NEW STUFF: Strange Pictures - Uketsu

I guess I have a problem with the "new honkaku" writers coming out of Japan.  I've always enjoyed the traditional Japanese mystery writers like Shoji Shimada when quite by chance decades ago I stumbled across The Tokyo Zodiac Murders. After reading that book I sought out all his books translated in English. Then when I serendipitously found a copy of The Inugami Clan by Seishi Yokomizo (long before Pushkin Vertigo translated/published his books) my interest was renewed.  And yet when I sampled some of the more recent Japanese writers I was always bothered by the emphasis on puzzles and the utter lack of real characters. One in particular was so poorly written with flimsy characters (The Moai Island Puzzle) I couldn't finish it and gave up after only three chapters. Like many of the mystery novels by French mystery writers (Jean Toussaint-Samat and Noël Vindry in particular) and I grew to dislike plots where characters were puppets in service of contrived incidents that all served the overarching puzzle structure. I enjoy the puzzle aspect of traditional Western mystery novels as anyone who reads my reviews knows, but I don't want the book and story to exist solely for the puzzles. Which of course brings me to today's book... 

Strange Pictures is a new book by Uketsu, a mysterious YouTube figure who writes gimmicky mysteries online and insists on dressing in an all black costume and wearing a weird mask like a villain tiptoeing out of a French silent movie. The gimmick in Uketsu's mystery stories is the use of puzzles in the form of ambiguous or encoded drawings and sketches. Strange Pictures is divided into four stories that focus on nine different drawings. Ultimately, the stories are interconnected through the characters and their actions.  The premise is certainly promising and tempting enough that I succumbed to the hype. But I was mostly underwhelmed.

 

The book opens with a foreword that sets the reader up for all that will follow. Tomiko Hagio, a "teaching psychologist", presents a simple child's drawing (see above) to her university students and proceeds to explain the hidden meaning in the picture.  It all smacks of the kind of ersatz psychology I despised in the early Gladys Mitchell mystery novels in which Mrs. Bradley pontificates on the psychology of the characters based on the most flimsy of "evidence" drawn from behavior or speech. I'll spare you Dr. Hagio's explanation of the bird in the tree and the pointy ends of the spear like branches in the tree.   But this is the sort of "solution" the reader will have to devise if he is to match wits with the "drawing detectives" in the various stories.

The first artistic puzzle related to a woman giving birth to her first child is actually rather ingenious because it relies on genuine out-of-the-box thinking in dealing with two dimensional drawings. I'll only add that those of you who live in the digital world and spend many more hours online than I do will probably catch on sooner than I did. One thing you mustn't do with this book is page through before you read. The solutions to these picture puzzles are blatantly illustrated. A few surprises were ruined when I lost my place, forgetting to put my bookmark in where I left off, then quickly flipped through the book looking for the correct page. In paging through the book I saw flashes of several altered pictures. Caveat lector!

The cleverest part of this book was the way Uketsu connects the various stories. This was really the only reason I kept reading. Eventually one character emerges from the background (originally an "invisible" role), becomes a supporting character, and then is oddly cast as the primary antagonist of the piece. The multi-layering of three seemingly separate stories and how the link up is ingeniously done and there are a handful of surprises that I truly enjoyed. But...

The further the story delves into the interconnection Uketsu begins to slather on shocking developments that escalate from melodrama to histrionics to absurdity. I can admire noir plots with their amoral characters and base motives, but these new writers don't seem to understand what works in noir is an understanding of human nature and not evil for evil's sake, or an abundance of cruelty and over-the-top gruesome violence to shock and repulse. At times I felt the evil characters were so absurd it became laughable. For instance, in the final section a man blackmails a woman into having sex with him all because he wants to traumatize the woman's child and humiliate her simultaneously. He arranges one night of sex so that the child wakes up unexpectedly and witnesses the horrible rape. Ugh!

