Murder in the Crooked House - Soji Shimada - Book Review

 

                    It's been quite a while since I took up a Japanese mystery book. What is better than a locked room mystery? 'The Tokyo Zodiac Murders' was a good read from Soji Shimada and I wanted to try this book. Plus the name was also interesting.

                   The Ice Floe Mansion sits over a cliff in one of the northernmost parts of Japan. The location is weird and the house itself is a very crooked and confusing structure - slopping floors, strange staircases, creepy masks and human-sized dolls. The owner of the house, Kozaburo Hamamoto and his daughter Eiko invite guests to spend Christmas at the House. The next day, a guest is found murdered inside a locked room within the house. Soon the police investigators from the region are trying to get to the bottom of this amidst the blizzard raging outside the house. Soon another locked room murder happens, and everyone is clueless. Tokyo police enlist the help of Kiyoshi Mitarai, the renewed sleuth. Will he be able to solve the locked room mystery and find the murderer forms the story.

                    First of all, yet another interesting locked room mystery for a master Japanese writer. The story also confines mostly within the house so there is more importance and interactions given to the characters. There was always something happening enough to keep me interested and invested in the plot. The layout map of the house and the rooms where the crimes happened were really helpful. As the name indicates, the house was so confusing that I had to go back and forth on the layout maps every time. Since there were guests allocated to each room, the reading was difficult at times. I had to pause and refer back half the time. The characters were well written and we get to know more details of each character as and when we go reading. The suspense was well maintained and the author was successful in maintaining the sombre mood throughout. I was able to guess the perpetrator midway but my reasoning was different. But the way it was executed could not be guessed at all. Kiyoshi enters the novel way past the halfway mark. But once he entered, the book seemed to catch up the speed. Some might find the slowness till then a bit dull. There may be logical flaws that you may notice here and there. Nevertheless, the book does keep you engaged. The writer has brought the landscape and the Japanese culture very well into the book. And I enjoyed how the whole thing unravelled. When it comes to translations, a big part needs to be played by the translator. Here also, I feel the translator has done full justice to keep us invested in the book. Pushkin Vertigo has been doing a wonderful job bringing out such classics to the front. I have read some amazing books from this publisher.

                    In short, this is a good locked-room mystery that can be a good read for mystery lovers. I have been a fan of Japanese mysteries and this adds one more significant addition to my "Read" list.