1000 Moji Tantei (一千字侦探) Review

I’d originally planned to take my physics teacher out for Japanese food, but when I drove over the place was closed…

I should’ve figured it out when nobody picked up the phone number listed on Meituan. Miscalculated. And somehow Meituan was still selling group-buy vouchers for the place — should I be snarking that everyone at Meituan is too busy lifting weights and riding bikes?

So we decided on the hot pot place next door.

Once we’d eaten most of the hot pot, my physics teacher started talking about her hobbies.

“I like reading detective novels.”

“Oh.”

“I especially like the ones about sophisticated crimes.”

“Oh…”

“You like them too, right?”

“I do, but personally I prefer the kind that digs into the psychology between people…”

“Psychology?”

“Sort of. Though really I’m in it for the story — the kind where you watch how far a person gets pushed before they snap and commit the crime.”

“Hmm… I personally like high-tech crimes, the ones using chemistry, or physics.”

“And they usually bring in all sorts of obscure knowledge most people have never heard of?”

“Yes, yes! You learn so much. What, you’ve read them too? Got any recommendations?”

“I hardly read pure text novels (seriously). If we’re talking about that type, the most recent one I read was 《All Become F》.”

“Never heard of it… All… Become… F.” She started searching on her phone. “Whoa, the blurb makes this sound insanely good…”

“Really? I thought it was pretty average.”

“Look, it says it involves computer science and math — that’s impressive…”

“Actually it doesn’t engage with them that well. It’s just some plain dialogue. The story itself is… fine, I guess. Passable.”

“Well, you understand this stuff. I don’t know computers, so it looks extra impressive to me. Most detective novels make it feel like the characters know tons of things. Super impressive.”

“That’s just detective novelists flexing their erudition. They throw in some obscure trivia on purpose so you feel like it’s deep and mysterious. Strip that out and what’s left is… not much. Or just the old formulas.”

“Old formulas?”

“Oh, more precisely, detective fiction basically has two patterns.”

“Two?”

“One is the detective laying out the whole chain of events and the truth in front of the culprit.”

“And the other?”

“The other is the criminal not giving the detective a chance to deduce — just going straight into a fight with the detective…”

“A fight?”

“Have you seen the recent Detective Conan movies?”

“Oh… got it…” She looked like it had just clicked.

“So by your logic, almost every detective novel follows one of those two routes?”

“Yep. I could even condense any of them to about 1000 characters…”

“Really?”

“Really…”

“Let’s hear it…”

“For instance… on some little island or in an apartment or wherever, a crime happens, the way out gets blocked off, and there are a few people present — one of them has to be the killer. Then the detective investigates and gets ready to act.”

“Okay… act how?”

“Once you know the truth you have to say it, right? So the detective gathers everyone together and starts yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak, then the suspect starts yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak making excuses, then the detective keeps yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak yak presenting the evidence, and the suspect finally yak yak yak yak admits it. Story over…”

“And the other one?”

“That’s when the detective figures out the truth, and the suspect shows up with a knife to take the detective’s life. Then it turns out the detective isn’t a pushover, the two of them start brawling, crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash bang crash for ages, and finally the suspect gets crash bang crash bang crash bang pounded into the ground by the detective, which conveniently also proves this suspect was the criminal all along. The end.”

“How boring…”

“Boring how? Strip out all that erudition you mentioned and most detective novels are exactly this… that’s the essence… Sometimes I think even 1000 characters is too much.”

Intro to the game 《1000文字探偵》: http://www.freem.ne.jp/win/game/13618

Demo of the game 《1000文字探偵》: https://zyx.fplay.xyz/play/display/13618/6e314005880e6ea7e8d3ee4d39128bd0