I feel like i have been waiting for this book for all of my life. Sad that there is no comprehensive English translation: the Japanese Edogawa Rampo series is 30 books, but only 3 have been translated. Barnaby Rudge features a talking raven, which may have or probably has inspired Poe's famous poem.Īnyway! If you're looking to get into a crime writer with an unique perspective, this Reader should be a good introduction. One great essay is all about that one time Poe and Dickens met: how Poe managed to foresee the ending of Dickens' Barnaby Rudge and spoiled it in a newspaper article, both met later and Poe was trying to get Dickens to help him sell more of his books in England, but nothing really ever came of it, even though Dickens tried. The essays are all over the place, but interesting - some are very impressionistic, it's quaint nowadays how terrified Rampo was of the moving picture, some essays are focused on the 'tricks' a detective fiction writer uses, and I'm a bit sad that his An Itemized Catalog of Tricks hasn't been translated to English ( here's Google Translate with the list of tricks from the Japanese Wikipedia). The so-called instinct for crime is another name for it.Ĭhildren are very sensitive to 'inhumanity and crude taunts', and though they might walk about expressionless as a Noh mask or put on a riendly facade, underneath they burn with hatred at the real world. Or rather, I should say it is the very need for taboos in the first place that proves human beings have an innate tendency to rebel against society.

Yet taboos are essential for human beings. From the moment we're born, we are endowed with certain anti-social traits. Sexuality, taboo, and rebellion are common themes: This Reader collects a few short stories (without the famous Caterpillar!), two of which are more classic detective fiction, the rest is more in the area of Weird Fiction, all very good, even though the detective fiction stretches its logic quite a bit ( all you need to murder people is a clear moon and a bit of suggestion!!). Edogawa Rampo is one of the most famous Japanese detective fiction writers, with huge debts to Doyle and Poe (pronounce Edogawa Rampo a few times the Japanese way and you'll find that he named himself Edgar Allan Poe).

D坂の殺人事件 他六編〈江戸川乱歩文庫〉 by Edogawa Rampo

D坂の殺人事件　他六編〈江戸川乱歩文庫〉 by Edogawa Rampo