The debut mystery novel of Yukito Ayatsuji, published in 1987 and riddled with references to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. It has a manga adaptation.
Tsunojima Island has an unresolved case in the brutal murder of its owner, with the death of his daughter at a club party still fresh. Six months later, seven students (all members of their university's Mystery Club) decide to spend a week vacationing on said island. Paranoia sets in when they start suspecting one of them is planning their demise. Back in the mainland, a former member of the club receives a letter claiming that the owner's daughter was killed too, that it wasn't an accident. Then he learns that other people have been mailed that same letter.
See Another, written by the same author.
Tropes:
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Agatha is described as an ideal pale-skinned and dark-haired beauty in the novel, while in the manga she is blonde.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Junya "Ellery" Matsuura is a textbook Decoy Protagonist who, despite spending the whole story trying to solve the case, draws completely the wrong conclusion and is backstabbed by the culprit immediately after blithely inviting them to go hunt for a non-existent true culprit together. In the book's official manga adaptation, however, Ellery successfuly identifies the true culprit, using Percussive Pickpocketing to take away their knife and delivering a lengthy summation explaining how they knew that they were the true culprit and the false conclusion their novel counterpart drew was wrong. The only thing stopping them from ending the story ahead of schedule is the culprit drugging their coffee ahead of time.
- Adaptational Nice Guy:
- Carr in the manga is still surly and combative with the other club members, but he's kinder to the girls than in the book, and more angered by the fact that he doesn't feel everyone else is taking the murder threats seriously until someone dies. The incident where he asks Orczy out after being rejected by Agatha and then cruelly disparages her is removed entirely. The bonus comics at the end of each manga volume also show him acting friendlier with the other club members prior to the trip.
- Ellery is still aloof and narcissistic in the manga, but he more openly expresses care for his friends. In the end, he admits that his fixation on the possibility of an outside murderer is partly because he didn't want to believe that any of the club members could murder the others. He also shows significant guilt over his role in Chiori's death and tells Van outright that he could have just killed Ellery for revenge rather than taking it out on everyone.
- All for Nothing: Manga-only: Shimada reveals to Van/Morisu at the very end that Chiori didn't drown when the Mystery Club's boat sank, but instead died of shock thanks to her weak heart. Van understandably freaks out upon realizing that this means that the other club members were indeed innocent of her murder; her death was just an unfortunate accident, and he killed everyone for nothing.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Van, or Morisu, successfully kills the six club members that he blames for Chiori Nakamura's death and frames Ellery as the culprit. However, while he has fooled the police, Kiyoshi Shimada might be onto him, and the book ends with Morisu asking a boy to give his written confession over to Shimada, so he may ultimately not get away with his crimes.
- Brick Joke: Kiyoshi Shimada tells Kawaminami early on that he is the third son of a Buddhist temple, and thus has no real job or responsibilities since his father and eldest brother are both healthy; he also vaguely mentions having a connection to the police to explain away how he knows certain things about past cases. The detective who shows up at the end of the book to investigate the murders of the Mystery Club turns out to be his brother, the middle son of the temple. He's merely exasperated by Kiyoshi's presence and freely shares what he knows since his brother will only pester him for information later.
- Closed Circle: The Mystery Club members are stuck on a remote island with no phones or electricity (or no cell service, in the manga), no reliable way to signal the mainland for help, and nobody coming to check on them for a full week. Thus, when the murders begin, they are left to try and solve the problem themselves. The possible subversion of the trope is discussed with the theory that someone could travel from the island to the mainland or to Nekojima, the smaller and more remote island nearby with a small boat. This is in fact how Morisu got from the island to the mainland and back every night.
- Dies Differently In The Adaptation: In the book, Chiori died of acute alcohol poisoning at a party hosted by the Mystery Club. In the manga, the party was held on a boat, and she instead drowned when it sank. This change is to set up the rest of the club as more culpable in her death, as Ellery took her life jacket to save Orczy when he believed that Chiori was already dead. Ultimately, it is confirmed that she died of a heart attack from the shock of the boat sinking, making the others innocent of directly killing her.
