I'm finally done with "The Devotion of Suspect X", with the murder exposed, guilty parties behind bars and all the rest. It took almost ten months - much too long, really. I could have finished it much faster, I guess, but by the end I just wasn't all that interested in the story or the characters.
As I wrote already, the problem is that it's a standard murder mystery, meant as a quick, fun read on your commute or during a trip. It's meant as chewing gum for the grain for a few hours. The story is inconsistent, the characters are two-dimensional and poorly motivated and the mystery itself has lots of logical gaps. But these traits don't matter at all; you hardly notice them as you skim through the book.
But when you study a language you don't skim. You're not quick. Instead, you scrutinize every sentence for minutes at a time, looking for clues to the story, to the characters behaviour or simply to grasp the basic meaning. And a quick read like this is simply not written to withstand such close scrutiny. So even though Yougisha X was an easier book to read than Riyuu, it took almost as long, simply because the flaws in the book kept putting me off.
It's not a put-down on the author at all - the exact same is true for, say, Agatha Christie, Ellis Peters, Dan Brown, John Grisham and all the rest (I do like to think that PD James would perhaps hold up better). Their books are fun, but pretty much fall apart if you start thinking too much about the details (and Dan Brown, to be honest, doesn't even need much thinking; I gave up on his bestseller partway through, something I almost never do).
Anyway, the take home lesson is: if you're going to read a book slowly and in detail, you're better off picking a book that is intended to be read that way. Even if they are more difficult you end up having more fun, and probably learning more since you're not tempted to skip or skim.
My next book? I've already picked it, and I've even read a bit already. No, it's not another Miyabe Miyki. We actually bought "Mohouhan" (copycat killer); the problem is, it's a five volume series and according to Ritsuko (who has been reading them) they're just like Riyuu, with lots of characters, asides and detours that only vaguely connect with the main story. It is fun, apparently - Riyuu was fun too, after all - but five volumes worth means I'd be occupied with the series until about 2013, which is a little longer than I want to commit to any one book.
I'll write about the new book once I get started on it properly.
Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Yougisha X No More
As a few of you may have noticed (to your relief, no doubt), I haven't posted my summary of the next chapter in "The Devotion of Suspect X". And I won't be.
I started writing chapter summaries and post them online just to make myself read it carefully. To write a summary I need to make sure I actually understand everything I read and not skip stuff when it gets difficult. As it turns out I understand this book just fine the first time through (well, with ample help from a kanji dictionary). To write the summaries I need to go back and reread each chapter all over again, and that makes reading it very slow and not much fun. I spend ages with this book, in other words, for little benefit.
And this book isn't really good enough to warrant all this effort. I mean, it's not nearly Dan Brown-level of bad (nobody has yet escaped from tall masochistic albino cultist hitmen by hiding in an Swiss bank's armored truck driven by the bank president1) but it's not exactly an immortal classic either. This is meant to be a quick, fun read on your daily commute. You're not supposed to reflect deeply on the characters or the story. When I have to go through each chapter twice to catch every last word and grammar point it turns from light entertainment into a tedious slog. Not fair to the book, and no fun for me.
So, from now I just read it through and enjoy the story for what it is. I'm piling up more Japanese-language books than I have time to read already, so I'll have no trouble finding something else once I'm done with this. Miyabe has a five-volume series on a copy-cat murder (模訪犯, Mohōhan) that Ritsuko is reading right now; that shouldn't take me more than, oh, three or four years to finish...
--
I started writing chapter summaries and post them online just to make myself read it carefully. To write a summary I need to make sure I actually understand everything I read and not skip stuff when it gets difficult. As it turns out I understand this book just fine the first time through (well, with ample help from a kanji dictionary). To write the summaries I need to go back and reread each chapter all over again, and that makes reading it very slow and not much fun. I spend ages with this book, in other words, for little benefit.
And this book isn't really good enough to warrant all this effort. I mean, it's not nearly Dan Brown-level of bad (nobody has yet escaped from tall masochistic albino cultist hitmen by hiding in an Swiss bank's armored truck driven by the bank president1) but it's not exactly an immortal classic either. This is meant to be a quick, fun read on your daily commute. You're not supposed to reflect deeply on the characters or the story. When I have to go through each chapter twice to catch every last word and grammar point it turns from light entertainment into a tedious slog. Not fair to the book, and no fun for me.
