Dの複合

Disappointing compared to some of the author's other books

(Review date: December 2011)

The story follows minor novelist Ise Tadataka, who has been commissioned by a magazine to write a series of travel articles whose selling point is to be a focus on the myths and legends of some out-of-the-way corners of Japan. Ise goes on a series of research trips to the places he's going to write about, accompanied by Hamanaka Mitsuo, who is one of the magazine's editorial staff. By coincidence, at one of the places they stay they witness a police hunt for a buried body following an anonymous tipoff; of course, coincidence gradually develops into something more complicated and sinister...

The first section of the book contains some quite difficult passages where Ise and Hamanaka are essentially trying to one-up each other in their knowledge of Japanese myths: lots of names of places, gods and historical figures, and the occasional quotes of classical Japanese. It gets easier later when the plot gets into gear and the focus shifts more to the mystery.

This wasn't a dreadful book, but I didn't really like it. I found the initial section far too long -- it seems to be several hundred pages before anything actually happens beyond Ise and Hamanaka sniping at each other. The other major problem is at the other end of the book: I found the conclusion totally unsatisfying, because the underlying explanation didn't ring true. Ideally when reading a mystery you should feel as if you are watching the characters gradually successfully unraveling a confusing but in retrospect plausible series of events. Here it seemed to me more like the author had simply made up a confusing tangle and then spent the last twenty pages describing the tangle he'd created.

Disappointing compared to the other books I've read by the same author. If you want to try Matsumoto I'd recommend Zero no Shouten instead, or maybe Ten to Sen.