edogawa ranpo’s shonen tanteidan/boy detective club book covers

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.

a whole lotta fiends round these parts…

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