The Hannya mask – from the Japanese tradition of Noh theatre – always foretold tragedy at the Chizui mansion. When Koichi Yanagi and Hiroyuki Ishikari see someone wearing the mask at an upstairs window, they enter the house where Koichi grew up, there is a strange tension abroad – and then Taijiro Chizui is found dead, locked inside his own study. His behaviour beforehand had shown that he was terrified of something – but the only sign of any foul play is the Hannya mask sitting on the floor in front of the dead body.

The detective story writer Akimitsu Takagi arrives to help find the truth, but the tragedy is only beginning. Anything that happened in the house before is nothing compared to what is coming…

OK, first of all, a note to authors. Just because you have read The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd doesn’t mean that your readership has. It’s not as if it’s a qualifying text – you must read this before reading any other crime fiction – so stop casually spoiling it. Yes, it’s a classic, but people need to read it cold, not knowing the solution which can be spoiled with a single phrase as indeed happens here.

Now that advice/request is a bit late for Akimitsu Takagi as he wrote this in 1949 and has been dead for nearly thirty years. Pushkin Press released a translation of his first novel, The Tattoo Murder Case recently and this, a standalone, is his second novel – or possibly his third, as the follow-up to The Tattoo Murder Case was released in the same year.

Now I know that you know where I’m going with this – the honkaku school of crime fiction has never quite clicked for me – but I’ve persevered. Some of my blogging friends are far more sympathetic to the subgenre, and some are ecstatic about it. And I’ve never quite got it.

This might just be the one that convinces me – it’s rather good indeed. There is quite a game being played here, one on quite a few levels. The inhabitants of the house are nicely distinctive and while the idea of the noh mask isn’t developed quite as much as I might have hoped for – it sort of disappears after the first death – the feeling of impending doom never lets up. And just when you think you know where things are going…

This may be sold as a locked room mystery, but I wouldn’t let that be the selling point. To say the method is technical would be understating things massively – it makes a certain locked toilet door that I read a few years ago seem simple – but the overall story here is far more than that. It’s complex but has an emotional kick and a very satisfying and clear – bar technical details – solution.

Easily the best of the recent set of translations that I’ve read – congratulations to Jesse Kirkwood for the translation by the way, it’s very evocative – definitely well worth a look.

Many thanks to Pushkin Vertigo for the review copy via NetGalley. The Noh Mask Murder is out on Thursday 4^th April in paperback and ebook.