Quote:
Originally Posted by Kanon
While there were apparently more clues in the novels, it appears the reveal that Reiko = Mikami was just as frustrating for the readers, if not more since the novel is written from Kouichi's point of view and the reader was privy to this thoughts. It really feels like a huge cheat. That reminds of a certain game... whose conclusion I hated for the same reason. This is not how you write a good mystery, imo.
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Actually it's exactly how you write certain kinds of mysteries. Especially when it comes to description tricks, which are huge in Japan's mystery fiction genre, you are expected to doubt what is given to you as much as what is kept from you. Only because you are witnessing a story as a first person narrative it's not at all given that you will gain every information concerning the solution. Just think of a certain Agatha Christie story where the whole reveal centered around the narrative mode being unreliable.
I agree that it stands on the boundary of a fair mystery, but the question is whether this was meant to be just that. The genre is, even by the author himself, categorized as horror and is clearly seperated from his pure mystery novels. But I admit that Ayatsuji Yukito tends to be a little bit too experimental with narrative unreliability and description tricks. Half of the time it works (e.g. Murder in the Waterwheel Mansion, Murder in the Labyrinth Mansion) and at other times it simply does not work out for me (e.g. Murder in the Decagon Mansion).
Yet I would rather group another with similar novels he wrote which tend more into the horror direction. Like Scarlet Whispering which is clearly inspired by Dario Argento's 70's movies. Those in turn were inspired by detective mystery fiction as well and some of them actually were quite clever mysteries (e.g. Profondo Rosso - Deep Red) but they are still grouped as horror or slasher films first.