And my collection of Japanese books with a black cat grows stronger 😂. I went to buy a book for someone else and I@came@out with three for me. I‘m weak.
pickI love how quiet & unassuming Kosuke Kindaichi, the main character, is in this series by one of the biggest names in classic Japanese crime fiction. As always, there is a gruesome crime but what really makes these stories work is the exploration of the emotions that drive people to do the unthinkable. As usual, the pacing is slow but it works & you can almost imagine yourself having tea with Kosuke as he tells you about the latest crime.
Shiny new book for the Xmas wishlist!
so-soThe 7th instalment in the Detective Kindiachi series. It consists of a long introduction, the main story and a second shorter story. In the main story a police officer discovers the body of a woman and a black cat. The solution felt unnecessarily complicated. The second story confused me as Kindiachi hardly appears. Thanks to NetGalley and Pushkin books for the ARC.
pickTwo novellas, one almost long enough to be a novel in its own right.
In the longer novella, the narrator quite explicitly says at the start that he is telling the story to subvert the trope of an unidentifiable corpse turning out to be the chief suspect while the alleged victim is actually the murderer. Even with that massive clue I still couldn't solve the puzzle.
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Murder at the Black Cat Café | 
