Steven Godin's Reviews > The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

I thought this might have been the sort of novel to breathe new life into the crime-mystery genre.


Clever and original with a surprising twist ending, they say.

A 'locked-room mystery' (There was something really enticing about that).

The Japanese Sherlock Holmes.


Sounded great. What could possibly go wrong?

Er...quite a lot, actually.


It's not that it's too clever for its own good, it's just not...well...really that clever to begin with.

Never mind Sherlock Holmes, the old porn star John Holmes would have made a more interesting detective than Kiyoshi Mitarai.

As for the ending. I was looking foward to jumping up and down in a fit of hysteria going "Wow! I can't quite believe it! Now I didn't see that coming!"

If only.


I'm not saying everything about the novel was wholly predictable, but at the end all I did was yawn in desparate need of a cup of coffee. Never has a murder mystery been so dull.

Not terrible, just disappointing.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's classic short story In a Grove, which is now 100 years old, tramples all over this when it comes to writing a clever murder mystery.