Echoes

During a recent discussion on Yukito Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders, a friend made the following observation: "How come none of the mystery club members, for all their wisdom of classic crime fiction works, sensed that there could be something wrong with an invitation to an uninhabited island? Given their shared past, surely one of them would have thought of politely declining?"

It was, I felt, an argument that lends itself to works that tend to be self-aware and reflexive; so when the logic is reflected back on to the work itself, the deficiency seems to stand out that much more. In the case of The Decagon House Murders, the issue stems more from the lack of a proper 'trade-off' for the group to gather on the uninhabited island in the first place, given the surrounding context and history.

In mystery fiction works involving closed-circle situations, I have noticed readers (myself included) to be more generous with the rationale behind people gathering in the first place, than with the dynamics and mechanics of the way in which the situation plays itself out. The Decagon House Murders, otherwise an exemplar of the classical, logic-based school of mysteries, itself suffers from this shortcoming. However, Ayatsuji does improve on this aspect in a major way, with his third offering in the Yakata series: 1988's Meirokan no Satsujin (translated as The Labyrinth House Murders, 2024).

The setup is tantalising, and makes good use of a pitch-perfect casting. A few writers, an editor, a critic and a surprise guest gather at the residence of a famous author, each for their own reason. The editor to coax one last masterpiece out of the author; the writers to stay in the good graces of the author who was a mentor to them; the critic and the surprise guest attend the gathering for reasons that become evident once the party is underway. Missing from the party itself? The famous author, whose birthday is being celebrated in the remote Labyrinth House.

The initial scene-setting reminds me of the well-thought-out proceedings in the Detective Conan story, "The Holmes Freak Murder Case", where a bunch of Sherlock Holmes fanatics gather at a collector's place and take part in an exceptionally tough quiz to get their hands on the first edition of A Study in Scarlet. As the hidden motive behind the party is revealed—a writing competition to be judged by a panel of experts, with ownership of the Labyrinth House as the prize—along with the unforeseen death of the famous author, the similarities with the Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo story, "Russian Dolls Murder Case", become apparent. In that story too, a deceased author leaves behind his palatial house as his inheritance, and organises a competition among select participants to decide who gets to inherit it, thereby setting in motion a series of bloody murders. Things are no different in The Labyrinth House Murders—the competing authors are all killed in violent ways, with an added twist.

By this point, the nesting doll structure of the story is already established. The three translated stories in the Yakata series possess strong identities: The Decagon House Murders stands out as a reinvention of And Then There Were None, while The Mill House Murders has a fairytale-esque flavour to it. In The Labyrinth House Murders, Ayatsuji experiments with the structure of the novel itself, making it unfold in the form of 'a story within a story within a story'. The book opens with a certain Shimada receiving a copy of The Labyrinth House Murders by one Shishiya Kadomi, who had been present when the events mentioned in the book took place. We then enter the world of Kadomi's manuscript, surveying a meeting between the famous author and the editor a few months prior to the birthday party. There is a fair bit of foreshadowing and a subdued-but-clever introduction to the cast in the opening chapter itself.

The events of the party kick off in earnest with shenanigans that clue in to some character traits and authorial tendencies of the writers participating in the competition. Then comes the double shocker: the announcement of the death as well as the terms and conditions of the will that bequeaths the entire mansion to the winner of the competition, besides funding a mystery-writing competition in the author's name. The will and its conditions lay a solid groundwork for the mystery to unfold: no one except a secretary and a doctor to step outside the house for the duration of the competition; the author's suicide to be reported to the police after five days; the fifty-page story entries to be set in the Labyrinth House, featuring only people present in the house, and centred on a murder mystery; all stories to be typed out in typewriters provided in each of the authors' room. The tension is depicted well, and the competition forces the authors to face their own demons—and their greed for the mansion itself.

Not surprisingly, the authors meet ghastly ends. An invisible enemy targets them one by one, walking through and around the solid walls of the mansion, terrifying and befuddling the remaining characters. And this is where Ayatsuji accomplishes an inspired, audacious feat of plotting: each of the authors, barring one, are killed in ways that completely resemble the manners of death they outline in their own submissions for the competition.

The possibilities for the impossible occurrences expand, and the scope of the novel assumes a sprawl as broad and convoluted as the floorplan of the Labyrinth House. Modelled after the mythical labyrinth in the Palace of Knossos, while also resembling one of those 'get in and out of the maze' puzzles one sees in children's books, the house itself plays probably the most significant, involved role I have seen in the Yakata series so far. In doing so, Ayatsuji pays homage to the works of Seishi Yokomizo, another maestro from the past. It mentions Yokomizo's Akuryū-tō (The Island of Evil Spirits) in reference to a message left behind, but for me, the operations of the Labyrinth House are more reminiscent of the Western-style manor in Meiro-sō no sangeki (Tragedy at the Maze Manor), whose hidden passages, peepholes, and secret doors are depicted vividly, and which play such an important role in the adaptation starring Ikko Furuya. Even more serendipitously, both Yokomizo's and Ayatsuji's novels feature climactic sections that take place in caves.

What is perhaps another strange point of similarity is the fact that both The Labyrinth House Murders and Tragedy at the Maze Manor reveal 'hidden' culprits. But, while the adaptation of Yokomizo's work explores this in a straightforward way, Ayatsuji, in keeping with the multi-layered nature of the book, employs a fair amount of narrative trickery to keep the real culprit cloaked till the very end. And, while some may object to the way the novel utilises fair play in the post-manuscript revelation where all disguises are discarded, this is also Ayatsuji at his playful best. While I did perceive a lack of the characterisation one sees in The Mill House Murders, the conceit, structure, and trickery seen here, and the much-better rationale for the setup, more than make up for it. The Labyrinth House Murders witnesses an author at his self-assured best—exhibiting a level of imagination, control, and sportsmanship few can aspire to achieve. One wonders what further surprises lie in store in the Yakata series.

Last of the Steam-Powered Trains

Like the last of the good ol' choo-choo trains

Huff and puff 'till I blow this world away

And I'm gonna keep on rollin' till my dying day

I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains

—"Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", The Kinks, 1968

The Kinks' 1968 album, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, stands among the finest lyrical evocations of the vanishing English countryside. A personal favourite from the album is "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", the band's adaptation of the classic Howlin' Wolf song "Smokestack Lightning", in which vocalist Ray Davies pens a rollicking character study of a steam train in a museum reminiscing about its glory days when it huffed and puffed across the country. 

I was reminded of the song—and the album—as I came across a description of steam engine drivers in Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi Hakucho (originally published in 1960, translated as The Black Swan Mystery, 2024):

"In his faded blue overalls, the strap of his cap tight around his chin, a driver was sitting on his hard seat, his right hand gripping a lever, his eyes fixed on the two parallel rails illuminated by the headlights in front of him. The fireman beside him opened the firebox door with a clatter and shovelled in some coal. The violent vibrations of the engine had taken their toll on the driver’s stomach, and all the colour had drained from his face. Every time the fire door was opened, however, the burning red light would be cast on his cheeks, and for a moment his complexion would improve so much that he was almost unrecognizable. Driving a steam engine was much harder than driving an electric locomotive. And yet the reward for it was scant at best."

This is not without precedent of course. The opening stretches of The Black Swan Mystery feature elements I would not have expected in a work by Tetsuya Ayukawa—a fashionably rich woman outsmarting a blackmailer rather courteously, a workers' strike at a textile mill and negotiations to overcome the impasse, a religious cult pulling the strings, and more. Clever casting ensures that these events are mostly seen through the eyes of characters pertinent to the plot, but it is all very industrious and painstakingly, meticulously laid out. It is also quite unlike my impressions of Ayukawa from my previous encounter with him—in the short story collection, The Red Locked Room, consisting of a number of intricately and tightly plotted, yet highly imaginative, tales of crime and detection.

