I haven’t read it yet, but I went out and bought ‘And Then There Were None’ so I had it available to read after I finish Umineko.
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I read And Then There Were None after playing the first episode of Umineko, since figured it might give me some clues as to where Ryukishi was going with it, and it completely kicked my ass. At the end I was honestly a little salty because I hadn’t been able to make any progress on figuring out the solution, but looking back it was a very solid, well structured mystery.
The reading circle that was proposed in this thread seems like a very fun idea. I’d be interested in some of the authors Ryukishi cited as inspirations (I know he mentioned Edogawa Ranpo and Seishi Yokomizo) but anything could be interesting.
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Good that this was brought back, reminds me that I should really get to reading G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown series.
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Well I finally got to finishing, And Then There Were None I loved it. I also really enjoyed seeing all of the inspirations of Umineko, that were in it. Just disappointed I couldn’t figure out the truth before it was revealed (sadly I was a little rushed in reading it for a school book study, if I didn’t I’d probably spent more time which might have allowed me to solve it). Oh well, it was a great mystery that was well written.
Wonder what I should check out next though.
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I finally read through the thread, and I very much agree with the book club idea, maybe have a general topic for that book? Or maybe they could even be considered gameboards, would appreciate to have more of those, really.
Anyway, I haven’t read much mystery after Umineko, buuuut I did read Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, and man I loved it! Disappointed I didn’t figure out the solution back then, but oh well, I definitely recommend it as something to read next for those looking for another book.
I do want to read some other mystery books, but I honestly want to have a physical copy of them in English, since reading from the screen bothers me a bit. But I won’t be able to find anything in English here since I’m live in Portugal still. Oh well.
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You should be able to find most popular works from the golden age of detective fiction online legally since they aren’t under copyright anymore, and you can get ereaders 2nd hand for like 20€ if you look around for a bit.
I read a study in scarlet recently. It’s not that great of a mystery, but as an introductory story to Holmes and Watson it works pretty well… the great alkali planes came out of nowhere though.
Again, I honestly don’t like reading stories from screens, especially when I want to try to sleep, I rather like the feel of turning pages and just putting a bookmark there without the need to press any buttons and wait for the thing to load, and I’m trying to save up to move out, so I can’t really afford to spend money on anything really.
Also, I feel like the Sherlock Holmes books aren’t actually fair mystery, but it’s mostly to see a really smart individual pull a weird fact out of nowhere. I guess that’s what we get for being too interested in space and shenanigans. 
I also read a story from that, and I was angry because I couldn’t have possibly have known about whatever fact Sherlock proposed.
Yeah; Sherlock is fun as a look into extreme inductive reasoning, but it’s not a challenge to the reader. The details for his reasoning aren’t presented prior to the reveal, so it’s more a story than a game.
It’s been quite some time since I posted here, but this is quite an interesting thread so I’m reviving this. So say, has anyone of you read Megan Abbott’s novels?
I’ve read one Megan Abbott novel! Does this make me a fan? The Fever is all I’ve read, but I liked it a lot! For those who haven’t read it, it’s a book about a girl named Deenie whose friends get sick with life threatening illnesses (stuff like comas, tics, etc). At first she thinks it’s due to a lake they went swimming in, but then a friend who was not at the lake also gets sick. It also tackles issues with sexuality, as the reasons for said illness are blamed on stuff like the HPV vaccine and toxic sperm. For a while, we even start to think that perhaps Deenie herself is behind the strange string of illnesses! It’s a mystery with a lot of fun twists and turns.
I liked it a lot though. Especially the end when you are left to wonder whether Gabby was really faking her facial tics or if it’s just hysteria as the police say.
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Darn, your description really wants to make me click that spoiler so much just to find out what it says. Argh, might be a book I have to read.
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Yeah it was a good mystery. Made me really want to check out more of her stuff!
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Can I recommend a video game? The fiction that got me into the mystery genre was ‘The Last Express’, a game that got no advertisement because the company was in the middle of shutting down when it released.
