The Lipless Man: From the casebook of Akechi Kogoro

by Edogawa Rampo, Alexis Brown (Translator)

The creature’s face was unforgettable. Vacant eyes, a hollowed-out nose, and a red snarling maw. For the young heiress, who catches her first glimpse of this lipless monster through a steamy bathhouse window, its appearance signals the start of her own voyage into the depths of hell.

First published in 1930 (Japanese title "吸血鬼", or "The Vampire") this is the fifth full-length Akechi Kogoro novel and the first to feature the boy detective Kobayashi.

Born as Hirai Tarō, Edogawa Ranpo (1894-1965) was an influential author and critic known for his tales of the mysterious and macabre. His pseudonym is a rendering of Edgar Allen Poe using Japanese characters. Ranpo often dealt with themes of sexual perversion and the grotesque, as well as writing more conventional crime fiction.

Alexis J Brown is a translator living in London.

Genres: Mystery, Japan

210 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2023

About the author

Hirai Tarō (平井 太郎), better known by the pseudonym Rampo Edogawa ( 江戸川 乱歩), sometimes romanized as "Ranpo Edogawa", was a Japanese author and critic who played a major role in the development of Japanese mystery fiction.

Reviews

[Tuca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the fourth Akechi Kogoro story I have read and the best one so far. I have formed my opinion on them as a whole. A streamer I like says that there is a difference between a detective game and a game where the main character is a detective: in the first case you get to investigate and solve the cases; in the second, the character does it for you. If you translate that into detective books, that's what Akechi Kogoro is to me. I am not reading a mystery book, I am reading a book about a detective going on adventures and being cool and smart. There is no point trying to solve the mysteries as a reader. Mystery books are a game played between the author and the reader where the author presents each piece and sets the board, leaving the reader to solve it. It has rules so that it can be solvable. Reading an Akechi Kogoro story feels like playing chess with someone who midway through the game starts eating the pieces. The solution is always completely simple and transparent or impossible to come to from the clues given. The book will say they checked for secret passages and there were none and then the solution will be.... a secret passage.

Now, about this specific book. It was the most enjoyable one so far and the closes to an actual mystery book. It did reuse points from at least 2 other novels and one short story I have read by the same author but it did feel better used this time around. I have to say though, everything around women is infuriating. They don't have lines, they don't do anything for themselves, the text is always describing them as seductive and beautiful, as if it's the only thing about them, and don't get me started on the milk...... That is not how a woman's body works. Women feel like they are there just to be the object of men's lust and their crimes, to suffer, to be taken.