Japanese Literature Summaries
日本語

The Fiend with Twenty Faces — Summary and Characters

The first Boy Detectives Club novel

Author
Edogawa Ranpo
Published
January 1936
First appeared in
Shōnen Kurabu
Form
Novel
Genres
  • Mystery
  • Adventure
Setting
  • Tokyo
Length
109,637 characters
Reading time
About 3 hr 39 min
Orthography
Modern script and kana

About this work

Serialized by Edogawa Ranpo in the magazine Shōnen Club in 1936, this is the first of the long-running Boy Detectives Club series for young readers. The Fiend with Twenty Faces, a thief said to have twenty different faces and to appear and vanish at will, takes only jewels and works of art and makes a point of never harming anyone. He always announces a theft before committing it — and against him stand the great detective Akechi Kogorō and his young assistant Kobayashi Yoshio at the head of the Boy Detectives Club, in a brisk contest of wits and nerve. An enduring hero story that captivated generations of children, and the model for Ranpo's brand of entertainment, full of disguises and elaborate schemes.

Summary

All Tokyo lives in fear of the rumour of the phantom thief called the Fiend with Twenty Faces. Said to have twenty wholly different faces, he disguises himself as an old man, a young man, even a woman, slips deftly past the police, and takes one prize after another from the jewels and works of art hoarded by the rich. But he never harms anyone, and it is his rule always to send notice before a theft. The Fiend sets his sights on the mansion of Hashiba Sōtarō, a great industrialist, announcing that he will take the family's heirloom diamond and its works of art. The Hashibas appeal to the great detective Akechi Kogorō — who is unluckily abroad. In his place his young assistant Kobayashi Yoshio goes to the house as Akechi's deputy and, with the other boys of the Boy Detectives Club, sets his wits against the thief. The Fiend throws the household into confusion with disguise after disguise and one outlandish scheme after another, and for a time succeeds in carrying off the heirloom, until Akechi returns from abroad and turns to the attack. Seeing through the disguises, laying traps, chasing and being chased, he drives the Fiend at last into a corner, and in front of the museum the boy Kobayashi and the Boy Detectives Club bring him down bodily. A brilliant opening to the Boy Detectives Club series, in which the cunning of crime strikes sparks against the cunning of justice.

Characters

Chapter-by-chapter synopsis

The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).

  1. 1. About This Work
  2. 2. Main Characters
  3. 3. Major Supporting Characters
  4. 4. The Iron Trap, and the False Elder Son
  5. 5. The Bamboo Tube in the Pond, and a Kidnapping
  6. 6. The Boy Detective Disguised as a Kannon
  7. 7. The Carrier Pigeon, and the Cook Who Was Swapped
  8. 8. The Castle of Art — The False Great Detective
  9. 9. Tokyo Station — Detective and Thief Meet at Last
  10. 10. The Boy Detectives Club, and Four O'Clock on December the Tenth
  11. 11. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing

The opening (original text)

In those days, in every street and every house in Tokyo, whenever two or more people met they would talk about the Fiend with Twenty Faces, as though they were remarking on the weather. "The Fiend with Twenty Faces" was the nickname of a strange thief who filled the newspapers day after day. He was said to have twenty entirely different faces. That is to say, he was extraordinarily good at disguise. However bright the place and however close you came, they said, you could not tell it was a disguise at all: he looked like a completely different person.

The Fiend with Twenty Faces by Edogawa Ranpo (Aozora Bunko)

The ending (original text)

Kobayashi at the head flung himself at the Fiend with Twenty Faces like a bullet. Hashiba Sōji came next, and then another boy, and another, until in a moment they were piled on top of the thief, and with both his hands useless he was rolled over on the spot. For all his skill, the Fiend with Twenty Faces had come to the end of his luck. "Ah, thank you — you're brave lads." Inspector Nakamura, hurrying up, thanked the boys, and with his men took hold of the thief so that this time he should not get away and led him off toward the police car that had just then arrived.

The Fiend with Twenty Faces by Edogawa Ranpo (Aozora Bunko)

Famous passages

In those days, in every town and every house across Tokyo, whenever two or more people met face to face, they would talk of the mysterious “Fiend with Twenty Faces,” as casually as remarking on the weather.

The opening of the Boy Detectives' Club series. The sheer spread of rumor alone conveys the enormity of the mysterious thief, making readers wait before Akechi Kogorō and young Kobayashi appear.

Read the original

The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.

Aozora Bunko library card

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