The book that first came into contact with Seishi Yokomizo was The Family of Gods, but the version I read was Blood Will, not the name. It was probably like the end of the century, when I was in junior high school.
In high school, the school had a set of complete works of Jin Tianyi published by Zhuhai Publishing House. At that time, I read a few books and accidentally found that the bloody will I read was the family of dog gods. If I had the heart, I could actually tell from the names, but I never thought about it. At that time, although I had the conditions to study, I still didn't read much.
As for the university, he dabbled in a wider range, but even skipped this old-fashioned book, not even as good as his grandson Kindaichi Hajime's book.
At the end of last year, I became interested in Seishi Yokomizo again on a whim. I can't say why. If I read Edgar Watt Lapol, I have reason to buy a set of e-books. What about Seishi Yokomizo? I really can't think of it. I have been to the whole library many times, but I still haven't finished reading it. But in the present situation, there is really no interest in continuing to read. For the Jin Tianyi series, I just want to say that "the significance of literary history is greater than that of literature. Just as mystery novels are successful, mystery novels are failures. "
Why is its literary history of great significance? The answer is simple.
Now, whenever japanese mystery is mentioned, there must be Seishi Yokomizo's name in the ancient gods, and there must be Jin Tianyi Gongjie, a scrawny and stuttering thin man in the classic detective image. The change of mystery novels is bound to be inseparable from the "change of style". Starting from the authors, characters and genres, Jin Tianyi's public and auxiliary series occupy an unshakable position in the history of literature. It is this position that drives future generations to re-read these articles and rediscover the inner beauty. Of course, if you fall here, you will wear off its original aura again and again and lose its high position.
As for the nature of the file, this is what this article will discuss. Its focus is the above-mentioned characteristics of Jin Tianyi: more than thrilling, less than reasoning.
If we think of mystery novels, what do we think of? No matter how much or how little you read, one thing is very important. I hope that the logical chain and evidence chain finally obtained can clearly point to a specific suspect. Frankly speaking, many of Grandma's novels are lax on this point, and even Raymond Chandler pointed it out in her article. For example, in the tragedy on the Nile, the time gap that the murderer relied on was so lucky. How can such a crime succeed? The same is true of evil under the sun. Grandma's knowledge of pharmacy is too limited. There is infinite worship and dependence on sleeping pills, which are used as anesthetics. A convincing novel is a series of works written by Quinn. It is even more fascinating that he directly faces the challenges of readers in his article. Professor Yi Zhongtian praised the mystery of Greek coffins without reason. I once asked him about it face to face, and he also said, "This is a good book and worth reading." .
Of course, with the development of the times, more and more cases do not need the brains of detectives, but criminal investigations. No matter how powerful the logic is, it can't compare with the detailed investigation of criminal evidence. The popularity of CSI TV shows this development in reality. Although "Jump the Search Line" is a comedy, the process of Japanese police handling cases it presents is really inspiring. Logical reasoning is indeed useful, but irrefutable evidence is still needed to charge and convict suspects. Otherwise, no matter how good it is, it's only nine Niu Yi hairs. Here, I recommend a book, The Murder of Land Bridge, which is an ancient book of reasoning. It ironically puts all kinds of detective methods that only rely on guessing and reasoning in place. The whole book is basically a collection of faces. In the previous chapter, if the detective has any new ideas, in the next chapter, he will immediately come up with new evidence to hit his face. It's really interesting. If we insist on wrangling, many works in the classical period can't stand scrutiny. We can only say that the criminal's heart is too fragile. You can carefully arrange a "complete crime" layout, and the result will be messed up as soon as it is seen. Criminals who have not filed a record deserve to be caught.
So now all kinds of mystery novels often don't focus on the core cases, but on characterization. This is particularly prominent among the tough guys popular in America. Because it is not the point, I won't go into details here. However, it should be noted that in those books, the case is often not the most attractive place, but only the motive force for the plot to unfold. This kind of work presents the personalities and emotions of all kinds of characters related to this case. People are the focus of these works.
As for Hyun Pai, the sword is biased and sometimes I don't know what to look at.
Since there are so many types of mystery novels, why should we evaluate him on the grounds of "insufficient reasoning"?
Before I talk about this question, let me review my experience of reading another writer. Also in high school, the library entered a complete set of complete works of Wesley. When the lessons are not so busy, brushing them one by one also forms an atmosphere in the class, which can be compared with Harry Potter. But it's only been over a month. After reading three or four books, everyone said that this book belongs to XX. At that time, people didn't read much, and the acquisition of genre novels was not as easy as it is today, but even so, in limited reading, I vaguely feel that novels like Wesley can't stand it. Really a fool. Whether it is science fiction or mystery novels, the stalls in the early stage are so big that people's expectations and thresholds are set high. As a result, when the end came, they began to talk nonsense. Superpowers, aliens or something. It's an insult to readers' wisdom, just like the domestic horror movies now.
