The Decagon House Murders (Jukkakukan no Satsujin Shinsou Kaiteiban)

A hugely enjoyable, page-turning murder mystery with one of the best & most-satisfying conclusions you'll ever read: clever enough that you're unlikely to guess it, but simple enough that you'll kick yourself when it's revealed. That's what has made it a classic in Japan, & what readers of this first ever English translation will love too.The members of a university mystery club decide to visit an island which was the site of a grisly, unsolved multiple murder the year before. They're looking forward to investigating the crime, putting their passion for solving mysteries to practical use, but before long there is a fresh murder, & soon the club-members realise they are being picked off one-by-one. The remaining amateur sleuths will have to use all of their murder-mystery expertise to find the killer before they end up dead too.
This is a playful, loving & fiendishly plotted homage to the best of golden age crime. It will delight any mystery fan looking to put...
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 & — yes — Christie), spend a week on remote Tsunojima Island, attracted to the place, & its eerie 10-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, & no telephones, either.
A fresh round of violent deaths begins, & Ayatsuji’s skillful, furious pacing propels the narrative...