Fourteen years and two disappointing sequels after the fact, it might be difficult to believe just how wild people went for the Matt Reeves-directed monster movie Cloverfield (2008) when it was first released. And I was reminded of that film when reading Death Among the Undead (2017, tr. 2021) by Masahiro Imamura for two reasons: firstly because of the time taken in both to ground the upcoming fantastical elements in enjoyably relatable worlds, and secondly because I cannot help but feel, now as then, that the praise heaped on both might be slightly overdone.
As a fan of impossible crimes, zombies, and genre-hopping — if the latter two are your bag, check out the hugely enjoyable superheroes/zombies hybrid Ex-Heroes (2010) by Peter Clines — Imamura’s novel should be tailor-made for me. A group of university students travelling to an isolated villa, only to be caught in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, only for said zombies to then apparently enter the villa and kill two people before apparently writing notes and/or leaving quietly whence they came, should be manna from heaven, not least because the ‘rules’ that govern murder mysteries extend so neatly into other genres and so can be well-observed here. For me, Imamura falls down not so much in the commission of some ingeniously-conceived and executed murders, but in the establishment of those rules and their communication to the reader so that we might be able to play along at home.
Imamura’s love for the trappings of the impossible crime subgenre and the zombie-as-horrror-icon shines through, with treatises on both from, repsectively, our narrator Yuzuru Hamura and horror movie buff Mitsuru Shigemoto:
“Zombies are not simply grotesque, horrifying monsters any more. They are beings that can be used to cast a light on so many themes: the sin of man, economic class differences, the strong and the weak, or the tragedy of how friends and family can turn into enemies in the blink of an eye. Zombies are projections of our own egos and minds.”
Since our ostensible detective Hiruko Kenzaki has “taken on many difficult and downright inexplicable cases that even the police couldn’t handle, and managed to solve them with her matchless powers of reasoning” but knows nothing of fictional detection on the page or screen, Hamura is also full of meta delights as he allows Imamura to hold forth on the trappings of the various subgenres and the tropes we might come to expect were these people characters in a novel (nudge, nudge). These playful elements are sheer delight: see Hamura thinking up tentative titles for cases he has been involved in solving with his fellow member (singular) of the university’s Mystery Society, as well as some wonderfully wry reflections that come through in narration:
Beyond the barricade, I could make out the figures of the zombies who were still foolishly slamming their bodies against the barricade, tumbling and falling down the stairs again. It was like a commercial to show off the sturdiness of the furniture. Let’s hope it was made in Japan.
Alas, in other regards, the book is less successful. It takes 50 pages to introduce everyone, only for Hamura to reflect that “whenever I read mystery novels, I always forget the names of the characters, and have to go back to the list on the front page” so Kenzaki lists them all again as if it’s been difficult to remember who everyone is (and there is a character list in this, so why bother…?). And then the zombies show up ten pages later and kill solidly a third of these characters anyway. And, yes, it might be playfulness, but there’s really so little to any of these characters that it’s not like a third of the book needed to be given over to teenage shenanigans and establishing how boo-hiss-bad some of them are. The opening of Cloverfield was too long, too — bring on the monster(s) dude, that’s why we’re here!
More frustratingly, as much of an expert as Shigemoto is in the zombie of popular culture, it’s never established how much of what those (fictional) zombies are capable of applies to these (factual) zombies. The innovation of including zombies in a locked-room universe (or vice versa, I suppose) is ingenious, but the zombies themselves are dismissed with a sort of “Yeah, you know how zombies work…” attitude that’s infuriating. Imamura cites a range of movies and video games, but all of them have different rules and expectations — hell, even within the ‘official’ George A. Romero X of the Dead (1968-2007) films the rules change: his zombies starting out mindless and then film-by-film achieving a degree of intelligence that supersedes some of the people I’ve met. We’re also never explicitly told (or given the chance to figure out) crucial details like how the zombie virus spreads in Imamura’s universe, or how quickly one becomes a zombie…and these things are crucial to accepting some of the solutions given.
There’s one breathlessly subtle and brilliant piece of misdirection involving the location of a character that is sublime, and retrospectively raises a moral implication far more interesting than anything happening with the shambling hordes outside (and, later inside) the building. And, as I say, the first two deaths are explained away ingeniously — though, I dunno if they’re really impossible, since there’s another explanation that could work for the first (you’d need to exclude some behaviour on behalf of The Horde first…), and the second hinges on a wonderfully-explained unlikelihood that’s merely very, very unlikely. Alas, before these clever solutions we get characters who are broad ciphers firing ideas back and forth at each other that comes across as rather more Early Ellery Queen than I like: intelligent, yes, but dust-dry.
