What Is The Twist Ending Of The Decagon House Murders?

Question

The Decagon House Murders shocked me! That last reveal connecting past and present—anyone else need to unpack its locked-room implications?

Phanny · Answer

You will get a similar feeling of deception when reading ‘The Decagon House Murders’ which is a locked-room mystery, heavily inspired by the Queen of Mystery Agatha Christie. This mystery unfolds as the detective eventually discovers that the killer is one of the seven club members who is pretending to have been killed by others, utilizing the island setting and their on-going murder mystery game within the group as decoy. While ‘The Decagon House Murders’ will keep readers eager to find out the truth as to who the killer was, ‘THE WIFE'S REVENGE: BETRAYAL IN BLOOD’ unravels a seemingly perfect marriage in a deadly web of premeditated revenge, carefully devised by its protagonist in great detail and kept secret until the very end of the book.

Xander · Answer

A short summary for those who want it: the killer wasn't some random stranger, it was one of the people who set up the vacation. I said that the Decagon murders must have been the work of an outside killer, but that was wrong. This killer was part of the Decagon group, set up this vacation in order to revenge himself on the family that had been murdered years before. The final scene was incredibly clever, both in terms of the mechanical setup of the various scenes of murder and in terms of motive (revenge of a family member). A very satisfying twist and a very crafty film.

The thing that will stick with me is how the twist changes our perspective on the group as a whole. So many seemingly ordinary moments and comments were turned into clues that led to this moment. It’s a cold twist but it’s so satisfying at the same time. The sympathy I have for him and his twisted motives doesn’t change how crafty it was to set up this twist.

Zara · Answer

I really enjoyed the way the author in “The Decagon House Murders” bysunsetTimeout Aidatsuji pawns off others for the reader to suspicion, and the big twist is wonderful and nasty. The main character of the visiting student is not who the reader has been following, and it turns out that he is the murderer responsible for the ten deaths. Ayatsuji skillfully misdirects the reader’s suspicion in several different directions including an island local or even a copycat of an earlier massacre. However the big reveal is that the murderer was part of the group of visiting students and used his own (false) backstory and plant many clues in order to have the reader believe that the murders were somehow tied to the previous atrocity on the island and its history.

My favorite part of the novel was how we got to go back and view the entire novel through a new lens after the big reveal. Many of the events and circumstances that the reader initially believed to be random coincidences or mere happenstance were in fact carefully staged by the mastermind behind the murders. Even seemingly accidental comments, pieces of evidence that were left behind, and the random timing of arrival to and departure from the decagon house were all part of a grander scheme to solidify the impression that the novel was tracing out the madness of a local or the vicious acts of revenge of a person hell-bent on avenging a past massacre. And the reason behind the killings was characteristically Ayatsuji: personal, motivated by a past atrocity that involved the architect of the current crime and some of the people who had been killed, but certainly not random. I actually really liked how the motive behind the novel was to build up a puzzle, a complex and twisted series of clues, that the reader would be misled by along with the characters. It was a very satisfying novel that left me satisfied but also kind of freaked out, which is pretty much my ideal reading experience. It’s why I always recommend The Decagon House Murders to anyone looking for a locked-room style mystery with a big twist at the end.

Chloe · Answer

ZOMG YOU GUYS. IF YOU HAVEN'T READD 'THE DECAGON HOUSE MURDERS' AND HATES SPOILERS, LEAVE NOW.

It was so surprising that the person who planned the island trip was behind the whole massacre. He wasn’t some club member who accidentally found themselves in the midst of the tragedy, he was hidden behind a facade of innocence and had his own motivations and identity tied into the Decagon family murders. The way the novel unfolds and you realize that it wasn’t some outside intruder but someone in the group had planned everything out in detail was amazing. And the way the author slowly reveals staged evidence, timed alibis and a confession like explanation of how and why he did it was so brilliant.

