The Art and Architecture of Unease

The narration draws readers into mysteries of shifting clues and domestic settings, turning everyday life into unsettling puzzles of dread

- - SHINIE ANTONY

When bestsellers blending mystery and horror by an anonymous Japanese author are published in English, the fans of creepy tales are in for a treat. The fact that the author appears masked on videos and speaks in a distorted voice only adds to the weird quotient and his cult status. With stories steeped in intrigue and an adequate amount of the dark and grim, author Uketsu is his own ambience.

His two books, Strange Pictures and Strange Houses, translated into English by Jim Rion, unfold like traditional puzzles, layering the mysteries into a parfait of missing people, etchings that need a second look, murders and grisly rituals. In some way, he reminds the Indian reader of Satyajit Ray's fiction.

Uketsu cuts up his story into chapters that unfold like short stories, with chills reminiscent of Ray's straightforward style.

While the latter builds an atmosphere of unearthliness with each tale, the former gives us one complete arc with seemingly disparate dispatches, coming to the main story with a series of subplots. An anecdotal air is maintained throughout, with old friends talking and eating, and calling each other up again with a new thought or because they happened to remember something.

There is a brevity to the writing, as if only essentials are being shared, which is a tricky premise in fiction that must mystify and keep us sleepless.