Literacy 2026: Book 5: Strange Pictures

Book
Strange Pictures by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion

Synopsis
Seemingly unrelated stories about drawings found on an abandoned blog, a child’s drawing in pre-school, and an art teacher who’d made a quick sketch on the day he went missing, all reveal a sinister story that stretches back decades.

Notes
I read the sequel, Strange Houses, first, because the original always has a long wait at the (virtual) library. There’s been a lot of buzz around the book, both as an unusual and accessible mystery-horror story, and because of its unknown author, who only appears online wearing a mask.

Both books are very similar, in that they’re written in the creepypasta style, where “here’s what happened” takes precedence over the inner minds of the characters. And they go to great lengths to put all the facts before the reader, giving multiple diagrams, charts, or timelines to illustrate every detail mentioned, with all of the pertinent facts highlighted in bold type. It often feels like overkill, a combination of the author wanting to “show his work” and also wanting to pad out the page count.

I think Strange Houses works a little better for me. Both because it was the first I read, so it still had that novelty, but also because it played more to the author’s strengths. Some of the sections in Strange Pictures that tried to get into the inner minds of the characters were pretty effective, especially when it was around the suspense or the horror. But more often, it revealed that they were caricatures or stereotypes — unless it was a topic the author’s personally familiar with, like school clubs or online culture — and were prone to melodrama.

Verdict
Has a lot of the same appeal as reading creepypasta, or if you’re older, a book of murder mystery short stories of the “did you spot the clue?” variety. Or mystery/horror manga like The Kendaichi Case Files, which I imagine were an inspiration. The situations are all wildly contrived, and the people investigating often take extreme leaps in logic and are always proven correct, so it’s not exactly a satisfying mystery. But as a bunch of mildly creepy stories to read before bedtime, it works as advertised.