The Decagon House Murders

"Ayatsuji's brilliant and richly atmospheric puzzle will appeal to fans of golden age whodunits... Every word counts, leading up to a jaw-dropping but logical reveal" Publishers Weekly

A hugely enjoyable, page-turning murder mystery sure to appeal to fans of Elly Griffiths, Anthony Horowitz, and Agatha Christie, with one of the best and most-satisfying conclusions you'll ever read. A classic in Japan, available in English for the first time.

From The New York Times Book Review:

"Read Yukito Ayatsuji s landmark mystery, The Decagon House Murders, and discover a real depth of feeling beneath the fiendish foul play.

Taking its cues from Agatha Christie s locked-room classic And Then There Were None, the setup is this: The members of a university detective-fiction club, each nicknamed for a favorite crime writer (Poe, Carr, Orczy, Van Queen, Leroux and yes Christie), spend a week on remote Tsunojima Island, attracted to the place, and its eerie 1 0-sided house, because of a spate of murders that transpired the year before. That collective curiosity will, of course, be their undoing.

As the students approach Tsunojima in a hired fishing boat, 'the sunlight shining down turned the rippling waves to silver. The island lay ahead of them, wrapped in a misty veil of dust,' its sheer, dark cliffs rising straight out of the sea, accessible by one small inlet. There is no electricity on the island, and no telephones, either.

A fresh round of violent deaths begins, and Ayatsuji s skillful, furious pacing propels the narrative. As the students are picked off one by one, he weaves in the story of the mainland investigation of the earlier murders. This is a homage to Golden Age detective fiction, but it s also unabashed entertainment."

Rezension:

"A terrific mystery, a classic of misdirection very much in the manner of Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr'" - Washington Post

"Behold, the perfect escapist drug! If I could crush this book into a powder and snort it, I would." - Vulture

"A real page-turner... Highly recommended" - Classic Mystery

"Ayatsuji's brilliant and richly atmospheric puzzle will appeal to fans of golden age whodunits... Every word counts, leading up to a jaw-dropping but logical reveal" - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A stunner of a plot, with an ending which I simply could not believe when it was first revealed... Rivals Soji Shimada's The Tokyo Zodiac Murders for sheer audacity and ingenuity" - At the Scene of the Crime

"A knowing tribute to classic crime, it features all manner of puzzles, including locked rooms, jigsaws and magic tricks." - Mark Sanderson, The Times

"highly ingenious" - Laura Wilson, Guardian

"The Decagon House Murders, is a thrilling homage to Christie s And Then There Were None, following a group of amateur sleuths on a trip to a lonely island, the site of several unsolved murders. In the opening chapter, one character remarks: Enough gritty realism please! What mystery novels need are a great detective, a mansion, a shady cast of residents, bloody murders, impossible crimes and never-before-seen-tricks played by the murder. It s impossible not to agree." - The Guardian