Murder in the House of Omari, by Taku Ashibe

 

9781805335214

Pushkin Vertigo, 2025

original title Ōmarike Satsujin Jiken, 大鞠家殺人事件, 2021

translated by Bryan Karetnyk

375 pp

paperback

“On a certain street corner, one day in the near future—” construction is roaring through the Semba district of Osaka. The old storefronts are coming down, to be replaced by the shiny new developments that will soon erase the neighborhood’s past. A small noticeboard tries to offer a nod to history, mentioning that this was once the place where the image of the classic “Osaka merchant” was born. But its quiet attempt at remembrance doesn’t stand a chance against the jackhammers, excavators, compressors, and crushers that are making the area “disappear for good.”  Then something unexpected happens -- while digging, a work crew uncovers what looks like an old air-raid shelter. They pause for a bit, curious—it’s not empty, nor is it a typical shelter. Inside are bits of everyday life frozen in time: furniture, dishes, and even a stash of old mystery novels. One worker recognizes them immediately: a complete set of the Ryuko-Shoin world detective-fiction series, a  mix of Japanese, American, and British titles. There’s also a cloth decorated with a temari ball and an old-fashioned logo bearing the name Ōmari—a name none of them have ever heard. The hole is filled in, covered over, and forgotten. Whatever life once thrived there has vanished again, this time beneath concrete. And with it goes any trace of the "vibrant way of life and commerce that the House of Ōmari once brought to the area" —not to mention the numerous murders that happened there "during its final days."  

Luckily, we have the creative imagination of Taku Ashibe to relate that story, in this novel that ranges from 1906 in the Meiji Era through the end of World War II and beyond.  Ashibe is an incredibly prolific author and a member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan, nominated several times for the Honkaku Mystery Award for best fiction before winning it, along with the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 2022, for Murder in the House of Ōmari.  

 Note the temari ...  from Amazon Japan

Before the story plunges into its unsettling run of murders, the author takes a moment to ground us in the company’s past and the people who built it. The House of Ōmari began as a modest “general-goods wholesaler” in South Kyuhoji-machi, but in 1894 the family made a savvy move into cosmetics—a decision that would define their future success. Over the years, one of the later heads expanded the enterprise even further, adding manufacturing to the mix while keeping the wholesale side alive and branching into over-the-counter medicines.  By 1906, the House of Ōmari is thriving. Sentarō, the family’s “young master” and heir apparent, decides to take a casual trip to the Panorama Museum near Namba Station. With only a company errand boy in tow, he heads out for what should have been an ordinary day—until he suddenly disappears, “like a puff of smoke.” His vanishing leaves the family without a male successor, throwing the Ōmari line of inheritance into disarray. To stabilize the future of the business, the family ultimately adopts their senior head clerk, who then marries their daughter Kiyoe and changes his name to Shigezo Ōmari.  The couple went on to have four children—two daughters (Tsukiko and Fumiko) and two sons (Taichiro and Shigehiko). But with Japan’s entry into World War II, the fortunes of the Ōmari family begin to shift. By 1943, the business is a shadow of what it once was; selling cosmetics is now considered unpatriotic, and to be "longing for" Euopean-style goods has to be kept under wraps. By 1945, the family is largely reduced to assembling care bags for soldiers, and their prosperity starts to unravel. Both sons are away serving in the military, leaving the two daughters and a daughter-in-law, Mineko, at home with their parents to keep the household and what remains of the business running.   It’s a dark night that same year when the police summon Dr. Namibuchi to the House of Ōmari for what they call a “police medical matter.” When he arrives, it turns out to be an attack on Tsukiko—but thankfully, she’s very much alive, and the blood is revealed to be fake. Yet the relief at her being alive doesn’t last long. Shortly after the police and the doctor finish their examination of the scene,   a real tragedy is uncovered: the body of Shigezo, the family patriarch, hanging in his bedroom. The police and Dr. Namibuchi quickly confirm what everyone fears—this was no suicide. Shigezo has been murdered.  As mentioned earlier, Shigezo’s death is only the first in a chilling string of murders. Add to that a peculiar detective and a series of bizarre happenings around the house, and the story quickly becomes stranger—and far more intriguing—than anyone could have imagined.

Sure, it takes a more than a little while before the first murder actually occurs, but it’s far from wasted time. As the fortunes of the House of Ōmari rise and fall, the author also captures the shifting landscapes of Osaka—and Japan as a whole—showing the transformations the country undergoes leading up to and during its militaristic period socially, culturally and economically.   It’s impressively done, working both as a well-plotted murder mystery and a vivid slice of history, with the two elements perfectly intertwined.  There is a bit of silliness here that might have been left out (a demon with red hair comes to mind), but otherwise, I have to admit to being completely caught up in the book, trying to figure out who is behind all of these horrific events.  Murder in the House of Ōmari had me tapping into my inner armchair detective, keeping me hooked from start to finish—while at the same time, the author’s rich historical backdrop had me completely absorbed in the history of a changing Japan as well as Osaka's merchant culture.  

This one’s definitely best for patient readers, but the payoff is well worth it—by the end, the story proves to be a truly satisfying read on many levels.   Definitely recommended. 

The LIttle Sparrow Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo

 

9781782278870

Pushkin Vertigo, 2024

originally published as Akuma no temari uta (悪魔の手毬唄, serialized 1957-1959; published in book form in 1971, Kadakowa Shoten)

translated by Bryan Karetnyk

311 pp

paperback

read in December

It is no secret how much I have come to love these books. I'd had this one preordered for months once I learned it was going to be published; I already have the next Pushkin Vertigo translation, Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, due out in the fall of this year, on my radar and in my sights.   The Little Sparrow Murders is number 49 of 77  in  Yokomizo's Kosuke Kindaichi detective series and is the sixth of this author's books to have been published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo.  I was also lucky enough to have latched on to a dvd of the film made in 1977, which was not quite as good as the novel, but then again, I expected that.  

