All About Books discussion

This thread is for discussing our winner after you have finished reading the book. In this thread, there is no need to use tags to mark any spoilers. Please be careful when reading this thread if you haven't finished the book - you might encounter spoilers!

And so we can say here that the killer was the judge!!! And that he commetted suicide in the end, to close the circle.
Loved it, as in the Orient Express where all were guilty!!! Somehow also here they were all guilty, weren't they?

LauraT wrote: "And so we can say here that the killer was the judge!!! And that he commetted suicide in the end, to close the circle.
Loved it, as in the Orient Express where all were guilty!!! Somehow also here ..."

That's great to talk freely about all that happened in And Then There Were None but I'm a bit sad about spoilers to the Orient Express:((

Oh no, sorry Diana! :(

Laura, I guess edit your comment in case others haven't read Murder On The Orient Express too!

Since it was a re-read for me, I knew who the killer was from the beginning, and it was interesting how accurate Philip Lombard's guesses were throughout. He was very perceptive and had Justice Wargrave pegged from the beginning!

Were there any of the "victims" that anyone felt sorry for or sympathized with?

Most of them had done something pretty terrible, but several of the characters were remorseful. I felt a little sorry for General Macarthur, sitting resignedly on the beach and waiting for the end to come. That terrible thing he did to his wife's lover had destroyed his life utterly, so much so that he was almost yearning for his life to end. It seems nothing was the same between him and his wife after that; so that relationship with his wife that he had committed murder to save, he had lost anyway.

He's guilty for sure, and he should be brought to account for it.

But it's almost as though by not being discovered in his "crime," his life was worse than if he had been caught. If he had been caught, he might have come to terms with it eventually. But by getting away with it, he had to hold all of that horror inside himself forever.

Greg wrote: "Oh no, sorry Diana! :(

Laura, I guess edit your comment in case others haven't read Murder On The Orient Express too!"

Sorry!!!!

I have to say that for more than half of the novel I thought that there had to be someone else besides those ten. I really liked the idea of the nursery rhyme (which seems just funny and childish and later appears not to be so harmless) and the statues disappearing. That made the story so creepy. I felt so confused about who the killer was. And of course, I didn't figure that out. It's interesting that their self-appointed judge was the judge in real life too. So, overall, maybe that wasn't so hard to guess. And I was very disappointed in Vera Claythorne. I honestly believed that the boy died only because she wasn't paying enough attention, but to know that she allowed him to swim there on purpose and didn't even try to save him, was very appalling.

Diana H. wrote: "I have to say that for more than half of the novel I thought that there had to be someone else besides those ten. I really liked the idea of the nursery rhyme (which seems just funny and childish a..."

Diana, I remember the first time I read it that I was very upset when I found out Vera had done it on purpose. I had convinced myself like you that she was not as bad as the others, but then it turned out she had done this monstrous thing!

Definitly of the same idea Diana and Greg!