Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the source text’s depiction of psychological manipulation, drug addiction, and alcohol addiction.

Leo, the son of retired movie star Lana Farrar, is in the garden of his mother’s house on a Greek island. Leo is vomiting after smoking marijuana with a man named Elliot Chase, his mother’s friend and the story’s narrator, when he hears three gunshots. Leo follows the sound to an ancient ruin and finds a dead body. Elliot and the others follow Leo’s screams to the ruin. Although the scene feels like the climax of a Greek tragedy, it isn’t the ending but the beginning.

Elliot speaks directly to the reader, warning that what they’ve read about the story he’s about to tell may not be the truth. He introduces himself as both the narrator and one of the characters in the story. He recognizes that the story sounds familiar—seven characters trapped on the island, and one of them is a murderer—evoking Agatha Christie; however, he reminds the reader that this is a story about real people. Instead of a whodunit, it is a whydunit that examines what led to the murder and why people do the things they do.