Rather than work together they individually try to solve the crimes. An isolated island with someone being murdered would be the last place where I would stay. This was my first problem with the writing. I found the read entertaining but also a bit perplexing.Why would a group of students stay on the island when even one death occurred? Each of them work individually to try to figure out who is the culprit. Except their first problem is the death of one of them. They are all fairly competitive and set out on their tasks with gusto. They begin the task of solving some of the worlds’ great mystery crimes. Leroux prides himself as the best of the mystery solvers. Two of the students are females including Agatha and Orczy and the remaining are males. The students have taken the names of famous English mystery writers Poe, Ellery, Orczy, Carr, Agatha, Van Dine and Leroux. It’s a perfect place for a group of university students to spend a week and solve some mysteries. The only structure remaining is a decagon shaped building with seven bedding areas and a kitchen, store room and restrooms. A large blue mansion once stood on the island but was destroyed by fire. Isolated from the mainland, accessible only by boat and uninhabited. The island is a perfect getaway for 7 members of a murder solving group. It will delight any mystery fan looking to put their little grey cells to use.

This is a playful, loving and fiendishly plotted homage to the best of golden age crime. The remaining amateur sleuths will have to use all of their murder-mystery expertise to find the killer before they end up dead too.

They’re looking forward to investigating the crime, putting their passion for solving mysteries to practical use, but before long there is a fresh murder, and soon the club-members realise they are being picked off one-by-one. The members of a university mystery club decide to visit an island which was the site of a grisly, unsolved multiple murder the year before. That’s what has made it a classic in Japan, and what readers of this first ever English translation will love too. A hugely enjoyable, page-turning murder mystery with one of the best and most-satisfying conclusions you’ll ever read: clever enough that you’re unlikely to guess it, but simple enough that you’ll kick yourself when it’s revealed.

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