Ten men and women who have gotten away with murder accept an invitation
to holiday or work on Indian
Island. Who is
the host? No
one knows. But it soon becomes obvious that their unseen host is
murderously insane, intent on executing justice for unpunished and
hitherto undetected crimes.
Nor does their host make an appearance, save in a recorded message
detailing the crimes for which they are about to die. They are
isolated on an
island without a boat and it is too far to swim.
There is no phone service and no radio. They are quite definitely
on their own until someone should come by boat from the mainland.
Desperately frightened, the
residents try to reason their way through
the puzzle. They search the island for intruders, they lock their
doors, they go about in pairs – take, in fact, all conceivable
precautions. Still, one by one, the residents die.
Each death adheres fairly closely to the old nursery rhyme, “Ten Little
Indians”, which is posted on each bedroom wall. But even this
list of clues does not help these desperate prisoners escape the
merciless justice of their unknown judge. No matter how
hard they try to detect the killer among them or how carefully they
lock themselves away from harm, one by one they die.
When the boatman returns, there are none left alive.
The police are completely baffled by the ten corpses found on Indian
Island. They, too, cannot identify the owner of the island.
They are not even certain who died last. In fact, the crime is so
perfect and so puzzling that it is solved only in the last chapter by a
post mortem message from the murderer found floating in a bottle,
explaining whodunit, how, and why.