What better introduction is there to the murder mystery genre than the og who-dun-it by Agatha Christie?
This novel was so great that it inspired an entire subgenre of "who-dun-it"s, which are detective stories where a group of people (say guests of a party) are picked off one by one by an unknown killer.
The killer is suspected to be one of the party, and as fewer and fewer members remain, the larger intraparty suspicion grows.
In this case, there are 10 seemingly-unrelated characters summoned to a vacation on the island mansion of one mysterious Isaaac Morris. I won't go in depth for each character, but their commonality is that they each have tenuous connections to Mr. Morris and have committed an unpunished crime in the past.
Occupations include doctor, judge, and governess, and crimes include operating on someone while drunk (killing them), sentencing an innocent person to death, and allowing her charge to drown so she can marry his relative and inherit their wealth.
One by one, they die on the island, and the number of murderer candidates grows smaller and smaller.
"Alright, it's got to be the judge... wait, he was shot?!"
Finally, there's only one person left: the governess. Could it really have been she? No, it makes no sense.
The last one alive, the troubled woman is alone on the island. She walks to her room and finds... a NOOSE AND A CHAIR.
Somehow a noose and a chair were set up in her room. How?!
Well, at the end we get to read a message in a bottle from none other than Justice Lawrence Walgrave (law is in his first name and backwards in his last name... hm).
The crafty judge faked his murder and orchestrated the death of everyone left on the island.
Towards the end I was getting very close to suspecting a supernatural cop-out, or an unresolved ending (which also would have been a cop-out), but I was very pleased to get an in-depth explanation of everything in the form of Walgrave's letter.
The explanation was satisfying, and made me think "of course!" as I read it.
Agatha Christie did a great job of making you think you knew what was up in the first half of the book, then when Walgrave was "murdered" everything was turned upside down and I questioned all of the assumptions I made.
The twist from "oh shit it's not the judge!" to the eventual (and logical) "oh shit it WAS!" was great.
I conclude my review with a twist on a popular meme:
"She had us in the second half, not gonna lie"