Kozaburo Hamamoto, a rich businessman, invites several guests to stay at the Ice Floe Mansion, his eccentric creation, during the Christmas of 1983. The mansion consists of a main building with a confusing layout and very slightly sloping floors, as well as a tower modeled after the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Kozaburo's room is at the very top of the tower, reachable by a drawbridge. A couple of his family members, his staff, and his guests are all in various rooms in the main house.

Things are a little awkward and tense right from the start. Eiko, Kozaburo's daughter, flubs a few of the introductions: she completely forgets Ueda, Mr. Kikuoka's chauffeur, and manages to embarrass both Kumi Aikura (Mr. Kikuoka's "secretary," who everyone knows is also his mistress) and Hatsue Kanai (the wife of Michio Kanai, an executive at Mr. Kikuoka's company). Among the guests are also two rivals for Eiko's hand in marriage, Shun Sasaki and Masaki Togai. After one of the guests is murdered in a locked room, the police begin investigating. As in The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, readers are invited to follow the clues, look at various crime scene and building illustrations, and potentially solve the mystery themselves.

This took me ages to read, because I kept flipping back to earlier parts of the book to reread them. There were so many strange little crime scene details and architectural oddities that I felt like I could somehow manage to solve the mystery if I just thought about it carefully enough. In some ways it seemed more solvable than The Tokyo Zodiac Murders. Even with hints from another reader, I couldn't quite get there, though, and now that I've read the end and know what really happened, I'm not sure I'd ever have figured it out. I spent too much time focusing on the wrong details. Also, as clever as the solution turned out to be, the way Shimada opted to muddy the water irked me.

Although I enjoyed getting to see Kiyoshi Mitarai again, when he finally appeared in the last third of the book, overall this is the kind of story you read more for the puzzle than for the characters. Even with all of the just-under-the-surface drama, most of the characters didn't make much of an impression on me, and for a while I kept having to flip back to the character list to remind myself who everyone was. Of the bunch, Eiko, Kumi, and Mr. Kikuoka probably stood out the most. The cops, meanwhile, completely blended together.

Shimada's Kiyoshi Mitarai books are like the literary equivalent of the puzzle games I like to play, right down to that moment of frustration when I give up and look at the solution, because clearly I'm not going to manage to figure it out on my own. I see on Wikipedia that there are many more books in this series that could potentially be translated into English one day. Even though I didn't quite enjoy Murder in the Crooked House as much as The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (the latter had a better overall atmosphere), I still very much hope that I eventually get the chance to read the next book in this series.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I read this well before Halloween Bingo, but it may interest some of you! This was just released Sept 4.

Mary Downing Hahn is a powerhouse of middle grade fiction, her talent transcends genre - does anyone else remember 'Stepping on the Cracks'?, but it is the supernatural stories that most people associate with her. 'The Girl in the Locked Room' is a classic story of loneliness, mystery, and discovery.

Jules' father renovates houses for a living, so she's used to moving to different town and living in creepy, old houses. Her mother is a writer. Jules has a bad feeling about this house, however, especially after she catches a glimpse of girl's face in an attic window. A window in a room that is sealed shut. The construction puts most of the house off-limits to Jules, but after making a new friend and hearing ghostly sounds in the night, she is driven to investigate.

A great thing about the book is the inclusion of the titular 'Girl's perspective. She has been locked away for so long she's forgotten everything, even her name, and it takes time for her to remember what happened to her and her family. This adds delicious atmosphere to the story.

The house and Jules' situation would have been a dream of mine growing up, but for Jules the nomadic life is one of loneliness. That element grounded the story and Hahn excels at creating relatable protagonists.

As a side note, I loved Hahn's respect for history and attention to detail in all things. My husband appreciated that she even got the dolls right.

Hahn still has it! This is a supernatural mystery for younger readers, but has sufficient depth for an adult to read and there are many potential topics to discuss with children.

I am gobsmacked by this book.

I don't know where I picked up the notion that Carr wrote noir, but I cracked this book open expecting dames and hardboiled, hard drinking private dicks and speakeasies. It's hard to imagine how I could've been less accurate. The Hollow Man had gothic overtones, oblique references to vampires and supernatural happenings, direct references to the ghost story writer M.R. James, and an extremely snowy, almost Victorian, London atmosphere.

In other words, the background stuff was right up my alley.

Attach this to not one, but two, miraculous mysteries, and a main character who reminded me strongly of Nero Wolfe, although I can't precisely put my finger on why, and a chapter that waxes eloquent on the locked room mystery and my, oh my, did I enjoy this book. The solution was very well done and - thankfully - did not involve an icicle in any capacity whatsoever.

Unfortunately, this book is not available on kindle and appears to be out of print. I picked up my copy on amazon for under ten bucks, but it looks like the edition that I read isn't available for anything less than $90.00 at this time. I would definitely recommend checking it out, if you can find it.

"But, if you're going to analyze impossible situations," interrupted Pettis, "why discuss detective fiction?"

"Because," said the doctor, frankly, "we're in a detective story, and we don't fool the reader by pretending we're not. Let's not invent elaborate excuses to drag in a discussion of detective stories. Let's candidly glory in the noblest pursuits possible to characters in a book."

This is not even remotely what I was expecting - for some reason I was convinced that this was sort of a noir-style mystery. I am really liking it - it's got atmospheric gothic overtones!