The central story "The Art Teacher's Final Drawing" deals with an unsolved murder dating back to 1992. An art teacher who went camping in the mountains is found stabbed and beaten to death. Three years later a young reporter discusses the case with an editor who wrote the initial newspaper stories on the murder. The young reporter decides to recreate the murder victim's trip while focusing on a strange sketch found on the victim.  It's a primitively drawn landscape (at right), one the art teacher enjoyed drawing repeatedly on his many trips to the same mountain. The reason for the sketch and how it was drawn seems clever and it's related to the horribly gruesome method of murder, described in a perverse plot twist and surprise reveal of the teacher's killer. But I found it all hard to swallow no matter how much the characters explain themselves and try to justify their unreal and absurd actions. The bizarre murder method in "The Art Teacher's Final Drawing" exists solely for the drawing to exist. In the end the whole book is constructed so that all the behaviors and puzzles can live neatly within one another like those matryoshka dolls.

I grew impatient with Uketsu's insistence on having characters engage in inner monologues where they tell us exactly what they are feeling and justify all their unbelievable actions (including multiple murder on the part of the primary antagonist). Too much "I'm feeling like this" and "I want this" and "I will kill him because I want this" kind of monologues written in simplistic declarative sentences. In fact the entire book is rather simply written. I don't blame the translator Jim Rion. He did an admirable job of translating one of the Yokomizo books for Pushkin's Vertigo imprint (The Devil's Flute Murder) and I wish he had done more of them rather than Bryan Karetnyk. Also Rion did an excellent job with Kthulhu Reich (2019) by Asamatsu Ken, a short story collection written in homage to Lovecraftian horror. Rion captured the flavor of English language pulp magazine writing style in translating those stories. I know he has a talent at translating. It must be that the original Japanese is far from complex. Strange Pictures at times reads like the work of a teenager with its lack of sophisticated understanding of human nature and the contrived machinations of puppet characters who commit amoral acts and engage in cruel violence.

Another Uketsu creation called Strange Houses is due out in the summer, early June according to the Harper Via website. And it's much shorter at only 144 pages. But even being less than half the length of Strange Pictures I may wait to take it out of the library this time.

Dragon's Cave - Clyde B Clason

THE STORY:  Jonas Wright, owner of an engraving business in Chicago, is found stabbed in a locked room where he housed his collection of medieval and historical weaponry. One of those weapons in his collection -- a halberd -- is apparently what did him in.  He is found with his neck severed and the halberd in a pool of blood nearby.  A dribble on a table in the middle of the room and one single droplet on the opposite side of the room are the only other traces of blood.  Shouldn't the room have been drenched in blood if Wright's neck had been severed?  Prof. Westborough is tagged by Lt. Mack to be a stenographer during the interrogations and to ask any questions he wishes., no matter two seemingly irrelevant. He is sure that the halberd is not the weapon. Before the detective team discover the correct murder means there will be more impossible events including the disappearance of a man from a second story locked room with no footprints in the snow outside his window.

THE CHARACTERS: The primary suspects are mostly confined to the Wright household with a few others associated with the family. They are:

Julian Carr- Sales Director at Wright Engraving who had returned from an amateur production of Romeo & Juliet. (BTW, the book's title is taken from a quote in the play which uses a cavern as a metaphor for a deceitful heart.) He was acting in it and played Mercutio. We find out he is adept at fencing and happened to be returning a rapier borrowed from Wright's collection used as a prop in the production. That's right, these Chicago yokels actually used a real sword in an amateur theater production.  (Ai yi yi!  What was Clason thinking?)

Madeleine Wright - she was with Julian when they entered the house and found her murdered father.  She was also in the play in the lead role of Juliet. Madeleine is one of these icy young socialites who turn up frequently in Golden Age detective fiction. Acting skill -- take note! She has murder suspect written all over her though with her dialogue and actions Clason tries to dissuade the reader against suspecting her. She's is not to be trusted, my friends.

Martin Wright - a pretentiously intellectual college student, the older of the two Wright sons. If it weren't enough that Prof. Westborough lectures us on the minutiae of medieval weaponry and how they were used we must endure Martin's mini lectures and allusions to great philosophers of the world. That's what he studying at Northwestern University. Schopenhauer is his current hero.  I was sure his ego and supercilious personality were going to implicate him in some fashion. At one point Martin pontificates on the uselessness of prisons and the failure of the prison system to rehabilitate.  He believes there are only two solutions to crime:  societal remedies that will prevent crime in the first place and psychological treatment.  For, as he tells Hilda and Ronald (see bleow), there are only two real causes of crime: environment and mental illness.

