 First edition | |
| Author | Gilbert Adair |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Mystery novel, postmodern fiction |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber |
Publication date | 2009 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 258 pp. |
| ISBN | 978-0-571-23881-1 |
| OCLC | 260207170 |
| Preceded by | A Mysterious Affair of Style |
And Then There Was No One is a novel by Gilbert Adair first published in 2009. After The Act of Roger Murgatroyd and A Mysterious Affair of Style, it is the third book in the Evadne Mount trilogy. However, rather than being yet another more or less straightforward whodunit, albeit with postmodern overtones, And Then There Was No One thoroughly blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction; or rather, reality, fiction, and metafiction.
The book is presented in the form of a (fictional) memoir written by a British author called Gilbert Adair who has recently published two successful whodunits featuring mystery writer turned amateur sleuth Evadne Mount entitled The Act of Roger Murgatroyd and A Mysterious Affair of Style. In September 2011, he travels to Meiringen, Switzerland to participate in the town's Sherlock Holmes conference. While he is staying there, two unexpected things happen: firstly, Anglo-Bulgarian novelist and essayist Gustav Slavorigin, the star of the festival, is murdered; and secondly, to his great surprise, Adair discovers Evadne Mount, the inspiration for his protagonist and the sharer of royalties from the two novels, sitting among the audience.
As with the first two books in the trilogy, the title is again a variation on an Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None.