I've enjoyed the previous two translated works from this author, and look forward to more being brought to an English audience.

This one is slightly different from the others as detective Kindaichi is seen from afar rather than as the main protagonist. I didn't particularly like this approach at first because it is meant to be an instalment in the detective series... But after a while I came around and enjoyed the narrative.

An inheritance, missing family members and plenty of murders, this one will leave you scratching your head until the reveal.

I would recommend to fans of the genre.

Thank you to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for a review copy of this book.

This is the third book in the series revolving around investigator Kosuke Kindaichi - even though we don't see much of the inspector in this book.

Instead we follow Tatsuya, whose father - a very cruel man - left him an estate in the small Village of the Eight Graves. When Tatsuya returns to the village he not only finds family members, but also death and murder.

I really enjoy Japanes mystery books especially from the Showa era. The style may be slow and digressing ever so often, but the storytelling is great and as readers we can also guess who's the murderer almost to the very end. Seishi Yokomizo is master of the genre and I recommend reading the other books of this series, too.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me an arc copy! <3

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This is the third book by Seishi Yokomizo that I've read, and while I do hope Pushkin continues to translate his work, this one was the most "meh" for me. I kinda saw the reveal for the antagonist coming about halfway through, and it wasn't as exciting of a reveal as the previous books were. It was interesting, but nothing on par with the massive surprises/reveals of "Honjin Murders" or "Inugami Curse". Honestly even the method was less exciting. The other two books had such a unique way of having the murders carried out, this one was just ok.

It just felt like there wasn't as much going on mystery-wise in this. Like it becomes kinda obvious who isn't the culprit because everyone has alibis so you spend most of the book waiting for someone's alibi to be proven wrong. It isn't as engaging because everyone remains pretty airtight for most of the book. The few people we are led to think are the killers, obviously aren't, so it feels like a lazy red herring.

Also as a whole, I'm not a fan of pregnancy as a "happy ending" so that also made me feel eh. Honestly, the entire "romance" section of this book was not the greatest. You can tell Yokomizo is not a romance writer. It just made me uncomfortable.

Hellishly Creepy and Twisted.......................
What an amazing horror book, The Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo turned out. The book is translated from Japanese and is a perfect horror read. If you are a beginner and looking for a horror book, then this should be your first choice. The plot literally gave me goosebumps as I was reading it in night. And, the best thing is the detailing the author has provided to brew the mystery. The same vibe flows through the whole story and, there is no point where you will get bored. Every time you turn a page, a jump scare is ready for you.

I would, definitely, give the book 5 stars. Thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for providing me an opportunity to read and review the book.

'There must be a story there, they'll think. And indeed, a story there is - and a strange one.'

The third of prolific Japanese author's Seishi Yokomizo's detective series to get an English translation (although, bizarrely, this is actually the 4th in the original series and is being published after the 6th in the series, The Inugami Clan - go figure!). Fans of fiendish puzzles, strange goings-on and clues a-plenty will relish this.

The story is told in the first-person by Tatsuya, who is told that he is to inherit an estate from a family he never knew. His father had gone on a killing rampage some 26 years earlier, and suddenly, now that Tatsuya has been contacted by a lawyer, more people start to die. When he finally arrives at the village that has the name of Eight Graves things get worse and, as the body count increases Tatsuya himself becomes a suspect. Enter the shabby, scruffy detective Kosuke Kindaichi - will he be able to work out just who is killing of the other members of the family?

The first-person narrative voice makes this a slightly different take on events from, say, the other two books previously published in English. The character of Kindaichi is seen only through the eyes of Tatsuya, and really isn't in the book all that much, so it is much more of a feeling of being in the midst of events rather than them being seen from a distance. The clues are there (although I'm such a dolt I can never work out what's going on), but the book is a wonderfully atmospheric and eventful ride and will ensure that you don't want to put the book down until you finish.

4 stars for fans of well-written and well-plotted crime fiction.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

Pushkin Vertigo republishing the classic mysteries of Japanese master Seishi Yokomizo has been such a delight.

The Village of Eight Graves was a nailbiter - so many Murders packed into this slim volume! This is billed as one of the Detective Kosuke Kindaichi series, but unlike most Detective novels, it is narrated by the man being set up as the prime suspect so we don't see the "little grey cells" of the Detective working. Instead, this novel approach makes it feel like a thriller, culminating in a Tom Sawyer-esque escapade through caves.

Will definitely be reading more from both Pushkin Vertigo and Yokomizo!

3.9/5

A pitch perfect instalment of classic crime. A gloomy cave network, lost treasure and an ancient curse, what’s not to love?! I particularly enjoy the cameos from the detective that links the novels together. He never interrupts the action, he only chimes in at an opportune moment to bring evidence to the reader’s attention. I eagerly await the next in the series.

