Edogawa Rampo (1894-1965), famend as the daddy of Japanese detective novels, created a complete catalog of thriller fiction methods titled “Ruibetsu Torikku Shusei” (A Taxonomy of Thriller Methods).
After World Battle II, throughout a droop as a author, Rampo delved into overseas thriller novels and meticulously categorized the methods utilized in these tales.
His compilation contains intriguing situations, not solely acquainted ones like “locked room” mysteries. For instance, there may be “the detective is the perpetrator,” “the sufferer is killed by an uncommon blade,” and the “two rooms” methods.
These phrases ought to remind any avid thriller fan of precise works.
The grasp of thriller novels additionally describes methods for “hiding a residing individual,” similar to being “left in a coffin along with a corpse” and pretending to be a doll. The author himself employed a trick in one in every of his quick tales the place the perpetrator hides as a affected person in a hospital.
A just lately uncovered real-life incident seems to echo the plots of thriller novels. A former hospital director and his doctor brother in Aomori Prefecture have been arrested for allegedly masking up the deadly stabbing of a affected person by one other on the hospital.
They’re believed to have listed “pneumonia” as the reason for dying on the certificates given to the sufferer’s household.
It stays unknown why such drastic motion was taken to cover the incident, particularly contemplating pneumonia wouldn’t trigger the bodily accidents on the sufferer. It’s tough to not really feel puzzled.
Police seized from the hospital quite a few dying certificates itemizing pneumonia because the trigger, together with the one concerned within the alleged cover-up. They have been all signed by a health care provider with dementia.
These information elevate doubts and suspicions concerning the moral {and professional} requirements on the hospital.
The state of affairs brings to thoughts a line from a British thriller sequence that includes Father Brown: “The place would a sensible man conceal a leaf? Within the forest.”
The easiest way to hide one thing is to mix it in with quite a few comparable objects. If one has to suspect your entire forest, not only a single leaf, the implications are certainly terrifying.
–The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 23
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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a well-liked every day column that takes up a variety of matters, together with tradition, arts and social traits and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column gives helpful views on and insights into modern Japan and its tradition.
