Agatha Christie has been called the Queen of Mystery. Even though she published her first book in 1920 and died in 1976, no one has knocked her off that pedestal. Her books are still remarkably modern. And absolutely no one can craft a surprise ending like Agatha Christie! You may associate Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple with Dame Agatha but her greatest mystery was "And Then There Were None" (originally published in England as "Ten Little Indians".) This is the classic "locked room" mystery. Ten people on a deserted island, each with guilty secrets of past crimes are killed off one by one. In her autobiography the author said, "I had written this book because it was so difficult to do that the idea fascinated me. Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous or the murderer being obvious. I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning...It was well received and reviewed, but the person who was really pleased with it was myself, for I knew better than any critic how difficult it had been." Thornwell Book Club #2 recently picked this as their next read. It was a pleasure to realize that it is just as disturbing and unpredictable as I remembered.
