There is no phone line on the island, or even electricity. In this book the group is the inner circle of the K- University Mystery Club, set on enjoying a week long holiday on an island where an unsolved mass murder occurred around six months earlier. As in the Christie classic, a group gather on an island in Ayatsuji’s novel, with no contact with the outside world.
The Decagon House Murders is basically a homage to Agatha Christie, in particular, to her classic novel, And Then There Were None.
Books in this genre tend to be plot driven puzzles, with less focus on character development. The style fell out of favour, so shin honkaku is “new orthodox”, a rebirth of the classic style with a twist. Fair play rules mean that clues needed to solve the mystery are given in the text, albeit mostly so well concealed that readers don’t spot the significance of them as they read. Basically, it is the Japanese equivalent of the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction” of Western literature. Honkaku is a mystery sub-genre that is “orthodox” or uses “fair play”. This could be because its publication was seen as the beginning of the shin honkaku movement. The cover of my edition of this book says it is “The Japanese Cult Classic Mystery”.
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