The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

"This is a famous book in Japan. I think this book triggered orthodox detective crime mysteries coming back to the market in the 1980s. The story is set on the same day as the 2/26 incident in 1936, an important date in Japanese history when a coup d’état by right wingers failed, but as a result the military gained more control over the government, leading to the Sino-Japanese War the following year in 1937. It was also an unexpected snow day, which plays a part in the story. This is a crime mystery quite focused on tricks. It’s continually making readers use their brains. I used lots of post-it notes to mark pages and phrases, but I didn’t do well enough to figure it out. I actually own a used copy, and the book has the original owner’s writing all over it. There are notes everywhere. It gives you an idea of how to read the book, what the excitement is. I enjoyed it too. In the middle there is a lot of conversation between the two friends, the detective and his friend about ‘What’s the situation?’ ‘How about this way?’ There are a lot of scenarios, there is a lot of back and forth. I felt I had to work it out in my head. Yes, that’s great, as well as the astrological analysis of Japan and its territory. Once I had read through everything my interest in the book really came to me. Once I understood how the mystery had been solved, I went back and forth quite a lot to see on which page to find the clues. This was a key book in reviving authentic detective mysteries again in Japan, where, at that time, social realism dominated. After him, there were many writers who were encouraged to write authentic detective mysteries—such as Alice Arisugawa, Yukito Ayatsuji and more."

"This is by Soji Shimada, a contemporary Japanese writer who has been highly influential, particularly in Japan and Asia, in reinventing the locked room mystery and traditional golden age story. These have been very, very popular in Japan and now to some extent in China as well, with mystery games being popular amongst young Chinese people. I met Soji Shimada at a mystery game convention in Shanghai and we were both bewildered by all these young people playing very elaborate golden age-type mystery games. Often there is a dark edge to the storyline that in general—with some exceptions, like “The House in Goblin Wood”— you tend not to find so much in the 1920s and the 1930s. Again, it shows the potential. The Tokyo Zodiac Murders was published in the 1980s but has only been available in English translation in recent years. It is a very interesting book. It’s pretty dark and gruesome. It’s convoluted in a Christie-style way but quite distinctive. It’s one of those books which very consciously references the golden age traditions, the great detective, the various ideas of clueing and red herrings and the twists, the surprise solution at the end. So it falls within the tradition but it remakes it at the same time. Soji has been very, very successful at doing that. His approach and that of a number of other writers from that part of the world has shown that the locked room mystery isn’t as played out as people used to think in the past. If you’ve got enough energy and imagination as a writer, you can take these ideas and do something fresh and interesting. Yes, Blackstone Fell is the third in a series about a character called Rachel Savernake , who denies being a detective, but is within the tradition of the great detective in some ways. She’s got a sidekick, a Doctor Watson figure called Jacob, who is a journalist and very impetuous and naïve. He gets into a lot of difficult situations. Rachel is enigmatic and mysterious, and very ruthless too, it must be said. She’s a complex character. What I’m trying to do in that series is to write books that feel as though they were written in the period. I do a lot of research to try to make sure that they have that authentic feel. They have a lot of golden age tropes, but I’m writing in the 21st century. These are not pastiches, they’re not an attempt to write Agatha Christie , they’re an attempt to do something different with those ideas about society, about human nature, about character. The settings are important, too. I’m trying to take those ideas and use the freedom that writers have today—which is a different sort of freedom from writers of the 20s and 30s—to write stories that are a bit quirky, a bit different but which, nevertheless, fall broadly within that great tradition. They are quite dark, but they’re also meant to be fun and entertaining, and to offer a genuine mystery to be solved. So with this book, Blackstone Fell , and the last one, Mortmain Hall , there’s a cluefinder at the end, which is something that some of the books of the 20s and 30s used to have. The author puts clues at the end of the book that the reader may or may not have picked up in the text. You’re demonstrating that you’ve played fair, which was very important in the golden age. That’s right—and trying to show the sheer range of stories written. The series really spans from the 1920s to the 1960s and crime fiction changed a lot during that period in many, many ways. It’s certainly not all me! It’s the British Library who decides, they do all the work and also take up ideas from others who make suggestions."