Anna’s Reviews > Чудовище во мраке > Status Update

Okay, so while I give ‘Beast in the Shadows’ its fairly-earned 5*, ‘Flag in the Fog’ was so lackluster and disappointing story that made me relate to the ‘anti-hero’ way more than to the actual protagonist, I can’t give it more than 1*. 1.5*, maybe, only because of Abe. I feel that it’s not exactly fair to combine the ratings for such different stories to evaluate the book as a whole, but it’s middling 3* for it.

I could have applauded the clever way with which Kiriko destroyed Otsuka’s career and public image, if it were only Otsuka who suffered for his misdeeds. But in the name of her revenge, Kiriko condemned an innocent person to prison and allowed a double murderer to walk away free, even though she could have stopped him and cleared her brother’s name. At this point, I feel nothing but disgust for Kiriko.

I’m a little awed by Mitiko Kono. This woman is rich, so she’s definitely not with Otsuka because of his money; she is young and beautiful, so she wouldn’t have any problems finding a younger and more attractive suitor, so all of that can only mean that she’s sincerely in love with Otsuka.

Otsuka proves himself a more complicated person instead of a heartless monster that he may seem to be from Kiriko’s perspective – he feels guilty for refusing to help Kiriko’s brother, but at the same time he’s too proud to admit that he was wrong, and these emotions make him human, and because of that I can’t really hate him as much as Kiriko does.

The foreword warns that ‘Flag in the Fog’ is a novel with no positive characters, but what about Abe? While Otsuka has questionable morals and Kiriko is too detached for me to sympathize with, Abe is a real sweetheart – in any other story he would’ve been a perfect romantic hero. Well, the foreword to ‘Beast in the Shadows’ had already taught me not to trust them too much…

‘Beast in the Shadows’ is a solid 5*, but ‘Flag in the Fog’ is rather meh so far – I even thought of splitting the book in two and rating each of the stories separately. Still, I rather like the way we investigate the murder through medical reports and police protocols instead of seeing it with our own eyes. Yet there are still too much ‘water’ for me, as the pace is slow and we don’t see much progress on the case.

‘Flag in the Fog’ provides an interesting perspective because the ‘villain’ of the story is not a murderer or a criminal of any sort, but a lawyer who refused a moneyless client, which caused the suspect to die in prison. In the eyes of law, the lawyer did nothing wrong, and even I cannot honestly blame him for not jumping to every poor man’s defense, though this is certainly a flaw in judicial system to be explored.

Just like the narrator, I find myself questioning everything he deduced. What if the villain’s ultimate revenge plan was to frame Sidzuko for her husband’s murder? Then this diabolically complex plan would’ve had to be put into action five years prior, with every detail plotted scrupulously, up to the villain finding an accomplice resembling Sidzuko. Is it contrived and improbable? Yes. But is it impossible? Heck no.

What makes ‘Beast in the Shadows’ a unique detective story is that the hero’s deductions are neither confirmed nor refuted in the final. On the one hand, he crafts a complex theory that makes perfect sense and where every little detail fits into a puzzle, but on the other hand he admits that there’s no hard proof to his deductions, and eventually there’s no way to learn if he’s right or wrong.

I love how the author crafts an intricate and 100% believable theory of Rokuro Koyamada’s death only to completely shoot it down later due to the revelation of a single detail.