"There was something magical about an island—the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world—an island was a world of its own. A world, perhaps, from which you might never return."

One of the most well-known Christie novels is also one that breaks both the mold of a usual whodunnit and the mold of Christie's own more conventional mysteries.

Ten people on an isolated island with no means of escape when things take a turn. The island acts as a purgatory of sorts, each character waiting if their individual judgment day to be cast in hell arrives and in what way. Because of this dark premise, the prevailing mood is hopelessness. It was even more so now that I read this the second time and after seeing the stage play a few years ago, because you see how cold and calculating the murderer is. The end is not nigh, it's already here, and the atmosphere is so well done that Christie's alternate ending (used in many adaptations but thankfully not in the novel) feels jarring and out of place after such a suffocatingly bleak cat and mouse game.

The mystery itself is pretty much impossible to solve. I noticed a few things that might be clues as to who the murderer is, and paying attention to what one of the characters is saying can prove to be helpful. The twist, however, is such a clever one that it (and a few aspects in the execution of the murders) veers a bit towards implausibility, but it doesn't matter much when the novel as a whole is so brilliant.