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.  

Continuing on in catch-up mode: Death of a Stray Cat/ An Affair of the Heart, by Jean Potts

 

9798886010053

Stark House, 2023

236 pp

paperback (my copy from the publisher -- thanks!)

 

I love reading the works of women crime writers of yesteryear.  Jean Potts is the author of fourteen novels in this genre, one "mainstream" novel called Someone to Remember (1943) and a huge number of short stories.  Quite a few of the latter were  published in  Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and at least one in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  In short, she was an incredibly prolific author; thanks to Stark House, her work is being brought back for modern readers to enjoy.  This volume contains two of her mystery stories:  Death of a Stray Cat from 1955 and An Affair of the Heart, published in 1970.

Very briefly, because there are two books at play here,  Death of a Stray Cat is a fine whodunit that begins as bookseller Alex Blair and his wife Gen arrive in the small New York community where they have a beach house: "on one side of the road W. Gertz, Meats and Groceries, and across from it the filling station and Rudy's Bar and Grill."  It's Labor Day weekend, and the two of them are looking forward to a happy, leisurely three-week getaway; along for the ride is "a preposterous pair," Mr. Theobald and Vonda, who will be staying at a cottage owned by Dwight Abbott, a friend of the Blairs.  When they stop for groceries, the proprietor lets them know that a young woman had stopped there earlier in the day, wanting to know where Alex's house was.  Neither of the Blairs can figure out who it might have been, and sort of brush it off, not giving it another thought.    Vonda and Mr. Theobald take the Blair's car to drop off the groceries while  Alex and Gen go to have drinks and dinner at nearby Rudy's, a local favorite.  They've just settled in at their table when Rudy's daughter takes a phone call that leads Alex, Gen and local police chief Ed Fuller to the Blairs' beach house, where they find the body of a young woman, apparently strangled. Gen has no idea who she is, but Alex recognizes her as Marcella Ewing.   He can't believe it --  of all the people in the world, he thinks, "it was hard to imagine anybody less dangerous than Marcella."  With only a small group of people as potential suspects, the focus is on the victim herself -- why would anyone want her dead?   I have to say that I didn't guess the identity of the killer, always a plus, but even more to the point, when that person was unmasked I had  a true "whoa!" moment.  The author's brilliant plotting shines through in this story, but even better is the way in which she managed to imbue her characters with such unexpected life. Mystery readers will LOVE this one.   Another thing:  while her Edgar award-winning novel Go, Lovely Rose was awesome,  Death of a Stray Cat beats that one by a mile.  Definitely very highly recommended.  

I really love these old, lurid covers.  This one's from Biblio

After finishing the second book, An Affair of the Heart, it dawned on me that the title can easily be taken as a sort of double entendre, especially because the dead man at the center of this novel has a heart condition.  By the way, this fact isn't a spoiler, since it's right there up front in the book blurb.  This book is much shorter in length than Death of a Stray Cat; although it comes in at less than one hundred pages, there's still plenty of whodunit mystery here to enjoy.  Kirk Banning is only forty-nine, but he's been told that he needs to take things easy in order to stave off another heart attack or an even worse fate.  For some time the younger Lorraine Walsh has been "the other woman" in his life, a role that once she had "leapt into so gladly and blindly," but lately she's had not only regrets, but since meeting Kirk's wife Hilda, she has also developed a conscience about the whole situation.   Things get intense when Kirk actually proposes, something that would have made Lorraine "raptuously happy" a year earlier, but not any more.  He plans on telling his wife about everything in three days' time.  The problem is that Lorraine can't find a way to tell him how she feels now, because the shock just might kill him, given his heart condition.  As she tells her sister Mary, that's not the worst of it -- suppose Kirk had another heart attack and died in her apartment?  How could she possibly explain everything?   As one might guess, on a day Lorraine is away, the inevitable ends up happening, forcing Lorraine, Mary and their good friend Teddy to go into cover-up mode.  All goes okay with the police, and Lorraine has a perfect excuse for his being there to offer to the family.  Kirk's daughter Isobel, summoned to the site of her father's death, realizes that he doesn't have his medication on him like he always does.   Lorraine also  notices that Kirk's medication isn't in the usual spot on her bedside table, leaving Mary to wonder whether or not she and Teddy "might have blundered into something quite different from what they had bargained for."  Evidently, someone wanted Kirk Banning dead, but who?  And how?  What none of the three could possibly know is that there will be a terrible price to be paid when all is said and done.   

