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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Elementary, Detective Mitarai!, May 17, 2007
This review is from: Tokyo Zodiac Murders: Detective Mitarai's Casebook (Hardcover)
This is one of those amazing books that, as soon as you have finished it, you are pushing into the hands of your friends and forcing them to read it immediately. A short, complex and innovative novel, it has an almost perfect balance between character-driven plot and straight analytical mental games that challenge you to unravel the puzzle before the author gives it away. Fans of the murder mystery genre will have a hard time not enjoying "The Tokyo Zodiac Murders".
The story starts off with a powerful hook. In 1936, an old eccentric artist named Heikichi Umezawa has been found dead, leaving behind a last will and confession detailing his obsession with alchemy and astrology, and his plan to construct a perfect woman, named Azoth. His plans are incredibly detailed, but basically involve taking body parts from several astrologically perfect women, then assembling those pieces together in sequence. He is dead before he can put his plans into place, but someone else finishes the deed. The murders are never solved, and remain one of Japan's most studied cases, with amature detectives pouring over the details in the same way as they do with Jack the Ripper nowadays. Fast forward to 1979, where Kazumi Ishioka, a freelance illustrator and fan of mysteries, gleans some new insight into the case and decides to pursue it. He enlists his friend, astrologer Kiyoshi Mitarai, and the two begin their dark journey into the mind of the Zodiac murderer, going down roads that seem obvious once the links are made, but appear impossible beforehand.
Author Soji Shimada knows how to construct a good murder mystery. He takes the classic Holmes/Watson team, a fact which he quickly acknowledges in the text of the book, and uses them to hunt an intricate puzzle, based on his own in-depth knowledge as an astrologer. Many mystery staples are here. A locked-door murder. A prime suspect dead before the murders occurred. He takes the basic elements and cliches, gives the reader a nod to let them know that he knows what he is doing, then shuffles them all around until you are completely baffled and utterly enthralled. Especially impressive is his use of multiple writing styles, such as flipping between Heikichi Umezawa insane confession and Ishioka and Mitarai's lighthearted banter. He also makes judicious use of charts and illustrations, even occasionally breaking the fourth wall and personally challenging the reader to solve the mystery before he reveals all in the next chapter.
The only shame with "The Tokyo Zodiac Murders" is that it is the only one of Shimada's many "Detective Mitarai Mystery" novels to be translated into English. As soon as you flip the last page, you are going to be hungry for more of the same. Let's hope they they are forthcoming!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
..and now, for something entirely different ..., April 29, 2009
This review is from: Tokyo Zodiac Murders: Detective Mitarai's Casebook (Hardcover)
This is the kind of book that I hope to find every time I pick up a new mystery. I do have to admit to a fondness for Japanese authors, especially mystery writers, and this particular book is an example of why. I have to find other works by this author in translation if they exist. I could NOT put this book down at all once I started.
The story begins some time back in the 1930s, and its focal point is a bizarre case known as the Tokyo Zodiac Murders. In the last will & testament of an artist under the influences of astrology and alchemy, he sets forth his plan to create the perfect woman...by killing off female relatives, including his daughters, to combine the best parts of all of them in his creation. The murders occurred, but this happened after the artist was found dead, in his studio, locked from the outside. The clues left little to go on, and solving the horrifying case became an obsession for many over the last decades. One detective, who is also a fortune teller, decides to take it on and solve it where others have failed. With the help of his friend, a fan of detective fiction, he tries to do what so many have attempted and failed over the a 40-year period of time.
An amazing book, one that will totally occupy you as you read. There are a number of possibilities that present themselves as the two friends delve into the past. The characterization is very well done, the writing is excellent, and the mystery itself (not to mention the solution) is nothing like I've ever read before. Hooray for a mystery I could really sink my teeth into.
I think this one will really appeal to people like myself who enjoy the different take on mysteries provided by Japanese mystery authors, and those who enjoy the classic locked-room/impossible crimes scenario. It isn't a mystery for cozy readers or readers who want an easy solution -- this requires the reader's participation the entire way. Also, if alchemy and astrology aren't your thing, then you may want to skip it.
An excellent mystery -- I enjoy finding these little gems now and then. Most highly recommended.
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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
readable, but ultimately unsatisfactory, August 22, 2010
This review is from: Tokyo Zodiac Murders: Detective Mitarai's Casebook (Hardcover)
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders contain 3 related cases: first the locked-room murder of the painter Heikichi Umezawa, then the murder of a daughter of his 2nd wife, then the mass murder of the remaining 4 daughters and 2 nieces who lived with the painter and his 2nd wife. The 6 women's bodies were cut up, each with a different missing piece, and buried in different locations across Japan. The missing pieces were supposed to be sewed up to create the ideal woman body to be buried in an unknown location. Astrological nonsense played a largely hocus pocus role in the mass murder. Uninterested readers may feel free to skip the part.
Astrologer-cum-detective Mitarai solved the 40-year old case apparently without much help of his astrological expertise. In Mitarai's outburst, we found his unprovoked venom against Sherlock Holmes with largely unsubstantial arguments. Perhaps Holmes was wiser to leave his venom against Lecoq and Dupin unexplained. Despite Mitarai's unabashed sarcasm again "leg work", he ironically brought his Watson and us along on a wild goose chase from Tokyo to Kyoto only to find that a person no longer lived in his 40-year old address, and then from Kyoto to Osaka only to find the said person dead (of old age). At the end, we found a pointless locked room like so many others. It also became obvious that the cases were far from baffling. In fact they wouldn't have remained unsolved for so long if not for the sloppy police procedure, i.e. leg work, in pre-war Japan.
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