The Moai Island Puzzle — Alice Arisugawa

In his introduction, Soji Shimada, the doyen of the Japanese form of Golden Age detective fiction known as shin honkaku, calls this novel a masterpiece and Publisher's Weekly gives it a starred review. Three students from Eito University in Kyoto travel to a remote island populated with moai statues in order to find a hidden treasure, but several murders -- including one impossible--occur before it can be located. Don't be fooled by the bland description. The locked room murder is brilliant and worthy of John Dickson Carr at his best, and the dying message and chain of deduction leading to the killer rival anything written by Ellery Queen. And neither Carr nor Queen ever combined both in one novel. Locked Room International discovers and publishes impossible crime mysteries from all over the world, and by authors past and present.