I’m not in Japan, but that sounds good! Option number 2 is my favorite, followed by number 1. 
Yes, I believe the next book would be 夜歩く, and then 八つ墓村 after that.
This means… @rodan will finally be able to read a new 金田一 story after golden week! 
2 Likes
Let’s go with Option 2 then! Here’s the revised schedule:
| Week | Start Date | Chapter Names | Page Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Apr 11th | 車井戸はなぜ軋る（ALL） | ~76 |
| Week 2 | Apr 18th | 黒猫亭事件（はしがき ~ 五） | ~60 |
| Week 3 | Apr 25th | 黒猫亭事件（六 ~ 結尾） | ~65 |
@rodan Are you okay with starting 夜歩く on May 9th?
2 Likes
Works for me!
2 Likes
I went ahead and created a thread for the 本陣殺人事件 stories here: 本陣殺人事件 Short Stories（金田一耕助 Reading Club）
Let me know if you want anything added.
2 Likes
Hey, something I noticed while looking online…
This book contains four stories, two of which fall chronologically into the gap between 獄門島 and 夜歩く, while one is a direct precursor and one takes place ten years later. 
The following chronology is taken from the 金田一耕助 Wikipedia page. The stories in the 殺人鬼 collection are noted in bold.
1946年（昭和21年） 数え34歳
9月初旬『百日紅の下にて』
9月下旬 - 10月上旬『獄門島』
10 - 11月ごろ『車井戸はなぜ軋る』
11月中旬『黒蘭姫』『蝙蝠と蛞蝓』1947年（昭和22年） 数え35歳
3月下旬『暗闇の中の猫（原題「暗闇の中にひそむ猫」）』
3月26日、28日 - 30日『黒猫亭事件（原題「黒猫」）』
4月中旬 - 26日『殺人鬼』
9月28日 - 10月11日『悪魔が来りて笛を吹く』1948年（昭和23年） 数え36歳
5月5日 - 9日『夜歩く』
5月中旬 - 9月初旬『八つ墓村』「中略」
1958年（昭和33年） 数え46歳
3月18日、25日『柩の中の女』
5月19日 - 21日、28日『火の十字架』
5月25日『薔薇の別荘』
5月28日『瞳の中の女』
6月29日、7月25日、26日、8月15日、16日、9月4日、5日、10日、18日、10月下旬『悪魔の寵児』
8月16日、17日『香水心中』
9月中旬『霧の山荘』
I realize that attempting to strictly follow the chronology would just make things more complicated and probably be more trouble than it’s worth. However, I did order 殺人鬼 along with 夜歩く and 八つ墓村 just in case, so if anyone is interested in incorporating those stories somehow, I would be open to the idea.
I compared editions
If we want to get in all of them, we’d need to read:
殺人鬼 for 百日紅の下にて (Should have done that before 獄門島 )
本陣殺人事件（ファイル2）for 車井戸はなぜ軋る
殺人鬼 for 黒蘭姫
金田一ファイル6 for 蝙蝠と蛞蝓
That’s when it become a bit more complicated:
暗闇の中の猫 is included only with the 春陽文庫 edition of 悪魔の百唇譜 - the 金田一ファイル one (File 16) contains the main story only. This seems impossible to get/not have a ebook version. This story is also included with 華やかな野獣 of the 金田一シリーズ - not the 春陽文庫 edition of the same name
本陣殺人事件（ファイル2） for 黒猫亭事件
And then we’d read 夜歩く and 八つ墓村.
That said, I’m open to either:
Finish 本陣殺人事件 extra stories next as planned, than read 殺人鬼 before 夜歩く.(either leaving the one story for later or just finishing. I’d prefer to not leave that book in my ‘currently reading’ pile for 10 years worth of books 
)
Read 殺人鬼 and the extra stories chronologically, then move on to 夜歩く.
Do either of those and also get in 蝙蝠と蛞蝓 and 暗闇の中の猫 while we’re at it.
2 Likes
I would argue for not worrying about a few stray stories falling by the wayside (like the ones published haphazardly in other volumes). But 3 of the 4 stories in 殺人鬼 were published around the same time and also take place during roughly the same time period as the 本陣 stories, so it seems like now could be a good time to read them. I wouldn’t be opposed to throwing the one later story in for a little glimpse into 金田一’s future either.
What seems like more of a conundrum is the stray novel (悪魔が来りて笛を吹く) that falls in between 殺人鬼 and 夜歩く in the chronology, but was published later. What do we do about that?
For the record, I vote for this option. Seems easiest and cleanest.
For my part, I definitely care about publication order much more so than story-chronology, but I’m not so much of a stickler for it to regularly pick and choose from collections. The only reason I pushed for you all to do that with the 本陣 additional stories was I didn’t and remembered 獄門島 specifically coming up in those stories 
. Short stories seem like they’re less likely to get that “hey remember that thing that happened in [Previous Story]? That was sure something wasn’t it!” treatment so I’m especially fine with holding off even if they were written earlier, or reading a whole collection at once even if it’s from a mix of years.
I was planning personally to focus mainly on the novels, and I guess throw in a story collection if/when I felt like reading short stories (or if I somehow managed to run out of novels).
So I’d be fine with throwing 殺人鬼 in there somewhere! (would have mixed feelings about it pushing out further some of the cooler sounding novels though)
Seems like I overlooked that one, It seems to be ‘名作中の名作と呼び声の高い、横溝正史の代表作!!’ according to the description on amazon, so I’d like to read it at some point.
