Several Little Deaths (And One Big One)

The Concubine's Tattoo by Laura Joh Rowland.

If Rowland communicates one thing effectively via the mystery genre, it is this: sex and death indeed are one and the same.

This is usually merely the subtext of a mystery, assuming we're not concerned with mere sociopathy: someone dies, and the detective must uncover the web of sexual and economic relationships that led to the murder in the first place. (It always comes down to sex or money in the end.) The victim's death is an indicator that something dark lies beneath the surface of events, be that surface never so smooth and unruffled. It's best if what lies beneath is sex rather than money, because illicit sex demands secrecy in a more interesting way than mere fiscal amorality. Sex is more ambiguous, more unpredictable, and therefore more to be preferred as a dramatic instigator.

Essentially, then, on a metaphorical level, death is often the direct result of sex.

Where Rowland's talent comes in is transforming this element from metaphorical subtext to actual, demonstrable, and above all literal text.

As The Concubine's Tattoo opens, the narrative point of view alternates between the concubine secretly tattooing her pubic area with the Japanese character for "love" (ai) to demonstrate her affection for her secret, illegal, outcaste lover (yes it's a spoiler; why wouldn't it be?) and the detective's formal, public, ritual marriage to a beautiful young girl he believes will bring peace and respite to his much-threatened, stressful existence. The concubine's death throes from the poisoned tattooing ink are coupled with the ritual sake drinking of the bride and groom. The discovery of the concubine's body happens with far-from-coincidental narrative precision right at the moment when the wedding ceremony officially ends. And all of this in a mere twelve pages.

There is also the scene in a puppet theater where the detective's assistant (the very Robin-esque Hirata) is given most of a hand job by a seductively sinister suspect while the puppets onstage copulate before killing one another and committing puppet seppuku, which an actor then summarizes as: "how treachery, forbidden love, and blindness caused a terrible tragedy." Then, too, the murderer turns out to be a woman for whom violent killing takes the place of the sex she avoids after being raped as a child.

With death-sex scenes like these, it is no wonder that the reader then begins to look for sex in the death scenes, and death in the sex scenes. Previously straightforward means of death (stabbing, for instance) take on a perverse erotic cast. The loving consummation of a marriage signals the death of pride and stubbornness in the consummating couple. The drug-seller's two categories of substances, poisons and aphrodisiacs, appear to be one linked set of chemicals.

It might not be perfect -- hell, it might not even be good writing -- but it is fascinating.