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A review by readingwithalex02
The Tattoo Murder by Akimitsu Takagi
mysterious
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? No
3.0
I personally wasn’t a fan of the translation of this book into English; I found it clunky and unnatural.
That aside, the story was interesting, but I felt that it went round in circles a lot. The supposed “boy detective” who tries to get to the bottom of the crime, as stated in the blurb, doesn’t even appear in the book till about halfway through then miraculously solves it by the power of thinking and chess. Some of the plot points I found easy to guess, though I was still impressed by the solution to the locked room mystery. And all of this is ignoring the sexism (and ongoing tattoo hatred) which I suppose should be expected from a book set in the 1940s?
Overall, mid.
That aside, the story was interesting, but I felt that it went round in circles a lot. The supposed “boy detective” who tries to get to the bottom of the crime, as stated in the blurb, doesn’t even appear in the book till about halfway through then miraculously solves it by the power of thinking and chess. Some of the plot points I found easy to guess, though I was still impressed by the solution to the locked room mystery. And all of this is ignoring the sexism (and ongoing tattoo hatred) which I suppose should be expected from a book set in the 1940s?
Overall, mid.