• (Translated by John Pugmire) The 8 Mansion Murders - 2018 John Pugmire,

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  Takemaru Abiko
  Writer

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The 8 Mansion Murders
Publishers Weekly. 265.15 (Apr. 9, 2018): p57.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The 8 Mansion Murders

Takemaru Abiko,trans. from the Japanese by Ho-Ling Wong. Locked Room International, $19.99 trade paper (180p) ISBN 978-1-986036-06-1

First published in Japan in 1989, Abiko's outstanding impossible crime novel combines laughout-loud humor with an ingenious murder plot. Insp. Kyozo Hayami, of the Metropolitan PD, Division I, lands a head-scratcher after Kikuichiro Hachisuka, the vice-president of his father's construction company, is killed by a crossbow bolt in the unusual figure eight-shaped house that he shared with his parents and two siblings. Kikuichiro's mute sister Yukie and her sign language teacher witness the murder. Their testimony implicates Yusako Yano, the son of the household's servants, from whose room the arrow was fired, but he claims that he was sleeping at the time, alone, and his door was locked. A second murder seems to have been committed by a crossbow that seemed to hover in the air. Kyozo's accident-prone sidekick provides comic relief, and John Dickson Carr fans will appreciate the summation made by Kyozo's younger brother, a devoted mystery fan, of the various possible ways a murder can be committed in a locked room. This is one of the funniest and cleverest novels of its type to hit the English-language market in years. (June)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The 8 Mansion Murders." Publishers Weekly, 9 Apr. 2018, p. 57. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A535099959/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a6189e43. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A535099959

• Mysteries Ahoy!
  https://mysteriesahoy.com/2018/05/16/the-8-mansion-murders-by-takemaru-abiko/
  Word count: 763

  THE 8 MANSION MURDERS BY TAKEMARU ABIKO
  Posted on May 16, 2018by Aidan
  MansionMurdersIt is the early hours of the morning and Yukie Hachisuka and her sign language teacher are talking when they hear the sound of someone walking and decide to open the curtains to look. When they do they observe Yukie’s father, businessman Kikuichirō Hachisuka, being shot through the heart with a crossbow.

  When the two women instinctively leave their room to run down to him they are struck from behind, waking up several hours later. They discover that he is dead but there are signs that the body had been moved. Even more strangely, when the Police investigate they find that the room the murderer used belongs to Yūsaku Yano, the son of the family’s servants, who swears that he was fast asleep and that his door was locked from the inside.

  The Police quickly settle on Yano as the only possible suspect they can see and they plan to arrest him but Kyōzō Hayami, an inspector of the Metropolitan Police Department, is persuaded by Yukie to try to find an alternative suspect. The Chief suggests that he might want to take a few days leave to investigate the matter and he and his colleague Kinoshita start to look into events.

  The puzzle is a solid one though I was somewhat surprised that I worked out exactly how it was accomplished about two fifths of the way into the book. This is rather baffling to me as it is quite unlike me to have the first clue about solving an impossible crime, let alone getting it done so early in the text. When this sort of thing happens I usually caution that I may just have been lucky but I do think there are several significant details mentioned that may prove suggestive to seasoned readers of the genre.

  While I may not have been amazed by the mechanics of how the crime was achieved, I am very happy to say that reaching that solution early did not diminish my enjoyment of the story for several reasons. For one, I could not be entirely certain of the identity of the killer. For another, there are some other aspects of the case that take a little longer to come into clear focus. But perhaps most importantly, I found Takemaru Abiko’s style to be highly entertaining and engaging.

  Part of the way Abiko draws the reader in is by presenting us with a very likeable central character in the form of Kyōzō. He is not necessarily the sharpest investigator, nor the most brilliant mind but he possesses a simple charm. One of the things that really sticks out is when we first learn that he is attracted to Yukie and he reflects on how he feels lucky that he would have a successful relationship with her because she is the fiftieth woman he has fallen in love with but there are plenty of other fun details and thoughts within the text.

