Clodhopping prose and clunky exposition don't succeed in spoiling the pleasure of trying to guess the identity of the culprit, or the highly ingenious solution." - Laura Wilson, The Guardian The mystery switches between the club members who are at the house and a couple of ppl who are trying to learn more about an event some of the members were involved with. The switching between these two threads lessened the momentum of the events at the decagon house and didn’t really even result in some tantalizing red herrings or promising leads. Frankly, it just bogged things down. The island setting is the only allure to this series. We have two POVs we follow. The mystery club amid being murdered ala And Then There Were None, and this ditzy boring girl who is pointless and nothing but Want to take our relationship to the next level? Become a patron today to gain access to exclusive perks, such as: A group of students arrive on a deserted island, which was the scene of a grisly murder one-year prior. .Obviously nothing goes wrong and they spend a relaxing week long vacation, talking about books they like and taking in the sun… oh, wait, no, this a mystery novel. Yeah, scratch that… bad things happen.

Note: this book was first published in Japan under the title of 'The Island of Lamentation' and it won the author an award when he was still a student. Decades later it has been published as 'The Decagon House Murders' in English. Clues are sprinkled throughout the story: it's a puzzle, allowing the reader to play along as detective in this whodunnit, matching their skills against those of the author (and the murderer). The Decagon House Murders is a twisted and enjoyable mystery in its own right. There's lots of room for red herrings, plot twists, and unexpected disclosures with its constrained setting and characters, dual narrative, and dual timeline. "I'm Van Dine" as soon as I read these words, my mind was like WTF! This is the debut novel of the author and also the first of his 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. They both have students going to a remote island where they’re killed off 1 by 1 and both openly pay homage to Agatha Christie’s original. And no simple deaths. Blowing them all up in one go would be infinitely easier and more certain, but he should not choose that route.

The exposition is integral to the plot, but the fact that it's through her is very annoying she is clumsily handled and just has zero real personality, everyone on the island is so much more interesting than her, the POV shifts can kind of kill your interest in the story and momentum you have going while reading. I know it's to space out the buildup and pay off, but it just doesn't work. The Decagon House Murders alternates between Kawaminami's investigations on the mainland and the progressively macabre events taking place on the island, paying respect to Christie's original while crafting its own convoluted and skillfully constructed mystery. The novel manages to innovate despite references to Christie's classic – as well as the detectives and writers of the larger Golden Age milieu – and there are a number of sophisticated variations on well-worn patterns. The Decagon House Murders ( Japanese: 十角館の殺人, Hepburn: Jukkakukan no Satsujin) is a Japanese manga series, based on Yukito Ayatsuji's novel of the same name, illustrated by Hiro Kiyohara. It was serialized in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Monthly Afternoon from August 2019 to April 2022, with its chapters collected in five tankōbon volumes. In North America, the manga is licensed by Kodansha USA. 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) He's going old-school, with the novel proper opening with one of the club-members, Ellery, making the case for mystery fiction as an "intellectual game", a puzzle for readers -- and emphatically distancing everything here from the then prevailing form of Japanese mystery fiction:

With them secluded on an island completely cut off from the main land, they need to use their amateur sleuthing skills to figure out who the killer is before it's too late. Without any hesitation or fear they would walk into the decagonal trap, where they would be sentenced. Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases for April Week 1: April 5 - 11 Anime Releases Grenadier: Hohoemi no Senshi (Grenadier: The Beautif... read more I said this was going to be a spoiler-heavy review already but I am about to go into end-game spoilers so read at your discretionAs 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.

First published in 1987, Ayatsuji’s brilliant and richly atmospheric puzzle will appeal to fans of golden age whodunits. Six months after the bodies of architect Nakamura Seiji, his wife, and two servants were found in the burnt remains of a house on isolated Tsunojima, a small island off the coast of Japan, seven members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club decide to visit Tsunojima. They are to reside for a week in the bizarrely constructed Decagon House, where everything seems to have 10 sides and where they soon learn that a killer is targeting them. The tension in this sophisticated homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is expertly heightened by a parallel plot set on the mainland, where two other members of the Kyoto society have received threatening letters, ostensibly from the dead Seiji. As in the best fair-play mysteries, every word counts, leading up to a jaw-dropping but logical reveal. (July) Publishers Weekly He knew his plan was far from perfect. It was best described as shoddy rather than meticulous. But he’d never intended to plan everything out in perfect detail in the first place. Pineda, Rafael (March 25, 2022). "The Decagon House Murders Manga Ends in April". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on May 7, 2022 . Retrieved May 7, 2022.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.