I almost feel sorry for not giving this book more than a three and a half stars. The locked room mystery and its solution was excellent and the insights into the Japanese tattoo culture was fascinating.

I had two specific problems with this book, though:

1. I haven´t had have a sense of time and place throughout the entirety of the novel. The story is set in the year 1947 in war-ravaged Japan and the dialogue between the characters have an outdated feel and read like something written in the late 1940s. However, this novel had a contemporary feel to it and it that regard the dialogue felt incredibly disjointed and out of place. Not sure whether this is the fault of the book or the fault of the translation.
2. The reader follows a character called Kenzo, an avid mystery reader / amateur sleuth. In the overall scheme of this novel, he is supposed to be a character like John Watson. But Kenzo lacks his Sherlock Holmes for most of the novel and only towards the last 50 pages of the mystery a Sherlock type of character is cropping up. And I´m sorry, but Watson without Holmes doesn´t work and there have been some chapters in the middle of this book that dragged considerably.

I would recommend this book to any locked room mystery enthusiasts. Even though this book has its flaws.

Some dialogues in this book sound incredibly stilted (though I do think people might have talked like that in Japan back in 1947). Take this drama queen moment for example:

"You stupid idiot! What the hell do you think you were doing! How dare you withhold something so important from me! Goddamn son of a bitch! Stupid, little brat! Thanks to your incompetent interference, this case is even more screwed up than it was before! Damn, damn, damn!" Daiyu Matsushita pounded the nearest wall with all his might, and loose plaster flew in every direction.

"I´m sorry, I´m sorry, I´m so very, very sorry," Kenzo cried, involuntarily throwing himself on the ground at his brother´s feet. "I was completely wrong, and I don´t know how to apologize. I wish I were dead." Kenzo burst into tears of grief and shame.

 

And then this little episode, in which Kenzo is thinking about the phenoma of the Doppelgänger:

 

So far Kenzo has managed to avoid being introduced to any of these walking wraiths, but he had a feeling that if he ever did meet his own doppel, he would gäng away in the opposite direction as fast as possible.

 

I´m actually blaming the translator for the wrong use of the German language.

"Oh," said the investigator, "that´s the neighbor, a Mrs. Kotaki, wife of a government employee. When she saw the severed head she fainted dead away. What can I say, she´s a woman."

 

My initial reaction:

[Source]

Yep, slightly annoyed.

 

"I don´t know what it has to do being a woman," Daiyu responded in a serious tone of voice. "I think anyone might faint at such a ghoulish sight. I mean, if this weren´t our job, a few of us might be under a doctor´s care right about now."

 

Oh ... okay.

"Unlike the Japanese tattoo, which flowes over the contours of the body like a river over stones, the Americans cover their arms with a hodgepodge of unsightly, obvious designs - hearts, anchors, flags, and the like. I suppose an upstart country like the United States doesn´t have any folklore or tradition to draw upon, but still, there´s no excuse for a total lack of artistry. No imagination. And the shading techniques are appallingly primitive, like something from the Stone Age! The subtle shadowing that sets the Japanese tattoo apart is achieved by the use of natural pigments which are applied with immeasurable skill by a true artist manipulating a variety of needles, with each bundle of needles encased in a wooden handle. But the Americans! They use a single needle, which is shy their designs are as thin as a bowl of milk that´s been left out in the rain." 

 

I´m intrigued. I´m not into tattoos myself, but the way it´s descriped in this book, as an art form and a part of the Japanese culture, is fascinating.

(If you are wondering about the references to the Americans, this book is set in the year 1947).

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders makes me want more Japanese mysteries. Sadly, that appears to be the only book by Shimada translated into English, and I've already read everything available in English by Yukito Ayatsuji, the first similar author that comes to mind.

It looks like The Moai Island Puzzle and The Ginza Ghost are my best bets for mysteries similar in style to Shimada's book. The others in my list also seem like good possibilities, although not necessarily similar to The Tokyo Zodiac Murders in style.