The Confused Victim

"Spoilers."

"Doctor Who"

Hmm, I bought this book over a year ago now I think about it, so it had been waiting for quite some time. Breezed through it within one evening though.

Nakajima Kawatarou was an influential critic of mystery fiction active in the second half of the twentieth century. He has not only won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1966 for his work, but he would later even serve as the president of Mystery Writers of Japan, Inc. While one would be tempted to assume that a literary critic's work would only be aimed at adults and be very, very serious, you'd be wrong in this case. At least, half. Nakajima's 1971 book Suiri Shousetsu no Yomikata ("How To Read Detective Novels") was published via Poplar and therefore aimed at a juvenile audience, introducing young readers to the magic of detective fiction. At the same time, Nakajima was very serious about this: the tone is definitely not childish, and he sets out to really educate the readers by introducing them to a literary history of the genre and introducing both Japanese and foreign writers and their best work, and discussing what makes them worthwhile. 

And he does this by ruthlessly spoiling a ton of mystery novels.

I first learned about this book when Ashibe Taku took me out second-hand book hunting in Japan, and we came across this book: he told me he had read this book when he was young, and that it was especially memorable because it so relentlessly and unbashfully spoiled the tricks of many mystery masterpieces. Yet he seemed to talk about the book in a fond manner. The idea of a "For Dummies" book on mystery fiction aimed at the younger audience in the seventies appealed to me too, as I figured it'd be interesting to hear how mystery fiction would be presented to the readers at the time, and what the 'hot picks' would be during that period, so I decided to pick the book up.

The book opens with an introduction to detective fiction, and the focus here lies very clearly on honkaku (orthodox) puzzle plot mysteries: Kawajima opens with a complete analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, breaking the story down to how it presents the mystery, how the clues are provided (or not) to the reader, how misdirection works etc. With that, Nakajima hopes to have demonstrated to the reader what a puzzle consists of, and the way it is solved, fun and he proceeds to explain how logic is an important factor in telling mystery stories. The chapter is then devoted to explaining different sub-genres to the mystery ficton (so not just honkaku) and ends with a long overview of the development of the genre both in and outside Japan, focusing on milestone publications/authors. What surprised me most that even in this introductionary part, Kawajima doesn't pull punches and will gladly spoil the tricks of major mystery stories to explain himself: sometimes he'll mention a title before he goes into his surprisingly detailed explanations of the tricks, but more often than not, he'll just start explaining a trick without telling you the title. I can imagine children reading this and on one hand getting impressed by all the tricks introduced... and then being hugely disappointed each time they actually read one of those original works, and realizing Nakajima spoiled them on that trick ages ago. 

Considering this was published in the early seventies, and the fact Nakajima clearly favors trick-based mystery fiction (puzzle plot mysteries), it shouldn't be too surprising to learn he seems much more impressed by the output in English than the output of his own home country. While there are of course many works he does like from Japan, a majority of the praise goes to the non-Japanese authors introduced in this book and in the second part of the book, where he briefly discusses several of the major detective characters in the genre, almost all are of foreign origin (he does mention a few of the Japanese creations in the previous section by the way). The fourth and final part by the way contains various best-of lists by both Nakajima and Edogawa Rampo, which also seem to favor the non-Japanese works, save for the specific "Japanese mysteries" lists of course.

The third part of the book is the most interesting and fun to read, but also the worst when it comes to spoilers. As I mentioned, Nakajima really focuses on tricks in mystery fiction, and this third part is a whole taxonomy of tricks in mystery fiction like Edogawa Rampo's famous Categorization of Tricks essay. As an introductionary book to detective fiction, this is a rather curious inclusion, to be honest. You have just managed to paint a picture of what detective fiction is, what makes it tick and presented an overview of the best known authors and their works... and then you start spoiling those works! And I do mean spoiling them. This isn't just "Category: Locked Room. Type 1: The Killer Wasn't In the Room At the Time of the Crime. A: A mechanical trick", no, Kawajima will go out of his way to give very specific examples of such tricks, spoiling the precise setup of the story in question and how this trick is then utilizes specifically. And no, Kawajima doesn't do spoiler warnings or anything, and as mentioned above, sometimes he'll mention the title of the story when he does this, and sometimes he won't, but he'll still spoil the trick in full details. Though I guess some can be guessed even if you haven't read the book in question, like when he starts explaining the trick behind a story that is set in a house in Goblin Woods... Fortunately I recognized most of the stories discussed here, but it's honestly pretty stunning to see Kawajima spoiling so many stories without any remorse, and all that in a weird attempt to get young readers attracted to puzzle plot mysteries! He does go over a good amount of trick categories here, and he does actually discuss good examples, but... I still don't think this should be anywhere near a For Dummies book!

There are some really nice retro illustrations by Iwai Taizou in this book by the way, some of them also accompanying the trick taxonomy part. I'll refrain from using those in this post, but here's Father Brown with a creepy smile instead!

Anyway, I knew Suiri Shousetsu no Yomikata wouldn't be like a super informative critical work of the genre when I got started on it, but supposing you're not really afraid of spoilers, this would be a fairly interesting book to get you started on detective fiction as a young reader, especially as it really focuses on puzzle plot fiction and does give you concrete examples of how clewing works, as well as tricks in mystery fiction and how they can be used to create surprise and a sense of catharsis when the truth is revealed. Only... Nakajima at the same time robs readers of that feeling by spoiling all those famous works indiscriminately. So yeah, I also very well understand why readers would be upset! This book is more a funny anecdote perhaps than a must-read, but I quite enjoyed it. Though it really helps I knew most of the examples anyway, so if you're a young reader in 1971 interested in detective fiction: please avoid this book.

Original Japanese title(s): 中島河太郎『推理小説の読み方』