The Decagon House Murders (1987, tr. 2015), the excellent first book in Yukito Ayatsuji’s series featuring the bizarre architecture of Nakamura Seiji, was translated into English so long ago that I hadn’t even started blogging at the time. Follow-up The Mill House Murders (1988, tr. 2023) was, then, much anticipated, and, for this reader at least, doesn’t quite merit the wait. While relatively swift, and enjoyably inventive as we’ve come to expect from shin honkaku, there’s a cleverness lacking in a story whose telling is marred by some unusual writing to the extent that I ripped through this without ever really relaxing into it. Like Soji Shimada, Ayatsuji has written a brilliantly clever debut and then suffered from Difficult Second Novel Syndrome.
Alternating between one night in September 1986 and the same night one year earlier, The Mill House Murders tells the story of a series of baffling events which enveloped the eponymous dwelling of Fujinuma Kiichi, son of the prodigious painter Fujinuma Iseii. Since his father’s death, the masked, wheelchair-bound Kiichi has built the isolated Mill House and reacquired all of his father’s paintings to adorn the walls. Once a year, the same four disciples of Iseii are granted access to the house to study the artworks, and it was in 1985 that one of these four apparently murdered one of the other men, stole a painting, and vanished from the house in seemingly impossible circumstances. And so, one year on, the survivors gather to hopefully make sense of events. And, wouldn’t you know it, complications arise…
The setup is handled well, with the situation clearly limned and the guests in the modern portion of the book all established within the first 60 pages. Things never really stand still, except in a late recapitulation chapter which rehashes the setup — in case you haven’t been paying attention, I guess — and the way the present narrative feeds the scenes from the past keeps everything clear despite the same characters featuring in both. What’s harder to enjoy is the sheer density of redundancy in Ayatsuji’s writing — Ho-Ling Wong has shown himself to be an excellent translator, so the fault must lie in the original manuscript — which sees information repeated in a way that becomes extremely hard to ignore, and some sentences which seem to defy categorisation:
He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and somehow as if he could be very difficult to deal with depending on the situation.
There are also some repeated refrains, like the gross coarseness of art dealer Ōishi Genzō, which seem to crop up over and over (it can’t be the case, but I felt like his mouth was mentioned almost every time he was) which ended up distracting me to a peculiar extent.
Taking that element out of it, there’s also the small matter of the central misdirection simply screaming out at me from about page 30. Possibly it’s better hidden in the author’s native tongue, but some clunky references and a key narrative trick deployed somewhat awkwardly tips his hand early on. As such, the resulting mystery simply wasn’t very mysterious and I had time to reflect on some of the odder elements — such as Kiichi’s relationship with his much younger wife Yurie — which seem unnecessarily…icky to me. And even when the answers weren’t obvious, such as that locked room vanishing, the solutions manage to stretch credibility and feel underwhelming, not least in light of the ingenuity previously on display in Ayatsuji’s debut.
Great work has been done in the likes of the discussion about artistic merit, but then unusual editorial choices — c.f. the idiom (rot13 for minor spoilers) V fnj erq, which could hardly be less appropriate — took me out of the narrative once again. This in turn drew my eye to some dodgy clewing, one element of which I simply refuse to believe would only be noticed in the circumstances cited, and made me feel less favourably towards the book overall than I’d like. Even the invoking of Nakamura Seiji, the linking strand in the series (or so I understand) only really pays off in a minor way come the end and fell rather flat for me when The Decagon House Murders did such a wonderful job in making the prospect of more books in this series seem so damn enticing.
And so, I find myself conflicted. That the honkaku traditions we have been introduced to in recent years allow for some brilliant, surprising, and magnificently creative mysteries I do not deny, and it’s sort of nice to know that there aren’t only masterpieces lingering just out of reach — our Eastern brethren are just as capable of underwhelming as the Western authors who have arrested our attention for decades now. And yet, despite my lack of enthusiasm, I don’t dissuade you from reading this, if only because a) the creativity on display is a bunch of fun and b) I want more of these translated because I believe Ayatsuji will definitely do better than this in his subsequent works.
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See also
TomCat @ Beneath the Stains of Time: I really enjoyed The Mill House Murders. A superbly written, intricately-plotted shin honkaku mystery weaving a seemingly complex patterns out of sheer simplicity. You can see how Soji Shimada and Yukito Ayatsuji’s ideas revitalized a genre that had been dominated for decades by social crime novels, which in turn inspired a new generation who completely rejuvenated the traditional detective story.
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I think I owe Pushkin Vertigo a shout out for providing me with a review copy of this book, but I’m not entirely sure. I had the opportunity to apply for a copy at the end of March and, hearing nothing, went out and bought one about a month later. Then, in the middle of May, a copy of The Mill House Murders arrived in the post in a completely blank package with no indication of who might have sent it…so many thanks to Pushkin if it was them, or to my mysterious benefactor if it wasn’t. My apologies to you both for not liking it more…!
