Review: The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

Synopsis: Students from a university mystery club decide to visit an island which was the site of a grisly multiple murder the year before. Predictably, they get picked off one by one by an unseen murderer. Is there a madman on the loose? What connection is there to the earlier murders? The answer is a bombshell revelation which few readers will see coming.

The Decagon House Murders is a milestone in the history of detective fiction. Published in 1987, it is credited with launching the shinhonkaku movement which restored Golden Age style plotting and fair-play clues to the Japanese mystery scene, which had been dominated by the social school of mystery for several decades. It is also said to have influenced the development of the wildly popular anime movement.

This, the first English edition, contains a lengthy introduction by the maestro of Japanese mystery fiction, Soji Shimada.

It is a distinct homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. If this is your genre, you will come to this with some trepidation as to how it translates and with anticipation as you know what is to come.

"... reality is full of too many coincidences ..." - a plan is made; a trap is set; revenge and judgement; they would all die one by one "... precisely like that story written by the famous British writer ..."

In this particular version, a university detective club find themselves on an island in an attempt to solve a previous murder mystery. They all have aliases - well known fictional detectives - and the story takes place both on the island and mainland, day by day.

It is only towards the end - as the body count rises - that we find ourselves questioning whether we might have missed some clue along the way. The denouement, when it comes, is rather good as is the follow up - post crime!

I would add this with Ten Dead Comedians: A Murder Mystery as another in the homage genre, of which both do Dame Agatha justice.

If you are interested in exploring Japanese Detective Fiction, then refer to this wikipage where you will find a list of authors.