FIR# 10
Title of the book read: The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
Author: Soji Shimada
Genre: Mystery(Who-Dunnit), Comedy
Dates: August 16(start of reading the book) to August 19(finished the book), 2010
Finally finishing the book, I had that odd feeling that the case shouldn't have ended like that(for full details, read the book). Although the whole mystery was finally solved after 40 years and that nagging feeling you get whenever you're trying to solve something is finally lifted, the ending of the dynamic would-be detective duo are sort-of unsatisfactory, especially to Kiyoshi Mitarai, the protagonist of the story.
Oh well, we can't be the readers the writer always expects...
The Summary
On a snowy night in 1936, an artist--Heikichi Umezawa--is battered to death behind the locked door of his Tokyo studio. The police find a bizarre testament describing his plan to create Azoth--the ideal woman--from various body parts from his young female relatives. Shortly after, his eldest daughter, Kazue, is raped and murdered. And then all his daughters and nieces all suddenly disappear. Gradually their dismembered bodies are found, all buried according to astrological details expounded by the artist.
The mysterious genocide grips the nation, baffling authorities and amateur detectives alike, but it remains unsolved for more than 40 years. Then one day, in the year of 1979, a document is brought to Kiyoshi Mitarai--astrologer, fortune-teller and self-styled detective. With his own version of Dr. Watson in tow--the illustrator and detective story aficionado Kazumi Ishioka--he sets out on the trail of the invisible perpetrator of the Tokyo Zodiac Murders and the supposed creator of the Azoth in this elaborate whodunit detective story as the hero--Kiyoshi Mitarai--only has one week to solve this.
Do you have what it takes to solve the mystery before he does?
Insights
In most(of what I read so far)detective stories, it is really a gripping, frustrating and, for my case, slow pace when it comes to the first and middle part, where the protagonist/s are still examining the clues, are still making speculations, etc about the crime scenes. But when I read the Tokyo Zodiac Murders, the same elements are still there--as the two argue(with a sense of witty wackiness and almost to the point that they lead themselves almost nowhere), debated what kind of killer would do such a thing and how the crime was done. But what made those parts more interesting is that this is not the usual crime investigation setting that happens in most detective stories. For instance, the crime itself has happened 40 years ago and the characters had never been present in that time yet.
I give praise for Soji Shimada for uniquely interweaving the usual themes of investigation, logic and wit with unprecedented humor of the two main characters, making the pace of the story very different and truly entertaining.
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