DECAPITATION: Kubikiri Cycle

A dropout from an elite Houston-based program for teens is on a visit to a private island. Its mistress, virtually marooned there, surrounds herself with geniuses, especially of the young and female kind—one of whom ends up headless one fine morning. The top-selling novelist year by year in his native Japan, prolific palindromic phenomenon NISIOISIN made his debut when he was only twenty with this Mephisto Award winner, a whoduni and locked-room mystery at once old-school and eye-opening.