He is known for writing mystery novels – particularly his debut work The Perfect Insider, which won him the first Mephisto Prize in 1996[1] – but he considers himself to be a researcher as well as craftsman.
He started out with a model locomotive that his father bought him as a birthday gift and was soon attracted to the process of making a miniature world of his own.
Tools and materials for model making were readily available since his father ran a construction shop, and when Mori was in fifth grade, he built a manpowered car by putting two bicycles together.
Mori confesses that one of the reasons for becoming a novelist was that he wanted to make more money to extend the miniature garden railway.
Mori preferred not to become further promoted to professor, stating that he would lose his valuable research time to trivial meetings and other business.
In fact, he finished his first novel in just a week by sparing a mere three hours at night after a day's work at the university.
This is most likely because Mori uses his experience as a research scientist and weaves some kind of a science- or math-related problem into the story (for example, several math puzzles were presented in Mathematical Goodbye).
According to Mori, computer jargons are not much different from proper nouns, like the names of celebrities or fashion brands, in the sense that they are in most cases just there as ornament that serves to create a particular mood.