I heard about this Korean mystery/thriller from a book podcast that I listen to and since it combined a murder mystery with books, I really, really wanted to read it. The only catch is that the book has not been translated into English – as far as I can find, it’s been translated into Japanese, Chinese, and Bahasa Indonesia. Frankly, reading in Chinese is not my thing, so I opted to get the Japanese version and it did not disappoint!

The Memory Bookstore (記憶書店), subtitled “the space where [you] wait for a murderer (殺人者を待つ空間)”, starts with a bang – the first chapter consists of alternating POV characters: (1) Professor Yu, who loves rare books and has announced his retirement from TV and the university in order to open an appointment-only rare bookstore, and (2), the “Hunter” as he stalks and kills a victim.

It turns out that the Hunter’s first victims were Professor Yu’s wife and daughter and for the past fifteen years, Professor Yu has been preparing to hunt down his family’s killer, even though he’s in a wheelchair. After observing his customers, he manages to narrow down his suspects to four, and then to three as he enlists the help of a booktuber and wanna-be author to investigate his suspects.

The ending of the book was a little bit violent (am not sure if I should be writing spoilers for a work that isn’t available in English), but I didn’t find it too disturbing. The only thing I wanted was for there to be a bit more explanation from Professor Yu – I didn’t quite understand how he determined which of the four suspects “Hunter” was and I would have liked to understand why.

Overall, this was a twisty, exciting mystery that also boosted my confidence in reading Japanese. It’s a step up from a light novel in terms of difficulty (plus it’s translated) but it’s still manageable and I think as long as you’re at an upper-intermediate level in your Japanese, you should be able to read this. It really helped that there are explanations for Korean terms/features, so I wasn’t completely lost when I came across an unfamiliar word and had to figure out if it was because of the original text or if it was a Japanese term I should google.

This was my first time reading a translated work in Japanese so I wanted to note it down!