The Decagon House Murders: Yukito Ayatsuji (Pushkin Vertigo)

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A stunner of a plot, with an ending which I simply could not believe when it was first revealed... Rivals Soji Shimada's The Tokyo Zodiac Murders for sheer audacity and ingenuity" — At the Scene of the Crime

I lived for years in Japan and this experience made my reading all the more delightful. The translation sounds exactly like the Japanese, to the point where many times I could know for certain what the Japanese word or phrase had originally been. It felt as if the translator is not a native English speaker, or at least the translator never stepped out of literal translation, and the unusual nature of the language in the novel gave it a charged, unexpected feeling as I read. This is an isolated-island murder mystery with the clues, red herrings, and so on with climax when readers found whodunit.Overall, I had enjoyed this manga very much and I can't wait for it to be released! The premise His celebration of traditional whodunits plays with the mystery genre in a wonderfully self-referential way... With each new murder, the remaining members of the group must use their knowledge of the genre to find the killer and try to stay alive." — Esquire , The 50 Best Mysteries of All Time a b 十角館の殺人（１） (in Japanese). Kodansha. Archived from the original on July 29, 2021 . Retrieved July 29, 2021.

Another man -- their gardener -- went missing, and the assumption was that he killed them all and then escaped. This book when released was apparently one of the leaders in the resurgence of the Honkaku genre (which had lost popularity with the rise of noir and police procedurals). I don’t know if this is because of the clever conclusion or if there was something majorly lost in translation, but I don’t quite get why this would be one of the standouts. Would I give it a recommendation? Only to a very specific group of people. To really enjoy this one, you have to be a person who enjoys the deduction aspect of a mystery novel over the plot. 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. This one's like a 3.7 popped up to a 4 by the ending. Speaking of which, crikey! While not the best Japanese crime novel I've ever read, had I been eating something when the big reveal of this story came along, I probably would have choked because of the huge gasp that involuntarily came out of me. As soon as that cleared, the first words out of my mouth were "holy sh*t." I don't have that reaction very often; even though there have been many times I've been truly surprised at the unmasking of the who, this one absolutely takes the cake. As much as I enjoy this book, I admit there is a big fat dead giveaway early in the story al la la out of the seven students, one student had gone up to the island earlier than the rest...you know what that means, right? so it isn't all that hard to guess who is the killer. The women in this book unfortunately suffer from the classic written-by-a-male-author syndrome. There is the extroverted pretty and the dowdy introvert…funnily enough one of the female characters is the first one to ‘lose it’, to the point of having to be sedated and referred to as hysterical. The two share one of the most hilarious ‘bonding’ moments, where they discuss their shared love for hand cream (i believe it was hand-cream) which is just..that is what us girls do when left on our own. A very relatable moment indeed.

Nevertheless, the common sense approach could no longer keep his emotions under control. Emotions? No, nothing as shallow as that. Absolutely not. This was not just some powerful feeling within him. It was the cry of his soul, his last tie to life, his reason for living.

I became disengaged with the unfolding events, about half-way through the book, as well. Events slowed and the focus returned, again and again, to the characters casting their suspicions on one another. Mateo, Alex (August 17, 2021). "North American Anime, Manga Releases, August 15-21". Anime News Network. Archived from the original on October 21, 2021 . Retrieved October 21, 2021.The most desirable plan was not one that limited your own moves, but a flexible one that could adapt to circumstances: that was the conclusion he had come to. a b 十角館の殺人（5） (in Japanese). Kodansha. Archived from the original on September 5, 2022 . Retrieved August 30, 2022. I recommend this novel for whodunit stories fans. If you don't know Honkaku genre, I recommend to search a bit about it, as what I have been doing for several days.