Ten strangers receive invitations to spend a summer weekend on a secluded island off the coast of Devon. Each has been lured under a different pretext: a secretarial position, a reunion with old friends, an unexpected holiday. The guests include the righteous and recently retired Judge Wargrave, the adventurous and reckless Captain Philip Lombard, the practical schoolteacher Vera Claythorne, the timid but respected Dr. Armstrong, the former detective William Blore, the stern religious spinster Emily Brent, the elderly General Macarthur, the wealthy thrill-seeker Anthony Marston, and the butler and cook, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers.

Upon arrival at the island's grand yet eerie mansion, the group discovers that their mysterious host, U.N. Owen, is absent. During their first dinner together, a phonograph record suddenly plays, accusing each person present of committing a murder that the law could not touch. Before anyone can react, one of the guests chokes to death on his drink. The guests soon realize they are completely isolated, as a violent storm prevents any boat from reaching the shore or any signal from leaving.

In the center of the dining table sit ten small soldier figurines. Hanging on the wall is a framed nursery rhyme, Ten Little Soldiers, which describes how each soldier meets its end. After the first death, one figurine vanishes. When another guest dies the following morning, then another in a grimly methodical fashion, the survivors understand they are being hunted according to the rhyme's verses. Paranoia consumes the group. They search the house, lock away weapons, and turn on one another, never certain if the killer is hiding on the island or standing right beside them.

As the bodies accumulate, each death mirrors both the poem and the hidden crime for which the victim was accused. Secrets surface: a reckless driving incident that killed two children, a deliberate failure to give life-saving medicine, a wrongful execution passed down by a vengeful judge, a fatal operation performed while drunk, and a drowning staged to look like an accident. The remaining few grow increasingly frantic, realizing that the killer knows every detail of their past.

At the height of the horror, one of the survivors is found dead while the others seem to have vanished. The final two, convinced the other is the murderer, face off in a deadly confrontation. Only one person remains alive, believing they have won. But when that last survivor returns to their room, a noose and a chair await, as if placed there by someone who knew exactly what they would do. They hang themselves, completing the final line of the nursery rhyme.

When authorities arrive days later, they find ten bodies on an island with no living soul to explain what happened. The mystery seems unsolvable until a fishing boat hauls up a sealed manuscript in a bottle. The confession reveals that the killer was among the guests all along, a person who faked their own death midway through the weekend with the help of an unwitting accomplice. That accomplice was then murdered, leaving the killer free to eliminate the remaining survivors while appearing to be a victim. The mastermind is a man with a terminal illness and a lifelong obsession with justice and execution, who crafted this elaborate death game as his final act of judgment.

The manga adaptation, illustrated by Aya Nikaidō, faithfully translates this classic suspense structure into the visual language of manga, using shadow, expression, and panel composition to amplify the isolation and creeping dread of the original story. The ten-character ensemble, the locked-island setting, and the nursery rhyme death count remain the central pillars of the narrative, driving the plot toward its famously bleak and ironic conclusion.