  The other aspect of Abiko’s approach that I think sticks out is the restrained use of humor throughout the story. Combining comedy and crime can be a tricky business and there is always a risk that the jokes will overpower the narrative. Abiko avoids that by picking specific aspects of his story to provide humor while allowing the crime to be taken seriously.

  One particularly rich source of humor is Kyōzō’s ability to compel Kinoshita to perform reckless or foolish acts. By the end of the book the reader will be anticipating the punch lines to these interactions but the pleasure comes in seeing just how Kinoshita will find himself injured again. Similarly I appreciated his frustrating interactions with his brother and sister who are both mystery fans and who each take on significant roles in the case, at one point giving their own version of Dr. Fell’s famous locked room lecture.

  Though its puzzle may not be quite as ingeniously constructed as either The Moai Island Puzzle or The Decagon House Mystery, other shin honkaku titles published by Locked Room International, I think it is most accessible of the three and it might make a good first step for readers beginning to explore this style of Japanese crime writing. I am excited to see these works being made available in translation and hope that there may be further titles in the offing. Recommended.

• Invisible Event
  https://theinvisibleevent.com/2018/06/28/405/
  Word count: 1313

  #405: The 8 Mansion Murders (1989) by Takemaru Abiko [trans. Ho-Ling Wong 2018]
  JUNE 28, 2018 / JJ
  8 Mansion Murdersstar filledstar filledstar filledstar filledstars
  Before we get onto the book itself, it’s worth mentioning that this is the twenty-ninth publication from Locked Room International. Under the stewardship of John Pugmire, we’ve been brought a wonderful mix of classic and modern impossible crime novels and short stories from all corners of the globe, and — given the standard of their recent output — it certainly seems that the best is far from past. I anticipate a great many excellent, obscure, and previously-untranslated works coming our way in the years ahead thanks to LRI, and I wanted to take a moment to recognise the work that goes into making this happen.
  Whichever way you choose to read the title — either “8 murders in the mansion” or “Murders in The 8 Mansion” — it’s a title that offers up plenty of potential. It’s the second reading that is correct, and so we can add this to the scores of books in which the building where most of the actions takes place plays almost the role of a character in the narrative, joining such luminaries as fellow LRI translations Death in the House of Rain (2006) and The Decagon House Murders (1987), Carter Dickson’s debut The Plague Court Murders (1934), and the recently-republished works of Roger Scarlett. And, trusting the setup to carry the story, what we get is a simple enough conundrum to begin with: Kikuichirō Hachisuka shot by a crossbow in his family’s eponymous, unusually-shaped mansion (plenty of floorplans to delight in here)…whodunnit?
  There are a few wrinkles beyond that — two witnesses see the murder take place, and the obvious culprit, from whose room the shot was fired, denies his involvement — but that’s essentially the setup for the first half of the book: our detective Kyōzō Hayami and his subordinate Kinoshita descend upon the mansion, question the suspects, and stumble upon things that will later turn out to be relevant in true Golden Age style. At about the halfway point a second baffling murder occurs, rendered impossible by the physical evidence, and Kyōzō and Kinoshita — the latter increasingly imperiled by slapstick shenanigans — must untangle the skein…
  If the narrative is rather trimmed down, it leaves plenty of space for you to appreciate how this book represents an increasing excitement about the potentiality of the Western-style detective story. Soji Shimada’s introduction superbly supplies the context for the young men and women of the Kyōto University Mystery Club who would meet to discuss classic-era GAD works of fiction and begin to incorporate elements of them into their own writing. Abiko’s narrative explicitly mentions ‘The Border-Line Case’ (1937) by Margery Allingham (alas, with spoilers), The Hollow Man (1935), The Emperor’s Snuff-Box (1942), and The Curse of the Bronze Lamp (1945) by John Dickson Carr, Death from a Top Hat (1938) by Clayton Rawson, genre lynchpin The Big Bow Mystery (1892) by Israel Zangwill, Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie, and sleuths of the calibre of Ellery Queen, Inspector Joseph French, Gideon Fell, and Henry Merrivale among others, with the author himself providing footnotes on these then-unexplored influences and Ho-Ling Wong’s excellent footnotes filling out many of the Japanese references that would otherwise be lost to Western audiences (The Deduction of Tortoiseshell Cat Holmes, for one, sounds like it could be a blast…).
