The locked room mystery has always held a special fascination for suspense fans. Perhaps the most popular—and earliest—of them is Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” in which a mother and daughter are murdered—the mother so brutally ravaged she is almost decapitated and the daughter strangled and stuffed up a chimney—in a…
Crime novel critic Kiyoshi Kasai focuses in his books on “orthodox” detective novels, which refer to the Golden Age detective novels in the Christie-Queen-Carr tradition. He identifies three distinct “waves” in the development of the orthodox detective novels in Japan , the first (1920-1940s) being the one represented by Edogawa Rampo, while the second is…
Why should you care about the Japanese detective story? Well, Japan has a long and rich tradition in the genre, and even today, the detective novel holds a vital place in Japanese fiction. From light-hearted travel-mysteries to Golden Age–styled novels, from the ‘social detective’ with his cultural commentary to the grotesque mystery, the Japanese detective…
