Books Like And Then There Were None: 9 Thrillers Where the Killer Is Someone They Know

Here is a fun fact about the book this whole list points back to: Agatha Christie rewrote its ending. When she adapted And Then There Were None for the stage in 1943 she changed the ending, because she and the producers were worried about leaving the audience on a low note, and the official Christie estate site has the detail. The estate’s page on the adaptation records that the 2015 BBC series was the first screen version to put her original ending back. So if you have only ever watched one of the adaptations, there is a decent chance you know the rewritten ending and not the one she published.

Stories where the water decides who gets to leave are personal for me. I nearly drowned in the Atlantic off the coast of Fire Island as a kid. I was swimming with my best friend before a storm and suddenly the waves got more violent. Luckily, a 65 year old life guard named George swam and saved us both. He also used to climb on a table, rip his pants off, and dance in his Speedo at the summer lobster party. I share this because he is an ICON and I owe him my life.

That is also why I ended up writing The Storm Reaper, a barrier-island thriller of my own. Christie built this machine in 1939 and the rest of us have been borrowing it ever since, usually with the serial numbers barely filed off. Here are nine books like And Then There Were None that actually earn the comparison, and yes, one of them is mine.

Why Is It Scarier When Nobody New Can Arrive?

The closed circle tells you early that the person who did it is already in the room with everyone else. Once the ferry stops running, nobody new can join the suspect list, so every conversation after that is doing two jobs at once.

According to the Christie estate, ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast, cut off from the mainland, with their hosts mysteriously absent, and each of them is accused of a terrible crime. Copies of a nursery rhyme hang in every room and the murders start following it. The same site calls the book the best selling crime novel of all time, which is a sentence I think about a lot, because the whole plot is people who cannot leave a room accusing each other.

The reason writers keep coming back is that the cut-off does the character work for them. Trap the same group somewhere long enough and you learn what they have actually thought of each other for years. That is why the modern versions put the murder inside a group that already has a seating chart, where the resentments are doing damage before anybody dies.

Closed circle mystery books also happen to be great for readers who have stopped trusting big casts. A cast small enough to hold in your head means you can actually keep track of who has lied to you. If you want the version where the isolation comes from geography rather than a snowstorm, I have a whole list of isolated thriller books that go further out.

How I Picked These Books

I read books like And Then There Were None because I love them, and because I want to see how other writers keep a small cast interesting for a whole book. My criteria for this list:

1. You have to know exactly why nobody can leave: a storm, an avalanche, one boat a day, water on all sides. The book has to name the reason and stick to it, so you never get that cheated feeling where you wonder why the characters don’t just walk down the road.
2. The killer has to be someone you have already met: no stranger arriving late to take the fall. Every page you read is evidence. You are not waiting to be told.
3. The ending has to survive the reread: this is where the form usually collapses, because the reveal has to send you back through everything you already read and make it hold up. I judged the last chapter hardest so you finish still respecting the book.

The 9 Best Books Like And Then There Were None

1. Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney (2022)

In the book, the Darker family gathers at their grandmother’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island for Nana’s eightieth birthday, and when the tide comes in they are cut off from the world for eight hours. Every one of them arrives with something they are not saying. At midnight, with a storm going, Nana is found dead. An hour later another family member follows. If you want the closest modern answer to Christie’s original, start here.

Feeney does the thing that is hardest to pull off in this setup, which is make the family plausible. The Darkers are not suspects arranged around a room; they are people with thirty years of specific grievances, and the tide gives them exactly eight hours to keep pretending otherwise.

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2. The Storm Reaper by Kristen Van Nest

Fire Island is a barrier island where the ferry is how nearly everyone gets on and off. I spent my childhood summers inside that closed circle without knowing it had a name. One of my friends from Fire Island told me about Pawleys Island and the folklore that it’s based on. There, folklore says a ghost appears before hurricanes to warn people to leave, and they call him the Gray Man. If everyone on an island expects the storm to take someone, who would notice a person doing the taking?

