Strange Pictures

The Japanese mystery horror sensation

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Pub Date 16 Jan 2025 | Archive Date Not set
Pushkin Press | Pushkin Vertigo

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Description

A Japanese mystery horror bestseller, revolving around a series of creepy drawings, in which the reader is the detective - from the Youtube sensation Uketsu

A series of drawings by a pregnant woman conceal a chilling warning.

A child's picture of his home contains within it a dark secret message.

A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth into a terrifying investigation

Can you find the hidden clues in these strange pictures and discover what connects them all? When you do, a sinister truth will be revealed.


About the Author

Uketsu is an enigmatic Youtuber and author, specializing in horror and mystery. He always appear in videos wearing a white mask and black body stocking, with his voice digitally distorted. His true identity is unknown. Strange Pictures has already sold more than 600,000 copies in Japan and the foreign translation rights are being quickly bought up across the world. Strange Houses and Strange Buildings are also forthcoming from Pushkin Vertigo.

A Japanese mystery horror bestseller, revolving around a series of creepy drawings, in which the reader is the detective - from the Youtube sensation Uketsu

A series of drawings by a pregnant woman...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781805335399
PRICE £14.99 (GBP)
PAGES 240

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Average rating from 7 members


Featured Reviews

This was unlike anything I’ve read before. From the get go there was something unnerving about the book, and the strange pictures only added to this feeling. The book starts with a mysterious blog post and unsettling images as the reader slowly finds out more about the images and how they’re all connected. The multi media aspect combined with the drawings made for a thrilling read, I found myself unable to put this book down. As the reader slowly finds out more about the initial image and all the ones that follow, the plot reveals itself and it’s insanely clever and imaginative. I really enjoyed this, both for the horror element and the visual elements too. Such a unique story!

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I am thrilled to be one of the first to read and review the English translation of Strange Pictures, the debut novel by masked Japanese YouTuber Uketsu. This unputdownable read delivers a perfectly constructed puzzle that comes together with a fantastic precision. As with many Japanese mystery novels, the themes are very strong, and Uketsu masterfully blends horror, psychological suspense, and brutal realism. I especially love the blunt, straight-to-the-point narrative style, which kept me hooked from start to finish. The strange pictures are truly mesmerizing!

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Cult Japanese author Uketsu’s ‘sketch novel’ features a wealth of eerie, unsettling scenes but it’s much closer to crime than horror, an intricate murder mystery with an unusual structure. The majority of the book operates like a puzzle. There are no easily distinguished unifying characters. No detective, amateur or otherwise, to guide readers through Uketsu’s maze. Instead, readers have to figure out how disparate pieces might fit together, although Uketsu’s narrative slowly builds towards a big reveal finale. Loosely connecting the novel’s different sections are themes of perspective and interpretation, an emphasis on the attitudes, and viewpoints that might dictate how we understand our everyday world - and the tendency to force fragments into some semblance of a coherent whole.

Images are key to Uketsu’s approach here, which draws on the concept of child therapists using patients’ drawings to understand their likely state of mind. This idea is introduced at the start via a lecture given by a child psychologist. The psychologist talks her students through her process, aided by a crude drawing made by a former patient, a matricidal killer dubbed Little Girl A. The psychologist explains how her reading of Little Girl A’s pictures became instrumental in dictating Little Girl A’s treatment and her identification as a candidate for rehabilitation and eventual release.

This chapter’s followed by a series of seemingly disconnected episodes, featuring a succession of characters and crimes - from suspicious deaths to obvious murders. The shift from one section to another sometimes so abrupt it felt like the verbal equivalent of a jump cut. His narrative’s highly visual qualities are in keeping with Uketsu’s background as a Youtuber who made his name through a series of eccentric videos. He wants his fiction to appeal to audiences who rarely read as well as those who do. The extensive illustrations incorporate numerous diagrams as well as charts highlighting potential plot developments. These suggest Uketsu’s deliberately blending conventions from locked-room style Golden Age mysteries with aspects of manga: Uketsu’s stated influences are contemporary Japanese crime writers like Honobu Yonezawa, he’s also a fan of Holmes and Watson.

There were moments when Uketsu’s concept felt a bit contrived and gimmicky but, for the most part, this was a gripping, entertaining experience, laced with striking twists and turns – whenever I worked out a possible link between one crime and another, I felt surprisingly smug. The only remaining enigma was Uketsu himself, apart from his pseudonym and gender almost nothing’s known about him. A bestselling author in Japan, Uketsu’s core readers are women between 30 and 50; often referred to as the Edogawa Ranpo of the Internet, Uketsu digitally disguises his voice and never appears without his trademark white mask and all-encompassing, black body suit. Translated by Jim Rion.

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This was eerie and so so clever! At first take, it looks like a series of short stories that seemingly have no connection. However, the connection soon becomes clear and I was gobsmacked. It is basically a full circle moment! The images included really made the story feel that much more intense and creepy. I was hooked.
This is definitely a perfect book for spooky season.

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