The Clock House Murders

About

Detective Shimada Kiyoshi arrives at a remote mansion built around an enormous clock mechanism — and naturally, someone dies in a locked room. The house itself is the puzzle: a building designed with secret passages, impossible geometries, and a ticking timepiece that may hold the key to the murder. Fair-play rules apply — every clue is visible to the reader who knows where to look. Ayatsuji, whose Decagon House Murders revitalized the Japanese honkaku mystery genre, delivers another architecturally obsessed locked-room puzzle. The pleasure is in the construction: watching the detective dismantle the house's secrets while the reader races to beat him there. A mystery where the building is the weapon, the alibi, and the solution — and the clock is always ticking.