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コズミック 世紀末探偵神話
本格ミステリ史上、最もバッシングを受けた鬼才のデビュー作。メフィスト賞の性格を決定づけ、後の作家に絶大な影響を与えた超問題作。1200の密室で1200人が殺されるという、密室卿を名乗る正体不明の人物からの犯罪予告が届く。1200年間、誰にも解けなかった密室の秘密を知ると豪語する密室卿の正体とは何か。JDC（日本探偵倶楽部）きっての天才にして、名探偵をも超越したメタ探偵・九十九十九が挑む！
- GenresMystery
710 pages, Paperback
Published September 6, 1996
2 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Ryusui Seiryoin
120 books6 followersEnglish：Ryusui Seiryoin
Japanese：清涼院 流水
Chinese：清涼院流水
Japanese：清涼院 流水
Chinese：清涼院流水
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 12, 2021
“This year 1200 people will die in 1200 locked rooms, no one can stop it. -The Locked Room Lord.”
My thoughts after reading “Cosmic: End of Century Detective Myth”
Written by Seiryouin Ryuusui.
Some context:
This novel is a monster, being 710 pages long. Also, it was the second winner ever of the Mephisto prize (other winners I’ve read are: Kubikiri Cycle by NisiOisiN, and Smoke Soil or Sacrifices by Maijo Otaro) and consequently, the novel Ryuusui debuted with. It is the first entry in the JDC (Japanese Detective Club) series.
The reason I wanted to read this book is mainly that I’m reading every novel by Maijo Otaro in publishing order, and I reached one that goes by the title of “Tsukumojuuku,” it is a novel Maijo wrote as a tribute to the JDC series! And of course, has spoilers of the series, so in order to read that 500-page book with a bit of context, I decided to read the first 710-page volume of the series it was based on. Another reason to read it was because a friend of mine read it early this year and just from hearing him talk about it I knew it was something I was gonna love, and I did!
The story:
An unidentified person calling themselves the Locked Room Lord sends a crime notice, claiming that 1200 people would be killed in 1200 locked rooms. What is the true identity of the Locked Room Lord, who claims to know the secret of the locked room that no one has been able to solve for over 1000 years? The JDC's genius, the Meta Detective who transcends great detectives, Juuku Tsukumo, takes on the challenge!
(Taken out of the Japanese Mystery Wiki)
Enjoyment:
Okay, I’ve never read anything like this. There is just so much to digest from this novel. The first 300 pages are entirely dedicated to retelling the locked rooms the first 19 victims died on, but they’re such an amazing display of the writing abilities of the author, in those 300 pages every character is completely developed, we get a decent amount of information of them, their relationship with their family, how they live this entire “locked room killings” situation in Japan. It’s pretty amazing.
After those 300 pages, we finally get to the detectives! With 10 deduction chapters (and as many subchapters to fill the entire Japanese syllabary) that are about the detectives from the JDC and then the DOLL in England trying to solve this mystery, inevitably realizing the real scale of this crime.
It was pretty enjoyable, I had so much fun with it. The main reason I had so much fun with it was mainly that I knew beforehand it had a “challenge to the reader” at around page 610, and preparing for that since the start I made a character list/notebook where I wrote down the name of every character and things that I considered interesting to solve the case. (it ended up being 11k words long).
This part of the challenge to the reader was really so much fun, writing down my deduction (and inevitably making a fool of myself online when I published it, here’s the link, be careful as it contains big spoilers of the book: https://twitter.com/AkutagawaKakuzo/s...) was really my first time experiencing this kind of immersion while reading a novel, truly a first time, and it was just so fucking cool.
How difficult was it to read this novel in Japanese?:
It was absolute hell!!!!
I’m not saying it was very difficult for me to understand, but wow, the way Ryuusui writes just hits different, you need a decent grasp on Japanese when reading him, there is an insane amount of word plays, and clues to the crime hidden inside the text of the book itself, it’s quite crazy. The most difficult thing I’ve read to this day in Japanese.
And, I made an Anki deck and vocabulary list.
I’m not gonna say “if you want to read this book, here is the vocab list” or whatever, knowing these words may help you when reading it, but there is just so much more than dictates the difficulty of this book than just vocabulary. In any case, here is the google drive link to the Anki deck, vocabulary list I made out of the words I had to search up when reading this book: https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...
The verdict:
Well, it’s the first time for me, I have never read a book as carefully crafted as this, by the end you can tell this book is literally untranslatable: that the author carefully thought of every sentence, that every single chapter has quite the deepness, and just how of an insane grasp into writing mystery he has.
This book is not just a thing you read, but a thing you experience. The characters are amazing, the mystery is complex and interesting as hell, the lore dropped through flashbacks along the story are super interesting (as most of them ended up turning into their own books of the JDC series, like the novel of the Saimon family case, coming out many years after its first mention in Cosmic.)
There is just so much to talk about this book, but such a short time.
I don’t want to extend it too much, in conclusion: this book is amazing, it’s crafted like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and it’s just crazy to read it, an eye-opening experience to a newbie mystery novels fan like me.
What a masterpiece, Cosmic: End of Century Detective Myth is a 10/10
Really can’t wait to read more volumes of the series. From the table of contents till the afterword this book kept me entertained, I loved every single second of it. With just having read one book of his, I can say confidently Ryuusui is one of my all-time favorite authors.
My thoughts after reading “Cosmic: End of Century Detective Myth”
Written by Seiryouin Ryuusui.
