History Literature / AndThenThereWereNone

%%* PsychologicalThriller: The book has elements of this.

* RuleOfSymbolism: On their first night on the island, the guests note a centrepiece on the dining room table, bearing ten china figures to represent the nursery rhyme hung in each of their rooms. With each death as the plot progresses, the killer removes another china figure.

* RuleOfSymbolism: The game adaptation provides a ceramic table centerpiece, which has ten sailors on it. Anytime someone is killed, one of the sailors is broken off. All of the film versions contain the same motif, though sometimes the figure types are changed. The 2015 version changes the figures from ceramic indians to jade-esque statues representing soldier boys.

** Most of the characters in the 1965 film. Vera Claythorne becomes Ann Clyde, Phillip Lombard is Hugh Lombard, Judge Wargrave becomes Judge Cannon, Emily Brent is Ilona Bergen, Anthony Marston becomes Michael Raven, and Ethel and Thomas Rodgers become Elsa and Joseph Grohmann.
* AdaptedOut: Even adaptations that keep the original ending do not use the epilogue, so Sir Thomas Legge and Inspector Maine have yet to be played by anybody.

* CuteKitten: A housecat turns up in the 1965 film.
* DarkerAndEdgier: The 1987 Russian version qualifies compared to the other film versions. The first victim ''crashes through a plate and gets the glass stuck in his face'', and the {{UST}} between Vera and Lombard culminates in [[spoiler:him ''raping'' her.]]

* DramaticDrop: Elsa the cook does this in the 1965 film when her name is called out in the U.N. Owen recording.

* HotterAndSexier: The 1965 version changed the elderly spinster character to a glamorous young actress, solely to allow another beautiful woman to be cast (a change that would be retained in the 1975 and 1989 versions). It was also the first adaptation of a Christie work to contain a sex scene (which had not been present in the original novel). Christie was not pleased.

* RuleOfSymbolism: The game adaptation provides a ceramic table centerpiece, which has ten sailors on it. Anytime someone is killed, one of the sailors is broken off.
* SettingUpdate: The 1965 film changed the setting from an island to a snowbound mansion and the 1989 film changed it to an African safari.

* ShipTease: The film adaptations -- especially the 1965 one -- crank up the {{UST}} between Lombard and Vera into a full-fledged relationship.
* SlapSlapKiss: Vera and Lombard (or Morley, depending on the adaptation) get into this.

** [[spoiler:Lombard is spared]] in the play and the 1989 film. (The adaptations featuring [[spoiler:Charles Morley]] avert this, as [[spoiler:Lombard committed suicide before the story began]].)

* StagedShooting: In all English-language adaptations except for the 2015 BBC miniseries, [[spoiler:Vera's shooting of Lombard turns out to be a faked one to draw the killer out of hiding]].

* TruerToTheText: The Soviet and BBC versions are both much closer to the novel, compared to the other film versions which are adaptations of the stage play (and frequently take liberties even with it). In particular, the Soviet film's ending is nearly 1:1 with that of the novel's, with the only major deviation being the fact that [[spoiler:Wargrave's confession takes the form of a soliloquy rather than a MessageInABottle]].

* Captain Philip Lombard, a cool-headed and intelligent man; he is accused of causing the death of twenty-one African natives by abandoning them during his brief career as a mercenary. He's also the novel's DeadpanSnarker

** Lombard’s revolver is a literal one. [[spoiler: It appears as though Wargrave is shot with it, and then Vera ultimately uses it to kill Lombard himself. Then Wargrave, who faked his death, uses it to kill himself so his manner of death will match what the survivor's diaries and notes will have said about it.]]

* GuiltInducedNightmare: In the Soviet adaptation, after the characters have already been subjected to two and a half days of psychological torment, Lombard, who has previously left twenty-one Africans to their deaths, has a DeliberatelyMonochrome nightmare of being back in the African jungle and fighting and strangling a zombie African who lunges at him from a swamp. This being Lombard, however, the nightmare doesn't change his attitude for the better.

