Set in the winter of 1937, but told by its narrator in the last year of the Second World War, the story is consequently framed by what we know happened in that conflict. So it depicts a pre-war rural order that was to be broken apart. The novel actually uses the story of a murder, and its resolution, as a way to frame this change - the old order literally disappears and decays.
The wealthy and upper-class Ichiyanagi family are celebrating the marriage of one of their sons, but after the celebrations, deep in the night, horrible screams are heard - and the music of a Koto playing. On investigation the bride and groom are found murdered, but there are no footsteps too and from the locked room and their seems to be no explanation as to why the murders took place. Suspicion immediately falls on a three-fingered man (a Koto is played with three fingers) seen in the area, until the dishevelled Kosuke arrives.
Yokomizo constructs a very clever plot, and soaks it in the ideas and atmosphere of the some detective writers - Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr and Gaston Leroux. In fact characters refer to these repeatedly as they reference the "locked room" nature of the killings.
But perhaps of greater interest than the detective mystery itself is the cultural background. The cause of the murder is in fact the misogynist nature of upper-class Japanese society, and while this is skipped over somewhat in the conclusion, the modern reader should perhaps dwell on this a little.
An excellent read and I look forward to the further adventures of Yokomizo's Kosuke Kindaichi. Louise Heal Kawai's great translation also deserves acknowledgement and praise.
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St John Sprigg - Death of an Airman
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