I also found myself in the unusual situation of knowing precisely who had died — no referring to the front of the book for me! — while also not being entirely sure who was still alive, so when the killer was eventually pointed out my reaction was more “Oh, yeah, they’re still in this” than “Whhhhaaaaaaatt?!?!”. The similarly dry characters of The Decagon House Murders (1987, tr. 2015) by Yukito Ayatsuji and The Moai Island Puzzle (1989, tr. 2016) by Alice Arisugawa imposed themselves on my memory far more clearly than these silhouettes, so don’t dismiss this as merely a facet of shin honkaku, and I guess the resulting lack of engagement is at least in part down to just how much these people really just felt like names with dialogue attached, 50 page introductory salvo or no.
So, well, Death Among the Undead presented to me far more of a mixed bag than others seem to have opened. There’s wonderful insight in how Imamura spots the potential for straddling genre lines, and I can understand that concept alone being thrilling to anyone suffering from genre fatigue, but the thing with being in two genres is that you must address the expectations of both of them and that causes problems when not done. Others have read and loved this, though, so there’s also that to consider. Still, one thing we can agree on to close: surely the disclaimer on the copyright page, with the boilerplate “Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental” could have added an “or undead” before that second comma, no?
~
See also
TomCat @ Beneath the Stains of Time: Purely as a traditional, plot-driven detective novel, Death Among the Undead can stand with the best of its kind, past and present, but the story makes a point not to ignore the whydunit angle. Not merely the murderer’s motive, but why the murderer employed such dangerous and high-risk methods. The trickery behind the murders can eventually be explained, but here it raises the question why such methods were employed. I really liked the dark duality the solution exposed between the intellectual and emotional facets of both the murders and murderer, which I thought was nicely complemented by an interesting and grim piece of commentary on the murder-magnet trope.
John @ Countdown John’s Christie Journal: This an absolute triumph and a reminder that the Golden Age tradition is alive and well for those writers who choose to embrace it and is not limited by time, place, or even genre itself.
The Invisible Event 
Have you read Masaya Yamaguchi’s Death of the Living Dead yet?
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I read the first 70 or 80 pages and found them extremely slow going, so gave up. I intend to return to it, because I know you rated it very highly, but the spirit is weak at present.
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Zombies have never been my cup of tea and even as a horror movie nut, I don’t really worship at the George Romero altar (though I did go out of my way during a trip to Pittsburgh, PA last fall to visit the Monroeville Mall, the setting of Dawn of the Dead ). I cannot underestimate the importance of Night of the Living Dead in the history of horror cinema though or, indeed, the history of cinema itself. I have always gravitated toward vampires…so when there’s a proper GAD-style mystery with vampires, let me know!
Anyway, interesting to read your review of this one. It’s been on my radar for a while after hearing the unanimous praise. I have only dipped my toe into the shin/honkaku school so far, but I have a couple titles on my shelves that warrant reading sooner rather than later. Without spoiling anything, I would be interested to know what elements inspired you most for Red Death Murders . After finishing it last week, I picked up on the GAD references galore, but I’d love to know what Easter eggs I may be missing…
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I was fortunate — if that’s the word — to watch Night of the Living Dead before I was old enough to know it was supposed to be a classic, and the other Romero films from that era followed in due course. When he started up making zombie movies again with Land of the Dead in the early 2000s I was…uneager to see them, and having gradually run into them on various streaming services I feel justified in that 🙂 For me, zombies peaked with Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1992), which is the perfect mix of invention and hilarity for those who can stand all the gore.
The Peter Clines book I mention above does a wonderful job bringing zombies to the page with superheroes, as does its first sequel. After that…not so much, but it’s always interesting to watch genre fans fold stuff together. Imamura is undoubtedly a fan, it’s just a shame that he has too broad a scope of what “zombie” means now. Treating such a neat idea as “Hey, we all know what zombies do…” does the setup no favours.
As to TRDM, I intend to record a podcast episode tomorrow and post it on Saturday that might just answer some of those questions…
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You’re hopelessly wrong, Jim! Well, you have a point that the zombies were not fully fleshed out, but, storywise, how could they have possibly answered those questions? The whole point is thrusting a group of unsuspecting students in the middle of a zombie outbreak, while a murderer goes to town on them. Only thing Imamura had to do is not let the zombies corrupt the integrity of the plot. Not only did he succeed with flying colors, but created a unique detective story that couldn’t have worked under any other circumstances. I loved every page of it!
