I became obsessed with Yukito Ayatsuji ever since I read The Decagon House Murders. Among all the Japanese murder mystery books I have been reading, I have to admit, his writing has captured my imagination the best.

This work is translated by Ho-Ling Wong. The language flows seamlessly and doesn’t make the readers feel they are missing out on the nuances of the translation. Since the book is littered with clues that tie in to solve the murders, it was crucial to get the translation to hit that balance between faithfulness to the source and relatability to the English language, and I felt that was truly achieved in this work.

I went ahead and read The Labyrinth House Murders by him last month but that one was third in the series and had references to The Mill House Murders. So I have decided to review The Mill House Murders first before giving you the details of the third book in the series. I mean, we have all been there, right? Reading a sequel before the previous book in the series? No? Just me? Okay.

A strong sense of deja vu is at the centre of the author’s works but in The Mill House Murders this is magnified tenfold. The mystery of two murders and a disappearance is expected to be solved exactly a year after the fact when the key characters of the incident gather at the scene of the crime again. The story is otherwise peppered with accidents and deaths beyond the ones they gather to solve.

I really like the ingenious ways the author transforms any location into the setting for a locked-room mystery. In this book, this is set up with a heavy storm and the only connecting road washed away. It also helps that the Mill House of the book is situated in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mountains and forests.

This plot harks back to a set of crimes committed a year ago when Shimada’s friend disappeared without a trace. Shimada appears on the anniversary of the incident to find out the truth behind the events of that fateful day. His other connection to the case lies in the fact that the Mill House is designed by the famed Nakamura Seiji, architect of the Blue House and Decagonal House in The Decagon House Murders.

The master of the house is wheelchair-bound with a mask and gloves on him perpetually. Married to a young beautiful woman who he keeps locked up in the isolated house, the he is a recluse. All of his peculiar behaviour can be traced back to the unfortunate car accident that he was involved in and that resulted in the death of his friend’s fiancé.

The fact that the master’s father was none other than the prominent artist who had enchanted his fans and critics alike by his dream-like paintings only adds to the complexity of the mystery. Following his retreat to this mountain mansion, the master of the house had tracked down and bought all of his father’s collection and locked it all up away from the public eye. The yearly gathering that forms the premise of this story is actually the once-a-year meeting of the admirers of his father’s works to experience the art in person on the anniversary of the artist’s death.

If you pay attention to the numerous details in the plot, you would figure out how cleverly the threads of the mystery are laid to form the central knot. I would have been pretty tickled by the sheer ingenuity by it all if it wasn’t all so similar to the other works in the series by the author. But am I still up for reading the rest of the translated books in the series by Yukito Ayatsuji? Absolutely.

Stay tuned for more book reviews of Yukito Ayatsuji and Japanese murder mystery in general.

You can grab your copy of The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji here.

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Have you read any of the books in The Bizarre House Mysteries yet? Or any other Japanese murder mysteries with a secret floor plan in it? What are your thoughts on them?

Feel free to drop a comment or reach out to me across social media at @thecalcuttanbibliophile. I would love to hear from you.