The Decagon House murders

I really enjoyed this one, from the pacing to the atmosphere to the characters. I was worried that this was going to hew too closely to the And Then There Were None formula, but was delighted that it simultaneously did and did not. It's great when in hindsight you can see the clues you noticed and the ones you did not. The great shame was finding out that this book is part of a series with ten others...only one of which has been translated, though a second one is coming out in May.

My expectations for this book were set by the foreword, which praises it for being a sort of return to form for Japanese mystery novels where the crime is a puzzle that the reader is given every possible piece to solve. So I got more and more disappointed as I read and realised this was not the case: from hidden relationships and the motivation for the violent acts of seemingly regular characters being that they are "psychopaths", to handwavy explanations and inane planning ahead, a solvable mystery it was not. If I had picked it up expecting a thriller I would have enjoyed it much more, but as a mystery novel it left me rolling my eyes, shrugging and thinking of animes like Subete ga F ni Naru. If that's your thing, this is absolutely for you!

This was fine? It was recommended to me as a landmark Japanese "locked room" mystery novel, and while that may be the case, I found the whole thing rather dull.