Teresa Reviews Mystery of the Ten Strangers (2011)

Teresa reviews The Mystery of the Ten Strangers (2011)

(c)2025 by Teresa Peschel

(Video of the episodes can be found at the RTVE site (subscription needed), while transcripts needed to assemble the English subtitles can be found at the Agatha Christie Wiki page.)

Fidelity to text: 3½ weapons

The characters don’t match And Then There Were None exactly, but the murderous motive of justice denied sure does.

Quality of film: 4½ weapons

Not only do you get a compelling mystery, you get compelling, fully-realized characters with their own lives and motivations.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Spanish TV show Los misterios de Laura, you may want to get familiar. The Mysteries of Laura is an hour-long mystery series showcasing detective Laura Lebrel’s ability to solve crimes like Miss Marple or Poirot. Yet she’s normal enough that she must solve a mystery clue by clue, while negotiating with her boss at the police station who’s also her ex-husband, a potential new boyfriend that her ex is jealous of, her smothering mother who lives across the street, her rambunctious twin sons, and her contentious relationship with her sister.

If that’s not enough soap for you, the detectives at the police station struggle with their own personal and professional lives, including Detective Lydia, who had an affair with Laura’s ex-husband, which probably contributed to their divorce.

Oh, and the show plays fair with the viewers. You see the clues when Laura does. Laura also makes mistakes. When she panics, it’s because anyone would panic in that situation. Her panics and mistakes are not because the script needed her to suddenly get stupid to move the plot forward.

Los misterios de Laura is so well-written, I learned this from watching two episodes. Two! These episodes are part of a much larger arc about Laura’s adventures. These two episodes are also based on And Then There Were None. You may wonder, as I did, how the script was going to put a detective in an isolated location, not knowing what’s going on, and have the bodies start piling up. Neither the novel nor the play allowed a character to “solve” the mystery, but that’s exactly what Laura, TV detective, must do in every episode, so she must do it here, too.

First, we must get Laura to the isolated location. She received an invitation to a mystery weekend, but she’s going off instead on a long weekend with the new boyfriend, also a co-worker. Her boss (and ex-husband) carefully manipulates the new boyfriend into revealing to Laura, standing behind him, that he’s a lying, cheating dog. She tells the new boyfriend “No,” and, since she’s got a long, empty weekend, accepts the mysterious invitation from Senor X to solve a mystery. Martín, her usual partner, invites himself along because the invite looks suspicious.

A mysterious stranger drives them deep into the Spanish countryside to an isolated mansion in the middle of nowhere. Inside, Laura and Martín meet the other guests, all strangers to each other. Except maybe not. Guillermo Blasco, a police officer, startles when he hears Laura’s name, but denies recognizing her.

Over dinner, the guests compare notes. Each was invited for a reason designed to get them to accept. The book collector was tempted with rare legal tomes, the crime writer with a new book concept, the computer geek with venture capital, the journalist with a major scoop, the psychic with an offer to cleanse the mansion of ghosts, the psychiatrist to identify Senor X’s issues, and the beautiful bimbo admitted she’ll accept any invitation, especially from a man.

Over dinner, Margarita, the crime writer, comments that their situation resembles the famous Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None. There are even ten statues on the table! An old-fashioned gramophone with a record waiting to be played lurks in the corner. She starts the record, and the ominous voice tells the guests that they must solve the mystery of how they’re connected and rectify a grave injustice. They can’t leave because cellphones are jammed, there’s no contact with the outside world, and the isolated mansion is surrounded by an electric fence. Escape attempts will be punished.

The shrink soon discovers a body in one of the rooms. When he calls everyone up to see it, it’s vanished so they suspect he’s drunk or delusional. But they don’t miss the second body. It’s the book collector, found with his throat slashed.

Since the guests are not stupid, read mystery novels, and have three cops among them, they agree to split into three teams to search the mansion for Senor X. As they return to the dining room, a violent storm moves in. Detective Blasco announces that he can identify Senor X, but the lights go out, the thunder crashes, and he’s shot through the head.

The storm passes, the lights are fixed, and an unexpected guest arrives. It’s Laura’s estranged sister, Verónica, invited to identify some rare paintings. She’d arrived earlier, but drank a doctored drink, fell asleep, and was hidden by Senor X in the basement. When she came to, she heard the voices and found her way upstairs.

Meanwhile, Laura’s ex-husband boss and her mother are panicking. They can’t reach her and Martín and every lead is a dead end. Unlike Laura, they’ve got information she doesn’t have: a private investigator had disappeared and his secretary is sure it’s murder because of the strange case he’s been working on. Could this crime be connected to Laura’s disappearance? It sure could be because her and Verónica’s pictures are discovered in the vanished detective’s files.

Back at the mansion, the psychic is strangled. Her tarot cards didn’t foretell her future. The computer programmer is next, his head bashed in with a trophy. Laura, Martín, and Verónica find a heap of mystery novels by Waldo Lydecker, whose grave is on the mansion grounds. The victims have been killed to resemble the lurid covers. What’s more, this case might be related to one that Laura and Verónica’s father worked on decades ago with the late Guillermo Blasco. Dad died shortly afterwards of a heart attack, and the girls know little about the case.

As a side note, if you’re familiar with the noir film Laura (1944) starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, you’ll recognize the name Waldo Lydecker. Here, it’s a shout-out to the film and a clue to the murderer’s identity.

As always in an Agatha story, anyone can be the victim and anyone can be the killer. What’s more, you can have more than one killer, operating for a different, unobvious set of motives. You also see that classic trope of old sins casting long shadows. Is everyone invited to the mansion connected? You bet they are and in unexpected ways. Is everyone at the mansion guilty like in ATTWN?

Nope. In a major twist from the novel, Laura, sister Verónica, and Martín are not guilty. Laura is there to solve the murder her father could not. Verónica is there to provide extra incentive for Laura. If she fails, her sister dies. If she succeeds, her sister lives. Martín was allowed in because Senor X was flexible enough to adjust to unexpected events such as Laura’s partner showing up and refusing to leave.

You recognize elements of And Then There Were None throughout, especially the self-justification of guilty people. Unlike Agatha, the children of the guilty also get punished. Give this version a try to see how Agatha’s masterpiece can be rewritten.