長長的迴廊 (Keigo Higashino, "Kairoutei Satsujin Jiken / The Murder in Kairoutei" | Chinese translation)

My livetweet thread with character notes is here.

Read this book in light of the cdrama adaptation coming out!

As far as I know there's no English translation of this novel, and I can't read Japanese, thus... forced to read the Chinese translation. /o\ Which, incidentally is the easiest Chinese-language novel I've ever had to read LOL (I understood roughly 80-90% with Pleco) due to the lack of specialized vocabulary, slang, or colloquialisms. You can listen to a Chinese audiodrama adaptation (that I myself haven't listened to) here on Youtube.

About the translation

This book's English title is The Murder in Kairoutei, a revenge/suspense novel framed as a locked room murder mystery. First of all, the Chinese translation is probably the one I would recommend the least since one of the subplots involves trying to figure out what name the victim was trying to write based on initials. The Chinese system of translating Japanese names is to keep the same names/characters since they share the same writing system (as opposed to the CN-EN system, which transcribes the pronunciation). However, since Chinese and Japanese characters are read differently (eg. 里中二郎 is Satonaka Jirou in Japanese and Lizhong Erlang in Mandarin), and there's no glossary for the Japanese readings of the names, there was no way for me as a reader to participate in this guessing game. :( Instead, the Japanese readings are indicated in the footnotes as they come up. While this subplot isn't particularly crucial, it was still an ongoing thread of mystery that I feel that I completely missed out on due to an unbridged language gap. :(

About the book

The book itself is probably a 3.5 out of 5 for me? It has the very immersive point-of-view of a business tycoon's trusted assistant who survived an attempted murder (strangulation and arson) and is seeking revenge for her boyfriend (confirmed dead) who was in the same room with her during the fire. She comes back under the guise of an old lady at the scene of the crime, the hotel Kairoutei, where the guests have reunited to observe the 49-day rites of the owner's death and open his will.

The centerpiece of the novel is the long cloistered corridor (part of the hotel's name and the book title) that guests have to pass through to get in their respective rooms and that offer various views of the hotel. The reader similarly has to make the long-winded journey through past and present—by which I mean, this novel definitely can be much shorter, but takes the longest and most roundabout route. It's all very thematic, but at some point I got tired of the protagonist purposefully withholding crumbs of information to prolong the suspense, which is compounded by how the protagonist's point-of-view is EXTREMELY limited by her identity (an outsider) and abilities (not a detective). What I like about it is how the protagonist's level of reliability is established within the first 5 chapters, so as a reader I felt I knew her well enough to engage with and interrogate her narration.

Strengths

The characterization of her boyfriend (Jirou/二郎): by far the biggest mystery in this novel and its revenge motivation is the main character's boyfriend, Jirou. The MC is so tight-lipped and single-minded about him that we don't know anything about him except the facts of the arson case, and his whereabouts before it—the MC has a clear direction (avenging Jirou) but as a reader I mostly felt like I was going along with the MC, since I had no idea if this dude was worth avenging. XD It is, however, a very effective limited PoV, and I did enjoy how it was a sort of reversal of the beautiful dead girlfriend trope.

Her interactions with the other characters through her eyes! I just loved being part of her brain as she worked to maintain her disguise as a completely neutral old lady whenever it felt like her mask was slipping, versus the behaviors of the other characters; I loved the crumbs of the outsider investigation and observation she could see, and how the tension and urgency to fulfill her revenge mission ramps up whenever the lead investigator is onscreen.

I think the book does very well at introducing possibilities through parallels, and thematically is very strong. So many of the plot points mirror each other.

Weaknesses

While I think the main character is generally very enjoyable and effectively characterized as the main character, I'm not sure I enjoyed her as a character! This is not necessarily a novel weakness, but I feel iffy about the gendered characterization of low self-esteem and body issues (even pre-arson) even though I know it's meant to inform the reader about her mindset.

The deliberate withholding of case-related information OR information known to the main character for the sake of extending the mystery. I just don't think it's FAIR. A lot of the "revelations" I felt took too long for the protagonist to put together that they were unsatisfying, especially because menial case-related details were deliberately withheld from the reader. But the escalation in the end was cinematic and satisfying! Just, I would have loved to be able to see more of the crime logistics lol. The PoV also depends a lot on characters explaining their actions to the protagonist that they didn't necessarily have to (for the reader's benefit), which in the last few chapters felt awfully convenient.

This is probably just me, but I wish the diagram of the hotel layout also showed where the doors and windows were ajkslja;fjas;

tl;dr

This book is definitely a mystery, but NOT a locked room mystery; rather, the locked room mystery is just a plot device for the ~real mystery~ of what is being avenged. It intentionally plays with the concept of the genre, I think, but is at the heart a revenge story that you have to unravel bit by bit.

I would categorize this as "more story than plot", in the sense that a lot of the plot is very handwave-y. Even the logistical details about the mystery of the murder-arson are kind of glossed over, secondary only to the revelations of motive and murderer.

I found the ending cinematic and satisfying!