The Decagon House Murders
The Decagon House Murders
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Overview
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.
From The New York Times Book Review:
"Read Yukito Ayatsuji’s landmark mystery, The Decagon House Murders, and discover a real depth of feeling beneath the fiendish foul play.
Taking its cues from Agatha Christie’s locked-room classic And Then There Were None, 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.
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.
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."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9798212253123 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor |
| Publication date: | 05/31/2022 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The sea at night. A time of quietude.
The dull sound of the waves welled up from the endless obscurity, only to disappear again.
He sat down on the cold concrete of the breakwater and faced the expansive darkness, his body veiled by the white vapour of his breath.
He had been suffering for months. He had been brooding for weeks. He had been thinking about just one thing for days. And now his mind was focusing on one single, clearly defined goal.
Everything had been planned.
Preparations were almost complete.
All he needed to do now was to wait for them to walk into the trap.
He knew his plan was far from perfect. It was best described as shoddy rather than meticulous. But he’d never intended to plan everything out in perfect detail in the first place.
No matter how hard he tries, man will always be mere man, and never a god.
It was easy to imagine oneself as such, but he knew that as long as humans were simply humans, even the most gifted amongst them could never become a god.
And how could anyone who was not a god predict the future, shaped as it was by human psychology, human behaviour and pure chance?
Even if the world was viewed as a chessboard, and every person on it a chess piece, there would still be a limit as to how far future moves could be predicted. The most meticulous plan, plotted to the last detail, could still go wrong sometime, somewhere, somehow. Reality is brimming with too many coincidences and whimsical actions by humans for even the craftiest scheme to succeed exactly as planned.
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.
He could not allow himself to be constrained.
It was not the plot that was vital, but the framework. A framework where it was always possible to make the best choice, depending on the circumstances at the time.
Whether he could pull it off depended on his own intellect, quick thinking and, most of all, luck.
I know Man will never become a god.
But, in a way, he was undoubtedly about to take on that role.
Judgment. Yes, judgment.
In the name of revenge, he was going to pronounce judgment on them—on all of them.
Judgment outside the court of law.
He was not a god and so could never be forgiven for what he was about to do—he was completely conscious of that fact. The act would be called “a crime” by his fellow men and, if found out, he himself would be judged according to the law.
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.
The sea at night. A time of quietude.
No flickering of the stars, no light of the ships off-coast could disturb the darkness into which he gazed. He contemplated his plan once again.
Preparations were almost finished. Soon they, his sinful prey, would walk into his trap. A trap consisting of ten equal sides and interior angles.
They would arrive there suspecting nothing. Without any hesitation or fear they would walk into the decagonal trap, where they would be sentenced.
What awaits them there is, of course, death. It is the obvious punishment for all of them.
And no simple deaths. Blowing them all up in one go would be infinitely easier and more certain, but he should not choose that route.
He has to kill them in order, one by one. Precisely like that story written by the famous British female writer—slowly, one after the other. He shall make them know. The suffering, the sadness, the pain and terror of death.
Perhaps he had become mentally unstable. He himself would be the first to admit to that.
I know—no matter how I try to justify it, what I am planning to do is not sane.
He slowly shook his head at the pitch-black roiling sea.
His hand, thrust into his coat pocket, touched something hard. He grabbed the object and took it out, holding it in front of his eyes.
It was a small transparent bottle of green glass.
It was sealed off securely with a stopper, and bottled inside was all he had managed to gather from inside his heart: what people like to call “conscience.” A few folded sheets of paper, sealed. On it he had printed in small letters the plan he was about to execute. It had no addressee. It was a letter of confession.
I know Man will never become a god.
And precisely because he understood that, he did not want to leave the final judgment to a human to make. It didn’t matter where the bottle ended up. He just wanted to pose the question to the sea—the source of all life—whether, ultimately, he was right or not.
The wind blew harder.
A sharp coldness went down his spine and his whole body shivered.
He threw the bottle into the darkness.