The Black Swan Mystery, on the other hand, unfolds as a rigorous police procedural, not marked by instinctive flashes of inspiration or brilliance, but instead by a physically exhausting process of following clues, links, red herrings, and other lines of enquiry. Tailing—once a tool of misdirection and building up suspense—becomes a necessary, widely accepted norm of investigation by this time whose utility is openly accepted by both the police force and the perpetrators of the crime. The act of physically following up on leads is used for another purpose here. As the characters move from place to place, we become privy to the evolving landscape of Japan (transitioning into a rapidly industrial one), and how individuals, families, neighbourhoods, social orders, systems (transport and education, for instance) and professions (most prominently, prostitution) trace their journeys across time and space. In it all, there's a sense of people looking to move on from their past, yet being inexorably caught up in it through forces and circumstances beyond their control:

"Onitsura just stared at the photo without replying. That Kayoko had once entered a ladies’ college only to suffer the fate of a prostitute, and that afterwards this fallen angel had seen yet another reversal of fortune, living in the lap of luxury because of her attachment to a man of great power and wealth, seemed to exemplify the wretched lot of so many young women who had been thrown into the chaos of post-war Japan and made to fend for themselves."

In this aspect, the novel resembles the works of another doyen of Japanese mystery fiction, Seichō Matsumoto, particularly those involving extensive train travel (see Inspector Imanishi Investigates and Points and Lines/Tokyo Express). It is also indicative of the enormous influence exerted by the shakai ha (or social) school of mystery championed by Matsumoto over Japanese mystery writing in those days. In fact, the modus operandi of the police investigation and its arrival at the solution would suggest that The Black Swan Mystery be primarily regarded as an extremely competent work of the shakai ha school.

But, of course, the work does not follow the course of a full-blown shakai ha mystery. A major difference is the fact that there is lesser focus on making out industrial society to be some monstrous evil entity exhorting people towards crime. It is also less obsessed with analysing the psychology of classes and crimes. 

However, what the novel does accomplish is the presentation of memory-based character sketches gleaned through conversations with diverse people (doctors, gardeners, corporate sector employees, housewives, railway conductors, religious shamans, pharmacists, among others) that are used to piece together the full picture. And, to go back to a point I had made earlier, it is here that I am most reminded of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. One can, for instance, in some ways juxtapose the essence of and sentiment behind a character's reminiscences of the pivotal Kayoko in the novel— 

"Kayoko and I were the best of friends ... We sat beside each other in class and always studied together. But that was only until we left school. I got married and became an ordinary housewife, whereas she—"

 and

"There she is after school, wearing make-up for the first time. During the war, they were so strict about it—if they caught you even putting on face cream at school, you’d get a ticking-off. I used to take so much pleasure in putting it on after we graduated. Kayoko looked so pretty with it, too…" 

with that of some lines in the album's song "Do You Remember Walter?": 

Yes, Walter was my mate.

But Walter, my old friend, where are you now?

and

Walter, isn't it a shame the way our little world has changed? 

Do you remember, Walter, how we said we'd fight the world so we'd be free? 

We'd save up all our money and we'd buy a boat and sail away to sea. 

But it was not to be.

I knew you then, but do I know you now? 

Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago. 

Walter, if you saw me now, you wouldn't even know my name.

I bet you're fat and married,

And you're always home in bed by half past eight.

And if I talked about the old times, you'd get bored  

And you'd have nothing more to say. 

Yes, people often change.

But memories of people can remain. 

An unexpected bonus, but delightfully welcome nonetheless. In fact, in hindsight, the act of the sympathetic Inspector Onitsura experiencing and solving the mystery indirectly—through the eyes, ears, and memories of others—brings some relief to the Inspector himself. Otherwise, this tale of a character's quest for freedom takes some very dark and tragic turns, bookended by a somewhat tender, moving climax that offers the space for the character to take charge of and narrate their own story, and not be explained away as a footnote in a chain of grand, deductive reasoning.

We are back to familiar ground when talking about the mysteries the book sets up. Tetsuya Ayukawa is known in Japanese mystery writing circles as a fierce exponent of the alibi deconstruction story—and The Black Swan Mystery is no different. The core mystery concerns the death of one Gosuke Nishinohata, the director of Towa Textiles, whose body was found next to train tracks, a bullet in his back. A plethora of scattered clues—an abandoned car, blood on a railway overpass, among others—point in different directions, while the motives and list of suspects are equally vast, owing to a large number of shadowy connections and incidents linked to the company: an ownership struggle within the company, labour unrest, Nishinohata's problematic past, ties to underworld figures, religious cults, and more. More incidents soon follow—a down-on-his-luck gardener is found poisoned at a railway station, an accident claims the lives of a voice actor (who claimed they had a solution to the mystery) and another employee of Towa Textiles, while the underground blackmailer is found dead in a forest on the outskirts of another city at the same time the company's workers had gone there to attend Nishinohata's funeral. It is all time-consuming, but is carried out rather assiduously and neatly in real time.

The police investigation responds in kind—and goes through the entire gamut of experiences following red herrings, obscure clues, circumstantial evidence, witness evidence, and combing through multiple dead-ends and breakthroughs. If there is one criticism to be laid, it is that we do not exactly witness the aftermath of the police's failures in the course of the investigation. The team seems excessively reliant on Onitsura and his mental acuity, the camaraderie between the officers remains virtually unaffected, while the officers on the ground carry on with a different thread of investigation, barely unaffected by the previous setbacks. As readers, we remain none the wiser on whether any punitive action, however perfunctory, was doled out—whether they were soundly rebuked, or some officers transferred to other teams/investigations, or whether the lack of success soured relationships between officers and hierarchies, and/or affected their morale, for some time. Certainly, a shakai ha treatment would have benefitted here.

As concerns the murders themselves, the one carried out on Nishinohata feels over-elaborate in its conception and setup on the one hand, its impact and execution stymied by the adversarial, coincidental circumstances on the other. The demise of the gardener, the voice actor, and the second Towa Textiles employee fall under the "unavoidable evil to advance plot ends" category.  However, I must reserve a high level of praise for the trick employed to kill the underground blackmailer, involving astute understanding use of train routes and schedules. It is also a poignant relic of the past—similar to the depressing motive behind the events of Matsumoto's Inspector Imanishi Investigates, the acts of the criminal in their original form can no longer be practically carried out today, as the schedules and the train configurations are no longer there. It is oddly comforting to note, however, that closer home, in my country of India, an almost similar trick can be pulled off today if I travel from my hometown to the eastern metropolis of Kolkata, because the required differences in train schedules and the divergent routes to reach a common destination still exist.

It feels strange to conclude my thoughts on the note that The Black Swan Mystery reminds me more of Seichō Matsumoto's and Keikichi Ōsaka's works rather than Ayukawa's own short stories, as far as the themes are concerned. But, perhaps, that is where its charm and importance lies—not as an outright shakai ha or honkaku mystery, but as an instructive one seeking to bridge the gap between the two schools through an approach that is as much contemporary and fixed in its own time as much as it continues to memorialise a past people are seeking to leave behind, yet to which they find themselves inexplicably tied.

Man in the Box

My previous experience of a Masahiro Imamura work was with the experimental and entertaining Death Among the Undead, which broke new ground with its inspired-but-flawed use of zombies in a closed-circle situation. With an overarching thread of bioterrorism, I had expected things to escalate even further in the series, deploying more bombastic, hybrid-mystery elements.

Colour me surprised, then, because the second entry in the series, Magan no Hako no Satsujin (2019; translated as Death Within the Evil Eye, 2022), delivers a traditionally plotted, classically styled murder mystery, with just a pinch of the supernatural. No zombies, no bioterrorism plot points in the events as they transpire in real time.

Death Within the Evil Eye starts with a sense of déjà vu—Yuzuru Hamura making an idle deduction on the food a girl is about to order at the university cafeteria. It's very identical to the Sherlock Holmes-skit-like beginning of Death Among the Undead; however, due to the events of the first novel, this time, Hamura has no one to share his deductions with. The absence of Kyōsuke Akechi is felt throughout the novel, lending poignancy to the narrative and influencing the character dynamics of our protagonists in a major way.

