Edited@14/11/2015: Re-reading Memai (translation: Dizziness) by Soji Shimada.
I had read this book long ago and after this re-reading I still find the story of Memai spellbinding and the plot twists clever and the murderer's motivation well explained and convincing, it is among Mr. Shimada's finest novels.
The author Soji Shimada, aka King Of Dismemberment in the realm of Japanese crime/detective novels, brings us yet another bewildering tale: the detective and his friend received a strange diary belonged to a disable young man, who lived alone in a seaside apartment provided by his movie star father, said father sent his disable son a beautiful female caretaker to look after him. Then one day, a masked robber broke into the apartment, the female caretaker and a visiting man were killed right before the young man's eyes, the young man ran out calling for help only to find outside of the apartment building, The End of the World had already arrived. Then in order to revive the deads, the young man cut the bodies in half and rearranged them to a half-male half-female Perfect Being, and then...the reviving ritual worked out and the Being opened his/her eyes?
So did the disable young man go mad and dream these all up? Or something deeper had gone on? You will have to find out for yourself.
Here're the few things I like about this book:
(1) The author came up with the most impossible situations (e.g. people turn into monsters, The End Of the World, the existence of an nonexistent 4th Floor, the Perfect Being etc) and manged to explain most of them logically and intelligently.
(2) I like how the murder mystery is solved and explained in the end.
(3) The atmosphere is nightmarish.
(4) The story is economically and neatly written, it's a fast read.
Last but not least, the 'reviving spell' in this book is a direct copy of the one in a H P. Lovecraft's short story. lol
genres: detective mystery, thriller Japan ranking: Meh, I Finished It! I stuck it out, but it wasn’t exactly fun. 3/10
the first line: "There is hell all around me. In the water, in the air, in the milk, in the rice, in the sweets, in the soap... Everywhere."
notes: no comments, this is just not my author, his style annoys me, I neither sympathise with no care for the characters; the cases seem obnoxious and overcomplicated for nothing