「・・・そして伝説は、もう一度、逆転する」

「真実なんてものはないんだよ。仮に、もし真実なんてものがあったとしても全て時の流れの向こう側だ。真実は人に記憶された瞬間から変質していく。記憶は年老いて薄れる、死んで消え去る。真実とか記憶とか、くだらないものにこだわるなんて、人間ってバカだよな。」
『SPEC〜警視庁公安部公安第五課 未詳事件特別対策係事件簿〜』 

"There is no such thing as the truth. Even if there is something like the truth, it is all on the other side of the flow of time. Truth changes the moment people store it in their memories. Memories get old, become vague, die and disappear. Mankind is really stupid to be so obsessive about insignificant things like truth or memories."
"SPEC ~ The Case Files of MPD Public Security Department, Public Security Section 5, Special Counter Measures to Unsolved Cases~"

Rewrite after rewrite tell me I am definately not going to say anything new or actually relevant about Ayatsuji Yukito's Jukkakukan no Satsujin ("The Decagon House Murders").  It's like being asked to say something innovative about Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in this time and age. It can be done, but certainly not by me.

So I'll just choose the easy difficulty. Click.

(See also this general post on the Yakata/House series.)

A group of students, all belonging to a local university mystery circle, head out to Tsunojima, an small island off the coast of Kyuushuu. Their goal? The ruins of the Blue Mansion and the only building still left on the island, the Decagon House. Owner of both buildings was the architect Nakamura Seiji, who along with his wife and servants, were killed and burned half a year ago on Tsunojima. The members of the mystery circle have plans to spend a week of leisure at the island, whilst taking a look at a real crime scene. But what begins as a nice holiday, ends in a tragedy, when the students are murdered one by one by an unknown killer. Meanwhile, on the mainland, an ex-member of the mystery circle receives a letter claiming to be from the deceased Nakamura Seiji, hinting something is going on. And so the stories progresses as investigations on both the island and the mainland develop in Jukkakukan no Satsujin ("The Decagon House Murders", 1987)

Jukkakukan no Satsujin is hailed as the first in the wave of new orthodox detective novels in Japan. It is a Giant in the history of Japanese detective fiction. If there is something like a canon to detective fiction history, this would be in it. And I personally thought that fun: I've come to a stage where it is hard to find detective fiction that are historically relevant that I haven't read yet. I have to read The Moonstone yet though. Which I actually have somewhere, I think.

But anyway, this was the start of Japanese new orthodox detective novels. A blast from the past. The description of the story should have tipped you off, as it's all classic stuff, right? The story on the island is a take on Christie's And Then There Were None and is pretty fun, even though the murders don't actually happen till relatively late in the book. The story on the mainland is a more orthodox investigation based on questioning witnesses et al and seems to connect directly to the island narrative only at select times, thus creating a gap between the tension on the island and the more open mainland, but the mainland plotline does give insight in the background of the murders on the island.

Ayatsuji also manages to slip in quite some meta-references in this work. The students are all known by their nicknames (like Agatha, Carr and Ellery) and the discussions the students have when they are trying to find out who is trying to kill them, are not the discussions of people afraid of getting killed, but most definitely of people who are very familiar with the tropes of the genre and think accordingly. Ayatsuji is very concious of the fact he is not one of the Great Ones before him, that he is, in fact, a mystery fan writing a mystery, and that makes this novel really entertaining.

And besides the book being obviously being a homage to And Then There Were None, Ayatsuji also wrote this as sort of a challenge to surprise Christie endings like And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I won't go into the trick itself, but the trick is very much like a magic trick. It's a trick that has certain limits (and can be seen through immediately if you just happen to look at from a certain angle) and while I think Ayatsuji plotted this novel very neatly, it left me with some ambiguous feelings. Also because I had seen the trick used somewhere else before, so I saw through it quite quickly. Can't remember where I had seen it though, not even whether it was detective fiction of before or after the release of this book.

But Ayatsuji had succes with this book, with a lot more novels in the Yakata (mansion/house) series published after this one. And of course the whole wave of other new orthodox detective novels. Starting a wave should count as 'succes'.

A friend commented that it seemed like new orthodox detective novels have some relation with (odd) architecture, posing that more orthodox novels are more difficult to use. Indeed, Jukkakukan no Satsujin features a decagon house. A slanted mansion features in Shimada's Naname Yashiki no Hanzai ("The Crime at the Slanted Mansion"). Stories in Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Young Kindaichi"), especially the later, often use this too. But this might be very author-specific, as writers like Arisugawa Alice and Norizuki Rintarou usually use modern urban settings in their stories. Granted, Arisugawa and Norizuki don't write locked room mysteries often, but when they write them, it's in a 'normal' building. Of course, a strange building is a lot easier to manipulate for a locked room murder, but I think (odd) architecture is more a general thing for detective fiction, rather specifically for new orthodox detective fiction.

But yes, Jukkakukan no Satsujin. Important. New Orthodox School. Read It.

Why isn't this translated in English?

Original Japanese title(s): 綾辻行人　『十角館の殺人』