An aspiring mystery writer and his childhood friend must join forces to solve the mystery of a string of deaths in a prominent Japanese family that may be the result of an inherited curse.
I’ve always enjoyed reading works in translation – they seem to bring you closer to the place in which they are set – but I definitely haven’t read many genre works. As such, I was intrigued by the prospect of this locked room murder mystery, written in 1949 but never before translated to English.
We are immediately plunged into the dark and atmospheric story of the Chizurui family, where the appearance of an allegedly cursed family heirloom in the window portends death. The author uses an interesting framing device to insert himself in the story as a bumbling amateur detective – it was rather amusing to see him so derisively described by the so-called writer of the diary in the center of the story, Koichi. The whole story has a heavy gothic flavor, and the solution that unfolded step by step lingered unsettlingly even after I was done reading.
However, the mystery itself wasn’t a particularly dazzling one, and elements of it felt derivative of other mystery novels from the era. Harder to ignore was the mounting melodrama of the plot, especially where romance enters into the story – I found myself scoffing at some of the more tense moments because of this, especially toward the end.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.