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.