The Decagon House Murders follow a group of students who are fans of the mystery genre and run a mystery club at the K University. Each of them has a nickname derived from the famous American and British authors of the same genre. They decide to spend seven days from the spring holidays in the infamous Decagon House.

The Decagon House, with its outlandish design, was home to Nakamura's and their servants. But one year ago, the house was burned to ashes, and everyone inside was slaughtered. The mystery shrouded the entire incident, and the police never apprehended the killer.

And now with, the students in the derelict house and they are dying one by one.

Two amateurs sleuths, Shimada and Kawaminami, look into when Kawaminami received a mysterious letter from the Nakamuro Seiji, the victim and owner of Decagon House.

Originally published in 1987, the book is one of the finest examples of the Honkaku genre. This is a debut novel of Yukito Ayustsuji and, for the first time is translated into English.
The story is narrated alternately between the mainland and the island of Tsunojima. The mainland version is narrated by Shimada and Kawaminami, a student also part of the mystery club. The island version is from the perspective of the group of students.

The island narration is influenced by Agatha Christie’s, "And Then There Were None", and is explicitly mentioned by the students. The book is an homage to Christie’s work and the golden age detective novel by adopting the names of the famous of the era.

The main highlight of the book is the house, described in details with a map, floor maps and diagrams. As with other unique feature of the book, are its characters. The readers get the little backstory of the students. They are detached and lack emotions. Each people have a typical personality and they have differences amongst themselves. That’s where the characterisation ends.

The ending is unpredictable. The readers will wonder about the culprit, but the way the crime is committed will surprise the readers.
On the whole, The Decagon House Murders is an interesting read and readers who enjoy locked room mystery will completely love this book.

I hope to read more of the Honkaku genre and adding some more books from this genre to my TBR.

My rating for the book is 4 stars.

Thank you, NetGalley and Pushkin Press, for the copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

Japanese mystery books are the best there are. Loved this one and it has me guessing and doing a bit of Math as well.

University students from a mystery club decide to spend a week on a Island where there were violent deaths six months ago. The enigmatic Decagonal house harbours some secrets and soon enough the students are being killed one by one on the island. The group doubts each other and there is an unknown element at play as well. The suspense is retained throughout and there is a nice ending tying up the probable loose ends.

Looking forward to reading more if the author's work.

Thank you Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the ARC

I absolutely love mystery and detective fiction, so this book was perfect for me. And the fact that it makes multiple allusions to Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None”? Even better.
I had such fun with this book, following along with the characters and trying to figure out who was responsible. I actually thought I’d been spoiled for the killer when I was trying to look up more information on this book online, but I was not! The killer was a complete surprise for me and I was delighted when everything was finally revealed.

Sadly I just couldn't get into this and gave up. The set up was just too trite (I know that was the point!) and it wasn't for me. Onwards and upwards!

Murder and mystery are what they are all interested in as the members of the so called Mystery Club of their university. They like to delve in the classic stories and to solve the puzzles of crimes. They have even given themselves nick names after the great classic writers of crime novels: Ellery, Carr, Leroux, Poe, Van, Agatha and Orczy. When they are invited to the remote island of Tsunojima, they are thrilled. It has been the place of a quadruple murder the year before and thus promises an interesting week which they want to spend with writing and enjoying themselves. Yet, they did not count on somebody waiting there for them to settle an old bill which is to be paid with their lives. In the meantime, on the mainland, three people receive letters insinuating that something strange might be going on and that a presumably dead killer might still be around.

“Even if the world were viewed as a chessboard, and every person on it a chess piece, there would still be a limit as to how far future moves could be predicted. The most meticulous plan, plotted to the last detail, could still go wrong sometime, somewhere, somehow.”

Yukito Ayatsuji’s debut novel is clearly inspired by the novels of the Golden Age of crime using the classic setting. “The Decagon House Murders” was first published in Japan in 1987 but only now the English translation is available. The reader alternatingly follows the evens on the island, where one after the other student finds his/her death and on the mainland, where they do not know what exactly happens there but try to combine the murders of the year before with the current events and the mysterious letters they got. Even though both lines of enquiry provide numerous ideas of what could be happening, the reader remains in the dark until the very end, just to discover what can only be called the perfect murder.

