Strange Buildings by Uketsu Review

Unusual deaths, child murderers, a bizarre cult for very specific couples, and, of course, lots and lots of weird floor plans of Strange Buildings - it can only be another of Uketsu’s unique brand of murder mystery stories.

Strange Buildings is the third in Uketsu’s Strange series after Strange Pictures and Strange Houses, and it’s also the weakest and longest of the three books. The previous two books had I think four parts each - this book has 11 parts!

Which wouldn’t be as noticeable if the parts were compelling but unfortunately most of these 11 parts are quite boring, taking the reader longer to get to the solutions as the first two-thirds of the book is all setup without a payoff. It’s almost like the author’s aware of this tedious trudge they’re forcing their audience to get through as they include a line similar to my complaint in the book itself:

“However, I was frustrated by the roundabout writing and the vague intimations designed to encourage people to read the second part, because it meant most of the mysteries went unsolved.” (p.152)

Some of the setup stories - or “cases” as they’re described here - aren’t instantly forgettable. The child killer, watermill and immolation stories weren’t bad and provided some of the expected creepiness while the (thankfully short) diary of the starving child was moving. But many of these stories just weren’t that interesting or built up any suspense over the first 250 pages. I flew through Uketsu’s first two books but this one took much longer because I wasn’t into the overall story of the mad cult or the disparate stories that make up the increasingly wearisome puzzle.

Once we get to the Holmesian character to explain it all, Kurihara (a draughtsman but, in the context of this series of floor plan mysteries, basically the equivalent of Sherlock) goes through it all to reveal Uketsu’s tenuous story to be convoluted and silly in an immensely contrived way.

Some elements are laughable like the string phones or the way the houses are designed to mimic something specific, with the entire premise of the cult’s foundation as the battiest solution, but this is all circumstantial guff that Kurihara is pulling out of nowhere. It reads like the author awkwardly explaining his reasoning to the reader as it clearly is.

Couple this with poor prose - besides the bland and repetitious instruction manual-style of writing Uketsu has, the book includes cliched phrases throughout like “I broke out into a cold sweat.” (p.203), “My heart was still pounding in my chest.” (p.204), “It was as if all the strength drained from my body.” (p.381) - and the novelty of including floor plans feeling played out at this point, and you’ve got the worst entry in the Strange series to date.

A dull story, put together in a clunky way, told badly - it isn’t strange to see why Strange Buildings is a crap read. If you’re interested in this one-trick author, don’t start with this one - check out Strange Pictures instead.