THE AOSAWA MURDERS, Author Riku Onda's English-language debut

THE AOSAWA MURDERS
RIKU ONDA (tr. Alison Watts)
Bitter Lemon Press
$6.94 Kindle edition, $14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: On a stormy summer day the Aosawas, owners of a prominent local hospital, host a large birthday party. The occasion turns into tragedy when 17 people die from cyanide in their drinks. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. But the youth who emerges as the prime suspect commits suicide that October, effectively sealing his guilt while consigning his motives to mystery. The police are convinced that Hisako had a role in the crime, as are many in the town, including the author of a bestselling book about the murders written a decade after the incident, who was herself a childhood friend of Hisako’s and witness to the discovery of the murders. The truth is revealed through a skillful juggling of testimony by different voices: family members, witnesses and neighbors, police investigators and of course the mesmerizing Hisako herself.

I RECEIVED A DIGITAL REVIEW COPY FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS. THANK YOU!

My Review: I can't believe we've been denied the voice of Author Onda for lo! these many years. She's been creating a giant ouevre since 1991. It's wonderful that we have so much good stuff to come; it's a howling shame that English-language crime-fiction readers haven't had Author Onda's words until now.

But let me tell you why that's a crime. Mystery novels, ones with a sleuth you follow around as she pokes her nose into many places that people with secrets would strongly prefer she didn't or cops whose sense of honor will not let them close an unsolved case, are thick on the ground. The true-crime genre is booming in this Time of Plague. But these are books that run on formulas. They're hugely appealing formulas, ones that reinforce the ma'at of society and thus fly in the face of most peoples' lived experience. They sell in their millions because their audience (which skews female for series-mystery fiction and true crime) hungers with a near-starved need for Justice to be served, even if the law is flouted.

Author Onda, via the very talented Translator Alison Watts, doesn't present us with such a jigsaw puzzle of a book, with correct answers that form an interlocked and coherent image. She gives us a crossword puzzle...yes, there are correct answers...several of them...and it's your job to sort out which ones make the desired connections in the overall mass of information. Just don't expect a portrait of a killer!

And thus the source of my, frankly, mingy rating of four stars. Hisako, the blind (a great deal is made of this, many mentions) young woman who sat calmly by as seventeen people died in agony around her, is presumed guilty by everyone.

Except me.

Why did she do it? There's always a reason, no matter how twisted, that someone murders another person...let alone seventeen people...and that is what the story lacks. People have opinions, files contain facts, and none of it adds up to Hisako being the murderer to me. I don't necessarily need the ribbon tied in a bow on the solution; I do need a sense of the solution's fairness and rightness. I don't get that from this marvelous, multi-modal story. Every voice is well-crafted, as one would expect (this story was published in Japanese in 2005, some 14 years into Author Onda's career) from a storyteller at the peak of her powers. But they're all singing a dirge for Hisako when I want the story to be a threnody.

My reservation aside, I want to assure all and sundry that this read is rewarding, and provides that delicious shiver of Evil's presence albeit at a safe remove. It is delightful to discover the work that Author Onda has done is not going to run dry any time soon...if we buy Bitter Lemon Press's editions of them! I strongly urge you to do that pronto.