It's July, 1955 and Kindaichi Kosuke is taking a much-needed rest and decides that he should go Okayama Prefecture where he'd "developed a fondness for the local people and their ways" after spending time there during a few of his crime-solving adventures.  First he stops in to visit with an old friend, Inspector Isokawa in Okayama, who gives him the address of an inn in Onikobe Village, owned by a woman who Isokawa once knew. Evidently, she's had "her fair share of sorrow," since her husband had been murdered some twenty years earlier, and the crime had never been solved.   While Kindaichi insists he only wants to rest for a while, he agrees to listen to the inspector about this case, which seems to mean so very much to him.   Once in the village, Kindaichi holes up at the Turtle Spring Inn, where he "could quite happily give himself over to idleness without being disturbed by anybody." As he notes, he didn't "feel any particular sense of obligation" to the inspector, but at the same time, he kept his eyes and ears open while "lazing around idly like a cat."   Kindaichi's plans for R&R are interrupted, however, with the disappearance (and perhaps murder?) of the elderly Hoan Tatara,  a self-described "recluse" and local historian.  Not long before Tatara disappeared, Kindaichi  had gone to his home and had written a letter to a former ex-wife for him, asking her to come live with him now that they're both old, a proposal that had been accepted.  In fact,  Kindaichi had run into an elderly woman with a large furoshiki on her back who had introduced herself as O-Rin, this particular ex-wife of Tatara's, who was on her way to his place.   Now, however, there is no sign of either of them, and Isokawa, who has come to Onikobe, wonders if perhaps Tatara's disappearance might have something to do with the unsolved crime of twenty years earlier.  It seems though that Tatara's disappearance is not the only strange happening in the village; it isn't long until a young woman is discovered murdered, her body and the scene staged in a bizarre fashion.  She isn't the only one to die, however -- the guests at her wake will soon be attending another one.   Kindaichi must figure out what connects all of these occurrences in order to stop these murders, and  discovers a slender thread of a clue that just might tie them all together. 

ryokan in Onikobe Village, from Trip Advisor

While my favorite of the Kindaichi mysteries so far continues to be The Inugami Clan (it's bizarre beyond belief and firmly in my strange-reading wheelhouse), The Little Sparrow Murders follows closely in second place.    The novel is also much more reader friendly than the previous ones, and Bryan Karetnyk's translation made the story flow.  I will say that I flipped back and forth between the text and the map that is provided at the beginning of the book any number of times before I finally took a photo and kept it up on my iPad screen to refer to.    The provided list of characters soon becames vital as well,  because the family relationships are beyond critical to the story. 

The Little Sparrow Murders delivers a super murder mystery, while also examining how the past has a powerful impact on the present and delving into social divisions, ritual, customs and the importance of history in this village.  It is also  a solid puzzle that armchair detectives will appreciate, making for a particularly good whodunit, and I am most happy to admit that  I did not guess or even come close to guessing the who here.   High marks to this one, and definitely recommended to readers of Japanese crime fiction or to fans of Yokomizo's detective Kindaichi Kosuke.  Now I'm not so patiently waiting for the next book.  

film poster for 1977 film, Akuma no temari-uta. From IMDB

Akuma no temari-uta was directed by Kon Ichikawa, as were thirteen other films featuring our erstwhile and somewhat scruffy detective Kindaichi.   There are other films with different directors, but the Ichikawa films are by and large my favorites, and Kindaichi's adventures were also revisited on Japanese television and in manga.   The story changes just a bit in the movie based on this novel but the main thrust of the book carries through the film.   In the book you have the list of characters complete with family relationships to draw on, but here the introduction to these people happens within the first half hour or so, making it a big on the draggy side.  But after that, I was completely engaged in what was happening on screen, especially the murders, which were portrayed in a way that even horror-film watchers would have appreciated, yet still kept close to the descriptions in the novel.  One trademark of Ichikawa's work is that he is experimental in style -- in Akuma no temari-uta there are quick cuts, flashbacks that often are revealed in grainy black-and-white and other moves that definitely kept me on my movie-watching toes.   One of these involves a scene from the 1930 movie Morocco that is so eerie in the watching, yet necessary to the overall character study.   There's also a sprinkling of Kindaichi's dandruff I could have done without, but that same thing happens in all of the Ichikawa movies in some form.   The end comes with some pretty over-the-top dramatics, but then again, I'm a long-time watcher of Japanese films where emotional scenes tend to bring this sort of thing out in the actor.  I am lucky enough to understand the language but I'm sure there must be copies of this movie on dvd with English subtitles. As usual, the bottom line is this: film good, book much better.  

The Devil's Flute Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo

 

9781782278849

Pushkin-Vertigo, 2023

originally published 1973 as Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku (悪魔が来りて笛を吹く)

Translated by Jim Rion

256 pp

paperback (read earlier this month)

I really love these Kindaichi novels -- over the years I've become a huge, huge fangirl.  According to Wikipedia, it looks as if this book first appeared as a serialization that ran from 1951 through 1953.  It was later published in 1973 in book form, and now the good people at Pushkin Vertigo have published it in an English translation, thanks to Jim Rion.  Going with that same article in Wikipedia, The Devil's Flute Murders is number fifteen in the series starring Yokomizo's detective Kosuke Kindaichi; it is the fifth of the Kindaichi books to have been published in English by Pushkin Vertigo.  Just a heads up here: at the Wikipedia page for Seishi Yokomizo,  I noticed that there is another translation coming from Pushkin Vertigo in 2024, The Little Sparrow Murders.  I will be grabbing that one as well, of course.  

As I've said many times, I love mysteries based on events of the past and this one did not disappoint.   

