Puzzle for Pilgrims

"It's morphin' time!"

"Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers"

No, that's not weirdly specific compression: the cover illustration is really pixelated.

Disclosure: I have translated works by Norizuki Rintarou and Abiko Takemaru.

As reflected by the winners of the same-named Mephisto Prize, Mephisto is a magazine providing entertainment fiction, with a focus on mystery, but not exclusively so, as it also features storie encompassing scifi and other genres. It has gone through a few formats since its inauguration in 1994, and since 2021, it has become one of the perks for subscribers of the Mephisto Readers Club, being published four times a year as its club magazine, featuring serializations of for example the newest House novel by Ayatsuji Yukito, but also original stories written for the magazine. In 2023, author Norizuki Rintarou became the chief of a project focusing on the classic detective device of the Challenge to the Reader, or in this case, a challenge to subscribers of the Mephisto Readers Club. Each story would be published in two parts: the problem part would be published in the magazine itself and end with a Challenge to the Reader. The reader would have a few weeks to send in their answer, complete with the proper logic behind it, and then the solution would be published online after the deadline (and they'd have live-streams with the writers to look back at the stories). Norizuki approached five other authors to write a story with a Challenge to the Reader, and while the Challenge to the Reader is commonly associated with the pure whodunnit, he interestingly also divided the stories in three groups: they would do two whodunnits, two whydunnits and two howdunnits. Early 2024, these six stories by the authors Norizuki Rintarou, Houjou Kie, Abiko Takemaru, Tanaka Hirofumi, Kitayama Takekuni and Ibuki Amon were collected in the volume Suiri no Jiken Desu ("It's Morbin' Time" "It's Inference Time"), finally giving non-subscribers also access to these stories.

I myself was not a member of MRC at the time, but I had seen Houjou Kie talk about her contribution to the project last year, and as I am a big fanboy and know she's good at these Guess the Criminal/Whodunnit + Challenge to the Reader-style stories, I of course wanted to read her entry too, so I was more than thrilled when I heard the stories would be collected in an anthology. Norizuki, Abiko and Houjou were also all members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, where these two-part puzzle-like Guess the Criminal scenarios (with a Challenge to the Reader) are a club tradition, so I knew they'd have experience with the format, and I was already familiar with the works of Kitayama and Ibuki, and I've enjoyed their works too, so I was very curious to see how they'd do the Challenge to the Reader too. Tanaka was the one author I hadn't read yet, and his entry was quite fun too, so I might read more of himin the future.

As mentioned in some of my older posts on the tradition in the Kyoto University Mystery Club, these scenarios are generally a lot closer to "pure puzzle"-esque than a normal mystery story and one important factor is that these stories really need to be solvable. When the Challenge to the Reader comes, all the hints must be given, and more so than "conventional" mystery stories, the logical chain from hint, to insight, to conclusion must be solid and not stretched too far apart: these stories generally don't expect you to come up with a brilliant locked room murder trick just by seeing the vague hint of a needle lying on the floor. Usually the process is plotted with a lot more hints, to keep the game fair. This would especially be the case for this project, as readers were encouraged to write in their answers, and had to explain the logical process (not a guess!) by which they arrived at their conclusions. So going into these stories, that was certainly something I kept in mind and I was also curious as to how it'd work with the whydunnits and howdunnits: as I explained in this article, the Queen-style whodunnit feels very fair as it's often based on the process of elimination and observed facts, whereas stories might feel less fair, because they expect the reader to "imagine" something.

The book opens with a story by Norizuki himself, titled Higisha Shibou ni Yori ("Due to the Death of the Suspect"). The last Norizuki I read was King wo Sagase last year, which was about the trope of the murder exchange, a theme I noted he liked as he had written about it in other stories. And he really likes it apparently, as this story is about it too! Mystery novelist and amateur detective Rintarou is visited by his friend Iida, who introduces him to Kajitani Kouhei, a financial planner who is being suspected of murder by the police. Kajitani is in fact somewhat of a swindler, and he had convinced Kajitani Iwao, a retired ship's cook, to adopt him, and take out a life insurance, with Kouhei as the beneficiary. Iwao was, not surprisingly, killed, but Kouhei has an alibi for that night. However, near the crime scene the former city councilman Mizoguchi Takanori had been seen, and it happens his wife was also killed just the week before: the police suspects Takanori and Kouhei swapped their murders, but the police cannot be sure, as Takanori committed suicide while in the custody of the police. And why go through the trouble of swapping murders, only to commit suicide immediately afterwards? But if there was no murder exchange and Kouhei has an alibi, who then killed Kouhei and Takanori's wife?

I have to admit: this set-up with a murder exchange wasn't what I had expected of a whodunnit scenario by Norizuki, though the foreword did mention him leaving the more traditional type up to Houjou. This story is great though: while fairly limited in cast of suspects, the chain that logically points to the murderer is very sound, and this is a prime example of a story that is clearly written to be fair, and that is willing to be "solved" and surrender to the reader, as long as the reader will do the bare minimum of sorting the clues in the story out and keep a good eye on who knows what at what time and things like that. 

Houjou Kie's story is titled Fuudani-kan no Satsujin ("The Whodani House Murders"): the Whodani House is the home of the jeweler Hatano Rokuhiko. The house consists of two buildings, which are connected in the middle by a glass house courtyard. Other people in the house include his two sons, his wife, his mistress and his secretary. And of course our narrator Uzuki, the maid and also a thief. One night, just as she hopes to steal a valuable painting from the living room, she first hears one muffled pistol shot going off, and five minutes later two more, but much louder, which also attracts the attention of other people in the house. She makes up some excuse for being in the living room at night with the lights off, and they go off looking for the butler, who for some reason doesn't show himself despite the ruckus. The butler is in the East Wing, while the living room is in the West Wing, so Uzuki and the secretary go to the security room, but they find the butler shot to death with two shots with a pistol from Rokuhiko's collection. When they want to report to their master in his bedroom back in the West Wing however, they find him shot to death too, and it's clear it was done with the same pistol. But who in the house managed to kill two people in both wings, while Uzuki was in the living room, which you need to pass in order to enter the connecting glass house courtyard?

This is the type of story I assume with a Kyoto University Mystery Club-style whodunnit scenario, and it's good one! Sure, it feels very "puzzly", but that is what I like about these stories, and man, this story is dense with clues. Houjou's work in general is quite dense when it comes to the pure mystery plot, but considering the page count, I'd say this might be her densest work yet, though I would admit that having this much density in a novel-length story might be a bit tiring. Still: this is a must-read if you want to learn how to these kind of fair-play Challenge to the Reader-style stories using a process of elimination: each step in the logical chain is explained clearly, allowing you to slowly cross out names on the suspect list until you end up wth the last name: the killer. Some clues are very obvious clues, but that's not a problem, as it's figuring out how to combine them that makes these stories so fun. Houjou also manages to hide more than a few suprises despite it being a relatively short story, but then again, it's so densily plotted you'll find crucial information everywhere, from the figures to the Challenge to the Reader itself. Definitely my personal highlight.