So, from now I just read it through and enjoy the story for what it is. I'm piling up more Japanese-language books than I have time to read already, so I'll have no trouble finding something else once I'm done with this. Miyabe has a five-volume series on a copy-cat murder (模訪犯, Mohōhan) that Ritsuko is reading right now; that shouldn't take me more than, oh, three or four years to finish...
--
#1 Please - you write a serious, vaguely believable thriller, like John Grisham or Miyki Miyabe; or you do a lighthearted, over-the-top romp, like the Bond movies. You can't do over-the-top and serious at the same time. Doesn't work. I don't normally stop reading books partway through, but that armored-car scene is where I made a rare exception and gave up.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
The Devotion of Suspect X - Chapter 7
..where we are in for a surprise. True to his word, Ishigawa goes to Bententei to buy a lunch bento. Yasuko is there, of course, and is very worried about his rare visitor last night. After enough furtive conversation and sideways glances to awake suspicion in a corpse she she finds out it was just an old classmate from his university days. After the morning rush Yasuko has a break with the Yonegawas, the owners of the shop. The detectives have visited them, and they're very relieved that Togashi didn't come to the store and didn't contact Yasuko (ahem).
The afternoon sees the entrance of Kudō, our possible plot twist, into the store and the story. A regular customer of Yasuko's at the first place she worked, he followed her to the next one (where both, by the way, met Sayoko, the bento shop owner's wife who also worked there). Yasuko and Kudō are not lovers, though not for his lack of trying. He even got into a fistfight with Togashi once as he escorted Yasuko home after work (I'm not altogether sure I would blame Togashi too much for that). He can apparently spend a large chunk of money and time every week for years with a hostess instead of his wife and son, without either of them protesting. Different strokes, I guess. Anyway, they reacquaint themselves, and go to a nearby place for coffee and a chat.
It rains as they leave, and he offers to drive her directly home. As they pull up by the building they are met by Ishigawa, who is uncharacteristically short-spoken and withdrawn on the phone with Yasuko later that day. At that point a light finally goes on for Yasuko. She realizes that Ishigawa may have the hots for her, and that may be the reason he helps her concealing a murder.
Now, I may not be the most socially or psychologically insightful person in the world ("computer science degree", 'nuff said) but this stretches the rubberband of believability to its breaking point. You'd expect a neighbor to lend a hand with a couch. You'd not expect them to lend a hand with a murdered ex-husbands corpse. Furthermore, Yasuko is a former hostess, a job whose single most important qualification (well ahead of being young and beautiful) is the ability to read and understand the moods, the desires and the motivations of other people. Sayoko, the bento-shop wife told Yasuko outright that Ishigawa is in love with her. And still it supposedly takes her weeks - and a third of the book - to figure out that there just might be something more behind Ishigami's willingness to help her conceal a murder than wanting to be a good neighbor. Yes, it is a murder mystery and you're supposed to check your skepticism at the door, but come on now; nobody is this dense.
The afternoon sees the entrance of Kudō, our possible plot twist, into the store and the story. A regular customer of Yasuko's at the first place she worked, he followed her to the next one (where both, by the way, met Sayoko, the bento shop owner's wife who also worked there). Yasuko and Kudō are not lovers, though not for his lack of trying. He even got into a fistfight with Togashi once as he escorted Yasuko home after work (I'm not altogether sure I would blame Togashi too much for that). He can apparently spend a large chunk of money and time every week for years with a hostess instead of his wife and son, without either of them protesting. Different strokes, I guess. Anyway, they reacquaint themselves, and go to a nearby place for coffee and a chat.
It rains as they leave, and he offers to drive her directly home. As they pull up by the building they are met by Ishigawa, who is uncharacteristically short-spoken and withdrawn on the phone with Yasuko later that day. At that point a light finally goes on for Yasuko. She realizes that Ishigawa may have the hots for her, and that may be the reason he helps her concealing a murder.
