A nice "tight five" of mystery and fiction in general. Nearly all the plot is driven by character dialogue and progresses with concision. Intermixed throughout these conversations are private vignettes revealing the characters' "dark pasts" warranting their inclusion on MURDER ISLAND. There are a few laughable occurrences whereby someone dies and then everyone else is like "daaaaamn that's crazy, imma go to bed about it" which happens multiple times.

Additionally worth note is the characterization of women directly and indirectly by Christie. The male characters openly mocking womanly sensibilities, religious mania, everything-up-to-menopause as explanations for their "irrationality" or concern for the literal murders going on. Additionally, the women do indeed exhibit some out-of-band behavior (no spoilers, but one death seemed almost too conveniently contrived playing on precisely these "damned woman's sensitivities"), which at first made me think "dang, is Agatha the worst at writing female characters?"

However, upon further reflection (i.e. Emma pointing out to me that it was exclusively the women expressing any sort of internal guilt or residual turmoil for their actions, even if in the private vignettes), I think I flip-flopped over to maybe Agatha is cracked at writing femalse characters in precisely the kind of way that a male dullard such as myself would totally miss.

I think I would have liked a bit more character development, and based on solely this novel I would wholly trust Christie to not waste pages or ink doing so in a boring way. I really liked the way that their backgrounds did unfold, and I think that could've been explored a bit more to maybe make us empathize/care about them more before they died. Nevertheless, she slayed – I understand why she's the goat of this genre.

related