Very briefly, the action begins  in Tokyo in 1947, and much of the city and other parts of the country are still in ruins after World War II.  It is also a time when the aristocracy class as a whole is marking the last of its days, a phenomenon, as the author notes, examined that very year by Osamu Dezai in his work The Setting Sun (1947).  It would be later that year that the peerage came to its official end with the establishment of the new Japanese constitution, but when Viscount Hidesuke Tsubaki was found dead, he was still officially a member of the "sunset class." Before then, he had been a quiet and unassuming man with no cares about influence or ambition. He was also an accomplished flautist whose recording of "The Devil Comes and Plays His Flute" was quite popular.  His home in Tokyo had survived the firebombing of the city, but unfortunately that wasn't the case with his brother-in-law's residence, which was destroyed, prompting him to move into Tsubaki's home.   This relocation caused no end of stress for the Viscount; the addition of his wife's uncle Tamamushi coming to live at the estate only worsened the situation.   Then on March 1, Tsubaki simply vanished, leaving home "without a word of explanation to his family," never to return.   Some time passes before his body is discovered, identified by his daughter Mineko and other family/household members.   As this novel begins in earnest, in September Mineko has made her way to see private detective Kosuke Kindaichi  with a bizarre story that immediately captures his attention.  It seems that after Tsubaki's death, her mother Akiko, her maid Otane and her uncle's mistress Kikue had gone to the theatre where Kikue had clearly seen the Viscount sitting in the front row of the balcony.  He was gone by the time they had the courage to go and check it out, but seeing him had sent Akiko into a panic.  Kindaichi agrees to go to the Tsubaki home when Mineko mentions a "divination" (sort of like a séance) that is about to be held there.   He enters into a most surreal and strange experience resulting from that event that surprises everyone else as well, but that's just the beginning:  it is there for the first (but not the last) time that he hears the sound of Tsubaki playing his  "The Devil Comes and Plays His Flute," which, together with sightings of Tsubaki walking in the estate grounds, rattles everyone in the household.  From that point, Kindaichi is fully involved; what he can't possibly predict is that the deaths will pile up before he can get to the core of this mystery based on secrets that go well back in time. The Inugami Clan continues to remain at the top of the list of my favorite Kindaichi novels, but The Devil's Flute Murders definitely comes in a very close second.  While there is a solid mystery at its core, Yokomizo also examines the deleterious effects of wealth, social status and privilege, and in this case it's not just ugly, but deadly. 

 I've purposefully  offered only a barebones description  here since the book itself is quite involved with a level of complexity I haven't yet seen in this series; after having finished it, I can see why the serialization of this novel lasted so long.   Yokomizo obviously took his time,  allowing  Kindaichi to unravel each and every strand (and there are many) of this perplexing case until the detective can get to the bottom of it all.  It might be worth noting here that if you're someone who wants their mysteries solved quickly with a standard cut-and-dried, formulaic approach to a solution, you won't find that here.  Another thing:  the huge cast of characters is listed in the front in a sort of dramatis-personae type thing, but I became pretty frustrated at flipping back to that list time and again so I finally ended up just making a copy to leave nearby while reading.   And speaking of characters, at one point I actually said to my spouse that I believe this is the first time in reading a book where there were  only two people  I liked, and that was Kindaichi and the dead Tsubaki.    Reader beware -- if you're someone who has to like the people inhabiting your books, you might be a bit disappointed.    

I am beyond happy to report that I did not guess the who until nearly the end when Yokomizo almost hands it to the reader,  although I will say that I did sort of figure out the underlying why in a vague way a bit earlier.   If I explain what it was that made me get that far,  it wouldn't be fair to people who may decide to read this book, so we'll leave it there.  Bottom line: when all is said and done, The Devil's Flute Murders is a solid and compelling mystery that regular readers of Japanese mysteries in translation or regular readers of the Pushkin Vertigo Kindaichi series novels should absolutely not miss, although it is very different in many ways from its predecessors.   

*****************

As the book was winging its way to me, I had purchased a copy of the 1979 film adapted from this novel, but after  some research, I found at least two more adaptations, the earliest dated 1954.  If there are more I haven't found them yet so if anyone has any info, please let me know.   Toshiyuki Nishida has the role of the very, very scruffy Kindaichi, and while the movie is quite good, had I not read the novel prior to watching the film I think I would have been lost. The powers that be who put this movie together made several changes that detracted from the essence of the book, but it was still an entertaining film, complete with subtitles.

from Film Affinity

The version from 2018 (available with subtitles on YouTube) is the better of the two, with Hidetaka Yoshioka as a very angsty Kindaichi.  This adaptation was an NHK TV movie, and the storyline was 

clear and straightforward, making it easy to pick up on what's happening even if you haven't read the

from ho-lingnojikenbo

 book.  This was even better than the Kindaichi films I've watched that were done by Kon Ichikawa, which for me is saying a lot.

The Mill House Murders, by Yukito Ayatsuji

 

9781782278337

Pushkin Vertigo, 2023

originally published as Suishakan no Satsujin Shinsou Kateiban, 1988

translated by Ho-Ling Wong

253 pp

paperback

The Mill House Murders is apparently the second of several books by this author in what Wikipedia refers to as the "Bizarre House/Mansion Murders" series. I've previously read his The Decagon House Murders (also published by Pushkin Vertigo),  the first in the series and a really good mystery that cinched the deal when it came to preordering this book. And while I had the inklings of a solution to this mystery vaguely floating on the periphery of my brain, The Mill House Murders still managed to seriously stump me as I couldn't figure out either the who or more importantly, the how.  

The novel begins at 5:50 a.m., September 29, 1985, within a prologue in which we learn that it is nearly dawn, and the group of people staying at the home of Fujinuma Kiichi have had a very bad September 28th night. While a typhoon raged outside, things inside the Mill House had taken a horrific turn -- a woman had fallen from the tower room,  a painting had vanished, and one of the guests had simply  disappeared.  As if that's not bad enough, things are about to get worse, with the discovery of a dead man in the incinerator, "cut up in pieces and burnt."  It was, to quote Fujinuma, "a blood-soaked night."   Flash forward exactly one year later, and once again a major storm is making its way to the area, and once again guests are expected at the Mill House. Aside from a caretaker and a housekeeper,  Kiichi lives in the house along with Yurie, whose father's dying request was that Kiichi take her in.  Not too long after he had done so, Kiichi had been involved in a car accident that had left his limbs damaged along with his face, leaving him with the desire to withdraw from the world. He had Mill House built, and he and Yurie spent a rather solitary existence, with Yurie spending most of her life in the house's tower room until the two eventually married.  The Mill House is named for its three water wheels that provide the house with its electricity; as one of the guests remarks about them, they

"...  almost look like they are turning against the flow of time, keeping the house and everything in this valley frozen in a never-ending moment." 

It seems as though this is precisely what the reclusive Kiichi desires, but as idyllic as it sounds, it is evidently not meant to be.  

