And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie’s mystery novel And Then there Were None is not only a part of the mystery genre of literature but it is also within a specific subgenre called a “locked-room” mystery, where a crime, almost always a murder, is committed under circumstances where it would be seemingly impossible for someone to commit and/or evade detection in the course of getting in and out of the crime scene.

A recurring theme in the book is the idea that the people on the island are being served a kind of strange ritualistic justice, in the form of a children’s rhyme, however, it is revealed that everyone being “served justice” are not really being served justice, but a form of uncontrolled spree-vigilantism from one of their own, who hands out his form of vigilantism based on what he perceives as levels of moral severity, killing the most heinous in his eyes first and the most questionably immoral guest for last. Even though the all the guests share the same kind of crime, murder of one or a number of people, they all share different fates, which goes against a key tenant of what justice itself means, that justice is fair, and that fairness means we ought to treat similar cases in similar ways. For instance, it would be unfair if we were to respond to one murderer by burning them, and then respond to another, but equal criminal act by hanging them. Similar situations ought to be treated in similar ways.