Review – The Decagon House Murders

From Goodreads:

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?

I read this while traveling around Belguim on various trains and it was the perfect mystery for that type of journey so easy to get into the mystery and just enjoy it.

This is a homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and it is very clear from the outset of the book. The narrator references it straight away and there are clear elements that are clear references to the original story. I have read a lot of ‘And then there were none’ as it is one of my favourite’s of Agatha Christie. However, most tend to disappoint me not able to pull of the reveals the way Christie can. This didn’t disappoint on the reveals front.

I really liked the structure of this. Told from two points of veiw, The first of the Mystery Club on the island and a perspective of one of their friends back in the city trying to solve the original mystery of the island. This both gave more tension to story but also was a great way of us learning lots of back ground information without it seeming info dump like. I really enjoyed how and when it switched betweent these two I felt the mystery built very well and it kept me wanting to turn the page and find out how the two mysteries linked.

When talking about characters I much prefered the characters based in the city I felt they were the more interesting collection but I think that was more the intention of the author as once events start to occur on the island I found I was a little mixed on how I felt aobout the deaths. I think this is also to do with those on the island following the more recognisable story while those on the mainland through in lots of great twists.

There were a couple of excentricites of the translaton which stalled my reading a little but that is more to do with the decisions made by the transltor rather than the story itself. Overall I really enjoyed this one. I think it is a great take on the locked room, no one left alive mystery.