Now, I may not be the most socially or psychologically insightful person in the world ("computer science degree", 'nuff said) but this stretches the rubberband of believability to its breaking point. You'd expect a neighbor to lend a hand with a couch. You'd not expect them to lend a hand with a murdered ex-husbands corpse. Furthermore, Yasuko is a former hostess, a job whose single most important qualification (well ahead of being young and beautiful) is the ability to read and understand the moods, the desires and the motivations of other people. Sayoko, the bento-shop wife told Yasuko outright that Ishigawa is in love with her. And still it supposedly takes her weeks - and a third of the book - to figure out that there just might be something more behind Ishigami's willingness to help her conceal a murder than wanting to be a good neighbor. Yes, it is a murder mystery and you're supposed to check your skepticism at the door, but come on now; nobody is this dense.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The Devotion of Suspect X - Chapter 6
..and it's flashback time. It's Teito university again, and a much younger Ishigami is sitting by himself in a lecture room. Another student behind him strikes up a conversation; this turns out to be a young, disagreeable Yugawa. Turns out they're both notorious and know of each other by reputation. There's some interesting banter about Paul Erdös and the Four-color theorem, mostly, I suspect, as a way for the author to establish a bit of local color. As they study different subjects - mathematics and physics - they don't interact much directly, but they hear of each other throughout their undergraduate days.
An aside:
Paul Erdős was a real character even by the standards of mathematicians; check out the Wikipedia entry on him, or see the movie. He spent most of his life traveling with no fixed address, and was such an amazingly prolific coauthor of papers that mathematicians (and even other researchers) sometimes keep track of their Erdős Number - how many steps removed they are from Erdős in coauthorship, with Erdős himself having number 0, his coathors having 1, their coathors in turn 2 and so on (I believe I have Erdos number 7 myself; that's pretty far away).
The Four-Color theorem is the claim that a two-dimensional map always can be colored with four - and no more than four -different colors, so that two areas sharing an edge (not corner) always have different colors. This was proved in the 1970's, and is famous because it is the first partially computer-generated mathematical proof. A computer program was basically used to check that a large number of special cases had a certain property; doing so by hand would have been infeasible. In the book our young Ishigami is vehemently opposed to this approach.
By the way: if you think about it, it's easy to figure out that two colors would be enough for any one-dimensional map, and that there's no limit to the number of colors you need for three-dimensional ones.
...anyway:
Returning from the flashback we have the middle-aged Ishigami and Yugawa in Ishigami's apartment, meeting each other again for the first time since they were students. Sharing takeout sushi and a bottle of spirits brought by Yugawa, they reminiscence and catch up their lives. As it turns out, Ishigami wanted to stay on for a doctorate. He was unable to do so as he needed to care for his ailing parents, leaving him with neither time nor money to continue studying. He worked as a teacher at a technical college for a few years but was so swamped with teaching duties that he was unable to do any studying or research. Also, the students were mediocre and the faculty more interested in politics and infighting than in research. He eventually gave it up and went into teaching high school instead.
Yugawa has brought a paper purportedly disproving the continuum hypothesis. Doesn't matter what it is (it's an unproven theorem about what kind of infinity the real numbers belong to) but it's a way for the author to show Yugawa and the reader that Ishigami still has it - he spends most of the night oblivious to time, finally finding the fault in the paper early next morning. Duly impressed, Yugawa follows Ishigami on the way to work. Ishigami confesses that he does frequent the bento shop where Yasuko works, and they part way as Ishigami heads that way to pick up his lunch.
An aside:
Paul Erdős was a real character even by the standards of mathematicians; check out the Wikipedia entry on him, or see the movie. He spent most of his life traveling with no fixed address, and was such an amazingly prolific coauthor of papers that mathematicians (and even other researchers) sometimes keep track of their Erdős Number - how many steps removed they are from Erdős in coauthorship, with Erdős himself having number 0, his coathors having 1, their coathors in turn 2 and so on (I believe I have Erdos number 7 myself; that's pretty far away).
The Four-Color theorem is the claim that a two-dimensional map always can be colored with four - and no more than four -different colors, so that two areas sharing an edge (not corner) always have different colors. This was proved in the 1970's, and is famous because it is the first partially computer-generated mathematical proof. A computer program was basically used to check that a large number of special cases had a certain property; doing so by hand would have been infeasible. In the book our young Ishigami is vehemently opposed to this approach.
