2020 My Favorite Mystery Novels

It's more than halfway through November, so far this year, I have read 41 books of reasoning, and the other 37 books, maintaining a consistent proportion. There are not many days left in 2020, so let's make a 🚩: 100 books rush rush!

Next, I recommend some of my favorite reasoning writers and works in 2020.

01. Masahiro Imamura 【Japanese】

After the previous hit "The Mystery of the Corpse Village", Masahiro Imamura has already become very popular. Born in Nagasaki in 1985, he quit his job as a radiologist at the age of 29 to concentrate on writing. At the age of 32, he became famous with his debut work "The Mystery Case of the Corpse Man", and achieved the achievement of "Second and Three Lists" in the reasoning world after "The Devotion of Suspect X".

"The Mystery Case of the Magic Eye Box" can be regarded as a continuation of the story of "The Mystery Case of the Corpse Village", and the protagonist is still the beautiful girl detective Biliuzi. This time, she and Ye Cunrang found traces of the "Banmu" group behind the last incident from a magazine report. From this, the two came to the sparsely populated mysterious village, and spent 48 hours of life and death with eleven people trapped for various reasons.

Personally, this book is more advanced than Zombie Zhuang, each character is more distinct, there will be no more confusion where a bunch of young students can't tell who is who; the floating lines are basically buried enough; the strong folk atmosphere is somewhat similar to my favorite The Mitsuda Shinzo. The first layer of superstition and curse serial killing techniques is unremarkable, the second layer of identity reversal begins to be exciting, and the final epiphany egg has a trace of emotional concern, making the relationship between the characters more loving.

After this battle, both the author and the detectives in his pen have grown up and look forward to the next one.

02. Ye Zhenzhongxian [Day]

Ye Zhenzhongxian is one of the author's pseudonyms. He used to be an excellent children's literature writer, and now he is a cutting-edge social reasoning writer. The "Death Nurse" completed in 2012 won the 16th Japan Reasoning Literature Award Newcomer Award in one fell swoop with the praise of all the judges. This officially debuted as a reasoning writer. After that, "Extreme Scream", published in 2015, is even more amazing. Together with the former, it can be called a shining twin of social reasoning.

Through the successive deaths of dozens of elderly people, "Death Nurse" tells the worrisome drawbacks of the pension system: families overwhelmed by both material and spiritual; Difficulty of change; poor working conditions of front-line care workers; fraudulent groups targeting the elderly... "The elderly are not like children, the status quo will only get worse and worse. In a world without hope, death is the last redemption." I still remember the feeling I felt after reading it, "For the first time, after reading a series of murders, the reader doesn't want to live." It is worth mentioning that several statistical analyses in the article show scientific highlights that are rare in reasoning works.

"Extraordinary Scream" shows a deeper and grander creative intention. With the life of a woman who "died alone" and was rejected, the mediocre and weak Yoko experienced the ups and downs and sorrows of fate, with her childhood to middle age. A series of unfortunate encounters stitched together a dark microcosm of the changes in Japanese society over the past forty years. The biggest tricks are interspersed with the narrative, and it's hard to predict until the last minute.

The most moving aspect of both stories is neither the technique, nor the author's way of telling them. The language is very fluent, the multi-line narrative is skillfully used, and the pronouns are subtly switched, allowing readers to piece together and guess as the process progresses, and it is even more gratifying to finally shake out the reversed identity trickery. In short, it is not dazzling, and it can be smoothly combined with the theme.

What the author really appreciates is his keen observation of life, his delicate and gentle female perspective as a man, and his restrained compassion for many social problems. Without a doubt, Ye Zhenzhongxian was one of the most surprising discoveries this year.

03. Tsuji Village Fukazuki 【Day】

Tsujimura Fukasuki is not a newcomer, she can even be called a popular female writer and screenwriter, but I only came into contact with her works this year. Born in 1980, he won the 31st Plum Award in 2004 and the Yoshikawa Eiji Literary Newcomer Award in 2011 for "The Messenger". In 2012, he won the Naoki Award for "Dream Without Keys". In 2018, "The Lonely City of Mirrors" won the first place in the "Bookstore Award" in Japan.

The story belongs to the fantasy theme that is rarely concerned with the growth of adolescence in the reasoning works. It tells the adventure story of a group of seven teenagers and girls who refused to go to school due to school bullying and other reasons, and accidentally broke into the mirror castle.

The author not only delicately grasps the sensitive and delicate moods of the teenagers who “refuse to study”, but in the step-by-step healing of them, he is also releasing a message to adults who are tired from urban life or have not yet healed the trauma of their growth period. Empathy and warmth.

In terms of reasoning, she implies two unexpected time and identity tricks (some readers have guessed it, awesome). It's these two tricks that make the ending almost burst, the kind of burst that serves the theme, so there are tears that go straight to the soul. Push.

04. Chen Yanyi【Middle】

The local newcomer who really came out of nowhere, although he is a contract writer for Yanbeitang (an original website for suspense novels), "Perfect Suspect" is his debut novel in the absolute sense. This can also be seen from his editorial notes (I heard that the author is still handsome?).

The title of the book is a bit vulgar, but this book is not the original version of any film and television work.

The murderer is confessed at the beginning, but there is still a big surprise ambush at the end. It is difficult to control this type, and the discussion of social issues such as children's education is still a naive debut work, but the overall look is not inferior to the highly mature Zijin Chen. The rhythm is very suitable for film and television. I strongly recommend iQIYI to buy the copyright, I am so looking forward to finding an actor to interpret the male lead.

