Chapter 50 "The Black Lizard" Problem Solving

It is the ninth volume of "Edogawa Ranpo Works Collection", which contains two novels.Published in 1934, "Landscape of Hell" was published earlier in 1931. It is the sequel to "The Strange Tale of Panola Island", the only full-length masterpiece of original reasoning before the Ranpo War. The difference between the two is , the author calls this version "The Harlequin Edition". The full-length novel is still a detective story with Kogoro Akechi as the protagonist, but it is quite unique in Ranpo's series of Akechi Detectives. Akechi Kogoro appeared in the novel, which echoed the creative thinking of Ranpo's early writing, basically in two directions: one is a puzzle-solving novel that is strong in solving puzzles, full of wisdom and romantic interest; A novel with magnificent fantasy and strange atmosphere.Akechi Kogoro's appearance under such a concept is like stepping on a muddy country road, being cautious but solid, basically in the same vein as the western puzzle-solving genius detective.From a psychological or literary point of view, this writing style, even if it is a short story, is still full of artistry and connotation worthy of further study.

However, from 1926, Ranpo was invited by the magazine to write a large number of popular novels.Since it is popular, it is undeniable that the reading interest that is favored by readers and Chen Yi's low reading interest has become the focus. In this way, it is difficult to have the complete artistry of past short stories.Magnificent fantasies are exaggerated into absurdity, novelty exaggeration sometimes surpasses the bottom line and becomes horror pornography.However, it is an indisputable fact that popular taste-oriented works are relatively popular with readers. Before the war, he took the initiative to take over the writing of the mystery novel and mystery writer project of the "Dictionary of World Literature and Art" (1935-1937) published by Chuo Koronsha. Ranpo once recalled that "it was like a popular novel for me I apologize for causing the degeneration of mystery novels.” After the war, I also reflected in my essays: “I regret very much. I really shouldn’t have written erotic and terrifying mystery novels in a low-level mass entertainment magazine that even children can read. I will never repeat the same mistakes in the future. .”

Comparing this point in time, it is really interesting to think about the discovery and the juvenile reasoning series that made Luanbu even more famous, which were published in 1934 and 1936 respectively. The reason why it is special is that it is almost impossible to see the strong brutal flavor that catered to readers in the past, and the gorgeous and weird descriptions are also much weaker. The detective Kogoro Akechi with high martial arts skills has become a hero who directly faces crimes and challenges crimes, fighting wits and suspense It becomes the main axis running through these cases, and the rhythm of the story is relatively bright and lively.

The psychological state at the time of creation can sometimes be seen from the changes in the writing style of reasoning writers.Based on the attempt to write a large number of juvenile reasoning in Luanbu later, comparing with this article, we can see the mystery of the gradual change in the meantime. Despite the similarities, the author portrayed a female thief Black Lizard who played against Zhizhi. The difference is that the narrative from the perspective of the female thief takes up a considerable amount of space; However, compared with the damp and tyrannical works of the past, the description of the whole novel is moving in the direction of "healthy and hearty", and the integrity is also relatively high. No wonder it is a representative work of Ranpo popular mystery novels.Although Yukio Mishima was moved by Ranpo's tanbi taste and once staged his work, but overall, it can be regarded as a work with a change in Ranpo's style.

"Hell Scenery" is a work written by Ranpo for the appendix magazine "Detective Taste" of "The Complete Works of Edogawa Ranpo" based on serving readers.As Ranpo said, the murderer guessing novel turned into a "laughing farce" with an absurd ending, but we can see the difficulty of Ranpo's improvisational long-form reasoning, as well as the original intention to abide by the basic puzzle-solving elements of the Benge school.Rather than classing it as an unsuccessful piece, this one contains interesting descriptions of the Ranpo style that cannot be ignored.