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lumberzach 's review for:
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
by Sōji Shimada
The narrator, Kazumi Ishioka, plays a Japanese John Watson to Kiyoshi Mitarai’s Japanese Sherlock Holmes, more or less. They are an entertaining duo of amateur detectives trying to solve the 40 year old mystery of a gruesome and highly publicized serial murder.
One fun little twist after the “investigation” is complete but before Kiyoshi reveals the plot, the author breaks the 4th wall and challenges the reader to solve the mystery before he reveals it! About 4/5 of the way through. That’s a mechanism I’ve never seen before, even if we’re all typically doing that when we read mystery novels anyway, and I thought it was a fun little surprise. Also, the mystery puzzle presented was fairly difficult, if I may say so, though I ended up with the right answer on my guess (was definitely not 100% confident), I didn’t figure out all of the clues the story left.
One fun little twist after the “investigation” is complete but before Kiyoshi reveals the plot, the author breaks the 4th wall and challenges the reader to solve the mystery before he reveals it! About 4/5 of the way through. That’s a mechanism I’ve never seen before, even if we’re all typically doing that when we read mystery novels anyway, and I thought it was a fun little surprise. Also, the mystery puzzle presented was fairly difficult, if I may say so, though I ended up with the right answer on my guess (was definitely not 100% confident), I didn’t figure out all of the clues the story left.