[There is a spoiler for And Then There Were None in this pitch.  No, I don’t reveal the killer’s identity.  If you haven’t read it, you should!]

A person doesn’t need an English degree to see the exploration of the universal themes of justice and punishment in Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel And Then There Were None.  Interestingly, few scholarly articles exist on the novel.  There are arguments aplenty on if U. N. Owen is justified or even interested in justice when s/he murders ten people, each of whom is accused of getting away with murder.  But nearly all these readers’ opinions are based on the assumption that all ten people are guilty of murder, which drains the book of some ambiguity. In fact, only eight characters are confirmed guilty through thoughts, flashbacks, or confessions.  The two that aren’t also happen to be, some say, the most minor, whose thoughts are never revealed: Thomas and Ethel Rogers, the butler and cook. Christie has been criticized for her underdeveloped domestic worker characters such as these two. But a New Critical lens reveals the paradox that the most “minor” characters are actually the most important.  The Rogerses’ so-called underdevelopment makes them ripe for a range of interpretations, and their opaqueness is not classist ignorance on Christie’s part, but an unsolved mystery within a (solved) mystery. Because we know so little about them and we never hear their thoughts, we never know if they’re guilty or innocent. In fact, unlike every other character, there’s no conclusive evidence they committed the murder they’re accused of.  This adds a dose of ambiguity that severely disrupts, if not completely overthrows, U. N. Owen’s master plan for “justice.”  

Potential Source: 

Vurmay, M. Ayça.  “Detection or Endless Deferral/Absence in Detective Fiction: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.”  DCTF Dergisi, 57.2, 2017, pp. 1127-1150.