Koto music, instruments, and implements play a recurring role in the case. The novel provides a detailed sense of place, including repeated references to cardinal directions and a detailed sketch of the murder scene. He frequently paused to include lyrical descriptions of nature, the mansion, and the characters. Though writing a noir and sometimes graphic murder mystery, Yokomizo worked within the tradition of literary Japanese aesthetics. Yokomizo had read classic Western detective novels extensively, and the novel makes allusions to John Dickson Carr, Gaston Leroux, and others, with several mentions of Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room as an emblematic locked-room mystery. In it, he solves a locked-room mystery murder that takes place in an isolated mansion ( honjin) blanketed in snow. The novel introduces Kosuke Kindaichi, a popular fictional detective who featured in seventy-seven Yokomizo mysteries. In 2019, it was translated into English for the first time by Louise Heal Kawai, and the translation was named by The Guardian as one of the best recent crime novels in 2019. It was filmed as Death at an Old Mansion in 1976. It was serialized in the magazine Houseki from April to December 1946, and won the first Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1948. The Honjin Murders ( 本陣殺人事件, Honjin satsujin jiken) is a mystery novel by Seishi Yokomizo.
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