Translated by Jim Rion — In January, we reviewed Strange Pictures by surrealist Japanese YouTuber and dapper mask-wearer Uketsu. That was the author’s second novel, and now his debut, Strange Houses, has also been translated into English. Focusing on the disturbing hidden meanings that can lie behind innocuous-seeming floorplans, it provides architectural insight into the darkest crevasses of the human mind.
A freelance writer specialising in the macabre – a fictionalised Uketsu taking on a starring role – is contacted by Yanaoka, a friend interested in buying a certain house on a quiet residential street in Saitama, suburban Tokyo. It’s the perfect property save for one thing: there’s an inexplicable dead space on the floorplan. Unsettled by this architectural oddity, Yanaoka seeks the advice of the writer, an aficionado of all things weird.
In turn, the writer contacts another friend, Kurihara, who happens to be both an architect and a horror and mystery buff. Kurihara agrees that there is something distinctly odd about the floorplan. After a bit of back and forth on the matter, the pair hit upon a frankly diabolical explanation for the internal layout of the house.
However, before the writer can investigate things further, news breaks that a dismembered body has been found near the house and Yanaoka decides that it’s not the property for him, whatever the reason behind the dead space. Despite his advice no longer being required, Uketsu cannot forget about the odd house and so writes an article describing the strange floorplan, omitting the address of the house.
The article draws a great deal of interest, most notably from a woman named Yuzuki Miyae, who claims to know the house in question. As the writer establishes a rapport with Miyae, he learns that he and Kurihara are not the only ones with suspicions about the house and what might have gone on there. As he investigates further, the true horror of what might have occurred slowly emerges.
Strange Houses is another masterclass in the macabre from Uketsu. While Strange Pictures used a set of perturbing illustrations to tell a series of interlocking stories, Strange Houses relies of some peculiar floorplans as the entry point for a subversive story of what goes on behind closed doors in suburbia. Once again, the mundane becomes disquieting and regular folks seem to be harbouring sinister secrets.
The use of floorplans as a storytelling device is inspired, bringing the key settings to life in vivid and disturbing detail and fostering an immersive atmosphere of unease as each new deviation from a normal house – however small and seemingly benign – is noticed. As Uketsu and Kurihara study the plans with increasing focus, teasing out the details and every potential explanation for them, they build a picture of the former residents.
While the floorplan was a staple of Golden Age crime fiction, particularly in cases of country house and locked-room mysteries, it has rather fallen out of favour as a tool for unravelling a literary puzzle in recent years. Uketsu does a great service to the genre in bringing it back and pushing it to the extreme of its storytelling potential, elucidating how the visual aspects of a crime scene can be subtly but powerfully evoked to enhance the narrative dimensions.
Still, despite the clear homage to the golden age of murder, Strange Houses doesn’t exactly play fair when it comes to the puzzle mystery. While the writer and Kurihara build their case logically for the most part, their initial suspicion as to the purpose of the house is based on a quite outrageous – if not totally bonkers – leap of logic that captures their interest and points them in the necessary direction.
As such, a considerable suspension of disbelief is required at the outset, but the subsequent investigation is so intriguing – and the steady reveal of potential suspects, motivations and clues so compelling – that it is easy to look beyond this issue and go with the flow of the story. This is helped by Strange Houses being a short novel that is heavy on dialogue and graphics and light on exposition, which lends it a rapid pace.
The sense of dread that permeates the story is equally as engaging as the details of the plot, with Uketsu simultaneously building a horrifying premise and establishing a prosaic setting. Against this unsettling backdrop, the clues and the actions of the characters both inform and wrongfoot the would-be detective, rendering Strange Houses a creepy and complex puzzle mystery that almost defies explanation.
For more Japanese crime fiction, try The Labyrinth House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji and The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani.
Pushkin Vertigo
Print/Kindle
£6.99
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
