Yukito ayatsuji the decagon house murders

Seven university students, who all belong to a club of mystery-lovers, travel to a remote island to spend a week at the Decagon House.

It’s a locked room mystery that clearly takes its inspiration from Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.

Crime Reads has a great primer to the genre.įor my first honkaku mystery, I selected The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji. Like Christie and her peers, these Japanese writers followed the principle of ‘fair play’ - they crafted intricately woven puzzles, but provided all the clues within the text, so that the reader had everything they needed to solve the mystery themselves. Writers within this genre take their inspiration from Golden Age detective fiction. Seriously, though, I’d heard of a Japanese literary movement called honkaku (and later, shin honkaku) mysteries. After all, I didn’t want to get so used to Christie’s style that I could pick out her storytelling tricks and solve her mysteries with my eyes closed. So I decided to take a mini-break from Agatha Christie and try my hand at solving a case from a different writer.