You know, that would be an interesting setting for a mystery story, an island where they have these GIGANTIC crosses and some kind of impossible crime happens, like a body appears right on top of the highest cross...
Mephisto is a long-running magazine of publisher Kodansha focusing on mystery and other entertainment genre fiction, featuring columns on literature, but more importantly serializations of for example Ayatsuji Yukito's House novels. While it used to be distributed "normally" as a magazine, its current incarnation is only available if you are a member of the Mephisto Readers Club, with the seasonal release of Mephisto being one of the perks that come with a subscription. Currently the magazine is for example running running the serialization of Ayatsuji Yukito's Futagokan no Satsujin/The Twin House Murders while the last two years, it had Arisugawa Alice's Nihon Ougi no Nazo ("The Japanese Fan Mystery"), which got a book release in 2024. But the subscription also includes other content, including a series of flash fiction by various mystery authors who have to work with the same opening or ending line, and also regularly updated mini-columns on mystery fiction on various topics. Mystery Island was originally a series of short, one-page columns running in the first half of 2024 penned by six critics, who all discussed eleven mystery stories set on... an island. The closed circle setting of an island, where nobody can go to or escape from and you have a limited pool of suspects, is of course a very popular one in mystery fiction ever since And Then There Were None and there are quite a few worth recommending to others, but even I hadn't expected you could discuss 66 different stories. Later the same year, publisher Kodansha published all these columns as one book (with a great cover!), also titled Mystery Island.
The six critics are Aoto Shino, Ooya Hiroko, Katayama Daichi, Sengai Akiyuki, Masamune Q and Miyake Kaho, who each take on eleven mysteries set on an island. They obviously did have some discussion about how to divide the works, as they all will discuss a few of the really famous ones, like And Then There Were None, Jukkakan no Satsujin/The Decagon House Murders, Gokumontou/Gokumon Island and Evil Under Sun, but each of them will also tackle some minor titles you likely had never heard about or wouldn't have expected to be discussed specifically. There is a good selection of both older titles and new ones, with some titles so recent they basically released the same year as when the columns were originally running, like Yuuki Haruo's Jikkai ("The Ten Commandments"). There's also quite some variety in the works discussed, from classic puzzle plot mysteries like the titles mentioned above, but also horror-mysteries like Sawamura Ichi's excellent Yogen no Shima ("The Island of the Prophecy") and weird fantasy-hybrids like Shimada Soji's Alcatraz Gensou ("Alcatraz Fantasy").
The Mystery Island columns however are very short, as they were originally published via LINE (a Japanese social chat platform) and it's best not to look as Mystery Island as a reference book, but rather as a coffee table book, the type of book you just pick up to peruse for a few minutes to read a short column and which you'll lay down and only return to after a while. The tone of each of column is pretty casual, usually containing personal anecdotes of how the critic came into contact with the story in the first place. Each column is basically just a page long, so there isn't much space to discuss any work in detail: they mostly get away with giving a brief outline of the work in place, and add a paragraph on its merits as a mystery story/mystery story set on an island. So for those who want to really know why a specific story is interesting as an island mystery, the columns might feel a bit too short, as they can never really delve deep into the themes and specific characteristics of the work in question, but for those who simply want simple pointers to decide what to read next, Mystery Island is quite effective as they really don't discuss enough to even remotely spoil anything. Because the six authors together do manage to introduce a great number, and a great variety of works, it's likely any reader will find a work they hadn't known about that sounds interesting. At least, I know I have a few new titles on my 'someday, I will read this' list I had not ever considered before. That said, the definition of 'mystery fiction' is quite broad, and seeing a title like Battle Royale here does feel a bit like cheating, but oh well, it's 66 titles, they're allowed to use a (very) broad definition.
Originally, these columns were posted on the subscribers-only Mephisto Reader's Club LINE account, and each column would be followed by a short poll on something kinda connected to the book in question: the one on Gokumontou for example asks if you were the killer, which of the four modern-day actors of Kindaichi Kousuke would you like to have as your opponent. The book release includes the outcome of each of these polls and also contains a write-up of the editors' meeting with the six critics, where they decided how to divide the work, which gives the reader a bit more insight into the selection process.
Oh, and moving away from the contents of this book, and discussing this book as... a book: besides the great cover, it also features some really cool character art by Kikuni Masahiko for all the six critics, in the same style as the silhouette characters of the authors featured in the shin honkaku anniversary anthology 7-nin no Meitantei ("The Seven Great Detectives"). The physical release also has a rather unique slipcase: the slipase is actually open on two sides (instead of one), so normally a book you'd place inside could slip out from the other side... but because this is Japan, the book of course also features an obi (a thin paper wrapper), and it's the obi that keeps the book in place. Really odd design I have never seen before.
Mystery Island is a rather interesting release now I think about it. It was originally written for subscribers to the Mephisto Readers Club, so in a way, for an audience that is probably more interested and knowledgeable about mystery fiction than the average reader, but as a book, Mystery Island works better as a casual coffee book table than a "reference book for die-hard mystery fans". It's easy to pick up, read a column or two and lay down again, and while none of the columns really go deep enough to really become informative or provide you with some eye-opening revelation, they do a good enough job to point you to the existence of some stories you may not have considered otherwise, or help you decide what famous mystery set on an island you should tackle next, if you hadn't read that one masterpiece before. I wonder if a project like this could be translated/released in English too to casually introduce both the well-known, as well as the lesser known island mysteries from Japan to an English-reading audience, considering its more casual tone.
