The Butterfly Murder Case was the second Yokomizo novel I read, but, in full disclosure, I’ve read a few more between completing the book and actually writing the review. So I don’t think it means nothing when I say Butterfly is my favorite Yokomizo novel so far. It’s a simple but solid murder mystery… although I feel a bit bad calling it “simple” when the victim is a prima donna who loves the dramatic.
A theater troupe, which is based in Tokyo, has a performance in Osaka. But the leading soprano, Sakura Hara, travels ahead with her husband and her protégé, and disappears after checking into her hotel. She doesn't show up at rehearsal, while the bass player complains that his instrument was never delivered. Someone eventually realizes that a bass case has been placed near the entrance, but when the bass player goes to retrieve his instrument, he discovers the case instead contains Sakura's corpse on a bed of roses. (She’s fully clothed, by the way—I have no idea why she’s depicted as naked on the cover.)
Unlike The Village of Eight Graves, which is more of an adventure novel, Butterfly is a fully fledged murder mystery. Although it might not be entirely fair-play. Yokomizo himself seems to have realized this, since in his Challenge to the Reader he admits he’s not sure he’s as fair as Ellery Queen.
Yokomizo has been described as the Agatha Christie of Japan, and this book really reinforced that moniker for me. Maybe the book isn’t totally fair, and perhaps it has “a” solution rather than “the” solution, but the solution still feels satisfactory and the murder plot feels like it was crafted to succeed, not to be solved—all like Christie.
Butterfly features nice misdirection, a neat trick, and a fair amount of content packed into what ends up being a relatively short scenario. The investigation ends up straddling both Osaka and Tokyo, which I thought was a fun change of pace since mysteries tend to close themselves off in a confined location rather than open themselves up.
On the other hand, some of Professor Yuri’s deductions are a bit… bad. Specifically, he tends to make broad, sweeping assumptions about people without any actual proof. “Oh, I didn’t suspect them because they have such an honest, forthright personality.” What kind of basis for solving a mystery is that? Professor Yuri might be a magically accurate judge of personality, but are we expected to be too? The motive was also pretty wishy-washy, although that’s typically the component of the crime I’m most willing to hand-wave, so not a major point.
Like many modern reprints of Yokomizo’s shorter novels, Butterfly came bundled with two short stories. Unfortunately, neither was any good.
The first story, Spider and Lily, isn’t even really a mystery. It’s just stuff that happens. So mainly a bore.
The second story, Rose and Tulip, is a bit more mysterious than Spider and Lily, but it’s still leaning heavily into thriller territory, it’s not fair-play, and the plot trajectory becomes obvious early on (which is not good when you’re trying to be suspenseful). Yuri and Shunsuke Mitsugi (Yuri’s Watson) barely do anything.
The cardinal sin of Rose and Tulip is the fact that it tries to recreate the famous wine scene from The Princess Bride (we’re going to ignore the fact that Rose and Tulip came first), but with a lame and ridiculous result. The drug/poison used in Rose and Tulip can also only be described as “magic.”
The Butterfly Murder Case is a decent novel from Yokomizo that can serve as a nice change of pace from Kindaichi, but feel free to skip the included short stories.
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