The novel is a homage to the classic crime novels and mystery readers who have always enjoyed Agatha Christie and the like will be totally enthralled. The plot, first of all, lives on the atmosphere of the island which is not very welcoming and cut off from the outside thus strongly reminding of “And Then There Were None”. The fact that it was the scene of a dreadful murder only months before adds to the its mysterious vibes. The murders seem to be carefully planned, no repetition in how they students find death and therefore leaving you pondering about one person could manage all this without being detected.

A classic whodunnit I thoroughly enjoyed.

I've always been intrigued by mysteries, and when I saw this appear for review after hearing of its reputation, I decided to request a copy to give a read and share my thoughts on.

Well, going into this, I was a lot less impressed - it felt incredibly slow burn and not at all moving in any direction, however as this book got deeper into the plot, it was incredibly difficult to stop reading with the last fifty pages being completely addicting and impossible to stop reading, with an ending that honestly I did not see coming at all. Holy cow.

The male characters in this books are given far more time to be fleshed out in this story, and there backgrounds are slowly unveiled as the story goes on and gets more involved in the mystery. I do feel the female characters are underdeveloped in this book and given very little detail or personality really, particularly Agatha to be honest.

I appreciated the moving story between mainland and island, which gave greater dimension to the finale of this story of course but it allowed for an expansion of interesting characters that really added to the energy of the book and led to a conclusion to this STORY that is subtle but incredibly well done.

I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Agatha Christie but with a modern twist.

As my first murder mystery from Japan, this book was quite impressive. The pace is slow and even, giving the reader time to think through who the murderer could be. The twist at the end was interesting too. Definitely looking forward to reading more Japanese mysteries. I liked that some more books to read were suggested towards the final pages. I will be seeking out those books.

A year after several people were murdered on an isolated island, a mystery club goes to visit the island, only to be murdered one by one themselves. I really didn't care for the writing here. It was mostly the dialogue, which was very flat and stilted. It didn't really flow nicely. I don't know if it was a translation issue or maybe a cultural difference. The ending was somewhat of a surprise, and while the story wasn't spectacular, it was decent. 3.5 stars rounded to 3.

This was a pleasant surprise! As I was reading I was kind of getting annoyed because it felt as if the characters were just telling us exactly what was happening and what the twists were and it definitely threw me off. What I will say is that the secondary plot/subplot with the characters on the mainland who were doing "detective" work bored me at times, but that's just a matter of preference, I would have preferred more content from on the island! I will say also that some things might have gotten lost in translation, but overall, this is a solid murder mystery.

A university detective fiction society goes on a trip to a secluded island. Famous for the brutal murders that took place there, Decagon House is the perfect location to gain inspiration for their mysteries... until they start getting picked off one by one.

This whodunnit, locked room mystery was so much fun! I love the fact that it is possible to solve the mystery yourself with the clues given and there is such a large cast of characters with potential motives, I did not see the ending coming so that was great. If you are looking for a whodunnit mystery with a really intriguing island setting, this could be a good read for you, but there were a couple of reasons why this was only a 3-star read for me.

The characters are all incredibly one-dimensional and cliche. The characters are designated with one characteristic (if that) and that is supposed to be how we differentiate them, with a relatively large cast of characters this becomes very confusing at times. The writing style is also very descriptive and surface-level with no real emotional impact. There are some gruesome moments in this novel and I just.... didn't care. However, this is a translated novel which is probably a contributing factor.

Overall, a really fun mystery! If you are the type of reader who really wants to analyse all potential clues and solve the mystery, this is for you. If you want to feel emotionally compelled along the way, I would skip it.
*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

I thought I knew where this was going and then I didn't. The Decagon House Murders is about a group of university students, who are members of the same mystery club, who go to an abandoned island where six months earlier there had been a massacre. The mystery club members, all named after a famous mystery writer, such as Agatha, Poe, and Doyle, have come to the island to write and create work for their mystery club's magazine and inspire new people to join, but soon it becomes clear that something more sinister is about the occur.

The structure of this novel is taken from and informed by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (the book is referenced several times within the narrative) so as someone who knows that story and what happens I thought I knew where the storyline was going to end, however it went in a direction that I didn't expect and I was pleasantly surprised! I think the second half of the novel is stronger than the first half, but it does set everything up. I wish it was slightly more atmospheric, but it could be a translation thing.

This was originally published in Japanese and has been translated by Ho-Ling Wong and I thought they did a good job. I can't speak to if they have kept the spirit of the original language as I haven't read it.

For lovers of Agatha Christie and "stuck on an island" mysteries, this was a wonderful addition to the mystery genre. What I loved about this mystery was the dual storylines (I'm normally not that big a fan of multiple storylines, but this one made it work wonderfully). I thought I had figured it all out (and I had most of it worked out), but whew! that twist!!

My only concerns were that many of the members of the island visitors were hard to differentiate, which made some of their deaths not impactful. (The women were interestingly written which is something not often found in male-written mystery books.) Also, as a non-Japanese person and a non-Japanese speaker, I think this translation would have benefitted from a prologue explaining the basics of Japanese culture and/or customs. There were places where I felt I was missing something because I didn't understand the societal expectations the story took place in.

Overall, an enjoyable read and one that might encourage me to sleep with a light on for a few more days.

In theory, I should have loved this book, but I think what I'm figuring out - with the help of this book and all of the other locked-room mysteries that I've read recently - is that locked-room mysteries aren't really for me. If you like Agatha Christie and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (some of the many characters in this book will give you hints as to other authors to read, like Orczy, Poe, Ellery Queen, Van Dine, etc.), you'll probably love this too.

The author, Yukito Ayatsuji, was one of the founding members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. Authors in this school want to recreate what makes classic mysteries such a fun game - think of it like Clue or a Nancy Drew game. They are typically locked room stories, where all of the characters, elements, and clues are presented to you like a puzzle. You can, in theory, figure out the whodunit, because you know as much as all of the characters in the book. In this way, the book is really more like a riddle or puzzle than a narrative where you're being taken for a ride.

In The Decagon House Murders, a group of students from a university's "Mystery Club," all nicknamed with authors from the aforementioned Golden Age of Detective Fiction, go visit a remote island in Japan with an infamous house in the shape of a decagon. This house, the Decagon House, was the site of an unsolved murder just six months prior. Predictably, a killer starts picking off the students one by one, and it's (somewhat) up to you to figure out what happened.

Although I tend to like domestic thrillers more - less mystery, more intrigue, secrets, lies, and twists - this is certainly a fun way to read and engage with a book. My biggest gripe is that I didn't feel like I connected with the characters enough to understand motivations and thus, figure out who ended up doing it. The book is relatively short, and as is typical with Japanese fiction, I felt a bit detached from all of the characters presented. But perhaps I feel this way because most modern domestic thrillers put you right in the shoes of your protagonist and all of their emotions, decisions, and conflicts, rather than trying to give you a somewhat objective picture of all of the players in a novel.

Overall, if you like solving mysteries from your armchair, you'll love this. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley!

My thanks to both NetGalley and Pushkin Press for an advanced copy of this mystery novel.

The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji is mystery featuring seven people, friend from the same college group, who travel to the site of a famous murder-suicide on an island off the coast of Japan. Soon things take a turn for the worse, as members of the group are killed in a variety of ways. A familiar kind of story.

Not quite a homage, more of a reconstruction of the classic mystery that plays both fair for the audience but not fair for the characters. Members of a college club for classic mystery aficionados, the victims, in fact most of the characters are not really fleshed out or examined, they are there to be murdered, ingeniously and mostly off page. In fact you don't really learn their names until near the end of the book, all of them going by nicknames of famous authors, Ellery, Poe, Agatha and the like. The final chapter tells the story of who, what and why, a typical denouncement again from classic stories.

The book is interesting especially if you like classic mysteries. The puzzles are clever, the secret passages are sufficiently mysterious, a few red herrings are dropped, but the story is pretty fair. I'd like to read other books by this author, just to see how loyal he stays to his style.