Abiko Takemaru's Osanasugiru Mokugekisha ("The Witness Was Too Young") is a whydunnit, which is probably a lot harder to put in a "fair play format", so I was curious how this would work out. We follow the police officer Hashitani Kaoru of the Community Safety Division, who is asked to assist with a murder investigation: Kiyomi, a pregnant mother, has for some reason stabbed her husband Haruto to death right in front of their son Subaru. He called the neighbors for help, but by that time, it was already too late. Kaoru has received training to talk with children, and is of course more suited to talk with Subaru than the angry-looking homicide detectives, so Kaoru is to see if she can get a little bit more information out of the shocked boy, as his mother is in the hospital in a dazed state and not available for questioning herself. The story of the boy whose his mother just came back home, pushed him away and started a fight with her husband sounds odd, and the boy can not imagine why her mother did that, but eventually Kaoru manages to figure out why. And this story works surprisingly well as a fair-play story. I have the feeling this story can also be "guessed" without any hints at all, but still, Abiko did plant proper hints, which allow a less imaginative reader to still arrive at the solution in a logical manner, and I find that very impressive. The solution is also pretty memorable, and overall, I'd say this tale too is good.

Tanaka Hirofumi's Perry no Haka ("The Grave of Perry") is the first of three historical stories: I am not sure why he, Kitayama and Ibuki all went for a historical setting. Perry no Haka starts in 1933, when a scholar visits a small village to open a tomb there. The scholar learned about the tomb via documents left by an ancestor, who worked as a (kind of) policeman in the Edo period, just around the time the Americans came to Japan, demanding them to open their borders for trade. The story then jumps back to the first arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry with his black ships at Edo, using the threat of their ships to first hand over a document demanding the Japanese to open their borders and saying they'd back one year later, expecting a positive answer from the Shogun. Meanwhile, we also learn about a worker in the kabuki industry who for some reason is visited by some Americans during this first visit, and one year later, when the black ships return, this man is found murdered, having been shot by the Americans. But why, and what does his death have to do with the tomb that is opened in 1933? This story has an interesting premise, focusing on Perry's arrival in Japan and the reaction to his fleet, and the way the mystery ties to actual history is quite clever. Hint-wise, I think it ultimately works out well: while I think the Perry-period story alone might not be enough, the prologue does provide enough context for the reader to make the necessary deductions, and while the story itself is not as densily plotted as Houjou, meaning there is much more "historical fluff" to flesh out the story, it is certainly a solid entry.

Kitayama Takekuni's Ryuugoroshi no Kunshou ("The Medal of the Dragonslayer") also has a story-within-a-story structure, as we first follow the narrator and his sister in Finland, who recently lost their grandfather. There's a safe in their grandfather's room, but they don't know the combination. They suspect a hint might lie in the stories he always told his grandson, though both believe their grandfather just loved tall tales. The clue might lie in a story their grandfather told about his father, who during World War II had been tasked with assassinating a nazi officer: while Finland had been working with Nazi Germany to fight off the Soviet Union, balance was going to shift soon, so they wanted to sabotage the operation, but without openly offending the Nazis. The operation occured during the transport of the railway gun Siegfried: two Fins (one of which their great grandfather) and two nazi officers were sitting in one carriage which was not connected to the other cars, meaning they could not leave it while moving. Meanwhile the Nazi commander was sitting in his own luxury carriage, which was connected to the railway gun carriage. The commander was seen to be alive when they boarded the train and set off. However, when they arrived at their destination, the commander was found on the roof of the railway gun wagon, at the controls, having been stabbed with a bayonet. But how could their great grandfather have done that, while he was in a different railway carriage, with three other witnesses?

You know, knowing Kitayama's work, I had actually expected a much more bigger, over the top trick. This was surprisingly.... normal. Okay, not really normal, but in comparison with his other works... I'm a bit torn on this story, to be honest. It's a good mystery story, that is for sure: I am familiar with other variants of the trick used here, but this specific iteration feels original to me, and it makes good use of the setting and of course, the idea of the murder happening on a moving train while we know the murderer is being watched, is pretty cool. But I don't feel this story is exceptionally fair, at least, not the degree we have seen in previous stories. While the story can be solved based on the hints, I feel this one does require a bit more imagination/intuitive guessing on the part of the reader, while personally, I think these stories with a Challeng to the Reader are the most satisfying when they do not require that, and allow someone with no imagination at all still solve the mystery by properly identifying all clues and following them to their logical conclusion. So in any other book, I would have liked this story better, but here it felt a bit off. 

Ibuki Amon's Hatozaki Taii no Homare ("The Honor of Captain Hatozaki") is set in Manchuria, where the detective Tsukisamu Sanshirou is sent by military command to investigate a certain unit. Command has been receiving letters accusing high ranking officers in that unit of illegally selling supplies to Koreans and other factions. However, command is actually aware of that, but turning a blind eye because they know that unit is stationed in a rather harsh place, so they give them a break. When the accuser threatens to blow the whole affair up if no measures are taken, Tsukisamu is sent (under the guise of being a journalist) to capture the accuser and silence him. Tsukisamu actually, by sheer coincidence, almost immediately learns his target is Captain Hatozaki, but during a skirmish, Hatozaki is injured and the surgeon won't allow Tsukisamu to question him just yet. In fact, Hatozaki was in a pretty bad shape and some of the medicine applied to him have put him in a rather confused state, so while he has been given sedatives now, he has been locked inside a room in the medical quarter's for his own, but also other people's safety for when he wakes up. Tsukisamu sees Hatozaki sleeping in the room, but has to wait until he wakes up. In the middle of the night however, as Tsukisamu wanders around the military complex, he sees someone shooting the lock off the door to Hatozaki's room, and while he and the surgeon immediately nab the guy, when they open the door to check inside, they find Hatozaki gone! But how could that be: the door was opened only just now by shooting the lock off, so neither someone on the outside, nor Hatozaki on the inside could've opened the door earlier.

This story has a bit of the same as the previous story, where it's an okay howdunnit, though not feeling as well-clewed as the other stories. The howdunnit itself is not as good as the Kitayama story, though I guess it's more solvable than that story too, with more hints. Oddly enough, I think the best part of this story is the whydunnit behind the culprit's actions; that part is actually really original and by far the most memorable part of the story and I would actually have preferred to have seen this worked out for the whydunnit part of the project, rather than it now feeling as a "bonus" to a howdunnit.

