Posted on June 26, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 6 – curse of the fiend with twenty (five) poplars
while trawling the web for more edogawa ranpo covers (as I am often known to do), I stumbled on a puzzling cache of detective novels shrouded in mystery – was ranpo among the illustrious authors? were the rip-roaring covers eerie… or eerily familiar? and what will I do when confronted with an actual phantom novel?! read on to find out!
(more…)Posted on June 23, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 5 – the edge of kodansha-hunting
as I’ve been looking for various versions of the edogawa ranpo boy detective series, there’s one edition that stood out from the rest – read on to learn more about this hair-raising kodansha selection, their unreal cover illustrations, illusive authorship and perhaps… a connection to kamen rider?!
(more…)Posted on June 13, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 4 and a half – a poplar interlude
while hunting for the edogawa ranpo covers from my last post (the ones rewritten to include the boy detectives) I found a funny little oddity: an edition of the rewrites that also included… something mysterious!? read on… if you’ve got the nerve!!!
(more…)Posted on June 11, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 4 – the fiend with twenty poplars
after finding the original 26 shonen tanteidan book covers from this poplar edition, I had no idea I might find more – let alone 20! a mystery was certainly afoot… and I planned to solve it. read on – if you dare!!
(more…)Posted on June 10, 2025
edogawa ranpo covers part 3 – the case of the missing poplars!
back in my first post on these shonen tanteidan book covers, I didn’t really have much info on them – but then I got stuck into digging up more info while I’ve been recuperating from a cold (cough). and so, here I present – the remaining covers that I was missing from that first batch of Poplar Publishing editions. which should be the end of it… OR IS IT??? read more to find out!!
(more…)Posted on June 9, 2025
edogawa ranpo book covers part 2 – kobunsha!
while I was hunting for the covers from my previous post, I also found a treasure trove of covers from the same series, but a different publisher – in this case, kobunsha! I also found… some fun facts??! read more to find out!! :^O
(more…)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!!
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