The Decagon House Murders: Yukito Ayatsuji (Pushkin Vertigo)

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Shimada Soji also explains in his Introduction that this novel triggered a revival of the " honkaku mystery"-form -- orthodox, old-style puzzlers, the detective-work in them based on logical reasoning (as opposed to the: "realism of the social school of mystery fiction" one of the characters had complained about), in a new, more modern guise. But if the whodunnit part is reasonably well done, the how-he-done-it -- painstakingly then spelled out -- is kind of a mess.

One might add: 'apparently', to all of the above and much of the below -- predictably, not everything in the novel is as entirely clear-cut as it might (initially) seem. The time focused on her and their shenanigans is pretty boring, she's a boring Mary Sue and her clueless demeanor and comedic relief makes me think she's more or less there for the reader to insert into and live through as she watches all of this unfold around her while desperately (and failing) to piece this entire mystery together. I knew the feeling Nanci had described — it’s the human equivalent of a computer’s spinning rainbow beachball — and I was moved by her invocation of it. The only family I knew from Sea Cliff consisted of a father who had something to do with Starbucks, his wife who collected fancy glass balls, and their three children Krystelle, Damon, and Sterling — the names a reference to crystals, diamonds, and silver, respectively. 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.

The characters are also quite expressive and easily distinguishable from one another; there’s an actual variety in body types and facial structures even before more individual personality quirks come into play. When they are asked to test a tracker that can read their thoughts and access their memories, guilty secrets are revealed. There are no extra characters meaning there isn't anyone in the story that doesn't give you some kind of information to help you make a decision.

As the self-proclaimed whodunnit enthusiast that I am, I was looking forward to reading this, especially as it promised to be a playfully meta murder mystery. To really enjoy this one, you have to be a person who enjoys the deduction aspect of a mystery novel over the plot. He will know the extra layers and extra walls and extra rooms; just as he will know your secrets, casting a cold eye upon them. Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review 's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers.Also, they are whodunnit experts, surely they would know that they are squandering valuable time on the kind of idiotic disagreements that solve nothing and if anything may result in them not paying attention to their surroundings etc. One of the club members, who was known as Conan Doyle before he quit the club, is horrified to one day receive a letter in the mail from Nakamura Seiji, the man who built the houses on the island.

Six months prior to the story's opening, the owner and builder of the house died when the adjacent mansion burned to the ground, and since the body of one of the five people who were on the island at the time was never accounted for, the case is considered unsolved. First published in Japan in 1987, it didn't make it into English translation until 2015 and was recently republished by Pushkin's Vertigo imprint, which specializes in classic mysteries in English translation, including an impressive number of Japanese titles such as Soji Shimada's The Tokyo Zodiac Murders and Masako Togawa's The Lady Killer.Conan Doyles’s Holmes stories were first translated and serialised in Japan in the 1890s, and quickly found a passionate fanbase.