Some context:
This novel is a monster, being 710 pages long. Also, it was the second winner ever of the Mephisto prize (other winners I’ve read are: Kubikiri Cycle by NisiOisiN, and Smoke Soil or Sacrifices by Maijo Otaro) and consequently, the novel Ryuusui debuted with. It is the first entry in the JDC (Japanese Detective Club) series.
The reason I wanted to read this book is mainly that I’m reading every novel by Maijo Otaro in publishing order, and I reached one that goes by the title of “Tsukumojuuku,” it is a novel Maijo wrote as a tribute to the JDC series! And of course, has spoilers of the series, so in order to read that 500-page book with a bit of context, I decided to read the first 710-page volume of the series it was based on. Another reason to read it was because a friend of mine read it early this year and just from hearing him talk about it I knew it was something I was gonna love, and I did!
The story:
An unidentified person calling themselves the Locked Room Lord sends a crime notice, claiming that 1200 people would be killed in 1200 locked rooms. What is the true identity of the Locked Room Lord, who claims to know the secret of the locked room that no one has been able to solve for over 1000 years? The JDC's genius, the Meta Detective who transcends great detectives, Juuku Tsukumo, takes on the challenge!
(Taken out of the Japanese Mystery Wiki)
Enjoyment:
Okay, I’ve never read anything like this. There is just so much to digest from this novel. The first 300 pages are entirely dedicated to retelling the locked rooms the first 19 victims died on, but they’re such an amazing display of the writing abilities of the author, in those 300 pages every character is completely developed, we get a decent amount of information of them, their relationship with their family, how they live this entire “locked room killings” situation in Japan. It’s pretty amazing.
After those 300 pages, we finally get to the detectives! With 10 deduction chapters (and as many subchapters to fill the entire Japanese syllabary) that are about the detectives from the JDC and then the DOLL in England trying to solve this mystery, inevitably realizing the real scale of this crime.
It was pretty enjoyable, I had so much fun with it. The main reason I had so much fun with it was mainly that I knew beforehand it had a “challenge to the reader” at around page 610, and preparing for that since the start I made a character list/notebook where I wrote down the name of every character and things that I considered interesting to solve the case. (it ended up being 11k words long).
This part of the challenge to the reader was really so much fun, writing down my deduction (and inevitably making a fool of myself online when I published it, here’s the link, be careful as it contains big spoilers of the book: https://twitter.com/AkutagawaKakuzo/s...) was really my first time experiencing this kind of immersion while reading a novel, truly a first time, and it was just so fucking cool.
How difficult was it to read this novel in Japanese?:
It was absolute hell!!!!
I’m not saying it was very difficult for me to understand, but wow, the way Ryuusui writes just hits different, you need a decent grasp on Japanese when reading him, there is an insane amount of word plays, and clues to the crime hidden inside the text of the book itself, it’s quite crazy. The most difficult thing I’ve read to this day in Japanese.
And, I made an Anki deck and vocabulary list.
I’m not gonna say “if you want to read this book, here is the vocab list” or whatever, knowing these words may help you when reading it, but there is just so much more than dictates the difficulty of this book than just vocabulary. In any case, here is the google drive link to the Anki deck, vocabulary list I made out of the words I had to search up when reading this book: https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...
The verdict:
Well, it’s the first time for me, I have never read a book as carefully crafted as this, by the end you can tell this book is literally untranslatable: that the author carefully thought of every sentence, that every single chapter has quite the deepness, and just how of an insane grasp into writing mystery he has.
This book is not just a thing you read, but a thing you experience. The characters are amazing, the mystery is complex and interesting as hell, the lore dropped through flashbacks along the story are super interesting (as most of them ended up turning into their own books of the JDC series, like the novel of the Saimon family case, coming out many years after its first mention in Cosmic.)
There is just so much to talk about this book, but such a short time.
I don’t want to extend it too much, in conclusion: this book is amazing, it’s crafted like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and it’s just crazy to read it, an eye-opening experience to a newbie mystery novels fan like me.
What a masterpiece, Cosmic: End of Century Detective Myth is a 10/10
Really can’t wait to read more volumes of the series. From the table of contents till the afterword this book kept me entertained, I loved every single second of it. With just having read one book of his, I can say confidently Ryuusui is one of my all-time favorite authors.
August 11, 2023
When words lose their way, mysteries are born.
December 2, 2022
Rating: 1/10
If it were a fantasy novel, I might give it a high score, but If it were a fantasy novel，I have never seen such an ugly mystery novel, not even as good as Keigo Higashino's，Ironically, even though the author of this book has a low level of reasoning, he has greatly influenced Japanese light fiction.The riddle is very strong, but the reasoning skills and solutions are quite retarded，and there is no way to form a logical closed loop.
If it were a fantasy novel, I might give it a high score, but If it were a fantasy novel，I have never seen such an ugly mystery novel, not even as good as Keigo Higashino's，Ironically, even though the author of this book has a low level of reasoning, he has greatly influenced Japanese light fiction.The riddle is very strong, but the reasoning skills and solutions are quite retarded，and there is no way to form a logical closed loop.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 29, 2021
I read it about 20 years ago.This was the first book ever managed to piss me off. I am still pissed.
June 6, 2025
One of a kind.
November 5, 2025
Holyyyy shit
January 31, 2021
Amazing book, brilliant deductions and characterizations.
Ending rumored to be frustrating but looks actually pretty fair in my eyes.
Sway~
Ending rumored to be frustrating but looks actually pretty fair in my eyes.
Sway~
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews