Cult Japanese author Uketsu’s ‘sketch novel’ features a wealth of eerie, unsettling scenes but it’s much closer to crime than horror, an intricate murder mystery with an unusual structure. The majority of the book operates like a puzzle. There are no easily distinguished unifying characters. No detective, amateur or otherwise, to guide readers through Uketsu’s maze. Instead, readers have to figure out how disparate pieces might fit together, although Uketsu’s narrative slowly builds towards a big reveal finale. Loosely connecting the novel’s different sections are themes of perspective and interpretation, an emphasis on the attitudes, and viewpoints that might dictate how we understand our everyday world - and the tendency to force fragments into some semblance of a coherent whole.

Images are key to Uketsu’s approach here, which draws on the concept of child therapists using patients’ drawings to understand their likely state of mind. This idea is introduced at the start via a lecture given by a child psychologist. The psychologist talks her students through her process, aided by a crude drawing made by a former patient, a matricidal killer dubbed Little Girl A. The psychologist explains how her reading of Little Girl A’s pictures became instrumental in dictating Little Girl A’s treatment and her identification as a candidate for rehabilitation and eventual release.

This chapter’s followed by a series of seemingly disconnected episodes, featuring a succession of characters and crimes - from suspicious deaths to obvious murders. The shift from one section to another sometimes so abrupt it felt like the verbal equivalent of a jump cut. His narrative’s highly visual qualities are in keeping with Uketsu’s background as a Youtuber who made his name through a series of eccentric videos. He wants his fiction to appeal to audiences who rarely read as well as those who do. The extensive illustrations incorporate numerous diagrams as well as charts highlighting potential plot developments. These suggest Uketsu’s deliberately blending conventions from locked-room style Golden Age mysteries with aspects of manga: Uketsu’s stated influences are contemporary Japanese crime writers like Honobu Yonezawa, he’s also a fan of Holmes and Watson.

There were moments when Uketsu’s concept felt a bit contrived and gimmicky but, for the most part, this was a gripping, entertaining experience, laced with striking twists and turns – whenever I worked out a possible link between one crime and another, I felt surprisingly smug. The only remaining enigma was Uketsu himself, apart from his pseudonym and gender almost nothing’s known about him. A bestselling author in Japan, Uketsu’s core readers are women between 30 and 50; often referred to as the Edogawa Ranpo of the Internet, Uketsu digitally disguises his voice and never appears without his trademark white mask and all-encompassing, black body suit. Translated by Jim Rion.

I am thrilled to be one of the first to read and review the English translation of Strange Pictures, the debut novel by masked Japanese YouTuber Uketsu. This unputdownable read delivers a perfectly constructed puzzle that comes together with a fantastic precision. As with many Japanese mystery novels, the themes are very strong, and Uketsu masterfully blends horror, psychological suspense, and brutal realism. I especially love the blunt, straight-to-the-point narrative style, which kept me hooked from start to finish. The strange pictures are truly mesmerizing!

This was unlike anything I’ve read before. From the get go there was something unnerving about the book, and the strange pictures only added to this feeling. The book starts with a mysterious blog post and unsettling images as the reader slowly finds out more about the images and how they’re all connected. The multi media aspect combined with the drawings made for a thrilling read, I found myself unable to put this book down. As the reader slowly finds out more about the initial image and all the ones that follow, the plot reveals itself and it’s insanely clever and imaginative. I really enjoyed this, both for the horror element and the visual elements too. Such a unique story!