The Japanese cult 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

The lonely, rockbound island of Tsunojima is notorious as the site of a series of bloody unsolved murders. Some even say it's haunted. One thing's for sure: it's the perfect destination for the K-University Mystery Club's annual trip.

But when the first club member turns up dead, the remaining amateur sleuths realise they will need all of their murder-mystery expertise to get off the island alive.

As the party are picked off one by one, the survivors grow desperate and paranoid, turning on each other. Will anyone be able to untangle the murderer's fiendish plan before it's too late?



Yukito Ayatsuji (born 1960) is a Japanese writer of mystery and horror novels. He started writing as a member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, a society dedicated to the writing of fair play mysteries inspired by the Golden Age greats, which inspired the club featured in The Decagon House Murders and has nurtured many of Japan's greatest crime writers.The Decagon House Murders was Ayatsuji's debut and is considered a landmark crime novel in Japan, where it revived the traditional puzzle mystery format and inspired a new generation of writers. It is the first of Ayatsuji's works to be translated into English.



A knowing tribute to classic crime, it features all manner of puzzles, including locked rooms, jigsaws and magic tricks



Highly ingenious



Very clever indeed



Fiendish foul play... taking its cues from Agatha Christie's locked-room classic And Then There Were None... Ayatsuji's skillful, furious pacing propels the narrative... This is a homage to Golden Age detective fiction, but it's also unabashed entertainment



The Decagon House Murders is one of the most enjoyable classic crime novels I've ever read. An evocative island setting, a perfectly constructed puzzle, and an entirely satisfying solution. It'll keep you guessing until the very end.



[A] landmark 1987 puzzle mystery



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



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.



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



Exceptional... The denouement is clever, entirely plausible and not far short of poetic... The Decagon House Murders is sharp and witty and very much in the spirit of the golden age mystery; superbly plotted and wickedly entertaining



A terrific mystery, a classic... very much in the manner of Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr



A real page-turner... Highly recommended



A captivating read, culminating in an ending as satisfying as it is shocking... The solution to the novel's puzzle unfolds in a way so ingenious and logical it can stand shoulder to shoulder with the very best mystery novels



Taking a new page out of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, seven college friends in a mystery club decide to camp out in the infamous 10-sided house on Tsunojima Island, the site of nasty murders. But when one by one the friends start showing up dead, they now have to turn their efforts into figuring out who is killing them and why



A wonderfully original take on the Christie classic And Then There Were None [and a] watershed moment in the annals of crime fiction writing in Japan



This 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



A watershed moment for a new, emerging style of mystery fiction in literature, the success of which then led to its widespread popularity in popular culture (manga, anime and films) within a decade of its publication... It is a work of monumental importance for scholars and aficionados of the genre - and it rightfully deserves every bit of the reputation it has earned and continues to, to this day