By the way: if you think about it, it's easy to figure out that two colors would be enough for any one-dimensional map, and that there's no limit to the number of colors you need for three-dimensional ones.
...anyway:
Returning from the flashback we have the middle-aged Ishigami and Yugawa in Ishigami's apartment, meeting each other again for the first time since they were students. Sharing takeout sushi and a bottle of spirits brought by Yugawa, they reminiscence and catch up their lives. As it turns out, Ishigami wanted to stay on for a doctorate. He was unable to do so as he needed to care for his ailing parents, leaving him with neither time nor money to continue studying. He worked as a teacher at a technical college for a few years but was so swamped with teaching duties that he was unable to do any studying or research. Also, the students were mediocre and the faculty more interested in politics and infighting than in research. He eventually gave it up and went into teaching high school instead.
Yugawa has brought a paper purportedly disproving the continuum hypothesis. Doesn't matter what it is (it's an unproven theorem about what kind of infinity the real numbers belong to) but it's a way for the author to show Yugawa and the reader that Ishigami still has it - he spends most of the night oblivious to time, finally finding the fault in the paper early next morning. Duly impressed, Yugawa follows Ishigami on the way to work. Ishigami confesses that he does frequent the bento shop where Yasuko works, and they part way as Ishigami heads that way to pick up his lunch.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Devotion of Suspect X - Chapter 5
Way late - I'm actually a chapter ahead - but onward we go, with
Chapter 5
Inspector Kusanagi and hanger-on Kishitani are visiting Teito university and Dr. Yugawa. They've just returned from another interview with Yasuko Hanaoka where she apparently conveniently solidified her convenient movie alibi with some convenient ticket stubs, conveniently forgotten in the conveniently saved movie program. This level of convenience did not pass unnoticed by our hawk-eyed inspector; nor is it overlooked by our all-around genius Yugawa. Convenient but, as Yugawa points out, not unreasonable.
Over coffee, Kusanagi mentions Ishikami in passing, and wonders whether he by any chance would be Yugawa's senior at university. A bit of banter and a yearbook picture later it transpires that Ishikami and Yugawa not only were undergraduate classmates, but Kishigami was in fact famous among his fellow students and faculty as an exceptionally bright mathematician. As a budding physicist, Yugawa and Kishigami went on separate course tracks but even so Yugawa got to hear about Kishigami's exploits. Eschewing computers he'd stay late into the night with just a notebook and pencil to work on some problem. Thus Yugawa is astonished to hear that his illustrious classmate is not a university professor or researcher, but a high school teacher.
Cut to Ishigami, who goes out on his (apparently common) trek to the nearby phone booth. He even meets Yasuko in the stairs, but rather than exchange words in the stairwell he has to be all cloak-and-dagger conspicuous with phone booths, telephone cards and sideways glances. I'm surprised the author doesn't have them use code words. Anyway (I promise I'll quit harping on this), Ishigami hears her side of the latest developments; she gave them the movie ticket stubs in a hopefully natural manner, and they asked her daughter Misato for confirmation on what they did that day.
Walking back home, Ishigami sees a tall shape waiting in the doorway. It is not a dead friend come back from his grave to warn him of his folly (this is not a Stephen King novel after all), but none other than our hero Yugawa, come to drop in on his long lost school mate. The circle is complete, the student is the master.
Chapter 5
Inspector Kusanagi and hanger-on Kishitani are visiting Teito university and Dr. Yugawa. They've just returned from another interview with Yasuko Hanaoka where she apparently conveniently solidified her convenient movie alibi with some convenient ticket stubs, conveniently forgotten in the conveniently saved movie program. This level of convenience did not pass unnoticed by our hawk-eyed inspector; nor is it overlooked by our all-around genius Yugawa. Convenient but, as Yugawa points out, not unreasonable.
