A family gathering. A lavish venue. Celebrations at midnight. Sound familiar? With New Year’s Eve only just in the rear-view mirror, I suspect it might. I’m going to hazard a guess, though, that your festivities didn’t culminate in the golden child stepping into the living room, knife in hand, announcing: “I’ve stabbed Grandpa to death.” As mood-killers go, it would be a doozy. And indeed it is in Shizuko Natsuki’s “rediscovered” Japanese crime classic Murder at Mount Fuji.
From the set-up alone, we know that we’re in for a treat. The remote mansion, the complex family dynamics, the looming question of what has actually happened to the family patriarch, Yohei Wada. For fans of a murder mystery, it’s familiar in all the right ways, and with the falling snow and the towering mountain serving as a backdrop, it’s not a novel that struggles for ambience. What’s perhaps less familiar, however, is how we see the caper play out.
More often than not a whodunnit will involve a detective visiting the crime scene after the events have taken place with the reader peering over their shoulder as they piece together the solution. This is perhaps the trickiest part for a reader and a writer. We know to expect a chapter at the end in which the murderer is unmasked and the crime is laid out, but with the action effectively behind us, how does the story keep up the tension while the hero gathers clues and interviews suspects?
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Enter our protagonist in Murder at Mount Fuji, the American exchange student Jane Prescott. Invited to join the festivities by her friend Chiyo — the angelic daughter who has supposedly murdered her grandfather — we watch through Jane’s eyes as the family close ranks to cover up the crime. We see footsteps being planted in the snow, meals being ordered from a local restaurant and a particularly grisly scene involving the corpse and a feeding tube to create the perfect alibi. The result is that when the police do eventually arrive the reader is privy to the efforts that would often be saved for that climactic final chapter.
It’s a clever way of keeping things dangerous. Not least because as we watch the unwilling Jane being dragged deeper and deeper into this conspiracy we know somewhere in the back of our minds we’re still watching a murderer at work. Kind, sweet Chiyo can’t really be the killer, can she? There must be more going on, and as the story unfolds the various twists and reveals land in a satisfying fashion.
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It’s a fascinating lens through which to view the investigation and perhaps this is why Murder at Mount Fuji has garnered such respect. Natsuki (1938-2016) wrote more than 80 novels and short-story collections, establishing herself as a prolific mystery writer and earning the title of Japan’s Queen of Crime. And yet Murder at Mount Fuji, published in 1982, took on a life of its own, becoming not only the first of Natsuki’s novels to be translated into English, but also being adapted six times for film and TV.
Now, with Japanese crime fiction enjoying a surge in popularity among British readers, it stands deservedly alongside classics such as The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo and Lady Joker by Kaoru Takamura. Perhaps Murder at Mount Fuji’s longevity is down to more than just its plot, though.
As with any good mystery, it’s a book that has plenty to say. “To put the matter bluntly,” Jane is cheerfully told of the Wada family men, “we’re lechers. It seems to be some sort of unfortunate inherited trait that has been handed down in the family.” Far from just a passing comment, this assessment sets a dark tone for the mystery that follows.
Whatever the reason, what matters is it’s here — a rediscovered classic for us all to enjoy. So happy new year, everyone, and here’s hoping it gets off to a better start than for the members of the Wada family.
Tom Hindle’s new novel, A Killer in Paradise, is out on Jan 15
Murder at Mount Fuji by Shizuko Natsuki (Cornerstone £9.99). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
AloJapan.com