Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Every house hides secrets. But some secrets are far darker than others.”

Strange Houses: The Chilling Japanese Mystery Sensation by Uketsu; translated by Jim Rion

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Strange Houses is the story of an unnamed newspaper reporter who is fascinated by the macabre , being approached by an acquaintance about an eerie house for sale in Tokyo which the acquaintance is thinking of purchasing. It is unclear, is Uketsu writing like he is the reporter, and the book is the article about the events? This is part of what makes this book interesting (also, the fact that Uketsu has never shown his face, and using a voice distorter in all his Youtube […]

A Japanese puzzle mystery I actually managed to figure out!

Newcomer (Kyoichiro Kaga, #2) by Keigo Higashino

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Last year I read Malice, the first book from this series translated into English, and it was so twisty and intriguing, I knew I had to read everything else translated into English by this author. And this second book bodes well. Though I didn’t find it as impactful as Malice, this book makes it clear that Higashino likes to play around with format and do new things with story structure in his books (and tone! this book is much less fucked up than Malice was). […]

What an absolute waste of a great book cover.

Death on Gokumon Island (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #4) by Seishi Yokomizo

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I think I might be done with this series. It’s really lost its charm. I might give it one more go if they translate a fifth book, but it will be by hard copy not by audio. 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 village of hysterical women.

The Village of Eight Graves (Kosuke Kindaichi, #3) by Seishi Yokomizo

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Whaaaat the heck happened here. This was a mess. In fact, I had such a different reading experience with this third translated book in the Kosuke Kindaichi series that I kind of have to wonder if it was me and not the book, since presumably the English publisher chose to translate and publish this one third out of all the many, many available books in the series for a reason (and it’s not third in original publication order). I really wasn’t expecting to have such […]

Triple Cannonballing with one of the cleverest books I’ve ever read. #CBRBINGO – Minds

Malice (Detective Kyoichiro Kaga, #1) by Keigo Higashino

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Well, this was a ride. Malice was one of the most interesting and compelling mysteries I’ve ever read. I love it when authors play with the format of a genre, and that seems to be something Higashino does well. I really can’t say too much about this one without completely spoiling it, but this book’s plot covers the murder and murder investigation of the famous Japanese novelist, Kunihiko Hidaka. The book is told in alternating POVs from Hidaka’s childhood friend, Osamu—who is writing a chronicle of […]

“‘That man’s lying.’ With that, he opened his suitcase and took out a blank telegram. After a few moments, he began to write. KATSUKO DEAD. SEND KINDAICHI.”

The Honjin Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #1) by Seishi Yokomizo

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A clever, meta little Japanese murder mystery, first published in 1946, by a man who was apparently a huge fan of the western Golden Age mystery. This is the first book in the Kosuke Kindaichi series that he wrote dozens of novels for. Kindaichi-san is very unlike his British counterparts, Poirot, Wimsey, or even Marple. He’s very young, and a bit of a slob, but he has a mind for mysteries. Here, he is brought to the scene of a wedding where the bride and […]



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