Strange Houses
by Paula Messina
Strange Houses by Uketsu is
one strange book. I can imagine English teachers throughout the country hurling
it against a wall and screaming, “There’s no character development.”
They’d be right.
There’s also no plot, setting, or the requisite digging for clues in a mystery.
But that’s mere
quibbling.
After all, who
needs plot, character, and setting when the reader has Uketsu?
Houses isn’t nearly as
strange as the writer. Well, that might be nitpicking. Both book and writer are
bizarre. The strangest thing of all is that I, a connoisseur of the those
typical requirements -- you know, plot, character, setting – for labeling a
manuscript a novel, especially character development, read through to the end.
Truth is I’m a
sucker for books with pictures. Houses has a ton of them, so many that
it’s probably a novella disguised as a novel.
The “About the
Author” at the back of the book states that Uketsu “only ever appears online,
wearing a mask and speaking through a voice changer.” He has 1.5 million
followers, and his mysteries have sold “nearly 3 million copies in Japan since
2021.”
His real name
and identity are unknown. In the lower right hand corner of the book’s cover,
there’s a minuscule photo of Uketsu wearing a white mask. Well, we’re supposed
to believe it’s the author. It could be anyone wearing a mask, or a badly
carved pumpkin, or Angelina Jolie getting a facial. Take your pick.
According to
Wikipedia, “Uketsu's fiction blends conventional prose with visual elements
(drawings, diagrams, floor plans) that are presented as clues within the text.”
Indeed, Houses is replete with renderings of different houses that
harbored murderers. In one sense, those drawings are reminiscent of the Golden
Age mysteries that contained maps or layouts of buildings. Those drawings were
never the focus of the story. They were visual aids. Uketsu’s renderings are
vital to the story.
I question that
Uketsu uses “conventional prose.” In fact, there is little prose for most of
the book. Instead, there’s lots of dialogue that is presented in a format
reminiscent of a play minus stage directions.
As for setting,
yes, the book is about houses, but they are explored as architectural
renderings or through dialogue, not as environments occupied by characters.
The story begins
when a friend calls the unidentified narrator—is he Uketsu?—to say he’s
considering buying a house. However there’s something odd about it. It has an
inaccessible space in the kitchen, a space that could not possibly serve any
purpose. The friend is wisely leery about moving in any time soon.
The narrator
agrees to investigate. He doesn’t put on his deerstalker hat and grab a
magnifying glass. No. He calls Kurihara, “a draughtsman with a prestigious
architectural firm.” Through Kurihara’s amazing powers of deduction, the
narrator learns that many other aspects of the house are weird. The strangest
aspect of all is that it’s a charnel house.
I’m positive
Kurihara will never replace Sherlock Holmes as the world’s most beloved
detective. Sherlock was a genius, but he worked to solve his capers. Kurihara,
on the other hand, has an uncanny ability to discover a house’s secrets by
simply looking at its layout. He never tests his hypotheses, and he’s never in
doubt. If he were a professional baseball player, his end-of-season batting
average would be one thousand. Not even the Babe achieved that record.
Back to that
inaccessible space. Kurihara quickly determines its use without considering and
rejecting other possibilities. For example, maybe the husband wanted a
dumbwaiter so he wouldn’t have to carry his late-night snacks upstairs. Or the
wife wanted shelves for her cookbooks and changed her mind. Kurihara simply
knows the space’s purpose.
Armed with
Kurihara’s insight, the narrator, a freelance writer, does what any writer in
that circumstance would do. He writes an article about the strange house his
friend is leery of buying.
And then a body
is found. Missing a left hand.
Yuzuki Miyae,
the wife of the dead man, approaches the narrator. With her input, the narrator
connects the house to the Katabuchi family. A series of houses and the gruesome
details of that family’s curse begin to unfold.
It was difficult
to keep all the names straight. Many begin with the same letter, which can be
confusing even when the names are familiar. At least Kurihara is not a member
of the Katabuchi family. The friend who got the ball rolling at the beginning
of the story is Yanaoka. Yuzuki’s mother is Yoshie. It’s enough to make a
reader yell, “Try some other letters of the alphabet.”
Strange Houses, as much as it
examines anything, examines what happens when a family believes it’s been
cursed and must go to extremes to maintain its status. Uketsu likes to pepper
his work with drawings. It would have been beneficial if he’d included one
more, a road map so the reader could keep straight all the Katabuchi
generations and their efforts to save the family’s status. He piled twist upon
twist to tie up all the loose ends. By the time I approached the finale, I
needed a stiff drink.
Strange Houses was translated
by Jim Rion. The cover states that it is “the chilling Japanese mystery
sensation.” I wouldn’t describe it as chilling. I’m not sure it qualifies as a
mystery sensation either. It’s all talk and little action. The narrator and
Kurihara never step foot in one of those strange houses. Kurihara’s analysis of
those architectural drawings is pretty much the sum and substance of the
detecting. The great reveal is a long narration. The many twists at the end
were a bit overwhelming.
I’m glad I read Houses.
It’s an intriguing writing experiment of how far an author can go and still
maintain reader interest. And sell enough copies to make most writers jealous.
Readers who like the unusual will enjoy this book. More conventional readers
might find it annoying.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4sC5BND
Paula Messina ©2026
Paula Messina is writing an historical mystery set in Boston’s North End. Donatello Laguardia, the WIP’s main character, solves crimes in Devil’s Snare and Snakeberry. Her contemporary fiction appears in Black Cat Weekly, The Ekphrastic Review, THEMA, and Wolfsbane. And yes, her Donatello Laguardia stories have recurring characters.
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