaching the cord and pulling the door closed. The cord will dangle innocuously from his glasses, and the stray handkerchief should not arouse suspicion. Thus the police will find ten dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on Soldier Island.

Characters

The following details of the characters are based on the original novel. Stage and film adaptations have often varied with names and backgrounds, such as Judge Wargrave being renamed Cannon and Lombard accused of causing the death of his pregnant girlfriend.

The ten

Minor characters

Publication history

Cover of first US 1940 edition with the title currently used in all English-language versions

The novel was originally published in Britain under the title Ten Little Niggers in 1939.[2][3] All references to "Indian" in the story were originally "Nigger": thus the island was called "Nigger Island" [3] rather than "Indian Island" and the rhyme found by each murder victim was also called Ten Little Niggers [3] rather than Ten Little Indians. Modern printings use the rhyme Ten Little Soldiers and "Soldier Island" for reasons of political and ethnic sensitivity.

The UK serialisation was in twenty-three parts in the Daily Express from Tuesday, June 6 to Saturday, July 1, 1939. All of the instalments carried an illustration by "Prescott" with the first installment having an illustration of Burgh Island in Devon which inspired the setting of the story. This version did not contain any chapter divisions.[9]

For the United States market, the novel was first serialised in the Saturday Evening Post in seven parts from 20 May (Volume 211, Number 47) to 1 July 1939 (Volume 212, Number 1) with illustrations by Henry Raleigh and then published separately in book form in January 1940. Both publications used the less inflammatory title And Then There Were None. The 1945 motion picture also used this title. In 1946, the play was published under the new title Ten Little Indians (the same title under which it had been performed on Broadway), and in 1964 an American paperback edition also used this title.

British editions continued to use the work's original title until the 1980s and the first British edition to use the alternative title And Then There Were None appeared in 1985 with a reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback.[10] Today And Then There Were None is the title most commonly used. However, the original title survives in many foreign-language versions of the novel: for example, the Greek title is Δέκα Μικροί Νέγροι, the Bulgarian title is Десет малки негърчета, the Spanish title is Diez negritos, the Romanian title is Zece negri mititei,[11] the French title is Dix petits nègres[12] and the Hungarian title is Tíz kicsi néger, while the Italian title, Dieci piccoli indiani, mirrors the "Indians" title. The Dutch 18th edition of 1994 still used the work's original English title Ten Little Niggers. The 1987 Russian film adaptation has the title Десять негритят (Desyat Negrityat). The computer adventure game based on the novel uses "Ten Little Sailor Boys".

Literary significance and reception

And Then There Were None is one of Agatha Christie's best-known mysteries. Writing for The Times Literary Supplement of 11 November 1939, Maurice Percy Ashley stated, "If her latest story has scarcely any detection in it there is no scarcity of murders." He continued, "There is a certain feeling of monotony inescapable in the regularity of the deaths which is better suited to a serialized newspaper story than a full-length novel. Yet there is an ingenious problem to solve in naming the murderer. It will be an extremely astute reader who guesses correctly."[15] Many other reviews were as complimentary; in The New York Times Book Review of 25 February 1940, Isaac Anderson detailed the set-up of the plot up to the point where 'the voice' accuses the ten people of their past misdemeanors and then said, "When you read what happens after that you will not believe it, but you will keep on reading, and as one incredible event is followed by another even more incredible you will still keep on reading. The whole thing is utterly impossible and utterly fascinating. It is the most baffling mystery that Agatha Christie has ever written, and if any other writer has ever surpassed it for sheer puzzlement the name escapes our memory. We are referring, of course, to mysteries that have logical explanations, as this one has. It is a tall story, to be sure, but it could have happened."[16]

Such was the quality of Christie's work on this book that many compared it to her 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. For instance, an unnamed reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star of 16 March 1940 said, "Others have written better mysteries than Agatha Christie, but no one can touch her for ingenious plot and surprise ending. With And Then There Were None... she is at her most ingenious and most surprising... is, indeed, considerably above the standard of her last few works and close to the Roger Ackroyd level."[17]

