怪人二十面相 🦹 (IBC) - Week 14

怪人二十面相 :supervillain:
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Week 14 April 4th 2026
Chapter(s) 29+30 名探偵の狼藉 + 種明し
Audio version [1] video 14
Previous week Week 13
Next week Week 15

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  1. female narrator, playlist, 聴いてみよう江戸川乱歩 ↩︎

4 Likes

The replaced buddhas turned out to be made from fresh wood. I was hoping it would be something sillier, like they were all made of chocolate.

Overall I liked this section a lot, the heist reveal felt like watching an episode of Leverage.

6 Likes

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.

I was hopeing the same.

5 Likes

29 名探偵の狼藉

Summary

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…

:sweat_smile: 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

6 Likes

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.

6 Likes

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.

6 Likes

Now that you mention it :thinking:

I’m going to change my opinion to: I had a bad week and took it out on this story :face_savoring_food: sorry Akechi先生!

6 Likes

Last week already! We had snow today in Denmark, how fitting xD

3 Likes

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 …

3 Likes

Yay! Very fitting. I will always have scenes of Denmark in mind in my memories of this book :blush:

:sweat_smile: I want this

3 Likes