More Uketsu: Strange things!

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Strange Pictures, by Uketsu

This is a prose novel, not a graphic novel, but it still revolves around pictures.  We have four short stories, each of which involves a mystery about one or more hand-drawn pictures -- some by children, some by adult artists.  In the end, the narratives fit together to solve a larger mystery about a very quiet serial killer -- a story that has lasted decades.  It was a good read, on the fast and easy side.

We start with an abandoned blog discovered by two students who think there's a puzzle involved.  The writer starts off happy and excited that his wife is going to have a baby, and is then grief-stricken when she dies during childbirth.  Three years later, he erases most of the entries, posts a cryptic note, and the blog ends.  Who is the note addressed to?  What of this little family?  Through three more seemingly unrelated stories, the solution eventually comes out.

 

 

 

 The Strange House, vol. 3, by Uketsu

Sadly for me, this turns out to be a quartet, and I still don't know the solution to the mystery!  In this third volume, the kind of mysterious woman whose sister used to live in the strange houses reveals a difficult story from her past: her grandparents live in an large, old, traditional (but strange) house, and years ago during a family visit, her cousin died.  He was just a little boy, and was found apparently having fallen from the giant altar at the end of the hall -- but he was frightened of that altar and would never have tried to climb it.  The two women decide to visit this strange house, and find it empty of people....but full of clues.

Volume 4 comes out in the fall and I sure hope it ends well.  I liked this installment quite a bit.

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