This book is part of the 金田一耕助 reading club. This is the 8th book we will be reading together and (chronologically) the seventh novel-length story, but can be read as a stand-alone.
It’s a bit unfortunate that the short first chapter and epilogue are adjacent to the longest chapters. How do we want to schedule this?
If we combine them, we’d have a 8 week schedule with 84-60-55-52-44-33-58-74 pages. How do we feel about that?
Then, since we’d already have a week with a higher page count, it’s tempting to also combine chapters 6&7 into a 77 page week. Is that doable or too much?
That feels like quite a lot, especially in week 1. I could certainly do it if that’s what everybody else favours, but I think I’d prefer week 1 to be chapter 1 and part of chapter 2, and week 2 be the rest of chapter 2. There’s a subchapter break on page 36 (giving week 1 31 pages and week 2 53 pages) or another on page 52 (for 47 pages / 37 pages).
Combining the last chapter and epilogue seems fine, since usually everybody wants to read to the end at that point anyway.
I’d prefer to just combine the first two chapters for the first week, even if it does make a long week. Maybe we could start on the 14th instead? But don’t otherwise disrupt the schedule, so week 2 is still July 24. That way the first “week” has a few extra days (over a weekend!) to accommodate the extra pages.
I think combining the epilogue and chapter 9 is good.
If it were up to me I’d combine 6 and 7, but I feel much more strongly about the first two chapters. Plus, since all the previous weeks are longer, and especially if we do combine the first two chapters, it could serve as a nice catch-up time.
Since we missed our opportunity to start a bit earlier due to my current inability to schedule my life, I hope it’s okay if we go with breaking chapter 2 in half instead, with the sub chapter break on page 36.
Week one and we have another story set in a long-established but odd family. Also the closed room looks suspiciously like somebody has taken a crime scene complete with blood-stained blunt instrument, and just closed the door on it and thrown away the key. Which seems a rather silly thing to do…
hmm, is the book going to mostly be set in this hotel rather than on the island? Also, I kinda lost track of who 遊佐 is. He was in the group with 蔦代 and 文彦 (who are both on the little family tree on page 52), but why is he with them?
I’m sure that Mr Mysterious not letting Kindaichi know who he is couldn’t possibly backfire.
Also 九十九 being read つくも is particularly silly even by Japanese name reading standards. Apparently it derives from some wordplay based on a poem in the 伊勢物語…
Now that S&M is over for the week I’m starting/catching up on this. There’s definitely a lot of striking visual imagery, so I wonder if this has been adapted more due to that than the strength of its story/mystery. I guess we’ll see. I’m also getting a strong Inugami vibe, we’ll see if Kindaichi is useless in this book as well (who am I kidding, of course he’ll be)
Considering everybody told Tomoko to stay out of the room, it seems to me more like a conspiracy by everyone to cover up the circumstances of the guy’s death.
If you were going to do a cover up, wouldn’t it be better to just dispose of the murder weapon rather than leaving it around to raise awkward suspicions in anybody who managed to get in and see it?
Finally, our first dead body! The combination of “tightly limited time” and “alibis” and “clock tower” makes me wonder about clever mechanical timed traps, but that would surely leave more evidence, so at the moment I think it unlikely.
Predictions:
Neither of the two fugitives is the murderer
The disguised old man is Mr Mysterious who the lawyer refused to name when he was briefing Kindaichi
The letter inviting Yusa to the clock tower said “come at 9”, so what was he doing between 9 and when he died after 9:15? (I’m assuming the letter isn’t from Tamon and so the answer isn’t “talking to Tamon”.)
Is there any significance to the fact that in the letter to Yusa both his and Tamon’s surnames are in hiragana, not kanji?
I’d guess it’s either a sign that the one who wrote it wasn’t sure which kanji to use for at least one of the names, or simply that they didn’t find the needed kanji in the letters they’d cut out. Which I’m willing to believe for ゆさ, but not たもん.
I’ve the same feeling that the two fugitives aren’t the culprit… but no clue yet who might be. I’m thinking 多門 probably got a similar letter to the one 遊佐 got (if that’s the correct kanji) with a different meeting time in order to frame him.
I finally managed to read the week’s part before the week is over!
Still behind, but nice to see Yokomizo is changing things up by featuring the most beautiful man in the world in this book. Although he also still the most beautiful woman in the world too…
For some reason I mistakenly thought I couldn’t read this yet.
I did too! Reopening the book this week reminded me about how I liked that last bit with the journalist, too. It’s always interesting to me to see how 金田一’s connections and reception change over time.
I’ve only read the first subchapter of chapter 5 so far. For some reason, it was really tiring? I’m also surviving on probably <5hrs sleep today, so there’s that.
(I really don’t mind too much either way.)
