Death of the Living Dead

Death of the Living Dead is the debut novel of Japanese author Masaya Yamaguchi, originally published in Japanese as Ikiru Shikabane no Shi. It was selected in 1988 as the eleventh volume of Tokyo Sogensha's Ayukawa Tetsuya and the Thirteen Mysteries series and published in 1989. The story unfolds in a fictional world where the dead come back to life: reports keep surfacing across America of the deceased opening their eyes and leaving the morgue. The resurrected dead are conscious and mobile, yet have no heartbeat or blood circulation, and their bodies can only be preserved from decay through embalming. This eerie atmosphere spreads to the remote village of Tombstone, where the Barricorne family, who grew rich running the local cemetery, are gathered. The family patriarch, Smiley, is gravely ill yet refuses to announce his will, so relatives scattered across the country are summoned back to the mansion. Just as the struggle over the inheritance begins to simmer, Smiley's grandson Green dies of poisoning—and then comes back to life. Suspecting his death is tied to the inheritance dispute, Green decides to use embalming to pose as a living person and continue playing the role of a family member while secretly hunting his own killer before his body decays beyond repair. Yet he discovers that everyone hides secrets, and that he is not the only living dead in the cemetery. Blending the fantastical premise of the resurrected dead with the logical deduction of honkaku mystery, the novel uses a limited corruption window to create urgency and unfolds through successive solutions offered first by the police and then by Green. It is regarded as a pioneering work of Japanese setup-based mystery.