Week 1 of 🤸 体育館の殺人 🔪 | Mystery Novel Book Club

I can do it, since I’m the one who wanted it.

Do you think it would be okay if I also uploaded the maps?

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No objections from me! Thank you for taking the time :slight_smile:

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I’ve not had much time so far so have only listened up to the end of part 1.1 in the audiobook. I’m kind of finding the audiobook annoying so far as the narrator keeps really changing the volume of her voice so I’ve been finding myself turning the volume up at points and then feeling deafened when she decides to do a loud voice. Hopefully I’ll get used to it! :pray:

Story wise, it’s fun so far, feels like an easier read than 十角館の殺人 so far which is a nice change of pace if it stays that way.

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It’s pretty poor quality for an audiobook :disappointed: Nothing wrong with the narrator necessarily, but it could have used some cleanup of the audio quality which would address things like volume jumps. She might also have not been using the best set up, hard to know.

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yeah it wouldn’t take much, pretty sure if I had access to the audio files out of audible I could fix the volume balance using audacity. It’s not the worst thing in the world, maybe just not one to listen to when relaxing :laughing:

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I haven’t noticed a change in volume, but a change in octaves when the narrator is acting some of the middle school girls. Not relaxing, but very common to hear people talking in falsetto.

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I’m not sure if I noticed any volume changes either, but I’m an audiobook noob and was trying to listen in-between doing stuff at work, so I definitely could’ve missed it.

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Lol, perhaps I just have very delicate ears. I went back a little bit when reading and listening to the rest today and think I found some of the bits I was talking about. Just a few lines, first from the male student calling out to someone called 三条 right before the body is found and second from the 眼鏡をかけた少女 that shouts a question at the detectives as they arrive at the scene at the start of 1.2 at least to my ears, were very loud compared to the narration. To be fair, in both cases I think it was intentional as in the first case I think it was meant to be someone calling over to someone and the second also someone yelling. Definitely a valid acting choice, I’m just grumpy and was listening when I was sleepy haha.

But anyway, even to my sensitive ears the rest of this weeks section was fine audio wise. In terms of the story itself I’m liking it fine so far. I guess because the murder has come so quickly we’ve not really had a chance yet to really get to know any of the characters much (except from the detectives a bit), so while nothing has particularly hooked me yet I’m guessing that will come! An interesting change from most other Japanese mysteries I’ve read so far where quite a lot of the novel is spent on set up/developing the setting and characters before the first big event

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Phew, okay; I’m a tad bit behind, but I’ve finished my reading for week one. Dunno if this’ll last, but this was my strategy week one: listen to the reading, re-read independently to look up stuff, make sure I understood everything, then listen through one more time.

I honestly basically picked up almost everything while listening + reading. I think there might’ve been one or two places where I lost track of who was talking (mostly among the police officers), but otherwise I picked up a surprising amount. Not sure if I’ll keep the same strategy going forward; I may do the same again for week 2, see how it goes, and adjust from there.

Anyway, thoughts!

So I was pleasantly surprised how quickly this murder happened (lol, sorry 朝島); it felt like it took a while for the first murder to happen in 十画館, in comparison. I’m intensely curious as to what our mystery murderer asked 朝島 to do in the beginning, and how that resulted in a knife in the heart. Is it bad I’m hoping some super petty high school drama led to all this?

I’m wondering who ウミガメ is; same with the blond student. I’m guessing the 卓球部 members won’t be important long-term? Like, once they give their witness statements, that’ll be it. Unless they’ll be vehicles to give us future high school gossip. :thinking:

I’m wondering what 袴田’s deal is, and why he’s kind of freaking out already. He was the one who got nervous when he heard 卓球 mentioned, right? Very suspicious. Makes me wonder if he’s got a family member attending the school/in the club. (Note: wrote this before going through others’ comments.)

I bet that’s totally it; he probably got nervous because he doesn’t want her involved.

I don’t believe mystery person’s gender was identified. この男 was referring to 朝島, I believe.

I got a laugh out of that as well, haha. Can’t wait to meet them.

This was a really strong start to the book, I thought! Can’t wait to read more!

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