Set in Gokumon Island which literally means Hell’s Gate Island, Kosuke Kindaichi found himself tangled with the murders of three sisters after he brought the news that their brother had died in a war. Soon the body count starts to mount up as people are murdered in bizarre and seemingly impossible ways. He makes for an interesting character dressed in (unusual for the time) traditional Japanese clothing with a crumpled felt hat on his head; ordinary, almost undistinguished to look at, of slight build and dark complexion but a thick ‘nest’ of hair on his head. It's September, 1946 and as the novel opens, a ferry is making its way to a few different islands in Japan's Seto Inland Sea.

War in the narrative is not glamourised and instead WW2 is regarded as ‘ridiculous’ and a greater focus is put on the devastating effect the conflict has had on the landscape as well as the people. And it took a really long time (I listened to the Audible version, which is well done) for Kosuke to explain it all. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophecy, and to protect the three women if he can. After Kosuke falls under suspicion for his curious demeanor, the lead detective on the island, Shimizu, decides to imprison Kosuke, and only releases him when another murder is committed while he is behind bars. It feels like a funhouse reflection of the American hard-boiled genre — not only are Japanese people grappling with the general trauma of war in these stories, but they are also dealing with the horror of losing said war and enduring nuclear disaster. Our hero detective, Kosuke Kindaichi, arrives at the titular island to inform the family of a deceased comrade of their loss. The branch family consists of Gihei-san, his wife Oshisho, and a handsome former soldier Ukai-san with whom all three of Chimata-san’s sisters seem to flirt.

In this case, Gokumon Island is set 9 years after The Honjin Murders, and after the period of war, in which Kosuke goes on a somewhat secret mission of sorts. Overall, ‘Death on Gokumon Island’ was a delight and certain to please lovers of classic detective fiction.

In the army, he met Chimata, the son of a fishing mogul on the (fictional) Gokumon Island; and Chimata, while not a coward, had a single fear: of dying before getting back home.

There was some suspense and I didn't guess whodunit (nor did I bother to because I was just bored and wanted to be done with). As Seishi Yokomizo is acknowledged as the King of Golden Age crime fiction in Japan, it’s no surprise that this proved an intricately plotted murder mystery. Being set in the period just after the Second World War, the book gives one a good feel of the period.

In Yokomizo’s fiction, we are given a window into the Japanese mentality after the brutality of a war that ended with the dropping of two atomic bombs and a public surrender from Emperor Hirohito. However, drawn by his interest in literature, and the encouragement of Edogawa Rampo (江戸川 乱歩), he went to Tokyo instead, where he was hired by the Hakubunkan publishing company in 1926.