You’re promised a puzzle up front, and boy do you get puzzles: literal jigsaw puzzles, an island-based treasure hunt puzzle, a ‘four years previously’ family tragedy puzzle, and – hooray! – the locked room murder of two of those gathered on the horseshoe-shaped island of Kashikijima. And so this Japanese island-set puzzle, the second collaboration between Locked Room International’s John Pugmire and translator and crime fiction blogger Ho-Ling Wong after last year’s excellent The Decagon House Murders, would be just what the doctor ordered if the medical profession ever thought of prescribing books for those of us with the thrill of fictional murder in our hearts. Sure, isolate them in some ancestral mansion via thunderstorm or on a train via unexpected snow and the effect is arguably the same, but there’s something about the island in itself that renders the idea all the more thrilling to my senses. But if I had to pick one crime fiction conceit above all others it would undoubtedly be a group of people on an island getting killed off one by one. Disclosure: I proof-read this book for Locked Room International in March 2016 Children, incarnations of The Doctor, phases of the moon…generally I try not to play favourites.
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