Six months before, there was a fire on the island and the couple who lived there were found murdered, along with the two servants.

There were also still plenty of reveals I didn't foresee, and yet none of them felt so farfetched that I rolled my eyes at the book. With the exception of Ellery, who is obviously set up as our official detective in the group, everyone else is pretty much void of a personality other than one or two emotions that they express when stressed. While this is happening, back on the mainland another investigation has started, one that may hold clues to the mystery club's dilemma by delving into the past.But then that character brought it up so often and so adamantly that again, I’m thinking, obviously, that can’t be the answer. Except that the second day of their trip, they wake up to find seven plastic nameplates with the labels First Victim, Second Victim, and so on to Fifth Victim, with the final two plates labelled Detective and Murderer.

In January of the year the architect got murdered, Chiori died during a mystery club afterparty (alcohol poisoning or an overdose, I can’t remember which exactly).Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy ( Your California Privacy Rights) and Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Kodansha Comics Licenses The Decagon House Murders, Yamaguchi-kun Isn't So Bad, Chihiro-kun Only Has Eyes For Me, More Manga". The flatness of the prose in this novel at first bothered me and then delighted me because it freed me from that somewhat squicky feeling I often have, when reading a murder mystery, that violent death should not be quite so entertaining. The author was interested in Golden Age Mysteries and even the characters in this book note similarities to Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None. The characters are pretty much cardboard cutouts, but the plot was fascinating, with the two main threads twisting together, and several side threads winding in and out.

Some words honestly seemed made up or taken from a not very good bilingual dictionary--like "shrubberies" rather than "shrubbery. Despite revitalizing the classic murder mystery genre in Japan, and developing a cult following in the process, The Decagon House Murders is the first of Ayatsuji Yukito’s works to be translated into English. It was the second novel with the same premises that I read in a short period, but I must admit that this one beats ‘Whisper Island’ easily.

Murder At the Mansion of Strange Masks: the latest book in the Mansions series and it's still going strong.

Not one of the characters was actually clever or possessed any real common sense, many scenes were wasted on each character asking ‘was it you? The next morning, a female student is found strangled with her left hand missing (like Seji’s wife) and the plaque with 1st victim glued to her door. Seven friends venture to an isolated island for a week of bonding over their shared love for detective fiction. years ago, Nakamuro Seji built a Blue Mansion and a decagonal Annex on an uninhabited Japanese island.This would have worked better for me if the author think if the author had committed to a sillier tone, as it would have resulted in a more spoof-type of narrative that doesn't elicit a lot of scrutiny. The students on the island are desperate to identify the killer, for obvious reasons, yet the novel lacks the claustrophobic quality of And Then There Were None.