The Village of Eight Graves de Seishi Yokomizo

Date de parution : 12.2021
Format : Broché
Nombre de pages : 352
Résumé : The third title in Japan's most popular murder mystery series -- after The Honjin Murders and The Inugami Curse -- fiendish classics featuring investigator Kosuke Kindaichi. Translated into English for the first time. Nestled deep in the mist-shrouded mountains, The Village of Eight Graves takes its name from a bloody legend: in the Sixteenth Century eight samurais, who had taken refuge there along with a secret treasure, were murdered by the inhabitants, bringing a terrible curse down upon their village. Centuries later a mysterious young man named Tatsuya arrives in town, bringing a spate of deadly poisonings in his wake. The inimitably scruffy and brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi investigates. Leseprobe PROLOGUE The village of Eight Graves is perched amid the desolate mountains on the border of Tottori and Okayama prefectures. Naturally, arable land is scarce in these parts, and of what little there is, most is given over to a small handful of rice paddies dotted around, each measuring only ten or, at most, twenty tsubo, or about seven hundred square feet. The inhospitable climate makes for a meagre harvest, and no matter the calls to increase production, the rice paddies yield barely enough to feed the villagers. Nevertheless, owing to a wealth of other resources, the inhabitants there live in relative comfort. Charcoal-making and cattle-rearing are the main industries in Eight Graves. The latter is a recent phenomenon, but the former has been the villagers’ chief livelihood for generations. The mountains that envelop the village stretch all the way to Tottori and are blanketed in various species of oak—blue, sawtooth and jolcham. They grow in such abundance that the region has long been famed for its charcoal throughout the whole of Kansai. In more recent times, however, it is cattle-rearing that has become the village’s main source of revenue: the local breed, the chiya-ushi, serves just as well for working as it does for eating, and the cattle market at neighbouring Niimi attracts traders from far and wide. Each household in the village is charged with raising ve or six head of cattle: they aren’t the property of the village farmers, but that of the landowners who give the farmers the calves and sell them on when they are fully grown. The proceeds of the sale are then shared between the farmer and the landowner at a xed r...