Since it was written later, we can be sure that it won’t be referenced at least, so tbh I’m not too fussed about when we read it. It’s published as a stand alone, so that’s good too.
There’s seemingly no order to them, either, so it wouldn’t be easy to to that. I’m fine catching them with whatever they’re published as well.
Do you mean specifically 夜歩く with that? That is, you’d prefer to read 夜歩く first, and then maybe 殺人鬼?
Man, scheduling pretty much ‘stand-alones’ is hard!
1 Like
Well, to put it like this, pre book club I made a queue of 5 in my backlog system (which involves groups of 5) based around wanting to read more Kindaichi/Yokomizo, and the queue I made at the time looks like this:
1. 獄門島
2. 夜歩く
3. 八つ墓村
4. 死仮面
5. 犬神家の一族
And if it were just me without external factors that’s likely what I’d still do.
犬神家の一族 is what I heard about Yokomizo from, and it sounds like it’s the most famous of the novels, so my thinking at the time was pretty much just “get to Inugami Clan, by reading novels in publication order.”
There’s surely interesting short stories too, but doubling-back for them seems less disruptive than scrambling the order of the novels would be, and there’s a lot of tantalizing sounding novels.
I didn’t love not feeling very grounded in context with the 本陣 backup stories but I imagined hitting the big novels would be enough to establish that context and I wouldn’t have a problem later being ‘ah this story was written and set between X and Y, got it,’ with the big novels probably establishing more than enough context on their own.
Ultimately though, I’m sure it really doesn’t matter (and it’s not like having a reason to read more Yokomizo stories is a bad thing). 
So I’d be happy reading whatever’s picked!
1 Like
I already own number 2, 3 and 5 on your list, so I’m definitely here for those (and probably more)!
If you’re alright with it, I’d like to stick with 本陣殺人事件 extra stories → 殺人鬼 → 夜歩く.
1 Like
This is also my preferred order, but I would be fine with skipping 殺人鬼 for now if you both would rather continue with the novels. I just thought I would buy it along with the novels so I had the option. Also, I was under the impression that 夜歩く was a more minor novel that we were just reading to keep the chronology going, which is why I thought the 殺人鬼 stories might be of interest as well. But I am fine either way (adding 殺人鬼 or skipping it for now).
2 Likes
本陣殺人事件 extra stories → 殺人鬼 → 夜歩く
works totally fine with me!
You can judge with the 本陣 backups if it’s worth at all trying to dodge 香水心中 - from the background section on its Wikipedia page it sounds like it might do the same thing as those do with 獄門島, but with 犬神家の一族 and 不死蝶 (i.e. name-dropping them when introducing Kindaichi as his detective fame meter levels up between books) but I’m sure that’d be all, and fitting the other stories in in a good spot and clearing out the volume is plenty reason to read it too.
2 Likes
An update on 殺人鬼：
I just received the paperback in the mail, and saw that the order is,
- 殺人鬼 (86 pages)
- 黒蘭姫 (64 pages)
- 香水心中 (90 pages)
- 百日紅の下にて (45 pages)
The first two are the ones that fall between 獄門島 and 夜歩く (along with the 本陣 bonus stories). We could either just read those two and leave the other two for us to read (or postpone) on our own time, or we could read the whole book as a single volume. If we read one story per week, that would be a four week read, or a six week read if we split the two longer stories up into two weeks.
1 Like
Sure, I’d be open to that. Since the one, chronologically later story is the longest, I wouldn’t really mind leaving it for later.
I would however want to read 百日紅の下にて while the context of 獄門島 is still relatively fresh in my mind, once I own it.
If you two are not so interested in that one, I can read it on my own in a slow week if it’s just 45 pages (and let you know if you’re missing out on anything! 
). And we can still allot some time for it at a later date if you want.
I have to admit I’m pretty curious what a 横溝 short story will be like.
1 Like
A couple of questions about the schedule going forward:
-
We are set to finish 黒猫亭事件 next week. Do we still want to take a week off before starting 殺人鬼?
-
Are we planning to read all four stories in 殺人鬼, or just the first two? If we only read the first two, we could potentially read them over the course of three weeks, take a week off, and then start 夜歩く on either May 30 or June 6 (depending on your answer to Question 1).
1 Like
As someone who has been lurking in the shadows, waiting to swoop in on the next book, my (entirely self-interested) votes are (1) don’t take a week off and (2) read all four stories.
3 Likes
I can’t see myself do anything but finish it early in the week right now, which would leave me with a ‘break’ either way. So while I do prefer having breaks, for this one I’m fine either way.
That’s still a difficult one. I kind of want to read 3 of them and ignore the one set 10 year later for now, but it would take quite a long while to reach that point by reading.
Having 本陣殺人事件 unfinished for maybe 2 months bothered me a bit already, haha.
So I guess I’m voting for reading all 4? I’m not really sure! Maybe I’d prefer the unstated option c, 3, after all. 
welcome, good to have you!
1 Like
Thanks for the input! Looking forward to having you join us. Have you read any of the other 金田一 books or will 殺人鬼 be your first?
Also, what would be your preferred speed for reading the 殺人鬼 stories? If we don’t take a week off and read a story a week, we could potentially take the week of May 30 off and start 夜歩くon June 6. But that would mean we would be reading 80-90 pages a week sometimes. Is that too fast? Or would having some shorter stories in there ultimately help balance the load?
1 Like