Important in its genre, I guess, but I wouldn't recommend it
3 stars
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.
Students from a university mystery club decide to visit an island which was the site of a grisly multiple murder the year before. Predictably, they get picked off one by one by an unseen murderer. Is there a madman on the loose? What connection is there to the earlier murders? The answer is a bombshell revelation which few readers will see coming.
The Decagon House Murders is a milestone in the history of detective fiction. Published in 1987, it is credited with launching the shinhonkaku movement which restored Golden …