I wanna get into detective/mystery/murder mystery books. (Not sure what they're called... books where there are crimes happening and there's a detective investigating everything) What are the must-read classics? And other recommendations? I prefer things with this old-fashioned aesthetic (old trains, fancy mansions, etc) but honestly anything that you think is good or would recommend also works. Don't be afraid of flooding me with lists, I want as many recommendationsaspossible.

>>24552497 (OP)
Read poes books about Dupin. They are better than anything umi references

>>24552517
Where can I find the reading order of those books?

>>24552497 (OP)
Edogawa Ranpo

>>24552545
Anything specific or should I just read everything he wrote?

>>24552550
He's best with short stories and you could start with any collection of those to get the feeling of him, but if you want a full-length novel then The Demon of Lonely Isle is a good entry too

>>24552561
Nice, I'll check it out! Thank you :)

>>24552497 (OP)
le BWC girl!

In relation to OP's pic, what do /lit/ friends think of Umineko? I started reading it recently, but I wonder if it's truly as profound as VN fans claim it to be, so I'd like to hear the perspective of readers of more serious, traditional literature, like you here.

>>24552497 (OP)
Have you read the sherlock collection? Does 19th century london and countryside come under this "old fashioned aesthetic" of yours?

>>24552674
Obviously I was planning to! And yeah, sure, I'm just looking for older classics.

>>24552606
It's good. Really good. But it's verbose and cringe at times. If you can stomach that, it's very good.

>but I wonder if it's truly as profound as VN fans claim it to be
Depends on how much you want to go with the death of the author, because you can extrapolate a lot, but the theme is great. That said, I don't see many talk about it, so it might be the case that many got filtered. idk. It is very long.

>>24552497 (OP)
my fellow uminegro, go read a few of the novels that directly inspired umineko.

Decagon House Murders
Tokyo Zodiac Murders (the character of Kinzo was almost directly lifted from this)

dont stop thinking. theorise as much as you can all throughout, you erikafag.

>>24552497 (OP)
There have been plenty of threads on this, haven't there? I'm sure there is a chart or two floating around.

Oh well. Here are some early ‘classics of the genre’:


— THE PURLOINED LETTER (Edgar Allan Poe, 1845)
Short story. C. Auguste Dupin is the model for all those brilliant reasoners (Holmes, Poirot, etc). A few years earlier and hence more seminal was
— The Murders At The Rue Morgue
but Letter is better.


— THE MOONSTONE (Wilkie Collins, 1868)
Often called the “first detective story”. Cursed jewel gets stolen. Created many of the ‘country house / gentleman amateur sleuth’ tropes. His other famous book is
— The Woman In White (1860)
about a complicated abduction where one woman is switched for another. A more sprawling setting, hence not considered so genre-defining.


— THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1901-2)
Sherlock Holmes is the best fictional detective and this is the best Sherlock Holmes novel. Look at the short stories too. There are fifty-six of them, and most are pretty good. Read
— The Speckled Band
if nothing else.


— THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN (G. K. Chesterton, 1911)
Short story collection introducing Father Brown, Catholic priest-cum-sleuth. Unassuming little fellow, with something of a Columbo vibe; the idea is he knows all about human wickedness from hearing so many confessions.


— PIETR THE LATVIAN (Georges Simenon, 1931)
Introduces Jules Maigret, pipe-smoking chief inspector. There are a hundred thousand of these so if you like him, you’re sorted.


— MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (Agatha Christie, 1934)
This one features Hercule Poirot, prissy Belgian detective. If you watch a film adaptation make sure it’s from 1974. You could also try
— A Murder Is Announced
with Miss Marple, A.C.’s other main detective, or
— The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd
which has an interesting twist. And let’s not forget her most famous offering,
— Ten Little Niggers
or whatever they’re calling it these days. Bunch of people on an island get bumped off one by one. Utter drivel but incredibly influential (“THE KILLER . . . IS ONE OF US!”).


