Pushkin Vertigo The Inugami Curse

I was very happy to find an entirely different take on the closed room murder mystery. my favourite kind of puzzle.

Content was 👍😊

I am a sucker for a classic mystery. I love the slow character development that gets you hooked on all the characters and makes you fear who’s going to die first. The deeper I get pulled in, the more I dread that first death. Having gone through all the most available classic series, I was intrigued to find the series reprint of a number of Japanese masters including The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo.Set in Japan in the 1940s after the second world war, the mystery begins with the gathering of a clan after the death of the patriarch. When the will is read, the family is shocked to learn the bizarre legacy left to them – bizarre murders follow shortly. These murders are well-paced with just enough detail to keep the reader on their toes guessing what will happen next.The Inugami Curse has all the usual hallmarks of a classic mystery – a closed cast of characters, deep character development, a well-described location, diabolical plotting…but it has one unexpected aspect I would have never guessed – magical realism. The author’s perspective on dread and the horror of murder color the prose with a beautiful (if slightly insane) vibrancy that comes to life at the most unexpected moments. The more I read, the more I fell under the spell of the Yokomizo’s prose. It was, quite simply, a hypnotic read. I could not look away.What was more, I felt a strong connection to the bizarre events of the mystery as well as the characters. When the puzzle is resolved, satisfaction was bittersweet. The human drama described had made it almost impossible to not imagine what happened after the book’s conclusion and how life went on. These are graceful characters who are masterfully arranged to stay with a reader for a long time.I highly recommend this book.

i read it in french some years ago and bought it in english for a gift to an english-speaking friend. this book is excellent and captivating. shipment was quick and timely.

As a reader, I have been fortunate enough to read some exquisite stories, both when it comes to novels, and comic-books and to my dismay it is only recently that I have started appreciating the efforts made by translators to translate a foreign language into English without losing any of the emotional & structural integrity of the story. The Inugami Curse-my second Yokomizo work after The Honjin Murders-reads very differently and much better from it's predecessor and the credit to my mind goes to Yumiko Yamakazi, the translator, whose use of appropriate terminology and colloquialism aged the story very well.As a story itself, the build-up is far superior compared to the climax and revelation. But while the perpetrator isn't exactly a surprise the ultimate conclusion does give one a sense of closure. For certain, this book/plot can be accused of 'lazy writing'. Especially given the concatenation of coincidences involved. But I, for one, will not levy such an accusation upon it, because in the end I wanted to read a story that would be engaging, intriguing and off-beat. Two out of Three is good enough for me.