And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Ten people with hidden nefarious pasts are on a remote island. They start dying off. Nobody can identify who the murderer is. Eventually it is down to two people. One woman ends up killing the last guy and then after seeing a gallows hangs herself. A nursery rhyme frames the story as people are knocked off one by one. After they are all dead, we hear from the authorities who have no idea what caused them to kill each other. Finally we hear the conclusion via a message in a bottle. A judge had set everything up to punish the unpunishable. He even faked his on death (via gunshut) early in the process. He then continued managing the deaths. After everyone died, he commited suicide, but staged it to look like the documented death. This is a classical story that I found even better when listened to earlier in dramatized form.