4.0 out of 5 stars
Keeping Murder in the Family, July 5 2004
This is a good juicy murder mystery full of family secrets and grudges. It blends post-WWII noir with a pinch of Poeish grotesquerie and a good old-fashioned "house party" mystery. You also get to meet the famous series detective Kosuke Kindaichi, whose rumpled demeanor and unseemly headscratching cover a brilliant and kind mind. (His cases were the subject of many films, and his grandson is star of <I>The Kindaichi Case Files</i> manga, anime, and live action series.)
Btw, to the reviewer who thought this showed how Japan had changed for the worse thanks to Westernization? I think you'll find that's not the point at all, if you consider the timelines and motivations. Many of the vices that caused the trouble were part of pre-Meiji culture, sadly. But it's not a pro-Western novel, either. Anything this noirish is bound to be full of inconveniently gray areas.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A Japanese family disintegrates, violently, Dec 23 2003
By A Customer
Set in the 1940's, this is the first in a series of mysteries featuring private detective Kosuke Kindaichi.
The elderly patriarch of a wealthy Japanese family of the title, dies, inexplicably leaving a will that virtually ensures a bloody battle for his fortune.
Kindaichi is summoned by the family's attorney to snow-covered northern Japan, where the gore-soaked feud plays out. Slowly, the family's sordid secret history is revealed as the members are ritualistically murdered, one by one.
Kindaichi is a likable character, an eccentric whose odd mannerisms (like a nervous tic of head-scratching) hide his superior intelligence.
The translation is a bit stiff at times, and some plot elements seem forced, but otherwise this is an enjoyable mystery. The atmospheric setting (the Inugami family's labyrinthine lakeside villa, in the winter) brings the reader to a region of Japan not well known in the West.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Excelent look at the other side of japanese culture, Nov 12 2003
This book takes an interesting look at the cultural norms of Japan and how they have been degraded by western ways. Almost disturbing, but but it keeps you reading till the end. Real page turners, but also very thought provoking
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