— NINE TAILORS (Dorothy L. Sayers, 1934)
Features her gentleman detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. This works pretty well as a stand-alone, letting you decide if you like him. If you do, you can go back and read the lot, bearing in mind they’re best taken in order of publication (especially the four with Harriet Vane).


— HOLLOW MAN (John Dickson Carr, 1935)
The quintessential ‘locked room’ mystery. (Someone is found dead in a room, no way in or out, etc.) The detective is called Gideon Fell. This book is notable for a lecture Fell gives on the ‘perfect locked room murder’ which is a long, almost fourth-wall-breaking essay on murder and detection. The solution to the murder(s) is absurdly complicated and implausible but if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like.

since you posted Umineko, checkout Pushkin Press line of recently translated classic Japanese puzzle style mysteries - short and enjoyable reads, my library even has them
https://pushkinpress.com/collection/japanese-crime/
they have a broader mystery line as well, Vertigo
https://pushkinpress.com/imprint/pushkin-vertigo/

not sure why all the cover images are broken today

>>24552606
It could have been good but clearly the writer decided to not have an editor and it shows. The material could and should have been contained in 1/4 of the size it ended up being. Plus the supernumerary fluff is anime cringe. I couldn't finish it.

>>24553014
why is Letter better than Rue Morgue? Morgue didn't just introduce a formula or tropes, it was from its inception a dissection of the hermeneutic basis of ratiocination and theory of mind both in content and effect upon the active reader's faculties - the kind of experimental modernist work you would expect to find later in a genre cycle deconstruction yet is remarkably one of its incipient foundations

>>24552606
Good plot and music, it really makes you think logically to solve the puzzles which is the main purpose of murder mystery. Some characters are pretty original too like Erika Furudo. Also the format of red and blue words is exaggeratedly creative, I don't think that has been done before in literature, maybe in some other VN though.

>>24553106
>Also the format of red and blue words is exaggeratedly creative, I don't think that has been done before in literature
for all House of Leaves' faults you have to give it credit in this regard. I'd also tip my hat to Borges encoding destabilizing epistemological pseudo-texts in his meta-fiction.
early internet Hypertext works also experimented with the possibilities afforded by the non-linear plasticity of interactive multi-media

>>24553157
>meta-fiction
Ah yes, that's also very creative and original, the characters from the novel go to a meta-dimention where they spectate the killings and try to solve it.
>early internet Hypertext works also experimented with the possibilities afforded by the non-linear plasticity of interactive multi-media
Nigga are you talking about Homestuck

>>24552497 (OP)

>>24552497 (OP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8LE9pw5yOw

>>24553183
He is talking about Homestuck without knowing what Homestuck is. And yeah, Homestuck has a lot in common with Umineko.

>>24552606
It pissed me off
It's trying to do two things at the same time and they both sabotage each other.
yes i am one of the goats.


it's also really long, i made the mistake of reading the whole thing in two weeks, which soured my perception of it.

>>24552497 (OP)
The Big Sleep.

slightly off topic but how come /lit/ mystery threads die so fast? it strikes me as strange given the popularity of mystery shit on other boards.

The Judas Window is mandatory reading.

Woah revisited this thread to actually find a list and more recommendations. Thank you everyone who replied! I'll make sure to read everything here :)

>>24552606
It's a profound trans allegory

>>24553014
There is a style of "who done it" and Agatha Christie is known for it. The "closed room mystery". The classic kids game of "clue" made fun of this.
>
and yes, while Poe may well have done it first, and even arguably better? There's no arguing that history remembers only the victor, and that's Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. (Baskerville? Excellent call up there, fellow-anon)
>
"The Big Wrap-up scene"...
Both Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes popularized my favorite, the wrapping up trope.
This is where the MC goes off on some manner of doctoral dissertation on everything. This is make or break for the story, in my eyes. Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt? Tends to have this big "wrapping up" late chapter scene. Its always exciting. Novel information, new ways of looking at things. Or correcting the order of things, anything goes.
>
OP seems to be actively shying away from moving on to the hard boiled gumshoe novels. Preferring the "classic" closed room mystery style of things, or the wrapping up of a holmes style sleuth.
>
more modern, you move into police procedurals and similar. Many of these, you can find to be basically... updated versions of the classics. Not all tropes are bad things, and the big wrapping up scene? Is one I always enjoy.

