The members of a university mystery club take a trip to Tsunojima Island, site of a set of grisly, unsolved murders, to put their amateur sleuthing skills to the test - when one of them is murdered, they realise they are being picked off themselves…

I haven’t really read any Japanese murder mysteries because for some reason I thought they tended towards the gory, and I enjoy murder mysteries for the puzzle factor rather than the grisly details. But my interest was obviously piqued by the blurb’s mention that this was inspired by Christie’s And Then There Were None… and it turns out it wasn’t especially gruesome.

I was hooked and I did not figure the solution out until the very last second. Actually, that’s not quite true - I correctly guessed whodunnit near the start, but immediately dismissed my reasoning as too basic. I certainly didn’t figure out how it was all done. Familiarity with And Then There Were None isn’t necessary nor particularly helpful (clearly), but it does add an extra layer of appreciation whilst reading the book - clever little references abound.

The problem with being inspired by a specific Christie is that, as a reader, it’s hard not to compare and Ayatsuji doesn’t quite match Christie’s brilliance. To be clear, this is still very good with an ingenious solution, and although it leaned slightly towards the verbose, I’ll certainly be reading more of Ayatsuji’s murder mysteries.

An ingenious, twisty closed-room murder mystery.