Book review: 『解決まではあと6人』by Futari Okajima

解決まではあと6人 (かいけつまではあとろくにん)
Title: 解決まではあと6人 (かいけつまではあとろくにん)
Genre:
First published: 1985
Page Count: 334
A woman asks strange requestS in several detective agencies. Each detective investigates their part, while we slowly get the whole picture.

This novel was first published with the title 『5W1H殺人事件』.

This novel is divided into 6 parts, and six detectives will be needed to solve the case. At first, I thought that our first protagonist, the first detective involved, will be our main character for the entirety of the novel and I really loved the first chapter. With chapter 2 however, it became obvious that each chapter would involve a different detective, and the book felt less appealing to me.

Each detective investigates a different matter, sometimes their task seems really trivial, and none of them gets to see the whole picture. I find that the structure of the novel was interesting and well executed. The reader can slowly piece together the result of each investigation to have a better understanding of the client’s real motive. What was really interesting is that each detective and each agency has different standards and different ways of investigating, so each chapter felt different.

I can’t really tell why, but somehow it did not work for me. Maybe because we don’t know much about the client, it was difficult to feel interested in the case. As for the detectives, we only follow each of them for one chapter, so it was hard to feel involved in each of their story.

As for the end, it was very good, but it also felt a bit rushed. The novel is progressing slowly with only bits of information gained during each chapter. In contrast, the last one has a ton of information to reveal, and it felt a bit short.

Overall, the plot is good, the structure is interesting, but I didn’t like this novel near as much as I loved the horse racing mysteries by the same authors.

Other books by this author:
Cover of チョコレートゲーム. The focus of the cover image is a small desk and two chairs facing the desk, typically the kind that are used in classrooms. On the table there is some kind of board game involving chocolate bars. There are also bank notes and chocolate around it.
あした天気にしておくれ(あしたてんきにしておくれ)
99%の誘拐 (きゅうじゅうきゅうぱーせんとのゆうかい)
焦茶色のパステル (こげちゃいろのぱすてる)
Cover of 七年目の脅迫状. Illustration: a brown horse is grazing on a green background.

I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read detective novels in these languages. I post about my reading progress and language study here. Best way to get in touch is on Mastodon 🙂

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