The Decagon House Murders: Yukito Ayatsuji (Pushkin Vertigo)

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But here the characters were bland, the girls left a lot to be desired (they are the type of characters that would have been okay-ish if they existed in a 1930s whodunnit) while the boys (allegedly) were all kind of clever and yet so very foolish and slow.

Kodansha USA publishes the series digitally in North America from August 17, 2021, [8] to November 29, 2022. Death was quickly welcomed into the plot and a And Then There Were None scenario was introduced, where both reader and remaining characters attempted to puzzle out who the criminal in their midst was. In the present day, Orczy’s and Carr’s left hands were also removed, but only Carr’s was seen by multiple people. Also, I needed more character development just so I could attach more of an identity to each of the people on the island. In fact, the book contains an absolutely fascinating introduction, giving a brief history of the Honkaku sub-genre and is well worth a read (I particularly liked the bit of info where they discuss that it’s looked less as a literary genre and more like a game between author and reader).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.

As the book builds towards its crescendo, the descriptions of the natural surroundings become poetic and ominous, in the tradition of the greatest Japanese literature. It was entertaining to keep track of them all and guess at which ones mattered and which ones might be red herrings. I wish the original names were introduced earlier on, so that the reader had enough time to map the nicknames to the real names.I pretty much figured out who did it fairly early on, but I didn’t figure out how so much (and when the reveal hit, I had a moment where I could have applauded it) “I’m Van Dine” was one of the biggest wham lines I’ve read in a while, and genuinely had me flipping through pages trying to figure it out HOW that one happened.

The reason for their presence there is a bit flimsy, as they are supposedly there to try to solve this cold case but do not have an actual plan in place to figure out how they will spend their week there. A group of students arrive on a deserted island, which was the scene of a grisly murder one-year prior. Murder At the Mansion of Strange Masks: the latest book in the Mansions series and it's still going strong. I do think I would like to take a look at the original though, because I'm not sure I would have translated some things in this book the same way, for example, in having one character refer to the group as "y'all.

There’s an eager beaver character who inserts himself into the former club members’ investigation, and in some ways ends up running it. 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. You need to be the person who sits there puzzling over every line and trying to think outside the box… those here for the story will likely leave unfulfilled, those here for the “game” of it, they may find something special. I will say that I'm a bit frustrated at not being able to share my experience with the identity of the who, but to do so would be giving away the show. After learning that several other people have received a similar letter, he also begins to suspect that something sinister is happening.

Some words honestly seemed made up or taken from a not very good bilingual dictionary--like "shrubberies" rather than "shrubbery. I would recommend this book to any thriller reader and classic crime lover, just so they get to experience Ayatsuji's clever dupe for themselves.

As I usually do with Japanese fiction in translation, I'll note that if you're new to it you may find the prose stilted at first, give yourself some time to get comfortable. Anyway, just because I found this to be a banal and lacklustre read does not mean you should not give it a go.