My mother and I have been reading Seishi Yokomizo's Detective Kindaichi Mysteries together whenever we go on long trips, and we just finished one yesterday. This particular novel contained two of his shorter stories including the "Murder at the Black Cat Café" and "Why The Well Wheel Creaked." Mr. Yokomizo's writing style is fascinating and quite unique. The second novel is an especially neat example. The detective himself barely features at all except in so much that he had figured out the truth and passed the case on to his friend / biographer to share. Before him came the little star of the story, a frail young girl who is writing a series of letters to her similarly invalid brother recovering in a Tuberculosis Hospital. What starts as mostly local gossip and news about their family and neighbors becomes increasingly more frantic as a deadly case of betrayal, jealousy, and mis-identity occurs at home. As her worst fears are realized, the reader is then introduced to the series of newspaper clippings from the days surrounding the gruesome incident. Then at last, we learn what she had already realized, a gut-wrenching and entirely unexpected truth. Both my mom and I were crying at the end of her final letter and I don't cry at books very often. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Mr. Yokomizo's writing style is that it initially comes across as so very deceptively simple. The short, generally simple sentences and almost quaint nature of the mysteries as you are introduced to them leads the reader astray into thinking they are looking at a rather cliche story. Husband killed his wife to run away with the mistress. Illegitimate son killed the legitimate son out of jealousy. It's all so terribly simple that you don't realize until the bitter end that Mr. Yokomizo is the master of red herrings and everything is so much more nefarious than you imagined. It's like you started as a fairly cozy mystery and then suddenly rammed into a dark thriller right at the end. I suppose some may compare him to Agatha Christie, but I think he actually does a better job at leading the reader astray and at revealing the darkness and self-centered nature of his true criminals. Unfortunately, you don't always get a happy or satisfactory ending. . . but you do get an excellent mystery! #SeishiYokomizo #JapaneseMystery #DetectiveNovel #MysteryNovel #MysterySeries #DetectiveSeries