Japanese mystery

> Tag: Japanese mystery

What an absolute waste of a great book cover.

Death on Gokumon Island (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #4) by Seishi Yokomizo

December 23, 2022 by narfna 1 Comment

I think I might be done with this series. It’s really lost its charm. I might give it one more go if they translate a fifth book, but it will be by hard copy not by audio. You expect a certain amount of clashing cultural mores when you read a book that was written over fifty years before, but when I read Agatha Christie, for instance, it’s usually just small stuff you can roll your eyes at and be like, ugh you dumb people in […]

The village of hysterical women.

The Village of Eight Graves (Kosuke Kindaichi, #3) by Seishi Yokomizo

November 3, 2022 by narfna Leave a Comment

Whaaaat the heck happened here. This was a mess. In fact, I had such a different reading experience with this third translated book in the Kosuke Kindaichi series that I kind of have to wonder if it was me and not the book, since presumably the English publisher chose to translate and publish this one third out of all the many, many available books in the series for a reason (and it’s not third in original publication order). I really wasn’t expecting to have such […]

Triple Cannonballing with one of the cleverest books I’ve ever read. #CBRBINGO – Minds

Malice (Detective Kyoichiro Kaga, #1) by Keigo Higashino

September 26, 2022 by narfna 10 Comments

Well, this was a ride. Malice was one of the most interesting and compelling mysteries I’ve ever read. I love it when authors play with the format of a genre, and that seems to be something Higashino does well. I really can’t say too much about this one without completely spoiling it, but this book’s plot covers the murder and murder investigation of the famous Japanese novelist, Kunihiko Hidaka. The book is told in alternating POVs from Hidaka’s childhood friend, Osamu—who is writing a chronicle of […]

“‘That man’s lying.’ With that, he opened his suitcase and took out a blank telegram. After a few moments, he began to write. KATSUKO DEAD. SEND KINDAICHI.”

The Honjin Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #1) by Seishi Yokomizo

March 3, 2022 by narfna Leave a Comment

A clever, meta little Japanese murder mystery, first published in 1946, by a man who was apparently a huge fan of the western Golden Age mystery. This is the first book in the Kosuke Kindaichi series that he wrote dozens of novels for. Kindaichi-san is very unlike his British counterparts, Poirot, Wimsey, or even Marple. He’s very young, and a bit of a slob, but he has a mind for mysteries. Here, he is brought to the scene of a wedding where the bride and […]

narfna on Family secrets and a ghost storyThat cover you have is so pretty!
Emmalita on 530 pages and I wasn’t ready for it to be overI love this series. I can’t wait for the next one, because the second one ends on a knife point.
ASKReviews on Anti-Fat Bias Is RealOh yay! Yeah, it's a good one, and if you read her first book, there's still new information in this one.
GentleRain on A Terribly Sad Book That Probably Shouldn’t Have Been Written at This Point in TimeThanks! Yes, it was a very thought provoking read but I really would have waited to write it, or written a different book if they...
Emmalita on Anti-Fat Bias Is RealI love Aubrey Gordon. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this.

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What an absolute waste of a great book cover.

The village of hysterical women.

Triple Cannonballing with one of the cleverest books I’ve ever read. #CBRBINGO – Minds

“‘That man’s lying.’ With that, he opened his suitcase and took out a blank telegram. After a few moments, he began to write. KATSUKO DEAD. SEND KINDAICHI.”

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