Seven students from a Mystery Club stay in a secluded island and live in the "Decagon House" which was built by an eccentric architect named Seiji Nakamura who formerly lived in the island and is said to have died after a horrible massacre six months earlier. Trouble starts when each of the students gets taken out one by one by a killer.


i reread Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" before reading this novel, since the premise of this book where people staying in an island slowly killed of one by one is inspired from that. And right from the start of "The Decagon House Murders", it calls back to the end of "And Then There Were None" with the culprit putting his confession inside a bottle and throwing it to the ocean. Which made a nice transition for my back-to-back read. However, just like its predecessor this book kind of fails in giving a truly satisfying for such a behemoth of a premise. i would say though that i liked the overall solution in this book better compared to "And Then There Were None", it's a neat literary trick that floored me and feels a little less unfair. But the overall tension, consistency with the characters, and the ending is a bit weaker for this one. Overall, i still enjoyed reading this book despite its flaws, the setting for this one and the mystery involving the architect were really intriguing.

Fujinuma Kiichi, who resides in a remote Mill House also built by Seiji Nakamura, hosts an annual exhibit of his father's paintings to his closed circle. However, a murder, a disappearance, and a theft of a painting occurs during the exhibit. The following year, the tradition continues but it seems as if the events of the previous year are about to happen again...

This was actually quite good, it is edged out a bit by The Decagon House Murders for me, since that had a stronger twist but the theme of the crime here and the overall storytelling was better, my gf (who i read this with) even prefers this one over Decagon. It is one of the easier stories to solve though, i wasn't able to get the whole solution 100% but i was able to figure out the culprit and the twist, since there are similarities to Yokomizo Seishi's The Inugami Curse, so if you read that, then this mystery is pretty much a cakewalk for you. i also really enjoyed how it leaned a bit on the supernatural, especially since Shimada, himself, claims he doesn't believe at such. And yet the weird coincidences and connection he has to the buildings built by Nakamura Seiji and especially, the ending of this book, implies that Shimada may be wrong.

to-read...