Last month I read Beast in the Shadows (陰獣) by Ranpo Edogawa, it was nice and short albeit quite simple to solve, but there’s a catch: as many Japanese novelists do there’s not a clear ending, so if interpretative stories are your cup of tea I’d say go for it
@ghagler How did you react to the fact that Owen relied on the weather conditions to carry out his or her plan? Christie’s alternative universe in which there was no storm would have made for a very interesting story.
@RedKey Edogawa’s Injuu must be around a century old. What is it about?
I didn’t care. It’s one of those things that has too many possible ways to deal with it, so the author didn’t have any need to discuss the hypotheticals. If there’s no storm blocking off the island from the mainland, maybe Owen just wouldn’t have done anything. Maybe he (I’ll stick with the gender neutral “he”) paid off the shuttle not to arrive on those days, regardless of weather. Maybe he’d have something more extreme, like destroying the dock or paying someone to sink all the boats nearby. He could’ve done any number of things, but it’d be boring if Christie explained all the possibilities Owen planned for, especially given the nature of how things went down on the island.
@ghagler What a crazed idea for Owen, with that motive, to sink boats carrying innocent people. I see bribery as the more realistic, but somewhat boring alternative of keeping people away.
What would you do if you were (AndNone spoilers) Lawrence Wargrave after the sixth murder, supposedly dead, sitting on your own in that bedroom? Your “schedule” is packed, but what do you do in your free time?
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I read “Three Coffins” a few years ago, I was able to get around ~60% of the solution? I was pretty salty that the revelation that the clock was an hour off relied on cultural information — at least, it wasn’t actually completely solveable for me.
But hey, I got what I came for (that lecture) so I’m not too mad
@Aulin
"Mystery of the Yellow Room" was cool, esp. since it’s considered the first ‘locked room’ mystery iirc. I haven’t gotten around to the sequel yet, but I was actually really surprised (but at the same time, not really) to hear that Leroux was the writer of “Phantom of the Opera”
While im not a massive mystery fiction nut (even though I do not watch any anime that doesn’t have mystery/suspense in it) I did go out and spend quite a bit of money on a hard cover edition of Tokyo zodiac murders. I was not disappointed by the purchase.
I think they’re doing cheaper paperback 2015 versions nowadays
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Ah, however have you guys left such an interesting thread fade away for over a month? Anyways, I am into literature and even though I enjoy mystery novels, I have read very few of them and frankly, I don’t really know much about them to pick some of the most interesting ones to read. So, does any of you have any suggestions as to what a beginner should start with? Your suggestion can be from any author or any time period. Though anyways, I’ve never read a piece of literature from Agatha Christie and since she’s considered one of the pioneers of the genre, I’ll probably give And Then There Were None a try soon.
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Yep; a great choice.
As recommendations go, it really depends on the kind of mysteries you like to read. There can be a lot of variation across different mystery novels depending on the author; G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown series has a very distinct kind of prose. Try reading the first short story (legally free to read online now) and, once you reach the end, decide whether you like it. He has other short stories that only get better, as well as a mind-blowing novel.
Agatha Christie’s other novels are much more classic detective novels: there’s a detective, sidekick, murder, investigation, et cetera. And Then There Were None is a unique (and very excellent) case. There are other mysteries like it, but not very many of the same quality/focus on mystery and murder.
There are plenty of modern mystery authors, but the really popular ones tend to change it up and have the focus be on a lot more than just classic mystery; maybe a love story, or mental insanity, or “personal stuff” for the detective(s), etc.
In any case, try out Chesterton and Christie, being more extreme but excellent examples of mystery, and then maybe try out some classics like the Maltese Falcon. There’s a lot out there; enjoy the journey 
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Thank you for the recommendations, Ghagler. Hmm, I guess I’ll read these ones you suggested first and see which type of mystery that they present I prefer most, then I’ll be a bit more clear as to what types of mysteries I’d like to read more of. 
Thanks to Umineko, I got to read “And then there were none”. And thanks to that, I discovered my love for mystery and got to read so many more fascinating books (currently working on writing one, as well).
Some of the most mindfuck mysteries that I’ve read are written by Japanese authors. I recommend “Salvation of a saint” and “The devotion of suspect X”, both howdunnits (and very clever ones) by Keigo Higashino. There is also “Villain”, by Shuichi Yoshida, which in terms of ambiguity is the closest mystery to Umineko I’ve stumbled upon so far, as it also presents a story which in the end could be interpreted in two opposite ways, depending on whether the reader has “love” or not for the murderer.
Recently, I started reading Scandinavian mysteries. I’ve read about 20 books so far (most of them being a mix of mystery and thriller) and they were all very, very captivating - not only in terms of plot, but also due to the characters and the vivid atmosphere. Some of the ones I’ve loved most are “Midwinter sacrifice” by Mons Kallentoft, “Cell 8” by Anders Roslund (oh boy, the twist! The twist at the end!) and “The bomber” by Liza Marklund.
