Originally posted May 17, 2024. Despite cutting my teeth on Detective Conan , I only started reading its influences, writers of the shin honkaku (neo-orthodox) school of crime fiction, a few years ago. At the time, I was in a jaded period where I felt like I’d seen every trick that mystery fiction had to offer, and could no longer be surprised. I was gifted Murder in the Crooked House by Sōji Shimada, thought it was okay, at least enough to seek out his previous book The Tokyo Zodiac Murders . And, well, that one surprised me—enough that I had to put the book down and rest my head in my hands. After that, I was hooked again. I made it my mission to read all of Shimada’s work published in English, which remains ‘not that much,’ and from there, some of his contemporaries. One strategy was to camp out Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine ‘s Passport to Crime department, started in 2004, which publishes works in translation for the first time. Here are some of the scattered shin ho...