Into this gap steps Hiruko Kenzaki, from the same university as Hamura, with her own quirks—a notorious oversleeper, and an exceptionally competent detective when it comes to real-life cases but utterly incompetent when it comes to identifying narrative trickery in fictional works. She also has a tendency to naturally attract freakish incidents. The two members of the reborn Mystery Society initially discuss strategies to hunt down the Madarame Organisation, the perpetrator behind the events of the first novel, through some potential leads—including one where a letter prophesising the Lake Sabea bioterrorist attack had been sent to a monthly magazine. However, Kenzaki decides to go at it alone, having already employed a private sleuth to investigate the Madarame Organisation's past activities and locations where it was active. In one of the finer bits of the novel, Hamura picks up changes in Kenzaki's attitude and demeanour, and decides to put the Tanuma Detective Agency on her tail. And thus it is that the duo find themselves on a journey to explore a former lair of the organisation. Their destination? Magan district in I county of W district.

Hereafter, the novel follows a pattern that may be familiar to readers of the Kindaichi series. A journey to a remote village in the mountains, with mysterious co-passengers (who happen to be students) headed to the same destination. To reach said destination, our main cast meets more curious folks—a professor and his son, a biker, a journalist, a woman visiting a grave in the village—all of whom then trek by foot to The Box of the Evil Eye—a two-storeyed building with no windows that was once used by the Madarame Organisation as a research facility to experiment with precognition and prophetic abilities. The purpose of the trip? To meet Sakimi, the prophetess whose prophecies have all turned out to be true for half a century.

And soon, a bridge burns down—isolating the whole cast. Then, the prophetess states that four people—two men and two women—will die. Yes, a major portion of the novel does indeed recreate the atmosphere and elements of multiple stories in Seimaru Amagi's Kindaichi and Detective School Q series.

Imamura does well to vary the nature of incidents that claim lives and distort minds: earthquake and landslide, animal attack, poisoning, and shooting. The cast, including two clairvoyants, reacts to the crises in a more diverse manner, even though they are already trapped in the clutches of the prophecy, than seen in Death Among the Undead. All this leads to multiple layered situations—and there's a definite improvement in establishing the closed-circle, locked-geography situations, the susceptibility of the characters to the supernatural, and creating the alignment between these situations and the rationale behind the characters' responses to these situations, when compared to the previous work. Having said that, the work still suffers from a problem I had observed in Death Among the Undead: namely that it is too aware of its status as a mystery novel, and the characters act not naturally or in accordance with the circumstances, but according to the dictates of mystery fiction tropes. It's a glaring discrepancy that is evident even here: in section-after-section dedicated to minutely dissecting each impossible situation through conversations and exposition (none of which, though logically sound, really stand out for quality or effect), but rarely do we see any concerted action.

Imamura thus comes across as an ideas man, rather than a natural plotter. The core of the novel—prophecies influencing people's actions—is carried out in several permutations and combinations. However, it is the spontaneous mix of superstitiousness, opportunism, and faith combined with fear, that invariably leads to unpredictable situations. Indeed, as Kenzaki points out in her summary of the case:

"This case is clearly completely different from the sort of crimes we all know. Setting aside the matter of whether Ms. Sakimi and Toiro’s powers were real or not, it is clear that our fear of their powers—and in a way, our faith in their powers—has influenced all that has happened here.’  

     Their powers had not directly killed anybody, but people had died there, whether by a natural event, or by human hand. In one sense, it was a murder case just like any other. However, the issue was that, additionally, the existence of precognitive powers had influenced our rationale and reasoning.  

     ‘A closed circle situation, plus precognitive powers. I do not believe that the police, coming from outside, can ever truly comprehend the fear and mental pressure created by such a combination. As soon as we step outside of the Box, the curious logic which has manipulated us over the last two days will disappear, as if it had all been just an illusion. Which is why I wanted to put an end to it all, before our tiny universe is broken up.’"

It is, therefore, quite unfortunate that the rationale and reasoning of the characters is also ultimately influenced too much by mystery fiction tropes and their analysis, which exert even more influence in the critical moments than any act of prophecy or clairvoyance does. Loss of hope and mounting despair can be powerful tools for authors to utilise, but when done in an organic manner. On the other hand, when they are used simply to serve plot-based, narrative, or trope-based functions, they can come across as excessively forced, artificial, and devoid of appropriate expression of emotions—as is the case with Imamura's two novels.

It is also the reason why, in my opinion, Imamura shines best when he explores human themes rather than supernatural themes. The evolving, moe-coded, Holmes-Watson relationship and dynamic between Kenzaki and Hamura, the continued acknowledgement of Akechi's absence—these form oddly tender oases in these two novels that revel in stretching character motivations to the extreme, and continuously putting them through a grinder. Both novels, I also think, are best read in light of a common them: revenge. While it is played in a straightforward, more preordained, manner in Death Among the Undead, the circumstantial nature of things ensures that the revenge seen in Death Within the Evil Eye is anything but straightforward, even though it is dictated by the needs of an infallible prophecy. The subject of the prophecy ends up as a victim, not of a direct revenge but an indirect, perverted one—one that not only fails to reach the intended target of the original grudge, but also effectively destroys the life of the perpetrator and condemns them to a future of utter futility, trapped by the nature and demands of the very things they exploited. In fact, this is rooted in a very Japanese sensibility—and one seen all too frequently in works featuring Hajime Kindaichi and Kosuke Kindaichi.

These are some of the aspects I would ideally have liked Imamura to have explored more in Death Within the Evil Eye, rather than the incessant homages to crime fiction he keeps making throughout the novel. There seems to be a third entry in this series—but I look forward to its translation with a sense of cautious optimism, and not of unbridled enthusiasm.

California Dreamin'

During what was, perhaps, the only Dungeons & Dragons session I have ever participated in, a friend of mine made a pitch for me to jump on the science-and-fantasy fiction bandwagon. Said friend introduced me to the 'Dying Earth' subgenre, which also happens to be a common theme and setting in Dungeons & Dragons games. It has a long lineage, featuring works from Mary Shelley and H. G. Wells to those by Gene Wolfe, but my friend particularly recommended stories and novels by Jack Vance. As it turns out, the subgenre is named as a tribute to Vance and his Dying Earth series (1950–1984).

I never did explore the 'Dying Earth' subgenre or Vance's series. My loyalty and devotion to crime fiction proved to be far stronger—and a cursory dive into Vance's bibliography showed that he wrote and published a number of crime and mystery fiction works, including a few under the Ellery Queen pseudonym. Last year, on a whim, I decided to read what sounded like one of the more interesting titles in his oeuvre—The Fox Valley Murders (1966). It is safe to say that I hit the jackpot in my first encounter with Vance's works.

Lived experiences of authors loom large over books I have read (or reread) in recent years. The descriptions of numerous fictional locations (villages, towns, hotels, buildings, among others) in Agatha Christie's novels, such as Peril at End House, Evil Under the Sun, and The Body in the Library, for instance, are said to draw inspiration from her travels and stays particularly in Devon and Torquay. In Seishi Yokomizo's Kosuke Kindaichi series, on the other hand, Yokomizo's wartime experiences in the Japan's Okayama islands mould the settings, the narratives, the politics as well as the way characters act and interact with each other—particularly in works such as The Honjin Murders, Death on Gokumon Island and The Village of Eight Graves.

In The Fox Valley Murders, Vance draws upon his childhood experiences in his beloved Californian countryside in a more personal and intimate manner than Christie or Yokomizo. The result is a work where the geography and the cast of characters emerge as something resembling picture cut-outs from a photo album. It is, therefore, not surprising to note that the novel is propelled by an effective combination of nostalgia, and the use of well-defined, believable characters, crisp, entertaining, and humorous conversations, as well as vivid, evocative descriptions of locales. Employing a very American diction, The Fox Valley Murders is, in my opinion, one of the finest specimens of a 'regional mystery' I have ever encountered.

Events of the past cast long shadows—and these shadows re-emerge when Ausley Wyett ("tall and awkward, with lank brown hair, knobby knees and wrists, a good-natured, if somewhat moony, face") steps into the town of Marblestone in California's San Rodrigo county after serving a 16-year-long jail term. If there's one thing that unites Marbletown's residents otherwise divided by petty jealousies and rivalries, it's a profound hatred for Ausley ("A lot of people around here don't feel too Christian about Ausley Wyett"), who was convicted of raping and killing 13-and-half-year old Tissie McAllister (who "loved her parents and was loved in return"). Ausley maintained his innocence at the inquest, but even though the evidence leading up to the crime—a number of people having witnessed Ausley and Tissie walking together but not the crime itself—is pretty much circumstantial, Ausley's own actions after the murder ("I lost my head and did the foolishest thing I could have done”) drove a nail in his coffin. Some miles away from the town, he had been spotted, "digging a hole, with close at hand the body of Tissie McAllister." However, even a prison term fails to cure his hardheadedness, because after returning to Marblestone, the first thing he does is to send a letter to the five persons who had testified against him:

"Dear Sir:

I am now out of jail, where I have served sixteen long years. I could write a long book on the dreadful experiences I have witnessed. How do you plan to make this up to me? I await your response with great interest.

Very truly yours,
Ausley L. Wyett"

It is this letter that sets in motion the events of The Fox Valley Murders.

At around the same time that Ausley sets the cat among pigeons on his return to Marbletown, Joe Bain becomes the acting-sheriff of San Rodrigo county, after his predecessor Ernest Cucchinello ("Cooch") dies of pneumonia. 16 years ago, Joe had been "the tall hell-raising lad from Castle Mountain, who had run away from home and now lived in San Rodrigo where he consorted with Mexicans and fruit tramps." However, life soon served several curveballs. His wife elopes with a band's guitarist, leaving him with "his nineteen-month-old daughter Miranda standing in the play-pen, diapers dripping, milk-bottle empty, quietly philosophic about the whole sad situation." Leaving his child in the care of his mother, Joe  then joined the military, saw action in Korea, transferred to the military police, and used his GI benefits to study criminology. He then became a deputy-sheriff under Cucchinello, but the sheriff's death adds more responsibilities on Joe's shoulders. On a day-to-day basis, he also has to deal with the sly opposition of Mrs. Rostvolt, "clerk, matron, office manager and power behind the throne", who continuously undermines Joe's authority, and acts as the eyes and ears of the next likeliest sheriff candidate—Lee Gervase, "a vigorous and progressive young lawyer, formerly of San Francisco." Joe ultimately throws his name into the sheriff candidacy hat, partly on a whim, and partly to keep the old-school nature and identity of San Rodrigo county alive.

Despite his daily frustrations, Joe never lets go of his keen, wry sense of observation, and makes himself available to most of the needs and demands of the residents:

"Charley Blankenship never seemed to change. He was a tall, pale, horse-faced old man with long arms and legs, soft gray hair, watery blue eyes, a pendulous pink mouth. He lived the life of a gentleman farmer, with a forty-acre cherry orchard and a white two-story house on Destin Road, south of Marblestone. Joe Bain had known him for as long as he could remember. During May, a favorite recreation among the local young people was stealing Blankenship cherries. Joe retained a vivid recollection of Charley Blankenship’s pallid face peering down the rows. He often carried a shotgun loaded with rock salt, and on one occasion had shot his nephew Walt Hobius. Opinion was divided on whether Charley had recognized Walt. Walt thought that he had, though Charley denied it to Walt’s mother, Dora. For the last ten years Charley leased the forty acres to a Japanese family, who during cherry season maintained a patrol even more vigilant than Charley’s had been."

Joe's common sense and troubleshooting skills are soon put to the test, as he has to balance his duties as  an acting-sheriff, as well as that of a candidate looking to win the upcoming sheriff election:

"Charley Blankenship turned him a look of more yellow malevolence than Joe would have thought possible from so rheumy and dew-lapped a face. There goes a vote, he thought in alarm. He jumped to his feet. “I’ll sure look into it, Mr. Blankenship. I believe in striking the iron before it gets hot. That way nobody gets burned."

Things do not get easier when a series of murders soon rocks Marblestone, claiming the lives of nearly all who had testified against Ausley. Former bus driver Bus Hacker dies in front of Joe, just as he opens the door to his house. Later, his house is burned down. Mushroom lover Charley Blankenship dies after eating a dish mixed with commonly known poisonous mushrooms which he picked himself. Willis Neff, another testifier, is shot dead, presumably in a hunting accident, in an open glade in a neighbouring county (warning: there is a glaring error in the timeline of death in this case, possibly due to a printing mistake). Oliver Viera falls off his ladder and plunges into a ravine while trying taking down a can of paint from the edge of the roof of his house. Towards the end, Cole Destin also has a very close shave in a traffic accident, but he survives. As Joe admirably puts it: "You feel a fool saying ‘accident’, you feel a fool claiming foul play. So what do you do?”

Investigator Joe comes across as a hardworking gumshoe, but much of his instincts are steered by his astute understanding of the residents of Marbletown and the relationship he shares with them. This same astuteness serves him well when he campaigns for votes, and it is amusing to see him switch between sleuthing and campaigning every so often:

Two elderly women came up to him. One asked in a bantering tone, “Can you be Joe Bain, the young rapscallion who was the shame of the neighborhood?”

Joe grinned. “I guess that’s me. And you’re Mrs. Mathews, my old third-grade teacher.”

“So you remember me after all these years!”

“How could I forget?”

The other lady said archly, “I don’t imagine you remember me!”

“I certainly do,” said Joe. “You’re Mrs. Beasley, at the post office. When I was ten years old I kissed your daughter. You caught me and whacked me good.”

“Think of it,” Mrs. Beasley marveled to Mrs. Mathews. “Ten years old he was, and kissing Arla bold as you please. Ten years old! And Arla pretending it was just an everyday occurrence. Oh, the little rascals. I hate to think what went on when my back was turned.”

“It goes to show that you never can tell. Arla’s married with four children, and Joe’s sheriff of the county.” Mrs. Mathews beamed roguishly at Joe. “How we used to pity your poor mother, coping with a pair like your father and you!”

“I imagine she felt sorry for herself at times,” said Joe.

The same Mrs. Beasley turns out to be a voter for Joe—and more importantly, provides a hint to the one existing, material evidence that would turn the case on its head, and indict the real criminal.

Reading the several conversations Joe has in sticky situations—and the way he inevitably exploits them (and the relationships he shares with antagonistic characters) for his benefit—makes one appreciate what a master manipulator he is. For instance, Joe is almost ensnared in a cartoonishly false rape allegation by Mary Destin, wife of Cole Destin and Tissie's elder sister—something that could have had serious implications on Joe's bid to be a sheriff. However, instead of being drawn into a long-drawn battle, Joe confronts the case head-on, lays out all his cards in front of Mary, and 'convinces' Mary that the implications of this case could be even more harmful for her—all in the presence of a hostile but influential local newspaper editor who agrees to drop the sensational article that would have demonized Joe even further. 

The conversations, interactions, and rich character portraits further reveal what a closed world Marblestone really is—where, barring a few exceptions, grudges are hard to forget, and meanness comes naturally to most, and whose prettiest pictures possibly exist only in the photos of an album. No wonder then that the real culprit's motives stem from an intense psychological pettiness and hostility towards their fellow residents. It is as though the town's atmosphere invisibly influences the culprit to carry out their deeds. 

Navigating such a familiar but unfriendly terrain, Joe pulls off an impressive double act—solving a devilish case and winning the sheriff election. To achieve this, Joe is constantly on the move, across the length and breadth of Marblestone and even beyond. These travels allow readers to immerse in some picturesque descriptions of Marblestone, its environs and neighbouring counties, as well as partake in some offbeat sights and sounds in and around the town: a church fight, a farmers' market, a political rally, a clash between a religious community and city folks, and more. 

The journeys also allow Joe to travel into his past and occupy himself with reflections:

This was Slough-house, an institution at its heyday during Prohibition, when it acquired a reputation for picturesque vice which it never quite outlived. Slough-house was now relatively respectable. True, there were rooms to be rented on a casual basis; complaisant ladies could generally be found at the bar. On summer Saturday nights there was dancing at an open-air pavilion beside the slough. Some of the most fragrant memories of Joe’s youth were connected with these Saturday night dances. The orchestra played romantic old tunes like I’ll See You in My Dreams, Whispering, Three O’Clock in the Morning; the weeping willows changed color as the floodlights shifted through red, blue, green, and gold. After one such dance occurred the incident which culminated in Joe’s marriage … Joe heaved a sigh for his lost youth. A dozen cars were parked in front of the bar. Luminous medallions advertising beer winked a cheerful invitation, but Joe drove past. It might not be too good an idea to be seen here. Not till after election, anyway.

