And Then There Were None

Yes. And Then There Were None is widely cited as the best-selling crime or mystery novel ever written, with more than 100 million copies sold. It also ranks among the best-selling books of any kind in history.

The novel was first published in the United Kingdom in 1939 under a title that used a racial slur drawn from a then-popular counting rhyme. It was later reissued as 'Ten Little Indians' and eventually settled, permanently, on 'And Then There Were None,' the closing line of the rhyme.

A counting-down rhyme hangs framed in each guest's bedroom, and the deaths on the island are arranged to echo its successive verses. The book's final title is taken directly from the rhyme's last line.

No. Unlike most of her work, this novel has no series sleuth such as Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. It is a closed-circle mystery in which the trapped characters must make sense of events themselves.

Yes. Christie wrote a stage adaptation that premiered in the 1940s with a less bleak ending than the novel, because she and the producers felt audiences needed a more hopeful conclusion. Many later film and stage versions followed this altered ending rather than the book's.

The BBC's 2015 three-part television series is noted for restoring the original novel's grim conclusion rather than the softened stage ending used by most earlier adaptations. It is among the few screen versions to preserve the book's bleak resolution.

The story takes place over a few days on an isolated island off the coast of Devon, England, accessible only by boat. A storm soon cuts the island off entirely, stranding the guests with no means of escape or rescue.

Yes. Christie regarded it as one of the most difficult of her books to construct because of its intricate plotting and tightly orchestrated structure. The challenge lay in engineering the sequence of deaths convincingly.