Experience The Honjin Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #1) Engineered By Seishi Yokomizo Exhibited In Leaflet

not long ago read a book that I marked down a bit for being a locked room mystery.
Now I am going to do an about face and say I enjoyed this example of the genre quite a bit for those rules or conventions it breaks or stretches quite widely.
I found myself a willing reader as the narrator presented the various stages of the crime: characters and setting involved, set up of events and the deaths themselves.
Then there is an unwinding that, for me, was well done, It was true to the characters and family involved and the information the reader was given, There were red herrings, yes, but not absurdities,

This novel was written in the lates, winning the first Mystery Writers of Japan Award inand only now translated into English.
This is the first of a series of an eventualbooks featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, a brilliant, young, somewhat disheveled detective.
I would read more of this series if they became available,

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
I found the elements of this book that are uniquely Japanese fascinating the house, garden and everything in it, the way of life in Japan just before WWII, the formality and feudalism that persisted until then.
The lockedroom murder mystery, though cleverly conceived, left me cold and the reason for it, what can I say, only in Japan perhaps, The plot was structured effectively for me well paced and the several different narrators perspectives on events mixed it up nicely.


A quick, absorbing read but not one Id care to repeat or particularly recommend, Im guessing Im not enough of a crime mystery devotee for this and others will enjoy its foreshadowing of more recent authors offerings.


With thanks to Pushkin Vertigo via NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC, the ending sucked but i loved everything else

so it balances it out i guess One of Japan's greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time.


In the winter of, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family.
But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.


Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music.
Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house.
Soon, amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is on the scene to investigate what will become a legendary murder case, but can this scruffy sleuth solve a seemingly impossible crime Very different to another book Ive read in this series, sitelinkThe Inugami curse, this is a retrospective metatextual lockedroom whodunnit that takes place in a village in Japan.
On the wedding night the newlyweds are murdered by a katana and everyone in the village keeps seeing or hearing about a mysterious man with three fingers.
The griefstricken uncle of the murdered bride asks Kosuke Kindaichi, a detectivewunderkind to solve it,

This one name drops a lot of famous works of the genre, all of them Western, and I havent read them all.
Curious to know if being familiar with those mysteries enhances the reading experience,

But anyways, this was once again a fun, quickpaced, highly improbable romp and Kindaichi gives me Death Notes L vibes.
Mop of tousled hair and OCD as in obsessive scratching of his head, And of course genius eccentric detective, I'm really enjoying this author, a nice palate cleanser,
sitelinkThe Honjin Murdersby sitelinkSeishi Yokomizo is the first book to feature the detective Kosuke Kindaichi, a Sherlock Holmes type character.


The tale concerns the wealthy, high class, and status conscious Ichiyanagi family, On the night of the wedding of eldest son Kenzo and his young bride Katsuko, both are murdered by a mysterious assailant who flees into the night, leaving nothing but a handprint and a bloodied katana in the snow.
sitelinkThe Honjin Murders is a "locked room murder mystery" in which there is no obvious way the murderer could have entered or left the murder scene and was popularised by the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Gaston Leroux.


I enjoyed the interesting insight into Japanese society in the immediate preWWera but have to confess I found much of it tedious and, when it finally arrived, the denouement to be ridiculous.
I'm not the biggest fan of this type of book so please don't pay my negative reaction too much heed.
Many people who love this genre regard sitelinkThe Honjin Murders as something of a classic,

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More about sitelinkThe Honjin Murders, . .

One of Japan's greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time.


In the winter of, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family.
But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.


Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music.
Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house.
Soon, amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is on the scene to investigate what will become a legendary murder case, but can this scruffy sleuth solve a seemingly impossible crime

i can't believe i guessed most of the mystery again

i am starting to think maybe I'm the problem, that maybe i have read wayy too much mystery and detective fiction and this genre will never blow my mind again The Publisher Says: One of Japan's greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time.


In the winter of, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family.
But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.


Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music.
Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house.
Soon, amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is on the scene to investigate what will become a legendary murder case, but can this scruffy sleuth solve a seemingly impossible crime

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS.
THANK YOU.

My : In a very Sherlock'sWatson fashion, the events of this premarital murder are narrated to us after the fact we know, by this very technique, that the mystery is one that can be solved if we're game to follow the clues.
Which clues Well, the mysterywriter narrator and I are glad you asked:

When I first heard the story, I immediately racked my brain to think of any similar cases among all the novels Ive read.
The first that came to mind were Gaston Lerouxs The Mystery of the Yellow Room and Maurice Leblancs The Teeth of the Tiger then theres The Canary Murder Case and The Kennel Murder Case, both by S.
S. Van Dine and finally, Dickson Carrs The Plague Court Murders, I even considered that variation on the locked room murder theme of Roger Scarletts Murder Among the Angells.

You really can't get a lot more fairplay than that, can you, giving the reader the crib sheet from which the author made choices and still, not to make it too easy by telling the reader what was cribbed from the Greats of the Golden Age.
I found it endearing. I was very amused by the conceit, and by the writer/narrator following in the footsteps of the wildly disheveled amateur detective.
Now keep in mind this is a story written in the lates and set in thes.
The idea of a Japanese man presenting himself as less than polished and perfect is damned near heretical.
There was no beatnik, or protohippie, movement in Japan, It is a culture of Face, something I equate with my mother's endless mantra, "but what will People Think" It's very, very important not to insult your neighbors, or your betters, by deciding to be different, to wear your Otherness on the outside.
. . so featuring someone who's indifferent to Face in this mystery series is quite a powerful statement of value and intent on the author's part.


What's important for your pleasure in an amateursleuth read An aura of verisimilitude A relatable cast of characters An evocation of a place and time I'd venture to say that no one would behave the way the characters in this mystery do.
. . but I could be wrong, . . at any rate, the point for me wasn't the verisimilitude never is with amateursleuth mysteries, pace all you truecrime podcasters but the delicious evocation of the time and the place:

A honjin was a kind of inn in feudal Japan where daimyo lords and other important officials would stay on their way to or from paying attendance on the Shogun in the capital, Edothe old name for Tokyo.
Ordinary members of the public were not permitted to stay at a honjin, A family who owned such a highclass lodging house were also members of the elite, and so it followed that this was a place where the rules of high society were closely adhered to.

The author, or more likely the editor and translator, gives me such a full and satisfying sense of the place with this simple paragraph.
I wanted to feel transported and I did, . . as well as catered to, told a story to, and one that really did leave me guessing until the end.
Very satisfying that Anglophone readers are getting this series it has SEVENTYSIX MORE VOLUMES!! at long last.
. . the author's only been dead since, No rush, guys.

The things I wasn't quite so pleased to read were the classconscious snobberies of the groom's family, presented without apparent or, to my mind, appropriate negativity cast on them.
This being a thing that bothers me now, in thest century, I can't even try to guess if I'd even have noticed it had I read the book around the time the author died.
. . almost forty years after it appeared, The snobbish tone is grating on oldman me, anyway, And the last chapter, number, is such a GoldenAgey thing, . . the way the guilty party is dealt with, the careful recounting of the places the clues were left.
. . it was both what I wanted, and a hair too much to swallow in one draft,

If your mysterystory shelves are a touch too light, this is a good, solid, entertaining read.
. . my crotchets aside. .