It seems that every year on September 28th,  a small group of Kiichi's acquaintances make their way to his home to view his collection of his famous-artist father's paintings, which he kept only for himself and not for public consumption in an exhibition.  It seems that these well-known paintings have strange effects on the viewer, often to the point of producing a hallucinatory reaction, but there is one that Kiichi will allow no one to look at known as "The Phantom Cluster," making his guests want to see it all the more.    This year there will be an extra, uninvited guest by the name of Shimada Kiyoshi who is not only interested in the events of September 28th of the previous year, but also a friend of the man who had disappeared at the time, who was thought to have been responsible for the theft of the painting and most likely for the death of the incinerated man.  As Shimada says to his host, "something about the case bothers me. There's something not right ..."   And yes indeedy, there is something very wrong in this house, beginning with the first death, bringing back fresh memories of that night a year earlier, as well as the question of  whether history might be repeating itself once again.  

2008 Japanese cover (which I must say beats PV's cover by a mile) from Amazon Japan

Shimada's theory is that the police investigation of the 1985 events was flawed, and he is there to try to find out "with my own eyes and ears" what had happened.   He is not there in any official capacity, nor is he there to catch the killer; his mission is to simply discover the truth.   As they say in Japan, 頑張ってね, -- ganbatte ne -- good luck.  He'll need it.  As he notes at one point, 

"... solving a problem is a lot like solving a jigsaw puzzle. However, in this case we don't have a picture of the completed puzzle, nor do we know how many pieces there are in total. And of course, the pieces of our mystery might not be flat, but three-dimensional, or perhaps they even have four or five dimensions. So depending on who is putting the pieces together, we could all end up with completely different pictures, or perhaps I should say 'shapes.'

 Given what's going on at the Mill House, solving this particular puzzle is  definitely not going to be easy. 

There is seriously nothing like reading a book that takes place during a major storm while in real life there's thunder and lightning at play all around you, making The Mill House Murders atmospheric and a bit creepy at the same time.   This story begins in the past, moves into the present, and continues in this way throughout the novel. At most points both timelines are set as a mirror of the other, as Shimada's questioning goes on and he gains more information and more clues as to what had happened in 1985.  That is not to say that 1986 doesn't have a few surprises in store; as I said at the beginning of this post,  I thought I had at least a sort of outline of the solution in my mind (I actually sort of did in a vague way guess a small part of it) but by the end, the various twists and turns taken throughout this story brought things to a level at which I would never have guessed.   The truth is that I'm always so happy to end a book with a with a huge gasp when all is revealed; this is twice now that it's happened with this author.  

At Pushkin's website, there is a short bio blurb that says that Ayatsuji is a 

"Japanese writer of mystery and horror novels and one of the founding members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan, dedicated to the writing of fair-play mysteries inspired by the Golden Age Greats. He started writing as a member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, which has nurtured many of Japan's greatest crime writers."

I do hope that Pushkin Vertigo will go on to publish at least a few (if not all) of the remaining Bizarre House/Mansion Murders books by this author -- for me The Mill House Murders was very well done, highly satisfying and really quite ingenious.  I happen to love these sort of mysteries;  they aren't always for everyone but I thrive on puzzle solving of any sort and these books are definitely puzzlers, in a very good way. 

 Recommended to regular readers of Japanese crime fiction/mysteries.  

Bad Kids, by Zijin Chen

 

9781782277620

Pushkin Vertigo, 2022

translated by Michelle Deeter

332 pp

paperback (read earlier this month) 

Continuing to try to catch up on my posts here,  Bad Kids by Zijin Chen is yet another book in the Pushkin Vertigo collection, available in English for the first time.   There is another book by this author that has been translated from Chinese to English by Michelle Deeter, The Untouched Crime, published by Amazon Crossing.  Needless to say, when I found out about that one, I hit the buy button immediately.   

A brief word about Bad Kids:  the back-cover blurb labels this novel as "Dark, heart-stopping and violent," and I'll agree to dark and certainly to violent, but "heart-stopping" is a bit over the top.  However,  it is certainly one of the most twisty novels I've enjoyed in a while, meaning that just when you think the endgame has played out, there's more.  And then some.  

It's July, 2013, and Zhang Dongsheng has taken his wife's parents for an outing at Sanmingshan, "the most famous mountain in Ningbo," and now a nature park. The in-laws are happy to be there -- it's a popular and crowded place on holidays but on the day of their visit the park is "practically empty."   The "filial son-in-law" suggests that they make their way to an observation point,  where they'll take a break.  Once there, he looks around and sees no one nearby except three kids "clowning around near a pavilion," but "dismissed them as unimportant," then offers to take the in-laws-  picture with the great view behind them as backdrop, convincing them that they should sit on the wall for a better photo.  Once they've done that, he puts his hands on their shoulders as if to position them just so, and then, with a smile on his face, picks up their legs and it's 再见 (zaijian, bye-bye) to the in-laws as they go tumbling down the mountain.  Zhang knows that there is no way they could have survived that fall, yet a few people had heard the in-laws scream so he has to make it look legit and calls for help.   Outwardly he looks panicked; inwardly he's smiling at the thought that he'd committed the perfect crime; even the police label it accidental death.   What he doesn't know (and this is not spoiler territory -- it's on the back cover) is that while he thinks he got away with it,  those "unimportant" kids have inadvertently caught it all on video.  

from the TV show The Bad Kids  sbs

Two of the three kids,  a boy by the name of Ding Hao and his friend, a girl called Pupu, had run away from an abusive situation in an orphanage  in Beijing,  and not wanting to return to their respective homes, had made their way to Ningbo and to the home of the third, Zhu Chaoyang, Ding Hao's friend in primary school.  To make a very long and complicated story a bit shorter,  Chaoyang's father gives him an old camera, and the kids decide to go to the nature park at Sanmingshan, where Chaoyang's mother works; it just so happens that they were there at the same time that Zhang Dongsheng was knocking off his in-laws.  The kids spend time taking photos, making videos and goofing around with the camera, and after arriving back at Chaoyang's place (and just before heading to KFC), Pupu discovers that they've picked up something completely unexpected on video -- the death of Zhang Dongsheng's in-laws as it really happened.   Chaoyang is ready to report the murder to the police, but is stopped by Pupu, who reminds him that the police just might ask who the other kids were on the video, and would likely send them back to the orphanage, which is an unacceptable choice.  As the back cover blurb notes, "an opportunity for blackmail presents itself," with Pupu deciding that she and Ding Hao could use the cash for their futures.   And so it begins ... with consequences unforeseen for all involved.  