The book has a bonus section, where the autors themselves take on the stories of the others, and they can be interesting to read. You can really see how their thinking processses work and how they pick up on clues and more. The accompanying essays on the project are also I think also very useful to aspiring writers, as you can get an idea of how they plot these kind of logical problems and have to explicitly make it solvable.

Suiri no Jiken Desu is on the whole a really solid volume though, and a must-read if you're into fair play puzzle plot mystery. While these stories don't really offer much room for characterization or fleshing out of the background, they are good showcases of how to do stories with a Challenge to the Reader, and especially Houjou's story is a great example of how to plot clues and how to guide a reader's thinking process in identifying the culprit. It's very likely this will end up as one of my favorite reads of this year, and I hope they'll do a similar project again in the future!

Original Japanese title(s): 『推理の時間です』: 法月綸太郎　「被疑者死亡により」/ 方丈貴恵 「封谷館の殺人」/ 我孫子武丸　「幼すぎる目撃者」/ 田中啓文 「ペリーの墓」/ 北山猛邦　「竜殺しの勲章」/ 伊吹亜門「波戸崎大尉の誉れ」

Dead Man's Hand

"It's good to be the king."

"History of the World: Part 1"

To be honest, I really dislike writing posts on books I feel... very indifferent about.

Disclosure: I translated Norizuki Rintarou's short story The Lure of the Green Door.  

A group of four gather in a karaoke box. While at first, this might seem like a normal gathering of friends, we soon learn the four barely know each other. But they have one thing in common: they all have someone they want dead. The four agree to exchange murders: by trading murders, they can secure an alibi for themselves when the person they want dead is murdered by someone else for them. Of course, they will have to commit a different murder in return. By having four people exchanging murders, they hope to fool the police completely, as a simple 1 - 1 trade might be discovered. They use a pack of cards to decide who gets which target and the order in which the murders have to be committed, as well as exchanging basic information about the intended victims with the would-be murderer. And in time, the game starts. Inspector Norizuki gets involved in one of these murders, but the discovery of a playing card leads to his son Rintarou realizing a murder exchange might be hidden beneath the murder. Can he and his father figure out who the murderers are in Norizuki Rintarou's 2011 novel King wo Sagase ("Find the King")?

King wo Sagase is at the moment the latest novel in the Norizuki Rintarou series featuring the same-named Norizuki Rintarou, a mystery novelist who sometimes assists his father Inspector Norizuki in difficult cases, mirroring the Ellery Queen/Inspector Queen dynamic. While a few short story collections followed afterwards, this is still the last long adventure of Rintarou, and also the last book I hadn't read of the series, so I guess I finally caught up, even though the Norizuki Rintarou books are among the first I ever discussed here.

The theme of the book is a murder exchange... which strangely enough a rather common theme in Norizuki's writings. The short story [Libra] Shukumei no Majiwaru Shiro de ("At the Castle where Fates Cross") is about a murder exchange too and is apparently a kind of proto-version of King wo Sagase, while one of the earliest non-series Norizuki's I read, Double Play, also tackles the same theme, While not about a murder exchange, I also have to think about the short story Abekobe no Isho ("The Switched Suicide Notes"), where the wrong suicide notes are found with the wrong people. You do get a sense that Norizuki likes... people swapping things.

This book does take on a different form than most Rintarou stories and the other novels, because it is about a murder exchange, and therefore takes an inverted mystery form in at least the first third/half of the book. We are told about the meeting of the four conspirators right away, and see them dividing the playing cards that decide who will kill who and in what order, after which we follows some of the murderers committing their crimes. When Inspector Norizuki and Rintarou become involved, it doesn't take them too long to start suspecting some kind of exchange is going on based on the clues they found, and I have to say it was this part which does feel a bit rushed, because okay, how swiftly would you usually really connect two or more seemingly unconnected murders by suspecting a murder swap? But I guess the realization has to come at one point for the book to shift gears, as from this point on, we focus more on the Norizukis investigation into the suspected murder exchange.

It's here the book takes a surprising turn. The book starts out as an inverted mystery story and we as the reader already know there really has been a murder exchange, but some things in the criminal plan go wrong, which quickly allows Inspector Norizuki and Rintarou to focus in on the murderers, who of course wish to escape the claws of justice. They come up with a plan to fool the Inspector, and this is basically the main mystery of the book: we already know who the murderers are and the murder exchange, which was the "initial" line of defence, has been exposed, so now they have to come up with a new line of defence using the cards they have been dealt. This becomes a more conventional puzzle, but I wasn't really a big fan of the overall plot, I think. I'm not really sure why. I think part of it is that it feels very much like a puzzle: a lot of the mystery demands of you to remember the real names of the four murderers, their nicknames they use among each other and the cards they were given at the start of the story and at times it really just feels like a sudoku-esque puzzle where you need to determine symbols A/B/C. And after reading other murder exchange stories by Norizuki, I guess some of the surprise of the twist lacked impact, as a lot of it did feel familiar in terms of themes. There is an interesting twist in theory, but it's basically portrayed in a rather cumbersome manner, and after at least two other stories with the same theme, little of King wo Sagase really surprises.

Perhaps someone who hasn't already read Norizuki's other murder exchange stories will enjoy this one better, but for me, King wo Sagase was just too short, with too many elements that feel too familiar to really impress me. In general, I also think the short stories with Rintarou are better as puzzlers, so I guess that this book was fighting an uphill battle with me, but while it's my last Norizuki Rintarou novel for now, it's sadly also probably my least favorite, not because it's actually bad, but having read all the other works in this series, it just doesn't manage to surprise as much, nor does it provide a deductive chain as entertaining as other Rintarou stories do manage to offer. I'm glad I have read all the Rintarou books now though, and I hope new short stories will come!

Original Japanese title(s): 法月綸太郎『キングを探せ」

Curious Interpretation

No news is good news

I really shouldn't wait three months after reading a book to finally get started on the review...

Disclosure: I translated Norizuki Rintarou's short story The Lure of the Green Door.

The last time a standalone book was released featuring the mystery writer and amateur detective Norizuki Rintarou was in 2012, when the second Hanzai Horoscope short story collection was released. Who would've guessed that it'd take seven years for a new book with Rintarou and his father Inspector Norizuki would be released? Norizuki Rintarou's Norizuki Rintarou no Shousoku, which also has the English title The News of Norizuki Rintarou was released in 2019 and collects four stories starring the amateur detective named after the author, but while the previous short story collections featured classic puzzler plots, this volume takes a very different form and it's probably not exactly what most readers were expecting after the fun, puzzle-focused Hanzai Horoscope collections. For besides two 'normal' stories where Rintarou and his father discuss an ongoing police investigation together and slowly deduce the most likely truth, there are also two literary bibliomysteries featured here that go deep into the worlds of Sherlock Holmes, G.K. Chesterton and Poirot.

