I had a lot of fun reading this book. It manages to maintain a light and humorous tone throughout, while still delivering an engrossing case and a challenging locked room mystery.
『密室の鍵貸します』 is a great howdunnit. If you like locked room murder mysteries, I highly recommend it if you are a fan of the genre as Tokuya Higashigawa explores the locked room possibilities with humour and inventiveness.
And the mystery is a challenging one for the reader as well as for our protagonist Ryuhei and the detective of the series: Morio Ukai.
I was also satisfied with the solution, which is not always the case when authors build complicated murder scenarios. The novel was engrossing all along, with a good pace and enough room for the reader to make their own theories, even though I remained clueless throughout the novel.
The book also contains a lot of humour, and plays with the reader’s expectations. For example, the conventional role of the private detective vs police officer is not what you would expect here. I found it extremely refreshing and I am so thankful to the author for introducing novelty in the genre and break the stereotype of the genius detective.
I have read several light/humorous detective books in Japanese, and this one is by far the best. I will continue the series for sure!
Other books in this series:
About
I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.
Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk with natives, etc. and for a long time, I thought it was weird to learn languages just to read books, with zero interest in communication.
Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.
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