Beast in the Shadows
By (Author) Edogawa Rampo
Translated by Ian Hughes
Penguin Books Ltd
Penguin Classics
25th July 2023
13th July 2023
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Thriller / suspense fiction
Fiction in translation
Crime and mystery: private investigator / amateur detectives
895.6344
Paperback
112
Width 129mm, Height 197mm, Spine 7mm
90g
A detective novelist searches for an elusive rival writer, in this classic work of Japanese crime fiction A reclusive writer of detective stories, Oe Shundei, has gone missing, leaving behind a suspicious trail of blackmailing letters to a former lover. Another detective novelist, his rival, is the only one who can find him. A sequence of macabre and appalling events follows.
Edogawa Rampo was the pseudonym of Taro Hirai (1894-1965), generally viewed as the greatest of all Japanese suspense and mystery authors. He was a prolific novelist and short story writer. Much influenced by writers such as Conan Doyle, Chesterton and Wells, his pseudonym is a Japanese transliteration of Edgar Allen Poe's name. Many of his works have been made into films. Perhaps his most famous stories outside Japan are 'The Caterpillar' and 'The Human Chair'.