A group of stand up comedians is brought to a mysterious isolated island, seemingly to be part of a new project by the most famous comedian in existance. But they quickly discover not all is what it seems, as they begin to be killed off one by one.

I'm immediately in for any book that is an homage to And Then There Were None, one of my top three favorite books of all time. I loved all the little touches that referenced the mystery great, whether it was the island setting, or the headshots on the wall (instead of little statues), or the video accusation (instead of a record). What also drew me to this book is that it promised to be a decidedly unique take on a classic with the cast of characters Van Lente presented.


This was a mystery that definitely kept me guessing! There were a lot of great twists and turns, especially a well-done big twist at the end.


I felt the motivation behind the killings rang a little thin. It didn't seem enough necessarily within the context of the book for the murderer to have gone to such great lengths to kill this specific group of people.

It was also sometimes hard, I felt, to translate stand up comedy to the written page. There were a lot of transcripts of monologue performances that didn't always work for me.


If you are looking for a quick mystery read that is a fun, unique take on one of the best mysteries of all time, I would recommend this book. I had fun reading it, and it flew by.

This was a funny murder mystery. It was an entertaining and a quick read. 10 strangers are on a deserted island, the home of legendary comedian Dustin Walker. He has invited them there to work on his latest project. When they arrive, they find the island deserted and their host dead. With no internet or phone service, they have no way of getting off the island. And one by one, they are being murdered.

The ways they are killed become increasingly complex, as we try to figure out who is responsible for the deaths, and who, if anyone, will survive. The main story is interspersed with comedy monologues from each of the comedians. I felt the monologues were the weakest part of the story. Towards the end, I just skipped over them. I don't feel like I missed anything.

It also seemed that the people weren't taking the threat seriously enough. They didn't seem as panicked as I think I would be. As in all horror movies, people were still going off by themselves instead of sticking together. And being lured to isolated locations. Why are people so stupid?

For all these flaws, this was still a fun read. I enjoyed the basic story. The murders were inventive and the ending was satisfying. Just be prepared for characters that you like to die. This is a murder mystery after all.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

When I first read Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None many years ago, I was amazed at how audacious a book published in 1939 could be. (That’s not even taking into consideration the whodunit’s original title, which is not so much audacious as just plain offensive.) On Christie’s island, there were no good guys, no Marple or Poirot… and no survivors.

Writing a contemporary riff on one of Christie’s most famous novels is also a pretty bold move. Fred Van Lente populates his island with stand-up comics, ranging from wannabes and has-beens to huge stars. They have all been summoned by Dustin Walker, an enormously successful comedian who starred in a blockbuster movie called “Help! I Married A Cat” and its many sequels. Ever since the failure of “Help! I Married A Cat: The New Litter” in 2009, Walker has been laying low, but now he’s plotting a comeback, and everyone wants in.

Anyone who follows the comedy scene will have no trouble matching Van Lente’s fictional stand-ups to their real-life counterparts: Billy the Contractor, a Larry the Cable Guy type whose catchphrase is “Fix ‘er up!”; Janet Kahn, an aging insult comic with a yen for plastic surgery a la Joan Rivers; Zoe Schwartz, a foul-mouthed comedian in the Sarah Silverman/Amy Schumer vein; and Oliver Rees, whose act seems to be a sort of hybrid of Gallagher, Carrot Top and the Blue Man Group. It’s plausible that a down-on-his-luck comic like Steve Gordon, reduced to teaching improv at corporate team-building events, would be willing to hightail it to Walker’s island, but would a high-maintenance celeb like Janet really show up sans entourage, even if she does see it as an opportunity to recover from her latest face lift?

If you can suspend your disbelief, this is a fun, quick read, though the solution (while clever) shows just how difficult it is to go toe-to-toe with Dame Agatha, even after almost 80 years.

Savvy mystery lovers will recognize immediately from the title what Fred van Lente’s debut is: a modern reworking of And Then There Were None, the Agatha Christie novel originally published with the offensive title of Ten Little Niggers. Which is especially appropriate for this novel for reasons I’ll get to later.