Kill during the storm, let the tide carry the body out, and the police write it up as a storm death. It worked for ten years, until the currents shifted and the bodies started washing back. Violet Crisp is twenty-six, and she is the only police officer who believes a serial killer is using the storms for cover — because at sixteen she survived the storm that killed her best friend, and that same night she saw a man murdered in the fog. The chief said she was confused by grief. Her own father said she was making it up. The Storm Reaper is Book 1 of the Violet Crisp series, for readers who want the closed circle to be a real place with a ferry schedule and a bar where the jukebox hasn’t been updated since 1987.

The part I could not have written without those summers is how a small island handles an accusation. Suspicion is socially expensive in a way it never is in a hotel full of strangers. Full disclosure: I wrote this one — it is on the list because the thing keeping everybody in place is a real ferry timetable.

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3. The Guest List by Lucy Foley (2020)

First published in 2020 according to its Goodreads record, it puts a wedding on an island off the coast of Ireland, in front of everyone who has a reason to hate one of the people getting married. In the book, the cell phone service is spotty and the waves are rough, and then someone turns up dead. It won the 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for Readers’ Favorite Mystery and Thriller. For readers who want the Christie setup with a marquee and a seating chart.

Foley understands that a wedding is already a closed circle with catering. Everybody invited has a history with somebody else invited, and nobody can leave early without making it a whole thing in front of everyone they know. By the time the lights go out you have a grudge of your own against half the guest list.

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4. One by One by Ruth Ware (2020)

A company takes eight coworkers to a rustic mountain chalet for an off-site retreat about mindfulness and collaboration. Per the publisher summary on Goodreads, an avalanche hits and the retreat goes utterly wrong. It was a 2020 Goodreads Choice Award nominee. For readers who want their closed circle to have an HR department.

This is the one I hand people who say the genre feels old-fashioned. The retreat is the most 2020s version of the setup on this list, and it needs no country house at all. A work retreat is already an environment where everyone performs warmth at somebody who controls their income. That performance gets much stranger once nobody can drive home, and Ware runs it for the whole book.

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5. The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji, Translated by Ho-Ling Wong (1987; English 2015)

The members of a university detective-fiction club, each nicknamed after a favorite crime writer, spend a week on a remote island. Tsunojima is reachable by one small inlet and has no electricity and no telephones, a detail the New York Times review quoted by the publisher singles out. The same page quotes The Guardian calling it a thrilling homage to Christie’s novel. For readers who want the puzzle turned all the way up.

Honkaku mysteries hand you every clue and dare you to use them. An island, a ten-sided house, a small cast and no way to call anyone add up to about as few variables as a mystery can hand you, and Ayatsuji beat me anyway. Ho-Ling Wong’s English translation appeared in 2015, and Anime News Network reported a live-action series reaching Hulu Japan in 2024. Read the book first; half the pleasure is the club members arguing about detective fiction from inside one.

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6. The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse (2021)

Le Sommet is a former abandoned sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel, which is a sentence that should have ended the booking right there. In the book, a detective arrives in the middle of a threatening storm, a guest goes missing, and the storm closes off all access to the hotel. For readers who want architecture doing the menacing.

Readers hunting books like The Sanatorium should know why it sits at 6 here rather than higher: it wins my first rule outright and only half wins my third. The cut-off is total, and the setting is the premise doing the work — somebody looked at an abandoned sanatorium in the Alps and thought, spa. The ending is the part readers argue about, and its Goodreads average of 3.36 is mostly that argument. Read it for Le Sommet and you will get your money back.

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7. Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (2022)

According to its Goodreads record, this one was first published in 2022, and it has Ernest Cunningham narrating his own family reunion. He opens by telling you that every single Cunningham has killed somebody. A storm strands them at a mountain resort and the first body turns up in the snow, per the Penguin synopsis. For readers who like a narrator who tells you the rules and then dares you.

According to his publisher bio, Stevenson is an award-winning stand-up comedian, and you can feel exactly where the timing comes from. He commits to playing fair in the Golden Age sense and then uses that promise as the weapon, which is a trick I have thought about stealing and have not been brave enough to try.

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8. Ten by Gretchen McNeil (2012)

First published in 2012 according to its Goodreads record, it sends teenagers to an exclusive house party on Henry Island, a storm rolls in, and they are cut off from the outside world, so when a killer begins picking them off one by one there is no escape. Amazon’s own listing bills it as an Agatha Christie-inspired thriller. For readers who want the structure at full speed, and for the teenager in your life who is ready for it.

