The Mill House Murders (1988) - Ayatsuji Yukito

I see the big wheels turnin’
Never endin’, on and on they go

“Big Wheels” (ELO)

This review marks a milestone for the blog, the first full month of regular posts. Granted, that’s only three reviews, but still, it’s something to celebrate…

Though characters being familiar with the tropes of mystery fiction is a common…er, trope of mystery fiction, it’s painfully obvious that most characters who appear in the genre lack this awareness. For example, nobody who was so much as remotely familiar with even the basic trappings of the genre would, after being seriously injured in a deadly car crash, would commission an eccentric architect to build a house in the middle of nowhere and live there in almost complete seclusion, surrounded by a collection of eerie paintings. Yet this is exactly what Fujinuma Kiichi, son of the famous painter Fujinuma Issei, does in Ayatsuju Yukito’s The Mill House Murders. And his dubious decision making doesn’t stop there. Once a year he invites three people to view the paintings, the only times he allows anyone to view his father’s works. In 1985 the annual visit goes awry, ending with one guest dead, another vanished, and a painting stolen. Next year, he invites the same set of people back again. Even ignoring questions of genre savviness, that is clearly not a wise course of action. In addition, another person shows up unannounced, Shimada Kiyoshi, who knew the man who vanished and wants to find out what really happened. The guests go over the events that occurred a year previously, but without giving anything away, it eventually becomes clear just how bad an idea it was to hold one of these gatherings….

The Mill House Murders was published earlier this year, and its release has been eagerly awaited. Mill House is the second entry in Ayatsuji’s Yakata series, the first entry of which, The Decagon House Murders, was published in 2015. Eight years is a long time to wait to continue a series, so there was much excitement when it was announced that Pushkin Press would be publishing the next volume. I haven’t been waiting quite that long to read it, since I read Decagon in 2019, but that doesn’t mean I was any less excited. And in my opinion, Mill House lived up to that excitement, though not perhaps for the reasons you would expect.

Though just directly comparing books with one another is not necessarily the best tact to take in a review, I think that in this case it’s not only warranted, but also possibly intended. Decagon & Mill House are too similar to one another for the correspondence to be accidental. The main similarity lies in the novels’ structure, in both cases two separate but related narratives alternate from chapter to chapter. In Decagon the separation is geographical: most of the cast is on an island getting killed off while a smaller contingent investigates on the mainland. Mill House uses a different kind of separation, one temporal rather than physical. An interesting consequence of this is the way all other variables are held constant. The time is different, but otherwise it’s (mostly) the same people, in the same place, for the same purpose. This allows for another structural point of interest, as for much of the book the action alternates between past events and present discussion about those events. This allows the characters’ theorizing to mirror the reader’s and gives the characters more facts to reason with.

There are also similarities in the plot. A similar (though certainly not identical) type of trick and misdirection are used in both novels. Mill House has far more clues than Decagon did, possibly even too many. Very few readers will reach the summation without unraveling at least a decent portion of the plot. Of course, the very fact that there is a summation represents a structural departure from Decagon. While that novel was absolutely fairly clued, the detective’s reasoning was not explicitly spelled out. Once the reader knew the truth, they would likely remember unnoticed clues, but the chain of reasoning was never explicitly spelled out. That made for a very interesting reading experience, but I can see why it wouldn’t be repeated further in the series. Unfortunately, while the trick in Mill House was very good, the one used in Decagon was a masterpiece. Though the former presents an interesting and satisfying variation on the core idea, the combination of its relative transparency and its similarity to its more accomplished predecessor renders it slightly underwhelming.

Vagrerfgvatyl, gurer vf nyfb na ryrzrag bs fvzvynevgl ertneqvat gur zbgvirf bs gur xvyyref va gur gjb abiryf. Obgu bfgrafvoyl npg bhg bs n fhccbfrq qrfver sbe eriratr, ohg va obgu pnfrf guvf vf whfg n guva irarre bs frys-whfgvsvpngvba pbirevat zber frysvfu checbfrf. Gur xvyyre va Qrpntba pynvzf gb or niratvat gur qrngu bs gur tvey ur ybirq, ohg ur nqzvgf gung fur jbhyq unir orra nccnyyrq ng uvf npgvbaf. Va nqqvgvba, ur xvyyf fbzrbar jub ur nqzvgf unq ab cneg va ure qrngu, fvzcyl orpnhfr vg svgf uvf "cresrpg" zlfgrel abiry-rfdhr fpurzr. Va Zvyy Ubhfr, gur xvyyre pynvzf gb jnag eriratr sbe n pne nppvqrag (juvpu jnf, nf sne nf gur ernqre vf njner, pbzcyrgryl nppvqragny), ohg vg gheaf bhg gung uvf zbgvir fgrzf sebz terrq naq n qrfver sbe gur ivpgvz'f jvsr. Va obgu pnfrf gur xvyyre pynvzf gb or n jebatrq vaqvivqhny, ohg vf va snpg nalguvat ohg. (Spoilers for both Mill House & Decagon hidden by rot13.)

