Death on Gokumon Island (Pushkin Vertigo) (Detective Kindaichi Mysteries): Seishi Yokomizo

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We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. You expect a certain amount of clashing cultural mores when you read a book that was written over fifty years before, but when I read Agatha Christie, for instance, it's usually just small stuff you can roll your eyes at and be like, ugh you dumb people in the past, but here (and in most of the books in this series so far) the sexism gets in the way of good storytelling. 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). Due to the danger involved in the fishing trade, citizens of the island are extremely religious, bestowing the priest with a tremendous amount of power. It turns out that Kindaichi, a friend of Chimata, had come to Gokumon-to let the Kito family know of his death aboard a transport ship just a month earlier.

The isolated fishing island and its rugged landscape provided a suitably desolate backdrop for the unfolding events. Over the last four years, Pushkin Press has translated four of his mysteries, most recently Death on Gokumon Island, the second book overall in Yokomizo’s Kosuke Kindaichi series. Because there is a deeply unpleasant truth I must face in reviewing this book: I love a puzzle so much that, when I'm offered it wrapped in enough sweetly seductive mystery, I will just keep reading and ignore my squicked-out "but this is appalling! Another classic Japanese murder mystery with Kosuke who reminds me a lot of TV detective Columbo is that he is always described as scruffy and those people who are guilty are derisive of his keen mind.I was pleasantly surprised and found myself liking what happened in here even if it's brief but I LOVE IT! But unbeknownst to his family, the victim warned Kindaichi with his dying breath that his three step-sisters’ lives would now be in grave danger.

It is a wonderful antidote to the genre that noir readers have grown accustomed to — a story about serial murders that believes in the possibility of a better future. Then there is also the prevalence of Western clothing with only priests, and strong, stubborn people still adopting traditional dress.The plotting is complex, the characters are interesting, both individually and in relationship to others. 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. The merest tinge of remorse, it seems to me, was plastered like a too-small figleaf over the fact that the whole crime.