The opening and ending story of this collection are definitely the surprises. The book opens with Hakumen no Tategami ("The Pale Mane"), where Rintarou is asked to read an unpublished manuscript by the deceased 'occult researcher' Tsutsumi Tomoaki, whom Rintarou became involved with during the events of Hanzai Horoscope. The manuscript involves Arthur Conan Doyle and two specific Sherlock Holmes stories and while Rintarou isn't really interested at first, he also happens to be working on a piece on G.K. Chesterton himself and during his research, he discovers a link between Tsutsumi's piece and Chesterton, leading him to an interesting theory regarding the Sherlock Holmes canon. In the final story Curtain Call, Rintarou is hired in an advisory role to a stage play of the Hercule Poirot novel Elephants Can Remember and also asked to write a short piece for the pamphlet. While he's doing research on Elephants Can Remember however, Rintarou sees parallels to the final Poirot story Curtain and eventually, he holds a little discussion group with the people in the theater troupe to find a truth Agatha Christie had hidden in her novels.

Both stories are quite similar in the sense that they are both primarily academic research papers that delve both into the internal themes of the works in discussion, as well as the relevant publishing and writing history (so for example, Conan Doyle's interest in the supernatural). Both stories may be presented in the form of Rintarou getting involved with these texts for some reason, but the bulk of each stories consists of quotations and literary research which honestly isn't going to be interesting at all to a reader unfamiliar with the material discussed. I knew the stories in question and found the literary theories proposed in these stories interesting, but I honestly can't imagine someone who hasn't read those specific Holmes/Poirot stories or who only has a passing interest in them to be entertained by these two tales, as you're basically reading a Literature paper, with analysis, quotations, more analysis and more quotations. Norizuki tries to make things a bit more interesting with minor mysteries for Rintarou in the outside world, but these two stories are definitely not among the most accessible in this series.

Abekobe no Isho ("The Switched Suicide Notes") is a story that was originally written for the 2017 7-nin no Meitantei ("The Seven Great Detectives") anthology and I already discussed it back then. I read it again this time as I had forgotten the details, but there's little to add to my original write-up back in 2017 to be honest. Inspector Norizuki brings an interesting problem back home for his son: He's dealing with two suicides, one by poison, one by jumping off a flat. Suicide notes were also found at both scenes. However the suicide notes were swapped: both victims had the suicide note of the other person. The two victims knew each other and been fighting over the same woman, so they had no reason to be committing suicide together, but why did they have each other's suicide note? Like many of the short stories in this series featuring Inspector Norizuki, the plot develops in a discussion-style: Rintarou and his father are sitting at home, and keep throwing balls at each other to develop their theories: Rintarou suggests something, the Inspector counters that with a new fact, Rintarou comes up with a new hypothesis, the Inspector introduces another fact etc. The story itself is interesting because the problem of the switched notes is both puzzling and yet somehow realistic and it shows off exactly how a theory has to adapt to the new facts each time, but ultimately, this story is solely about theories. In the end,  Rintarou does come up with a clever solution as to why the two victims had the other's suicide note, but it's completely based on layers of assumptions and guesses and the story ends with the Inspector leaving to find confirmation to their theories.

Korosanusaki no Jishu ("Confession of a Non-Murder") is very similar to the previous story, not only in structure, but also in terms of plot. This time, the Inspector is dealing with a case which just doesn't seem to make any sense. Some time ago, a man came to the police confessing a murder, but his "victim" (an old friend whose "advice" regarding breast cancer led to his wife's death) turns out to be alive and well. Later however the woman is really murdered following the man's confession, but the Inspector can't see understand why the man confessed to the murder before it even happened and it seems more likely someone else did it. When the Inspector also learns that the murder had been predicted by a psychic, the whole thing seems to make no sense anymore, which is why he needs his son's help. While the explanation Rintarou comes up with at the end is certainly entertaining and original, I think the whole story lacks a bit of oomph to really sell the idea. I won't say it fell flat, but I think a much more engaging story could've been built on the same building blocks if this for example had been a full novel.

Even as a fan of the series, Norizuki Rintarou no Shousoku is a difficult volume to really recommend as it's so different from the previous short story collections, which all featured excellent puzzler-type stories. There are only two of those in this collection this time and while not bad, they certainly do not rank among the best of Norizuki's puzzlers. The two other stories are interesting to read as literary research papers about Holmes and Poirot, but they are clearly meant for a very, very small niche even within the mystery fanbase. The result is a volume that longtime fans like myself will read anyway, but which ranks in the lowest spot in the priority list when it comes to this series, as the other volumes are much, much better.

Original Japanese title(s): 法月綸太郎『法月綸太郎の消息』:「白面のたてがみ」/「あべこべの遺書」/「殺さぬ先の自首」/「カーテンコール」

The Secret of the Old Clock

TIME TO LIVE TIME TO LIE 

TIME TO CRY TIME TO DIE

『Confused Memories』（円谷憂子）

Time to live, time to lie

Time to cry, time to die

"Confused Memories" (Tsuburaya Yuuko)

I have a tendency to read mystery series, I noticed lately. Of the writers I regularly read and review, I don't think there's even one where I'm solely reading non-series. I just enjoy having a framework and recurring characters, I think, as you kinda know what to expect when you read a certain series in terms of style of plotting etcetera.

(Disclosure: I translated Norizuki Rintarou's short story The Lure of the Green Door)

So while I have read quite a few of short story collections by Norizuki Rintarou, Shiramitsushi no Tokei (2008) is actually the first time I read a non-series book written by him, as all the other books I've read by Norizuki were part of his Norizuki Rintarou series, which is about the same-named mystery author who solves crimes with his father Inspector Norizuki in a totally Ellery Queen-inspired set-up. The ten stories collected in this volume however here are not part of any series, save for the last story, which is an early version of what would later be rewritten to a series novel. The ten stories were originally published between 1998 and 2008 in various magazines, and range from suspense thrillers and pastiches to not-really-mysteries.

To start with the conclusion: don't expect the pure puzzle plot mysteries like the ones we know and love from the Rintarou short story collections. The stories where Norizuki really shows off his love for Ellery Queen and for logical reasoning, for classic mystery tropes as the locked room mystery, the true whodunnit and other brilliant and surprising ideas, as well as engaging and funny short stories are to be found in those short story collections. Shiramitsubushi no Tokei features a variety of styles I myself hadn't seen Norizuki utilize before, and I know the reception of this volume is fairly good because there's variety in here, but save for the title story and maybe two or three other stories, few of them are what I would consider "typically" Norizuki. Which isn't a bad thing per se, but I certainly don't think this volume is indicative of Norizuki's plotting talent. It's, to borrow Monthy Python's words, something completely different. It's like only reading Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot short stories, and then reading Witness for the Prosecution for the first time. It's just different, and perhaps not what you attracted you to the author in the first place.

