The Mill House Murders

Author: Yukito Ayatsuji
Publisher: Pushkin Press 2023

His father was a famous artist.  He had a successful real estate business.  When his father died he sold his business and with a combined money from both his and his father’s earnings he was rich enough not to work for the rest of his life.  He built a house in a reclusive area among the mountains, with its own mill to generate electricity and enough gallery space to display all of his father’s paintings.  

He has a butler, a cook, and a beautiful young wife.  This is how he described his young wife.

Yurie was slim and 150 centimeters tall.  She was rather fair for a Japanese person, with firm smooth skin.  Her luscious hair hung down to her waist.

He had a serious vehicular accident soon after the death of his father, and as a result, he is severally disfigured.  He wears a mask to hide his face and glows to hide the injuries to his hands.

Four of his friends—an art dealer, a surgeon, a professor of humanities, and a Buddhist monk—come to see him once a year on the day his father died.  They actually come to admire his father’s paintings.  

The year was 1985.  There were no cell phones, and there was an additional former friend was visiting him that particular year.

The cook falls from a first-floor balcony to her death that particular stormy day.  The decapitated body of the additional former friends was found in the incinerator in the basement, and the Buddhist monk, along with a painting went missing.  Police declared that the cook’s death was an accident and the missing Buddhist monk was the murderer.

A year later, in 1986, the art dealer, the surgeon, and the professor returned for their annual visit.  The only addition to the house is a new cook.

At this point, I have to mention a few links to author’s previous book for the potential readers of this book.  The mill house was designed by the same architect who designed the decagon house, and he has a tendency to include secret passages to his designs.  The son of a Buddhist monk, who was the brother of a police officer in the decagon house murders story, is a friend of the missing Buddhist monk.  He arrives uninvited because of those connections as he does not believe his missing friend was the murderer.

Once again, I did not see the ending coming.  I was surprised primarily because I was following the deductive reasoning presented.  As a matter of fact, one of the main clues was hidden from the reader until the end of the story, which is why I could not guess the outcome and was surprised at the end.

I like this story very much.  I would give it four and half stars out of five.

Act of Oblivion

Author: Robert Harris
Publisher: Harper Colins 2022

I bought this book because: (a) I have a collection of all his other books, (b) I am happy with his historical novels, and (c) Amazon offered the Kindle version for $1.99.

The history behind this novel was novel to me. Stating it very concisely, Charles I, the king of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, was in financial difficulties; his newly instituted taxes were unpopular; and his religious activities were also unpopular. In the 1640s, a mostly Puritan army led by Oliver Cromwell defeated the king's armies, and the king was taken prisoner. His nefarious deals with the Scottish Parliament and foreign powers to free himself further eroded relations between him and the Puritan army. After a short trial, he was beheaded in 1649, and Cromwell became the Lord Protector of England until his death in 1658. The English monarchy was reestablished in 1660 with the coronation of Charles II, his son.

(Read Wikipedia for further information.)

Soon after, Parliament passed the Act of Oblivion to capture and prosecute all who signed the death warrant of Charles I. Even the signatories who had died, including Cromwell, were dug up and their bodies hanged. The regicides who surrendered suffered horribly.

“The lord Chief Justice placing a small square of black cloth upon his head and pronouncing the terrible sentence, again and again: `The judgement of this court is that you be led back to the place from whence you came, and from thence to be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and there you shall be hanged by the neck, and being alive shall be cut down, and your privy members be cut off, your entrails to be taken out of your body, and you living, the same to be burnt before your eyes, and your head to be cut off, your body to be divided into four quarters, and your head and quarters to be disposed of at the pleasure of the King’s Majesty; and the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”

Two of the regicides, Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, managed to escape to America. The Puritans in the British colonies were willing to help them hide from the hunters. However, the large bounty offered for their capture made it very difficult for them to remain hidden.

In his Author’s Note at the end of the book, Robert Harris states:

This novel is an imaginative re-creation of a true story: the tracking down of the `regicides’, the killers of King Charles I, the greatest manhunt of the seventeenth century—in particular, the pursuit of Edward Whalley and William Goffe across New England.  The events, dates and locations are accurate, and almost every character is real, apart from Richard Nayler.  I suspect there must have been such a person—you cannot sustain a manhunt without a manhunter—but whoever he was, his identity is lost to history.

The story was a bit boring at times due to the lack of excitement, which I think you cannot expect from a 'true story.' However, since this is a novel, the author could have added more exciting events to spice up the story. Other than that, I did enjoy reading it.

Sweet Bean Paste

Author: Durian Sukegawa
Publisher: A One World Book 2022

I have been to all inhabited islands of Hawaii except Molokai. The reason I could not go was due to the objections of my traveling companions. There was a leprosy colony on Molokai. Since leprosy is known as an infectious disease, nobody wanted to risk exposure. This was in the late 1990s.

Leprosy is caused by a bacillus (a rod-like bacterium), Mycobacterium leprae (M. leprae). The microorganism was discovered by a Norwegian physician, Gerhard Armauer Hansen, in 1874, and the disease has been known as "Hansen’s disease" since then.

Hansen’s disease is ancient. The term "Arun Kushta" (අරුන් කුෂ්ඨ) was used in ancient Indian literature to refer to leprosy. Indian physicians used the oil of Tuvarks seeds to treat the disease.

(Ref: "Mycobacterium leprae: A historical study of the origins of leprosy and its social stigma" by Luigi Santacroce et al. Infez Med. 2021; 29(4): 623-632.)

Leprosy is not highly contagious. However, people who are exposed to a person with leprosy are 5-8 times more likely to develop the disease. Symptoms include light-colored or red skin patches with reduced sensation, numbness, and weakness in hands and feet.

Promin was one of the effective drugs for leprosy developed in the 1940s. Leprosy can be cured with 6-12 months of multi-drug therapy. The currently recommended treatment regimen consists of three drugs: dapsone, rifampicin, and clofazimine. Early treatment avoids disability.

This is a story about a Japanese woman who contracted leprosy as a young girl and was then restricted to a leprosy colony in Tokyo in the 1940s. Even though she was fully cured of the disease, she was not allowed to leave the colony until the late 1990s.

Under the 1953 Leprosy Prevention Act, most people affected by leprosy were isolated and forced to move into sanatoria. The act was abolished on April 1, 1996. The Japanese parliament enacted a new law to compensate family members of former Hansen’s disease patients in November 2019.

As a novel, this book is an abject failure. The characters were chosen haphazardly, and there is no rhyme or reason for their actions. The ultimate goal of the story is to expose the stigma associated with Hansen’s disease, but the author has done a very poor job of achieving this.

The author should have written a non-fiction book instead. However, I am not sure he has the skills to succeed in writing such a work. A more skilled writer could have produced a better fiction or non-fiction book about Hansen’s disease. For example, Gina Kolata wrote an excellent non-fiction book about the flu virus of 1918, titled "Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It."

However, the book is popular among its readers. One World first published it in 2017. Since then, it was reprinted in 2018 (twice), 2020, 2021 (three times), and 2022 (twice). Perhaps someone else should read the book and write a review.