If this were all there was to the plot, it would still be good.  But Zijin Chen isn't quite finished with his readers yet.  There's much more going on outside of the blackmail as one of the characters takes it upon himself to commit a horrific act that will also generate some serious fallout for everyone involved, and then, well let's just say that there will be more deaths than those of Zhang Donsheng's in-laws.   There is, of course, a police inspector looking into these, but for me the story was less about the investigation than the choices that were made in each instance and the resulting consequences.  

Bad Kids was a fun novel to read, and little by little as all of the unexpected twists and turns came into play, and characters played various battles of wit with each other,  it was seriously difficult to put the book down.  I have to admit to a few eyerolls here and there and thoughts of "as if" at different points, but the novel makes for hours of entertainment even as the author shines a light on the complicated nature of family relationships and more than a few social issues that show up within the story.  And by the way, the ending was perfect.  After reading this one,   I would really love to see more Chinese crime novels in translation (hint hint, Pushkin Vertigo).   

Recommended to people who enjoy twisty crime novels and who don't mind going deep into the dark in their reading.  

Death on Gokumon Island, by Seishi Yokomizo

 

9781782277415

Pushkin Vertigo, 2022

originally published as Gokumon-To, originally serialized 1947-1948

translated by Louise Heal Kawai

310 pp

paperback

Completely overjoyed when I learned last year that this book was going to be published by Pushkin Vertigo, I hit the preorder button at lightning speed.  At the same time, I bought a dvd of the 1977 film made from this novel, directed by Kon Ichikawa, which I watched last night after finishing Death on Gokumon Island.  More on that later.    

It's September, 1946 and as the novel opens, a ferry is making its way to a few different islands in Japan's  Seto Inland Sea.   It drops its passengers until there are only three left, all heading for a small island, Gokumon-to, which translates to Hell's Gate Island.  One of these people is Kosuke Kindaichi, who overhears a conversation between the other two -- a priest who had gone to pick up the once-confiscated, now-returned bell belonging to Senkoji Temple, and another man who informs the priest that someone named Hitoshi was "supposed to be coming home soon."  He had heard the news from a soldier in Hitoshi's regiment who had come to the island a few days earlier, when the guy had turned up to tell the family that Hitoshi had sent him to let them know not only that he would be returning, but also that he hadn't been injured in the war.  The priest then asks about someone named Chimata, which captures Kindaichi's attention, sparking a conversation among the three men.  It turns out that Kindaichi, a friend of Chimata, had come to Gokumon-to let the Kito family know of his death aboard a transport ship just a month earlier. 

Kindaichi, "like every other young man in Japan," had been drafted into the army, where he had spent two years in China before being deployed "between different islands to the south." His last stop had been in Wewak, New Guinea, where his division had been defeated, causing them to retreat; his division had joined others and it was then that Kindaichi had met and befriended Chimata-san,  helping him through his bouts of a very bad case of malaria and spending time together while the other soldiers "fell one after the other."   While they eventually made it out okay when the war ended,  each time Chimata fell ill Kindaichi noted that he suffered from "an extreme fear of death."  All was well, it seemed, until Chimata fell ill on board the repatriation ship; before he died he had told Kindaichi that he didn't want to die, and that he had to go home.  Otherwise, he said,  his "three sisters will be murdered."    Exactly why this might be is not explained until the end, but by then, it's too late -- it seems that Chimata had been right, and now our detective must try to discover who is behind these (quoting the back cover) "grotesquely staged" deaths that start not too long after he lands on the island. 

1971 cover from Mandarake

He will definitely have his work cut out for him, since the islanders tend to regard anyone not from there as suspicious; he is even arrested once by the local police sergeant who has no idea of his prowess as a "famed detective" and who views him as prime suspect in the case.  With the arrival of his old friend Inspector Isokawa (from The Honjin Murders) Kindaichi is released (to the sergeant's great  chagrin, I might add), but even then it will not be smooth sailing because, as he says to Isokawa, "everyone here on Gokumon Island is crazy. They're all out of their minds."   Perhaps, but while the Inspector makes note of the insanity behind the murders, Kindaichi eventually realizes that there is most certainly a method behind the madness on the part of whoever is responsible.  

What is done very well is the description of the longstanding power structure on the island and then there's the novel's  immediate postwar setting which captures the  demobilizations that are still ongoing, the families who continue to wait for their loved ones to return home and sit by the radio to hear the latest repatriation news, and a real sense of how the war has interrupted the flow of life for most people such as Isokawa, whose career had basically stalled during World War II and remains unsettled at the moment.   At the same time, the real payoff  in reading Death on Gokumon Island must wait for the end.  I was actually becoming a bit frustrated partway through because the story becomes more than a bit muddled and clunky at times; to be fair to the author, he does toss out clues here and there but they are on the impossible side of figuring out until all is revealed and things fall into place.  Trust me -- even the most seasoned armchair detectives will not be able to figure this one out.  Word to the wise: pay attention to the list of characters offered up front; I found myself returning to it several times.

 So far, Pushkin Vertigo has published four of the books in Seishi Yokomizo's Kosuke Kindaichi series:  The Honjin Murders, The Inugami Curse, The Village of Eight Graves and now this one.  According to Thrilling Detective, there are seventy-seven books featuring Kindaichi, so with any luck (crossing fingers) we may be seeing more in translation.   As I've noted before, my favorite is The Inugami Curse apa The Inugami Clan, but with another seventy-three left, who knows what little gems are yet to be uncovered in this series!  Despite my reading reservations at times,  Gokumon Island ends up being not only clever, but the author injects more than a twisted sense of destiny as well as a sort of tragic irony into this story once all is said and done.  Recommended for fans of the series and for Japanese crime fiction in general; it may be a bit slow in the telling but the reward is well worth waiting for. 

from TMDB

The Japanese film (1977) based on this novel (directed by Kon Ichikawa, whose The Burmese Harp I could watch on a continuous loop) starts with the same premise as the book, but for some reason I still can't fathom, the powers that be here then changed the storyline, including the identity of the killer.  Also unexpected and producing a very loud "wtf"  was a decapitation scene, and I have to say that I actually cringed every time Kindaichi scratched his head releasing clouds of very visible dandruff. Ick.  On the other hand, it streamlines the rather convoluted story making it easier to follow, but I'm glad I read the novel before viewing the movie.   All in all a fun experience but in my humble opinion, not quite as well done as the movie based on Yokomizo's Inugami Clan, also done in the 70s but miles better than this one.  