Basically you play on The Orient Express and there’s been a murder that you could be implicated in, so you have to sneak around the train snooping on people’s conversations and breaking into compartments to figure out what’s going on.
The game simulates real time so if you’re not in a certain place for an event it will just happen without you, and if you get a game over (there are a lot of them) the game turns back the clock to a point in one where you could have prevented it. It’s super neat!
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Ah, so you’ve read The Fever, wonderful. I haven’t read that one yet and frankly, I’ve just read one of her novels, which I finished earlier today, but she is a pretty good writer and writes in a very intense manner, that’s why I recommend her. I’ve only read The End of Everything, an earlier novel of hers, but pretty good too. Well, more like just good, rather than very good, I suppose. I mean, it is very enjoyable and has a lot of twists and turns, but it mostly focuses on the themes that it explores rather than the mystery, which is not really too meticulous or complicated, so that’s why I may have enjoyed it less. It’s about two 13 year old girls, Lizzie and Evie, who have been best friends for as long as they can remember, they live next to one another, their families know each other and everything. They’re also both in awe of Evie’s older glamourous sister, Dusty. Then one day, after school, Evie disappears and is soon declared missing. Later, it’s speculated that she might have gotten into the car of Mr. Shaw, an older married man she has no apparent connection with. Lizzie searches for the truth and always has this uncanny feeling that she knows more than she thinks she does and the answer is in her memories. It explores themes of maturing and how some people romanticize the wrong things at times. The setting is a bit boring, I know, but it is an interesting piece of work. I hear The Fever is her best work yet though and I’m very much looking forward to reading that.
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I read And There was None recently. It was interesting to see the similarities to Umineko. I actually did suspect the culprit at first, though not quite for the right reasons… and in the end, I wasn’t sure if anyone was faking their death or not, so I suppose the mystery still defeated me. Sigh. I’m definitely taking more of an interest in classic mysteries. Got the entire Sherlock Holmes on my e-reader now so I’ll read that soon (I’ve only read the Hound of the Baskervilles before. It was pretty good.)
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I have never read "And There Were None"but I am not going to lie, I didn’t like my first experience with Agatha Christie (I read “Murder in the Orient Express” and as far as I remember, I thought that Hercule Poirot’s logic was quite flawed, but I think I should try again, because it has been many years since I read it). Well, about Sherlock Holmes…you should just read them all lol I have a special place for The Hound of the Baskerville’s, but “A Study in Red” and “Valley of Fear” are excellent too!
Hmm, while I am and have always been interested in reading Sherlock Holmes, and I probably will read a novel or two of his at some point, I hear that Arthur Conan Doyle’s structure of his mysteries is a bit… well, simple. Don’t get me wrong, I think in his day it must have been quite something, since his novels are among the pioneering ones of the Golden Age of Detection Fiction or whatever it’s called, but nowadays, they may feel a little simplistic and the mysteries may feel easy to solve. So, would you say that they are that? Or does just the overall feel and tension of the novel he creates make the simplicity irrelevant?
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They are definitely way simpler than Umineko haha I was able to keep track of Connan Doyle’s narrative when I was about 12-14 years old, so, in terms of structure they aren’t the most complex thing in the world. But the writing is really good and the fact that Conan Doyle was a medical examiner/coroner at his time exposes a quite scientific and logical approach of a crime Scene, that I find really appealing.
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Oh, that certainly must be interesting, to lay out the scientific and logical evidence, it does convey the process of solving a mystery well. I’ll definitely read one of his novels at some point, maybe one of the ones you say are your favourites too, so I definitely look forward to this aspect of them. 
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Man, it’s been a while since I read any mystery stories, much less normal books. I’m a bit overwhelmed by all the choices out there though, not sure where to even begin. I haven’t read any of Agatha Christie’s works, and seeing as how it inspired Ryukishi, I’m quite interested in trying out those. Personally I’m in the mood for bizarre, surreal mysteries which actually have logical explanations behind them despite how unrealistic they seem.
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