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mattdube 's review for:
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
by Sōji Shimada
I totally picked up this book for its cover, which I think is a lot more edgy than the book itself. Shimada has written a kind of Holmes pastiche, where the first third of the book or so is literally two characters talking over a long dead mystery, with an aim to solve it, and this was kind of slow going-- what worked for Holmes and Watson doesn't quite hum along today the way it did in the nineteenth century, and the weight of detail here made the first part of the book kind of lumbering.
Later sections, when the two main characters got out and about worked better for me, and there was some fun sociological stuff about Japan in here, and they did become kind of funny and rich to me as characters. The detective story is that type where readers get all the clues before the curtain is pulled back, and there are mildly postmodern elements in this novel, including the author addressing us (twice) to tell us we can solve the murder now.... There were formal disruptions in spots throughout the book that made me want to read Shimada in a more unrestrained narrative than this one.
Cool cover, though, and I am interested in the Pushkin Vertigo line of books that this came from.
Later sections, when the two main characters got out and about worked better for me, and there was some fun sociological stuff about Japan in here, and they did become kind of funny and rich to me as characters. The detective story is that type where readers get all the clues before the curtain is pulled back, and there are mildly postmodern elements in this novel, including the author addressing us (twice) to tell us we can solve the murder now.... There were formal disruptions in spots throughout the book that made me want to read Shimada in a more unrestrained narrative than this one.
Cool cover, though, and I am interested in the Pushkin Vertigo line of books that this came from.