The Locked Room Murder Game: Checkmate (Novel by Akio Utano): Review, Spoiler Summary & Analysis

Preface

Actually, I've bought this book twice.
Sometimes, after buying a used book cheaply and reading it only once, you tend to forget about it and end up buying it again.
I've made this mistake two or three times before, and this book was one of those times.
In particular, on Amazon's marketplace, you can buy books for as little as 1 yen with a shipping fee of 250 yen.
Since they're cheaper than new, I often buy a lot of books, read them once, and then forget the title and content.
When I start reading, I usually realize, "Oh, I've read this before," but sometimes I mistakenly think I haven't read it just from the title.

However, it's not that I forgot about it because it wasn't interesting.
It seems I simply forgot due to a decline in my memory.
In fact, even when I read it for the second time this time, I had forgotten some of the details, but I still found it interesting.

How I came to know Shogo Utano

When I'm looking for a book to read, I sometimes use websites that compile recommendations for mysteries and other genres.
I first learned about the author Shogo Utano through his work "Thinking of You in the Season of Cherry Blossoms."
"Hazakura" is a work that I'm glad I read at least once, but personally, it wasn't my favorite.
If I had to choose, I found this "locked-room murder game" easier to read and preferred its atmosphere.

My thoughts on "The Locked Room Murder Game: Checkmate" (with spoilers)

The main character is a detective, but is also a murderer.That piqued my interest quite a bit.
When written down like this, it sounds quite novel, but when you actually read the novel, it seems like we've entered an era where you can think, "Maybe something like that could happen."

Now, I felt that the interesting parts of this work started to appear in the middle.
The first game, Q1, was quite drawn out because the perpetrator's intentions weren't conveyed very well.
The answer itself felt like I'd just been given the answer to a quiz, something like, "Oh yeah, now that you mention it," so I wasn't particularly impressed.
Perhaps the description was somewhat detailed because it also served as an explanation of the "murder game" they always play.
Perhaps the author wanted to highlight the abnormality of this game, which involves murder in what is essentially just a quiz.

I wasn't particularly interested in the subsequent games either, personally.Question 5, "044APD," was very interesting and exciting.
I enjoyed the scenes where they discussed the solution to the trick, including the progress of the case.

And Q7 cleverly utilized all the previous hints, and I was completely fooled.
When I read mysteries, I don't read with the intention of figuring out the author's trick; rather, I read with the intention of being deceived.
(Even if you read it with the intention of seeing through it, you'll probably fail to do so more often than not...)
In that sense, I was pleasantly misled, so I'm very satisfied.

By the way, what does the title "Checkmate and Rook Capture" symbolize?
Are you referring to the dilemma at the end, where "if you run away, your fellow murderers will die, but if you don't run away, it will never end"?
I kind of get the gist of it, but the title never quite clicked with me until the very end.
I quite like the sound of the title itself, but that one point bothered me a little.

My personal favorite characters are the cool "044APD" and "Zangya-kun".
044APD is sharp when playing the detective role, and the trick in Game Q5 when he was the question setter was quite impressive.
Zangya's deliberately aggressive demeanor made him seem like he was trying to hide his cowardly true nature, which I found endearing.
He seemed excited after learning the true identity of the "Crazy Man," and he was also concerned about the Crazy Man's safety during the final game.
He had a foul mouth, but he gave off the impression of someone who valued his friends.
Although they are all murderers who kill others without hesitation, the reader inevitably empathizes with them because the story is told from their perspective.
The film ends in a way that leads into the next installment, so we don't know how it all concludes from this film alone.
I plan to write my thoughts on the next work as well.

The works I introduced are here.

密室殺人ゲーム王手飛車取り（歌野晶午）

Rakuten Market: 密室殺人ゲーム王手飛車取り（楽天ブックス）