Preamble
If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here. Or you can take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!
Review (4 out of 5)
This is one of several post-War Japanese detective tales that I’ve read in the last year or two, courtesy of an initial prompt from the Death of the Reader podcast. I’ve reviewed two others in the same series featuring the same detective: The Honjin Murders and The Village of Eight Graves. By now, the tropes of the more than 70 stories featuring private detective Kosuke Kindaichi are feeling familiar to me, and I’ve barely read 5% of them! Here again, we find a physiognomic method of characterisation, in particular “simian features”, which was a feature of the twin aunts in Eight Graves; poisoning again, as a characteristic female method of murder; and a convoluted physical space that externalises the convoluted familial relationships of the suspects and victims.
Here, Kindaichi is centre stage again, unlike in Eight Graves, and I find I prefer him more to his early appearance in The Honjin Murders. As a character, he feels settled now, although it’s hard to tell whether that is true of Yokomizo’s text or of my familiarity with the series.
Inheritance and mistaken identity are again at the centre of the tale, with some intriguingly cinematic deaths to go along with them. I really enjoyed the Gothic sensibilities here, and they felt better integrated into what is, in many ways, a classic country house murder mystery, whereas I found Eight Graves a little too outlandish. The character of the imperious patriarch is strongly drawn, and the relationships between the various family members, pitted against one another, felt natural. It was clear early on that there was some sort of bait-and-switch at play, but there were actually a few such ploys happening, and it was interesting to see the detective unravel the set of mysteries that the family members posed to one another.
Take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!
Dominique Gracia 
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