The downside is that there are some minor flaws in the logic, and the specifics are not expanded. But the flaws do not hide the truth. The final real answer is really shocking and dazzling, and the hidden trigger for uncovering the truth lies in the psychological state that ordinary people tend to ignore. It is designed very ingeniously. All in all, this author has a bright future.

05. Si Ting 【Taiwan, China】

The author, whose pen name is "Si Ting", has won the Taiwan Lin Fuer Mystery Novel Award for three consecutive years, but who he/she is, you will never know.

He is the 72-year-old gold screenwriter Chen Wengui. (Why is it called Si Ting? It was purely a mistake in the layout of "The Reasoning Magazine".) In the past 30 years, he has been a witness to the history of Chinese costume dramas, creating "Iron Teeth Bronze Teeth Ji Xiaolan" and "Little Li Feidao" "Bao Qingtian" and other classic works can be called gold screenwriters in Chinese costumes. He also won the Best Screenplay of Magnolia at the Shanghai TV Festival with "The Case of the Orphan of the Zhao Family".

He is not a man without a story.

Born in Xiamen in 1948, in 1969, in a cultural catastrophe, at the age of 21, he followed the slogan of "educated youth to the countryside" to the mountainous area of Fujian. Later, he published in Taiwan a collection of short stories "Mother Trafficking Case" with Xiamen as the main background. In 2013, he wrote a collection of mystery novels that could never be published in the mainland, "The Execution of Death Tonight" , also based on the background of the mainland in the 1960s and 1970s and the legacy of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait twenty years later. The two different types of works show the inner commonality. The author is not stingy, and repeatedly and directly conveys to us: in the violent and treacherous age, absurdity and greed are the most conspicuous footnotes of human nature.

In terms of reasoning, there are several short stories with a very high degree of completion. The stalk of the book of the same name "The Execution of Death Tonight" even made me smell a shadow of Borges. "Guests from Taiwan", "Take a Good Picture", and "The Last Lesson" also maintain a rigorous logic in the strong irony.

It is a pity that, with the suspension of the Lin Furer Mystery Fiction Award, Si Ting finally put aside the creation of mystery novels with insufficient food and clothes, and returned to his well-known screenwriting field. Therefore, this book may be the only collection of mystery novels set in this era, so read and cherish it.

06. Paul Holt 【French】

I rarely write Golden Age classics, not that I dislike it, but the other way around. Except for a small number of Quinn's works, most of the others have finished the whole set in the teenage years. The advantage is that the classic and original style has established a lifelong aesthetic tone. The disadvantage is that after eating the sweetest fruit, life is only bitter (no) The disadvantage is that the evaluation system was not mature at that time, and the judgment of some works was too subjective. Therefore, in recent years, I have had to downgrade most of Granny's works, re-evaluate the value of Carl's tricks, and after overcoming the boring language, I have re-understood Quine's meticulousness and beauty.

Having said that, back to Holt, a living classical king. A European and American person who can really feel the legacy of Granny and Carl. He also has no shortage of personal characteristics: grotesque, whimsical, gothic, cold alleys, cursed legends, family events, and the reasonable superposition of many elements makes him worthy of the title of "the last defender of the golden age".

This year, Qingdao Publishing House finally collected five books, and directly released the resources on WeChat reading. For readers like me who have been suffering from lack of resources for new works in recent years, it is very enjoyable to finish them in one go. The types of the five stories are somewhat similar, the puzzles are all seemingly impossible crimes, and the ideas for solving the problems are different, but they are quite tribute to Carl in terms of atmosphere and tricks.

"Masquerade": espionage theme, layers of reversal, narrative tricks.

"Phantom Alley": The gothic atmosphere is full of gothic atmosphere.

"Mystery of Angel's Alley": Short and concise, there are fake answers and real answers, and the truth is a little broken.

"House of Mad Men": Very classical, very Karl, the answer uses a psychological blind spot, very solid.

"The Last 139 Steps": Double secret room, the shoe stem is very whimsical, and the overall is mediocre.

Finally, a series of his classic old works can also be completed, "The Fourth Door", "Dartmoor's Demon", "The Seventh Answer", "The Curse of the Redbeard", "Night of the Hungry Wolf", "Blood Mist", "Penelope's Web" and so on. All above the standard, rest assured to enter the pit.

07. Not selected but not worth reading:

・"Sleeping Prison" [Japanese] Kazuhiro Uraga

・"Unknown Author" [Japanese] Nobuzo Mitsuda

・"Hold My Broken Brain" [Japanese] Chinen Shiki

・"The Closed Door" 【Japanese】Ishimochi Asami

・"The Thirteen Steps That Disappeared" [Japanese] Kazuaki Takano

・"Common feeling" 【Day】Ryo Amane

・"Wonderful Diary of an Office Building" Chicken Ding

・"Knight's Sacrifice" Nato

・"Reverse Time Investigation Team" I and II Kittens

・"Detective Fowler, Word Morse" [Hong Kong, China] Morris

・"Balloon Man" [Hong Kong, China] Chen Haoji

References:

1. "Mother Trafficking Case": Surprise, and shocking the ugliness of Chinese folk Hong Kong Zhitang Community

2. "The Absurdity of Condensing a World with Deformities and Reflections" monochrome book community

3. "Rereading Si Ting, a Puzzle Piece of Taiwan's Mystery Novels" Lu Ren

by Raisin.