In another instance, Joe thoughts take on a level-headed, morbid tinge:

Joe drove south along Destin Road to the ruins of the Hacker house. The fence smothered in red roses still stood. Joe leaned on the gate and considered the black rubble beyond.

The sun was gone; twilight blurred the mountain slopes, lights began to sparkle up and down the valley. Joe listened. Silence except for the warm wind in the poplars. A bat flew twittering past. The ashes of the Hacker house seemed more melancholy than ever. Joe thought of Millie’s letters to Bus, written long ago when the world was young. He looked down into the rubble where the exploded glass of Millie’s jams and preserves still reflected a few sullen lights from the sky. Life was a funny thing, thought Joe. You just reached the stage where you could appreciate it when you had to start worrying about how it would end … He walked back to his car, drove into Marblestone.

It all leads to a most unusual and entertaining climax where Joe eliminates his political rival, Lee Gervase, by implicating him in the case Joe is trying to solve for witholding vital information. In the same rally, much to the glee of the audience, the high-level delegates and organizers are left with eggs on their faces when Joe proceeds to reveal the truth behind the current spree of murders, as well as the killing of Tissie McAllister. All loose ends are tied up—and, for all its darkness, the novel has a happy ending.

Where the novel does subvert the classic detective fiction mould somewhat is in its choice of Joe as the protagonist, and a further definition of his role. In the grand old game of cat-and-mouse, as seen in Christie's Poirot and Yokomizo's Kindaichi series, the great detective often participates in a case in the capacity of a visitor, where they travel to places and glean information, background, and context from often untrustworthy and unwilling locals. The result is a view of the politics and mechanics of crime from the lens of an outsider. In The Fox Valley Murders, however, we are privy to the complexities of crimes, their impact on a town's residents and politicians, and the process of solving them, through the eyes of a local: Sheriff Bain. This makes for a more realistic portrayal, in so far as Joe's mastery of a crooked game is concerned—Joe has to manipulate his way through a corrupt rival, a sly subordinate, hostile and prejudiced inhabitants of the town, as well as media-persons and political dignitaries dead set against him as a candidate for the sheriff's position.

Seen in this light, The Fox Valley Murders has more in common with Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996), that wonderful series set in (mostly) smalltown America. The series introduces writer Jessica Fletcher, hailing from Cabot Cove, Maine, in the role of a sleuth. In my opinion, Jessica straddles the insider-outsider dichotomy perfectly. In the cases set in, say, Boston or New York, she fulfils the role of an inquisitive guest or trespasser, rising above circumstantial difficulties and solving the cases while being mocked and frowned upon by the suspects in the case. However, when incidents happen in Cabot Cove, things get a bit too personal, and Jessica performs a role akin to what Joe does in The Fox Valley Murders. While the modus operandi may not be as gritty and manipulative as seen in Vance's work, Jessica does call upon favours from his companions (Dr. Seth Hazlitt and Sheriff Amos Tupper), and relies on her knowledge of Cabot Cove's residents, the relationship she shares with them, the city's history and evolving political climate, to dispense her own brand of ratiocinative, but ultimately sympathetic, justice—just as Joe Bain does.

Vance would go on to write another full-fledged Joe Bain novel, The Pleasant Grove Murders (1967), and a fully-sketched outline of a third novel, The Genesee Slough Murders. As someone previously relatively unaware of, but now keen to explore, American countryside mysteries of the kind seen in The Fox Valley Murders, I can only imagine the kind of complexities and tricks Vance cooked up in his latter two efforts.

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: ‘The Fox Valley Murders’: A hit combination of nostalgia and evocative descriptions of locales)

Burning Down the House (Part II)

"Do you still write in your diary every day?
Do you still look up at the stars once a month?
Do you still walk around the park alone?
Do you still watch movies on Sundays?"

        —"Renai Bochi" ("Graveyard of Love"), Kirikyogen, Kuni Kawachi and the Flower Travellin' Band

Akimitsu Takagi debuted with Shisei Satsujin Jiken (The Tatoo Murder Case) in 1948, but it was his second novel—1949's Nōmen Satsujin Jiken (The Noh Mask Murder)—that won him the prestigious Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1950. I fondly recall The Tattoo Murder Case for its evocative portrayal of a bombed-out Tokyo, the underworld, the tattoo culture, and its clever use of tailing as a plot mechanic, rather than for its locked room mystery credentials and prowess. So, naturally, expectations were sky-high when I picked up a copy of the English translation of Nōmen Satsujin Jiken (The Noh Mask Murder, Pushkin Vertigo, 2024) earlier this year.

Takagi comes across as an intriguing writer on two counts. On the one hand, while he is probably not as skilled a storyteller as his compatriot Seishi Yokomizo, his portrayal of a post World War-II Japan (as seen in The Tatoo Murder Case) is refreshingly original, in a manner quite different to Yokomizo's Japan. On the other hand, Takagi's sense of fair play and habit of acknowledging his inspirations is rather extreme—to the extent that he openly describes important details and plot points from the works he is inspired by, thereby spoiling them for numerous readers. Subtlety in this regard is not his strong suite, and the combination of the two qualities can be both fascinating and frustrating.

The Noh Mask Murder takes one to the seaside resort town of H– on the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa. In 1946, a mansion on the outskirts of the town is witness to a series of incidents that leads to the demise of the entire Chizui family living in it. Thematically, the novel resonates with Yokomizo's The Devil's Flute Murders which portrays the downfall of the Tsubaki family and other lineages associated with it. However, the mechanics of the family's annihilation in The Noh Mask Murder sharply contrasts what one sees in Yokomizo's novel.

The novel opens with a note from the author himself who plays a not-insignificant role in the events. In it, he recounts meeting with a childhood friend, Koichi Yanagi, that would eventually lead him (Takagi) to be embroiled in the Chizui affair. The subsequent narrative is in the form of Yanagi's journal that documents the Chizui case, bookended by a letter and a sealed note addressed to Takagi by a public prosecutor Hiroyuki Ishikari. Though Ishikari's 'association' with the Chizuis dates back three decades, his involvement in the events of 1946 begins, incidentally, with a chance encounter with Yanagi, the son of Ishikari's dear friend Genichiro, on a beach that holds some painful memories for Ishikari. A few days later, Ishikari visits the Chizui mansion on Yanagi's invitation. Their stroll comes to a jarring end once they reach near the grey walls of the Western-styled Chizui mansion, when they hear a haunting tune on a piano. At around the same time, they see the terrifying face of someone wearing a hannya mask staring at them from one of the upper-floor windows. The nightmarish scenes concludes with an abrupt end to the piano tune, just as "the ghastly, deranged laughter of a woman" echoes through the night.

So much for the opening act! Takagi may not impress one with his storytelling finesse, but there's no doubt that he significantly amplifies the dramatic, theatrical quotient in the novel. Two days after the demon's sighting, amateur detective Takagi ( who "... fancies himself Japan's answer to Philo Vance") enters the picture when Yanagi visits him on the request of the head of the Chizui household, Taijiro. As Takagi and Yanagi discuss the case, they receive a rather frantic call from Taijiro who states that he has identified the person behind the Noh mask. However, within the 20 minutes it takes for Takagi and Yanagi to return to the mansion, the unthinkable happens—and the corpse of Taijiro, with no visible injuries, is found seated in a room with doors and windows tightly closed and locked, with the hannya mask, "the bearer of a two-hundred-year-old-curse", lying on the floor. 

The murder of Taijiro acts as the catalyst for the eventual unravelling of the Chizui family, but it is hard to feel any shred of sympathy for a majority of the characters and their fates. Most of the patriarchs in the Chizui family are portrayed as absolutely vile with no redeeming quality, while the victims die by the end of the novel, facing the most pitiable and pathetic fates. Taijiro and his sons are involved in the death of the previous head of the Chizui family—Taijiro's brother Soichiro—while Soichiro's wife Kayoko is 'admitted' to a mental asylum for her alleged insanity. The most villainous of the lot is Taijiro's eldest son, Rintaro, who is described by Yanagi as "a terrifying nihilist":

"All he really believes in is power; to him, justice and morality are no more than intellectual games. He seems to view everything in this world as a sort of dreary mirage, contemplating reality in the indifferent way one might gaze at a passing cloud in the sky. All capacity for feeling has deserted him, leaving behind only his abnormally sharp intellect; if he hasn’t murdered anyone yet, it’s probably only because it doesn’t agree with him as a hobby. He told me as much himself once, in no uncertain terms. If it had been you he was talking to, I imagine he would have informed you, with a scornful smile, that 'the ultimate law is lawlessness itself '."

