Death Among the Undead / 屍人荘の殺人

Sometimes it feels like orthodox detective stories belong to a dead genre. The "Golden Age" came and went a century ago, and that really does seem like it was the perfect time period for classic puzzle plots. Forensics could provide basic information about a crime, but technology hadn't progressed so far that nearly any physical trace could blow a trick wide open. Plus, as the genre has developed and readers have become more savvy, it's become more and more difficult to develop original tricks that will surprise and delight readers.

But then every once in a while you get a work like Imamura Masahiro's debut novel Death Among the Undead which, through sheer originality and style, kindles hope that the genre can be reanimated.

The book follows Hamura Yuzuru, who functions as the Watson to the self-proclaimed "Holmes of Shinkou University," Akechi Kyousuke. Due to several mysterious happenings surrounding the university film club Akechi desperately wants to join their summer retreat, but he's rejected by the club president. However, Kenzaki Hiruko, a student who has actually solved several real cases, approaches Hamura and Akechi with a deal: she will take them to the retreat, as long as they don't ask her why. Obviously, Akechi accepts. As the trio travels together on the summer break, Hamura finds himself caught between two great detec—wait, this sounds familiar...

Anyway, since this a detective story, you already know what happens next. People start dying, and the cast gets trapped at the lodge where they're staying. You'd think at some point the scenario of "university mystery club goes on a summer trip, gets stranded, encounters a murder mystery" would get stale... but it doesn't! Probably because having the characters discuss detective fiction at the start of a book is a clear way for the author to signal to the reader that, yes, don't worry, I know how real detective fiction works, and this isn't going to turn into some lame thriller. But I digress.

This is the moment where the sheer originality of Death Among the Undead comes into play. But... I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's not a huge spoiler, since it's literally the premise of the book, and the chances that the average reader of this review will ever read the book are probably slim (unless it ever gets translated UPDATE: which it has). But the Japanese marketing hides the premise, and maybe it would be more fun to go in unaware. If you desperately need to know, I've put a little puzzle at the end of this review. All I'm going to say on the matter is that the reason the characters are trapped at the lodge is wholly original (for detective fiction), and completely shapes the course of the rest of the book.

So you have an incredibly unique event, and murders happen during it. I think there could be a concern that the event overshadows all else in the book, but I think the novel does a good job balancing things. While there are certainly segments where the event takes center stage, it only does so to the extent necessary to set the stage for the murder mystery.

Fortunately, the mystery is pretty good. A unique premise is nice, but it doesn't mean much if the plot can't make use of it. And this book does! I always appreciate it when a murder mystery takes advantage of its unique premise or setting, and the event is deeply connected to every murder in the book. The tricks are all clever, and every clue is presented clearly and fairly. Imamura does a fantastic job creating a mystery in a nonstandard situation. Mysteries can operate under any "ruleset," as long as the audience is aware of the "ruleset" in play. Imamura makes sure we get all the information we need about the event to play fair.

Of course, that doesn't make the book perfect. A large part of the solution relies on coincidence that is juuust past the acceptable allowance for murder mysteries. The novel hides clues from the reader that the characters have access to in a silly and annoying way. Not enough to make me feel bitter, but certainly enough that I rolled my eyes. While the tricks are all solid and clever, there are none that I felt were mind-bendingly brilliant. (Although I would call the idea of using the event in a murder mystery and the way Imamura fully integrated the event into the mystery brilliant.)

There's also a bizarre locked room lecture in the middle of the book. Locked room lectures are fine, but the issue is that the room in question is an auto-locking hotel room. The main question posed by a locked room is usually how the culprit escaped, which isn't much of an issue when the door just locks itself. And even if you look at it from the entry angle, that also doesn't seem like a stumper when the setting is a bunch of friends on vacation together. There are intriguing elements surrounding the room in question, but the term "locked room" doesn't quite fit the situation; it feels like Imamura just wanted to use that buzzword. On the flipside, the book has a second lecture about the event that I found quite interesting.