Other critics laud the use of twists, turns, and surprise endings. Maurice Richardson wrote a rhapsodic review in The Observer's issue of 5 November 1939 which began, "No wonder Agatha Christie's latest has sent her publishers into a vatic trance. We will refrain, however, from any invidious comparisons with Roger Ackroyd and be content with saying that Ten Little Niggers is one of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies yet written. We will also have to refrain from reviewing it thoroughly, as it is so full of shocks that even the mildest revelation would spoil some surprise from somebody, and I am sure that you would rather have your entertainment kept fresh than criticism pure." After stating the set-up of the plot, Richardson concluded, "Story telling and characterisation are right at the top of Mrs. Christie's baleful form. Her plot may be highly artificial, but it is neat, brilliantly cunning, soundly constructed, and free from any of those red-herring false trails which sometimes disfigure her work."[1]

Robert Barnard, a recent critic, concurred with the reviews, describing the book as "Suspenseful and menacing detective-story-cum-thriller. The closed setting with the succession of deaths is here taken to its logical conclusion, and the dangers of ludicrousness and sheer reader-disbelief are skillfully avoided. Probably the best-known Christie, and justifiably among the most popular."[18]

Other recent commentators, however, have been more critical of the work, finding that Christie's original title and the setting on "Nigger Island" are integral to the work. These aspects of the novel, argues Alison Light, "could be relied upon automatically to conjure up a thrilling 'otherness', a place where revelations about the 'dark side' of the English would be appropriate."[19] Unlike novels such as Heart of Darkness, however, "Christie's location is both more domesticated and privatised, taking for granted the construction of racial fears woven into psychic life as early as the nursery. If her story suggests how easy it is to play upon such fears, it is also a reminder of how intimately tied they are to sources of pleasure and enjoyment."[19]

Film, TV and theatrical adaptations

And Then There Were None has had more adaptations than any other single work of Agatha Christie. However, they often used Christie's alternative ending from her 1943 stage play, with the setting often being changed to locations other than an island.

Stage

In 1943, Agatha Christie adapted the story for the stage. In the process of doing so, she and the producers agreed that audiences might not flock to such a grim tale and it would not work well dramatically as there would be no one left to tell the tale. Thus, she reworked the ending for Lombard and Vera to be innocent of the crimes of which they were accused, survive, and fall in love. Some of the names were also changed with General Macarthur becoming General McKenzie, perhaps due to the real-life General Douglas MacArthur playing a prominent role in the ongoing World War II. On 14 October 2005, a new version of the play, written by Kevin Elyot and directed by Steven Pimlott opened at the Gielgud Theatre in London. For this version, Elyot returned to the book version of the story and restored the original ending where both Blore and Lombard die and Vera commits suicide.

Film

There have been several film adaptions of the novel. The first was adapted for the cinema screen in René Clair's successful 1945 US production. The second cinema adaptation of the book was directed by George Pollock in 1965; Pollock had previously handled the four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford. This film transferred the setting from a remote island to a mountain retreat in Austria. Another variant of And Then There Were None made in 1974 was the first colour English-language film version of the novel, directed by Peter Collinson from a screenplay by Peter Welbeck. This version was set in the Iranian desert. A version from the USSR, Desyat' negrityat (Десять негритят "Ten Little Negroes") (1987) was written and directed by Stanislav Govorukhin and is the only cinema adaptation to use the novel's original ending. The most recent film, Ten Little Indians, directed by Alan Birkinshaw, was made in 1989 and is set on the African safari.

Gumnaam is a 1965 uncredited Indian film adaptation set in a remote Indian location by the sea. Many elements, including musical dance numbers and a comic relief butler, were added to Christie's story in a film directed by Raja Nawathe from a screenplay by Dhruva Chatterjee and hit music of the film was done by Shankar-Jaikishan. In addition, 5 Bambole per la Luna D'Agosto (1970) is an uncredited giallo adaptation by Mario Bava.

Television

Several variations of the original novel were adapted for television. For instance, there were two different British adaptions, the BBC adaption in 1949 and ITV adaptation in 1959. In addition, there was an American version, Ten Little Indians, directed by Paul Bogart, Philip F. Falcone, Leo Farrenkopf and Dan Zampino with the screenplay by Philip H. Reisman Jr., that was a truncated TV adaptation of the play. A West German adaptation Zehn kleine Negerlein was directed by Hans Quest for ZDF in 1969. A year later in 1970, Pierre Sabbagh directed Dix petits nègres for the French television adaption. The American television miniseries Harper's Island bore a strong resemblance to Christie's novel.

In the July 5, 2010 episode of Persons Unknown Incomming a main character Moira Doherty references the novel regarding her and her fellow captives in a strange "town" that they can't escape from and she thinks is being monitored by someone pretending to be a fellow prisoner, someone they least expected.

Other variations

The K.B.S. Productions Inc. film, A Study in Scarlet (1933), predates the publication of Ten Little Indians and follows a strikingly similar plot.[20] Though it is a Sherlock Holmes movie, the movie bears no resemblance to Arthur Conan Doyle's original story of the same name. In this case, the rhyme refers to "Ten Little fat Boys". The author of the movie's screenplay, Robert Florey, "doubted that [Christie] had seen A Study in Scarlet but he regarded it as a compliment if it had helped inspire her".[21] In addition, several parodies have been made. One, the 1976 Broadway musical Something's Afoot, stars Tessie O'Shea as a female sleuth resembling Christie's fictional Miss Marple. Something's Afoot takes place in a remote English estate, where six guests have been invited for the weekend. The guests, as well as three servants and a young man who claims to have wandered innocently onto the estate, are then murdered one by one, several in full view of the audience, with the murderer's surprise identity revealed at the end. For an encore, the murdered cast members perform a song, "I Owe It All to Agatha Christie".

On TV, the story was spoofed in the 1966 Get Smart episode "Hoo Done It", which featured guest star Joey Forman as detective Harry Hoo, a parody of Charlie Chan.

In addition the Japanese visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni was heavily influenced by the book. Similarities can be seen in such features as the characters being trapped on an island during a storm as they are murdered one-by-one in accordance with a riddle, the seeming "unsolvable" nature of the crimes and the many situations described as "closed room" scenarios, akin to the orchestration by Wargrave of his own murder as revealed in the book's postscript. The first novel even ends with a message bottle sent by one of the characters washing ashore and being discovered by a fisherman several years after the incident. In 2005, The Adventure Company released the video game Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None, the first in a series of PC games based on Christie novels. In February 2008 it was ported to the Wii console.

Sierra Entertainment, then simply "Sierra", released the Colonel's Bequest 1989 in which most visitors in an old house are found murdered in similar fashion.

And Then There Were None was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 30 April 2009, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Frank Leclercq.

See also

Film & television adaptations

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Review of Ten Little Indians". The Observer: pp. 6. 1939-11-05. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Peers, C; Spurrier A & Sturgeon J (1999). Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions (2nd ed.). Dragonby Press. pp. 15. ISBN 1-8711-2213-9. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Pendergast, Bruce (2004). Everyman's Guide To The Mysteries Of Agatha Christie. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing. pp. 393. ISBN 1412023041. http://books.google.com/books?id=nMS6y9YsqXkC&pg=RA3-PA393&ots=Ya0sD7j9g0&dq=%22ten+little+niggers%22+christie+%22and+then+there+were+none%22+%22ten+little+indians%22&as_brr=3&sig=PRCJUhB5jOlcQpz7QVTjsTzmIpg. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "American Tribute to Agatha Christie - The Classic Years: 1940-1944". http://home.insightbb.com/~jsmarcum/agatha40.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-24. 
  5. ↑ Davies, Helen; Marjorie Dorfman, Mary Fons, Deborah Hawkins, Martin Hintz, Linnea Lundgren, David Priess, Julia Clark Robinson, Paul Seaburn, Heidi Stevens, and Steve Theunissen (14 September 2007). "21 Best-Selling Books of All Time". Editors of Publications International, Ltd.. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/21-best-selling-books-of-all-time.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-25. 
  6. ↑ Poole S & Wagstaff V (2004). Agatha Christie: A Reader's Companion. London: Aurum Press. pp. 160–67. ISBN 1-84513-015-4. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1845132033/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link. Retrieved 2008-11-25. 
  7. ↑ Note: In some versions the seventeenth and eighteenth lines read Two little Soldier boys playing with a gun / One shot the other and then there was One. Also the One said he'd stay there... line is sometimes replaced by One got left behind....
  8. ↑ "Ten Little Indians Study Guide". pp. 1–38. http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-tenlittleindians/sum.html. Retrieved 2009-04-09. 
  9. ↑ Holdings at the British Library (Newspapers - Colindale). Shelfmark: NPL LON LD3 and NPL LON MLD3.
  10. ↑ British National Bibliography for 1985. British Library. 1986. ISBN 0-7123-1035-5
  11. ↑ "Zece negri mititei" si "Crima din Orient Express", azi cu "Adevarul"
  12. ↑ Amazon.fr : Dix petits nègres, nouvelle édition: Livres: Agatha Christie
  13. ↑ British National Bibliography British Library. 1986. ISBN 0-7123-1035-5
  14. ↑ Whitaker's Cumulative Book List for 1977. J. Whitaker and Sons Ltd. 1978. ISBN 0-85021-105-0
  15. ↑ The Times Literary Supplement 11 November 1939 (p. 658)
  16. ↑ The New York Times Book Review 25 February 1940 (p. 15)
  17. ↑ Toronto Daily Star 16 March 1940 (p. 28)
  18. ↑ Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie - Revised edition (p. 206). Fontana Books, 1990. ISBN 0006374743
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Light, Alison. Forever England: Femininity, Literature, and Conservatism Between the Wars. Routledge, 1991. (p. 99). ISBN 0415016614
  20. ↑ Taves, Brian. Robert Florey, the French Expressionist. New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1987, p. 152; ISBN 0810819295
  21. ↑ Taves (1987), p. 153