Shiyouchuu ("Occupied") is inspired by Stanley Ellin's short story The Moment of Decision, and features a locked room situation, though it is not a locked room mystery. I can't write too much about it, as the story is basically building up to a punchline, but it involves an arrogant writer, his rather hopeless editor and a vengeful waitress at the cafe where the writer and his editor are meeting. Again, it's not really a mystery story, just a playful story that plays with the notion/concept of what a locked room murder is.

Double Play is a story I had already read some years ago, as it was included in the lackluster anthology Futoumei na Satsujin. It deals with a murder exchange, with our protagonist having just about enough of his wife when another man pops up at the batting center, asking our protagonist whether he wouldn't want to kill his uncle for him, offering to kill the protagonist's wife instead. This is a suspense story that is admittedly well-written, but it's a shame it wasn't written as a true puzzler, as a bit more build-up to the ending (more clues/foreshadowing) would've made this story better in my opinion.

Shirouto Gei ("Amateur Skill") is a fairly short story where a man accidently kills his wife after a row about her spending a fortune on ventriloquism lessons and a dummy. This wasn't the first time the two had a loud fight though, so this fatal fight alarmed the neighbor. As the husband realizes the neighbor isn't really put at rest just by him saying everything is alright and refusing to let the neighbor to see his wife, he quickly hurries to hide his wife's body as he's sure the neighbor will call the police. As he tries to fool the two detectives though, it seems the dummy has other plans for him.... A surprisingly funny short, but again not much of a puzzler, more a story that builds to a punchline.

Nusumareta Tegami ("The Purloined Letter") is not a pastiche of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin series, but of Jorge Luis Borges' Death and the Compass, starring the detective Erik Lönnrot. This story is set before Death and the Compass, and has Lönnrot trying to solve the puzzle how his nemesis Red Scharlach managed to steal an letter of indiscretion written by the wife of a general, to a man she had fallen in love with. The wife had taken lengths to protect her letter to the man, with her locking her letter inside a special box, which was locked by a padlock of her own. After receiving this package, her lover locked the box himself with his own padlock and sent the box (with two padlocks now) unopened back to the wife, who then unlocked her lock, and sent it back to her lover for him to finally open the box. Yet somehow Red Scharlach managed to get hold of the letter which was at all times protected by at least one lock. The solution is rather obvious though, especially with the opening quote, and it's actually the same idea as another story in this collection, only in another context.

In Memoriam and Neko no Junrei ("The Cat Pilgrimage") are both not mystery stories, but stories that feature curious and surprising settings. In Memoriam is a short short of just four pages, about a secret club of authors who, as a game, write obituaries for collegues who are still alive. Neko no Junrei is the almost fantasy-like tale about the "cat pilgrimage", a journey cats undertake when they reach a certain age to a cave near Mt. Fuji. Sometimes, the cats run away from home for a month or two to go on the pilgrimage, but sometimes, worried owners make use of guided cat pilgrimage tours to bring their own cat to their destination. The story is about a couple making up their mind whether they'll allow their cat to go or not.

Yonshoku Mondai ("The Four Color Problem") is a pastiche of Tsuzuki Michio's Taishoku Keiji ("The Retired Detective") series, of which I have read nothing, but it is apparently about a police detective who sometimes talks about some cases with his father, who is a retired policeman himself. This time, the son is working on the strange murder of an actress, who starred recently in the action superhero series Time Task Force ChronoRangers as Chrono Blue. Leaks of photographs secretly taken of her and the female co-star who played Chrono Pink undressing and using the shower have been going around, and while an assistant-director on the ChronoRangers team had to take the fall, it appears that was just a studio cover-up, and the actress suspected that one of the four male leads (who played Chrono Red, Chrono Green, Chrono Yellow and Chrono Black) was behind it all. It appears she had confronted the person she suspected, who then stabbed her in the stomach. However, the actress hadn't died immediately, and for some reason, she pulled the knife out of her body to carve an X in her arm, and she removed her watch and necklace too. But why? It's one of those dying message stories that depends on rather specific knowledge to make any sense, and while Norizuki tries to set-up the decisive clue, it still doesn't take away from the fact that you won't be able to solve this unless you happen to know about a certain piece of trivia.

Yuurei wo Yatotta Onna ("The Woman Who Hired A Ghost") is a pastiche of Tsuzuki Michio's Quart Gallon series, which in turn was a pastiche of Ed McBain's hardboiled mystery I'm Cannon - For Hire (credited as Curt Cannon). Gallon was once a private detective who nearly committed a double murder after finding his wife and his best friend in the same bed, and now he lives in the Bowery, deprived of his credentials. Which doesn't stop people from trying to hire him anyway. A woman hires Gallon to find out what's wrong with her husband. The husband has been lost in thought the last week, and even bought a gun 'for protection', even though nothing has happened in the artists' shop he runs. An okay hardboiled story, but the title gives the game away, I think.

Shiramitsubushi no Tokei ("Leave No Clock Unturned") is the title story and the masterpiece of this collection. "You" find yourself waking up in a small, round room completely encircled by a hall as part of a job interview for a leading think tank. There are no windows in these rooms and the temperature inside is completely computer-controlled. In the hallway, "you" find 1440 different running clocks, each indicating a different time down to the minute (12:00, 12:01, 12:02 etc.). "Your" assignment: figure out which of these 1440 clocks is indicating the correct time, within a time limit of six hours! This is a true puzzler, with a truly devilish conundrum, for how are you going to find out the correct time if there's a clock for every minute of the day, which are obviously all running as you're working on the problem, and you can't even look outside to guess what time it should be! Norizuki however shows a perfectly logical manner to find the correct clock among the 1440 clocks. Shiramitsubushi no Tokei does feel more like a logic puzzle or quiz rather than literature, I admit, but man, this is what you'd expect from a mystery writer who places so much emphasis on logical reasoning like Norizuki! 

Two Of Us has an interesting backstory: it was originally written for the Kyoto University Mystery Club's club anthology Souanoshiro, which is sold at the annual campus festival in November. I have actually seen the original version of this story myself in one of the old Souanoshiros while I was in Kyoto. The story does feature Norizuki's characters Rintarou and his father Inspector Norizuki, though the spelling of Rintarou's name is different, as Norizuki Rintarou changed the spelling of his name when he became a professional author (if you go through the old Mystery Club magazines, you'll only find the old spelling). Two of Us was eventually rewritten to a full novel in the Rintarou series titled Ni no Higeki. Neither the novel, nor this original short story version would count towards my favorite Norizuki's to be honest, as the emphasis in this novel lies far more on the human relations than the deductions of Rintarou. In fact, for the true logic puzzlers you're off much better with the Rintarou short stories, as save for some early entries, the novels never really manage to be as awesome as the short stories in terms of pure puzzle plots.