Wellington (Wel) Wright - the handsome hunk of a son, youngest in the family. Embittered because he is not rewarded with a high paying job in his father's firm. Impetuous, temperamental, brash and a bit naive. Drinks a lot. Was drunk the night of the murder -- or was it play acting? Had been at the home of his Gold Coast friend...

Tony Corveau - commercial artist and Lothario. Puts the make on Madeleine.  Oh aiwt there were once an item.  See despises him now.  Tony likes to draw naked women and his lush apartment is decorated with his many pen & ink sketches of many women he's met. Recently fired from Wright Engraving over some kind of abuse of company supplies. Wellington might also be involved.

Hilda - the Wrights' servant. She flees the house after it is learned that her son Ronald has recently been released from prison. Her escape is a desperate attempt to keep her son away and prevent him from being questioned by the police. She fails miserably.

Alan Boyle - Chicago newspaper reporter.  Intrusive, too wise, and very interested in Madeliene (aren't all these men?). Always seems to be at the Wright home at the right time (ha!). He is eventually enlisted as an aide by both Madeleine and later Westborough.

Hans Gross (1847-1915)

THINGS I LEARNED:  This is the earliest murder mystery I have ever encountered where blood spatter, bloodspill and blood patterns found in a crime scene are featured prominently in the action. Or actually in this case -- the lack of blood evidence.  Two experts' names in the field of blood evidence are invoked in Westborough's mini lecture: Jeserich and Gross.  Both were Germans.  Dr. Paul Jeserich according to his New York Times obituary published on Dec 10, 1927 was dubbed the "German Sherlock Holmes" and was known internationally for his work in "legal chemistry".  Hans Gross was a 19th century criminologist who authored a seminal book entitled Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik (1893), literally Handbook for Investigating Judges as a System of Criminology, described in a professional journal article (Literature of Bloodstain Pattern Interpretation - MacDonell, 1992) as "an excellent reference for not only bloodstain patterns but almost everything else that may be considered within the field of criminalistics." Proving once again that Westborough (and of course Clason ) really knows his stuff.

Westborough and later Boyle, the reporter, both make an allusion to Mary Blandy when the police start to seriously suspect Madeleine as the killer.  Blandy I had never heard of.  Wikipedia tells us: "In 1751, she poisoned her father, Francis Blandy, with arsenic. She claimed that she thought the arsenic was a love potion that would make her father approve of her relationship with William Henry Cranstoun, an army officer and son of a Scottish nobleman."  Was she that well known that two characters would make allusions to her case?  Madeline Smith was more well known as a notorious poisoner. But why even mention poison since the victim was stabbed? I guess Clason wanted someone accused and tried for patricide to make his point. Still seems extremely arcane even for the 1930s.

Madeleine & Julian spy blood
leaking under the doorway. Note
that Julian has the rapier in hand.
UK edition (Heinemann, 1940)

INNOVATIONS: Despite some of my snide commentary above in describing the characters I rather enjoyed this one.  The impossible problems are cleverly carried out and the detection involved to explain those impossibilities is both sound and sensible.  The characters are forced into resorting to bizarre means to accomplish desperate acts because they are trapped in a house under constant guard by the police.  It's not a murder mystery where someone intentionally dreams up the crimes and miracle problems just to baffle police.  In this regard Clason was trying to make the locked room mystery more grounded in reality rather than making it a puzzle for its own sake.  So points to him!

While there is a somewhat sappy subplot of a love triangle (Julian-Madeleine-Alan) and Professor Westborough indulges a bit too often in esoteric tangents the plot is always engaging, the banter between Lt. Mack and the professor is always fun and amusing, and the imaginative "miracle problems" keep the reader on his toes trying to outguess the detectives and come up with the solution before the final chapter. Dragon's Cave (1939) has now displaced The Man from Tibet (1938) as my favorite in a rather uneven series of detective novels. I still have four more to read before I say whether this is the quintessential Clason mystery.

EASY TO FIND?  Wonderful news! Not at all scarce. Plenty of Rue Morgue Press reprint paperback copies out there. Amazingly, most of them are very cheap, well under $10 a copy. And, of course, there are several of the US first edition for those interested in owning the original Crime Club hardcover. Many of those are actually under $50 a copy. That's refreshing, ain't it?