Have to say that in the end I was disappointed. You tell me that this book is a homage to "And Then There Were None" and it ends up just being kind of a mess with an ending that was nothing like that book. It didn't help that Ayatsuji had some of the book following two other characters so you don't stay on the island with the characters who are being picked off one by one. I do like that we were given a glossary in the end to understand some of the words being used in this book.

"The Decagon House Murders" is a bit of a convoluted tale. The book starts off with us in the murderer's POV. We know that he or she has something up their sleeve to make people pay for what they did. Then we transitioned over to a group of college aged students who are making their way to the Decagon House. The students plan to stay on an uninhabited island for a week. A brutal murder and apparent suicide took place there six months ago and due to this the students think it would be perfect for them to go and get away to. 

All of the students belong to a mystery group at their university and they have taken the names of famous mystery writers. We have the following: Agatha, Van, Leroux, Orczy, Ellery, Carr and Poe. While they are away on the island, a former member of the mystery group, Kawaminami receives a letter accusing him of being behind the murder of a former member named Chiori. We find out that she was a shy young women who died of a heart attack brought upon due to alcohol poisoning. Kawaminami starts to try to figure out who could have sent the letter and figures out ties that Chiori has to the island that the group has just departed for. 

I have to say that I didn't get a chance to get a handle on anyone. When the group on the island starts to get picked off one by one by the murderer it just started to feel anti-climatic. I liked how Christie did it via her book and how they were all sent to die based on a rhyme. This felt a little too clumsy. It didn't help that the book jumps back and forth between the murders on the island and Kawaminami's investigation with an older man he meets. I think that distracted from the overall tenor of the book and it felt a bit like we had Ayatsuji trying to throw in a bit of Arthur Conan Doyle and have a Sherlock and Watson on the scene.

The writing was okay, as I said earlier it was great to get the glossary in the book describing things. However, the flow wasn't that great. I had a hard time with the second investigation going on since it just felt really fake to me. And then it made zero sense with what we know was going on, on he island.

The setting of the island and the Decagon House were intriguing. I liked the history behind it being built and how lonesome it must have been. Ayatsuji provides some diagrams which were helpful to show where everyone is staying at and also at one point where a body is found. 

The ending did have a cool twist, but I had a hard time buying it. It didn't really work I think in the end. And then the reason behind the murder felt very fake to me. It just seemed like a reason for the murderer to do what they did. We get a reveal about all of the murders and how they happened and it felt like that bit got written before the initial set up of the book. 

A nice look at a Japanese golden age mystery novel. I definitely enjoyed "The Tokyo Zodiac Murders" more. 

Should be done sometime today. I just got off track. Will update.

I cannot wait to get started on this. The author who wrote "The Tokyo Zodiac Murders" did the introduction to this book and I love the Japanese Golden Age mystery revival. I will have to see about more translated works in the future.

Have I mentioned that I hate reviewing anthologies? Collections of stories by the same author are easier to review than ones with stories by many authors, but I’d still rather review individual novels, novellas, and short stories.

Anyway, this made it onto my TBR after I finished Soji Shimada’s The Tokyo Zodiac Murders and went hunting for similar books. The Ginza Ghost starts with an introduction about Osaka and his stories. Like Shimada, Osaka was an author of honkaku (orthodox) mysteries. He was born in 1912 and began prolifically publishing mystery stories starting in 1932. Unfortunately, this was a time when honkaku mysteries were looked at unfavorably in Japan, and so he eventually had to switch to comedy and spy stories. In 1943 he was drafted, and he died of disease sometime in 1945.

The collection includes twelve stories organized semi-chronologically by publication date. I’m not sure why there were a few exceptions mixed in. Perhaps to make sure the volume ended as strongly as possible? “The Phantom Wife” wouldn’t have made for as good a stopping point as “The Ginza Ghost.”

