The Village of Eight Graves is the third book I have read in the Detective Kosuke Kindaichi series. Sometimes a mystery series can become formulaic, with books being hard to tell apart. So far that is not the case with this series. The first book (The Honjin Murders) is a classic locked room mystery and the second (The Inugami Curse) is more like a family drama/thriller. This third book is an interesting combination of gothic horror and adventure, with a murder mystery thrown in. And strangely, this time the story is told from the perspective of Tatsuya, the main protagonist of the story, rather than from the perspective of the detective or their sidekick. Tatsuya does not act as a sidekick to Kosuke Kindaichi (our detective), such as Watson is to Holmes or Hastings to Poirot. He is completely outside the investigation, has no direct connection with Kindaichi and can only talk about information that he becomes aware of. He actually mentions this at one point in the story: that a normal detective story should show how the investigation progresses and what the detective uncovers, but that he, as an unwilling participant in the drama, cannot do this. This unusual perspective means it does not read like a conventional murder mystery.

There are two pre-stories which set up the action of the main story.

The first tells how the village got its strange name, Eight Graves. Roughly 400 years ago the villagers brutally murdered eight samurai from one clan who had sought refuge in the village, mainly for the gold the samurai were rumoured to possess, but also to claim a bounty offered by another clan. Not only did the villagers fail to find any gold, the leader of the samurai cursed the village as he died, vowing to visit his vengeance upon it for seven generations to come. Six months after the massacre, lightning struck a tree in the garden of Shozaemon Tajimi, the ringleader of the attack, splitting it in half. Tajimi was already plagued by remorse and this lightning strike drove him mad. He seized a sword and killed seven people in the village, then killed himself by self-decapitation. Eight deaths to match the eight dead samurai. The legendary power of the curse was firmly established in the village! The fearful villagers recovered the bodies of the samurai and reburied them with great ceremony, erecting eight graves where they venerated the samurai as divinities. The shrine of eight graves gave the village its name.

The second story is set around twenty six years before the main story, and also concerns the wealthy Tajimi family. The head of the family, Yozo Tajimi, had several years earlier developed an infatuation with a young village girl, despite already having a wife and children. He abducted the girl, Tsuruko, and kept her imprisoned for several years, subject to constant rape and abuse. In general the rest of the village, including her family, thought it best that she just submit to him, as every time she resisted or attempted to run away Yozo would fly into a violent rage and threaten everyone. Eventually Tsuruko had a child, Tatsuya. Yozo at first doted on the child, but then, convincing himself that Tatsuya was the son of another man, he branded the poor child with fire tongs. He also severely beat Tsuruko. Tsuruko ran away again with her child, and this time managed to flee the village. Yozo was completely enraged when she was not returned to him, and went on a rampage through the village before fleeing into the nearby mountains. He left behind thirty two dead and many more injured. Although the villagers laid some blame for what happened on Yozo, with his vanishing, they mostly blamed Tsuruko, feeling that the bloodbath would not have happened if she had just submitted to him. They also associated the tragedy with the curse on the village, with the thirty two victims seen as four sacrifices to each samurai. Tsuruko left the village with her child and never returned. Yozo was also never seen again.

The actual story then begins with twenty eight year Tatsuya, now an orphan, finding out his origin story, when his father's family find themselves in need of an heir. His two half-siblings are both sick and neither is expected to survive much longer. His maternal grandfather arrives in his town to escort him back to the remote village. But very soon after they meet the grandfather dies, murdered by poison. Although now hesitant, Tatsuya still travels to the village, accompanied by another outsider, Miyako Mori. Miyako is the widow of the younger brother of the other wealthy family in the village, the Nomura Family. She has lived with her husband for many years in Tokyo but has now returned to live with her husband's family. Tatsuya welcomes her supportive company, as most of the villagers make it clear to him that he is unwelcome, that they expect him to be mad like his father, and that they blame him (along with his mother) for Yozo's long-ago crimes. Just as in the time of the samurai, a tree has recently been destroyed by lightning, this time one of a pair of cypresses that form part of the shrine to the dead samurai. The death of Tatsuya’s grandfather is seen by the superstitious as a sign that the curse will strike again. Some villagers tell him directly that he is not welcome, and that his coming will see the village bathed in blood again.

That prediction is accurate. There is another death the very next day. Many more rapidly follow, with Tatsuya seen by the villagers as the obvious culprit. A very tense time follows for poor Tatsuya, as bodies pile up around him. A mob raises against him, and he is forced to flee into underground caves to escape the pitchfork wielding villagers.

The adventure side of the story mainly centres on the legend of the samurai gold, and the hunt for it following fragments of an ancient map through the vast limestone caves underneath the village.

The creepy atmosphere of the village is beautifully created, with its remote location, bloody history and the curse. Adding to the feeling of a gothic horror is Tatsuya himself. He behaves exactly as you expect a gothic horror heroine to act: lots of hand-wringing and bemoaning the evil fate that brought him there. Luckily for Tatsuya, he has two brave female companions who manage to rescue him time and time again from the fate that awaits him, even though neither of them would easily fit the job description of a hero. One is his half-sister, Haruyo, dying from kidney failure, and the other is Noriko, his cousin who was born prematurely on the night of his father’s rampage and is generally regarded as frail and weak.

The story is weighed down a few times by Tatsuya’s vacillation and going over the same points again and again, but apart from this slight problem with pacing, the story is entertaining and constantly keeps you guessing about what will happen next. Apart from the good story, this book also provides a fascinating look at life in post-War Japan. The villagers are all struggling to survive and their world is uncertain. In some ways they are still very feudal, but they are changing business methods along with other new ways that are slowly changing their way of life. It is easy to see why many of them cling to old beliefs and find it easy to believe in the power of superstitions and of the samurai curse.

Recommended if a good gothic horror/adventure/murder mystery is what appeals to you.