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Dreadfully repetitive to the point of sheer boredom. I relished every time we stopped talking about time tables or rehashing the same series of events over and over.
In some ways it reminded me of 七回死んだ男 which is another book that didn't seem to trust the readers could remember anything longer than 2 pages. The writing in this was better though, so I won't damn it to the same level.
I waffled between a two and three, but ultimately a three for me is something that I would recommend even if it didn't thrill me. I can't think of who I would recommend this book to.
For the first half of the book the characters felt pretty faceless but they do get some personality as it fleshes out near the end.
I found the detective's reasoning flimsy at best and it felt very much like a solution had been decided before motive or means were established.
Difficulty wise I think this doesn't deserve it's current (Sept 2024) L36. There is some old fashioned speech/vocab and one or two sections (letters) are written with a lot of formal speech, but overall this book didn't feel harder than many ~33/34 books and 36 simply seems too high.