The Invisible Event 
Despite all of the criticism, your review actually makes me want to read it even more than other reviews that I’ve read. The setup sounds really interesting, and the brisk pace is what I’m looking for in these shin honkaku books.
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A mystery that’s easy to solve can still intrigue if there’s enough else going on, and this almost fulfils this brief. If anything, it’s fascinating because of how small the situation is amd how well Ayatsuji juggles the dual timelines.
But the Five Find-Outers would solve this quicker, and there needs to be more happening. But the flaws make it interesting even if not successful.
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I have yet to read any of the shin honkaku mysteries. I continue to watch bloggers who I respect enter into the books excited that another one now is available leading then only to lukewarm reviews (e.g., Mill House, Honjin, Inugami, Gokumun Island, and Eight Graves come to mind). I have so many other great books to read that I haven’t tried any of these.
Is there a shin honkaku book that you recommend I read first to get not only an appreciation of the style, but also one that come with a clever puzzle / motive / solution (e.g., The Decagon House Murders)?
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Of the shin honkaku I’d say Decagon House Murders is the best, with The Moai Island Puzzle also an excellent example of the form. Death Among the Undead is very inventive but needed, for me, a little more rigour. And Death in the House of Rain, while not technically in the school, has a lot to recommend it.
For the older honkaku mysteries The Honjin Murders is superb, and Inguami Curse shows so much promise. But I’d recommend starting with the Ginza Ghost collection from Locked Room International, shorter mysteries that will give you a good flavour with a variety of approaches.
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@jj “Death Among the Undead is very inventive but needed, for me, a little more rigour.”
Just curious, what did you mean by rigor? I read it but wasn’t sure what you meant in this regard.
That said, I agree with your picks like Decagon and Moai and others as entrypoints into honkaku. (And nice review – I hope I enjoy it when I read it. I’m bad at catching deceptions so I expect to like it more.)
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Given the obvious love of zombie films that must have informed the writing of DAtU, I feel there’s a lack of clarity about the rules for the zombies in that book. And it…matters. That’s perhaps as far as I can go without veering into spoilers for the unwary.
I, too, hope you enjoy this. Hell, I hope everyone enjoys it and lots of Ayatsuji follows. He’s a talented man, and it would be wonderful to see more of him in English.
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Scott, I think you might like Decagon for its overt homage to Christie and Honjin Murders for the similar respect it pays to Carr. After that, you’ll have enough of the gist of honkaku to decide if it is or isn’t for you.
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Oh, thank God, we’re back to disagreeing again!
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I hadn’t seen your review of this — I avoid reviews of books I know I want to read — but of course you liked it 😄 Order is restored in the universe.
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Agreed that the mystery is pretty easy to solve for genre savvy. However, I thought the cluing is pretty good. Overall, I still enjoyed it though Decagon is better. That being said, I hope Pushkin will continue the series. I am especially looking forward to the next book (“the Labyrinth House Murder”) which Ho-ling reviewed very favorably years ago, as well as the fifth book (“the Clock House Murder”) which supposedly is a more refined Decagon and feature memorable tricks.
Speaking of honkaku and shin-honkaku, there are a lot to look forward to this year. Besides “Devil’s Flute Murder” by Yokomizo, there is also “The Samurai and the Prisoner by Yonezawa Honobu” translated into English next month by Yen Press. It is a critically acclaimed historical mystery novel which has won multiple mystery awards as well as major literary awards 2 years ago. There is also an older historical honkaku mystery: “The Meiji Guillotine Murder by Yamada Fuutaro” published by Pushkin at the end of the year. That book also received high praise by Ho-ling in the past.
Also, another book I would recommend is “The Borrowed by Chan Ho-kei”. It has been translated into English years ago, but few people has reviewed it. The author is a winner of Soji Shimada award, and I thought it combines strong puzzle with great setting and social commentaries.
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I appreciate you bringing The Samurai and the Prisoner and The Borrowed to my attention — both sound intriguing, and would likely have passed me by completely.
As to Ayatsuji…it’s sincerely to be hoped that more translations follow, because the man clearly has a corkscrew of a mind and it would be wonderful to see what else he’s come up with. Bizarre Architecture of Shin Honkaku holds so much promise…
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The Borrowed has been recommended to me several times, but completely missed The Samurai and the Prisoner. Yonezawa Honobu also wrote the Classic Literature Club series. Very interesting!
In the spirit of take a recommendation, leave a recommendation: Okamoto Kido’s The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo deserves more attention that it received since its publication in 2007 or 2008. The short stories stand closer to Sherlock Holmes than your typical (shin) honkaku mysteries, but back then it was like finding treasure.
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I completely missed The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi, but it now retails at £77 which — even ignoring our history of coming down on the opposite dies of such matters — is a trifle expensive for me just now 😄 I shall keep an (unoptimistic) eye out for it, however…
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A trifle expensive was also your excuse for not getting a £12 copy of David Marsh’s Dead Box.
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Yes, that was the reason 😄
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