* MoreThanMindControl: Vera Claythorne has been slowly going insane over the course of the novel due to her own guilt and the MindRape that's been going on alongside the murders. So, [[spoiler:when she ends up the last one left, she walks up to her room, sees the noose hanging, smells the sea, which is how she committed her murder, feels the presence of Hugo, the man she loved, who seemingly urges her to do what's right, and decides that she has to kill herself ''because that's how the rhyme goes'']].

* ThePerfectCrime: [[spoiler:All of Judge Wargrave's invited guests show up as expected, and he's able to kill them himself, or, in Vera's case, dupe them into killing each other so that everyone dies. He dupes the doctor into helping him fake his death, so he'll stop being suspected as the killer, then murders the doctor afterwards, kills Blore, watches Vrea kill Lombard, and then he then watches Vera hang herself out of shock and guilt, believing she's the only one left, puts the chair she stood on back against the wall to let the authorities know someone was alive AFTER she hanged herself, and then uses elastic cord on Lombard's gun to shoot himself in the head, as he knows others have journaled as his cause of death, letting the cord pull the gun from his hand and away from his body. He so effectively stymies the authorities that they never figure out he's the killer until they are given a confession letter that he wrote himself and that he threw into the sea, giving them one remote chance to figure out what happened, which they finally do.]]

* VillainHasAPoint: The killer is certainly correct about one thing, at least. All of the victims ''do'' more or less have it coming. (Some much more than others, though)

* XanatosSpeedChess: [[spoiler:Wargrave had a plan in place to ensure everyone died in a manner that would fit the poem, such as bashing someone's head in with the bear clock, but the exact particulars he improvised a fair amount as well. In his letter at the end, he mentions that while he wanted to make the perfect crime and a murder mystery, the important thing was that everyone receive justice for their crimes and the dramatic appropriateness of the killings was down to no small amount luck.]]

* JerkassHasAPoint: When Emily Brent and Vera Claythorne are discussing Philip Lombard's guilt, the self-righteous Miss Brent is adamant that Lombard is guilty for abandoning twenty-one natives: "Black or white, they are our brothers." Vera starts ''laughing'' at this idea, though [[SanitySlippage her sanity has been fraying steadily throughout the novel]]. Her laughter also makes more sense when you consider the original title -- "our black brothers" being the subject of the IronicNurseryTune.

But whatever its title, every serious mystery fan knows the novel's plot by heart: [[TenLittleMurderVictims ten people, strangers to one another, receive invitations to an island hideaway.]] A mysterious recording played for the group accuses each person of having caused another person's death. Sometime after the record is played, members of the group start dying one by one, each in ways similar to those in the rhyme ("Ten Little Niggers" in the original British edition, "Ten Little Indians" in many later editions, "Ten Little Soldiers" in current editions). Those still alive soon come to the only possible conclusion: one of them is killing the others. Paranoia and suspicion run high, as each person tries to outwit the killer; who can be trusted when everyone around them is dying? And how long will it be before the next one dies?

* KickTheSonOfABitch: Some of the guests are harder to feel sorry for than others.

* AdaptationInducedPlotHole:
** The 2005 video game adaptation changes the killer's identity but still has them [[spoiler:fake their death]], which opens up the plot hole of [[spoiler:how they managed to fool Armstrong, a trained doctor, into believing they were dead]] because the killer doesn't have the book's justification of [[spoiler:persuading Armstrong beforehand to help them fake their death]] here. The killer explains this by revealing that [[spoiler:she intentionally provoked him into drinking even more heavily than normal, so he would not notice that she was still alive.]]
** The Soviet version omits the small subplot of Miss Brent's ball of wool and the red curtains from the drawing turning up missing, which creates a plot hole when [[spoiler:Judge Wargrave is discovered wearing a crudely improvised judge's wig and red robe when he and Armstrong stage his "murder"]].

* JudicialWig: When [[spoiler:Judge Wargrave is (apparently) shot and killed]], part of what he was dressed in includes one, made up of Emily Brent's knitting wool.