Over coffee, Kusanagi mentions Ishikami in passing, and wonders whether he by any chance would be Yugawa's senior at university. A bit of banter and a yearbook picture later it transpires that Ishikami and Yugawa not only were undergraduate classmates, but Kishigami was in fact famous among his fellow students and faculty as an exceptionally bright mathematician. As a budding physicist, Yugawa and Kishigami went on separate course tracks but even so Yugawa got to hear about Kishigami's exploits. Eschewing computers he'd stay late into the night with just a notebook and pencil to work on some problem. Thus Yugawa is astonished to hear that his illustrious classmate is not a university professor or researcher, but a high school teacher.
Cut to Ishigami, who goes out on his (apparently common) trek to the nearby phone booth. He even meets Yasuko in the stairs, but rather than exchange words in the stairwell he has to be all cloak-and-dagger conspicuous with phone booths, telephone cards and sideways glances. I'm surprised the author doesn't have them use code words. Anyway (I promise I'll quit harping on this), Ishigami hears her side of the latest developments; she gave them the movie ticket stubs in a hopefully natural manner, and they asked her daughter Misato for confirmation on what they did that day.
Walking back home, Ishigami sees a tall shape waiting in the doorway. It is not a dead friend come back from his grave to warn him of his folly (this is not a Stephen King novel after all), but none other than our hero Yugawa, come to drop in on his long lost school mate. The circle is complete, the student is the master.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
The Devotion of Suspect X - Chapter 4
On to chapter 4, and the investigation continues. Our police friends now know the identity of the corpse on the riverbank, and as the curtain opens, we find inspector Kusanagi and sidekick Kishitani on the way to estranged former wife (and, as we know, murderer) Yasuko. They are somewhat surprised she did not know the dead man in the news lately was her former husband, and ask her about her whereabouts on the night in question. Turns out, she and her daughter had gone to the movies, a ramen shop, and some karaoke. Perfectly normal, of course - and also, incidentally, all the kind of place where you're unlikely to actually be remembered or recognized by anybody. Mighty convenient, you might say, and indeed, the point is not lost on Kusanagi.
Anyway, they have no particular reason to think there's anything amiss. They leave, but as they do, they meet Ishigami, our Mathematical Mastermind, on the stairs. They figure that what the heck, and invite themselves in for a quick interview. Ishigami states, not surprisingly, that he never noticed anything out of the usual with his neighbor that day. Of course, what is he going to say? "Oh, I helped her clean out a strangled corpse in the hallway, but apart from that, nothing"? As they are leaving, Kusanagi notices a newsletter from Teito university. And indeed, Ishigami turns out to be a graduate of the very same university as Prof. Yugawa, our main character that we met last chapter - and of Kusanagi himself, though apparently not a student of the science faculty.
After the police leave for real this time, Ishigami produces a sweater and a telephone card, and walks to a nearby telephone booth. He is calling Yasuko to ask her about her interview with the police. Now here's my problem: why is he going to a nearby phone booth?
Obviously he's afraid that the police may find out they're talking. If they'd be tapping her phone it wouldn't matter from where he calls. Instead, he must be worried that they'll look at call logs and see that they have been calling each other. But he's never called from that phone booth before (and as we'll see, he keeps using it); it would have to be a very dense policeman indeed not to get suspicious with repeated calls from a phone booth right after the murder and the police interview. A phone booth, mind you, that's a quick walking distance from her apartment - what kind of person would call from a phone booth instead of walk over and talk in person?
Instead, why not just talk with each other in the stairwell? Nothing would be more natural than a couple of neighbors spending a few minutes in conversation whenever they bump into each other. Especially a single man and a divorced, attractive woman; if asked they could hint that he's trying to court her and she's not interested but doesn't mind. That would explain his frequent visits to her workplace as well and would have had the added bonus of being completely true.
No matter; this is a mystery novel, and if we'd demand stringent logic and consistency in everything very few of them would ever get written. We'll just note this, and let it pass.
Anyway, they have no particular reason to think there's anything amiss. They leave, but as they do, they meet Ishigami, our Mathematical Mastermind, on the stairs. They figure that what the heck, and invite themselves in for a quick interview. Ishigami states, not surprisingly, that he never noticed anything out of the usual with his neighbor that day. Of course, what is he going to say? "Oh, I helped her clean out a strangled corpse in the hallway, but apart from that, nothing"? As they are leaving, Kusanagi notices a newsletter from Teito university. And indeed, Ishigami turns out to be a graduate of the very same university as Prof. Yugawa, our main character that we met last chapter - and of Kusanagi himself, though apparently not a student of the science faculty.
