Agatha Christie · 1939 · thriller

The best-selling crime novel ever written, and the one Christie said was the hardest to do. Ten strangers are lured to an island off the Devon coast by a host who never arrives, accused by a gramophone record of killings nobody could prove, and then removed one at a time in the order of a nursery rhyme.

1. 1
   London

   Eight letters go out from a Mr and Mrs U. N. Owen, each pitched precisely at its recipient - a job, a house party, an old friend's invitation - and eight people who have never met accept for eight different reasons.

2. 2
   Paddington

   The train west on 8 August 1939, and Christie's opening: each passenger thinking about the letter in their pocket and about something they have done that nobody has ever proved.

3. 3
   Exeter

   Devon, and the change for the branch line - the last ordinary place any of them will be, and the point past which Christie begins closing the exits one at a time.

4. 4
   Sticklehaven

   The mainland village, based on Bigbury-on-Sea, where Fred Narracott takes them across in a motorboat - and where nobody will come out again in weather like this, which is the whole design.

5. 5
   Soldier Island

   Burgh Island off the south Devon coast, cut off by the tide twice a day. Ten figurines on the table, a gramophone accusing every guest of a killing, and a nursery rhyme in each bedroom - and then eight of them are dead.

6. 6
   Scotland Yard

   The epilogue: two policemen unable to make the deaths work, because the last person alive on the island could not have arranged the scene - and then a fishing trawler pulls a bottle out of the sea with the answer in it.