And yet, with the help of Kosuke’s unexpectedly light and compassionate disposition, the novel ultimately reads as optimistic, focused on the rebuilding of a community after the decisions of people far away have thrown ordinary citizens’ lives into disarray. Chimata-san had in fact asked Kindaichi to go to Gokumon and save his three stepsisters whom he believed would be killed once he is dead. Loosely inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None , the fiendish Death on Gokumon Island is perhaps the most highly regarded of all the great Seishi Yokomizo's classic Japanese mysteries. One women remains alive and more or less healthy at the novel's end, but she's the outlier—and her prospects aren't that great either.

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He makes for an interesting character dressed in (unusual for the time) traditional Japanese clothing with a crumpled felt hat on his head; ordinary, almost undistinguished to look at, of slight build and dark complexion but a thick ‘nest’ of hair on his head.

There are some emotional moments here as he met a person from the past, this showed how he remembered people he met in his life and I appreciate this side of him so much (*cries). The setting has an ominous, unsettling vibe to it since the island was formerly a place of exile for criminals and a stronghold for pirates…which made the islanders the descendants of pirates and exiled prisoners.Kindaichi is on his way to Gokumon Island to fulfill a promise to a dying comrade, to personally tell that family of his death. Death on Gokumon Island is set in 1946 and I felt this was a really engaging time period to situate the mystery in. Having only read The Village of Eight Graves before this book, I was also pleased at getting to really ‘meet’ Kindaichi and see him in action, as Eight Graves had him mostly on the sidelines and solving the case ‘off the page’. While released in English as the fourth in the series, ‘Death on Gokumon Island’ was actually the second book, taking place nine years after the events of Book One, ‘The Honjin Murders’.

The book begins with Kosuke traveling to Gokumon Island to deliver the news of the death of Chimata Kito, a friend from the war and the only direct male heir of the island’s ruling family. Reflecting on the ending of the mystery as a whole I think there is perhaps some logic and reasoning behind the author’s decision to not have Kindaichi reveal his mission openly until the end, but for the character this action does not make a lot of sense. I think it gives the denouement an ironic twist and reminded me of the work of Francis Iles and Henry Wade.But we do get glimpses of the haiku of the master, Basho Matsuo and his disciple Takarai Kikaku, and the priest Ryonen is given to quoting haiku much of the time, with even macabre seeming choices at some moments. White plaster-walled houses, glowing in the evening sun, were dotted on the hill slopes under a glowering grey sky that seemed ready to attack at any moment.

As Seishi Yokomizo is acknowledged as the King of Golden Age crime fiction in Japan, it’s no surprise that this proved an intricately plotted murder mystery. The Honjin Murders, The Inugami Curse and The Village of Eight Graves are also available from Pushkin Vertigo. Death on Gokumon Island can stand on its own feet without being compared with Christie's masterpiece, this coming from a huge fan of Christie. but fret not, we have our beloved Kindaichi with us to maneuver us to know these characters, particularly the Kaemon's family which are the family we got to know the most in here. Chimata, with his dying breath, urged Kosuke to visit the island himself and told him that his three sisters are now in mortal danger.Y la verdad, no me decepcionó para nada, la historia está buenísima y recién al final uno vislumbra quién es el asesino pero la revelación final tiene varios giros sorprendentes que lo hacen un gran libro de misterio. The protagonist is Kosuke Kindaichi, an eccentric private eye that we’ve met in earlier mysteries by Seishi Yokomizo. But I am fascinated with the way that the novel opens up my understanding of the United States’ postwar noir.