The Decagon House Murders

(Paperback)

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Description

The members of a university mystery club decide to visit an island which was the site of a grisly, unsolved multiple murder the year before. They're looking forward to investigating the crime, putting their passion for solving mysteries to practical use, but before long there is a fresh murder, and soon the club-members realise they are being picked off one-by-one. The remaining amateur sleuths will have to use all of their murder-mystery expertise to find the killer before they end up dead too.

This is a playful, loving and fiendishly plotted homage to the best of golden age crime. It will delight any mystery fan looking to put their little grey cells to use.

Reviews

"A terrific mystery, a classic of misdirection very much in the manner of Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr'" -Washington Post

"Behold, the perfect escapist drug! If I could crush this book into a powder and snort it, I would." -Vulture

"A real page-turner... Highly recommended" -Classic Mystery

"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" -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"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

"A knowing tribute to classic crime, it features all manner of puzzles, including locked rooms, jigsaws and magic tricks." - Mark Sanderson, The Times

"highly ingenious" -Laura Wilson, Guardian

"The Decagon House Murders,is a thrilling homage to ChristiesAnd Then There Were None, following a group of amateur sleuths on a trip to a lonely island, the site of several unsolved murders. In the opening chapter, one character remarks:Enough gritty realism please! What mystery novels need are a great detective, a mansion, a shady cast of residents, bloody murders, impossible crimes and never-before-seen-tricks played by the murder.Its impossible not to agree." - The Guardian

Author Bio

Yukito Ayatsuji (born 1960) is a Japanese writer of mystery and horror novels. He is one of the founders of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan, dedicated to the writing of fair play mysteries inspired by the Golden Age greats. In 1992 he won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for his novel The Clock Mansion Murders. The Decagon House Murders was Ayatsuji's debut novel and is the first of his works to be translated into English.