The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
christopherborum's review
2.0
The writing in this book is so weird. I can't tell if it's the author or the translator. It's the opposite of "don't tell, show". There will be a few lines of dialog, and then several paragraphs of description of what led up to that encounter. For examples, two characters meet to discuss a murder. They speak two or three lines each and then follows two pages of "X had done this and Y had gone there and X had called this person, but maybe Y was not the right person so he had done something else." It's really hard to describe-and hard to show because I'd have to enter hundreds of lines of text.
Also, it isn't really a mystery. We know who does what (mostly) and when. I think it wants to be a psychological study of the main character, but he's kind of a doofus who takes certain actions he hopes will get him what he wants, but his motivations and assumptions are poorly thought out. He's hard to take seriously as a tragic figure because he's so selfish, but he's also hard to accept as a villain, even though he does villainous things, because he's such a dolt. And the backstory that propels the relationship between Daigo and Fumiko, especially his, is kind of silly.
It could have been written as a mystery, where even though the reader kind of knows what's happening, the clues the police find could have been spun out selectively so that we are solving the crime along with them. As it was, however, it's a lot of, "The Inspector assumed [x] and so he had made several phone calls and confirmed his suspicions and then he had observed [something] and then later he had found a certain clue at the scene that led him to think differently, so he had made some more phone calls, etc, etc." We could have been shown him find the clue at the scene and been left to speculate what it meant rather than being told it had happened several days after it was found.
That all said, the resolution/twist was acceptable, although I might have handled it differently. This is not a great book, but almost worth reading so you can see what I mean about the writing style. Other than that, don't bother.
Also, it isn't really a mystery. We know who does what (mostly) and when. I think it wants to be a psychological study of the main character, but he's kind of a doofus who takes certain actions he hopes will get him what he wants, but his motivations and assumptions are poorly thought out. He's hard to take seriously as a tragic figure because he's so selfish, but he's also hard to accept as a villain, even though he does villainous things, because he's such a dolt. And the backstory that propels the relationship between Daigo and Fumiko, especially his, is kind of silly.
It could have been written as a mystery, where even though the reader kind of knows what's happening, the clues the police find could have been spun out selectively so that we are solving the crime along with them. As it was, however, it's a lot of, "The Inspector assumed [x] and so he had made several phone calls and confirmed his suspicions and then he had observed [something] and then later he had found a certain clue at the scene that led him to think differently, so he had made some more phone calls, etc, etc." We could have been shown him find the clue at the scene and been left to speculate what it meant rather than being told it had happened several days after it was found.
That all said, the resolution/twist was acceptable, although I might have handled it differently. This is not a great book, but almost worth reading so you can see what I mean about the writing style. Other than that, don't bother.
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