It’s a great ‘fair-play’ twist, which means that the reader can look back at the story and spot all of the clues as they’re revealed, with the author scattering the occasional detail about the planner’s behavior or the slightly odd way in which some part of the story unfolded. His explanation for the motive behind the killings, and the method used, is cold and logical. It’s a revenge story, driven by theatricality. I was left with great admiration for the book, and a queasy feeling at the intimate, and petty nature of the revenge that had unfolded.

Max · Answer

I love deconstructing the ending to these locked-room mysteries and “The Decagon House Murders” is particularly nasty. Instead of an outside killer, the true mastermind was one of the group who had planned the whole thing and manipulated the timeline to fit in with his pre-planned scheme. Cleverly, he had even set up a few misleading clues to point away from his true identity. The deaths of the group were made to look like accidents and chance events, but were all part of his overall plan and were revealed in a clever narrative reconstruction of the entire weekend.

It’s great to be able to link the puzzle’s mechanics to the killer’s motivations. As a big fan of locked-room style mysteries, I loved the fact that the killer of The Decagon House Murders wasn’t just some mastermind who had managed to lock all of his victims in a room and then hidden away in a secret compartment, complete with a stash of red herrings. Rather, he or she was someone who had been haunted by the memories of the earlier massacre at the family’s country home and sought to exact revenge on the descendants of those responsible. Thus, every earlier mystery or oddity was linked to the killer’s own motivations in ways that were sometimes subtle and other puzzled me at the time but became blindingly obvious in retrospect, and were even cleverly incorporated into the manuscript in a way that allowed the reader to go back and realize how each had been manipulated to divert suspicion in a given direction.

Ella · Answer

I wasn’t expecting this twist in The Decagon House Murders. The real killer is one of the students who went to the island. He was hiding in plain sight and had set up the whole scenario in advance using a false identity. The way the events were set up in order to make the murders look like a copy of the previous tragedy on the island, complete with coincidences, fabricated alibis and disguised motives, was clever. And I loved the personal motive of the killer for his crimes: they were a mix of revenge and theater. The book had me reading in a suspicious way, never trusting apparent coincidences, never taking things at face value. Even now I want to go back to the beginning with a red pen and re-read it in light of the twist.

Freya · Answer

I tend to be very analytical when it comes to plot twists. ‘The Decagon House Murders’ has what I call a ‘classic’ locked-room mystery, turned on its head. The big reveal isn’t simply ‘it was someone else’, but rather that the murderer was hiding in plain sight as one of the visitors to the Decagon House, having assumed a completely different identity. It’s a highly intricate plot, full of clever twists and turns. The final chapters were a great reveal of the layers of the murderer’s performance – how he had created false alibis, led discussions in a particular direction, played on the natural human assumptions as to who would most want to exact revenge for the past slaughter on the island. That it all came down to a motive tied to a past grievance or cover-up was fantastic.

The book also looks at the emotional aspect of the identity of the murderer. The motive for the murder(s) has to do with a past injustice or cover-up on the island where the murders took place. This is not just a random killing or two, but rather a very deliberate act to get attention for past wrongs. The author does a great job of tying up all of the ends in the confessional scenes. They are very frustratingly neat and require a re-reading of many parts of the book to realize how the author set that up. If you like cleverly written mysteries that make you feel smart and then humble, then this is the perfect book for you. It definitely left my brain exhausted in the best way.

Edna Mccall · Answer

For me, the greatest trick of the plot is the alibi trick. The question at the center of a closed circle is usually “How did an outsider get in?”, but Seiji’s clever solution is that he didn’t get in as an outsider. Instead, he created an inside identity for himself and his alibi is his assumed identity. No one questions Kawaminami’s presence because he arrived with the group, he was on the list, and he acts like he belongs there. And the greatest trick of all, the biggest surprise of all, is hiding in plain sight, i.e. among the victims. It’s such a simple and obvious solution that it’s a wonder it wasn’t done before. It’s a solution that respects the reader’s intelligence.

