Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada
Think you’re up to it? The explicit challenge in Murder in the Crooked House is for the reader to solve the mystery before the grand reveal.
On a snowy plain in northern Hokkaido stands the Ice Floe Mansion: a peculiar glass house with sloping floors, a leaning tower, and a maze-like interior. The reclusive owner invites eight guests to spend Christmas with him - a number that dwindles with murder…
I’ve always loved books in which the author breaks through the fictional world and directly addresses the reader. In Murder in the Crooked House, Soji Shimada makes the challenge clear: “The clues are all there. Can you solve this case?”
And so we enter a game between author and reader. It’s a classic locked-room mystery with a Golden Age vibe and cunningly hidden clues. Shimada expects the reader to pay careful attention, exercise their imagination, and suspend disbelief with gusto. Like a proper nerd, I read the whole thing with a pencil and paper - jotting down clues and theories while slipping left and right on red herrings.
I loved the self-awareness in the narrative. There are references to Sherlock Holmes, Perry Mason, and Edgar Allen Poe. There are warm-up puzzles before the murder. Shimada’s detectives liken their perplexity to fiction: “…it’s starting to get a bit like a murder mystery novel.” And the narrator makes numerous comments on the progress of the narrative: “To bring it to anything but an extraordinary climax would be insulting to the artist who created it.” The resolution is appropriately far-fetched.
Murder in the Crooked House will appeal to fans of Golden Age detective fiction, locked-room mysteries, and cryptic puzzles.
Many thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for my ARC.
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