Of course, let's get back to the point. Of course, there are alien ghosts at the end, but don't bluff under the guise of "mystery novel" Works such as Cai Jun and Leonardo tell you from the beginning that you can't understand the story in the article with real-life ideas, as long as you appreciate it a little according to the author's design. For example, Prince Ma's "She Died on QQ" is the same, which is simply a ghost story. So, if you kill someone through the hard disk, you won't feel stunned at all, and you won't scold at last. However, if there is no foreshadowing in the early stage and it is suddenly said that the murderer in this case committed the crime like this, I am afraid that the book will really die and the kindle will be smashed.
Let's get down to business and finally talk about Seishi Yokomizo. But first of all, his problem is really not as serious as Wesley mentioned above. Instead of perfunctory and fooling readers, he unconsciously confused the key points of the article.
Let's list the books we read recently: Killing in this array, Eight Tombs Village, Prison Gate Island, Magic Flute, Dog God Family, Night Walking, Misery Village Tragedy, Queen Bee and Three Pagodas. The number is not too much, and I haven't read all of them, but I have read a few well-known books and got a basic impression of his style.
From the beginning of the article, his evaluation was not high. This is not what you want to promote first, but what you feel. Please point out the problems of each book first. If you don't want to lose the reading experience, please avoid the spoilers that may be involved.
Killing in this Array is the first novel I read, and its content is a classic mechanical secret room. Among them, the machine was used twice, once for suicide and once to cover up the truth. If it ends like this, there is no problem at all. But in the process of telling this story, an irrelevant third party was deliberately mixed in. When writing, all doubts point to this stranger, and then when solving the mystery, tell everyone that he is an unfortunate passerby. His fingerprints are everywhere because his hand was cut off by the murderer. WTF！ ! ! ! This is no longer a paradox, but a naked use of words to mislead readers. This book is still a success, which at least proves that Jin Tianyi Gongjie is a good detective. Later, he wrote a series of mystery novels with Jin Tianyi as the protagonist. Jin Tianyi appeared in 77 novels and short stories. On the other hand, although this book is not Seishi Yokomizo's first novel, it is his first novel after the war, which can be the starting point for him to reach the peak of mystery novels.
The next order is evaluated according to the publishing order rather than the reading order listed above. Prison Island (1947) has the typical features of Seishi Yokomizo's works. Because I'm not a professional researcher, I can't say for sure whether this book is the first Jin Tianyi's work with this feature. I can only say that the elements in this book are repeated in later works, which has become Seishi Yokomizo's trademark.
Its typical feature is generally a big family, no matter what it is now, its ancestors must be very rich; Because wealth often has luxury houses and many rooms; There must be an unlucky legend in this family, and modern people's lives will never get rid of this shadow.
In the process of crime, it is characterized by serial killings. Jin Tianyi Xiaofu seldom identified the suspect like Richard Moore, so he avoided the sudden death of the suspect. The process of the case is the focus of this book, which is the biggest difference from the general mystery novel. His works rely on one dead person after another to promote the development of the plot. At the same time, the role of Jin Tianyi is looming. Readers can't devote themselves to the detection of cases from the perspective of bystanders, but simply watch the performances of the characters in the play.
In this book, the scene of the story is a closed island-Prison Gate Island. The victim's three sisters came from a big family, because they participated in the distribution of the inheritance, and the beneficiary of this inheritance was the result of the resentment of the previous generation. The dead have different ways to die, which is beautiful, and with the corresponding poems, it is more mysterious and temperament. However, what is unsatisfactory is that it is unforgivable to learn that all cases were completed by many people. This way of dealing with stealing chickens is too perfunctory. The final result is worth mentioning. Originally, the three sisters were killed for property, but when they finally learned that the so-called beneficiary had died, the sense of absurdity and powerlessness reached its peak. The so-called reasons for killing have also become ridiculous. This is the most lasting ending of Jin Tianyi's works that I have ever read.
Night Walking (1948) is my favorite of these books. This story uses two elements, one is the unknown corpse, and it also involves narrative. The combination of the two, although frankly speaking, the final decryption process is still a little fate, but the whole process is done in one go. Especially because of the mysterious design, the unreasonable process has also been photographed, and everything is logical without any sudden feeling. This book is my most recommended. Of course, as Seishi Yokomizo's work, it may not be typical enough. But as a mystery novel, it is still quite wonderful.