Dustin Walker was a comedy legend in his day; however, a series of extremely lucrative but terrible movies has reduced the one time king of comedy to a punchline. Even so, Walker has accrued so much wealth that he now has a Caribbean island to himself with a mansion to match. So when an assortment of comedians — some well-known, some not-so-much — get an invitation from Walker to come to the island, they all respond, hoping that they can profit from what they assume is a comeback gambit. The group includes funhouse versions of Larry the Cable Guy, Joan Rivers, Pewee Herman, a Puerto Rican David Letterman, among others. As in And Then There Were None, the guests find their host has killed himself and then arranged that the rest should die, one by one.

As the novel’s title suggests, van Lente has crossed the Agatha Christie classic with a no-holds-barred, profane and often tasteless show-business satire to create a gripping thriller, both funny and suspenseful, a book that kept me reading into the wee hours so I could see how it ended. And worth every lost minute of sleep. Highly, highly recommended.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Quirk Books in exchange for an honest review.

A funny twist on a classic. The plot line stays true to the original, so readers will easily predict the ending, but I was wondering the whole time if there would be something unexpected. Comedy bits are funny, but not all of them were to my taste, i.e. I found some funnier than others. I will recommend this book to fans of Christy's original and readers looking for humor and mystery.

This is a cute takeoff on Agatha Christie, so if you know that book you know the ending pretty much. That's OK. My problem was that these were just annoying people, not really evil. They really don't deserve what happens.

This is the perfect throwback to classic murder mysteries with an updated twist! I loved reading this whodunit. I found myself trying to replace the 10 comics in this book with real life comics that matched the personalities in the book which was fun. The premise of this story is an updated version of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. A group of people, in this case famous and semi-famous comedians and TV/radio personalities who all have a connection to ultra famous Dustin Walker are invited to his private island. He has asked them all to come with a promise of a project that could further or revitalize their careers. Each has their own motive for agreeing to go and each has their own history with Dustin. Once they reach the island, it quickly becomes clear that this is not a vacation and it certainly does not promise to end with a boost to anyone's career. The guests find out upon arrival (via video) that their host Dustin intends to kill all of them, but not before diving off a cliff to his death. One by one people start to die in crazy gruesome ways and the finger pointing begins. Who is murdering everyone? Is someone among them the killer? I really enjoyed this book. I flew through it and finished it quickly because I was dying (no pun intended) to see how it would end. I could really see this as a movie!

The heady mixture of murder and comedy makes for an addictive read from opening stanza to punch line. In this murder mystery, author Fred Van Lente employs a number of classical genre tropes but keeps the story fresh with a healthy dose of humor. As the title suggests the plot revolves around a group of comedians brought to an island under false pretenses, thinking they're going to collaborate with a comedy heavyweight only to be picked off one by one by a mysterious murderer. I couldn't put it down - highly recommended - 5/5 stars.

This is a review of an ARC from NetGalley

Oof. Nine comedians are summoned to an island to meet with a legendary king of comedy on a new project. Once they arrive, they realize there host is missing. And then the murders start.

This was trying to be "And Then There Were None" meets Clue. But Agatha Christie is a brilliant master plotter and queen of suspense. And Clue was a brilliant farce. This is just...unfortunate. Weak plots, poorly drawn characters, obvious jokes. Just not even worth finishing.

In his debut novel, Fred Van Lente does Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None - but with comedians! And it’s not bad.

Many of the characters are thinly-veiled versions of real-life comedians: there’s a Larry the Cable Guy-type, Carrot Top, Ali Wong, George Lopez, and Joan Rivers, to name a few. They’re lured to a private island owned by a famous, rich comic they all have connections to who strangely isn’t there to greet them - and then the comedians start getting killed one by one!

And Then There Were None (alternately titled Ten Little Niggers/Indians/Soldiers hence Van Lente’s title) is my favourite Agatha Christie novel and a masterpiece but Van Lente, despite being a talented comics writer, isn’t as good a novelist as Christie to make his story as gripping as hers. I think he’s going for both a comedic and thrilling novel and, in splitting his focus on two disparate genres, doesn’t really accomplish either.

Whereas with Christie the tension builds until you forget you’re even reading, you’re flying through the pages, Van Lente’s story has a stop/start rhythm to it; sometimes it’s exciting, like when a murder happens, but more often than not it’s kinda dull as the characters stand around wondering what to do.

The story is padded out with excerpts from the comedians’ standup routines which were the worst parts of the book. Full marks to Van Lente for trying, and I realise writing genuinely funny comedy is very hard, but, wow, were these passages unfunny - I didn’t laugh once at anything. Maybe that was the point - to highlight the comedians’ hackery - but it didn’t make for entertaining reading either.

