Decagon House Murders

<b>Ayatsuji's brilliant and richly atmospheric puzzle will appeal to fans of golden age whodunits... Every word counts leading up to a jaw-dropping but logical reveal<i></i> -- <i>Publishers Weekly</i></b> <p/><b>A 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. A classic in Japan available in English for the first time.</b> <p/>From <i>The New York Times Book Review</i> <p/>Read Yukito Ayatsuji's landmark mystery <i> The Decagon House Murders</i> and discover a real depth of feeling beneath the fiendish foul play. <p/>Taking its cues from Agatha Christie's locked-room classic <i>And Then There Were None </i>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. That collective curiosity will of course be their undoing. <p/>As the students approach Tsunojima in a hired fishing boat 'the sunlight shining down turned the rippling waves to silver. 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. There is no electricity on the island and no telephones either. <p/>A fresh round of violent deaths begins and Ayatsuji's skillful furious pacing propels the narrative. As the students are picked off one by one he weaves in the story of the mainland investigation of the earlier murders. This is a homage to Golden Age detective fiction but it's also unabashed entertainment.