Shokan

My recent bedtime reading is Oufuku Shokan (往復書簡) of Kanae Minato (湊佳苗).


Yes, the author of Confession (告白).

Seriously, this tiny paperback is the only detective fiction that I feel an impulse to buy in the past ten years. (But I didn’t; I borrowed it from AL, who happened to have ordered it on-line from Taiwan some weeks ago.)

I am not saying this book is great – quite the opposite actually. It is not a story, but a collection of three short ones – and the first and last are slightly dull and disappointing.

However, the second one, with the subtitle Homework After Twenty Years, is stunning. When Atsushi Ohba (大場敦史) – the school teacher – wrote the letters and described his interviews with that six students, I expected the story was going to unfold like Hercule Poirot talking to one passenger after another on the orient express, or the evidence would appear like Rashomon (羅生門) of Akira Kurosawa (黑澤明).

But, no. Minato did give me a surprise (albeit a slight one) – in an entirely logical way.

PS. I am particularly impressed by the second story for another reason: If you remember Cao Cao (曹操) wrote that famous Essay on My Original Objective (自明本志令), I find the letter of Ikuta Yoshitaka (生田良隆) – yes, the boy who was drowned and nearly dead fifteen years ago – a very suitable one for me.