The Coincidental Murders

“...a sticky, rotten spider’s web of tangled desires...”

In the summer of 1947 a group of bohemians gather at their friend’s villa in the mountains to escape the city heat. Sparks fly, daggers are drawn, and the bodies soon pile up. A self-effacing amateur detective is tasked with identifying the killer from a large cast of eccentric characters including blackmailers, poets, and sexual deviants. But are the murders connected, or purely coincidental?

Sakaguchi Ango’s outrageous whodunnit (original title: Furenzoku Satsujin Jiken, 不連続殺人事件) won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1949, the year after Seishi Yokomizo took the prize for ‘Honjin Satsujin Jiken’ (The Honjin Murders).

Alexis J Brown is a translator living in London.