Rampo is a pseudonym for the writer, Tarō Hirai. This is a novel about detective story writers, who operate under pseudonyms. Reading wikipedia, I learn that some of the novels named in Beast in the Shadows were written by ‘Ranpo’ himself. In the novel they are the work of a sadistic detective story writer who threatens a woman who jilted him. The woman then seeks the support of the narrator, another writer of detective stories, supposedly the only one who might have a brain as twisted and wily as Detective story writer #1. When the woman’s husband is murdered in bizarre circumstances, the book becomes a whodunit, with the investigation taking place across the length and breadth of Tokyo. Learning that it was written in 1928 gives what might have been a dated feeling book the sense of actually being ahead of its time, notably in its arch portrayal of the sado-masochistic anti-heroine who the narrator ends up falling for, before starting to wonder if he is being manipulated by her. Beast in the Shadows is also an interesting example of Britain’s soft cultural power, as Hirai/ Ranpo was influenced by Chesterton and Conan Doyle, turning Tokyo into a dirty, foggy Edwardian soup of a city.
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