So how could you give this masterpiece a paltry, three-star rating? You’re lucky you wrote a locked room mystery. That means you’re now on my list of endangered species that can’t be culled.
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Well, you have your side of the street and I have the correct one, so at least there’s that. And there’s no reason why the zombies should corrupt the plot — anything with rules folds in to the classic mystery story, as James Hogan proved with hard SF in Inherit the Stars. We just need rules for this universe, that’s all, and we’re not given them. That aside, this is very good indeed.
…how could they have possibly answered those questions?
Yeah, you’re right; it’s not like there were 50 pages at the start of the novel filled with needlessly drawn out introductions to all the characters that could have been put t better use. Man, what was I thinking?
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The most important question, of course, is whether these are running zombies or not. I take it these are more the shambling sort. I do have a weakness for zombie movies, and I can imagine some of those rules that need to be fleshed out. The worst is when there is an inconsistency in the time taken to turn into a zombie after being bitten. And of course, there’s the question of whether you have to be bitten, or is ingesting blood enough, or, hell, is simply dying enough?
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They shamble, yes. It always seemed to me that a zombie should be able to run when newly zombified but would become slower over time as more of the flesh, y’know, died. But then I’ve thought far too much about this kind of thing.
A lot of time — I’d suggest too much — is given over to the outbreak, and that in itself raises questions that aren’t addressed. Honestly, if Imamura had cut 30 pages off of this b having it all just happen quicker at the start it’d be a lot more my kind of thing. By going the route of seeking to explain, he falls down in that he’s arguably explaining the wrong things. At least for my taste; a lot of people disagree — the only option is to read it yourself and see what you make of it 🙂
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Sorry to hear you weren’t enamored with this one. I adored it, like nearly every other honkaku and shin-honkaku reprint from LRI. Consistently their highlights, in my eyes. I’m not sure who picks the Japanese books to reprint (I assume Ho-Ling pitches the books?), but they’ve had a fantastic track record compared to the European translations.
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I agree that the honkaku reprints have been a real highlight, and have done such brilliant work in bringing to an ignorant Western audience what is brilliant in another culture equally enamoured with the puzzle plot. Buy, hey, not everything is going to work for everyone; that’s why we’re all able to keep these review sites running. Imagine if we all agreed all the time, how dull that would be.
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Thanks for the review, JJ. I read a different edition of this novel (the Chinese translation), and it seems like I enjoyed it more than you did… From memory, the rules concerning the zombies came through with sufficient clarity; certainly, I felt like the solutions to the crimes made good sense of the preceding data. 🤔
Anyway, I’ve finished reading “Red Death Murders”, and have submitted a review on Amazon, which might take some time before appearing on the website. 🤓 It was definitely an enjoyable read, and so thanks for writing it! 👍🏻
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I’m aware that I’m firmly in the minority for not loving this, and that’s cool; I’m in the minority of loving Freeman Wills Crofts, too, so I’m very content with my minority status 🙂
Thanks for the kind words about TRDM, and for the review. Now tell everyone you know and love to buy a copy!
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“And, as I say, the first two deaths are explained away ingeniously — though, I dunno if they’re really impossible, since there’s another explanation that could work for the first (you’d need to exclude some behaviour on behalf of The Horde first…), and the second hinges on a wonderfully-explained unlikelihood that’s merely very, very unlikely. ”
What is the alternate explanation for the first one?
And what is the unlikelihood that’s very unlikely that you refer?
ROT13 from what I recall reading it:
Gur svefg jnf n thl uvq uvf TS, jub ghearq vagb n mbzovr naq ovg uvz, evtug? V’z gelvat gb guvax bs nygreangr fbyhgvbaf- jrer lbh guvaxvat bs uvz orvat ovggra uvzfrys orsberunaq be fbzrguvat?
Gur frpbaq jnf gur thl va na ryringbe jvgu jrvtugf, fb V nz abg fher gur hayvxryvubbq. Vf vg gung mbzovrf ner hayvxryl gb yrnir gur ryringbe orpnhfr gur svefg sybbe jnf pebjqrq jvgu gurz?
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Oh, lord, I’m sorry, after all this time I’m afraid the precise details are a little lost to me — I’d have to reread the book to be certain of what my thoughts were.
My apologies. Let this be a lesson to me not to include this sort of comment in reviews in future without backing it up with some rot13’d details.
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