So personally, I can't say Shiramitsushi no Tokei was my favorite Norizuki short story collection, with a very simple reason: all the awesome puzzle plot short stories we saw in the Rintarou short story collections weren't to be found here. If you are not as puzzle-plot focused as I am, you might enjoy the sheer variety of this collection, and at any rate, the title story Shiramitsubushi no Tokei is really a masterpiece, but in general, I'd say try out Norizuki's other short story collections before coming here.

Original Japanese title(s): 法月綸太郎　『しらみつぶしの時計』：「使用中」/「ダブル・プレイ」/「素人芸」/「盗まれた手紙」/「イン・メモリアム」/「猫の巡礼」/「四色問題」/「幽霊をやとった女」/「しらみつぶしの時計」/「トゥ・オブ・アス」

Lucky Seven

時の流れには逆らえず色褪せてゆく想いもあり

「As The Dew」（Garnet Crow）

Unable to go against the flow of time, some feelings will fade away

"As The Dew" (Garnet Crow)

The cover of today's book is simple and clean, featuring deformed illustrations of the authors featured in this anthology, but I really like it!

Disclosure: I have translated works by Arisugawa Alice, Norizuki Rintarou and Ayatsuji Yukito, among which Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders.

Ayatsuji Yukito made his debut as a professional author in 1987 with the publication of The Decagon House Murders (org. title: Jukkakukan no Satsujin). The mystery novel had clearly derived its inspiration from the classic puzzle plot mystery novels like they were written in the Golden Age, but it was at the same time also clearly a product of its time, aware of the tropes from, and the discussions surrounding classic mystery fiction, and its story built further on that as a modern take on the classic puzzle mode. Ayatsuji's debut was only the start, as he was followed by many other debuting authors from a similar background (often college students) who'd write in what is now called the shin honkaku or "new orthodox" school of mystery fiction. 2017 is thus not only the thirtiest anniversary of The Decagon House Murders, but also the thirtiest anniversary of the shin honkaku movement. 7-nin no Meitantei ("The Seven Great Detectives", 2017) is a special anthology to celebrate this anniversary, featuring seven original stories on the theme of "the great detective", by seven representative authors of the early shin honkaku movement

The book is also known as part of the bookmark-gacha craze among Japanese mystery fans: three anthologies were published to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of the shin honkaku movement. A special series of a lot of bookmarks were made for these books, and you get one of them at random by purchasing one of the anthologies. A large number of them feature an illustration of one of the seven authors in 7-nin no Meitantei, together with an iconic quote from one of their works, while there's also one which features all seven authors. Behold the fans who try to collect all of them or find the one bookmark with their favorite author or quote. I got the one with everyone on it by the way.

The seven authors included in 7-nin no Meitantei have all been discussed at least once here on the blog, and as I noted in the disclosure message above, I have even translated some of their work. It might be interesting to note that five of these authors studied in Kyoto: Ayatsuji Yukito, Abiko Takemaru, Norizuki Rintarou and Maya Yutaka were all members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, while Arisugawa Alice belonged to the Mystery Club of his own Doshisha University. Many authors of the early shin honkaku movement made their debuts as students or soon after graduation, and were often active members in the Mystery Clubs (student clubs for lovers of mystery fiction) of their respective universities, which is partly why a lot of the early shin honkaku works featured so many students, and also why the books tended to be so incredibly genre-savvy (as they were written in rather skewed enviroments, among other mystery fans). Oh, one warning: I can only add a certain number of characters in the tags to each post, and I was not able to tag everyone/add all the related tags, so you'll have to click on the author links in the post itself for some of them.

The anthology opens with Maya Yutaka's Suiyoubi to Kinyoubi ga Kirai - Ookagamike Satsujin Jiken ("I Hate Wednesdays and Fridays - The Ookagami Family Murder Case") and features his series detective Mercator Ayu. Narrator/mystery author Minagi is lost in the mountains, but finds shelter in the mansion of the recently deceased Doctor Ookagami. He had four adopted children, who form a musical quartet, and they are scheduled to perform at the mansion the following day for their annual recital. While Minagi is still recovering from his ordeal in the outdoor bath, he spots a cloaked figure making their way to a garden lodge overseeing a cliff. When the figure leaves again, he notices they have shrunk in size, and when he peeks inside the lodge, he finds distinct signs of a murder having occured there: blood, a weapon and a sinister sign featuring a quote from Faust, but there's no sign of any victim. Later, one of the adopted children is found murdered, together with another quote from Faust, but there is no weapon. More mysterious events occur in the mansion, but all is explained when brilliant detective (with a rather abusive attitude towards his "Watson") Mercator Ayu arrives on the scene.

The anthology starts right away with a screwball, because that's the only way I can describe this story. There's something of an impossible crime here (disappearing victim, disappearing murder/weapon), but what this story really is, is a parody on Oguri Mushitarou's infamous anti-mystery Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken. The mansion, the backstory of an eccentric person adopting four children who form a quartet, the Faust imagery, it's all straight out of Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken. Several other later story development are also clearly lifted from that book. The problem I have with this story is that it doesn't really work in its current form. The pacing of this story is incredibly high because it follows the plot of Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, but that was a full novel and this is a short story. The result is a story that I recognize as a parody on Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, but it doesn't do much but mirror a few situations and circumstances in quick succession. The core mystery plot is therefore a bit too concise for my taste, as the tale just tries to cover too much ground for a short story. And I happened to have read Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, but I can imagine that for someone who hasn't, this story will feel disjointed. I think this story would've worked better in a dedicated Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken tribute anthology. As a "Mercator Ayu taking on Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken" type of story, I guess it's okay, but I find it a strange choice for the opening story of this particular anthology. Then again, I guess Maya's work is seldom really straightforward.

Rakugo is a traditional form of Japanese entertainment, where a storyteller tells a comical story with witty dialogues, acting all the roles of the story themselves. Yamaguchi Masaya's Dokumanjuu Kowai - Suiri no Ichimondai ("I'm afraid of Poisoned Manjuu - A Deduction Problem") is part of a series where Yamaguchi builds on classic rakugo stories to turn them into mystery stories. The theme for this story is the classic rakugo story Manjuu Kowai ("I'm Afraid of Manjuu"). The retelling of Manjuu Kowai is followed by the continuation of the tale, where one of the major characters from Manjuu Kowai is murdered by a poisoned manjuu, just as he was about to disinherit his good-for-nothing sons. I liked the idea better than the execution, because the mystery part of the tale is basically a not-even-really-thinly-disguised variation of the "one of them always lies, one of them always tells the truth, who is the liar?" riddle. At this point, it doesn't feel like a story anymore, but just a slightly dressed-up riddle.