Speaking of the event, it's never fully explained. Death Among the Undead sometimes dips its toes into other genres as necessary for its setting, but at its core it's a murder mystery and nothing else. The explanation and backstory behind the event is not the point of the book, so the book doesn't provide them. We learn a bit about the instigator of the event and their motives, but we're mostly left in the dark. The event is there not to provide a secondary genre, but solely to create the setting for the mystery. If you're interested in the event for its own sake this might be disappointing, but I read the book solely for its mystery, so I didn't particularly care and found the information that was given sufficient.

The cast is decent, with an eclectic mix of sufficiently abrasive personalities. The names are all silly puns that wouldn't be out of place in an Ace Attorney game (and the book even explicitly runs through them), letting you know that these are mere puppets here to act out a murder show, not real people. And yet I found all the silliness gave the characters a breath of life that many murder mystery casts lack. The most enjoyable characters are probably the protagonists; as a mystery nerd, it's just plain fun to see other mystery nerds nerd out over mysteries.

Overall, Death Among the Undead is a fantastic, unique, well-plotted mystery. When mysteries get too "out there" they sometimes stop playing fair, but Death Among the Undead manages to remain a proper orthodox murder mystery the whole way through. While there isn't one particular stand-out trick, the consistently high quality of the tricks throughout the entire story within the unique setting is amazing. Death Among the Undead is a book to read, if you can.

And if you can't... there's a movie. Surprise bonus review!

The movie is... adequate. It's about the level you'd expect of a competent adaptation. Which is to say the book is still a lot better. But the movie does accurately depict the heart of the book's story, so it's at least better than nothing.

There are two main issues with the film version. First, the fact that the film moves on its own pace prevents you, the viewer, from having time to fully internalize and ponder the mystery. The other issue is that cuts had to be made, since there was apparently too much in the book. Characters are incessantly speaking really fast for most of the film's solid two-hour runtime, yet despite the amount of dialogue they were able to cram in entire plot points and sub-mysteries still had to be completely dropped. In some cases, things were literally condensed: the titular "House of Death" is three stories in the book but two in the movie. Of course, pacing and cuts are extremely common problems in detective films and movie adaptations in general.

Once you look past those two issues, it's a decent adaptation. Even though some things were cut, as I said, the movie still retains the core story and mystery. Beyond the cuts, there were naturally a number of smaller changes to the parts that were left in. I think a plurality of the changes made things slightly worse, but there were still plenty of changes that were improvements or that didn't matter much. Plus, none of those changes were major in either direction. There's no singular change or error to point to that ruined the movie or anything.

The casting and set was on-point. Despite all its drawbacks, the big advantage of film (and TV shows) is that we get to see everything play out. The "House of Death" is lavish, the perfect setting for a gruesome, isolated murder mystery. The cast, especially the main trio, brings a lighthearted energy perfect for a mystery that's all about the puzzle and not the dreadful drama of death. The movie also changes the background of some characters to make the cast a bit more diverse than just a bunch of college kids.

The last thing to mention about the movie is that, whenever somebody dies, the film shows the moment of impact with an x-ray effect. (Think Mortal Kombat.) This was obviously done to keep the rating down, and it looks pretty silly... but I at least respect the movie for following through on this for every death over the course of the entire movie, rather than doing it for the first few and then just forgetting about it.

Death Among the Undead is a really cool mystery that's worth experiencing in one form or another. With the book being the much-preferred form. This might just be wishful thinking, but considering Death Among the Undead won a ton of awards, was big enough to get a movie, and has no Japanese cultural or language elements in its plot or solution, I think there's actually a decent chance it could end up translated. My recommendation: set a reminder in a few years, read this if it's been translated by then, otherwise just watch the movie.

And if you want to know what the big "event" is, it's—

3-1-5-3, 8-1-1-1, 1-3-5-6, 7-2-6-1, 4-1-5-7, 1-1-1-4, 5-1-2-2.

(UPDATE: The book has indeed been translated. And after all the effort I put into the review not to spoil the twist in the premise, the English title just puts it right out there... Well, that's how it goes, I suppose. I updated the title from "Murders at the House of Death" to "Death Among the Undead" but have not otherwise modified the review.)