a rather bland cover for this one: Gollancz UK first edition hardcover, 1970.  From Dead Souls Bookshop

Once again it's the characters that really make this story, and once again, the plot focuses on a small number of people at its core, all of them with closely-guarded secrets that add an element of tension and a darkish sort of intensity into the reading.  It's not quite on the level of Death of a Stray Cat in my opinion, but it's still pretty good story with more than a couple of surprises along the way. Unfortunately, I did figure out the who in this one, but I think it's likely because it wasn't nearly as involved or written as in depth as the other. Despite that, An Affair of the Heart still makes for a good read, and taken as a whole, this two-novel volume is well worth your mystery-reading time.  I enjoyed this volume so very much that I've just bought three more (so I suppose that makes six in total)  books by Jean Potts directly from the publisher.  As long as they keep putting them out, I'll continue reading them.

My many thanks to the powers that be at Stark House, along with major apologies for taking so long to get to this book and the others they've sent -- we've had a hell of a year here at home and it's only just recently that the pall has begun to lift.  Thank you so very, very much.

Green For Danger, by Christianna Brand

 

9781728267661

Poisoned Pen Press, in association with the British Library, 2023

originally published 1944

284 pp

paperback

I'm still working at restoring my mental mojo, but that doesn't mean I've been idle readingwise. I'm just very, very behind and now I've got a stack of like five books sitting here waiting for me to post about. Not to worry -- I'll get there.

Green for Danger is book number two in Christianna Brand's Inspector Cockrill series, preceded by the series opener, Heads You Lose (which I'm reading now).  I'm just thrilled that it is a part of the British Library Crime Classics collection, since the copy I have is an old mass market paperback in pretty beat-up condition.   I enjoyed Green for Danger so very much that I immediately bought the remaining books,  including preordering Death of Jezebel (also from British Library Crime Classics and arriving in August) -- that's how very good it is.  

World War II serves as the backdrop for this clever, closed-circle mystery, which takes place at a former sanitorium now serving as military hospital at Heron's Park just outside of Heronsford in Kent.  The seven main players have all been called to duty there, and they are introduced one by one  (along with a bit of each person's backstory) via their acceptance letters which are being delivered by  postman Joseph Higgins.  The male contingent consists of Dr. Gervase Eden, a surgeon from Harley Street, Mr. Moon, another surgeon hailing from Heronsford, and Dr. Barnes (Barney),  a local anesthetist; the women are   Jane Woods  (Woody), who has been called as a VAD nurse as have Esther Sanson and Frederica (Freddi) Linley, and finally Sister Marion Bates.  Offering the tiniest bit of a clue as to where this story is headed, as Higgins takes himself and his bicycle up the hill leading to Heron's Park, the author tells us that he "could not know that, just a year later, one of the writers would die, self-confessed a murderer."  

Within that year, the hospital working routine of these new arrivals has been established, romance and more than a bit of sexual tension hangs in the air, and air raids are regularly bringing in casualties.  One of these is Joseph Higgins himself, admitted with a fractured femur.   His surgery is routine, "only a little operation, hardly anything at all," so when he dies before the operation begins while the anesthesia is being administered, everyone is surprised.  After all, "the old boy was all right" physically, and no one can find anything wrong in the equipment or the procedure that might have caused him to die so unexpectedly.  Goodness knows things like this can happen "for no rhyme or reason," but the problem is that this wouldn't be the first time that Barnes had lost a patient while administering anesthesia.  Major Moon tells him that if anything comes of Higgins' death, he'd be happy to call in "the high ding-a-ding" Inspector Cockrill  to ensure that "there isn't a lot of undue fuss."   At first Cockrill (who often goes by the nickname Cockie) doesn't "see what all the fuss is about," but it isn't too long before he realizes that Higgins' death was definitely suspicious, and definitely a murder.  He also realizes that it's one of our seven main characters who is responsible, but as to motive, he has no idea.  It seems however, that the murderer isn't quite finished, as there is a second death, again in the operating theatre.  