I have read a few of these classic Japanese mysteries by renowned writer Seishi Yokomizo and they are so much fun! I was delighted to be accepted for this one on NetGalley and appreciated the slightly different perspective of this strange, pulse-racing story.

The Village of Eight Graves sits within the mountains and it takes its name from a massacre that occurred centuries before. The tragedy has placed a curse on the village’s inhabitants and now with the arrival of Tatsuya, a young man pursuing an inheritance he knew nothing about, comes a string of poisonings. Could Tatsuya’s arrival and these deaths possibly have any connection?

Our detective is Kosuke Kindaichi and while presenting as an unremarkable, unassuming man, he is incredibly clever. In this book, we are following events through Tatsuya’s eyes whereas we’re usually following Kindaichi. This made for a refreshing change and allowed me to see Kindaichi in a different light.

Yokomizo has a wonderful way with words. Every now and then, I was taken aback by the subtle, unique descriptions. They aren’t something you get in crime novels very often and perhaps they should become more of a priority because it definitely offers a big breath of air.

The threat in this book is really creepy and I was looking over my shoulder all the time. There is a lot of blood and the past haunts every part of the mystery. I could almost see and hear the ghosts whispering through the walls, which created such an eerie atmosphere. The fact that this successfully came through in a translated book too is testament to the fantastic standard of writing.

As you might expect in a small village like The Village of Eight Graves, everyone is very suspicious of Tatsuya as an outsider. This ripples through the book and i started to wonder whether their mistrust of him was founded. I really liked him so I felt sure that he wasn’t anything to do with the deaths but the toxic vibes being thrown his way were slightly contagious. The way that Yokomizo plays with his readers like this is so smart and I really wasn’t sure who the culprit was.

The Village of Eight Graves is a dark, twisty mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie. It’s incredibly addictive and follows a loveable detective with a very satisfying ending. Fast-paced and fantastically bloodthirsty, it could well be an amazing un-Christmassy quick read.

Keep these books coming Pushkin!

I absolutely love Yokomizo’s work. Now being translated to English for the first time, we finally get to read these crime novels. It’s very obvious that there are Sherlock Holmes influences in The Honjin Murders and The Inugami Curse, with the detective being almost a carbon copy of him, but he still has enough of an identity to still be interesting.

So it’s odd that Yokomizo’s takes a different approach to this one. This novel is told from a new perspective, of a man haunted by a the gruesome events of his family, and now those events are repeating themselves again, and he is seen as the main culprit.

It’s an interesting choice to make, and while it worked, I did miss our detective. He hardly showed up in the narrative, only appearing to make his deductions, and I wish he had a bigger role.

It’s still a very good novel, with Yokomizo’s familiar style and wit, and I am eager to read more if his books. I can’t wait to get my hands on it when the next one is available.

This book was a DNF for me. It sounded interesting in the description, but opening with abduction and repeated rape isn't the kind of reading I enjoy, even if nothing is depicted in detail. I'm giving this 3 stars as a compromise.

“You see this map, darling? You must always keep it safe. Don’t ever lose it. One day it may make you a very lucky person. So don’t tear it up, don’t throw it away. Most importantly, though, don’t ever tell anyone about it…” Tsuruko to her son, Tatsuya.

My thanks to Pushkin Press Pushkin Vertigo for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Village of Eight Graves’ by Seishi Yokomizo. It was originally published in Japan in 1951 and translated in 2021 from the Japanese by Bryan Karetnyk.

This is the third detective novel by Seishi Yokomizo featuring Detective Kosuke Kindaichi to be translated to English. Book 4, Gokumon Island, is forthcoming next year.

The Village of Eight Graves, nestled deep in the mountains, takes its name from a local legend that tells of eight samurais, who in the sixteenth century had taken refuge there along with a secret treasure. When the inhabitants murdered the samurai they are said to have brought down a terrible curse upon the village. A curse believed to continue.

In this mystery Kosuke Kindaichi is more of a supporting character. The narrator of the tale, who is writing of these events, is Tatsuya Tarade. His mother, Tsuruko, had left the village when he was a child and he was unaware of his origins.

Now he has been contacted by a solicitor with news of an inheritance. He also learns some disturbing facts about his family. He returns to the village of Eight Graves to discover more. However, a spate of poisonings accompany Tatsuya and suspicion quickly falls upon him. The outwardly scruffy yet brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi investigates. (Kosuke Kindaichi unassuming appearance and razor-sharp mind could almost make him a prototype of Columbo)

I found this an unusual and complex mystery. Seishi Yokomizo’s plotting is meticulous and provides plenty of twists. He is acknowledged as the Master of Golden Age crime fiction in Japan. I enjoyed it very much.

