The Mill House Murders is the sequel to Ayatsuji Yukito's Decagon House Murders, and once again features our unlikely detective Shimada Kiyoshi looking into a series of murders that takes place in a home made by the eccentric late architect Nakamura Seiji.
While The Decagon House Murders is a classic in Japanese mystery fiction that is credited with starting the 'shin-honkaku' movement, I didn't like it very much, for reasons I will touch upon later in this review. But Mill House Murders was fantastic, providing a satisfying resolution to a long string of mysterious events at a nearly perfect level of cluing.
Fujinuma Kiichi is the son of the late artist Fujinuma Issei. However, after an accident leaves Kiichi paralyzed and disfigured, he retreats from the world to live in the Mill House, an isolated mansion designed by Nakamura Seiji and powered by three large waterwheels, with his servants and Yurie, the daughter of Issei's deceased disciple under Kiichi's care, and whom Kiichi eventually marries.
Kiichi also begins to buy all of his father's works and hoard them in his house. The art world does not take kindly to losing the talented Issei's amazing art, so as a compromise, on one day each year Kiichi allows a select few guests to visit the Mill House and view Issei's paintings. All is well (or at least as well as can be, given the circumstances) until one year, when people start dying and art starts disappearing.
The chapters in Decagon House alternate between the events taking place on Tsunojima Island and the mainland. Mill House has a similar structure, but rather than alternating between locations, it alternates between two different dates: September 28, 1985 and September 28, 1986. We witness a snippet of the events of 1985, and then in 1986 we hear the characters' recollections and feelings on those events. It's an interesting effect that almost plays out like running commentary.
When the smoke clears in 1985, there are a couple of corpses, and one guest, Furukawa Tsunehito, and one painting have disappeared. As a result, everyone simply assumes that Furukawa committed the murders, stole the painting, and ran away. Furukawa, however, is Shimada's friend, and Shimada just doesn't think Furukawa is capable of those things. As a result, Shimada visits the Mill House in 1986 to learn the truth of the events of 1985. He doesn't care about bringing the true culprit to justice or anything, he just doesn't want to have to think of his friend as a thief and murderer.
The main reason I wasn't a huge fan of Decagon House was because it only had "a" solution (which readers of this blog will know is a huge pet peeve of mine). Although only the murderer could have pulled off the trick at the core of the solution, before the denouement there is nothing to disprove alternate theories. In fact, near the end of Decagon House, the characters explicitly walk through how each character could have pulled off all the murders.
In contrast, the scenario in Mill House only has room for one solution. Everything is clued, and those clues work together to form one undeniable conclusion. In the afterword, Ayatsuji says that he intended Decagon House to be a test between the author and reader, while Mill House was supposed to be a more classically-styled puzzle plot. In this latter respect, he succeeds. All the clues for the solution are there. In fact, most readers who attempt to solve Mill House will probably succeed! From that point of view, maybe you could call Mill House too "easy," but the clues are subtle enough that you'll feel like a genius once you get it. Mill House strikes the perfect balance of being solvable without feeling like the answer was just handed to you.
There are a couple of parts to the solution that are just a bit too subtle, but the main shape of the answer is more than fair. Also, the story feels slightly too reliant on luck. Usually when a murder mystery is reliant on luck, it's because the villain gets lucky in carrying out their murder. But in Mill House, it's the opposite: innocent witnesses just happen to be in or look at the right place at the exact right time to witness something important. But these are basically the only faults I can find in the book, and they're pretty minor.
The Mill House Murders is a fantastic book, keeping tensions high with an onslaught of mysterious happenings, and then explaining them all with a solution that threads the needle of being fair without being obvious. I definitely recommend this book to any and all fans of classic detective fiction.
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