 Original first edition cover, from Wikipedia

As a person who often figures out the who long before the big reveal comes, I have to say that I was extremely delighted not to have done so this time.  I actually had two different suspects in mind but Brand came along and pulled the rug right out from under me.  That's not too surprising, since the author sort of toys with her readers by planting doubts (and thereby possible motives) about each of the seven suspects. In hindsight, all of the clues were definitely there, and it was like a "how did I miss that?"  kind of moment when Brand actually unmasked the killer.  Add to this the very realistic and credible sense of place and the atmosphere that the author delivers pretty much from the start, all making Green For Danger a pitch-perfect mystery. 

from Cinema Sojourns

I have the old black-and-white film (1946, Pinewood Studios) on DVD as part of my Criterion Collection movies, so I watched it right after finishing the novel.  While it deviates a bit from the book I could have cared less.  Alastair Sim definitely steals the show here in the role of Inspector Cockrill, often playing his scenes for laughs, which at times given the dark and actually somewhat sinister atmosphere underlying this film, can be a welcome relief.  He is eccentric, but underneath his quirkiness there is definitely a sense that he is a wise detective with a keen sense of justice.  The supporting cast, including Trevor Howard, also does a great job.  I would definitely recommend both book and movie, in that order.  

A Helping Hand, by Celia Dale

 

9781954321878

Valancourt Books, 2023

originally published 1966

paperback

173 pp

Before I start chatting away about this book, I have to say that we had a death in our family that left us mentally flat at the end of January, continuing on through February and well into most of  March. It's been absolutely terrible, and as I said elsewhere, it's  really only now that I'm getting back to the mindspace to be back reading and posting my thoughts.  I have a bit of a post backlog that needs catching up but hope to get to everything asap. 

Valancourt Books has recently published new editions of two of Celia Dale's novels, A Dark Corner and this book, A Helping Hand.  I read A Dark Corner some time ago and have plans to reread it soon, but A Helping Hand is completely new to me.   As I discovered, even at less than two hundred pages it's worth taking your time on this one -- if ever a novel could be labeled as a creeping slow burn, it is this one; on the flip side it's also one of the darkest books I've read in quite a while as well as a true gut puncher.

Maisie and Josh Evans  are on holiday in Italy.   While Josh sits and takes in the sun, Maisie brings a couple of British ladies along with her to the terrace to meet her husband and have tea. The older woman is the widow Mrs. Cynthia Fingal, the younger her niece, Lena Kemp.  Mrs. Fingal had come to live with Lena, and they are also on their holiday, eager for some sun.  As Maisie explains, she and Josh had needed a break after the death of "Auntie Flo," who had been living with the Evans' while being  nursed by Maisie.  The four get along splendidly, and decide to meet up later in Rimini.  When they reconnect, Mrs. Fingal takes a definite liking to Josh, spilling forth all her woes about living with Lena, while Lena finds an audience for her problems with her aunt in Maisie.  Long story short: before the respective couples return to England, it's been arranged that Mrs. Fingal will come to live with Josh and Maisie.  Back at home, after having moved in as a "paying guest," Mrs. Fingal soaks up the attention paid to her by Josh, which she greatly craves and which he doesn't mind giving. At first it seems that the arrangement was a good one all around,  but it isn't too long before the reader starts noticing that things are more than a wee bit off and that there's something not quite right at the Evans home.  I will say no more -- to tell in this case is definitely to spoil. 

from goodreads

On the back cover there's a blurb from the Buffalo News that most perfectly describes A Helping Hand as  "A little gem of a thriller ... evil most monstrous."   It's a good thing that I am one of those readers who doesn't need to find something likeable with the characters in a book because with only one or two exceptions, the people in A Helping Hand are absolutely vile.  The author writes so vividly that at times I felt like I was right there in the house as an observer of the appalling wretchedness, and I had to stop reading every so often just to move out of the dark and back into the light because she is so good at creating a claustrophic atmosphere.   

While the usual elements of a standard crime story will not be found in this novel, what happens here certainly falls within the realm of the genre, and given that this book was written in the 1960s, it remains extremely pertinent in our contemporary world which makes what happens even more frightening.  The one and only thing I found to be on the negative side is that right after a rather stunning twist the story comes to a quick, almost rushed ending which was a bit disappointing, but in the long run it's really more about the getting there. 

I can most certainly recommend this one, and my thanks to Valancourt for bringing it back into print.  My advice: find a nice sunny spot for reading -- you'll need it.  