After the police leave for real this time, Ishigami produces a sweater and a telephone card, and walks to a nearby telephone booth. He is calling Yasuko to ask her about her interview with the police. Now here's my problem: why is he going to a nearby phone booth?
Obviously he's afraid that the police may find out they're talking. If they'd be tapping her phone it wouldn't matter from where he calls. Instead, he must be worried that they'll look at call logs and see that they have been calling each other. But he's never called from that phone booth before (and as we'll see, he keeps using it); it would have to be a very dense policeman indeed not to get suspicious with repeated calls from a phone booth right after the murder and the police interview. A phone booth, mind you, that's a quick walking distance from her apartment - what kind of person would call from a phone booth instead of walk over and talk in person?
Instead, why not just talk with each other in the stairwell? Nothing would be more natural than a couple of neighbors spending a few minutes in conversation whenever they bump into each other. Especially a single man and a divorced, attractive woman; if asked they could hint that he's trying to court her and she's not interested but doesn't mind. That would explain his frequent visits to her workplace as well and would have had the added bonus of being completely true.
No matter; this is a mystery novel, and if we'd demand stringent logic and consistency in everything very few of them would ever get written. We'll just note this, and let it pass.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Devotion of Suspect X - Chapter 3
First a mea culpa: it turns out that Misato is the stepdaughter of our recently bereaved Togashi, not his true daughter. Not sure why I missed that in chapter one, but I did. Anyway, onwards to
Chapter 3
..being a short chapter mostly intended to introduce our main characters. It's March 11th and we find ourselves not in the company of Yasuko and Ishigawa, but with two men sitting by a chess board in an ununsed classroom at the physics department of Teito University. One, winning the game and radiating contented smugness as a result, is none other than Prof. Yukawa, physicist, master sleuth and all-around hero in this series of books. The other, Kusanagi, is not winning, and radiating irritated bafflement as a result. When he is not losing at chess he is a detective at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.
To nobody's surprise, Kusanagi gets called away as a body has been found at the bank of Edogawa river. The body (no prices for guessing who) has no clothes, a smashed-in head and burnt-away fingerprints. Nearby the victims' clothes are found, partially burned, along with an abandoned bicycle.
After some traditional police banter with their boss at the station, Kusanagi and his younger partner Kishitani are ordered to contact the bicycle owner (remember, bikes are actually registered here) to see what they can dig up. Not much, it turns out; on the 10th of March the owner had parked it near a station and found it gone when coming back. Other than that, nothing much seems to be gleaned from this whole episode.
We quickly jump forward as the police proceed to canvas the area and plaster the media with drawings and descriptions of the unknown victim, with no result. Only after they've searched flophouses and cheap inns for missing tenants do they finally find a place missing a tenant since the 11th. The name in the register is Shinzō Togashi. The hunt is on...
Chapter 3
..being a short chapter mostly intended to introduce our main characters. It's March 11th and we find ourselves not in the company of Yasuko and Ishigawa, but with two men sitting by a chess board in an ununsed classroom at the physics department of Teito University. One, winning the game and radiating contented smugness as a result, is none other than Prof. Yukawa, physicist, master sleuth and all-around hero in this series of books. The other, Kusanagi, is not winning, and radiating irritated bafflement as a result. When he is not losing at chess he is a detective at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.
To nobody's surprise, Kusanagi gets called away as a body has been found at the bank of Edogawa river. The body (no prices for guessing who) has no clothes, a smashed-in head and burnt-away fingerprints. Nearby the victims' clothes are found, partially burned, along with an abandoned bicycle.
After some traditional police banter with their boss at the station, Kusanagi and his younger partner Kishitani are ordered to contact the bicycle owner (remember, bikes are actually registered here) to see what they can dig up. Not much, it turns out; on the 10th of March the owner had parked it near a station and found it gone when coming back. Other than that, nothing much seems to be gleaned from this whole episode.