I’d highly advise skipping the portion of the introduction that discusses the individual stories. I made the mistake of reading the first few and, although they didn’t quite include spoilers, they contained enough information to affect the way I interpreted the stories and the evidence.

The first story was a fairly basic mystery. It wasn’t until later in the collection that one of Osaka’s signature elements, the possibility of supernatural involvement, came into play. Although none of his stories contained true supernatural elements, many of them were designed to look like they might. In “The Phantom Wife,” it appeared that a man was killed by his vengeful dead wife. The murder in “The Monster of the Lighthouse” seemed to have been committed by an enormously strong red octopus-like monster. In “The Ginza Ghost,” a young woman seemed to have been murdered by the ghost of a jealous wife. In “The Cold Night’s Clearing,” the murderer looked to be none other than Santa Claus himself.

Another thing that came up a lot in Osaka’s stories was optical illusions. While the way these illusions were uncovered didn’t always work for me, they were certainly interesting. One part, in particular, brought to mind 2015’s “The Dress,” the one that either looked blue and black or white and gold depending on who you asked.

I liked but didn’t necessarily love most of the collection. My particular favorites were “The Mourning Locomotive” (even though it relied heavily on information found in a letter after everything was all over), “The Ginza Ghost,” “The Guardian of the Lighthouse” (tragic and horrific), and “The Demon in the Mine" (wonderful incorporation of the setting). “The Cold Night’s Clearing” was also quite good, as long as you’re okay with your Christmas stories being very depressing. And “The Hungry Letter-Box” was a nice change of pace, the only mystery that didn’t involve a death of some kind. I later learned, after reading the bit about this story in the introduction, that this was the one story in the collection written after Osaka switched to spy stories and comedies.

There were other stories I didn't like quite as much. “The Phantasm of the Stone Wall” was a little boring, and the deductions in “The Mesmerising Light” were largely unnecessary and could have been done away with if one of the characters had come up with better questions. “The Three Madmen” and “The Hangman of the Department Store” were both nice enough mysteries, but not the best or most intriguing mysteries in the collection. “The Monster of the Lighthouse” started off okay but became, for me, the worst story in the collection by the end. Its placement right after “The Mourning Locomotive” probably didn’t help.

Ah, and I feel I should mention really quick that some of the stories have very gory and descriptive crime scenes. The ones that made me cringe the most were “The Mourning Locomotive” and “The Three Madmen.” The first had many grisly deaths by train, including the aftermath of trying to clean up, and the second included a victim whose brain had been removed.

Those with more of a taste for short stories might like this collection more than I did, but it wasn’t bad. “The Demon in the Mine,” the longest story in the book, made me wish that Osaka’s one novel, Yacht of Death, had been translated. The story’s greater number of pages gave him more time to really set up the situation (although the characters still weren’t fleshed out at all), and I loved the way he incorporated the specifics of the mine into the mystery.

The book included a publisher’s note on Japanese weights and measures, as well as a few translator’s notes. I wouldn’t have minded if there had been a few more translator’s notes - there were at least a couple things I was curious about that didn’t get notes.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I'm finished! "The Ginza Ghost" was the best of Osaka's

mysteries.

It takes place on a narrow street. There's a tobacco shop across from a cafe, and the middle aged female owner of the tobacco shop is known to have a rocky relationship with her current lover, who she's convinced is cheating on her with the shop's young new assistant. One evening, the folks at the cafe hear a horrible scream and see the owner of the tobacco shop briefly come out, brandishing a razor, and then go back in. A short while later the police arrive. The young assistant is found with her throat cut and dies after the police get there - the last thing she says is the shop owner's name. The shop owner is found dead as well, strangled with a towel. It's assumed that she killed the assistant and then killed herself, but 1) it's hard to strangle yourself with a towel and 2) the shop owner died an hour before the assistant. That leaves two likely suspects (and one less likely one, if you believe in vengeful ghosts): the shop owner's lover, who was out drinking at the time of the murder, and the shop owner's daughter.

The solution to the mystery reminded me strongly of