OH MY GOD THIS BOOK ! This is a new favorite. Like, oh my god this book.
I was so invested in my reading ! You can ask my friends whom i was facetiming with during some of the time i read this, my reaction were one of a kind. This book is so immersive and addictive. You literally cannot stop reading. The characters construction is amazing, you get attached to them so quickly even though you perfectly well know what's gonna happen to them - but still, you have a tiny bit of hope that maybe your fave will survive this. The writing, with both perspectives from the island and from the land, is so amazingly smart. Everything is intriging, you can"t stop making up theories in your mind.
Anyway, this book is stunning, you need to read it, i can promise you this is one of the best reading experience you'll get. Thank you netgalley for providing this for me !

This book did a great job of keeping me on my toes! It was very plot-driven--I could hardly tell you a thing about the characters--but that didn't detract from my enjoyment. And the twist was very well done. Readers will want to puzzle out the mystery on their own, and some will likely succeed, but many will be left confused. I loved how creepy the ten-sided house was, how isolated the students were, and that the two mysteries kept a reader on their toes.

The Decagon House Murders is a gripping "who done it" murder mystery novel. The name says it all. There is a house which is shaped like a Decagon, the owner Nakamura Seiji was queer indeed, and might have suffered from Monomania. Not only the house, the hall inside was decagonal, and was surrounded by ten rooms that were in the form of a Trapezoid.
About twenty years ago, he had moved to the Tsunojima island and build a mansion called "The Blue Mansion", along with the Decagon House. However, in an unsolved case a few months back, the mansion along with all four of its inhabitants was burned down.
K__ University runs a murder mystery club, where avid readers and fans of the genre meet to discuss various works. A select few among them have special nicknames; the likes of their favourite foreign murder mystery authors.
Seven of them ; Ellery, Agatha, Poe, Carr, Van, Leroux, and Orczy have this Oh so brilliant idea of spending a week on this island in the Decagon House, cut off from the mainland. The fisherman who carried them to their destination does warn them of ghost sightings, believed to be of the deceased Nakamura.

What was supposed to be a week of adventure turns grim when a message with the intention of a murder turns up. It goes on to say that the murderer in one among them.
Nothing could give an adrenaline rush such as this to a bunch of young murder mystery lovers. as you have with enthusiastic youths eager to share their views on a case, this book has a lot of dialogue and thoughts thrown at us; those of nine people to be exact. It definitely got a bit overwhelming at times and seemed excessive.

Where the book shines is the plot. You'll never guess what actually happened till the end, but when you read it, it will be like "Oh yeah, i should have noticed that before!" At least that is what happened to me.
the book is not a fast read, but is it worth your time? It depends;
1. Do you like complicated plots with multiple characters?
2. Do you read murder mystery novels for the thrill of it or for finding the beauty in the plan?
3. Do you want the victims to get justice and the murderer to be caught and punished in the book?

If the first answer is yes, the second is the latter choice, and for the third you prefer ambiguity, do pick up this book!

The galley was impossible to read because the text contained no formatting so I cannot rate this book. Single words were on one line followed by half a line, etc.

4.5 stars

Yukito Ayatsuji’s cult mystery novel has had me absolutely hooked. Seven students head off to spend a week on a remote island, intrigued by a tragic murder committed there six months before. They believe, as members of the K-University Mystery Club, that they might just have the deductive skills to solve the crime. As a local fishermen ferries them out, they discuss the problem with modern crime fiction. It doesn’t allow enough scope for deduction, one of them complains. ‘What mystery novels need,’ he argues, ‘are… a great detective, a mansion, a shady cast of residents, bloody murders, impossible crimes and never-before-seen tricks played by the murderer.’ Best of all is the ‘chalet in a snowstorm‘ model, where characters are cut off from the outside world. Little do they realise that, soon, they will be in that very same situation, trapped on an island with no means of escape. And then, one by one, they will begin to die. Someone on that island is a murderer. But who? Intricately plotted, this stonking novel challenges the reader to use her ‘little grey cells‘ to solve the mystery before the grand denouement. All the clues are there. But can you work out the solution? (Spoiler: I didn’t!)

