The Master Key

My main issues include: The translator decided to use the sentence "She was a Japanese," which I'm surprised wasn't updated in newer versions but... okay. The naming conventions are inconsistent (sometimes last name-first name, other times first name-last name). There's an obvious failure of the translator to know what a child of an American would call their own mother when speaking English (even though this is a well-known difference, and it would've been true in the mid-century setting and when it was translated in the 80s), which is just a little obnoxious. But these are largely just small picks.

What I really think this book suffers from is improper marketing. Its inclusion as a 'mystery' book is correct, but I think its constant description as a 'classic mystery' and being marketed next to things that do fit 'classic mystery' does nothing to really help it. This is because a 'classic mystery' to most people who engage in mysteries is to see it in the realm of there being a detective who you follow with an obvious crime to solve as you do, and this book isn't... that.

And that's fine. But the marketing team at Pushkin Vertigo really need to understand what the book is in order to help it properly find its audience... Especially when they're marketing it to people who enjoyed reading their other translated mystery novels, which are... very different from this.

I also think this book is misunderstood by people who read it (which can stem from the improper marketing), and I'm saying this because of how many people I've seen complain of its tell-over-show quality. The way the story is told is... through telling because the events of the crime have already happened long ago in the past for the characters. You're not following the 'mystery' of the kidnapped child of seven years ago, and that kidnapped child is not really the most important part of the story. He is an important part, but he and his kidnapping are not the core of the story. They are solvable elements, but they're not the point.

The focus is on the loneliness of 'spinster' women. There's a reason it takes place in an apartment block entirely dedicated to the lives of young women (and later older women). It's about the ways in which society completely neglects and overlooks their lives, especially once they're no longer "useful" to society. It's about what loneliness, especially under a variety of circumstances, can drive people to do (even in a very negative form). It's about how we can misunderstand the people around us because, rather than engage with them directly, we're encouraged to gossip and skirt around issues. It's about the assumptions we make of other people using what little evidence we have. Hell, it's even about the grief of loss and how that can negatively impact people.

I originally complained that this book was more like creepy vignettes than a mystery novel, but that 'creepy vignette' structure had a point. It was to show the reader all of these people, everything they do in their loneliness and grief and vanity and... whatever. We're being shown who these people are and what they're driven to do and why they're driven to do it.

The mystery itself is secondary, and that's... fine.