The premise is still a great one and kept me reading to find out whodunit. I also couldn’t guess who the murderer was (though their motivation for the killings was so stupid) so the mystery is maintained the whole time. Van Lente sporadically wrings enough interesting scenes out of it to make this a decent, quick read on the beach or on a plane. But it’s still a very average book and, if you’ve never read Agatha Christie’s original, I’d highly recommend checking that one out over Ten Dead Comedians.

Not my taste. Trashy humor, boring, repetitious, but I think there's a market for it. I'm just not it.

A group of comedians, all either on their way up or on their way down, is invited to a fellow superstar comedian's private island for a mysterious project. But the project, it turns out, is killing them.

Like all good comedy, "Ten Dead Comedians" is light fare, but with a definite bite. It's less haha-hilarious than I was expecting, but it does have that upending of expectations, that edgy attack on accepted cultural mores, that good stand-up does. The comedians represent a cross-section of contemporary American comedy, including the white blue collar comedian who pokes fun at Liberal America in a heavy (faked) Southern accent, the ultra-liberal Asian lesbian who alienates everyone around her with her crusading, the Hispanic TV show host who harasses women and gays, the washed-up improv instructor, and so on and so forth. Each character has a story, which they get to tell, exposing the sexism, racism, classism, and fame-chasing of their society, and each character has a reason why the others might want to kill them.

I won't spoil it by saying whodunnit, but readers of this kind of thing will have a good guess, while also being satisfied by the twist that exposes the villain. The plotting is conventional locked-room murder mystery stuff, but it's done well, with a good balance of surprise and satisfaction, and the action is page-turning. All the characters are sort of likable, or at least pitiable, and sort of irritating jerks, so it's good that the narrative doesn't spend too long with any of them, giving multiple points of view in each chapter. This could be confusing, but the characters are all delineated clearly enough that it's easy enough to sort them out after a couple of chapters. Readers should be beware that the body count is high, as you'd expect, and there is some gore, although not in egregiously large quantities. In the end, "Ten Dead Comedians" is like a good comedy routine--it's a fun piece of entertainment, with enough of a snap to it to keep you listening, and thinking about it afterwards.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I received an ARC via Netgalley and Quirk books but that in no way influenced my review. This book is an homage to Agatha Christie’s <I>And Then There Were None</i> (Otherwise known as <i>Ten Little Indians</i> after the nursery rhyme which, sad to say, had an even more offensive racial title back in the 30s, think N word). The plot was lifted directly from her work and it’s one most mystery readers will know even if they’ve never read Dame Christie’s book as it’s been done a thousand times (I just saw a rerun of the <i>Murder, She Wrote</i> version of it the other day). I wanted to read this one because it sounded fun and I know the author from some of the comic book work.

The twist this time is they’re all comedians at various stages in their careers with one connection: they all credit Dustin Walker, their host, with being their inspiration. You’re quickly introduce to the nine comics in short chapters, Steve who once was on a TV show with Walker but whose career tanked and he’s now teaching improv (and he has a dark secret that is referenced through much of the novel before being revealed), TJ who also worked on that show but went on to be a relatively big deal with another TV show (and hates Steve) and makes his Hispanic heritage a big part of who he is, Dante, an African America comic (who might not be as street as he pretends) and alcoholic with rage issues, Ollie, a prop comic who does an act Orange Baby Man (who comes across as a cross between the Blue Man group, Pee Wee Herman and Ned Flanders in his abhorrence of bad language and mean humor), Bill the Mechanic, who’s snobby and wealthy pretending to be blue collar ala Larry the Cable Guy, Janet who reminds me of Joan Rivers only more obsessed on making her vagina part of her act, Zoe who’s a bit of a stereotype: the neurotic Jewish woman, and Ruby, the Vietnamese lesbian who does podcast humor. Rounding out the 10th comic could be either Walker himself or Meredith his African-British gal Friday and comic wanna be.

Walker has lured them all to a private island, to his estate there, all of them thinking this comic legend is going to help their careers but in short order they’re shown a recording of him accusing them of crimes against comedy and of him committing suicide. Following Christie’s template, they can’t reach the outside world (no internet, no cell phone reception) and one by one they start getting picked off until well...there was none.