>>24554560
I'm not shying away from anything, I genuinely don't know how to get into this whole thing and what more advanced stories there are. If you have any modern recommendations I'd appreciate them as well, I just thought it'd be best to start with the classics. But of course I'd like to read all this genre has to offer. I find it very interesting and don't know where to start and where to go, I guess.

>>24554560

>"The Big Wrap-up scene"

Yes this is fun. There are two main types:

1) The "pre-reveal wrap-up". This goes as follows:
DETECTIVE: Now, let me tell you why I have gathered you all here tonight. One of you . . . is a murderer!
EVERYONE: This is preposterous! Well, all right, maybe not. Maybe one of us IS a murderer . . . but who? Who, in the name of heaven??
DETECTIVE: Before I name the killer, let me explain the chain of logical deduction which led me to his — OR HER — identity . . . .

2) The "post-reveal wrap-up":
DETECTIVE: <Apprehends killer in middle of diabolical scheme>: Here, gentlemen, is your murderer!
EVERYONE: But — that’s our friendly mildmannered vicar / doctor / member of parliament! How could you possibly have known?
DETECTIVE: Let me now explain the chain of logical deduction which led me to his identify . . .

Agatha Christie more often does the first sort and Arthur Conan Doyle more often the second, but not exclusively.

>>24554653
OK, if we're moving from genteel English country house style to USA hardboiled / noir, might as well start at the top.

Dashiell Hammett didn’t write that much. A bunch of short stories first (not great) and then five novels.

— The Maltese Falcon
is much the best. The detective is a interesting mixture of good and not-so-good. You root for him but you don’t actually like him. This is a must-read; the others are optional.

Two are told first-person by a stolid unglamorous forty-something guy who works for a large detective agency:
— Red Harvest
is basically a ‘corrupt town / gangster’ bloodbath. It's not really a murder mystery as such (it does start off as one, but that murder gets solved very quickly) because we know basically who is guilty (everyone) and we know basically how it has to end (the detective arranges for everyone to kill everyone else). Then
— The Dain Curse
is about a young woman who thinks she's cursed / insane. Slightly weird / eerie vibe. Not bad, but it has some pacing issues. (It's basically in three distinct parts, so there's a lot of stopping and starting, rather than a gradual build-up of tension.) Closer to a pure ‘murder mystery’ because there is a main underlying antagonist who has to be unmasked.

Hammett himself rated
— The Glass Key
highly. The setting is more like Red Harvest (corrupt town, politics overlapping with organized crime) but there is a definite murder mystery in there too. Lastly there’s

— The Thin Man
which is a missing person / murder mystery with a wisecracking retired-detective-plus-wife duo who both drink like fishes, plus a great nasty woman. It's a real oddball offering, lighter than the others without actually being funny.

>>24554807
Thank you for all the recommendations!! They sound very interesting :) Just like everything else in this thread, I'll make sure to check these out as well!

>>24554902

After Hammett the next big name is of course Raymond Chandler. Like Hammett, he first wrote a bunch of short stories (of varying quality) and later stitched them together, rewriting and expanding, to make novels. All these novels are narrated by Philip Marlowe, the quintessential wise-cracking, world-weary but idealistic P.I. whom everyone has copied ever since:

— The Big Sleep (1939)
One of the best so you might as well start with it. It only becomes clear towards the end what the most important murder really was.

— Farewell, My Lovely (1940)
Roughly on a par with TBS. Not really a murder mystery, but never mind. Giant not-entirely-unlikeable tough guy just out of prison is hunting for his old girlfriend. She’s moved on; it can’t end well.

