The plotting is brilliant, with enough clues to help you work it out but I imagine not many do. I think this is Agatha Christie’s best book. But as suspect after suspect is murdered, the possibilities narrow.Īs each one dies, one of the ten soldiers on the dining room centrepiece disappears. Therefore, the killer has to be among the ten. It is evident that there is no one else on the island, which is now cut off from the mainland by a storm. One by one they are killed off, in accordance with the poem hanging on their bedroom walls. Later that night, the first person dies from a poisoned drink. It turns out that the voice comes from a record that the butler has been instructed to play after dinner by the mysterious Mr. When they assemble in the living room, after an excellent dinner, they are startled by a disembodied voice accusing each one of them of murder-murders that they have gotten away with. The reason they are on the island becomes clear on the first night. They include a retired Justice of the Peace, a schoolmistress, a doctor, a young man who is part of the jet set, an uptight, older woman, a retired general, a private detective, and an adventurer-and of course the butler and cook. On the surface, the ten people have nothing in common with each other.
The theme is echoed in the dining table centrepiece with its ten soldiers. Each guest room has a print of Ten Little Soldiers, a child’s counting rhyme, in which the soldiers die one by one. The hosts appear to have a macabre sense of humour. The odd thing is that none of the people on the island-including the butler and cook-has ever met the Owens.
Owen, who have sent apologies for not being there. When the group arrives, they find no sign of their hosts, a Mr. Some have received invitations that purport to come from friends, while others have been hired through a lawyer. Ten people are summoned to a weekend on Soldier Island, a rugged piece of rock off the Cornish coast with a single large house. “Ten little soldiers went out to dine / One choked his little self and then there were nine.”
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