Even though the other family members also exhibit varying degrees of evilness and madness:

"It’s the same with Taijiro’s second son, Yojiro. He may not be quite as craven as his father, but still—a snake only ever begets a snake. If we were to compare Taijiro to a mighty sword, Yojiro is more like a dagger glinting in its sheath.

Even Taijiro’s mother, Sonoe, long bedridden with palsy, has the same fiery temper smouldering away inside her. And while his daughter, Sawako, is the most reasonably minded of the family, you have to remember that for many years she has had only lunatics, near-lunatics and invalids for company. Who knows when she might succumb to some violent fit of emotion?

Between the two remaining members of the Professor’s own family, and these five members of Taijiro’s branch, it is safe to say there is no love lost. As Jules Renard once put it, a family is a group of people living under the same roof who cannot stand each other. That house has been struck by a disease from within. Riven by mutual hatred, suspicion and a sheer failure to understand one another, the Chizuis are engaged in a perpetual and desperate struggle.

But precisely because their respective forces have reached a sort of equilibrium, the family appears, on the surface at least, to be entirely at peace. Any disruption of that balance, however momentary, would surely spell the downfall of the entire family. Who knows what tragedy may erupt among that forsaken tribe? In any case, I fear it may be fast approaching …"

The swirling miasma in the Chizui family also overwhelms Soichiro's and Kayoko's children—14-year- old Kenkichi who is unaware that he has a heart disease (and won't be alive for long), and 27-year-old Hisako (once a piano-playing prodigy, now driven to madness). And, unlike the kind of madness seen in Yokomizo's works such as Death on Gokumon Island, where the onset of insanity is often tied to external factors such as war, the madness of the characters in The Noh Mask Murder is due to willful and vile misdeeds committed by certain characters on others. In particular, Hisako's plight is a scathing indictment of the depravity of the Chizui family members.

It is no surprise therefore that the Chizui family ultimately decays from within. In fact, I am almost tempted to call this an 'anti-Yokomizo' sensibility. In a work like The Devil's Flute Murders, one sees how the sordid secrets of the Tsubaki family affect multiple families caught in the wheelhouse of the Tsubakis. In other words, the action spills out in a centrifugal manner. In Akimitsu's work, however, the narrative absorbs all the disparate strands and concentrates them on the Chizui family. Like a whirlpool, the Chizui affair draws all kinds of hidden facts and truths towards itself with an enormous centripetal force, leading to the implosion of the entire family. However, the War plays, at the most, a cursory role in this work—limited to one or two social commentaries, and not even close to the level of influence it exerts on the plot of The Devil's Flute Murders.

What does leave a lasting influence on the novel, however, is the discourse on and application of theatre, particularly its conventions and 'props' (masks and tools). Furthermore, a particular section in Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, provides a code to the whereabouts of the elusive treasure, the root of all that's evil in this work, while the dying words of Kayoko reference the character Portia in the same play. And, while the core mystery of Taijiro's death is, at its heart, a scientific one, the use of the cursed mask and a particular tool used in Noh theatre prove to be integral to the entire performance.

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In between setting up puzzles, Takagi devotes a surprising amount of time and space in providing social commentary. As Ishikari addresses his companions in a certain section:

"Gentlemen, Japan is changing: we have a democracy now; the military has been disbanded; the police are no longer the violent enforcers we knew in the past. It seems that even in prisons, with a few rare exceptions, torture has fallen out of use. These days, there is only one place where such brutality is still permitted—the mental asylum.

This is possible, of course, because we hold doctors in higher regard than almost any other profession. We see them as somehow special—almost holy, if you like. But any privilege, in the wrong hands, can have terrible consequences. And when a doctor abuses their power, the results can be spine-chilling." 

Takagi's description of the Oka asylum follows in these lines:

"Could it even be called a ward? There was a small barred window high up on the wall, through which even the summer sunshine seemed reluctant to enter. The tatami mats were mouldy, an acrid stench of unknown origin assaulted our nostrils, and leaking water had smeared the walls a miserable grey. Even prison inmates were surely treated more humanely than this. I recalled my army days, and the dreaded guardhouse to which disobedient soldiers were confined—and yet even that paled in comparison to the wretched sight in front of us."

(Sadly enough, cases of abuse in Japanese mental asylums continue to this day.)

 Takagi also briefly reflects on the country's 'misguided education policy':

"[...] the answer to that question lies, in a sense, in the misguided educational policy of the war period. For all those years, we drummed into the nation’s children a pointless hatred of the enemy, a misguided desire for revenge. Children’s hearts aren’t like those of adults; the emotions seared into them cannot simply be forgotten overnight. Perhaps an extended period of democratic education will one day succeed in reversing the harm that was done. Otherwise, this country will be doomed to repeat the tragedies of its past."

Perhaps, these were all early signs that, as an author, Takagi would not be limited to only honkaku mystery conventions, but instead, dabble in multiple genres. However, The Noh Mask Mystery is still a very nascent work in this regard, with Takagi showing his naivete at times with some curious but questionable observations:

"A year before Sawako was born, Mrs Chizui began suffering from mild pleurisy, and relocated with Yojiro to a fishing village not far from Zushi for convalescence. Mrs Matsuno went with her as her maid and nurse; Taijiro himself visited once a week. Gradually, Mrs Chizui’s condition began to improve. Then, one autumn day, she had a chance encounter with the man she had loved in her youth. Now, to most men, such youthful dalliances are like a sprig of wild chrysanthemum, broken off on a whim as they pass and just as immediately discarded. The names of those first loves—sometimes even their order of appearance—are easily forgotten. But to women, love is a more vital force—and they never forget the person who first kindled its fire in their breast."

[Funnily enough, I recently came across a similar observation in C. M. Naim's work, Urdu Crime Fiction, 1890–1950: An Informal History (2023), where he translates a section of Lala Tirath Ram Ferozepuri's Urdu novel, Mistrīz āf Fīrozpūr (c. 1904): "Modesty does not allow me to be explicit, but let me give you a hint. A woman—any woman—when she shares her bed with a man and satisfies her sexual passion for the first time, a deep love for that particular man becomes a permanent part of her being, like a line scratched into stone ... It was Dunichand who first planted 'the seed of love' in me. Thousands came after him and told me how they loved me, but I now find no trace of affection for them inside me. However, the special love I feel for Dunichand will remain with me till death arrives."]

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The solution to The Noh Mask Mystery, while pleasing to visualize, really suffers from the lack of a map or a diagram, especially since there's an expansive fake solution involved. Even more glaring is the fact that the novel borrows handsomely from a few well-known works of S.S. Van Dine and Agatha Christie (which Takagi mentions too many times over the course of the novel to mention here). It therefore lends itself to the same critique I had extended in the case of The Tattoo Murders: that the ending stretch reads too much like a tribute act to certain works of Western crime fiction, despite it having sufficient elements to break new ground. A missed opportunity indeed!

The saving grace is the manner in which Takagi handles his own inclusion in the plot. Maybe it is an act of self-indulgence, but Takagi comes across as, perhaps, the only gentlemanly character in the work. He does not overplay his involvement in the case, honestly admits to his failures in deciphering the case from the right angle, gets a vague glimpse of the truth, nonetheless, that is completely against his expectations, and gently excuses himself from the case around the midway point:

"In your journal, Mr Takagi comes across as a complete idiot, but it seems a correction is called for. Nobody is perfect, after all. Making mistakes is only human [...] He told me he’d forget everything he’d learned, then withdrew entirely from the case. [...] See how, even in a situation like this, friendship shows us its beautiful light."

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With all its promise and flaws, The Noh Mask Murder is an oddly balanced work, where the yin and the yang cancel each other. Even with his considerable shortcomings, Takagi continues to fascinate me in these early works as an author charting his own path, and finding his own voice and style. This view of a flawed author experimenting with genre, form, plot, and style, has its own charm—distinct from what one experiences from reading the more polished works of a consummate storyteller like Yokomizo.

