Murder at the Black Cat Café by Seishi Yokomizo

Seishi Yokomizo was a mid century Japanese crime writer. He began writing a Western-style detective series in 1946 with the book The Honjin Murders. This book featured Sherlock Holmes-style consulting detective Kosuke Kindaichi. The series ran to 77 cases, until just before Yokomizo’s death in 1981. Kindaichi has, as a result, appeared in numerous films, TV series and manga. Some of this series have already been translated into English but not in the order that they were published. Murder at the Black Cat Café is the third case in the series but the seventh to be translated (by Bryan Karetnyk).

Murder at the Black Cat Café is introduced by Kandaichi’s chronicler (his ‘Watson’, although the writer does not participate in the investigation). It tells of a letter and pile of documents sent to him which detail Kandaichi’s solving of a ‘faceless corpse’ case. Kandaichi says has already solved a ‘locked room’ mystery and was keen to have a ‘faceless corpse’ case, as detailed in some of the famous detective novels and was lucky to run across one. The story itself revolves around the uncovering of a faceless female body in the garden of the Black Cat Café in a small town outside of Tokyo. The police think that they know what trick is trying to be pulled before Kandaichi arrives and unravels a more complex and diabolical plot.

Murder at the Black Cat Café is absolutely classic mid-century crime fiction using the templates laid down by the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. But Yokomizo puts his own Japanese spin on the prevailing tropes. So while there is a mystery to be solved, Yokomizo is also using the genre exploring the world of post-war Tokyo in which there was still a fair amount of privation and Japanese people who fled to China during the war were returning. And while it all seems a little staid, given the amount of crime fiction that has followed, it very much needs to be read considering its context and used to consider how effectively these forms translated to enable authors to explore their time and place.

Murder at the Black Cat Cafe by Seishi Yokomizo

7.5

7.5/10