To be honest it wasn’t too hard to figure out who the killer was and why (that really wasn’t the point I don’t think) but it was an entertaining read. I will say that not ever character is as well drawn as the others with the ladies suffering more from this lack of depth than the men. Ruby is the best drawn of the women, an overly sensitive, overly aggressive feminist who sees men as the enemy (there’s no subtly to her feminism which, as a feminist, I found disappointing). TJ and Dante are also aggressive and very unlikeable to be honest. Actually only Ollie, in his child like innocence (child like in an arrested development sort of way) was nice and he is abused badly by the others as not being a ‘real comic’ because of his type of act (ironically he’s the richest, most successful of them). His pain at their mockery is the most real emotion in the whole novel.

And that is maybe one of the bigger failures of the novel: not a lot of emotional depth. Sometimes we’re in their heads but often there is a great narrative distance which keeps you from really engaging the reader. In fact, for some reason many of them are referred to by first and last name throughout and I found that irksome. There was one point I was very annoyed by a very obviously wrong death scene but power on. It’s actually a clue. I was a little disappointed by who was the last comic standing only because I didn’t like the character but it made sense that comic was the one to solve it.

As I said I did have an ARC so I didn’t take formatting into consideration but it was atrocious in mine so I hope it gets fixed. Also large chunks were in red and I wasn’t sure if that it was an editing left over from either adding to or maybe highlighting for removal and I’m rather hoping the latter. It was in the sections where we were getting to see parts of the comic’s acts (which were dispersed through the book) and honestly they went on rather long and oddly not that funny (at least to me. Humor is one of the hardest things to write because it’s so subjective). There are several post Trump election references as well (I’m imagining were added after the first draft as I don’t think a publishing schedule could take something from start to finish in less than five months without it really showing).

This black comedy is a clever take on Christie's "And then there were none." Quite the interesting cast of characters, too. I couldn't help try to figure out what real-life comics the author was spoofing. The posh, upper-class gentleman whose onstage persona reeked of Larry the Cable Guy; the former talk show host who sounded like a combination of Jay Leno/George Lopez; An older insult comic who reminded me of Joan Rivers; The streetwise urban comic who was actually from a middle class home; The childlike weirdo who came across as some strange genetic combination of PeeWee Herman and the Blue Man Group. They and others are invited to a mysterious island where they are being picked off one by one. The owner of the island in question is an extremely famous comic who has lost some of his shine after a series of bad movies (Eddie Murphy? Jim Carey, maybe?).

There are some graphic, bloody moments. But over all it's a pretty good book to pass the time with while chilling out on vacation.

On the whole, the book reminded me of the old movie spoof "Death by Murder".

I'm sorry to say that I will be unable to finish this book. I thought that it sounded entertaining, but it just isn't the book for me.

A blast to read, it's the perfect mash-up of classic Agatha Christie and truly funny stand-up comedy. The only drawback is this is Fred's first novel. Was hoping that he'd have lots more titles for me to go back and read.

A take on the "locked room" mystery, this had about 6 too many characters; I had difficult time keeping them straight and never felt I knew much about them. The solution was clever with a good twist.

It's compared to Agatha Christie's AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, and while the plot is similar, take care in recommending to Christie fans as it is a bit raunchy in places.

Thanks to the publisher for the advance digital reading copy.

Great book. For me it took a while to get the characters in place. There are 10 comedians after all. But it got really interesting when they arrived on the island.
Great read, intriguing and very enjoyable

Ten comedians on a remote island, being picked off one by one. A big jumble of motives and murders, red herrings and twists, violence and vitriol. And it's absolutely brilliant! An absolute page-turner where nothing is really what it seems and the things you are sure of change by the minute.

Fred Van Lente's debut novel might be based on Agatha Christie's classic 'And Then There Were None', but it's so much more than an updated copy of the original. In 'Ten Dead Comedians' there is all of the cleverness associated with Christie's book, but also a critique of modern society, comments on the nature of celebrity and a fast pace that is more in line with what we expect of TV's Sherlock. I literally couldn't put it down - it has been my constant companion as I raced through to the end. I'm usually more at home with the more sedate pace of historical crime, but this grabbed my attention and wouldn't let me go.

If you're looking for a compulsive, easy and fun read then this could be the book for you. One thing is for certain: you absolutely will not be bored.