The standard practice of my reading aloud during dinner prep is on hiatus during the World Cup.1 We’ve been sticking to our usual diet of recent reissues of vintage mysteries, mixed with newer novels written in that mold.
Since 2019, Pushkin Vertigo has been publishing translations of the works of Seishi Yokomizo, one of Japan’s most popular crime novelists. His enduring creation is vagabond private detective Kosuke Kindaichi, whose unkempt appearance leads to him being routinely underestimated Columbo-style. Yokomizo himself turns up, a humble mystery writer who recounts Kindaichi’s most baffling cases as his “official biographer.”
Kindaichi made his debut in The Honjin Murders (1946), a classic locked-room mystery. In Murder at the Black Cat Café (1947, US 2025, translated by Bryan Karetnyk), he tackles another genre staple: the “faceless corpse” murder, in which the victim cannot be identified. Such stories follow a standard formula, but Yokomizo—both novelist and character—opens with a bold meta framing that declares this time will be different. After the owners of the title establishment in Tokyo’s red-light district sell up and disappear, a body is unearthed on the property. Kindaichi investigates, and the solution is indeed suitably devious. “Black Cat” is a novella, short enough to be paired with a second in the same volume. Kindaichi takes a minor role in “Why Did the Well Wheel Creak?” (1949)—it appears Yokomizo revised it in 1955 to add his beloved protagonist—but it’s smartly paired with “Black Cat” for thematic reasons. Relayed through letters and newspaper stories, it’s set in a remote village where the long-standing feud between two families plays out in tragic fashion after World War II. It’s the stronger story in a book that isn’t the ideal introduction to Kindaichi but is a worthy entry in the series.
A Golden Age or Golden Age-style novel will include a certain amount of acceptable artifice. Then there’s the notion that the essays of a literary critic analyzing whodunits can result in “a warm and fluffy feeling each time” a character reads them, that simply whispering that critic’s name can make her “heart flutter.” Such is the world of Masateru Konishi’s My Grandfather, The Master Detective (2023, US 2026, translated by Louise Heal Kawai). A smash hit in Japan, this odd, engaging collection of six linked short stories combines the traditional mystery with the subgenre known as healing fiction. Kaede, she of the fluttering heart, is an introverted twenty-seven-year-old schoolteacher who has a close relationship with the title paterfamilias, a retired educator. But her sole remaining relative faces a long decline after a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia. Kaede hopes that their shared love of classic mysteries—along with her asking her grandfather to unravel a few local crimes armchair-detective-style—will keep his faculties sharp. There are locked rooms and other impossible crimes, but the book’s not-so-secret focus is Kaede’s personal life as she finds herself torn between two potential suitors. Several solutions are preposterous, the final tale involves a shocking crime from the family’s past that could have been developed throughout the book as opposed to being sprung on the reader, and Kaede’s romantic future is (spoiler!) not resolved. But the many nods, both explicit and subtle, to the likes of Carr and Chesterton pay off, and the tone is beguiling, even—here’s a word I never use—heartwarming.
The book includes an incongruous shoutout to The Big Blue (1988), a Luc Besson movie I thought had been justly forgotten. The film lives in my memory because it cropped up in William Goldman’s Hype & Glory (1990), in which the Oscar-winning scribe of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), All the President’s Men (1976), and The Princess Bride (1987) chronicles his stint as a Cannes Film Festival juror. The Big Blue screened out of competition but Goldman still had to sit through it, saying among other things:
Sheer embarrassment. Agony.
It’s about—no, I’m not going to detail what it’s about, because there’s no reason for your brains to be burdened with such minutiae, and besides, the jerks and clowns who made the thing never goddamn decided what it was about.
The movie has to do with deep-sea diving tournaments … in this turkey, you weren’t sure for half the picture whether the object of the tournament was to go deeper underwater or hold your breath longest underwater.2
Arturo Pérez-Reverte swiftly establishes a luxe atmosphere worthy of Agatha Christie in The Final Problem (2026, translated by Frances Riddle). In 1960, British actor Ormond Basil, carefully attending to what remains of his fame and his bank account, accepts an invitation to tag along on a cruise with a boisterous Cinecittà producer and his opera diva paramour. A storm strands the trio on a Greek island, where one of the other monied guests at their boutique hotel is found dead in a cabana in yet another impossible crime. The weather keeping the authorities at bay, the isolated jetsetters turn to Basil—because he starred as Sherlock Holmes in a popular series of films. Having internalized the canon of Conan Doyle and with a Spanish pulp writer as his Watson, Basil assumes the role of sleuth in real life. The trouble is that the killer, also realizing that the game is afoot, is determined to deliver an equally worthy performance.
I’m a sucker for a show business mystery—I can recommend five of them—so I should have adored this book. But when the trip started to meander, I began wishing the itinerary were shorter. Pérez-Reverte is so besotted with his conceit (“An actor who played detective playing detective!”) that he continually marvels at it, creating a false and repetitive sense that Basil may abandon his efforts. The mystery is thin, too many suspects eliminated from suspicion too quickly. And for all its glorification of fair play, the book doesn’t adhere to these rules, introducing evidence in the last chapter to which we were not privy. Still, the solution, with acknowledged shades of Patricia Highsmith as much as Conan Doyle, satisfies. The decadent demimonde is a delight, as is Basil’s barbed voice; all too aware of his fading fortunes, he relishes the opportunity to reprise his signature turn, and he tosses off juicy tidbits about the likes of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and David Niven throughout.
The Clock House Murders (1991, US 2026, translated by Ho-Ling Wong) is the fourth of Yukito Ayatsuji’s Bizarre House Mysteries, a series that raises the question of why anyone would move into a home designed by architect Nakamura Seiji; given that every book is about the tortured history of a structure bearing his name, mayhem is guaranteed to be an amenity. The Clock House was a commission for a now-dead collector of timepieces and is reputed to be haunted. A group of students from a university mystery club, an alleged medium, and staffers from a magazine agree to be locked into the oldest part of the building for three days in order to divine the truth. In a parallel plotline, Ayatsuji’s sleuth Shimoda Kiyoshi and a student who was meant to be in the original party investigate the house’s origins from the outside.
The book is the slowest of slow burns, Ayatsuji’s workmanlike prose not exactly conjuring up an aura of dread. For a band of mystery enthusiasts, the students inside the Clock House seem woefully unaware of many classic tropes; you might find yourself, like me, screaming at the page, “Haven’t you kids heard of secret passages?”
I stayed with the book, and I’m glad I did. Amidst the flurry of classic mystery references, a few mention Philo Vance. S.S. Van Dine’s insufferable sleuth habitually gassed on about the diabolical plots of his adversaries. The reveal here truly warrants such praise; it is authentically fiendish yet was staring me in the face the entire time. Every irksome move Ayatsuji made was essential to its execution, culminating in a bravura final sequence for the ages. I’m not going to forget the wrap-up to this mystery anytime soon.
What I’m Drinking
A recent score of fresh basil reminded me of the Gin Basil Smash. I first encountered bartender Jörg Meyer’s refreshing beverage in a class taught by Paul Clarke based on his book The Cocktail Chronicles (2015). High time I reacquainted myself. Light and herbaceous, it makes for perfect summertime drinking.
The Gin Basil Smash, by Jörg Meyer
2 ounces gin
¾ ounce lemon juice
¾ ounce simple syrup
3-4 sprigs of fresh basil
Muddle the basil in a shaker. Add the remaining ingredients. Shake. Strain over ice in a rocks glass. Garnish with a fresh basil leaf.
Rosemarie says, “Go Les Bleus!”
I saw this movie and I’m still not sure.