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I’m not really happy with the happenings in this week. It feels like a copout to have the thief not steal the stuff at the time he announced. All prevoius robberies we’re done at the pointed out time.
I have a theory where the thief is currently. But i still don’t understand why akechi is free again. Still waiting on that resolution.
The others don’t believe Akechi that the museum has been led so they go to check. One display case is opened and Akechi breaks of a piece from all the Buddha statues to reveal they are all fake. Ensue chaos and the realisation that since the previous day, everything in the museum has been exchanged with fakes.
thoughts
Akechi is the only calm one - and what the heck? No one is going to ask him any questions about his disappearance and how he got here?? I feel like we missed a few pages of explanation…
nice fantasy
30 種明し
Summary
They’re trying to work out what happened - how did the thief manage to swap so much artwork despite the high security in the space of one night? Akechi uses a pedantic question and answer style to guide everyone through what happened. Basically that the thief took advantage of trucks coming in and out of the property (run by his thieves) to covertly transport fakes in and museum goods out. The finishing touch was having kidnapped the 3 night watchmen and replacing them with the thief’s associates to make the swaps in the displays.
thoughts
I have to admit I was rather impatient with this chapter. I’m sure there’s something to know about Akechi obviously, and why is he holding the museum director’s hand, but overall instead of wondering that I was disappointed that we’ve had 2 chapters of Akechi talking and nobody asked him where he was and how he knows all this. I’m sure it’s coming but… the long mostly monologue chapter felt uncharacteristic to me, I would have liked to have read this from the perspective of the action, rather than as an explanation after it’s all done and dusted
It’s funny you hated the explanation so much. I view the 解説 monologue chapter as an essential of detective fiction so it would feel weird if there wasn’t one, especially in a book this old.
Just caught up - had to do last weeks reading as well this morning, but excited to be closing in on the end! I also didn’t super enjoy this chapter, but maybe this just isn’t my type of story. The answer could always be anything and it either feels obvious beforehand or so obscured that it’s not really impressive with the reveal. Like we had no idea about the construction, and the night shift just being kidnapped felt a little lame. I also agree, the fact that the swap didn’t happen at the agreed time was dissapointing.
I also waited for an explanation where Akechi had been and how he suddenly appeared just after the robbery. A crazy idea: could the famous detective himself be the famous thief? That would explain a lot …
After fits and starts, Week 14 is done! (turtle making my way to the finish line…)
Week 14 thoughts
For last week’s reading, I guessed that the Museum Director was actually the thief in disguise and that Akechi had already moved all the artworks from the museum so the thief would be unable to steal them…
Now that I’ve read this week’s section, I’m not entirely sure if this is correct…but I’m holding onto this theory and adding another inception-like layer: Detective Akechi is telling the story of how the thief stole all the valuables, BUT he’s calm about it because he had ALREADY replaced all the museum artifacts with fakes. Those fakes were super realistic because of his Foreign Affairs’ friend. So the thief’s well-executed plan was in fact, a foiled plan where he replaced fakes with different fakes! This theory leaves open the possibility that the fake artworks supplied by Detective Akechi were in fact, made of chocolate.
The Detective is gripping the hand of the museum director the entire time is because the Museum Director is the thief in disguise (Question: earlier in the book, was the thief and the cook holding hands and running away from the police foreshadowing this final encounter with Detective Akechi?)
Anyway, the anger and eye-rolling of the museum director is because he’s been caught and begins to suspect he stole fakes…
The Detective Boys Club are nowhere to be seen in Ch. 29 and 30 unfortunately
I did not find any new favorite words or expressions. I did some internet searching for the origin of Ch. 30 title 種明し (たねあかし) or “revealing the trick”. One discussion of the word seemed to suggest 種 is used for the secret behind the trick because that’s the source of the magic trick which then “blooms” before the audience. But I wasn’t really sure about that explanation and there was little else I could find. There was something else I saw about how たね backwards became ネタ and is used in ネタバレ for plot spoilers (so the two expressions are connected?), but again, i looked so quickly I wasn’t sure…
I appreciate anyone who long finished this book club book and still finds their way here to read the comments!
nice fantasy
sorry Akechi先生!