Death on Gokumon Island (Pushkin Vertigo) (Detective Kindaichi Mysteries): Seishi Yokomizo

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Death on Gokumon Island is set in 1946 and I felt this was a really engaging time period to situate the mystery in. I could say the murder's methods are not exactly similar but they bear a similar method which you will understand once you read the book and also if you have read And Then There Were None. In Death on Gokumon Island, which takes place right after the war has ended, this altered consciousness is apparent in all of the characters, most notably in the prodigious detective’s life path. Maybe because I was not expecting it and because I felt very grounded in the realities of post-War Japan, I found this style a bit disconcerting, as though it didn’t quite fit in. I was pleasantly surprised and found myself liking what happened in here even if it's brief but I LOVE IT!

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. This was said to be loosely based on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and as a fan of Agatha Christie and the book being my favorite book ever, I will say honestly, nope, this was misleading.It's a scene from the 1970s movie version of one of Detective Kindaichi's series: The Demon's Nursery. After serving as editor in chief of several magazines, he resigned in 1932 to devote himself full-time to writing. The atmosphere sexism created in the third book, The Village of Eight Graves, is one of the main reasons that book got two stars. But I think reading The Decagon House (1987) by Yukito Ayatsuji may have put me off, due to the dryness of the prose. In fact, at one point, if we want to find out about an Inspector who appears on the scene, we are directed to go and read a previous novel!

It was actually the single most important motivating factor in the first book, The Honjin Murders, and while it wasn't prominent in the second book, The Inugami Curse, there was enough homophobia there to make up for it.The branch family consists of Gihei-san, his wife Oshisho, and a handsome former soldier Ukai-san with whom all three of Chimata-san’s sisters seem to flirt.

Also, I'm a huge fan of the manga series Young Kindaichi which was inspired by the book series by Seishi Yokomizo here. I am interested to see if anyone else picks up on one peculiarity of the sleuth that I mentioned in the review. After Chimata, his cousin Hitoshi (also from the ‘main’ family) is to be heir, but he too, is away serving in the war in Burma. On his deathbed, their grandfather made his three closest friends promise that they would kill his three granddaughters if their older brother did not survive WWII.I usually re-read this book at least once a year, this time aside from the clever plot twists, I truly start to appreciate how the author wrote his characters (he wrote them like he knew these people, their speeches and their behaviors like the back of his own hand) and how he described the post-war life for general/lower class Japanese citizens. This plot point feels like an indictment of the power bestowed upon religious leaders within small communities and the ease with which they can exploit that blind trust. Surprisingly, Kindaichi’s dandruff does impact those around him as at one point he: ‘immediately began to scratch his head, a look of joy on his face.