— The High Window (1942)
Definitely weaker. Girl has traumatic memory, but what really happened? (In several letters Chandler said he was worried about the lack of action, but felt he had to follow where the story went.)

— The Lady in the Lake (1943)
Better than THW but slightly below FML in my opinion. Woman runs away from husband, woman is found drowned in lake, is it same woman, what's going on?

— The Little Sister (1949)
This one is pretty good although you have no idea what is going on at any point. Hollywood milieu. Shy small-town girl is worried about her black-sheep photographer brother with a penchant for blackmail.. BONUS: includes a great sexy evil woman. We like evil women. She's not even really that evil.

-— The Long Goodbye (1953)
Many people's favourite. The longest, the coolest. Marlowe befriends oddball drunk traumatized war veteran married to a rich slut. Drunk kills wife (or did he?) and Marlowe (who doesn't think he did) helps him flee to Mexico. Enter an alcoholic writer and his 11/10 blonde wife. It's all the Chandler tropes turned up to eleven. Also it's about masculine friendship. What things can it survive; what things kill it?

— Playback (1958)
Much weaker (Chandler was old and sick by this point). Some decent moments but it’s only for the completionists really.

>>24554902
All right, sticking with hardboiled but moving back to the UK. Peter Cheyney was a top-selling author in England in the 1930s/40s but no-one knows about him now. (No idea whether any of his books are currently in print but they're all pretty easy to get hold of second-hand if you want physical copies.)

He had several recurring characters. <Pic attached> is the first book featuring a London private detective called Callaghan. (It's not essential to read these in order, but definitely preferable.)

Basic setup: A rich guy has a bunch of nephews, mostly dissolute/criminal, and a stepdaughter. He has threatened to change his will.

The stepdaughter hires Callaghan, ostensibly to protect her interests (but it's unclear whether she's really asking him to give her a fake alibi). Anyway, stepfather gets murdered (obviously) & she's the prime suspect. Callaghan has to work out who actually did it.

>>24555091
Great list. I'd also toss in Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer stuff if any anon's already blitz through the Chandler-Hammett stuff and want to scratch that itch. Past them, you've got plenty. John D. Macdonald's work isn't quite as great, but it's solidly enjoyable. Mickey Spillane is very violent and gutsy, but should be mentioned as it's still widely considered notable.

If you want to get into older crime-noir recs, there's always the guys who popped up in Black Mask and Dime Detective magazine. Norbert Davis, Raoul Whitfield, Frederick Nebel, and Carroll John Daly are all splendid.

For additional examples, look for Library of America's "Crime Novels" anthology volumes. They got one for the 30s-40s with Woolrich, James M. Cain, and others. There's one for the '50s with Thompson and Highsmith and etc. Then there's a 2 volume set for the '60s with the likes of Westlake and Fredric Brown.

Best of luck anons. There's also the long-lived guys like Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain who did last from the '50s-60s up to the 2000s and wrote tons of crime/mystery fiction. YMMV on those.

Nothing really beats Chandler and Hammett for hard-boiled stuff. But there's plenty of great options.

bump

>>24552606
I don't think anyone should waste time reading it. I'm not going to write a full retort but it's far less intelligent than it bills itself as. Dragon Knight 07 breaks his own rules all the time. To most, it is immediately obvious who the real killer is. There's no payoff because everything you read onscreenis fictional in-universe so there's no reason to care about the characters because the events portrayed aren't real