- Dramatic Irony: The reader finds out very early on that Chiori Nakamura was Seiji Nakamura's daughter, thus giving the motive for why Seiji might target the Mystery Club if he is still alive. Most of the characters don't know of their connection however, because Chiori wanted to keep it a secret due to her distant relationship with Seiji, thus leaving the club members to question how things fit together for most of the book.
- Faking the Dead: Early on, the theory is posed that Seiji Nakamura could have faked his own death by using his missing gardener as a body double, using the fact that the body was burned to prevent sure identification. This isn't the case, just a convenient misdirection that Van uses to throw everyone off his trail.
- Finger in the Mail: Seiji Nakamura mailed a package containing his wife's severed hand to his younger brother before killing their live-in employees and presumably himself. Kojiro is prodded by Shimada into confessing that he believes Seiji did this because he'd realized that his wife had an affair with Kojiro and had sent him the evidence of her murder as punishment.
- Gender Flip: In the manga adaptation, the male Masaaki Kawaminami is changed to a young woman who is instead named Akira, though her relation to the Mystery Club and role in the story remains the same.
- Mad Artist: Seiji Nakamura was a genius architect who spent most of his life hiding away on an island in his elaborate mansion, with only his wife, their two servants, and occasionally the gardener for company. His eccentricities and troubled mental health lead various characters to speculate that the death of his daughter finally drove him fully over the edge.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: One of the theories that Shimada and Kawaminami pursue in their investigation is that Chiori Nakamura might not have been Seiji's daughter but the product of an affair, which contributed to his estrangement from her and his eventual madness and the murder-suicide of his wife and employees. She is in fact the biological daughter of Seiji's brother Kojiro.
- Page-Turn Surprise: In the original Japanese edition, The Reveal of the culprit's identity occupies a single sentence (totally innocuous in-universe, but a massive Wham Line to the reader) but gets an entire page to itself.
- Shout-Out Theme Naming:
- Invoked by the members of the Mystery Club, who all pick their nicknames from famous mystery writers. We have Ellery, Carr, Van, Leroux, Agatha, and Orczy.
- The cast also includes a Kawaminami, an Alternate Character Reading of "Conan", a Morisu, after Maurice Leblanc, and a Kiyoshi Shimada, after author Soji Shimada and his Great Detective Kiyoshi Mitarai.
- Ten Little Murder Victims: Seven members of a university mystery literature club visit an island where a gruesome massacre took place sometime before and start being killed off themselves. Two of the club's other members, not aware of the danger their friends are in, investigate the prior murder on the mainland. It turns out that one of the club members is moving back and forth between the island and the mainland to give himself an alibi, and has let everyone else think only six people went to the island.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Carr, the second victim is killed with a poisoned cup of coffee. The killer later drugs another cup in order to knock Ellery out, so that Van can finish framing him and then burn the house down with him inside.
- Tomato Surprise: "Van" ( who takes part in the Ten Little Murder Victims event on the island) and Kyoichi Morisu (the Armchair Detective who helps out the narrator on the mainland) are the same person. All of the people on the island and the narrator of the mainland section know this, but nobody realizes it's relevant to the case because Morisu lied and told everyone except the island goers that he wasn't going to the island in order to give himself an alibi.
- Tragic Keepsake:
- Orczy was given Chiori's ring as a keepsake following her funeral and wears it in the present day. This is the actual reason that the killer cuts her hand off after her murder, along with being a convenient Red Herring; the ring had Chiori and Morisu's initials inscribed on the inside, revealing their relationship.
- In the manga, Ellery puts on Leroux's glasses for a moment after he, Van, and Poe find Leroux's body, while making his declaration that they will solve the mystery for their dead friends' sake.
- Wham Line: "I'm Van Dine."
