Fly by Night

flying gone 

夢見るように堕ちてゆくの

「flying」（Garnet Crow）

flying gone

I'm falling down like I'm in a dream

"flying" (Garnet Crow)

THIS COVER IS FRIGGIN' AWESOME.

Business brought the great detective Homura Souroku to the city of Osaka, but little did he know that he'd stumble upon one of his weirdest cases. One day he wakes up to find the whole neighborhood around his hostel making a ruckus about a horrible smell hanging in the air. Homura traces the smell back to the home of Doctor Kamoshita. A note on the gate says he's out of town for a while, but inside the police find a dead body hanging upside down above a fire in the fireplace. While searching the house, Homura also gets attacked by an unknown assailant wielding a machine gun, but he manages to make it out alive. The discovery of a letter threatening the doctor changes everything, as it is signed by someone calling themselves "the Human Fly". A letter signed by the same man had been delivered to Tamaya Souichirou, together with a dead fly. With the dead corpse found in the Kamoshita mansion, the police doesn't dare take any risks and provide for police security for Tamaya on the time his death was predicted. The man was hiding inside his room, of which the doors and windows were locked from the inside, with waiting policemen outside, yet the Human Fly managed to kill the man under these circumstances. Can Homura stop this man who can slip inside locked rooms in Unno Juuza's Hae Otoko ("The Human Fly", 1937)?

Unno Juuza (1897-1949) was a writer who debuted in 1928 and remained active until his death. While he debuted as a mystery writer, he is best known as one of the founding fathers of the science-fiction genre in Japan. And because I seldom read about authors before reading their books, I actually didn't know about this until I realized this about halfway through the book (I'll explain later). This book is the second in a series collecting Unno's stories featuring his detective Homura Souroku, combining the novel Hae Otoko with four short stories.

Hae Otoko starts out as one of those 1920-30s Japanese mystery novels that mix the detective genre with distinct (grotesque) horror and science-fiction elements that you might remember from Rampo's writings. The novel was originally published as a serialized story, so the writing can feel a bit chaotic and directionless at times (with characters appearing and disappearing and weird connections between parts) and I'm pretty sure Unno improvised a lot during the serialization. Elements like the shocking discovery of the first body, the narrator who seems to be addressing the reader directly, beautiful ladies in danger and murderers using weird names who are kind of enough to send a letter in advance to announce who they are going to kill when remind of a time long past for readers now, but were quite normal in 1920-30s Japanese mystery fiction. The story is a pleasant read, and there are some interesting impossible locked room murders that happen that should capture the reader's interest.

But then you're reminded that Unno was most of all, a science-fiction writer. While the set-up is classic enough, the solution is barely any different from having a killer-robot appear in the story who can use his magical powers to fly in and out of a locked room. I mean, Rampo had his share of "freak" characters who could do almost impossible things, like in Kotou no Oni, but in comparison to what happens in Hae Otoko, Rampo'd be like the pinnacle of realism. Last year I reviewed Rampo's Yuureitou, which had some elements that seemed a bit advanced for the time, but in this novel, we see things that aren't even possible now, even though the book was written in 1937. And that kinda kills Hae Otoko as a mystery story, as when you're suddenly presented with (30s) science fiction elements, the whole mystery plot just becomes unfair. Hae Otoko is fun to read as a variant on the Gothic horror novel using a mystery motif, but it is not a fair mystery story.

The science fiction aspect is not seen in all of the other four stories found in this volume. Angou Suuji ("The Number Code", 1938) is probably the best "pure" detective story in the book. In it, Homura is chasing after a numerical cipher used by foreign spies in their communications, and he has his hands on a clue that will lead him to the precise numbers. I am guessing Unno loved maths, as the code involves a maths problem with only a few numbers known, and Homura spends a lot of time deducing which numbers go in the blanks, but it was a bit too theoretical for me. The story ends up to be a fairly good variation on a Holmes story, but a bit predictable due to the way the story was introduced.

Machi no Tantei ("The City Detective", 1938) is a short story that combines two super-short stories with a similar theme, but they seem more like an excuse for Unno to talk about science and chemistry than actual tales. Chihayakan no Meiro ("The Maze of the Chihaya Mansion", 1947) on the other hand goes full horror, with Homura and his client finding themslves wandering inside a maze built underneath the Chihaya Mansion in their hope of locating a certain person who was seen in the neighborhood. This tale reads more like a gothic adventure story with even a slight pinch of Indiana Jones. The truth behind the case really comes out of nowhere by the way.

Dansougan ("The Crooked Face", 1947) is the weirdest story of the volume. While the story was written in 1947, the story was set in the faraway future of 1977. So in Hae Otoko's 1938, Homura was impressed the culprit could ride an automobile like a sophisticated modern man. In the 1977 of this story however, an elderly Homura has an android girl assistant, people travel by conveyer belt through town and mankind has visited Mars already. And returned. Unno was expecting a lot of those thirty years! There is a story somewhere about Homura being hired to get rid of a stalker who's been popping up near the wife of a Mars-astronaut, but nothing will beat that shock of this immense change in background setting.

Hae Otoko was thus in the end not at all what I had expected it to be. It started out as Rampo-ish detective-adventure story, but suddenly pulled the science-fiction card. And I think if you can appreciate 1930s Japanese science-fiction, there's probably something interesting to find here. I figure that people who like Hoshi Shinichi might find some resemblance in their works. I myself am not against science fiction in the mystery genre, but I think the way Unno used it in Hae Otoko was the least interesting way possible, as it does not contribute to the mystery plot itself. It seemed more like an excuse to use science-fiction horror. So not a big fan, but I imagine that if you start on this with a different mindset, a reader can actually learn to enjoy the totally wacky story, as I can at least say that Unno was an imaginative chap.

Original Japanese title(s):　海野十三 『蠅男』：　「蠅男」 / 「暗号数字」 / 「街の探偵」 / 「千早館の迷路」 / 「断層顔」