The Village of Eight Graves, by Seishi Yokomizo

 I'm looking at the date I was last here -- September!  Yikes!   I have to say that we had an extremely rough 2021 which is actually putting it mildly, but now, thankfully, we've turned that corner and things are much better and slowly getting back to normal going into 2022.   I'll be picking up where I left off with the septimo circulo list shortly as well as with a stack of books I've sadly neglected.    Truth be told, I'm just glad to be back.  

 9781782227453

originally published 1950

translated by Bryan Karetnyk

349 pp

paperback

Village of Eight Graves will be the third book I've read that features the somewhat shaggy-looking detective Kosuke Kindaichi, whose creator Seishi Yokomizo wrote him into a grand total of 77 novels.  Pushkin Vertigo has also published translations of his The Honjin Murders and The Inugami Clan (my favorite of the bunch so far), and there will be another one, Gokumon Island  later this year.   I've already preordered the last one, and I bought a dvd of that film as well.  I tried to find a copy of Village of Eight Graves on dvd, but I'm not all that sure I really want to pay the $60 the one I actually found goes for.   I did however, content myself with the trailer on YouTube (note: if you to and take a look at it you should know ahead of time that there are no English subtitles, but you'll get the drift).  

The story in Village of Eight Graves is set in postwar Japan, but before arriving in that time period, Yokomizo takes his readers back in time to the sixteenth century to explain how the village got its strange name.  Legend has it that eight samurai fled when their daimyo surrendered to another, taking along with them some 3,000 tael of gold.  They ended up in the village, where the people were hospitable to them until they learned that the samurai were being sought;  at that point they killed all eight, offering their heads in exchange for a promised reward.   With his dying breath, however, the leader of these warriors put a curse on the village, "vowing to visit his vengeance upon it for seven generations to come."  The villagers never did find the gold,  and six months later, the "ringleader of the attack on the warriors," a certain Shozaemon Tajimi,  went more than a bit beserk and not only killed members of his family but "every villager he came across."  Seven died, and Shozaemon killed himself, bringing the total to eight.  Believing that this attack was some sort of "retribution from those eight warriors who had been murdered in cold blood," the villagers decided to give them proper burials, "erecting eight graves where they were venerated as divinities."  

Flash forward first to the 1920s and then on to the postwar era,  as a young man named Tatsuya Terada recounts the story of  how he "embarked on an adventure of dazzling mystery and stepped into a world of blood-chilling terror."   It all begins with  the appearance of an attorney who comes looking for Tatsuya on behalf on someone who has been looking for him.  Identity satisfied, all the lawyer will tell him is that the person seeking him out is "extremely wealthy" and wants to "adopt and provide" for him.  But before he gets any further news, he receives a letter telling him  to "never set foot in Eight Graves again,"  and that if he does, "there will be blood!"  It was the first Tatsuya had heard of Eight Graves, but in another visit to his lawyer, he meets his maternal grandfather, whom the lawyer reveals is actually not the person looking for him.  However, he offers Tatsuya his true identity as the son of Yozo Tajimi, reveals that he has two unmarried half-siblings, and that neither one will ever have children. To prevent the Tajimi line from dying out, it seems that his great aunts have decided to name Tatsuya as the Tajimi heir.  But before Tatsuya even travels to the village, he is there when his grandfather dies, not a natural death, but one determined to be from poison.  This is the first of a number of strange deaths; the remainder will wait  for Tatsuya's return to Eight Graves Village, where it doesn't take long for the villagers to believe they are all done by Tatsuya's hand.  If I say much more there won't be a need to read the book, and people will likely be upset that I've spoiled things.  However,  it's when Tatsuya is taken to Eight Graves Village that not only do the deaths continue, but also that there are a number of strange, seemingly inexplicable occurrences that will test Tatsuya's mettle to the limit.  And while Kindaichi is on the scene here and there, his role remains sort of behind the scenes until the very end, leaving a 300-page plus mystery for the armchair detective reader to try and solve.  I never did but I had great fun getting to the big reveal.    

from Amazon Canada.  Kosuke Kindaichi action figure.  I want one of these!. 

One thing brought out very quickly which is extremely well done here is the effects of fear and superstition on the villagers, all stemming back to the  sixteenth-century and the ongoing belief of these people that history tends to repeat itself,  leading to exactly what some people are capable of when overcome by fear for their own lives.   The mystery (and its solution) is beyond satisfying, and there are a number of suspects from which to choose to up the whodunit game.  Like any good mystery writer, Yokomizo lays down any number of red herrings that tend to take readers down certain paths before realizing they've been had.  Unexpected twists and turns abound right up until the very end, adding to the fun and continuing to add more to the mystery itself  as well as ratcheting up the tension level for the reader.  Two things: first, my advice would be to copy the cast of characters offered at the front of the book -- I ended up doing this not too long into the novel because I found myself  constantly flipping back and forth.  Second, the story takes a bit of a turn into the realm of adventure tale having to do with the samurai gold, which was a bit off-putting until I just let myself go with it, figuring we'd get to the solution at some point -- a good decision.    And while it's not great literature, who cares? It's an incredibly fun book that will test any mystery reader's solving ability.  Definitely recommended.

The Decagon House Murders, by Yukito Ayatsuji

 

9781782276340

Pushkin Vertigo, 2020

originally published as Jukkakukan no Satsujin  (十角館の殺人),  1987

translated by Ho-Ling Wong

284 pp

paperback

"We're just the poor insects that flew into the trap called the Decagon House"

Had I been eating something when the big reveal of this story came along, I probably would have choked because of the huge gasp that involuntarily came out of me.  As soon as that cleared, the first words out of my mouth were "holy sh*t."  I don't have that reaction very often;  even though there have been many times I've been truly surprised at the unmasking of the who, this one absolutely takes the cake.  