Again, I am so pleased that Pushkin Press have undertaken to publish his Detective Kindaichi mysteries in English. Also, kudos to the publishers’ design team for creating a set of extremely eye-catching covers.

I requested The Village of Eight Graves via NetGalley to give Seishi Yokomizo a second chance! I really did not enjoy the Inugami Curse at all but Yokomizo wrote 77 novels featuring detective Kosuke Kindaichi so his work is most definitely popular. Surely I must be missing something?

Well, now I get it! The Village of the Eight Graves kept me far more engaged in the mystery but also the characters too. That was a major failing for me in the Inugami Curse as I really didn’t care what happened to that unlikeable family. This time I was rooting for narrator Tatsuya and wanted to know who was behind all these deaths. As the story was told through Tatsuya’s eyes, we don’t have much of an insight into the thinking of detective Kindaichi. He pops up now and again and Tatsuya tells us what he does and that’s enough. The reader gets to experience the mystery rather than just spectate.

Didn’t think I would say it but I look forward to reading more by Yokomizo!

Thank you to Pushkin Vertigo and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this story.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first Seishi Yokomizo novel, though I also have the previous ones added to my to-read list for a long time. Though it's a Detective Kosuke Kindaichi novel, it's a standalone one, so reading the newest novel of Yokomizo in English before the previous ones didn't cause any issues. I've read online that Yokomizo is called Japan's Agatha Christie, and I surely saw some similarities between the styles of this novel and Hercule Poirot novels. But the Japanese cultural elements definitely enriched the former and put it on an original, different track than the latter.

I loved how the author wove Japanese superstitions into a detective mystery. The way the events unfold is very well-written since it makes the reader keep guessing until the end. The story also flows easily and quickly that you don't realize you've read so many pages in one sitting. All in all, I really liked the book, and will definitely read The Honjin Murders and The Inugami Curse soon.

I just couldn’t get into this murder mystery—perhaps the setting was too alien for me, although I have enjoyed many Japan set mysteries. The gruesomeness of the mass murders that started off the book was off putting and I was confused by the relationships of the main characters.

3.5 stars.
The Village of Eight Graves got its name from the eight samurai murdered for the gold they had and buried there many years before the start the narrator’s recounting of a series of murders at this same village. The villagers believe their village, or specifically, one of the village families, is cursed for perpetrating the samurai murders, especially after a descendant of this family went on a rampage, killing several of the villagers, many years after the initial eight murders.
Years later, Tatsuya, a solitary young man living in Kobe, is contacted and told he’s wealthy, and must come to this village. It turns out Tatsuya is the son of the man who killed his fellow villagers, but Tatsuya is not apprised of his father’s rampage till shortly before leaving Tokyo.
Unfortunately, it appears the curse is still in effect, for when Tatsuya’s grandfather comes from the village to meet Tatsuyo, he dies unexpectedly, tainting Tatsuya’s expectations for this new stage of his life, and several other villagers are murdered once Tatsuya arrives at Eight Graves, casting suspicion upon him as the son of a murderer.
Unexpectedly, a rumpled-looking detective, Kosuke Kindaichi, comes to the village and investigates the events, until he reveals the identity and motives of the murderer.

The pacing is slow by modern standards, but I liked the atmosphere of the village; it felt insular, quiet, suspicious of outsiders, and I liked how Tatsuya felt odd and out of sorts there. Also, with each successive murder, the tension was nicely built. I did find Tatsuya's understanding of women to be mostly nonexistent, and one of his relationships never made any sense to me. Also, I'm not sure that the clues entirely pointed to who the murderer actually was, but I still enjoyed this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Pushkin Press for this ARC in exchange for my review.

The Village or Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo is a classic Japanese murder mystery translated for the first time in English and published by Vertigo Puskin and one of the most entertaining books I've read for a very long time. It's the third in a series featuring private investigator Kosuke Kindaichi ,a rather dishevelled sleuth with the sartorial elegance,and manner, of Columbo and the brain of Sherlock Holmes.

The book begins with an unassuming young man,Tatsuya, working in a factory in the city of Kobe being told that he's heir to a family fortune , a family he'd never heard of before,in the remote Village of Eight Graves. Even before he leaves the city a visitor from the village dies in his presence and when he actually gets there the bodies really start to pile up.

Far more than just a murder mystery this story has everything, ancient legends, dark family secrets, a hunt for legendary treasure, a serial killer on the loose a house with hidden secrets and even Tolkeinesque adventure in a subterranean labyrinth containing a Samurai shrine.
While most of the book is narrated by Tatsuya and the killer is revealed by him the last few chapters are Kosuke Kindaichi revealing the complete mystery from start to finish

Despite being over 60 years old the book still holds up today, a crime thriller with a touch of the Gothic. Fans of Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes looking for something just a little different will love this.

