The Village of Eight Graves

This was the first of Yokomizo's Kosuke Kindaichi mysteries I read, despite it being one of the later books in the series AND the fact that the private investigator the series is named for is much more of a side character in this narrative than anything else.

This title has been compared to Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles by critics and standard readers alike, and I can absolutely see why. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed it so much, seeing as Baskervilles is my favorite Sherlock Holmes book, and another of my favorite books entirely. Even apart from the lack of Kindaichi, similar to the lack of Holmes, there are a number of gothic features in the story that the book shares with The Hound of the Baskervilles: family secrets, hidden identities, elements of the supernatural, a dark and foreboding atmosphere, hidden passageways, a haunting of the present by the past.... There was a great number of borderline cliche mystery tropes involved, too, but I don't say that as a criticism; in fact, I found them all very fitting for the story! This book is also one of those mysteries where the murders continue throughout the book, the list of victims growing longer right up until the very end (much like Yukito Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders) - my favorite sort of mystery!

I was actually rather surprised that a number of reviewers were disappointed by the book when comparing it to Yokomizo's The Honjin Murders and The Inugami Curse, when in fact I much preferred The Village of Eight Graves over those two, though they were also interesting. As of writing this, I look forward to reading Death on Gokumon Island, as well as The Devil's Flute Murders, the latest upcoming installment in Pushkin Vertigo's translation of the Kindaichi series. 

(I read much of this one in my car on my lunch breaks.)