A Quiet Place
Very much enjoyed A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto. What starts as a mystery unravels into a plot reminisent of The Stranger or Crime and Punishment. The ending is a bit sudden and takes the book in a more comic direction. If you like those and are curious about the explosion of Japanese crime novels that’s happening at the moment I recommend checking this one out.
I’m also reading Investigator Imanishi Investigates by the same author, excited to finish it now. Seems that the author is good at laying out meandering plots that arive at unexpected psychological endings.
My ranking of the chapters/ articles of the New Yorker anthology An Editor’s Burial as I was reading.
Included in the book is journalism that served as inspiration for Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (a brilliant movie that deserved more than it got).
I think the book’s quality and thematic cohesion wavers towards the middle but is saved in the end by superb writing from Baldwin, Liebling, and White.
Tony’s charm, intelligence, and kindness is the glue holding this quip-of-the-week (‘Don’t order seafood on Mondays!’ ‘Hear about the gang that escaped from Arkham? They’re calling themselves Vegetarians!’) and cigarette-stained book together.