The rather ‘meta’ discussion about detective fiction doesn’t just introduce us to our characters. It also explains Ayatsuji’s own beliefs, foreshadowing the manifesto of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan, of which Ayatsuji was a founder member in 2000. The point of a honkaku (i.e. ‘authentic’) mystery is that it offers fair play to the reader. You won’t end up finding out that the murderer is someone introduced in the penultimate chapter, or that a key clue was missing. All the evidence is there in front of you, as it is in the best Golden Age crime novels. All you need is a mind sharp and observant enough to figure it all out. (I’m amused to see that The Honjin Murders is considered to be honkaku, because the solution in that novel is so convoluted and so off-the-wall that surely no sane person could possibly come up with it!) As an author, Ayatsuji is paying homage to the Golden Age greats – most notably, in this case, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – while his characters, who are equally keen on classic crime, take on Mystery Club pseudonyms based on the names of famous authors. That’s why, to my initial befuddlement, we’re introduced to characters who call themselves Ellery (Queen), Carr (John Dickson), Poe (Edgar Allan), Orczy (Baroness, for her Old Man in the Corner stories), Agatha (Christie), Van (Dine) and Leroux (Gaston).

Six months ago, on the island of Tsunojima, the isolated Blue Mansion went up in flames. Four bodies were found there, three of whom had been murdered in advance: the reclusive architect Nakamura Seiji, his wife Kazue, and their two servants. The main suspect? The gardener Yoshikawa, who hasn’t been seen since. People say that lights have been seen on the island, and whisper about ghosts, but the Mystery Club members think there’s more to it. Fortunately, the Nakamura family have recently sold the island to Van’s uncle, an estate agent, who has arranged for the students to stay in the mansion’s intact summer-house. This is the Decagon House, a peculiar ten-sided structure in which everything is dominated by decagons. On first glance, the students find it quirky. But later, as they’re picked off one by one, the architecture seems oppressive, twisted, almost evil: a setting designed to baffle the senses.

Meanwhile, on the mainland, the student Kawaminami receives a troubling letter. He used to be a member of the Mystery Club as well, but left last year after a tragic accident which led to the death of a junior member. Her name? Nakamura Chiori. Now Kawaminami has received a typewritten letter, accusing him of murder and threatening revenge – and he’s not the only one. Identical letters have been sent to all members of the Mystery Club who were present on the day Chiori died (although, unfortunately, they only arrived after the Club’s core officials headed off for their break on Tsunojima). But the most unsettling thing is the signature: the letters are all signed by Chiori’s father – the very same Nakamura Seiji who died six months before. Kawaminami is determined to figure out what’s going on and, as he embarks on his investigation, he has two key assistants: Morisu, his bright former colleague in the Mystery Club, and Shimada, an unlikely companion driven by an enthusiasm for detective fiction. Kawaminami has no idea that, as he delves into the mysterious letters, their promised revenge is already being enacted upon his friends.

I’ve noticed some reviews which complain that this book is too similar to And Then There Were None. They share a basic premise, of course, but I didn’t find that this undermined my enjoyment in any way (probably because I’ve never actually read the Christie novel; I’ve only seen the recent TV adaptation). Ayatsuji’s book is an intellectual game, ferociously plotted and carried off with the same sleight of hand that Ellery uses for his card tricks: it’s thoroughly enjoyable. As I said earlier, I had absolutely no idea who the murderer was, though I suspected everyone in turn during the course of the book.

I should point out that much of the enjoyment derives from the wonderfully fluid translation by Ho-Ling Wong who, like Ayatsuji, belongs to the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan and, also like Ayatsuji, once belonged to the Kyoto University Mystery Club, on which the club in this novel is based. (‘He did not,’ his bio wryly states, ‘commit any murders on Mystery Club excursions’. You can also read his article about the real Mystery Club here.) For both author and translator, this novel was clearly a labour of love and it shows: it’s sprightly, fun, fast-paced and full of allusions to classic crime fiction. I’m definitely keen to read more honkaku, so I think The Tokyo Zodiac Murders might well be one of my next stops in this genre. And, of course, I’d love to read more of Ayatsuji’s novels, so fingers crossed that Pushkin Vertigo (and Wong) have more in the pipeline.

Genuinely, one of the most enjoyable murder mysteries I’ve read. Highly recommended!

After a long time I read a closed island mystery , with murders happening one after another , without a single idea if who could be the real culprit. This was cleverly written and very engaging till the very end.