Despite these similarities, there are major differences in the execution of the two books. One which stands out early on is the character writing. In Decagon the characters were fairly flat, with little characterization. Aside from occasional humanizing moments they were mostly there only for the roles they played in the plot. Some of them were downright interchangeable. Honestly, this didn’t bother me at all when I read it, since they were developed to the extent that the plot required, but it’s a criticism that I’ve seen leveled against the book fairly often. Mill House shows a definite improvement in this regard. All of the characters have distinct personalities. They’re not deep, but it marks a definite improvement in Ayatsuji’s style. (This also seems as good a point as any to add that the quality of the translation, done by Ho-Ling Wong, is very good indeed. For reasons that I can’t mention without spoilers, this can’t have been an easy novel to translate into natural sounding English, but it was carried off admirably.)

An unfortunately disappointing point about the novel is that the titular mill house is very much underutilized. The whole premise of the series is that murders keep happening in houses designed by Nakamura Seiji, an architect who always hid secret passages and architectural tricks in his buildings. This allows for any number of interesting situations, as well as allowing completely fair violations of a fundament rule of mystery fiction. As a rule (or rather, a commandment), a writer can’t just have the murder committed via secret passages, as it makes for a remarkably unsatisfying solution. But when the presence of a secret passage is guaranteed, suddenly this is no longer a problem. Not only can it more naturally be integrated into the broader plot, it can also feature in the reader’s theorizing and deductions. In this way something that is ordinarily seen as a cheat becomes an opportunity for new and creative situations and tricks. In this novel, however, the architecture was disappointingly underutilized. Vaqrrq, gur zheqrere arire hfrq gur frpergcnffntr ng nyy, nf ur jnf hanoyr gb svaq vg. And aside from one quite effective set piece, the titular giant mill wheels that line the house also play no role in the plot. To an extent this is understandable, as Ayatsuji was no doubt still deciding what he wanted to do with the series, but it’s still slightly disappointing.

At this point it probably seems as if I'm not quite sold on The Mill House Murders as, although the writing has improved, and although the mystery was certainly good, it just wasn't as gripping or as well executed as Decagon. But that conclusion would be completely wrong, for the simple reason that The Mill House Murders's ending had a real degree of grandeur to it. Mystery fiction, by its very nature, involves taking a situation that seems uncanny and…well, mysterious and explaining it in rational, sensible terms. Some have argued that this makes the solutions inherently disappointing, but I cannot agree with that. A good solution elevates the situation it sprang from, it possesses a satisfaction and a genuine, aesthetic beauty all its own. But it generally (though not always) takes the situation from the level of the wonder-inducing to that of the readily explicable. (Again, this isn’t to say that the solutions don’t inspire wonder, the best ones always do, but it’s wonder of a different sort.) As mentioned, some solutions overcome this difficulty by dint of the sheer brilliance of the solution (as in a great many of Carr’s novels, for example, or in Decagon itself). But others sidestep the issue altogether. In these, the solutions, and the overall situations, signify something in some way, be it artistic, moral, philosophical, or something else altogether. Obviously, I can’t give details, as I would be spoiling some of the best works the genre has to offer, but examples of what I mean include the last chapter of Ten Days’ Wonder, the motive in Gokumontou, and the moment of realization in The Nine Tailors. The solutions to these novels posses a sublimity which is difficult to describe, but which ensures that they stick in the reader’s mind, the relevant scenes indelibly impressed upon his or her memory. And the ending of The Mill House Murders possesses this quality, its very last scene elevating all that has come before. It produces this effect differently than the aforementioned works, as it isn’t part of the solution to the crimes that does so, but the answer to a more…thematic mystery that has come up throughout the book. It reveals an (unclued but foreshadowed) pattern to the events of the novel that gives them grandeur and, within the world of the story, significance. Some might say that the specifics are out of place in the rational world of a mystery novel, but they don’t in any way alter or invalidate the solution, so to me that objection seems to be something of a pointless quibble. While Mill House isn’t on the same level as the books I mentioned earlier, it is of the same kind. And its last line is so good as to almost rival that of Carr’s “The House in Goblin Wood.” Without this closing scene, I could still recommend The Mill House Murders as an entertaining and well-clued mystery that doesn't quite live up to its potential. But with it, I think it’s a minor classic which I recommend strongly. Furthermore, I very much hope that Pushkin will continue with the series, as the next novel, The Labyrinth House Murders, sounds especially interesting.

