The Decagon House Murders: Yukito Ayatsuji (Pushkin Vertigo)

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The novel might have worked better if it had focused solely on the puzzle, and treated the characters just as role-playing cogs in the story's machinery. Meanwhile on the mainland, other members of their group begin receiving mysterious letters, purportedly from the dead architect, accusing the group of murdering his daughter Chiori. The daughter, who was also amember of the mystery group, apparentlydied of alcohol poisoning at their New Year’s Eve party the previous year. One of the group’s former members, Kawaminami, takes it upon himself to investigate the letters, and enlists the help of Shimada, a friend of the murdered architect’s brother. As they look deeper into the letters, they start to investigate the circumstances surrounding the quadruple murder, and begin to see a connection between the events of the previous year and the group currently on the island. The book actually has two storylines, one that takes place on the remote island while another takes place on the main land that eventually blends to disclose a big reveal.

I became disengaged with the unfolding events, about half-way through the book, as well. Events slowed and the focus returned, again and again, to the characters casting their suspicions on one another. As much as I enjoy this book, I admit there is a big fat dead giveaway early in the story al la la out of the seven students, one student had gone up to the island earlier than the rest...you know what that means, right? so it isn't all that hard to guess who is the killer.Oct 25 Yearning Teens, Frustrated Romance, Pretty Skies — Is There Anything Else to Makoto Shinkai? A stunner of a plot, with an ending which I simply could not believe when it was first revealed… Rivals Soji Shimada’s The Tokyo Zodiac Murders for sheer audacity and ingenuity” — At the Scene of the Crime The first volume plot focused more on the mystery, the previous case and the perspective of the other two club members that did not go on the island with them. As this series will have three volumes in total, I feel like everything will start to unfold in the next volume as the end of this particular volume left me with so many questions and I keep searching if there are any updates.

This manga started off with a lot of promise, but the idea is not at all original, from the island murders, the house with secret passageways to the mystery club and the members being aptly named after famous writers. Nothing about it is remotely unique, but the art is very good and the overall mystery is decently fleshed out until it isn't. That's what Ayatsuji tries to set up and then play out here: a limited cast of characters, many with their own little (and some pretty big) secrets, isolated on this island -- and, apparently, one of them a murderer, killing the others off, one by one. 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. He had been suffering for months. He had been brooding for weeks. He had been thinking about just one thing for days. And now his mind was focusing on one single, clearly defined goal. They would arrive there suspecting nothing. Without any hesitation or fear they would walk into the decagonal trap, where they would be sentenced.Join our Discord community, where we chat about the latest news and releases from everything we cover on AIPT Indeed, it's only close to midway through the novel that readers are warned that: "the parade of death was about to begin". The members of the mystery club are excited to stay at the decagon house, uncover clues and discuss theories to determine what really happened.