We quickly jump forward as the police proceed to canvas the area and plaster the media with drawings and descriptions of the unknown victim, with no result. Only after they've searched flophouses and cheap inns for missing tenants do they finally find a place missing a tenant since the 11th. The name in the register is Shinzō Togashi. The hunt is on...
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The Devotion of Suspect X - Chapter 2
Time is at a premium for me, still, so reading has taken a back seat to other things for a while. Nevertheless, I haven't been able to completely stay away from our hostess-turned-bakery-assistant and her wayward husband we met in chapter 1. Onward!
Chapter 2
Our journey through "The Devotion of Suspect X" continues, despite work- and holiday-related interruptions. When we last left the book at the end of Chapter 1, Yasuko and her daughter Misato had a decidedly unsavoury visit from Yasuko's abusive former husband and ne'er-do-well Toshige, and we left just as Misato clubbed him over the head with a heavy copper vase in the hallway.
Was he hurt? Dead, perhaps? No. Enraged he stepped up and proceeded to beat up Misato. Fearing that he'd actually kill their daughter, Yasuko grabs a power cord from the kotatsu table and yanks it around his neck. Misato holds on to the desperately struggling Toshige while while her mother Yasuko strangles him with the cord. I must say that in an era where family activities are disappearing and generations no longer interact, it's uplifting to see three people really come together as a family and enjoy a physical activity with each other rather than be cooped up alone with the tv or some video game.
Anyway, the wayward husband, father and overall douchebag has only barely kicked the bucket when the doorbell rings. Yasuko sends Misato to the other room, covers the undearly departed with the kotatsu blanket and opens the door. It's none other than Ishigami, our lovestruck math teacher from chapter one. He lives right next door, it turns out, and wonders what the noise was. Yasuko mumbles some excuse about chasing a cockroach and sends him away.
Yasuko has just decided she'll have to call the police, despite her worries about Misato (she did help kill her father after all) when the phone rings. It's Ishigami - again - now wondering if she would appreciate help with the dead body she's got, seeing how a single woman would have a hard time moving it.
Our math teacher, having nothing on Sherlock Holmes, has figured out what happened only from vague clues glimpsed through the door crack: her tousled hair, cigarette smoke from a discarded soda can, that sort of thing. Never mind that the same clues could have a simpler, more likely explanation; this is a detective story and suspension of disbelief is part of the package.
After a bit of back and forth she decides the police can wait, so Misato cleans the crime scene while Yasuko and Ishigami drags the very deceased Toshige's body over to his apartment. As the saying goes: "Friends will help you move; real friends will help you move bodies". And truly, Ishigami is a veritable sir Lancelot here, apart from the whole cover-up-a-murder thing, which I don't theing the real Lancelot would have approved of. He does a bit of thinking, and decides a false trail is appropriate. As we leave the scene he asks her to help him get the clothes off the body.
--
Oh, and if it's not clear from my tone above, I truly enjoy murder mysteries in general, and this book in particular. They have a lot of genre conventions, and the plots are not meant to make a huge amount of sense. Poking gentle fun at them is part of the enjoyment.
Chapter 2
Our journey through "The Devotion of Suspect X" continues, despite work- and holiday-related interruptions. When we last left the book at the end of Chapter 1, Yasuko and her daughter Misato had a decidedly unsavoury visit from Yasuko's abusive former husband and ne'er-do-well Toshige, and we left just as Misato clubbed him over the head with a heavy copper vase in the hallway.
Was he hurt? Dead, perhaps? No. Enraged he stepped up and proceeded to beat up Misato. Fearing that he'd actually kill their daughter, Yasuko grabs a power cord from the kotatsu table and yanks it around his neck. Misato holds on to the desperately struggling Toshige while while her mother Yasuko strangles him with the cord. I must say that in an era where family activities are disappearing and generations no longer interact, it's uplifting to see three people really come together as a family and enjoy a physical activity with each other rather than be cooped up alone with the tv or some video game.
Anyway, the wayward husband, father and overall douchebag has only barely kicked the bucket when the doorbell rings. Yasuko sends Misato to the other room, covers the undearly departed with the kotatsu blanket and opens the door. It's none other than Ishigami, our lovestruck math teacher from chapter one. He lives right next door, it turns out, and wonders what the noise was. Yasuko mumbles some excuse about chasing a cockroach and sends him away.
