Prashant, BA LLB, Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad
ABSTRACT
Agatha Christie, an English by origin, is credited to have penned down a series of suspense thrillers and murder & mystery fiction novels since the beginning of the 20th century. In the novel "And Then There Were None", attributed to be one of Agatha's best-known works, ten people are invited to a desolated island and are murdered in a sequential manner. In the epilogue of the story, this murder mystery concludes with a letter from Justice Wargrave. It reveals Wargrave as the killer and he tries to explain the reasoning behind his killings, thereby justifying his actions. Justice Wargrave felt that it was virtually impossible to punish them all under the normal procedures of law, therefore he had to take recourse to an "innovative" method in order to serve justice. This research paper seeks to analyse how the notion of justice is being portrayed in the novel and whether justice is served at the end of the story, through a deep analysis of the plot. This research paper tends to portray that notion of justice can many a time be misinterpreted even by the so-called stalwarts of Law.
Keywords: Murder, mystery, justice, Agatha Christie, law
