Présentation de l'éditeur :
Eight people of different social classes have been invited to a mansion on the fictional Soldier(Indian) Island ("Nigger Island" in the original 1939 UK publication, "Indian Island" in the 1964 US publication), which is based upon Burgh Island off the coast of Devon. Upon arriving, they are told that their hosts, a Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen (Ulick Norman Owen and Una Nancy Owen ), are currently away, but that the guests will be attended to by Thomas and Ethel Rogers. Each guest finds in his or her room an odd bit of bric-a-brac and a framed copy of the nursery rhyme "Ten Little Soldiers" ("Niggers" or "Indians" in respective earlier editions) hanging on the wall. Before dinner that evening, the guests notice ten soldier boy figurines on the dining room table. During the meal, a gramophone record plays, accusing each of the ten of murder. Each guest acknowledges an awareness of (and, in some cases, involvement with) the deaths of the persons mentioned, but denies either malice and/or legal culpability. The guests realize they have been tricked into coming to the island, but find that they cannot leave: the boat which regularly delivers supplies has stopped arriving. They are murdered one by one, each murder paralleling a verse of the nursery rhyme, with one of the ten figurines being removed after each murder.
Revue de presse :
“The whole thing is utterly impossible and utterly fascinating. It is the most baffling mystery Agatha Christie has ever written.” (New York Times)
“One of the most ingenious thrillers in many a day.” (Time magazine)
“One of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies.” (The Observer (UK))
“There is no cheating; the reader is just bamboozled in a straightforward way from first to last....The most colossal achievement of a colossal career. The book must rank with Mrs. Christie’s previous best—on the top notch of detection.” (New Statesman (UK))
“The most astonishingly impudent, ingenious and altogether successful mystery story since The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.” (Daily Herald (UK))
“What Agatha Christie taught me was all about the delicate placement of the red herring. She was the ultimate genius behind ‘by indirections shall we find directions out.’ ” (Elizabeth George, New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Lynley novels)
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