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dreaj 's review for:
The Decagon House Murders
by Yukito Ayatsuji
Read for 52 Book Club Challenge 2024 #1 A locked room mystery
This novel is an example of Honkaku, a Japanese sub-genre of detective fiction, which roughly translates as "orthodox". Honkaku is inspired by, and generally follows the rules of the Golden Age of Fiction. The book makes lots of nods to this, with characters nicknamed after classic authors and Agatha Christie's "And then there were none" specifically referenced and obviously an inspiration for the story.
The plot involves members of an elite University Mystery Club, who go to stay on an island in a unique ten-sided house. Six months earlier, the island was the site of a quadruple murder that still hasn't been fully solved. Things start to unravel when the group find a set of plates with "first victim", "second victim" etc written on them. Spoiler alert - it doesn't end well.
In the meantime, friends on the mainland start to investigate letters supposedly sent by one of the quadruple murder victims, which accuse members of the club of murdering a young girl through alcohol poisoning. Are the two crimes linked? And who links them?
I enjoyed this Japanese homage to this classic fiction as I do like a puzzle book with maps and diagrams and the hope that your "little grey cells" will work out whodunnit before the big reveal. I did find that the male characters on the island tended to merge into one with too little differentiation or distinguishing characteristics. Reading it as an e-book probably didn't help this either. It's also hard not to question why they just didn't all sleep together in shifts in one room as protection after the first murder. But that would have spoiled the fun, I guess!
This novel is an example of Honkaku, a Japanese sub-genre of detective fiction, which roughly translates as "orthodox". Honkaku is inspired by, and generally follows the rules of the Golden Age of Fiction. The book makes lots of nods to this, with characters nicknamed after classic authors and Agatha Christie's "And then there were none" specifically referenced and obviously an inspiration for the story.
The plot involves members of an elite University Mystery Club, who go to stay on an island in a unique ten-sided house. Six months earlier, the island was the site of a quadruple murder that still hasn't been fully solved. Things start to unravel when the group find a set of plates with "first victim", "second victim" etc written on them. Spoiler alert - it doesn't end well.
In the meantime, friends on the mainland start to investigate letters supposedly sent by one of the quadruple murder victims, which accuse members of the club of murdering a young girl through alcohol poisoning. Are the two crimes linked? And who links them?
I enjoyed this Japanese homage to this classic fiction as I do like a puzzle book with maps and diagrams and the hope that your "little grey cells" will work out whodunnit before the big reveal. I did find that the male characters on the island tended to merge into one with too little differentiation or distinguishing characteristics. Reading it as an e-book probably didn't help this either. It's also hard not to question why they just didn't all sleep together in shifts in one room as protection after the first murder. But that would have spoiled the fun, I guess!