yukito ayatsuji the decagon house murders

This is a homage to Golden Age detective fiction, but it’s also unabashed entertainment.

As the students are picked off one by one, he weaves in the story of the mainland investigation of the earlier murders. There is no electricity on the island, and no telephones, either.Ī fresh round of violent deaths begins, and Ayatsuji’s skillful, furious pacing propels the narrative. The island lay ahead of them, wrapped in a misty veil of dust,' its sheer, dark cliffs rising straight out of the sea, accessible by one small inlet. That collective curiosity will, of course, be their undoing.Īs the students approach Tsunojima in a hired fishing boat, 'the sunlight shining down turned the rippling waves to silver. Taking its cues from Agatha Christie’s locked-room classic And Then There Were None, the setup is this: The members of a university detective-fiction club, each nicknamed for a favorite crime writer (Poe, Carr, Orczy, Van Queen, Leroux and - yes - Christie), spend a week on remote Tsunojima Island, attracted to the place, and its eerie 10-sided house, because of a spate of murders that transpired the year before. The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji is a classic whodunit novel with a slow-burn plot and old-school vibes however, I struggled to stay engaged, possibly due to the translation, as the writing felt stilted at.

'Read Yukito Ayatsuji’s landmark mystery, The Decagon House Murders, and discover a real depth of feeling beneath the fiendish foul play. A classic in Japan, available in English for the first time. Every word counts, leading up to a jaw-dropping but logical reveal ' - Publishers WeeklyĪ hugely enjoyable, page-turning murder mystery sure to appeal to fans of Elly Griffiths, Anthony Horowitz, and Agatha Christie, with one of the best and most-satisfying conclusions you'll ever read.

'Ayatsuji's brilliant and richly atmospheric puzzle will appeal to fans of golden age whodunits.

Yukito ayatsuji the decagon house murders