It began as a "little adventure" for seven members of their university's Mystery Club, who'd decided to make the island of Tsunojima the destination of their club trip.   They'd gone there looking forward to 

"Freedom on an uninhabited island. A cold case to pick over. A bit of a thrill."

They had arrived on the island on March 26th, having been taken there via fishing boat.  Tsunojima, located about five kilometers off the coast of Kyushu's Oita Prefecture, had been the site of a still-unsolved "mysterious quadruple murder" six months earlier, resulting in the deaths of Nakamura Seiji (last name first), his wife Kazue, and the "servant couple who worked for them.  Nakamura's gardener was thought to have been the killer, but it was never proven since he'd disappeared and never been seen again.  The murder culminated in a fire which had completely destroyed the main house, the Blue Mansion; the "annex building" known as the Decagon House was left intact.  Decagon House was to be their home away from home for the next few days; together, each of the seven members -- Ellery, Carr, Leroux, Poe, Van (short for Van Dine),  Agatha and Orczy -- comprised "the core writing group" of the club.  For the upcomng April club magazine, they were each asked  while on the island to write one story based on the magazine's title, Dead Island,  the name of the "first Japanese translation of Dame Agatha's masterpiece" known to everyone today as And Then There Were None. 

from Goodreads

Oh no, I thought, I don't want to spend my reading time going through a Christie ripoff, and as luck would have it,  aside from a few nods in homage to And Then There Were None, it turned out to be anything but.  

The novel moves back and forth between what's happening on the island and what's going on back on the mainland, where a former member of the University Mystery Club, Kawaminami Taka'aka, receives a mysterious letter containing only one sentence:

"My daughter Chiori was murdered by all of you."

Kawaminami is floored when he realizes the letter is from none other than Nakamura Seiji -- and that he's received an  "accusation made by a dead man."  What's more, he discovers right away that at least one other member of the club, now on the island,  has received the same correspondence.  Along with two other acquaintances,  he begins to delve into the matter of the strange letter, which leads them to also investigate the case of the quadruple murders of the previous September on Tsunojima.  In the meantime, the weirdness begins back at the island with the discovery of seven "milky white plates," on which red characters had been printed, 

quickly followed by the mysterious death of one of the seven and the first of the plates having been tacked to the dead person's door.  With no possibility of leaving the island, and as more deaths follow, as the back cover blurb notes, "the survivors grow desperate and paranoid, turning on each other." 

As I've always said about this genre that really stands on its own within the genre of crime/mystery fiction,  these stories are less character oriented and more about how the deed was done.   It's no surprise to me on reading several reader reviews  of this book that noted the lack of character development, because that's pretty standard with this sort of thing, something I've come to expect after reading so many of them.  Taking that aspect away, focusing on the who and the how, The Decagon House Murders becomes an intense puzzle, the solution of which I would never have guessed.  I will say that I'm a bit frustrated at not being able to share my experience with the identity of the who, but to do so would be giving away the show.  I do think I would like to take a look at the original though, because I'm not sure I would have translated some things in this book the same way, for example, in having one character refer to the group as "y'all."  I mean, come on. Seriously? 

I had great fun with this novel, and I certainly would recommend it to regular fans of this sort of puzzler, or to fans of Japanese crime fiction in general.  The ending alone was well worth the price I paid for the book.  

The Honjin Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo

9781782275008
Pushkin Vertigo, 2019
originally published as Honjin satsujin jiken, 1946
translated by Louise Heal Kawai
182 pp

paperback

Pushkin Vertigo has done it again, this time with the classic Japanese mystery, The Honjin Murders, the first book to feature Yokomizo's "scruffy-looking" sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi.  Making his debut in 1946, he would go on to solve  a further 76 cases over the next thirty-plus years before his creator's death in 1981.  This edition is the first English translation of Honjin satsujin jiken; his The Inugami Clan has been available in English for some time,  but Pushkin Vertigo will soon be releasing a newer edition of that book with the title The Inugami Curse. 

The puzzle set before us in The Honjin Murders  falls under the heading of  locked-room/impossible crime.  I love these books (for the most part; sadly, I've read some pretty bad ones in my time), but for readers who aren't so familiar with what goes on in this sort of thing they can be pretty daunting and even disappointing.   As John Pugmire of Locked Room International notes, they are stories in which the purpose is "purely and simply to baffle while entertaining. It challenges the mind, not the heart or the spirit."  I've often felt that the locked-room/impossible crime really exists in its own sort of universe; although crime fiction it is, the major emphasis seems to be on unraveling the  solution as well as the cleverness of the villain of the piece in its design.   I don't mind that bit at all,  but other mystery readers who may expect major character development or in-depth backstory just might.

The back-cover blurb does a fine job of preparing the reader for what's to come:

"In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming Ichiyanagi wedding. But, amid the gossip, there is also a worrying rumor -- it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.  Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music. Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house."

The police arrive on the scene, but while they are busy with scattered clues that make absolutely no sense and following up reports of the arrival in the village of a strange man with three fingers on his hand, the dead woman's uncle has his own ideas about getting this horrific crime solved.

one television version of  Kindaichi from Black Hole Reviews

Enter detective Kosuke Kindaichi, whom Uncle Ginzo had met while in San Francisco some years earlier on business.  Kindaichi had left university, finding it "boring," then went to America with "no particular purpose in mind."  He drifted around the country for a while, taking on jobs to support himself, eventually becoming hooked on narcotics.   As the narrator reveals, it was a long-unsolved murder in San Francisco that prevented him from becoming "one of those lost, drug-addicted Japanese immigrants"and turned him into a "hero"  --  Kindaichi solved it when others couldn't, using only "reason and logic in a focused attack on the case."   Returning to Japan, he found his calling and  set up a detective agency. With business somewhat slow at the beginning,  within six months Kindaichi was being honored in the newspapers for his service to the nation by solving a major case.   The question is, can he put his logic and reason together to solve this rather baffling mystery? 