Most glaring rule breaks
>the killer actually is the butler
>the killer has multiple accomplices (Nanjo, Kumasawa, Ronoue) (conspiracy rule broken), who ALSO happen to be servants
>um ackshually he's not a staff member he's a family member masquerading as a servant so that rule doesn't apply
Why the story is bad and only enjoyed by stupid people
>the killer is said to be a female (a witch)
>logic states the killer can't be an actual woman because then there wouldn't be a "clever" trick for the pesudointellectual author to
>the story introduces a servant femboy who calls himself furniture and clearly resents the family (has an obvious motive) in the first 30 minutes of reading
>in the first chapter, when Maria is left in the rose garden, during which she meets the witch
>during this time kanon is said to be walking from the main house to the guest house
>also the phone lines are cut during the period when kanon is moving to the guest house and maria meets the witch
In EP3, while Jessica is blinded, Kanon's (who is allegedly dead), voice guides Jessica (who can't see him)>very soon after that, during the EP3 ending "trick", beatrice is shown, onscreen, killing nanjo. after this EVA-Beatrice kills Beatrice onscreen
>after Beatrice has been killed onscreen, Eva lists currently living characters
>Eva killed Kanon between Nanjo's murder and the time snapshot when she lists dead characters
This is all very obvious on first read. As stated, the mysteries aren't interesting or clever considering everyone knew the killer this early on. None of the stories actually happen, so there's no reason to care about the characters dying over and over. The mystery is gone when you solve the culprit. The only reason to keep reading is a few mysteries like where the gold came from but the reveal was about as satisfying as it would have been if i opened a wiki page instead of reading 2000 pages of a story I already solved.

I wasted way too much time finishing the story after that point but the entire episodes 5, 6, 7 are written for morons, in the original sense of the term, to whom this was not obvious 2000 pages ago.

Anyone that didn't figure out the culprit by the end of EP 3 is an idiot. Reading after that point is a waste of time.

>>24558109
Without love, it can't be seen

>>24552606
The Divine Comedy but godless, truer to romance.

>>24553014
chatgpt posts in non ai threads should be deleted and their users should be banned for it

>>24558109
Maybe if one exclusively judged it as a mystery genre work, your reading would be somewhat justified; but otherwise it is remarkably wrong-headed, and it is incredible you were able to get through all or most of it while remaining this clueless about the intended meaning. Your take is only marginally more insightful than claiming it is pointless to read fiction, because it never happened...
With respect to the killer being easy to guess, there's enough over-determination for there to be competing candidates, at least during the first four chapters (there are nearly more words there than in the Bible!). You could find similarly persuasive arguments for a handful of other characters (and indeed, as it was being released, the main suspect in the Japanese internet wasn't the correct one, which remained a fringe theory, favored by Japanese women). Other than that, you missed the most obvious hint (a name), but I'd rather not spoil it.
Yet getting it right isn't the point of the first four eps, as the question isn't even addressed until just before the end of those; rather, you've to mirror Battler's incompetence and development, solving the closed-rooms and second-guessing his arguments against Beatrice (charmingly erotic as those are at their best...). That's the way the game's heart; if not, you can be right about the killer (in one sense), but there'll be little emotional weight to it, and it'll make the four last chapters, and their mysteries, pretty dull.
Umineko has other things going for it, ofc. The purgatory-variations of most characters are interesting on their own, and nearly all find fitting resolutions; the music, in its natural development from ambient to motifs, makes it worthy of the sound novel title (and one hopes more VNs would strive for it); Kinzo is pretty sad, but turns out to be one of the better, more formidable characters, as a Faust-reincarnation; and at last Ange's outsider-story, which appears just at the right time to free the game from its setting, makes the entire VN approach The Brothers Karamzov as a monument/memory against itself (and Ange's jump), esp. during the last puzzles in the party, which overwrite and can oddly redeem all earlier ones.
Granted that what animates the VN is something else. Yet this, what "without love, cannot be seen" isn't the killer, but rather why Battler himself realizes who it was (killer and author), upon reading the first chapters, and without doubt falls in love. This is the core theme of the VN (even finds itself in its music clearly enough, in Future for instance), and underpins the closing scenes of chapters 4, 7, and 8. The heart between those two. It remains half-hidden, but when you're asked the one final question, this is what is being settled: does romance deserve to persist across worlds? If you embrace your beloved, and she's not there, and she embraces you, and you're not there, is that still love? Whether anything really happened or not is besides the point.

