I think I might be done with this series. It’s really lost its charm. I might give it one more go if they translate a fifth book, but it will be by hard copy not by audio.
You expect a certain amount of clashing cultural mores when you read a book that was written over fifty years before, but when I read Agatha Christie, for instance, it’s usually just small stuff you can roll your eyes at and be like, ugh you dumb people in the past, but here (and in most of the books in this series so far) the sexism gets in the way of good storytelling. It was actually the single most important motivating factor in the first book, The Honjin Murders, and while it wasn’t prominent in the second book, The Inugami Curse, there was enough homophobia there to make up for it. The atmosphere sexism created in the third book, The Village of Eight Graves, is one of the main reasons that book got two stars from me.
Here, sexism basically singlehandedly takes an interesting plot and creepy setting, and makes the mystery seem thin and unbelievable.
There were certain things present here that mean I’m not giving it two stars like I did the last one, like a coherent structure, and the genuinely interesting insight we get into post-WWII Japan. But when you reach the all-important scene in a whodunnit where the detective reveals all and afterwards you still have absolutely no idea why the crime happened, something is wrong. If your plot is about protecting three young sisters on behalf of their brother’s dying wish, then maybe I don’t know, talking to those sisters is essential? Like, talking to them at all? Being concerned about their whereabouts? And after two of them are murdered, keeping a close eye on the remaining one instead of letting her fuck around and do whatever she wants while you focus on talking to all the men in the book including “the lunatic” and ignore the primary reason you are there???????
Anyway, this is why I say I’m probably done with this series, because this book is widely regarded as one of the author’s best.