4.5 stars
The Village of Eight Graves has a bloody and murderous history; so when Tatsuya is contacted about an inheritance and must return and his feelings of unease are justified.as before he steps foot in the village someone dies and the deaths don't stop. Is the curse on the village real or is someone out for blood.

The dark history of the village and the characters were all beautifully written and I was captivated; the terrible dark history of the village had me fearing for Tatsuya but as soon as the scruffy Kosuke arrived on the scene I knew that he was the one who would solve the mystery A gripping read that I couldn't put down.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review

Over the last few years I have discovered several Japanese crime authors – including Soji Shimada and Yukito Ayatsuji – thanks to Pushkin Press making them available in English translations, but the one who has impressed me the most is Seishi Yokomizo. I really enjoyed The Honjin Murders, one of his many books to feature the detective Kosuke Kindaichi; I didn’t like The Village of Eight Graves, another from the same series, quite as much, but it’s still an entertaining read.

First published in 1950, the novel is set in the small Japanese village of Eight Graves where, centuries earlier, eight samurai were brutally murdered, bringing down a curse upon the village and giving it its sinister-sounding name. In the 1920s the curse struck again when a village leader went on a violent killing spree. Now, twenty-five years later, our narrator Tatsuya Terada, a young man who has been raised in Kobe by his mother and stepfather, is informed by a lawyer that his real father was the man responsible for those terrible murders. It seems that Tatsuya is now the heir to the family estate and must return to Eight Graves to claim his inheritance – but before he has even left Kobe he receives an anonymous letter warning him to stay away.

On his arrival in Eight Graves, Tatsuya finds that most of the other villagers are hostile and unwelcoming, believing that his presence will bring bad luck and tragedy to the village yet again. And so, when more murders begin to take place, suspicion immediately falls on Tatsuya – but as he is our narrator, we know that he is innocent. Or is he? Kosuke Kindaichi is called in to investigate, but at the same time Tatsuya is carrying out investigations of his own to find the real culprit and clear his own name.

Unlike in The Honjin Murders, where the untidy and unassuming Kindaichi plays a big role in the story, in this book we hardly see him at all. Almost as soon as he arrives in Eight Graves he disappears into the background again. We know that he is working on solving the mystery, but we don’t actually watch him doing it because we stick exclusively with Tatsuya’s narration and he and Kindaichi have very little interaction until nearer the end of the book. This makes this one less of a detective novel and more of a thriller or adventure novel, as Tatsuya explores the village alone looking for clues and stumbling into danger.

Yokomizo creates a wonderful atmosphere in this book with Tatsuya’s investigations leading him into networks of tunnels, caves with stalactites, and underground lakes and caverns. The legend of the eight murdered samurai is also incorporated into the story, along with a search for hidden treasure said to be buried somewhere within the village and a rivalry between two branches of Tatsuya’s family: the ‘House of the East’ and the ‘House of the West’. It’s an entertaining novel and there’s always something happening – but I did think the parts where Tatsuya is wandering around in the caves and tunnels became a little bit tedious. The absence of Kosuke Kindaichi for most of the book was also disappointing and I think I would have preferred a more conventional detective novel with the focus on solving the mystery rather than on treasure hunting.

Still, this book was fun to read and I loved the setting. Now I need to read the other Yokomizo novel currently available in English: The Inugami Curse.

The title of the book was enough to give me the creeps and pick it right away. I was aware of the success of The Honjin Murders and The Inugami Curse by the same author, and that is why I decided to pick this book immediately when I saw it on NetGalley.

I was not disappointed. Terrible myths, curses, murders, madmen, fugitives, the prodigal son, a picturesque village, and a hidden treasure. Combined with brilliant story-telling and ingenious plot twists. And I was unable to put this book down. It was an absolutely thrilling and nerve-tingling ride. I enjoyed the mystery immensely and could never have imagined by whom and why the multiple murders were committed.

I like that the author explored the perspective that killers explore the superstitious nature of villagers to commit horrific deeds, by misusing old myths. The characters were so varied and immensely entertaining, and the mystery of the hidden caves and their ambiance and maze-like structure, where all the action happened, was truly bone-chilling.

Also, the Japanese culture, traditions, and myths that I learned in the process were very entertaining and enlightening as well.
If you enjoy mythical stories and cultural mysteries that thrill, this one is a must-read for you.

The Village of Eight Graves is the third in Pushkin's translations of Seiko Yokomizo's classic detective stories featuring shambling Columboesque private investigator Kosuke Kindaichi.

This novel is narrated by a young man with complicated family relationships, whose arrival in a small rural village coincides with some horrific poisonings. There are dark secrets galore, hidden caves, samurai treasure and even a bit of a love interest. The body count gets quite high before it's all finally resolved!

An enjoyable addition to the series - I hope there are many more.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.