The pair are a variation on the old Holmes and Watson team – a duo as popular in Japan as anywhere else in the world. Other than Maria and Alice most have regular Japanese names. Along with the university mystery club, led by narrator Alice (sharing the author’s penname both are male) there is an odd assortment of characters who usually spend their summers in the island’s two villas. The group summering on the island is varied. But unfortunately the secret has a dark past – the last person who came close to finding it out was found dead on the island’s idyllic shores the next day, in what appears to be a case of murder. One summer several members of the club travel to the island hoping to find the secret. A series of Moai statues, modelled after those on Easter Island, have been placed on the island by Maria’s grandfather to provide the answer to the location of his stash of diamonds. A group of university students from the Eito University Mystery Club travel to Kashikijima, a secluded island paradise, hoping to investigate a mystery left behind by the grandfather of one of their members, Maria Arima. The Moai Island Puzzle is in fact a series of puzzles.
Lovers of Golden Age will find a lot to love in The Moai Island Puzzle, and Arisugawa knows this well, and plays it. Much like the honkaku authors Soji Shimada and Yukito Ayatsuji, Arisugawa’s work wears its influences on its sleeve, to the point of being pastiche. The Moai Island Puzzle is a mystery that plays on that relationship between Golden Age novels and puzzles, and follows the traditional rules much like other stories from Japan’s honkaku (orthodox) school of mystery writing. The stories follow patterns, and the reward for readers is not in being tricked by a new and entirely original creation, but working roughly within the formula and using the clues in order to work out the mystery along with the detective. Written by Alice Arisugawa, translated by Ho-Ling Wong - Golden Age mysteries are formulaic and, far from being a flaw, it’s a major part of their appeal.
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