Forum - View topicREVIEW: The Decagon House Murders Novel
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1487 |
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I'm a complete mystery newbie, so reading the review deepens my appreciation of:
The Suzumiya Haruhi island mystery The recent Suzumiya Haruhi Mystery Club novel (which devotes a lot of attention to the Van Dine rules) Nisioisin's Kubikiri Cycle, which also takes place on an island estate All of which were probably referencing this book (as well as the Agatha Christie). |
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2351 |
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Is the solution to the mystery as screw you to the audience as another's mystery solution was.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
 Posts: 2664 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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No, this is much more of a classic fair play mystery. It has a few kind of silly components, but they pretty much all come from Golden Age mystery tropes. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2273 |
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Hearing that this was a fair play mystery was basically all I needed to get this on my to-buy list. 
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Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
Posts: 2664 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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The fact that I named my new kitten Ellery should tell you what my favorite type of mystery is. 
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jenthehen
 Posts: 835 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio |
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I finally read all of Umineko the end of last year into the beginning of this year and loved it (thanks Higurashi Gou / Sotsu for motivating me!)
I subsequently read And Then There Were None and The Decagon House Murders which were great! I previously had no idea just how popular this "classic - figure out the mystery" type of fiction really was in Japan. |
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shosakukan
Posts: 334 |
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In a sense, that would be a 'Who reads what in Country X' thing. To detective-story readers proper/detective-story maniacs in Japan, the best-known/most important work by Baroness Orczy is The Old Man in the Corner stories after all. And it is possible that detective-story readers proper in Japan don't read Occidental books to the level where they also reach for historical fiction by Baroness Orczy, even if The Scarlet Pimpernel was popular and famous in the UK (and also in other English-speaking countries) to the level where, say, Alexander Korda's London Films produced a motion-picture adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel. There are people who see things in a given field in the culture of a foreign country only through a relatively small window, even though they seem to be/say that they are interested in the given field in the culture of the foreign country. You write articles on Japanese books including manga as a professional, and methinks you read the Japanese language, Ms Silverman. No offence, and I don't mean to criticise you, but I suggest to you that you should check how many Japanese 'canon' books, Japanese books that are likely to be listed in something like Cultural Literacy: What Every Literate Japanese Needs to Know, Japanese mystery-fiction classics, Japanese historical-fiction classics, manga classics and so on in the original are on your shelves. Now-almost-defunct-but-major-in-those-days publishing firm Kaizō-sha published a Japanese translation of The Scarlet Pimpernel (trans. by Matsumoto Tai) in Shōwa 4 (1929). Translator Muraoka Hanako, who also translated many books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, published a translation of The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1950. Scholar of English literature Nishimura Kōji published a translation of The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1958. Famous publishing firm Chikuma-shobō published a translation of The Scarlet Pimpernel (trans. by Nakada Kōji) in 1977. Shūeisha published a translation of The Scarlet Pimpernel (trans. by Ogawa Takashi. Abridged translation) in 2008. (The Shūeisha edition seems to have tried to take advantage of Takarazuka's Star Troupe's doing the 2008 Takarazuka version of the Wildhorn-Knighton Scarlet Pimpernel.) So The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy is not necessarily unknown to Japanese readers. Takarazuka's Flower Troupe had also done a stage version (adapted and dir. by Shibata Yukihiro) of The Scarlet Pimpernel already in 1979. |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
Posts: 2664 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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You are absolutely correct. In that way, I think that many readers who get the books in translation have a much better grasp of some English-language authors, and Baroness Orczy is one of the best examples. In English, you get the odd The Old Man in the Corner tale in an anthology (almost always edited by Otto Penzler; his anthologies are great sources of older works) and poor Lady Molly of Scotland Yard rarely even makes it into those. Since The Old Man is one of the best examples of an armchair detective, I'd guess that he's a direct influence on this novel. (Actually, The Old Man was left out of the episode of the 1970s TV show The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes that was adapted from one of his cases, which both says a lot and is ridiculous.) I never quite get everything I want to into these reviews. 
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