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A review by livres_de_bloss
Murder at the Black Cat Cafe by Seishi Yokomizo
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
Roughly 15% of the titular story is a long-winded preamble about mystery tropes that's completely unnecessary. There's an awkward set-up where the narrator was an author whose only connection to the world is being told the story by a detective. Wouldn't it be easier to just tell the story rather than have this author shoehorned into it? There's such limited time to grab a reader's attention and this book didn't set the stage well at all.
The actual story is really telling-heavy and linear. The writing was stilted with little to choose between any of the characters. Because the heavy-handed prologue gives the tropes away, there was very little mystery to the events of the story because they'd already told us what was going to happen! The police work was unconvincing (relying almost entirely on hearsay) and the resolution was just ridiculous. As was the rationale for killing the black cat. The author was trying to pull a 'gotcha' and it felt so forced, like a really clunky magic show finale. Then, we have to sit through the whole thing again as a character tells the entire story from beginning to end!
How can a book that's 135 pages be so overwritten and stuffed with so much padding? I get this is likely a product of its time (1947) but I'm not sure this mystery does what it sets out to do in 2025... not without much more stringent editing.
There's a second story that makes up about 40% of the page count that follows the same format: a long road to a very short thought.
This title was available to review from Pushkin Vertigo on NetGalley.
The actual story is really telling-heavy and linear. The writing was stilted with little to choose between any of the characters. Because the heavy-handed prologue gives the tropes away, there was very little mystery to the events of the story because they'd already told us what was going to happen! The police work was unconvincing (relying almost entirely on hearsay) and the resolution was just ridiculous. As was the rationale for killing the black cat. The author was trying to pull a 'gotcha' and it felt so forced, like a really clunky magic show finale. Then, we have to sit through the whole thing again as a character tells the entire story from beginning to end!
How can a book that's 135 pages be so overwritten and stuffed with so much padding? I get this is likely a product of its time (1947) but I'm not sure this mystery does what it sets out to do in 2025... not without much more stringent editing.
There's a second story that makes up about 40% of the page count that follows the same format: a long road to a very short thought.
This title was available to review from Pushkin Vertigo on NetGalley.