 As it turns out, the plot was particularly ingenious and actually heinous when all is said and done, offering more than one unexpected twist that kept things lively and kept me guessing.  The first time through I was a bit annoyed when the narrator started pointing out  various items of "significance" as if telling his readers that these are things to pay attention to, or at least to keep in the back of their our minds for later.   And before the mystery is completely explained, he reveals the point in the case in which Kindaichi reaches his "aha" moment, which points the reader to a particular avenue of thought.  Again, I found this a bit annoying, but the truth is that this bit of Kindaichi's later insight (without giving the show away, thank goodness)  took the armchair detective in me in a direction I would never have considered.  I was still wrong, but after the second read I was kicking myself for not having figured it out the first time. 

Just one more thing before I finish up here, and that is that it's important to keep in mind when and where this book was written.  While there is not a lot of character development as you read along, there are cultural and social issues that rise to the surface that will become important later down the road.  There is also much to say about the locked-room/impossible crime genre within the story itself, which provides more than just a deft touch to the mysteries at hand, also reading as a bit of an homage to the genre.    My standard practice when reading this sort of thing is to read it twice, the second time to block out the noise of red herrings, etc.  and try to get to the point of  my own "aha" moment.  The story is so nicely plotted that I didn't, even after the second reading when I already knew what had happened.

 I hope that The Honjin Murders will gain a following, prompting Pushkin Vertigo to publish more of Yokomizo Seishi's work in the future.  Recommended, certainly for fans of the locked-room mystery, but for readers just testing the waters with this sort of thing, you couldn't go wrong by starting here.

Murder in the Crooked House, by Soji Shimada

9781782274568\
Pushkin Vertigo, 2019
originally published as Naname Yashiki no Hanzai, 1982
translated by Louise Heal Kawai
paperback

345 pp

A few years ago I read and loved Shimada's The Tokyo Zodiac Murders so it was a no-brainer as to whether or not to buy his newest, Murder in the Crooked House.  As in The Tokyo Zodiac Murders,  at one point in the action, everything comes to a full stop as the author throws out a challenge to his readers, letting us know that at this point in the game we have everything that we know to solve the mystery.   The question is "Can you solve this case?"  The answer:  no, not I.  I did manage to figure out the who but not the why and not the how, and even that  small victory came only after making my way through a wriggling school of red herrings thrown in throughout the story.  To those of you who solved it by the time the "challenge to the reader" is thrown down,  I would love to have your brains, because I was kept in the dark pretty much throughout.

And small wonder.  I don't know how anyone could have possibly solved this while reading because the solution is so farfetched and so out there, well beyond the norm of many of the locked-room crime novels I've read.  In fact, whenever reading in this subgenre, I flip the switch in my brain to "suspend disbelief" mode so that I'm prepared when the denouement comes.  On the other hand, once I knew how Shimada made it all happen, I found myself going back to the diagrams scattered throughout the novel trying to put things together and doing the inner "aha" as I saw how it could have been pulled off (sort of).     I have to admire the author's creativity here, and  I have to wonder how many hours he must have given to setting up the entire story, not to mention how much fun he must have had in doing so.

from CDJapan

In the long run, this is a book where it is best to know next to nothing about the story.  What little I'm willing to spill here is that the action takes place in a house somewhat like the one pictured here on the Japanese cover.  As we learn,

"At the top of Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido, on the very tip of Cape Soya, there's a high plain that overlooks the Okhotsk Sea. On this plain stands a peculiar-looking structure known by the locals as 'The Crooked House.' " 

At present it sits empty, on the market for many years, and "will probably stay that way."  One might think that it's because of its remote location, but in reality,

"it's far more likely the murder that keeps buyers away."

The house's actual name is the Ice Floe Mansion, built and owned by Kozaburo Hamamato, a somewhat eccentric industrialist who, at the time of the events that took place here, was in his late 60s.  He occupies the tower, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the leaning one in Pisa; his eccentricity even includes a drawbridge that connects with the rest of the house.  Hamamoto refers to it as "this old man's whimsical mansion," because, as the back blurb notes, it is a

"maze of sloping floors and strange staircases, full of bloodcurdling masks and uncanny dolls."

His daughter Eiko and three household staff also occupy the "crooked house," and as the story begins, the Hamamotos have opened their house to a number of guests for the Christmas holidays, 1983.  The first night of the guests' stay turns out to be anything but normal, but things become even more off-the-wall weird once daylight brings the discovery of a most bizarre murder.    Going back to the blurb once more, the victim has been "found murdered in seemingly impossible circumstances," in a locked room which is accessible only from the outside, the murderer having left no footprints in the snow either coming or going.  While a few of the houseguests take on the puzzle the killer has left behind, the local police are called in and do their best to try to put the limited (and strange) clues together to form a picture of what had happened.  When another death occurs, in circumstances that are perhaps even stranger than the first murder, they have their hands full and call to Tokyo for help, bringing Kiyoshi Mitarai and his friend/sidekick Kazumi Ishioka to Ice Floe Mansion.  But even then ....

[as an aside, Mitarai and Ishioka are names readers will recognize from Shimada's The Tokyo Zodiac Murders; I actually did a double take when I came across them here for the first time on recognition since I had no idea that this was their second adventure. ]

To say more would be to spoil and I don't want to do that at all because it would be wrong to take away someone's fun in trying to piece together exactly how these crimes were committed.  What I will say is that the use of masks in this story  is most appropriate as  it seems that most of the people staying in this house over the holidays have things they desire to keep hidden, each masking his or her inner self behind a very different public persona while in the company of others.   I could go on here, but it would also be a spoiler to do so.

I loved the eerieness of the setting  in this book, which added an atmospheric quality to the novel.  Combining such a remote location, the howling winds during a blizzard, the greyness of the sea during the winter with the fact that the people in the house are all pretty much trapped there until the mystery is solved gives the story a claustrophobic feel that only heightens the strange events that take place.

  In comparing Shimada's earlier book with the present one,  I have to say that Murder in the Crooked House is much more reader friendly, moving much more quickly through to the solution than was the case in Tokyo Zodiac Murders; I also felt that this time around, as I said earlier, I had to keep myself in the state of suspension of disbelief a bit longer than while reading the first book. When all is said and done, I had a lot of fun with this novel and certainly recommend it, most especially to people who find pleasure in reading locked-room/impossible crime novels, which are in many ways a very different breed than your average crime/mystery novel and may take a bit of getting used to.

 Once again, hats off and major applause to anyone who solved this crime before the answers were made known.  I was left completely in the dark. And that's okay.