I will not go into more details here, but I’m sure readers who are expecting an Agatha Christie type of story will be wildly surprised by the grim and macabre turn of events.Īs a novella, “The Black Lizard” comprises 29 short chapters (most are less than 10 pages), while there are some pages interspersed with drawings of certain scenes and characters. While the story starts off with the talk of abduction of a young heiress, characters disguising themselves oh so successfully and fooling everyone around them, as well as many other familiar plot devices and tropes, it’s not long before it takes a rather gruesome turn. The Black Lizard of the title is none other than our female criminal (it is revealed in the very first chapter, so this is hardly a spoiler), a femme fatale who stirs a lot of trouble for our seemingly clueless male detective.

“The Black Lizard” is the longest of the two novellas (174 pages), and it uses many familiar tropes of the genre. Published in 2006 by Kurodahan Press and translated by Ian Hughes, the tome I am writing about today features two of Rampo’s novellas, “The Black Lizard” and “Beast in the Shadows”, as well as a very enlightening introduction by Mark Schreiber that helps even those readers who are unfamiliar become acquainted with this era of Japanese mystery fiction. With a pseudonym that is basically inspired by the Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allan Poe, Rampo developed what is frequently referenced as the “Japanese gothic mystery”, managing to introduce the Western elements of mystery fiction to the Japanese audience, while adding an inherently Japanese flavour.

Although the writers whose seminal works we identify with the Golden Age are predominantly Anglophone or European (Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ellery Queen, Georges Simenon etc), this flourishing of detective fiction took place even outside these continents, reaching as far as East Asia.Įdogawa Rampo was one of the most influential writers in early 20th century Japan, as his works helped establish the detective and mystery genre in modern Japanese literature. The Golden Age of Detective Fiction (mostly in the 1920s and 1930s) is a much revered and even more referenced era for all lovers of detective and mystery fiction.

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