Posted on June 3, 2025
edogawa ranpo’s shonen tanteidan/boy detective club book covers
透明怪人 – Invisible Fiend (1951)
怪奇四十面相 –
The Fiend with Forty Faces (1952)
サーカスの怪人 –
Fiend of the Circus (1957)
a whole lotta fiends round these parts…
during the pandemic, I took it upon myself to start reading as many japanese mystery novels as I could get my hands on – I won’t go into any of the details on authors or genre distinctions here (for now!!! another time!) but something I’ve become fascinated with is edogawa ranpo‘s era of juvenile literature. for a guy mainly known (particularly in the west) for his ero guro nonsense genre books, I am obsessed with the chunk of time where he churned out 26+ of these shonen tanteidan (boy detective club) mystery thrillers for middle grade readers. what gives!! why is no one talking about this!!! but more importantly – the covers I’ve found so far are amazing. read more to check em out!!
Gray Giant (1954)
The Glowing Monster (1958)
these covers are my favorites so far, though there are obviously a few outliers in terms of stylistic differences (the ‘shigeru’ signature, for one) – this also doesn’t include every book in the series, because I’m sticking with the higher res versions where I can. I’ll try and add to this when I find new ones, because there are definitely other editions I think are cool, too :^)
if you know anything about these, hit me up!! I’d love to have more info on the illustrator(s) in particular