The previous story was set in pre-modern Japan, but Abiko Takemaru's Project: Sherlock is clearly set in the present, or even in the future. It tells the story of how a special computer database named Sherlock is built by a police IT engineer. Sherlock is a database that allows anyone to simply solve crimes by inputting the necessary data in it. Sherlock has a rich open source database of case files (both real and fictional) which is fed by a worldwide community, and by comparing circumstances and detecting patterns, the program can solve any mystery laid before it. This is a weird story: it reads more like a prologue for a longer story than an independent one, and while a murder involving Sherlock does occur late in the tale, it's not really meant for the reader to solve. There is potential for more in this story, but as it is now, it feels like you were only allowed to read the first chapter of many more.

Arisugawa Alice's Senchou ga Shinda Yoru ("The Night The Captain Perished") stars the criminologist Himura Hideo and his friend/Watson/mystery author Arisugawa Alice. Himura and Alice are on their way back from one of Himura's work trips when they decide to swing by a small villlage on the foot of a mountain where a murder happened last night. The victim, commonly referred to as the Captain, had been stabbed during his sleep in his home, and while a security camera nearby had caught the figure of someone fleeing the scene that night, this figure had covered themselves wisely in a large sheet of blue plastic, making it impossible for the police to identify them. The Captain had recently returned to his home village after a long life on sea, and his manly appeal had attracted the attention of at least two women in the village (one of them married), and it appears love-gone-wrong might be the motive. I have the idea the story is a bit longer than it needed to be (it is by far the longest story in this anthology), but the mystery plot is probably the best of the whole book. The structure is very familiar (short whodunit with three suspects), but it's expertly clewed. It's of course in the style of Ellery Queen, where you need to deduce what the murderer must have done on the night of the murder, how it was done, and eventually, who could've done those things we just deduced. The process as done here is great, and I think this is a good story to showcase how a good puzzle plot mystery doesn't need to rely on misdirection solely: it takes tremendous skill to lay down clues and puzzle pieces right in front of the reader, without any smokes or mirrors, and still have a puzzle that perplexes them, but the satisfaction you gain when you see how everything fits together is arguably even better than when an author uses aimed misdirection techniques.

Norizuki Rintarou's Abekobe no Isho ("The Switched Suicide Notes") features his series detective named after himself. Rintarou's father, Inspector Norizuki, has a weird case on his hands. Two suicides, one by poison, one by jumping off a flat. Suicide notes were also found at both scenes. So no problem, right? The conundrum Inspector Norizuki has however is that the suicide notes were switched: both victims had the suicide note of the other person! The two victims knew each other, and were both vying for the hand of the same lady, so they had no reason to be committing suicide together, but why did they have each other's suicide note? It's a wonderfully problem that feels realistic, and yet mystifying at the same time. The story unfolds by Rintarou proposing several theories to his father, which his father sometimes shoots down as he reveals a new fact he hadn't told his son yet, but the two do slowly move towards the truth. Or do they? A gripe I do have with this story that it is mostly built on theories: eventually the two arrive at a solution that is actually quite clever, and one that does seem to fit the facts, but they only arrive there by making several assumptions, and the story basically ends with the Inspector finally moving to check whether their theory is true. The story makes a good case for puzzle plots focusing on logical reasoning, with Rintarou proposing theories and having to adjust them as the Inspector introduces new facts, but it also undermines it a bit as we never leave the land of theories.

Utano Shougo's Tensai Shounen no Mita Yume Wa ("The Dream Of The Prodigy") is set in the future, starring the last few remaining pupils of the Academy, once the home to people talented in fields like hacking, engineering or even ESP, but once the war broke out, survival was the only thing left on everybody's mind. Acting on a rumor that the enemy country will launch a new destructive weapon, the students lock themselves up in the Academy's bomb shelter and while they do feel that something with tremendous power hit their city, they have no idea what happened outside because all communication was cut off. But then one of the students is found hanging. She appears to have committed suicide, but the following day another student is found dead right next to the first victim. Another suicide, or is there something else in this shelter? While this story does seem familiar, with its closed circle setting, it's not really a detective story (it is however a mystery story in the broad sense of the term). Explaining too much would spoil it, but the story is trying to work towards a certain conclusion, but that conclusion is barely clewed/foreshadowed, and the story is a bit strangely structured, with a very long intro, while it basically skims over the murders to jump the conclusion. Might've worked better in a longer format.

Ayatsuji Yukito's Kadai - Nue no Misshitsu ("Tentative Title: The Locked Room of the Nue") closes this anthology, and while it's technically not really a fairly clewed mystery story, it's a pretty heartwarming story that puts the thirtieth anniversary of shin honkaku in context. The story stars Ayatsuji Yukito, Abiko Takemaru and Norizuki Rintarou themselves, as well as Ayatsuji's wife Ono Fuyumi (a well-known horror/fantasy author herself), who were all members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club around the same period back when they were in college. Guess-The-Criminal is one of the oldest traditions of the club, where one of the members presents the first part of a mystery story to the others, ending with a challenge to the others guess whodunnit. The other members then have to guess who the criminal is, and explain the process that led to their conclusion. Nowadays, the stories are all written and printed out so everyone has their own copy, but back in the early eighties, these stories were told orally, so little remains of them now. Abiko remarks that a while back, he had a few drinks with Maya Yutaka (also a Mystery Club member who joined after them) and that he, while drunk, had said that he had once witnesses a really incredible and illusive Guess-The-Criminal story. The problem: he doesn't remember anything about it. Ayatsuji, Abiko, Norizuki and Ono all seem to have unclear, yet existing memories of such an event, which they vaguely remember as being titled The Locked Room of the Nue, so they start talking about what that story could've been, digging deep in their memories of the Mystery Club.

As said, this isn't really a mystery story, but closer to an essay where Ayatsuji, using the other authors as his fictional devices, looks back at his own time at the Kyoto University Mystery Club. As the four slowly start to remember more from the past, we also read about what the club activities were to what cafes they went to when they were still students, painting an image of the place and culture that would eventually lead to the birth of the shin honkaku movement. There are some nice moments, like when each of them remembers something else about the illusive story, to which Ayatsuji draws parallels with each author's writing styles, as well as a heartwarming ending. Read as a story that mixes autobiographical elements with a bit of fiction, I'd say this was an entertaining story for those wanting to know more about the shared past of these authors, but again, don't expect any detecting on your own.

