And Then There Were None By Agatha Christie [ PREMIUM ✦ ]

If you think you know whodunnits, think again. Before there was Knives Out , before The Usual Suspects , and long before every crime drama on Netflix introduced the "unreliable narrator," there was Agatha Christie’s 1939 masterpiece: And Then There Were None.

Here is why, nearly a century later, And Then There Were None remains the ultimate locked-room puzzle. Most Christie novels feature a brilliant detective—the meticulous Hercule Poirot or the nosy Miss Marple. And Then There Were None has neither. and then there were none by agatha christie

Their host, the enigmatic U.N. Owen (sounding suspiciously like "Unknown"), is absent. If you think you know whodunnits, think again

Christie does something revolutionary here. She removes the "safe" character. In a normal mystery, you trust the narrator or the detective. Here, everyone is a liar. Everyone has blood on their hands. The paranoia is so thick you can cut it with a knife. I will not ruin the ending for you, but I will tell you this: even for a woman who wrote The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (which has one of the most famous twist endings in history), Christie outdid herself. Owen (sounding suspiciously like "Unknown"), is absent

It is the best-selling crime novel of all time (over 100 million copies sold). It is the book that made the Queen of Crime terrified of her own plot. And it is arguably the only mystery in history where the ending leaves you just as unsettled as the murders themselves.