Death of the Living Dead (1989) – Yamaguchi Masaya

Say what was that name you called me?
What was that grin you grinned?
An expression so uncertain
That breaks a line so thin?

“Commercial Breakup” (Thomas Dolby)

 

(Note: This is a review that I wrote early last year, just after I read Death of the Living Dead. Had I written it now, I would have done it very differently. However, I have decided to leave it mostly as is. I still agree with its content, and it doesn’t bug me to the extent that I want to go through the effort of revising it. Let’s just say that it’s a snapshot of how I was writing reviews a couple years ago, and be glad I didn’t start blogging then…)

The Barleycorns could, by any definition of the word, be called an odd family. There’s the patriarch, Smiley, a skilled mortician who, forced to leave England due to his womanizing ways, emigrated to America and decided to reestablish his practice in a grand way, founding the Smile Cemetery, the largest and most prestigious funerary establishment on the east coast. There are his sons, John, a dour, business-oriented man set to succeed his father as head of the house of the dead, William, a would-be theatrical producer who’s always looking to secure more funding, Jessica, Smiley’s only daughter, who married the son of one of his business associates, and James, who, disconcertingly proud of his skills as an embalmer, has no interest whatsoever in such trifles as the management of the cemetery (and that’s without getting into the segment of the Barleycorn siblings who have already shuffled off their mortal coil.). And there’s our protagonist, Francis “Grin” Barleycorn, son of Steven Barleycorn, one of the aforementioned late lamented, who, instead of joining the family firm, chose the life of a punk rocker. From front to back, the Barleycorns are a family touched by death, every one of them having worked in or trained for a role in the running of the cemetery, but, in more ways than one, they’ll soon find that they don’t understand death as well as the thought. For, all around the world, the dead are returning to life. And, against the tableaux of these unnerving events, the Barleycorns will be confronted with death in an even more immediate way when someone begins killing them off. But who would want to kill in a world where the dead can come back to life?

This is the question posed in Yamaguchi Masaya’s Death of the Living Dead, which was released in December of 2021, in an excellent translation by Ho-Ling Wong. Published in 1989, it was Yamaguchi’s debut novel and is considered one of the major works of the shin honkaku movement. Though I had been aware that Yamaguchi had been trying to get it released in English for a few years, I must say that its sudden publication took me by surprise. Especially as it wasn’t the first Japanese mystery novel involving the dead returning to life to be published last year. An surprising coincidence, but a welcome one. (According to the back of the book, there’s a Hollywood film adaption in the works, which probably explains how a publisher was finally found. One wonders how the film will turn out…)

The first half of the novel is rather slow moving, focusing mostly on the establishment of the setting, characters, and themes, but it’s extremely riveting, as well as necessary to the plot. If you don’t pay close attention here, I can assure you that you have very little chance of solving the mysteries that follow. And once the plot gets moving, it really gets moving. Between the killer stalking the Barleycorns, the corpse that vanishes between its funeral and burial, and the possible return of a serial killer from years back, you start to wonder how all of this could possibly tie together.

But tie together it does. As unrelated as they seem, all of these plot threads contribute to a solution that is astonishingly elegant in its simplicity. Its central point is downright Chestertonian (which is quite fitting, given how often he’s quoted here). It’s so blindingly, elementally obvious that we (or at least I) never consider it.

And this isn’t the only similarity to Chesterton. Like the Father Brown stories, Death of the Living Dead is fundamentally a piece of humanistic detective fiction. Yamaguchi is interested in exploring how people relate and react to death, both individually and as a society. This exploration comes into focus well before the mystery itself, but don’t think that they are unrelated concerns. The philosophic questions at the heart of the novel are essential to the solution, and the mystery throws the philosophical questions into sharp relief. Furthermore, to bolster this theme, Yamaguchi includes well-researched information on subjects as diverse as funerary customs, Medieval art, and the history of embalming. This is the kind of mystery that Robert Burton or Sir Thomas Browne would have written.

(At this point, there’s an aspect of the novel’s that I’d like to discuss, but it’s something that some people might consider a spoiler. To be clear, I don’t think it is, and it’s mentioned in the table of contents anyway. Plus, most, though not all, of the reviews out there mention it (and if you’ve read any of those, you already know exactly what I’m talking about). Still, I certainly don’t want to spoil anyone’s reading experience, so if you want to go in absolutely blind, skip the next paragraph and come back when you’ve finished the book. For everyone else, read on…)

Perhaps the most striking thing about Death of the Living Dead is the fact that Grin, who’s both the protagonist and the detective, himself becomes one of the living dead early on in the book, after he is poisoned with arsenious acid. The undead here aren’t the shambling zombies of horror fiction, they retain their personalities and memories. This puts him in the unusual position of having to catch his own killer, but it also adds some extra complications. Chiefly, he has to hide the fact that he’s dead, from both his family and his girlfriend, Cheshire, who acts as his Watson. The only person he lets into his confidence is Dr. Hearse, a close friend of his grandfather’s (and one of my favorite characters!), a professor of thanatology and occasional consultant with the local police. Grin has the good doctor embalm him, as coming back to life doesn’t stop the process of decomposition. Aside from throwing a new wrinkle into the plot, this turn of events also has another narrative function. Since only Grin and Dr. Hearse know that someone poisoned Grin, everyone else investigating the Barleycorn killings is in possession of imperfect information. The police can’t hope to solve these killings, but Grin, and the reader, can.

Not that the police had much of a chance to begin with. The local police are, shall we say, somewhat dysfunctional. The sergeant gladly blabs everything he knows to the press, the junior detective is only interested in two things, getting promoted and slacking off, and the senior detective, Richard Tracy, is a workaholic who’s unhealthily obsessed with his job. At first, he seems to be the force’s only sane man, but as the crimes begin to pile up, Det. Tracy’s stress levels get closer and closer to the breaking point. He also provides one of the novel’s absolute funniest scenes. Near the end of the book, he proposes a false solution which starts out brilliantly clever. However, as he goes on, flaws start appearing in his explanation. They start out subtle, but by the end his audience is chiming in one after another, pointing them out faster than he can keep up with.

As you may have guessed from Det. Tracy’s name, the view of America in Death of the Living Dead is very pop-culture influenced. This becomes apparent early on, particularly in the scene set in NYC, which, with its boom-box carrying gangsters and corrupt cops, feels like it could have come from an over-the-top 80s action flick. As strange an atmosphere as this may seem for a classically styled puzzle-plot mystery, it actually works quite well. After all, you wouldn’t exactly expect strict realism from a novel where punks run around solving murders as the dead rise from their graves…

As far as I can see, the novel only really has one flaw, and not a major one at that. Near the beginning, it’s stated that worldwide, thirteen people in total have returned to life. Conceivably, some may have escaped risen unnoticed, but it couldn’t be that many. So revivification seems to be a fairly rare phenomena, yet in the small town of Tombsville, the living dead just keep on coming, in numbers that are truly surprising, given how few rose before. Vaqrrq, ol gur raq, whfg nobhg gur jubyr Oneyrlpbea snzvyl unf znqr gur erghea gevc (spoilers concealed using rot13). Now, this isn’t a hard science fiction novel, and I’m not demanding some kind of detailed explanation for this. But since we’re told at the beginning that this is an uncommon thing, I think most experienced readers will factor that into their theorizing. Unless told otherwise, we assume that everything in a mystery could be relevant, so I wish that Yamaguchi had somehow indicated that this wasn’t something we needed to pay attention to, rather than just hoping that we don’t notice the mother of all statistical anomalies.

But, that said, I can’t say that this even remotely impacted my enjoyment of the novel. I didn’t even notice it until a few days after finishing it. And that I was still thinking about it days later says a lot. Death of the Living Dead is a triumph as a novel of detection, but it’s also a moving rumination on man and mortality. It’s a book that I’ll not soon forget, and I highly recommend it.

(As I mentioned, I still agree with everything in this review. But I do have a couple of things I’d like to add. The first is actually something that I meant to mention in the review, but which completely slipped my mind. It’s simply that I admire Yamaguchi’s choice of chapter quotes. It takes skill to be able to use John Dickson Carr, Jorge Luis Borges, and King Crimson in the same novel.

The second point has less to do with the book itself, and more to do with its reception. I’ve been shocked at how little attention it’s gotten since its release. When it has been reviewed (on a handful of blogs and in the Washington Post) it’s garnered high praise, but by and large it seems to have slipped under the collective radar. And that’s a shame, because in my opinion this book is a masterpiece of the genre and deserves a wide readership.)