External links

Works by Agatha Christie
Detectives
Hercule Poirot · Miss Marple · Colonel Race · Tommy and Tuppence · Ariadne Oliver · Arthur Hastings · Superintendent Battle · Chief Inspector Japp · Parker Pyne · Mr. Harley Quin
Novels
The Mysterious Affair at Styles · The Secret Adversary · The Murder on the Links · The Man in the Brown Suit · The Secret of Chimneys · The Murder of Roger Ackroyd · The Big Four · The Mystery of the Blue Train · The Seven Dials Mystery · The Murder at the Vicarage · The Sittaford Mystery · Peril at End House · Lord Edgware Dies · Murder on the Orient Express · Why Didn't They Ask Evans? · Three Act Tragedy · Death in the Clouds · The A.B.C. Murders · Murder in Mesopotamia · Cards on the Table · Dumb Witness · Death on the Nile · Appointment with Death · Hercule Poirot's Christmas · Murder Is Easy · And Then There Were None · Sad Cypress · One, Two, Buckle My Shoe · Evil Under the Sun · N or M? · The Body in the Library · Five Little Pigs · The Moving Finger · Towards Zero · Death Comes as the End · Sparkling Cyanide · The Hollow · Taken at the Flood · Crooked House · A Murder is Announced · They Came to Baghdad · Mrs McGinty's Dead · They Do It with Mirrors · After the Funeral · A Pocket Full of Rye · Destination Unknown · Hickory Dickory Dock · Dead Man's Folly · 4.50 from Paddington · Ordeal by Innocence · Cat Among the Pigeons · The Pale Horse · The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side · The Clocks · A Caribbean Mystery · At Bertram's Hotel · Third Girl · Endless Night · By the Pricking of My Thumbs · Hallowe'en Party · Passenger to Frankfurt · Nemesis · Elephants Can Remember · Postern of Fate · Curtain · Sleeping Murder
As Mary
Westmacott
Giant's Bread · Unfinished Portrait · Absent in the Spring · The Rose and the Yew Tree · A Daughter's a Daughter · The Burden
Short story
collections
Poirot Investigates · Partners in Crime · The Mysterious Mr. Quin · The Thirteen Problems · The Hound of Death · The Listerdale Mystery · Parker Pyne Investigates · Murder in the Mews · The Regatta Mystery · The Labours of Hercules · The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories · Three Blind Mice and Other Stories · The Under Dog and Other Stories · The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding · Double Sin and Other Stories · The Golden Ball and Other Stories · Poirot's Early Cases · Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories · Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories · The Harlequin Tea Set · While the Light Lasts and Other Stories
Plays
Black Coffee · And Then There Were None · Appointment with Death · Murder on the Nile/Hidden Horizon · The Hollow · The Mousetrap · Witness for the Prosecution · Spider's Web · A Daughter's a Daughter · Towards Zero · Verdict · The Unexpected Guest · Go Back for Murder · Rule of Three · Fiddlers Three · Akhnaton · Chimneys
Radio and
television plays
Wasp's Nest · The Yellow Iris · Three Blind Mice · Butter In a Lordly Dish · Personal Call
Other books
The Road of Dreams · Come, Tell Me How You Live · Star Over Bethlehem and other stories · Poems · An Autobiography