![]() Regardless of which end is true, the story is a satisfying piece as far as the average reader goes and Rampo is a writer worth inspecting. Both cases are anxiety-inducing and unfortunate for the protagonist. ![]() If the second letter is untrue, there is an imminent threat to deal with immediately. ![]() If he was lying in the first, that would lead to the surfacing of a new voice in writing that could replace the old one (the addressee replacing the addresant). In the subsequent 30 years of prolific writing, he has acquired a reputation among Japanese mystery story enthusiasts that equals - if not surpasses - that of his famous namesake. Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination, the first volume of its kind translated into English, is written with the quick tempo of the West but rich with the fantasy of the East. Edogawa Rampo after Edgar Allan Poe (pronounced edogah-aran-poh in Japanese). This collection of mystery and horror stories is regarded as Japan's answer to Edgar Allan Poe. ¶ There is a dual nature of terror in this story – the first is the fear of being unknowingly observed and the second fear lies in the ambiguity of the ending: was the writer of the letter lying in the first letter or in the second? by Edogawa Rampo, Patricia Welch, James B. Rampo composes his story with elegance: He swiftly places the reader as a bystander in the story, reading the letter alongside his protagonist. ➥ What begins as an almost tedious story about an accomplished female author going through her fan letters, quickly turns into a psychological terror ending in one of the aptest culmination that I have come across in short fiction. Welcome to my project of reading *weird* fiction in 2023 ![]()
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