"Kumo Otoko" (Spider Man) by Edogawa Ranpo, a crime thriller involving a cruel artist.
The title refers to the nickname given to the antagonist of this novel, and was chosen due to the cruel nature of spiders (not at all related to a certain superhero that came 33 years after this novel). This is a man who murders for a very perverse kind of art, and his lifelong ambition is to build a gallery filled with 49 dead women. The artistic aspect of this story reminds me of "Panorama Island Tales", and I would recommend that book over this one if your main interest is a bizarre freak show.
The main focus of this book is in the crime thriller bits. Not so much about trying to figure out who the killer is -- we already know it's "Spider Man", and his true identity was obscured by a relatively simple trick that is revealed halfway through the book. The really thrilling part is how this killer is always one step ahead of the police. In most other detective stories with serial killers, there is a sense of how the good guys have contained the situation after the first few victims. In this book, the killer remained elusive pretty much throughout the entire book, and it wasn't obvious until the last chapter whether the killer would be captured or not. It's true that some of it was due to unnecessary missteps injected by the author to keep the story going, but for the most part, the killer just seems really clever.
This book is an example of classic Ranpo style of vivid action with bizarre gory details on the side. It was very what I expected and quite enjoyable to read.
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