An
artist, Heikichi Umezawa is found dead in his studio adjoining
his house. From his room, the police get a detailed note written by him on how
he wants to kill all the women in the house and make the perfect god, Azoth.
Soon, all the women are found dead exactly as mentioned in the note. The whole of
Japan gets obsessed with who committed the crimes. After 43 years, an
illustrator Kazumi and a young astrologer Kiyoshi try to uncover the mystery.
Will they be able to uncover it after so long?
A fascinating concept. I really liked the overall premise. Japanese mysteries
always try to come up with such storylines. The duo reminds me of
Sherlock Holmes and Watson who gets referenced in the book as well. Guess
Sherlock served as an inspiration. I did like the chemistry between the two. The
read was quite exciting but did tire me out at places. As the conversations got
lengthier, I did get bored at 2 or 3 instances. Kiyoshi like Sherlock has his
bouts of boredom which did seep into me as well. There were quite a few
characters and the investigation was procedural There were some very interesting
twists and turns in the book, but solving so old a mystery from the confines of
a room did seem far-fetched to me. The translator had done a good job conveying
the book in an interesting form. The reference to astronomy gave an eerie feel to the story. The suspense was interesting and unexpected. Leaving
aside being far-fetched, the book was a nice read.
In
short, this is a fairly decent read for mystery lovers. For me personally, this is
just an average one-time read.
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