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The Golden Age of Detective Fiction & Agatha Christie's Legacy

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And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie Mysteries Collection

by Agatha Christie
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • First Published:
  • Nov 6, 1939, 264 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2011, 247 pages
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About This Book

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction & Agatha Christie's Legacy

This article relates to And Then There Were None

Print Review

Four Agatha Christie book jacketsIn the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, people sought comfort and escapism in a world marked by chaos and uncertainty. Detective fiction offered a perfect outlet, with meticulously plotted mysteries that allowed the reader to regain a sense of control. After all, aren't detectives in these stories trying to restore the status quo, bringing order to disorder? As priest, critic, and detective fiction author Ronald Knox wrote in 1929: "The detective story is a game between two players, the author on one part and the reader on the other."

This period is now known as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, and it concurred with a time when women were beginning to gain rights, enter the job market, and establish themselves as celebrated authors. In fact, this subgenre was popularized by Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh, who earned the title of "Queens of Mystery"—but if they were queens, Agatha Christie was the undisputed empress.

The British author dominated this genre. Her criminals are introduced early in the story, there are sidekick characters, supernatural elements are absent, and no mysterious "Chinaman" makes an appearance—adhering to the striking fifth rule of Ronald Knox's famous "Ten Rules for a Good Detective Story," considered a sort of decalogue for the genre after being published in 1929 in The Publishers' Weekly. Yet Christie's genius lay not only in following these conventions, but in breaking and redefining them.

Much like Picasso mastered traditional art before experimenting with distortion, Christie perfected the genre's rules before transcending them. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), she employs a narrative twist so groundbreaking that revealing it would spoil the story entirely. Similarly, in And Then There Were None (1939), she delves into psychological themes like guilt, justice, and paranoia, elevating the detective story beyond mere entertainment.

Christie also pioneered some of the genre's defining tropes. Her debut detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), the first to feature the famous Hercule Poirot, is considered the first "closed-circle" mystery: a story structure focused on a limited set of suspects, all with motive and opportunity, and sometimes confined to an isolated location. This trope often intersects with another hallmark of the genre: the "locked-room mystery," in which the crime occurs in a sealed or inaccessible setting. In And Then There Were None, ten characters are stranded on a remote island. While Christie didn't invent the locked-room mystery (Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" [1841] is often credited as the first), she built on it with this and other of her more famous novels, like Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and Death on the Nile (1937).

These last two have recently been adapted into successful films by British director Kenneth Branagh, reigniting interest in Christie's works and introducing her to new audiences. The impact of her storytelling is evident in contemporary authors like Richard Osman. His successful series The Thursday Murder Club, a literary phenomenon with over 10 million copies sold and movie rights acquired by Steven Spielberg, echoes Christie's plots. Osman acknowledges her influence, telling the BBC in 2023: "I just wanted to write an Agatha Christie-style thriller but with some humour and with a modern twist."

Her influence also permeates other media, like blockbuster Knives Out and its sequel, Glass Onion. Director Rian Johnson has credited Christie's stories, telling Variety: "They felt like the most entertaining thing in the world. And we make these movies as entertainment first and foremost. What was exciting about doing ['Glass Onion'] was the notion of trying to emulate Christie with a completely new story."

As Johnson develops a third installment in the Knives Out series, Osman continues to enjoy success (We Solve Murders, published in September 2024, was the number one bestseller of the year in the UK, according to Nielsen Bookscan; The Last Devil to Die, Osman's previous novel, was second), and with many authors acknowledging Christie's influence in the proliferation of the cozy mystery genre, it's clear that her legacy continues to thrive and that she remains, almost a century later, the unrivaled empress of mystery.

Agatha Christie book jackets, courtesy of Agatha Christie Limited

Filed under Books and Authors

This article relates to And Then There Were None. It first ran in the January 29, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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