Murder at Mt. Fuji
by Shizuko Natsuki
Ballantine, 235 pages, translated by Robert Rohmer
rating: Neat-O
A slim, atmospheric mystery by Japan's bestselling mystery writer, Murder at Mt. Fuji is in essence a police procedural, but with a very different flavor from similar American or British works. I found it interesting that the protagonist, to the extent that there is one, is a young American woman named Jane Prescott studying in Japan. I suspect that Natsuki uses her presence as a distancing device, to allow him to examine some of the family relationships that drive the story that the Japanese might take for granted, but to an American, Natsuki's Jane Prescott is doubly distancing--without being blatantly wrong or stereotypical, there's something about her reactions and her aquiescence to the family's plotting that seem odd.
The plot is roughly this: Jane is Chiyo Wada's English tutor, and to help Chiyo with her term paper she's invited to the ultra-rich Wada's New Year's family gathering at Mt. Fuji. There, the patricarch of the Wada clan is murdered, and when Chiyo confesses to doing it in self-defense, the rest of the family comes up with an elaborate plot to protect her and make it seem like an outsider did it. But things aren't always as they seem, and when the Five Lakes District police begin investigating, not only does the plot unravel, but the most basic "facts" about the murder are called into question.