The Village of Eight Graves

The Village of Eight Graves is yet another mystery novel featuring our favorite scruffy detective, Kosuke Kindaich. Like his other cases, this one takes place in post-WWII Japan and features a dysfunctional family (the Tajimi). Perhaps to add variety to what could have been a formulaic exercise of writing detective fiction, Kindaichi is actually a rather marginal character in this novel. The narrator, and central character, is the illegitimate child of the previous head of the Tajimi family, a man whose murderous spree fueled the superstitions of the villagers. See, in the late 16th century, the residents of Eight Graves had massacred a samurai and his retainers but failed to locate the gold they brought with them. So, this novel uses the backdrop of the legend of the missing gold and the belief in a curse on the Tajimi family for their role in the massacre of the samurai to blend elements of adventure fiction with a detective story. It usually works, surprisingly, but since the narrator is a character not privy to the investigation of Kindaichi, the detective's role in the story is a little disappointing. Further, the mystery of the "whodunit" was a little underwhelming since the readers are mainly receiving their information and clues from a protagonist often committing his own amateurish investigating. This uneven attempt at balancing a mystery novel and an adventure novel certainly deserves points for effort, but does not quite deliver on either end. That said, the mystery element here did bring back fond memories of Agatha Christie's The A.B.C. Murders. But for those who prefer their sleuth being more central to the narrative, this one was weaker than some of the other translated Kindaichi novels.