>>24558449
>Maybe if one exclusively judged it as a mystery genre work
Which is what it is, for the most part. I'll admit I avoid all information about the contents of works I read to a fault. I didn't know why it should be good. I didn't even know there were going to be witches before it was mentioned in EP1 as I didn't read a synopsis.

I enjoyed the fantasy scenes, they were fun to read but the story goes to great lengths to crush your hope for magic to exist in any situation, like Maria's.

The story falls apart as soon as Ange is introduced at Ep3. epilogue. Until then you can interpret the series mythology as the first episode being real and the rest being continuation for it, Game 1 Batora going to the purgatory after being killed. But that's not the case as in Ep3 and Ep7 the real story is introduced.

Game 1 was the most compelling in the first place as it seems. I kept hoping that at the end they would pull a bait and switch, after all of the talk about magic not being real with Ange and Maria, this would only apply inside the gameboards. In Game 1, Maria saves Natsuhi with the scorpion etc. In the epitaph they use 黄金の郷 -> 里 -> 真里亞 -> Maria is the key to the golden land. She actually chooses who dies in Game 1, like giving the scorpion charm to Natsuhi on the first night. The first game is the only one that puts effort into the supernatural aspects. That plot goes nowhere. Instead RK07 treats you like Maria and hammers into your head how magic isn't real. There's no payoff to theories.

But in Ep3 the bomb plot is revealed and even the first game didn't happen. There's no magic. Like soulja boy said "There ain't no point to the damn game haha".

>Your take is only marginally more insightful than claiming it is pointless to read fiction, because it never happened...
It's not the same at all. The VN spends SO SO MUCH time on the mystery after the point where an observant reader is confident on the killer but treats the reader like someone that doesn't get it until the end of EP6. I'll confess I didn't realize Shanon=Kanon until that point as it wasn't mentioned anywhere that it was the first time they were working on the island at the same time which apparently was the case, and it was too much to consider someone would keep the act up for longer times, which they didn't considering canonically that was the first time both Shanon and Kanon had shifts at the island at the same timeIt's also weird that George takes Shkanon on vacations and proposes to him without noticing he's a trannyThe clearest hint to this is at the start of Ep1 when Batora wants to fondle Shannon's breasts but she freaks out because they're not real, so people that didn't binge read it could have theorized this, sure

Out of character count and so on so I lost as many plot threads as Ryukishi but w/e
Also I get bad vibes from the MC and the Beatrice being gay lovers so I can't see their love

I’m not a big mystery novel guy but Defending Jacob by William Landay was excellent. Non-linear storytelling with a great ending. Easy read, you should be able to knock it out in a couple days.

LIBER INVICTUS LAUDAT DEUM

>>24558109
>I knew who the killer was because I looked it up beforehand to make myself look smart
cool story bro

>convincednooneaward.jpeg

fata morgana is umineko done right.

