Quite a lot happening! And some character development! And omg I was sure he was gonna kill off 牧野洋子, and I’m glad he didn’t, but at the same time I was curious to see how the story would deal with Moe’s grief. In the end the victim is still someone she knew, and she grieved for like… two sentences? I hope this comes up again later.
I also think it’s super cute how she’s trying to learn about Saikawa’s work. And it looks like she has two new love interests?? She seems to have a small crush on 篠崎 (seriously?? he’s so creepy), and the young 鵜飼 officer might be interested in her.
Yeah, it seemed like she tried very hard to suppress those feelings and rather focus on the case at hand. I almost forgot that she cried at all, could only remember that she leaned against the wall for support.
Some thoughts on this week’s chapters:
I’m curious what led Yuuki Hiroshi to switch places with Minoru while he was being followed by the police. We don’t know the circumstances around what happened on campus yet, but based on the assumption that Minoru (who was on campus at the time) killed Hiroshi’s wife, it seems like a horrible mistake of Hiroshi to almost allow something like that to happen. Could possibly be that it was someone else, though Shinozaki pretty much has an alibi this time, spending time with Moe at the pub. (And I agree, Shinozaki is so creepy )
I like that we got to read from the perspective of Moe’s friend, Makino Youko, someone other than Saikawa who also knows Moe. At first I felt a bit sad for Moe because of how much she missed him, but after a while the change of perspective felt refreshing, actually. I don’t quite know why, but maybe it is because Saikawa is so unconcerned with some of the stuff that happens in the book, it can be a bit annoying.
Yeah that was my understanding as well, but I hope we see those feelings come back later once she’s not in full investigation mode, otherwise she wouldn’t be very human (and it would feel like a cop out from the author).
Do you think Minoru did it? It just seems too obvious. It would be weird for the murderer to be the guy that the police suspected from the start, especially given the convoluted scenarios we’ve seen in the previous books. And the police has always been totally useless so far.
Given what we know, I think it is possible that he did it. At the same time, I think it would be disappointing if it was that straightforward. For instance, maybe he’s responsible for the most recent murder, but wasn’t for the first two ones. Now that I think about it, didn’t we figure out the trick of the bronze statue puzzle in the middle of the previous book? That one was pretty obvious, though arguably, it wasn’t really the main Big Mystery of that book.
In my previous post, I almost included “Maybe the author did a bad writing? “ regarding the portrayal of Moe’s feelings, but I left it out in the final edit, hahaha. I too hope Mori-sensei gets back to it later at some point.
It‘s probably not Minoru? Everything is way too obvious and I can’t believe he would be stupid enough to make the murders resemble the lyrics / album cover and title. But he does seem to have some … sociopathic tendencies?
Also, why doesn’t Moe at least tell anyone she’s meeting with Shinozaki? Why does she keep getting herself in danger without consulting anyone? Flashbacks to volume 2… I‘m scared for her
Chapter 6
First I thought Shinozaki might have a good motive? The good old „Minoru gets all the fame even though I’m the genius actually writing the songs, notice me!“ motive. But he has a pretty solid alibi for the third murder.
I‘m also interested in why Hiroshi agreed to create/fake an alibi for Minoru. He even put on a wig? How did his brother get him to do that?
Stopping in for some way after the rest of the book club speculations as I read this. I’ve just finished chapter 7
I am currently really bewildered/kind of frustrated at some of the really bad decisions that Moe is making. Like, she keeps on making plans to meet individually with people who she knows are very closely related with a murder investigation/could well be the murderer without telling anyone else who she is meeting/what time/who she is with. Then this chapter she doesn’t tell the police that she was with Shinozaki (there is a bit of her thinking about whether she should and then almost doing so but I feel like she should have said something straight away).
My theory up until this chapter was that Hiroshi and Sugitou were behind the murders as they were kind of just on the edge of everything but not suspicious enough to seem like a red herring. Buuut I guess that’s not correct. My current theory is that it’s either a) minoru is the murderer but the real mystery is more about the motive. Like maybe the serial murders is to divert attention away from a plan between hiroshi and minoru to kill sugitou for….some reason b) it was minoru’s creepy friend who Moe met at the bar, she was killed closer to 7pm and there was some kind of programming of the machines in the experiment room to make it seem like she was still alive at 7.30pm (and so giving creepy friend an alibi of meeting Moe) c) wild card - it is Kaneko, the other student that has been mentioned a few times. Getting some odd vibes from him.
)
That one was pretty obvious, though arguably, it wasn’t really the main Big Mystery of that book. 
“ regarding the portrayal of Moe’s feelings, but I left it out in the final edit, hahaha. I too hope Mori-sensei gets back to it later at some point. 
b) it was minoru’s creepy friend who Moe met at the bar, she was killed closer to 7pm and there was some kind of programming of the machines in the experiment room to make it seem like she was still alive at 7.30pm (and so giving creepy friend an alibi of meeting Moe) c) wild card - it is Kaneko, the other student that has been mentioned a few times. Getting some odd vibes from him.