Home thread for 十角館の殺人! 🕵️‍♀️ 推理小説読書会 | Mystery Novel Book Club 👮‍♂️

According to the OP of the Mystery Book Club, starting date is August 8. As far as I can see it’s not mentioned in this thread at all. We should probably add it.

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Thanks! I actually checked that thread too but I must have skimmed too much. :see_no_evil:

That’s perfect. I’ll be traveling for work next week and may have to start slightly late anyway, but that should give me plenty of time to finish ‘And then there were none’.

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Post has been updated to show the start date :white_check_mark:

I’m down for this, especially as the split is leaning towards a two week first thread. I will not make a ‘final call’ until polling closes, but the two options are quite similar to each other so I think overall it’s just a matter of preference as to how VROOM you wanna be towards the end of the book :joy:

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So how are we dealing with the prologue + first chapter? Do we decide a cut-off point for the first week, or do we just make a two-week thread and everyone reads as far as they like? I tend to favour the latter. Accidental spoilers so early on shouldn’t be a big problem, and not splitting a chapter into two threads is just neater. What do you think?

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I was planning on one thread, yep. I think it’d be confusing if I cut a two week reading assignment into two threads as it’d be unclear what to discuss where.

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pikachudetective

Week 1 + 2 thread is now open

And I need to get the reading done :sweat_smile:

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Should we keep a prominent schedule with links to the discussion thread on the top post? I’m asking as I now have a link to this thread on the main book page :slight_smile:

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Minor bug report for the new Natively book club tag on the main site:

Summary


The tag in the top left of the picture doesn’t show any text.

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Home thread top post has been updated to now list the weekly threads as they open :pencil2:

Edit: Also thanks for doing this! How exciting to be the first tagged book club :sparkles:

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Ooh, nice! Just thought I’d mention it actually links to post number 27, if you meant to link to the op.

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Oh thank you! Fixed :slight_smile:

Oh good catch, fixed.

Oh great, much better! If you wanted to go a step further, you could get a little fancy like they do in the WK book club and make a table, like so (copied from シャドーハウス (Beginner Book Club) - Book Clubs - WaniKani Community):

Week Start Date Chapter Page Count
Wk 1 Jul 16th Ch 1 ケイトとエミリコ 12
Wk 2 Jul 23th Ch 2 壊れた人形は 13
Wk 3 Jul 30th Ch 3 説明書

Also, I think we could hide a lot of the past information (polls, chapter information) in a ‘details’ dropdown and make the top post more relevant to potential newcomers in the future.

I guess I keep adding on suggestions :joy::joy: if you prefer I can try take a crack at updating the top post… I’m mostly just inspired from that beginner book club thread, it presents the relevant information well :slight_smile:

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I made the table but oh how I despise discourse tables. They’re such a pain. It feels like more formatting than is necessary.
I also put the majority of the content behind a detail drop down, but that did destroy the poll.

Feel free to edit the main post, formatting and visuals have never been my forte.

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Looks good to me!! :grin:

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I added a chart with character names and readings as well as some basic notes to remember who is who to the top post of this thread. It is a wiki so anyone can edit it. Please take care to hide any spoiler notes behind spoiler tags. :slight_smile:

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Just 24 pages this week! Week 4 thread has opened :female_detective:

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The list with the readings for each name is so helpful!

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Another short week at 22 pages! Week 5 is open! :female_detective:

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Week 6 thread is open! 39 pages this week and an extra poll to vote on what cadence we want to finish out the book on. :calendar:

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Week 7 thread is open! The results of the poll showed a win for a swifter read towards everyone’s demise the ending so we’ll be reading three chapters this week (6, 7, and 8) totaling 43 pages.

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Hey all~ So since (most of) our main characters are nicknamed after real mystery authors, I thought it’d be fun to have a spotlight on each author here for those interested in learning more about them or who wanted to read some of their books. Of the eight authors named at our current week of reading, I personally had only heard of three of them, so this is kind of a fun investigation for me as well, haha. (Please note: because I have not read the vast majority of these, my descriptions may be a bit thin.)

First up is Baroness Orczy. Why her first? Because she’s only got a few mystery stories (afaik) and is therefore easier to research, haha.

Name: Emmuska (Emma) Orczy
Born: Sep. 23, 1865 in Hungary
Died: Nov. 12, 1947 (age 82) in London, England
Notable Works:

  • The Scarlet Pimpernel (not detective fiction)

Baronss Orczy (pronounced “Or-tsey” according to Wikipedia) was a Hungarian-born author who wrote in English and lived in Britain. She has quite a few novels, short story collections, and translations to her name, but she is overwhelmingly known for “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, an action-adventure story set during the French Revolution.

For our purposes here, I’ve been looking into what mystery the Baroness wrote. It’s surprisingly difficult, as I haven’t found really good documentation of what most of her books are about, and the vast majority that are not The Scarlet Pimpernel series seem to be out of print, unsurprisingly. I think a decent chunk of it should be in public domain at this point, at least.

As I haven’t gone through her novels to check and see what’s what, I’ll instead focus here on her short story collections: the The Old Man in the Corner series, the Lady Molly of Scotland Yard stories, and the Skin o’ My Tooth stories.

The Old Man in the Corner
This series is made up of three books of short stories, all featuring the eponymous Old Man. He’s the very definition of an armchair detective, solving crime while not leaving his seat at a teahouse. A young journalist visits him and tells him about the cases, which he’s able to solve from the details she gives.

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard
This is a collection of 12 short stories all featuring Lady Molly, a female police detective; they are narrated by her Watson-like assistant, Mary. Lady Molly is generally called in when her male colleagues hit an impassable roadblock, and she uses her wits and female intuition to (generally) goad a suspect into revealing more information than they’d like. I’ve read a few of these; they’re very quick, rather wholesome stories (insofar as Lady Molly is held up as a paragon of detective work; she’s very positive and eager to solve crime).

Skin o’ My Tooth
The title is a nickname for our protagonist in these stories, “an ugly, portly, but particularly sharp Irish lawyer who goes to great lengths (even unscrupulous ones) to get his clients off”. He apparently goes off to solve his clients’ cases himself. This Project Gutenberg Australia link gives 12 stories in this collection.

Know any more mystery stories by Baroness Orczy? Notice something here that’s wrong/have more information to add? Let me know! If anyone else wants to write up a mini-biography for our authors, feel free! I’ll probably add one here every so often as I go along with my own research; my goal is to read one mystery novel from each author as we read 十画館の殺人, so there should be plenty to share!

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