NEW STUFF: Strange Houses - Uketsu

Here we go again. Another puzzle laden "mystery" novel has arrived fresh from the pen of Uketsu and the English language translator Jim Rion. It's Strange Houses (2025, original Japanese edition 2021) and this time instead of a variety of unusual picture puzzles that are supposed to reveal the hidden motives of the criminally minded characters in its pages (Strange Pictures) we have an assortment of floor plans of deviously designed homes. But it's more of the same -- contrived story meant to nest inside some silly puzzles that are not too puzzling. The preposterous story, once again devoid of any fundamental understanding of humanity, reminded me of a 1974 TV movie called Bad Ronald I saw when I was a teen that has stayed with me for decades. Quite a campy bit of psychological horror, wild and preposterous, but in the end utterly human. It was based on a cult crime novel by John Holbrook Vance, about a boy who commits a murder and is secreted away in a hidden room. Then his mother…