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.  

coming your way in January: Awake and Die, by Robert Ames

 9798860101

Stark House Press, 2023

178 pp

paperback

I just noticed that my last post here was in July. Ouch! On the other hand, July through September is usually spent reading the Booker Prize longlist, and truth be told, I haven't read my usual volume of books this year. According to goodreads, it's just 70 to date, but with this book, Awake and Die, we can up that to 71.  

In the brief author bio in the back of this book, we learn that  Robert Ames is the pseudonym of Charles Lee Clifford (1890-1991), who wrote two other books under this name:  The Devil Drives (1952) and  The Dangerous One (1954).  Memo to self: I need to have these.    Awake and Die is part of Stark House's  fantastic Black Gat collection, but was originally published in 1955,  number 518 in the old Fawcett Gold Medal series.  This  Stark House reprint duplicates the cover of the Gold Medal edition, minus the blurb 

"Murder was a pleasure and women were a pain." 

 Just to be very clear here, Awake and Die is not a whodunit; all you need to do is to read the basic outline  laid out on the back cover blurb to know that this is not an armchair detective sort of thing.  More importantly though, at the very beginning of the novel the narrator, Will Peters, wants the reader to judge whether he is a "cold-blooded killer" or if he "was off in the head," recounting events that take him up to the present day.  As he also says, "it wasn't anybody's fault, except fate's," which in my opinion sort of also challenges the reader to decide whether or not that's how it was.  

from Bookscans

It seems that Peters had been injured during the war in Korea when a bullet had pushed a piece of his helmet into his head.   After three operations, doctors finally managed to get it "all cleaned out."  Being "an outside man," after his surgeries Peters makes his way home to New Jersey to a place called Bayhaven, where he works as a clamdigger; he is to report every couple of weeks  "to be checked" by an Army Reserve doctor in the area.  One day as he lifts his basket of clams out of his boat (to be given to the doctor, a Dr. Algee, as thanks), he notices a gorgeous woman who offers her help with the heavy load, and it seems to be a mutual, instant attraction.  Claire Grace is her name, and after a while he learns among other things that she lives in the "richer part" of Bayhaven and that she's married.  After they spend some time at a bar with a couple of drinks and a dance, she scoots off after Will invites her to his place, making the excuse of not realizing how late it was.  Still, Will can't get his mind off of her, thinking that Claire was "the kind of woman a man ought to have."  

When he finally makes it back to his place, he notices a light on in the house and thinks maybe Claire might have taken him up on his offer.  The thought makes him "feverish," but it's only his former girlfriend Mae there, with her "brassy-dyed hair," her "glaring white makeup with bright-red lipstick" and her fake British accent, waving her cigarette around.   As Peters notes, "it was remembering Claire Grace, and comparing her with this drunken babe, that so enraged me."   Suffice it to say that this is the point when this story truly takes off, leaving bodies to pile up one after the other, a detective with a need to prove himself  who will not give up under any circumstances, and yet another woman who could very easily put Peters in the big house for life.  

Even though this is not a whodunit (as I noted earlier),  there is more than enough here to satisfy any reader of older crime fiction, especially because of  the many twists the author throws into the basic plot, some expected, some definitely not.     Ames lays on the sleaze factor a bit thickly in this story, which given the time of its writing is not unusual, but on the flip side, he was a fine plotter and a pretty good writer, keeping me reading and not wanting to put the book down, tying up a lot of loose ends so that I wasn't left in the dark about anything.    Evidently he was also not without a sense of humor.  One of Peters' neighbors is an old recluse who speaks to others via his seagull, his dog and his cat, each with its own distinct personality and voice; it seems that any one of them (she says, tongue-in-cheek) could potentially make the rest of Will's life miserable. [I really had to chuckle at this bit -- my dog often answers me back or makes comments in a thick New Yawk accent when I'm feeling a bit silly.]  

 My many and very grateful thanks to Stark House for my copy -- I've just recently bought a couple of their books, Only the Good, by Mary Collins (1942) and a two-volumes-in-one edition of The Make-Believe Man (1963) and A Friend of Mary Rose (1961) written by Elizabeth Fenwick, but looking through the little book pamphlet included with those, I'm super, super excited about reading Jay Dratler's Pitfall, which they list as "First in a series of Film Noir Classics."  I'm actually so stoked about that one that I'm going to go buy it now.    

Awake and Die is a big yes for me and it should most certainly be for those people who enjoy indulging in crime from yesteryear.  Recommended, definitely.