>>24558602
We disagree essentially on two points: 1) whether Umineko is mostly reducible to its mystery genre elements and 2) whether it has literary merit as a complete work.
As to 1), there's a basic sense in which yeah, it contains/deals with mystery novels; yet that is not all there is to it. Rather, Umineko is about the mystery genre, and so exceeds it, as Don Quixote with chivalric romances. This is very much thematized by the VN in Game 2, with its genre-constraints fantastical characters.
But the main reason why this is plausible is, as you point out, how painfully contrived and thematically irrelevant the puzzle solutions of the first four chapters turn out to be. I claim this is by design, because the main aim of those chapters is not to showcase the events and get you to solve the mysteries once you've seen enough; that is secondary, and relatively unfair given the particular solutions. No, beyond getting you to know the characters (the things they're capable), the intended effect is that of Battler's own reading (as it happens also in-world), that you may grasp the (underlying) romance and its justification, as Battler himself did.
In this sense, Umineko is best described as an odd variation on the byzantine-novel-form (a now mostly dead genre about lovers overcoming all sort of hardships and separations in a semi-fantastical setting, to be purified, reunited at last, and marry). The very last scene of the VN perfects this form (overcoming the usual anti-tragic reunion ending, which took place in eps 6/7); but only if you're fully committed to the magic, and can see it.
This leads to 2). Magic itself is, in the story, like Beatrice, as impressive (consider the Mahayana-scripture-like battles in ep 3 or ep 8) as it is defenseless (Maria's persecution by Furudo Erika). It's not just some good fragments, which you rightly praise, but essential to the VN, to the extent that the last choice ties it all and depends on what you make of the magic (as Ange's, Maria's, and Beatrice's are inseparably tied). Not a question of whether it exists in-game (what'd be the point?), rather Umineko wants to prove that these possible and meta-fictional worlds are no less, maybe even more truthful than Rokkenjima Prime; and therefore that magic should be real beyond Umineko, precisely for how weak it is while remaining, if one's invested in the story, emotionally significant and apparently necessary.
This is what motivates Game 2, as well as the constant references to the heart. Recall how the VN doesn't even take Rokkenjima Prime seriously enough to complete the sentence confirming it. It's all useless (hehe), unless you already agree there's something to the romance; from there, the defense of magic by Game 2 is pretty good (although not as entertaining as Game 1); and arguably earns its right to the last scene and its love across worlds, as she, this time truly, kills him, though long dead. If you superimpose every chapter, this is what's brightest.

>>24559741
Anyway, Sebald said it better; from this, all of Umineko follows
>The trails of light which they [butterflies*] seemed to leave behind them in all kinds of curlicues and streamers and spirals..., did not really exist, explained Alphonso, but were merely phantom tracks created by the sluggish reaction of the human eye, appearing to see a certain afterglow in the place from which the insect itself, shining for only the fraction of a second in the lamplight, had already gone. It was such unreal phenomena, said Alphonso, the sudden incursion of unreality into the real world, certain effects of light in the landscape spread out before us, or in the eye of a beloved person, that kindled our deepest feelings, or at least what we took for them.

>>24559341
Sorry about your lacking power of perception lil bro. It's well documented the Japanese fans knew the culprit by episode 3, and the VN has a poor reception there because it was ultimately unsatisfying. I came to the same conclusion.

>>24554918
One interesting twist on the genre is the historical whodunnit. The Name Of The Rose is the famous one I suppose but I'm sure someone else will have mentioned it already. (I also think it's overrated, but never mind. You'll want to look at it if you're trying to survey the whole genre.)

<Pic attached> is the first in a series (so as with Maigret, if you like it, you’re sorted). It's quite well-regarded.

>>24554902
One interesting twist on the genre is the historical whodunnit. The Name Of The Rose is the famous one I suppose but I'm sure someone else will have mentioned it already. (I also think it's overrated, but never mind. It definitely exists, if you're trying to survey the whole genre.)

<Pic attached> is the first in a series (so as with Maigret, if you like it, you’re sorted). It's quite well-regarded. The detective is this monk who lived quite an adventurous, worldly life and then retired to a monastery when older. So he knows all about secular affairs and people often underestimate him, assuming he will be naive (much as with Father Brown).

>>24552497 (OP)
After, AND ONLY AFTER you'll finish reading at least Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Dashil Hammett, you might like to evaluate certain Robert Rankin. Despite most of his writing is a satirical fantasy, most of it incorporates quite a lot of detective genre features, some books like "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" (yes, this is the name of the book, although most of his other books are named somewhat less lenghty - just don't be fooled by "trilogy" word ever) or "Waiting for Godalming" are straight up detectives under the guise of the parody on the genre. Dude in general writes something, that is a kind of a sitcom during the pseudo-epic events with David Lynch-tier plot development in some cases, better start reading from the first book. Most of them aren't connected plotwise, but, rather, through character archetypes almost like Final Fantasy game series. I have managed to find most of his books except the very last one, "Normanghast". For the best experience it is required to be somewhat familiar with british and scottish cultures as well as with popular and fantasy media from 30s up to late 2010s (for latest books).