Burning Down the House (Part I)

The translations of classic Japanese crime fiction works which Pushkin Vertigo has been publishing in recent years is a veritable goldmine for aficionados and scholars to dig into. If not anything else, these works provide a glimpse into how a genre originating (allegedly) in the West came, first, to be adopted in the Far East, and then developed its own identity in myriad ways, informed primarily by the contemporary social and cultural realities in the eras they are placed in. I find myself particularly fascinated by the novels of Akimitsu Takagi and Seishi Yokomizo, two doyens of the mystery genre in Japan, whose novels often openly acknowledge influences from classic Western works but then go on to transcreate the essence of their inspirations, by moulding highly original stories boasting of a unique Japanese identity. Interestingly enough, the early works of Yokomizo and Takagi, both written in the post-World War II era, seem to take on similar themes, the treatments of which circle around, but never quite intersect with, each other.

The demise of entire families or lineages—often in the most violent and abnormal ways imaginable—is one of the themes the aforesaid writers seem to be preoccupied with. There are a number of reasons that may account for this fixation on part of the authors. The American Occupation of Japan between 1945 and 1952 irrevocably changed the social, cultural, political, and economic fabric of the country. The army was disarmed and demobilised, wartime public officials were excluded ('purged') from public offices, wartime criminals were put on trial at the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal, while the Emperor himself denounced his divine status. It is no wonder then that the works of Yokomizo, in order to portray the intense turmoil and churn of the times, use the figure of the disfigured, disembodied, demobbed soldier (having served in the colonies) returning home, only to roam aimlessly in search of their families or a place to belong to. Furthermore, the 1947 Constitution of Japan abolished the erstwhile kazoku (a system of hereditary peerage under the Empire of Japan), as a result of which the nobles, princes, dukes, viscounts, barons and marquesses were all stripped of their titles and the privileges that came along with it. The decade between 1945–1955 was, therefore, marked as much by decadence, futility and a loss of purpose, as it was by a fierce clash between newly emerging and traditional world orders—something that both Takagi and Yokomizo use, often to varying degrees and effects.

Yokomizo's Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku (serialised between 1951 and 1953, translated as The Devil's Flute Murders, and published by Pushkin Vertigo in 2023) chronicles the tragic downfall of the once-proud and noble Tsubaki family: 

The Tsubaki family was a noble one, and one of the most prominent of the old aristocratic lines, but it had produced no notable members since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and although the family had received titles from the Imperial family, their yearly stipend had dwindled. In Hidesuke’s youth they had been reduced to poverty, and he himself had struggled to maintain the basic appearance necessary for a man of his station. He had been saved by his marriage to a member of the Shingu family.

What saved the Tsubakis from complete ruin is the Viscount Hidesuke Tsubaki's 'marriage of convinience' to Akiko Shingu—the Shingus being "peers of the old feudal daimyo lineage" who were "famous for their wealth". The marriage was a strange, mismatched one, and inexplicable to the Viscount himself who had often wondered why Akiko's maternal uncle, the Count Tamamushi, "would assent to letting his darling niece marry a man such as him". After all, Hidesuke "had apparently lacked the vitality necessary to deal with all the changes and turmoil rocking Japanese society at the time", instead spending time on extending his mastery over the flute, while Count Tamamushi "had always remained a powerful political force in the shadows", despite not being a minister himself. The firebombing of Tokyo spares the Tsubakis' mansion, but brings together a lot of combustible elements from branch families of the Shingus under one roof—the Count Tamamushi and his mistress Kikue, and the entire Shingu household, consisting of Toshihiko Shingu (Akiko's brother, "who filled his life with liquor, women and golf" and was regarded by Count Tamamushi as "a true figure of [the] nobility), his wife and son.

The fuse to this powder-keg of a situation is lit, seemingly, not through the internal machinations of this disjointed household, but from an unexpected external source. Yokomizo relies on a real-life case—the robbery-cum-mass-murder at a branch of the Imperial Bank (Teikoku Ginkō, aka Teigin), Tokyo, in 1948—to set in motion the chain of events in The Devil's Flute Murders (which are, however, set in 1947). Acting on an anonymous tip, the police summon Viscount Hidesuke due to his strong resemblance with a montage photo (or a composite photo) of the culprit which they had released. The viscount is later set free due to lack of evidence, but he disappears, nearly two months after the events of the Teigin Case. A month-and-half later, Hidesuke's body is discovered in the faraway Nagano Prefecture. It is established that he had committed suicide, but not all is as it seems as Hidesuke's presence is seen and felt by Akiko during a visit to the theatre, a few months after the former's death. And, thus it is that in the month of September 1947 that Hidesuke's daughter, Mineko, visits the private detective Kosuke Kindaichi to request his help in finding out whether her father is dead or alive. What Kindaichi finds, instead, over the course of the novel, is a whole lot of skeletons buried in the closets of the Tsubakis, Shingus and Tamamushis—miserable secrets that force the chronicler of Kindaichi's adventures to significantly postpone its publication: 

In truth, I should have written about this case before two or three other Kindaichi adventures I have published in the last few years. The reason it comes so late is that Kindaichi was reluctant to reveal its secrets to me, and that was mostly likely because he was afraid that unveiling the unrelenting darkness, twisted human relationships and bottomless hatred and resentment within might discomfit readers.

The opening act of this 'tragedy in three acts' unfolds with two significant events. The first is the revelation of the two 'legacies' left behind by Viscount Hidesuke. One of them is an enigmatic letter to his daughter: 

Dear Mineko, 

Please, do not hold this act against me. I can bear no more humiliation and disgrace. If this story comes to light, the good name of the Tsubaki family will be cast into the mud. Oh, the devil will indeed come and play his flute. I cannot bear to live to see that day come. 

My Mineko, forgive me. 

The second piece of legacy is Hidesuke's last contribution to the world of music—a sinister composition titled "The Devil Comes and Plays His Flute", based on Doppler’s flute song “Fantaisie Pastorale Hongroise”, and which would play a vital role in the unravelling of whodunnit.

The second significant event is the divination ceremony held in the Tsubaki house the day after Mineko's visit to Kindaichi. The ceremony held is unlike seances in the West, instead sharing resemblances with Japan's "kokkuri-san" divination and sand divination, as noted by Kindaichi. Needless to say, a number of events happen in quick succession before, during, and after the ceremony—not unlike the opening stretches of Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit. The house is plunged into darkness, footsteps are heard from the unoccupied, former room of the Viscount, the ceremony goes sideways when the image of a kaendaiko (or flaming drum), eerily matching the birthmark on Toshihiko Shingu's shoulder (a later revelation), is found engraved on the sand in the divination apparatus, and the haunting notes of "The Devil Comes and Plays His Flute" are heard immediately after the end of the divination. As if this isn't enough, the Count Tamamushi is found dead the next morning in the locked "Western-styled" room with its "long ventilation window or ranma" where the divination had been held the previous night. Preliminary investigations by Kindaichi and his friend, Chief Inspector Todoroki, reveal that the count had been beaten with a statue and then strangled with a scarf. Some other incidents—a missing statue, a jewel stolen in the Teigin case ending up in Viscount Tsubaki's flute case, and a typewriter with a particular peculiarity—amp up the mystery quotient in this section to a fever pitch.

The commencement of the second act marks a tonal departure from the preceding section, as Kindaichi travels to the west to follow in the footsteps of Hidesuke's final days, and unravel the singular mystery behind why he took his own life and left the aforementioned, ambiguous letter to his daughter. Personally, I quite like this section as it unfolds in the form of a travel narrative where Kindaichi indulges in conversations with people from different stratas of society—from inn owners, domestic helps, craftspeople, temple priests and prostitutes, all the way up to former aristocrats. Also, the pictures Yokomizo paints of the countryside in these sections are tinted with a sense of nostalgia, of places, faces and figures lost to the vagaries of time and war:

The one saving grace, he found, was that the Three Spring Garden Inn was not one of the shady new-built inns, aimed at couples looking for some brief privacy, that had proliferated after the war—the ones with the fake onsen, hot spring signs. Rather, it was a grand old lodge with a long history—as well as wide gables to keep the rain off—and a calm atmosphere.