Do not skip this because it is young adult. The compressed cast makes the machinery visible, so if you are trying to learn how this kind of book is built, it is the clearest X-ray on the list. It is also genuinely mean about the pecking order inside a friend group.

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9. The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning (1930)

Eight guests arrive at a New Orleans penthouse for a party. Their host is nowhere to be found, and then a voice on the radio tells them the evening’s agenda: every hour, one of them will die. Per the Goodreads listing, the publisher calls it the widely suspected inspiration for Christie’s And Then There Were None, and notes it was filmed as The Ninth Guest. For readers who want the machine before the famous version.

I went looking for this because I wanted to know what Christie might have read, and it is startling how much is already here in 1930: the absent host, the accused guests, the schedule. I put it last because it is the ancestor and not the best version. The prose is of its era and the penthouse is a genuinely great choice, because a locked apartment on a high floor is an island with better lighting. Whether Christie ever saw it is not settled, and the publisher’s hedge is the honest way to say it.

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Why an Island Beats a Snowed-In Chalet

The cut-off has to be boring and physical — an avalanche, or one ferry a day. The books that lose me are the ones where you could solve the whole problem by walking twenty minutes, and the author is counting on you not to think about it. Christie gave herself water on all sides in 1939 and every writer since has been looking for a reason that holds up as well, which is why we all keep landing on islands and mountains.

The second thing is that the group has to have a history before page one. Strangers work for Christie because the accusation is what introduces them to each other. Everyone since has gone the other way and picked people who arrive already owing each other something: a wedding party, a work retreat, a family reunion, a school friendship that curdled a decade ago. Once these people already have grudges, the body is almost beside the point. What you are actually reading for is the bridesmaid deciding that this, finally, is the moment to bring up 2009.

Murder mystery island books have one extra advantage, and it is the reason I keep writing them. A chalet weekend ends on Sunday, whereas a small island is a closed circle that never opens again. Everybody has to still be there on Tuesday. That changes what it costs to be the person who says out loud that something is wrong, because on Tuesday you still have to buy milk from whoever you accused. If you want more of the weather doing the trapping, my hurricane thriller books list is the closest cousin to this one, and my island thriller books roundup goes wider on the setting.

What to Read Next

FAQ: Books Like And Then There Were None

What Are the Best Books Like And Then There Were None?

Some of the best books like And Then There Were None are The Guest List by Lucy Foley, The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji, One by One by Ruth Ware, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson, and my own The Storm Reaper, a closed circle mystery set on Fire Island where a police officer realizes the storm deaths on her island have been murders.

What Is a Closed-Circle Mystery?

A closed-circle mystery traps a fixed group of people somewhere they cannot leave, so the killer has to be one of them. The isolation is usually physical, like an island, a snowed-in chalet or a mountain resort in a storm. The reader can solve it with the same information the characters have, which is what separates the form from a thriller where new suspects keep arriving.

Which Book Came First, The Invisible Host or And Then There Were None?

The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning was published in 1930, nine years before Christie’s novel, and its publisher calls it the widely suspected inspiration for And Then There Were None. Christie never confirmed reading it, so treat the connection as a strong resemblance rather than a settled fact.

Is And Then There Were None the Best-Selling Mystery Ever Written?

According to the official Agatha Christie site, it is the best selling crime novel of all time. The same page notes that Christie rewrote the ending for her 1943 stage version because she and the producers worried about leaving the audience on a low note, and that the 2015 BBC series was the first screen adaptation to restore the ending she originally published.

Which of These Books Have a Detective?

If you want a detective actually running the investigation on the page, start with The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse, where a detective is on the scene when the storm closes the hotel.

Are There Books Like The Sanatorium Where the Setting Does the Trapping?

Yes, and in murder mystery island books it is the strongest version of the form. One by One uses an avalanche, Ten uses a storm on Henry Island, and The Decagon House Murders uses an island with no electricity and no telephones. In each one the reason nobody can leave is concrete enough that you never stop believing it.

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