Baling Village (1949) also has the typical features of Seishi Yokomizo's works. In this case, the ancestors of this village were cursed by warriors, which is an unlucky legend; The hero of the story returned to the village and inherited a large fortune. He is a rich ancestor. There are also luxury houses and even complicated underground secret passages. As for the dead, finding and examining the bodies has become an important contradiction to promote the development of the plot. Once the story is weak, a person will die quickly, and then there will be a lot of repetition. As for the final answer, it is even more ridiculous. In a conversation similar to the briefing, Jin Tianyi revealed that she locked the suspects from the beginning and then asked her to kill one after another. I wonder how you will feel when you see this place. This book is really thrilling when rendering death, which can be regarded as a good-looking mystery novel; But with the final ending, I suddenly felt that the dog's tail continued to mink and lost one star. However, this kind of dog's tail continues to feel mink, which has different degrees of performance in different works. In addition, an important clue-a note full of the dead-was originally written casually in imagination, but it was accidentally used by the murderer, and the person who wrote this note became the victim, which is also unsatisfactory. What a difference.
As mentioned above, The Family of Gods (1950) is the earliest novel written by Seishi Yokomizo, although I have long forgotten the plot. This book is also one of his works that is famous because of the existence of movies. It can be seen from the name of the story-whether it is the bloody will or the dog god family-that this is also a case about the family. The process of reasoning is barely satisfactory, but the problem is that the modus operandi is too coincidental. It's too hard to kill people when they go to the bathroom. The same problem, also mentioned in "The Battle of Our Array", is that many people commit crimes. Of course, in this case, someone handled the scene for the murderer, but at first, according to the general thinking of readers, they would never guess in this direction. Because once you guess like this, the possibility suddenly increases, and the answer will not be unique.
At this point, it is almost impossible to comment on the following books one by one because their inherent advantages and disadvantages are too similar. There is almost no doubt that there is a copier. Just change the name and the position inside, and you can churn out another work. The Queen Bee (195 1) is also such a work. The heroine living on a desert island came to Tokyo, and as a result, several people who wanted to date were killed one after another. If there is any charm in this story, it is to solve the case that the heroine's father was killed 19 years ago. However, I have to say that the evidence is only the evidence of the existence of the murderer. Someone was killed. It has been 19 years. Afraid of conviction because of a little evidence? The killer is too impulsive at this time. Of course, the final result is also killed, avoiding the embarrassment of not being able to sue. As for the detection of several blind dates being killed, I have no impression at all. We locked the suspect by checking the motive, and then everything was ok.
The situation in the devil playing the flute (195 1) is excellent. The investigation process is also described as a broken leg like the traditional police and bandit novels, and the description of the crime process is also interlocking. Often the key witness is killed when the reasoning has just begun. But the problem is that when we look back, we will find that the murderer is also not a person, and the reason for buying the murderer is far-fetched. This case has already broken through the restrictions of closed environment such as big houses and isolated islands, and entered a normal and open society. I think it will be a good show. The result finally falls on the theory of motivation. Once the purpose of the murder was uncovered, the suspect was quickly locked, and the modus operandi was also brushed aside, which gave a specious answer. This is the novel I regret most, because for a while he even began to criticize the reality, but in the end he returned to the most familiar corner, and the hasty ending made all the previous work in vain.
Three Pagodas 1970 has a movie black atmosphere. The story also begins with a will, and then the beneficiaries of the will start killing each other. The protagonist of this novel was involved in the case for no reason and was considered as the murderer. With the help of others, she began her escape journey. There are a lot of murders about love, abnormal feelings, sexual abuse, the process of exploring secrets, and the adventures along the way, all of which have abandoned the main line. But this thrilling process is already very enjoyable. But it's still like the dog's tail and mink mentioned above Once back to the main line, the secret of the case is weak enough to waste the excitement in front. At this point, Seishi Yokomizo doesn't seem to know what readers want or what kind of book he wants to write.
The slogan of the tragedy of the lost village (1975) is "a masterpiece". Indeed, the classic elements in Seishi Yokomizo's works are all reflected in this novel. But after the baptism of the previous books, I am tired of this stylized work. Not to mention that the occurrence and cracking of the case are mixed with a lot of accidental factors, which I can't accept. Judging from his creative process, this book should be his first work after the transformation. However, due to the lack of more abundant information at hand, I don't know whether his transformation was successful or failed, so I can't make a pertinent evaluation of this return. If the transformation fails, this kind of return can only be the performance of being at one's wit's end; If the transformation is successful, this return is undoubtedly a summary of his creative career.
In the last part, I talked about the feelings of several novels I have read. Generally speaking, disappointment is greater than gain. There may be many factors, after all, the development of mystery novels is changing with each passing day. What I have read and seen now is far beyond that era. So these novels are not so good at present, but as the cornerstone of mystery novels, we can't ignore them. Of course, ordinary readers only need to know its significance in the history of literature. At this age, the possibility of getting pleasure from reading his books is really limited.