  The whole affair has a sense of voracity about it where paying dues is concerned, extending to the locked room lecture towards the end of the novel that prefaces the eventual solution. You really feel Abiko’s enthusiasm bleeding through, although those of us who have read even generally in the genre will find very little if anything new in that treatise, and may wish for a little more incident between the murders. But this is also has more to it than simply some extended nerd-out over a new and seemingly-bottomless enthusiasm — there are some great moments of dry humour, though the increasingly-ludicrous fates befalling Kinoshita don’t really hurdle the cultural barrier, and off-kilter moments such as Kyōzō’s opinions of people owing a lot to trichology:
  Kyōzō’s first impression of Kikuji was that of a smug individual, further confirmed when he noticed the man’s luxuriant black hair.
  And:
  Well into his forties, he had no facial hair, unlike many of his contemporaries, which for some reason left a good impression on Kyōzō.
  There’s also a glorious skewering of the unabashed brainlessness of magazine-style TV shows, and a superb acidity in the suggestion that a woman would only welcome the servant accused of murdering her son back into her house because she’s struggling to keep everything running smoothly. You’re not here for the characters, but they do remain distinct, even if a couple of them are a little interchangeable, and Kyōzō’s detective novel-obsessed siblings Shinji and Ichio treat the whole, y’know, double murder thing with a little bit too much scholarly remove when holding forth on accusations and lectures come the closing stages.
  Suffice to say, the two solutions are excellent, with the first occurring to me in principle if not precise detail, and the second being a very, very smart way of reworking the expectations of the impossible crime. For someone who is so delightedly geeking out on classic locked room murders, too, Abiko has found a way to inveigle their spirit into his own updating of the same, with these solutions fitting as well into anything by Carr as they do the milieu offered herein. So, yeah, Number 29 is a rollicking success, and comes highly recommended, especially if you’ve yet to take a dip into the shin honkaku waters LRI are so brilliantly bringing to our shores. And I’m left hoping that the prominent mention of Rintaro Norizuki in the introduction augurs well for further translations of his work down the line…
  ~
  See also
  Aidan @ Mysteries Ahoy!: The puzzle is a solid one though I was somewhat surprised that I worked out exactly how it was accomplished about two fifths of the way into the book. This is rather baffling to me as it is quite unlike me to have the first clue about solving an impossible crime, let alone getting it done so early in the text. When this sort of thing happens I usually caution that I may just have been lucky but I do think there are several significant details mentioned that may prove suggestive to seasoned readers of the genre.
  Brad @ AhSweetMysteryBlog: While the family’s banter feels (conservatively) modern, the mystery itself is pure GAD. The author utilizes all sorts of classic narrative tools and techniques, including providing us with six diagrams of the mansion’s topography: three floors of rooms separated by a yawning courtyard which is, in turn, bisected by a gallery on each floor, creating the figure eight of the title. False solutions are presented before the truth is unveiled, and I would venture to say that in this case the true solution is the most absorbing of the bunch.
  Ho-Ling Wong: The novel’s a tribute to the impossible crime mystery in the spirit of John Dickson Carr, which also happens to be a hilarious adventure. Comedy is a trademark of Abiko, but don’t let the funny bickering between the various characters fool you, as the core is as classic as you can get, with impossible murders inside an odd, “8”-shaped house, and a genuine locked room lecture!
  ~
  For the Follow the Clues Mystery Challenge, this links to The Affair of the Bottled Deuce from last week because the solution to the murder in that book is discussed very explicitly in this one.