Some other mysteries that I really love are the ones written by JK Rowling under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith. They’re very… special. Let’s just say that. The second volume was extremely gruesome as well. Didn’t expect a children’s author to write something like that, but maybe that’s where the magic comes from.
I also love it when authors combine mysteries with other genres. For example, Asimov had a combination of SF and mystery in his Robot series - most notably, “The caves of steel” and “The naked sun”.
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It seems I’m finally finished with And Then There Were None, so here are my thoughts on it.
It is a good novel and it’s very enjoyable to read and I definitely recommend it to somebody who is new to mystery novels. The prose is okay, though nothing much is done with it but Agatha Christie certainly was extremely good at creating a suspenseful aura. You can feel it from the beginning when there are given small hints to the true nature of the island and that of the characters and when the murders start to happen, the suspense feels bigger and bigger. Though I, in my probably heartlessly critical fashion, will say that when the first three murders happened, the characters were not portrayed as alarmed nor did it feel like they were scared. Anyhow, with each murder occurring and each character getting more frightened, Agatha Christie creates an incredible claustrophobic aura and making the culprit look much present and visible even though they are not shown till the end of the novel. The small clues that were given in the first chapters were well-done, too. As for the answer, I was a bit disappointed, I feel it wasn’t explained in that much detail and found it a bit… well, an average answer. Though this is one of the pioneering works in mystery fiction, so it is to be expected that it wasn’t that much experimented on at that time. Anyways, overall it was a pretty enjoyable novel and I am a bit more interested in mystery novels after reading this one.
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Precisely! It’s fascinating to look at it and realize how different this was, compared to everything that came before. Even though the mystery solution seemed very basic and average, it was mindblowing. No one had read mysteries like this before, so this sudden, insane story of everyone on a remote, isolated island being dead, with no survivors, seemed impossible. It wasn’t as much of a question of who did it as much as who could have done it. It was a different look at what the “mystery” consists in.
Agatha Christie was really good at pioneering the field for her audience: just look at her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for another total twist of the genre. I love reading all the books from that early period of the Detection Club, since we really are seeing the birth of a genre, and it’s really neat to see how the questions and mysteries evolved.
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I just finished the 3rd one last week. I think it was the most interesting from mystery/suspense perspective though the very end (at the wedding) kind of left me baffled and a bit frustrated. Still, I hope we see more in that series because I do think she does a good job.
I think I will be buying And Then There Were None with my next Audible credit. There is too much positivity for it here for me to not get it firmly on my list.
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Indeed, it was like you said, a different look at ‘mystery’. Just experimenting with the sole concept of mystery itself, rather than with the characters around it, asking ‘why’ rather than ‘who’. Though frankly, even though the solution was pretty average, like I said, just the suspenseful aura is enough to want to read these wonderful pioneering works. Thank you for that other recommendation then, I may give it a try sometime, you’re making me curious by mentioning this total twist.
So I just finished And Then There Were None. It was fine on its own, but really is most interesting within its context in the history of the genre. With the polish and flourish that has been added to the idea in the years since it is very respectable that it holds up at all, and I can clearly see where Umineko was influenced by it.
It also got me caught up on my reading goal for the year, so yay!
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I just had a thought: maybe we could do some short story mystery challenge, where someone picks a short story that the others haven’t read and they post most of it, except the solution portion. Then we could quickly read it, discuss it, postulate theories, and enjoy the ending.
Main problem would be: often, these don’t have enough evidence (or any lol) to make a good mystery to try and solve. Usually, it’s a full-fleshed book that best does the whole thing. But I know of some that would be interesting: Chesterton’s Father Brown short stories that involve locked room murders, for example, or some in a mystery anthology.
A bad example would be some of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, which might not have much of any clues that the reader can find: it comes from deductions that Sherlock made whose origin we never saw (the type of cigar being the most obvious example). Still fun to read, but probably not possible to solve without just guessing.
Thoughts?
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I think this is a good idea, but maybe we should structure it as a chapter by chapter book club or something? Being the person who has to pick which clues need to be mentioned sounds challenging, and I would want the author of any good mysteries to get the due credit if we enjoy their stories as a group.
Agreed, this should be interesting. I also think it should be in a book club format and when every member finishes each chapter we all post all the clues that we noticed in that one. This way we can gather clues quicker, see what similar clues we have all noticed, learn of other things some of us may have not noticed and exchange our opinions. Also, I think we start with a book that’s not very long at first, to keep things light. Like I’ve mentioned before I’m new to mystery novels so I don’t really have any ideas on what authors to recommend so except for Ghagler who already mentioned a few authors, does anybody else have anyone else in mind?
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I am not really too familiar with the genre either, but I found this Best Of Fair Play list that might have some good ideas on it too. Though I would rather do one that had someone here’s actual endorsement
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Meh, I wouldn’t trust that list too, it probably has generalized mystery fiction recommendations. Besides, like Ghagler said, most mystery novels don’t really present that many clues in their stories so we can guess at the answer, so we’ll need novels that have clues scattered here and there, and like you said, you can only hear about that from one’s own endorsement.