(I’m amused to see that The Honjin Murders is considered to be honkaku, because the solution in that novel is so convoluted and so off-the-wall that surely no sane person could possibly come up with it!) As an author, Ayatsuji is paying homage to the Golden Age greats – most notably, in this case, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – while his characters, who are equally keen on classic crime, take on Mystery Club pseudonyms based on the names of famous authors. All you need is a mind sharp and observant enough to figure it all out. All the evidence is there in front of you, as it is in the best Golden Age crime novels. You won’t end up finding out that the murderer is someone introduced in the penultimate chapter, or that a key clue was missing. ‘authentic’) mystery is that it offers fair play to the reader. It also explains Ayatsuji’s own beliefs, foreshadowing the manifesto of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan, of which Ayatsuji was a founder member in 2000.
The rather ‘meta’ discussion about detective fiction doesn’t just introduce us to our characters.
But can you work out the solution? (Spoiler: I didn’t!) But who? Intricately plotted, this stonking novel challenges the reader to use her ‘ little grey cells‘ to solve the mystery before the grand denouement. And then, one by one, they will begin to die. Little do they realise that, soon, they will be in that very same situation, trapped on an island with no means of escape. ‘ What mystery novels need,’ he argues, ‘are… a great detective, a mansion, a shady cast of residents, bloody murders, impossible crimes and never-before-seen tricks played by the murderer.’ Best of all is the ‘ chalet in a snowstorm‘ model, where characters are cut off from the outside world. It doesn’t allow enough scope for deduction, one of them complains. As a local fishermen ferries them out, they discuss the problem with modern crime fiction.
They believe, as members of the K-University Mystery Club, that they might just have the deductive skills to solve the crime. Seven students head off to spend a week on a remote island, intrigued by a tragic murder committed there six months before. Clearly I only had to wait for the right book, because Yukito Ayatsuji’s cult mystery novel has had me absolutely hooked. Only a few days ago, I wrote about finding it difficult to engage with Japanese fiction.
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