Tokyo Zodiac Serial Murders by Soji Shimada

A sub series of threads where I talk about Mystery Novels I read and their influences/similarities to Umineko. The thread will contain mild spoilers about the tricks used, but never the name of the culprit.

#07threads

This novel was directly referenced by Furudo Erika in Episode 5, in the talk between her and battler regarding the number of victims, and to my surprise it is also viciously similar to Umineko in many ways. (beware of spoilers for the book or Umineko in general).

First, the case itself has been a cold case for 40 years, the murder of a whole family was done in a very bizzare way, and the only clue the public has is the note from the killer explaining how and why the murders went like this, & his vision of the family and japan in general

The problem is, the person writing the note was already dead before even the crimes occurred, but strangely the crimes happened just like in the way he envisioned, and people wondered if he wasn’t actually dead, but the room he died in is a closed room that cannot be solved.

The case is being solved in the modern day at the time of writing the novel between two upstart detectives, and a big chunk of the book actually involves heated debates between the two regarding the closed room murder and the weird message bottle like note.

Many books and theories were made about the case so that helped a lot with presenting a lot of clues and illustrations for the rooms and family relationships/circumstances. There is also a person who is treated as a culprit even though she was only related to the victims.

The characters are forced to make a lot of culprit theories and debunk them since they have nothing else to go by, but as usual there is always a bit of truth in every theory and written word and it all works out in the end in a magnificent way.

The main trick involves some magic (very close to Beatrice’s main trick) and it was done masterfully. The confession note in the end explains everything about the culprit, and how they made a bet with themselves that they will love whoever catches them, whoever that may be.

A big portion of reaching the solution actually involves the heart of the written culprit note and not the actual crime shenanigans themselves, and honestly it made me appreciate how much ryukishi worked and read to elevate the source material.

You can think of everything or instance and you will instantly figure out how ryukishi updated it and added so many layers to every detail and even made allusions and connections to the overarching theme and characters so it became its own unique thing in the end.

Every note he wrote as an author insert actually reflects his thinking process and the situation of the detective fiction world more closely than anyone would think, ofc the crimes he wrote are limited to a certain closed room variety, but the heart is clearly there in abundance