Kobe had been heavily bombed in the war, and the district of Suma itself was mostly burnt out, but the area around Sumadera temple had been largely spared. These few old, miraculously surviving buildings standing in that heavy autumn rain served as faint reminders of better days long gone. The Three Spring Garden Inn was itself a serene testament to those days, as well.

Or, take, for instance, the section where Kindaichi discovers the former villa of Count Tamamushi:

At this, Kindaichi shook his head and looked around like he was waking from a dream.

He saw a stretch of about two and a half acres of scorched land spread out in front of him. It looked like a brick wall or something similar had been up on the hillside where they stood, but it was completely burnt away, and now all that was left was bare land. No buildings, no trees; nothing was left. Nothing, except for the stone lamp that Okami-san had mentioned. It, too, had been scorched white by the flames, and now it stood forlorn in the autumn dusk.

[...]

At the bottom, they stepped out into an overgrown field piled with charred tiles and other rubble. The red heads of knotweed, damp from the rain, danced like waves in the breeze on their long stalks. Osumi and Kindaichi trudged through them, the hems of their kimonos soaking up the damp, heading towards the lantern.

Once, this garden must have been a wonderful place. The layout of the land, with the pond and hill, and the remaining garden stones, gave a hint of its past glory, though now it was nothing more than a dismal ruin.

Or, the description of Akashi Port:

The rain had lifted, but clouds still hung low and dark in the sky, and the waves on the leaden sea at Akashi Port were running high.

The port was shaped like a coin purse with its mouth facing south. At its back were two piers, each about thirty feet long and seemingly made of old ship parts, jutting out over the filthy, debris-covered seawater. The Bantan Line steamships bound for Iwaya used one pier, and the other was for Marusei Line ships sailing around the Awaji route.

Rain-battered fishing boats were clustered around the roots of the piers, rocking like cradles on the heavy swells. One rather elegant lighthouse still stood at the mouth of the port. Awaji Island rose beyond it like an ink painting.

The eastern half of Akashi and Kobe city had survived relatively untouched through the war and still had some old houses, but the western half looked to have been completely lost to the fires. Now it was covered with the same slapdash temporary buildings that had spread across most of Japan. None of the beauty that the Suma and Akashi districts had once been famous for was left to be seen.

This is not to say that Kindaichi completely abandons the investigation to indulge in melancholic reflections over the lost Japanese countryside. Rather, the investigation Kindaichi and the young police detective Degawa conduct is of a more intense, intimate and sensitive nature. That is because The Devil's Flute Murders, from the reader's perspective, is not a story where one can employ principles of logic and fair-play to solve it. The core question of "what really happened in the past?" requires one to go along for the ride the author wants the audience to embark upon. On the one hand, in this act, Kindaichi peels layer after layer of the depraved and senses-numbing history of the Tsubakis, Shingus and the Tamamushis, by interacting with a whole host of people, spread across myriad locations, who were connected with these families in the past, however remote that connection might have been. On the other, events unfold in a most thriller-like fashion in real time. A stone lantern with the mysterious but important inscription, "Here, the devil's birthplace", is found defaced the next day. Furthermore, on an island away from the mainland, a hitherto-unintroduced nun called Myokai is murdered before Kindaichi can meet her. As it would later transpire, Myokai, the last person Hidesuke Tsubaki spoke to, was possibly the one living person who could have seen and predicted the plot of a majority of the novel, plain as a map.

Things pick up in the third and concluding act of the story as Kindaichi races back to Tokyo, on being informed about Toshihiko's murder in the hothouse, with his head split open, at a time the culprit, in a premeditated manner, arranged for Toshihiko to be at the crime scene at the right time, away from the sight of others. At the same time, the missing statue makes its reappearance with its base sawn off. Two other murders—that of Toyasaburo Iio, one of the suspects in the Teigin case, and of Akiko Shingu, through poisoning—and a bit of sleuthing involving a confirmation of identity of a particular member of the Tsubaki household hastens the novel towards its conclusion. A very neat and inspired piece of clueing, focusing on the manner in which "The Devil Comes and Plays His Flute" is composed and played, ultimately points to the culprit. By the end of it all, the events of a single summer day in the faraway past lead to four households being effectively wiped out—the Tsubakis, the Shingus, the Tamamushis and the Kawamuras.

As with Death on Gokumon Island, The Devil's Flute Murders suffers from some characteristic, familiar flaws—most prominent of them being the inconsistent and extremely repulsive characterisation. In order to portray the depravity and perverted mindsets of Japanese nobility in its 'sunset years', the main characters in the tragedy—Toshihiko Shingu and Count Tamamushi—are portrayed in a most unpleasant manner, with no redeemable features. Indeed, while it is possible to sympathise, to a degree, with the fate of the Kawamuras, the actions of the elder members of the Shingus and the Tamamushis deserve no such consideration. On the other hand, the women (with the exception of Kikue, perhaps) are mostly relegated to secondary roles, with most of them coming across as victims with barely any agency of their own, whose plight ought to be pitied. Furthermore, a very casual strain of misogyny comes across in certain sections, as is evident in Kindaichi's first impressions of Akiko ("Akiko was certainly beautiful. However, it was the beauty of an artificial flower. She seemed as hollow as a woman in a painting. Akiko’s smile filled her whole face. It was a dazzling, beautiful smile. However, it was one that someone had taught her to make, not one of genuine feeling. Her eyes were pointed at Kindaichi, but they seemed to actually be looking somewhere else, somewhere far away."), or the description of Shino, Akiko's senior lady-in-waiting ("Next to her sat an old woman who was as ugly as any in the world. This must have been Shino, the senior lady-in-waiting who had accompanied Akiko here when she left the Shingu household. [...] Ugliness of such purity and extent is actually not unpleasant. Indeed, it becomes a kind of art at that point. The corrosion of age seemed to have washed all marks of shyness or vanity from her expression, and she stood unabashed in front of guests as if having forgotten her own ugliness, even putting it on display, making it an object of awe. In a way, this woman seemed to have left some elements of human weakness behind."). There is also a section that revolves around linguistics, and differences in local, regional dialects, that comes across as jarring and a bit too obvious in the translation. But perhaps, the most glaring of these shortcomings is a major plot point involving the science of birthmarks, which seems to be quite inaccurate and would require a significant suspension of disbelief for it to be convincing enough.

The strength of the novel is its treatment of its core theme: the decline and demise of the Japanese nobility and aristocracy in the post-World War II era—something Yokomizo was inspired to explore after reading Osamu Dazai's 1947 book, The Setting Sun, as he admits in the story ("This was all before Osamu Dazai wrote his work Setting Sun, about the decline of the aristocratic class after the war, so we did not yet have ready terms like 'the sunset clan' or 'sunset class' to describe these people, newly bereft of their noble privilege and falling into ruin. But, if we had, then I think it likely that this case would have been the first to see the term used."). Along with this, Kindaichi's 'travel journal' in the second act is a welcome addition. Replete with brief but illuminating interactions with numerous characters, these provide a rich study of the lives of people from different social classes, and how they evolved from the pre-War to post-War times. Nicely dovetailing with this are Yokomizo's descriptions of the landscape and activities in the countryside and harbours around Kobe and some islands, with their evocation of what they had lost with the passage of time and two World Wars.

I had briefly touched upon a 2018 adaptation (a TV special) of Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku in a previous post of mine, where I had argued that a wonderful casting choice and some creative liberties to alter the plot of the book in subtle but major ways led to an incredibly sinister, foreboding and dramatic viewing experience. Having read the translated version of the book now, I would say that the plot-based alterations in the movie were a bit too over the top—the darkness and wickedness in the original novel is quite overwhelming and unpleasant, as it is.

In the second part of Burning Down the House, I hope to discuss Akimitsu Takagi's 1949 novel Nōmen Satsujin Jiken (translated as The Noh Mask Murder, published by Pushkin Vertigo in 2024) as an intriguing companion piece (in some respects) to Yokomizo's The Devil's Flute Murders. Takagi's novel too is not for the faint-hearted—the levels of perversion and evilness seen in The Noh Mask Murder far surpass what one encounters in The Devil's Flute Murders.