[2] It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers,[3] after an 1869 minstrel song that serves as a major plot element.

Acting on the host's written instructions, Mr Rogers puts on a gramophone record, which accuses all ten people present of having committed murder.

They discover that a sleazy agent named Isaac Morris had purchased the island and made all the arrangements on behalf of an unknown buyer.

He reveals that all his life he had possessed both a strong sense of justice and a savage bloodlust, contradictory impulses he had satisfied by becoming a judge and sentencing criminals to death.

Once it became clear that the killer was one of the group, Wargrave tricked Dr Armstrong into helping him fake his own death as part of a fictitious scheme to trap the murderer into incriminating himself.

[9] Green had modelled his lyrics on an American comic song "Ten Little Indians" [or Injuns][10][11] by Septimus Winner that had been published the year before.

Writing for The Times Literary Supplement of 11 November 1939, Maurice Percy Ashley stated, "If her latest story has scarcely any detection in it there is no scarcity of murders ...

It is the most baffling mystery that Agatha Christie has ever written, and if any other writer has ever surpassed it for sheer puzzlement the name escapes our memory.

For instance, an unnamed reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star of 16 March 1940 said, "Others have written better mysteries than Agatha Christie, but no one can touch her for ingenious plot and surprise ending.

Maurice Richardson wrote a rhapsodic review in The Observer's issue of 5 November 1939 which began, "No wonder Agatha Christie's latest has sent her publishers into a vatic trance.

We will refrain, however, from any invidious comparisons with Roger Ackroyd and be content with saying that Ten Little Niggers is one of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies yet written.

We will also have to refrain from reviewing it thoroughly, as it is so full of shocks that even the mildest revelation would spoil some surprise from somebody, and I am sure that you would rather have your entertainment kept fresh than criticism pure."

After stating the set-up of the plot, Richardson concluded, "Story telling and characterisation are right at the top of Mrs Christie's baleful form.

Her plot may be highly artificial, but it is neat, brilliantly cunning, soundly constructed, and free from any of those red-herring false trails which sometimes disfigure her work.

"[19] Unlike novels such as Heart of Darkness, "Christie's location is both more domesticated and privatized, taking for granted the construction of racial fears woven into psychic life as early as the nursery.

article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343–44 (26 December 2014 – 3 January 2015), the writers picked And Then There Were None as an "EW favorite" on the list of the "Nine Great Christie Novels".

[7] The word "nigger" was already racially offensive in the United States by the start of the 20th century, and therefore the book's first US edition (1940) and first serialization changed the title to And Then There Were None and removed all references to the word from the book, as did the 1945 motion picture (except that the first US edition retained the phrase "nigger in the woodpile" in Chapter 2 Part VII and Chapter 7 Part III).

[27] Light goes on to say that "Christie's location [the island] is both more domesticated and privatised, taking for granted the construction of racial fears woven into psychic life as early as the nursery.

"[27] Speaking of the "widely known" 1945 film, Stein added that "we're merely faced with fantastic amounts of violence, and a rhyme so macabre and distressing one doesn't hear it now outside of the Agatha Christie context.

Languages where the most recent edition retains racial epithets include Spanish, Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian,[29] and Russian,[30] as well as the 1987 Soviet film adaptation Desyat Negrityat.

[35] European Portuguese translations have been titled Convite Para a Morte (1948: "An Invitation to Death") and As Dez Figuras Negras (2011: "The Ten Black Figures" – referring to the figurines, in this case minimally anthropomorphic).

[35] The Finnish translation Eikä yksikään pelastunut ("No one was saved") in 1940 had its title taken from the American first edition, before being renamed Kymmenen pientä neekeripoikaa ("Ten little negro boys") in 1968.

Productions Sherlock Holmes film A Study in Scarlet follows a strikingly similar plot;[43] the victims are tormented by slips of paper inspired by the same poem used in Christie's novel.

The author of the movie's screenplay, Robert Florey, "doubted that [Christie] had seen A Study in Scarlet, but he regarded it as a compliment if it had helped inspire her".

The production was directed by Mary Peate and featured Geoffrey Whitehead as Mr Justice Wargrave, Lyndsey Marshal as Vera Claythorne, Alex Wyndham as Philip Lombard, John Rowe as Dr Armstrong, and Joanna Monro as Emily Brent.

She and the producers agreed that audiences might not flock to a tale with such a grim ending as the novel, nor would it work well dramatically as there would be no one left to tell the story.

[51][52] By 1943, General Douglas MacArthur was playing a prominent role in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, which may explain the change of the character's name.

Ten Little Niggers (1944): Dundee Repertory Theatre Company was given special permission to restore the original ending of the novel.

And Then There Were None (2005): On 14 October 2005, a new version of the play, written by Kevin Elyot and directed by Steven Pimlott, opened at the Gielgud Theatre in London.

In 2014 Peká Editorial released a board game based on the book, Diez Negritos ("Ten Little Negroes"), created by Judit Hurtado and Fernando Chavarría, and illustrated by Esperanza Peinado.