The Decagon House Murders – Yukito Ayatsuji
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, and 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 and fiendishly plotted homage to the best of golden age crime. It will delight any mystery fan looking to put their little grey cells to use.
I received a review copy from the publishers through Netgalley.
Yukito Ayatsuji is taking one of the most famous murder mystery stories and putting a new spin on events. A group of friends – students at a university mystery club – are all planning on spending a few days staying on a small island. The island has a dark past as the previous year the couple that lived on the island, and members of their staff, were murdered. One employee remains missing to this day and it is generally accepted that he was the killer and has fled to freedom.
One of the students knows the new owner of the island and manages to negotiate for the members of the mystery club to stay for a few days in the intriguingly named Decagon House – a smaller building away from the main residence where the murders occurred. Pleasingly for map fans there is a map of Decagon House inside the book and you can see it is a 10 sided building with a room on each of the walls. The rooms taken by each of the students is shown on the map and if you are playing amatur sleuth it is a helpful guide when you try to work out who may have been close to any given room at any time. Handy when the murders begin.
Murders? Yes indeed. I said this was a new spin on a famous murder story – take a collective of people, pop them on an island and let the murders commence. It is Yukito Ayatsuji’s take on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and it is a fun read. First the students…fewer than the 10 guests that Christie had on her island and because they are all members of the same club they know each other before proceeding begin. Each of the students has their club name – the surname of a famous mystery writer, Christie (nod), Poe etc. Slightly different from the original source material is that there are several scenes which also take place off the island. An independent investigator is asking questions and conducting his own review of the murders on the island the previous year.
The narrative is split – students on the island being picked off one by one with a variety of causes of death. The mainland where the truth about the murders the previous year is slowly being discovered. Will the two plot threads come together? Well possibly. Will they come together while all the students are still alive? Certainly not – the body count is high.
The Decagon House Murders was my first expereince of a Japanese murder story. There are some distintive language styles in Japanese to English so I read with more care than usual but the translator has done a terrific job and there was never any point where I wasn’t getting a great story. I am aluding to the naming style of family name before forename which was explained before the story began and it does help to understand this as characters are introduced.
I consider And Then There Were None to be the best of the Christie collection and I enjoyed this spin on the original. Look out for this when it is published next month I really enjoyed the time I spent with this one.
The Decagon House Murders will be published on 3 December 2020 by Pushkin Vertigo. It will be available in paperback and digital format and you can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Decagon-House-Murders-Yukito-Ayatsuji/dp/1782276343/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&qid=1604509887&refinements=p_27%3AYukito+Ayatsuji&s=books&sr=1-2&text=Yukito+Ayatsuji