Plot summary

The morning after his eighty-fifth birthday party held at his Norfolk County mansion with his dysfunctional family of his mother, his surviving children, their spouses, and their children in attendance, successful novelist and publishing house owner Harlan Thrombey, self-made in his wealth, is discovered in his attic study by Fran, one of the housekeepers, him dead with his throat slashed, knife in hand. Arguably the last person to see him alive was his Brazilian nurse, Marta Cabrera, the daughter of an illegal immigrant, something she has told few within this sphere. She went through her evening ritual of playing a game of Go with him and administering his medication at that time. A week later following the funeral, the local police are questioning the family members at the mansion to see what happened that night that could have led to his death, the questioning in their belief that Harlan committed suicide. The interviewees all confirm the time-line of events supporting that suicide belief. One other person at each of the interviews is famed private detective Benoit Blanc, who the family will learn has been retained as a consultant. What he fails to tell them in return is that he was hired anonymously, cash in advance. Blanc is able to bait many of the interviewees into bad mouthing other family members while being reticent to admit something that Blanc already seems to know about them, each of the family members looking out solely for him/herself. The key interview, one that happens unexpectedly, may be with Marta, who Blanc suspects was Harlan's confidante and who cannot lie in always having the physical reaction of vomiting whenever she does. One person not interviewed in being absent is one of Harlan's grandchildren, overly privileged Ransom Drysdale, who left the party early after having had a private conversation with his grandfather, he not being interviewed somewhat immaterial as Ransom was known to have not been at the mansion at the time of death. The nature of the investigation changes a week later at the reading of the will, where all will discover but some who were already aware that Harlan had rewritten it the week before his death, the specific changes not known until this day. With all these comings and goings, learning the full truth of what happened with Harlan may come down to discovering the unknown of who hired Blanc and why.—Huggo