The novel has been published under several different titles, as a direct result of ValuesDissonance. It was originally published in the UK as ''Ten Little Niggers'', which was not shocking in 1930s Britain. In the United States, [[DidNotDoTheBloodyResearch more sensitive publishers changed the title]] to ''And Then There Were None'', while many earlier foreign translations kept the original title, such as ''Dix petits nègres'' in French or ''Zehn kleine Negerlein'' in German. The book was also published in English as ''Ten Little Indians'' on both sides of the Atlantic, until people eventually came to see that title as racist as well. ''And Then There Were None'' has, more or less, become the official standardized title.

But whatever its title, every serious mystery fan knows the novel's plot by heart: [[TenLittleMurderVictims ten people, strangers to one another, receive invitations to an island hideaway.]] A mysterious recording played for the group accuses each person of having caused another person's death. Some time after the record is played, members of the group start dying one by one, each in ways similar to those in the rhyme ("Ten Little Niggers" in the original British edition, "Ten Little Indians" in many later editions, "Ten Little Soldiers" in current editions). Those still alive soon come to the only possible conclusion: one of them is killing the others. Paranoia and suspicion run high, as each person tries to outwit the killer; who can be trusted when everyone around them is dying? And how long will it be before the next one dies?

* YouAreTooLate: Fred Narracott realizes something is wrong and goes back to the island as soon as the storm clears, even though Mr. Owen gave him instructions to wait a week and not answer any distress signals. [[spoiler:He doesn't make it in time to save ''anyone'', not even for the police to be able to successfully investigate the case afterwards (which possibly ''could'' have been done if not too much time had elapsed for establishing the time of death of at least the last victim...)]]

* YouAreTooLate: Fred Narracott realizes something is wrong and goes back to the island as soon as the storm clears, even though Mr. Owen gave him instructions to wait a week and not answer any distress signals. [[spoiler:He doesn't make it in time to save ''anyone'']].

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

** A few [[SympatheticMurderer are sympathetic to varying degrees, mainly the ones who had come to accept that they had done something wrong, such as General [=MacArthur=].]]

* AssholeVictim: ''None'' of the victims is exactly an innocent, though a few [[SympatheticMurderer are sympathetic to varying degrees, mainly the ones who had come to accept that they had done something wrong.]]

* LockedRoomMystery: [[spoiler: the police arrive, all they find are ten dead bodies on an island, each with times and manners of death that completely contradict each other. Specifically, the final four deaths of Armstrong, Blore, Lombard, and Vera. There's no way any of them could have been killed without someone else being alive, yet no one else was on the island.]]

* MistakenDeathConfirmation: When the survivors find Judge Wargrave apparently shot in the head, Dr. Armstrong quickly checks his pulse and declares him dead. However, Wargrave and Armstrong had conspired to fake Wargrave's death, as Wargrave had convinced Armstrong that this was the best way to catch the murderer. Unfortunately for Armstrong, Wargrave is the murderer and quickly disposes of Armstrong.

* TruerToTheText: The Soviet and BBC versions are both much closer to the novel, compared to the other film versions which are adaptations of the stage play (and frequently take liberties even with it).

* TheBadGuyWins: Well it ain't called ''[[MeaningfulName And Then There Were None]]'' for nothin'. The killer pulls the plan off so well that the police can't figure out what happened - although your mileage may vary on whether this person really qualifies as the "bad guy" of the story, considering the victims' own crimes.

* DownerEnding: There's a reason why only the Russian movie adaptation initially used it. It was Agatha Christie's 125th birthday before an English-language adaptation tried it.

* PoorCommunicationKills: [[spoiler:By the time Vera and Lombard seem to be the last living people on the island, both are strained to the breaking point by fear and paranoia. They eventually turn on one another, never considering for a moment that neither of them could have possibly killed Blore. Vera shoots Lombard on the beach with his own revolver, then hangs herself shortly afterwards,[[SelfFulfillingProphecy completing the rhyme.]] ]]

* CriticalResearchFailure: In universe: Blore initially tries to pass himself of as a South African called Davis. But he hasn't researched his fellow guests well enough to know that Lombard is well-acquainted with South Africa, nor has has he read-up about the place itself properly. Consequently, Lombard very quickly realises that he has never been there.

* KillEmAll: When the authorities arrive, they find ten bodies. ''And then there were none.''