đź“š Goodreads review: The Mill House Murders, by Yukito Ayatsuji
The Mill House Murders (House Murders, #2), rated 4/5 by yours truly:
I read this book more than a month ago, and I almost forgot the criticisms I had towards it, other than that I hated Fujinuma Kiichi. It’s strange to be unable to relate to any of the characters in a novel, yet keep reading and enjoy it, right?
In many ways, this second book in the “House” series had all the conditions to be less frustrating than the first one (which I nonetheless rated 4/5 as well). In the end, it was, and not only because I liked murder mysteries that are constrained to an isolated house (more of a castle, actually), but also because I failed to guess the murderer! I wasn’t fooled by the red herrings offered to the reader, and I had my suspicions regarding a certain character, but the full solution was more complex than that and truly unexpected!
Some readers guessed everything based on the accumulation of oddities. Bravo to them; I just thought strange things were, well, strange. I suppose I tend to trust Japanese people too much, so I failed to see the obvious. “The killer is obvious from the start,” really? “The characters are underdeveloped and implausible,” complained another reader. “Slow, flat and boring, with dull dialogue.” Well, I disagree. It wasn’t all that bad!
4 full stars out of five.
The storytelling is indeed quite intricate and even annoying because it jumps back and forth between past and present too much, and the writing might feel unnatural at times, but it should match the Japanese mindset. Have you ever tried to set the memories on a Japanese audio system with six buttons? I’ve seen devices with four buttons and complex menus that could send anyone to a mental institution!
As for the reference in chapter 11 to “H.M. of Doctor Fell” and to “Rawson’s Merlini,” it should puzzle not only the Japanese reader but even many Western aficionados of classic crime mysteries.
Not right away, but I will definitely go for the third in the series. Will Shimada be a faster thinker this time?
The Decagon House Murders (House Murders, #1), rated 4/5 by yours truly:
Prior to having read this book, the only Japanese crime novel I read was Kotaro Isaka’s “Bullet Train”. Ayatsuji Yukito’s “The Decagon House Murders” might be the trigger that will make me want to explore much more from this side of Japanese fiction.
Translated from Japanese by Ho-Ling Wong, a Chinese-Dutch raised in the Netherlands who developed a passion for detective fiction and also for Japanese, this is the first in Ayatsuji’s “House” series. It is said to have revolutionized the Japanese “honkaku” (“orthodox”) whodunit, focusing it on inviting the reader to use logical reasoning to defeat the misdirection traps set in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction manner.
This is not entirely fair. Shimada Soji’s 1981 masterpiece “The Tokyo Zodiac Murders” was a hugely successful locked-room mystery, and it included a plan of the house. “The Decagon House Murders” only came up in 1987.
Furthermore, as the translator himself notes in a blog post, there were other Japanese mystery novels predating Ayatsuji Yukito’s, all with nice maps. Examples include Shimada Soji’s 1982 “Murder in the Crooked House” (“The Crime at the Slanted Mansion” in the blog post), and a never-translated book from 1964 by Nakai Hideo. From the same blog post, we find out about a monumental four-volume locked-room mystery by Nikaidou Reito published between 1996 and 1998 that includes eight floor plans from a castle in France, and also about a 1990 book by Ayatsuji Yukito that doesn’t belong to the “House” series and which hasn’t been translated, but whose title means “The Kirigoe Mansion Murder Case.”
Back to our book, I initially found it strange, or rather to artificial, that the members of a university’s Mystery Club actually referred to one another by their chosen nicknames, which, lo and behold, were derived from American, British, and French mystery writers: “Ellery” (Ellery Queen), “Carr” (John Dickson Carr), “Leroux” (Gaston Leroux), “Poe” (Edgar Allan Poe), “Agatha” (Agatha Christie), and “Orczy” (Baroness Orczy, a founding member of the Detection Club in 1930).
To be honest, though, using such names instead of the real Japanese ones kind of helped, I’d say.
The trick performed by Ellery in chapter one, section 5, in which Ellery successfully guesses (or forces Agatha to pick) the Four of Hearts, is a nod to the real-world Ellery Queen’s 1938 mystery novel, “The Four of Hearts”. If there were some other similar hints to literary works, I didn’t notice them. The second trick, the one involving the Queen of Diamonds (chapter five, section 4), is not an identifiable reference.
Now, did I enjoy this novel?
I shouldn’t have to, but I did! To cite someone on Reddit (spoilers!), “How can anyone not catch the killer after reading the first 30 pages?”. Why, this is precisely because we kept reading, and the author was cunning enough to mesmerize the reader with various hypotheses and characters that seem suspect to the suspicious mind! That said, indeed, this novel has a fatal flaw, and I can only hope that the other ones in the series have a different narrative structure.
Someone else, also on Reddit (spoilers!), notes that smoking is not a random aspect in the story. Maybe, but I failed to notice. As a general rule, most clues were lost on me!
So I have to admit: I’ve been held spellbound, then conned, duped, but I didn’t mind.
The only criticism I have concerns the epilogue. I had to read the answers to a question on Goodreads to realize that I need to reread the prologue. I hate prologues, and I hated this prologue!
What’s next?
I already started “The Mill House Murders”. Then I plan to take a pause from this author and try Uketsu’s “Strange Houses” and “Strange Buildings”. Because I like trains, Nishimura’s “The Mystery Train Disappears” might follow, although some reviews are tepid.