Maliah Izen · Answer

I don’t think this scene has been looked at from the angle of cost to Seiji. A man who has thrown his entire life, identity and everything into revenge, only to have his revenge consume him. He may get what he wants but he won’t go back to being Seiji. He’ll be a ghost of a man who committed a horrific crime. The twist of the scene is not just clever but also very sad because it shows the extent of personal annihilation that a man of vengeance can go through. He’s as much of a victim of the tragedy as his sister is. The horror of the murders is matched by the horror of what unchecked grief without hope can do to a human being. The decagon house is Seiji’s masterpiece and his coffin.

Gert van der Merwe · Answer

I didn’t find the big twist to be super surprising. If you’ve read a bunch of old school-style mysteries, the idea of a body coming back after faking his own death and switching identities isn’t exactly new and shocking. But this book worked really well because the execution and the atmosphere were where the true strength of the story lay, not in the big reveal itself. Throughout the book, there are tons of little clues as to why Kawaminami would know random things about old cases and be super interested in them from time to time. My true surprise was just how detailed and thorough the whole setup of the previous murders and his fake death was. The “who” was sort of apparent before the end, but the “how deep a rabbit hole was this guy in” was really interesting to read about.

Superovkata · Answer

What lingers from this twist is the image of the house after everything has been revealed. No longer is it just the setting of a bunch of murders. The decagon house is a monument, a structure of severe lines and unnatural angles. It’s a isolating house. The house was designed by Seiji in his grief to be a place where one person could care for another terminally ill person. But in the end, it became so much more than that. Instead of just being killed, each of the victims was sacrificed inside this monolithic and symbolic structure. And what does the house mean? What do the murders mean? That the artist saw fit to present this gruesome and senseless act in a grotesque and horrible light is what makes this a murder mystery instead of just a “whodunit” and how they did it. The real symbolizm of all of this is what lingers long after the reader has gotten past the details of how each of the victims spent their last hours and who was were where when the others were killed.

Colin Edward Tucker · Answer

More impressive than the twist itself was the setup to it. The scenario of an apparent murder on a remote island with no outsider would have been impossible to pull off had Shimada not so cleverly laid the groundwork. The solution, when it finally came, was extremely satisfying because the book played completely fair within the parameters of a closed circle mystery. All the clues were there: his knowledge of details long past, his specific reactions to certain names, his decidedly unassertive personality and behavior that allowed others to take center stage. The twist was that the killer was someone that the reader would never have thought possible – someone who shouldn’t exist. And that’s what made it so cleverly subversive, as it played against the typical reader assumption of this genre of story: that the killer would be one of the island’s obvious residents.

Thegr8salzali · Answer

The twist also makes the setting a character. The Decagon House is a very harsh, almost unnatural structure of very straight lines, repeating back on themselves to form angles, but offering no comfort, and no way out, all turning about a single tragic fact. A very weird, and very cool house, prior to the twist, the Decagon House becomes, after the reveal, another deliberate choice by Seiji to establish the framework for his revenge drama. The symmetry of the house, the isolation of it from the surrounding town, the way it causes sound to travel in unexpected ways, and heightens paranoia, all are used by Seiji to achieve his end. Thus the house and the killer’s identity are one and the same: a carefully constructed illusion, designed to capture and destroy.

Sherry Garland · Answer

The twist works so well in part because of how to set up the character of Kawaminami as slightly fearful, somewhat aloof and thus somewhat other to allow the reader to misunderstand his nature as he lets others take charge while he observes and keeps adding fuel to the suspicions of the others by dropping occasional ‘clues’ for them to jump to conclusions on. Every action of Seiji is understandable in the light of how the reader would normally expect a stranger to behave in a murder scenario, until the twist is revealed, and it’s all been a clever act. His fear was a mask, his aloofness a desperate attempt to control events, and his watching and noting down everything a director ready to edit and add music to a drama. You’ll want to re-read every scene where you read Kawaminami in order to find the cracks in his facade, as a great twist must turn the second reading into virtually a completely different read. This one does that successfully.

What Is The Twist Ending Of The Decagon House Murders?

14 Answers

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