November Meetup

A very high turnout for our October session produced a lot of interesting talk about both books. Clear scored 71 while Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 scored 65

For November we are staying, with one book, in the Far East with a Japanese murder mystery and, for our second choice, entering the world of metafiction

Please note, with thanks, we appreciate attendees making a contribution of £1.50 at the meeting to help cover meetup charges.

Happy Reading.

Murder at the Black Cat Cafe by Seishi Yokomizo (nominated by Robert)

Tokyo, 1947.

The Pink Labyrinth is one of the bomb-scarred city's most shady neighbourhoods. There, in the dead of night a patrolling policeman catches a young Buddhist monk digging in the back yard of The Black Cat Cafe, a notorious brothel. In the shallow grave at his feet lie the dead body of a woman, her face disfigured beyond recognition, and the corpse of a black cat.

Who is the murdered woman, and how was she connected to the infamous establishment? And where did the dead cat come from, given that the cafe's feline mascot seems to be alive and well? The brilliant sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi investigates, but as he draws closer to the truth, he finds himself in grave danger...

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (nominated by Jonathan)

The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, Pale Fire, is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote.

Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty, inquisitive, intolerant, but is he also mad, bad - and even dangerous? As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should.

Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterwork is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Other books nominated were:

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff