There’s a mystery where Rampo tries to make you think the amateur sleuth figured it all out through an ingenious interpretation of a word association test, but when you think about it, was actually just a much more simple slip up by the criminal, but Rampo (through the voice of his sleuth) is so pleased with himself, he can’t see it.

But mostly, it’s a psyschosexual romp through whatever is going on in Rampo’s head. The woman who spends years sexually torturing her limbless husband before accidentally blinding him. The man who may or may not have hidden inside of the super comfy chair of a famous writer so as to enjoy the erotic thrill of being sat upon. The woman who subtly encouraged two husbands to try to kill her so that she could, in turn, kill them in self defense. A story about a man obsessed with surrounding himself with mirrors is immediately followed by one about a man terrified of them.

While characters of both sexes engage in much villainy, the theme of emasculating wives is repeated. Sometimes it’s by blinding their helpless husbands, other times, it’s just by being more successful or famous (a female writer is more famous than her diplomat husband, yet we are let known that her work is somewhat frivolous, implying that her upstaging of her husband is undeserved). They are like the stories of Poe, if Poe had always been resentful of his wife, Virginia.