The Book Depository The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada
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Description: The Tokyo Zodiac Murders : Paperback : Pushkin Press : 9781782271383 : 1782271384 : 17 Sep 2015 : A bestselling and internationally-acclaimed masterpiece of the locked-room mystery genre. The Book Depository The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9781782271383
MPN: 1782271384
GTIN: 9781782271383
Author: John M
Rating: 5
Review: This is one of a series of 20 or so classic crime 'who dunnit' thrillers from around the world published by Pushkin Vertigo. This story is set in Tokyo in 1979 when an amateur detective and his friend reinvestigate the series of murders from 1936 which included an artist and seven female members of his family, including 2 nieces, 3 step-daughters and 2 daughters. The youngest 6 women are discovered dismembered and buried across Japan at sites with some astrological significance in an incidence known as the 'Tokyo Zodiac Murders'. The artist had penned a bizarre treatise about carrying out such a plan for his own reasons, but he is murdered prior to the women, so he couldn't have done it, or could he?? His murder occurred in strange circumstances in a locked room. Kazume Ishioka asks his friend and amateur sleuth Kiyoshi Mitarai to investigate. The books is written almost as if it were a true event being re-opened rather than a novel, which it is. It starts with the rambling and very detailed astrological treatise and plan of the artist, Heikichi Umezawa, to recreate an ancient Japanese goddess from the body parts of his female family members. Mad stuff, but a compelling insight into the logic of his mind. It then details the murders and the reinvestigation. It is unsettling and gruesome in parts, but compelling nonetheless. The solution is clever, but the plot ultimately a bit contrived. However, it is still worthy of high praise because of its unique style and ingenuity. I definitely will read others in this series, and would recommend this to anyone with a devious mind and a strong stomach.
Author: KIKAREN
Rating: 2
Review: This is dire. Just wasted a week of my life plowing through it. It’s a very famous Locked Room Mystery which is by convention a murder in a room where all means of entry and exit are sealed. So the question becomes, how did the murderer get in and how did they get out. When it works you should be able to re-read a locked-room mystery twice apparently, the second time recognising the clues and seeing how the whole thing fits together. Read it twice? Errr . . . Set in Tokyo in the middle of the 20th Century, it’s a clever premise. An artist writes a note, later discovered by the police stating his intention of murdering his six daughters and using the body-parts to create a kind of Frankenstein monster which he calls Azoth. The girls are duly killed but after the artist himself is murdered, so who killed the daughters? Who killed the artist? Above and beyond that is the fact that the artist is found dead in a locked room with bars on the windows and a lockable bar on the inside of the entry-door that we are told can only and absolutely be locked in place from the inside. Then follows about 250-pages of misdirection. I couldn’t be bothered. Perhaps if I had been stuck in a hospital waiting room for half a day and read it quickly in one or two sessions, I might have got caught up in it but in fact there are so many Japanese characters and names to remember that I was soon in difficulty: who was Tae again? What was Tokiko’s relationship to the artist? Forgotten already. The answer when it comes bears zero relationship to the clues that we have been given such as they are. For example, one of the key episodes is the discovery of Yukiko’s body. Yukiko had a birthmark we are told three pages from the end. The totally secure bar on the front door is released from the outside thus . . . ‘Then I went outside. After putting my handbag under the eaves where there was no snow, I threw a rope I’d prepared to the sliding bar from the window and managed to hook it and then pull it to lock the door’ [my italics]. If there is one thing I know something about it is locking bars and I would say that this is impossible: you might get lucky after perhaps a hundred tries but that would take what three, maybe four hours of standing outside exposed in minus zero temperatures in heavy snow. Pernickety? Well, the whole mystery is premised on the legitimacy of the clues we are given and if there is a chink in the clues, the mystery breaks down. The best locked room mystery I know of occurs in fact in Breaking Bad when Walter and whatsisname are locked in a caravan. Simple and effective; you are on the edge of your seat the whole time. Was never once on the edge of my seat in the Zodiac Murders.