Yasuko has just decided she'll have to call the police, despite her worries about Misato (she did help kill her father after all) when the phone rings. It's Ishigami - again - now wondering if she would appreciate help with the dead body she's got, seeing how a single woman would have a hard time moving it.
Our math teacher, having nothing on Sherlock Holmes, has figured out what happened only from vague clues glimpsed through the door crack: her tousled hair, cigarette smoke from a discarded soda can, that sort of thing. Never mind that the same clues could have a simpler, more likely explanation; this is a detective story and suspension of disbelief is part of the package.
After a bit of back and forth she decides the police can wait, so Misato cleans the crime scene while Yasuko and Ishigami drags the very deceased Toshige's body over to his apartment. As the saying goes: "Friends will help you move; real friends will help you move bodies". And truly, Ishigami is a veritable sir Lancelot here, apart from the whole cover-up-a-murder thing, which I don't theing the real Lancelot would have approved of. He does a bit of thinking, and decides a false trail is appropriate. As we leave the scene he asks her to help him get the clothes off the body.
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Oh, and if it's not clear from my tone above, I truly enjoy murder mysteries in general, and this book in particular. They have a lot of genre conventions, and the plots are not meant to make a huge amount of sense. Poking gentle fun at them is part of the enjoyment.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Halfway
I'm at chapter 10, page 337 of Reason, where Naomi Ishida explains where and why he decided to become an architect. That's just about exactly halfway. Since my last update it's been around 50 working days, and 184 pages, for 3.6 pages per day on average - call it 3.5. At that pace it's 95 days to finish the book, or just over four months. To finish the book within a year I'd have to step up the pace a bit. Which I won't; the pace fits the book, and taking just a few minutes every morning doesn't intrude into anything else.
I just wish Miyabe - the author - didn't have such a ravenous appetite for asides and digressions. This latest digression on the importance of a well-designed internal environment in public buildings for people's well-being is kind of fun, but I don't so far see how this actually relates to the four murders that the book is about; I doubt it was a mad murdering rampage caused by a flickering fluorescent strip.
I just wish Miyabe - the author - didn't have such a ravenous appetite for asides and digressions. This latest digression on the importance of a well-designed internal environment in public buildings for people's well-being is kind of fun, but I don't so far see how this actually relates to the four murders that the book is about; I doubt it was a mad murdering rampage caused by a flickering fluorescent strip.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
More Reason
I started on "Reason", a Japanese crime novel, last December, as I've mentioned previously. It's really addictive - I must know why the Koito family has fled; what Katakura lodging house has to do with the murder; and why the superintendent has to air out one of the empty apartments every week to remove a strange smell (I actually asked my teacher this; she just laughed and asked if I really wanted to know beforehand).
I've been reading it during my morning commute, and yesterday I reached chapter 5 ("The hurting woman") on page 153. That makes 93 weekdays for 148 pages (it starts on page 7) - that's about 1.5 pages per day. Now, my average reading speed lately is a bit more than 2 full pages every morning (dialogue is fast; the digressions on the Tokyo housing market are really slow). I'll keep speeding up as I learn more, to three pages or so. That's 15 pages per week, and as the book ends on... *leafing through the back* ...page 676, that makes 523 pages to go, taking 34.8 weeks, to finish the book in early December.
At 10 minutes per page that's about 110 hours of entertainment, which really isn't bad value for an 800 yen paperback. Japanese fiction is nothing if not cost-effective.
I've been reading it during my morning commute, and yesterday I reached chapter 5 ("The hurting woman") on page 153. That makes 93 weekdays for 148 pages (it starts on page 7) - that's about 1.5 pages per day. Now, my average reading speed lately is a bit more than 2 full pages every morning (dialogue is fast; the digressions on the Tokyo housing market are really slow). I'll keep speeding up as I learn more, to three pages or so. That's 15 pages per week, and as the book ends on... *leafing through the back* ...page 676, that makes 523 pages to go, taking 34.8 weeks, to finish the book in early December.
At 10 minutes per page that's about 110 hours of entertainment, which really isn't bad value for an 800 yen paperback. Japanese fiction is nothing if not cost-effective.
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