7-nin no Meitantei has the usual ups and downs of an anthology, but in general, I'd say it's an interesting showcase of the work of the featured authors. The theme of "the great detective" worked better for some authors than others: Arisugawa Alice and Norizuki Rintarou's contributions were definitely the best detective stories included, and those stories featured their best known series detectives. Yamaguchi Masaya and Maya Yutaka too used their series detectives in their stories, though I found the stories themselves not as good as the previous two for various reasons. Utano Shougo and Abiko Takemaru on the other hand did not choose to go with their series detectives (partly because they haven't used them in decades), but tried to explore the theme of the Great Detective in stories that are almost science fiction, and your mileage on them might vary. Ayatsuji Yukito's contribution is not a mystery story at all, but a sort of nostalgic look back at a long forgotten past, before there was such a thing as shin honkaku, and works wonderfully as a closer for an anthology meant to commemorate thirty years of shin honkaku.

Original Japanese title(s): 『7人の名探偵』: 「曜日と金曜日が嫌い 大鏡家殺人事件」（麻耶雄嵩） / 「毒饅頭怖い　推理の一問題」（山口雅也） / 「プロジェクト：シャーロック」（我孫子武丸） / 「船長が死んだ夜」（有栖川有栖） / 「あべこべの遺書」（法月綸太郎） / 「天才少年の見た夢」（歌野晶午） / 「仮題・ぬえの密室」（綾辻行人）

No Time To Die

"It belongs in a museum!"

"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

Oh man, it's been more than six months ago since I last did a review on a TV drama! I used to do these more often... Anyway, two Japanese mystery specials today for the price of one today!

Hanzai Shiryoukan - Hiiro Saeko Series: Akai Hakubutsukan ("The Crime Archive - Hiiiro Saeko Series: The Red Museum") is a TV special broadcast on August 29, 2016, based on Akai Hakubutsukan, a 2015 short story collection by Ooyama Seiichirou. Terada Satoru was a promising police detective until he made a major mistake handling evidence. He is transferred to the Red Museum, a place inspired by New Scotland Yard's The Black Museum. Files and evidence concerning cases of which the statute of limitations has already passed are stored in the archives beneath the old brick mansion. While the function of the museum is simply preservation of cases of which the police can't arrest the culprit anymore, the slightly difficult-to-handle director Hiiro Saeko still thinks there's merit in finding the truth and often starts new investigations in closed cases on her own. One day, Terada is witness to a traffic accident. Before the victim died however, he told Terada he once commited a murder exchange in the past, two decades ago. Digging in the victim's past, they find out his wealthy uncle was murdered two decades ago, while he himself had a perfect alibi. Hiiro concludes that for a murder exchange to have happened, there must be another unsolved murder featuring someone with a perfect alibi and starts poking around, but not everybody is happy with the interference of the Red Museum.

Ooyama Seiichirou's output as a writer is a lot less than I had hoped it to be, because I really enjoyed the stories by him that I've read. His mystery stories fall under the Queen-Norizuki school of logical reasoning. Misshitsu Shuushuuka for example was a brilliant display of doing locked room murders in the form of a pure, logic-driven puzzle plot. So I had high expectations of this TV drama, which would also be the first TV adaptation of Ooyama's work.

I was a bit disappointed though. From what I understand, the TV drama is mostly based around one of the stories in the original short story collection, with some elements from the other stories, but the TV drama itself was rather chaotic. One problem is that it tries to address too many past cases at the same time: not only do we follow the investigation about the murder exchange (so that's two murders), the story also puts a spotlight on two personal tragedies in both Hiiro and Terada's past, bringing it up to four cases, and that's just at the beginning of the story! One storyline in particular felt like nothing but time-filler, making the whole feel less cohesive than it should've been.

As for the mystery plot, it was a bit bland. It wasn't precisely what I had expected (I had expected something more firmly set in the Queen-Norizuki school), but it was also not fair to the viewer. Not only was there a convenient piece of evidence that simply told Hiiro the truth behind the murder exchange, this piece of evidence wasn't even shown to the viewer! I mean, they intentionally didn't show it on the screen. Well then, you kinda lose my goodwill then. The mystery about the tragedy in Terada's past was good though. I do like the concept of the Red Museum and it seems they might want to do a sequel one day (about Hiiro's own past and her relation with her father), but I can't say I'm really looking forward to it, if they're going to present the mystery plot like this again.

Note: I translated Norizuki Rintarou's short story The Lure of the Green Door.

Yuukai Mystery Choukessaku: Norizuki Rintarou- Ichi no Higeki ("A Kidnapping Masterpiece: Norizuki Rintarou - The Tragedy of One") is a TV drama special broadcast on September 23, 2016 and is based on Norizuki Rintarou's 1996 novel Ichi no Higeki ("The Tragedy of One"). It also marks the first time a work of Norizuki has been adapted for television. I already reviewed the original book some years ago, but to give a short summary: the well-to-do Yamakura household is shocked by a phone call telling them their son Takashi has been kidnapped and demanding ransom money. However, Takashi is safe at home. It appears the kidnapper accidently took Takashi's classmate Shigeru, who came around the house in the morning to pick Takashi up on their way to school (Takashi didn't go because of a fever). The kidnapper doesn't appear to have noticed their mistake though, so they demand Yamakura Shirou, father of Takashi, to bring the ransom money. But Shirou doesn't succeed in his task because of both bad luck and almost insane demands of the kidnapper, and Shigeru's body is dumped somewhere on an empty lot. Police investigations bring a man called Miura in sight, but this man has a foolproof alibi: he had spent the whole day with Norizuki Rintarou, mystery writer and son of the police superintendent in charge of the kidnapping-murder investigation.

Overall, I'd say this was a pretty competent adaptation. Highlights were definitely the violin music (I wish they'd release this soundtrack!) and Hasegawa Hiroki's take on the role of mystery writer Norizuki Rintarou. While it's often hard to get a hold on a character through just one TV special, I'd say that Hasegawa's Rintarou is already almost perfect, and I'd love to see a series starring him based on the Rintarou short stories.

In terms of the mystery plot, there were some changes. Some were to streamline/simplify the story, other changes had to be made because of the difference in medium. A bit of a shame they pulled the "let's not show the decisive piece of evidence to the viewer" card again though. And while I said I thought this was a competent adaptation, I'd also say it's a weird adaptation, in the sense that yes, all the things that needed to be there were present, and the overall gloomy atmosphere of the original book was depicted very well, but there were also some very characteristic elements that didn't made the jump to TV. In fact, one of the reasons the book carried the title The Tragedy of One is because it was written in the first person (the sequel was naturally written in the second person). There was another reason why the book was titled like that, which was related to the mystery plot, but that too didn't make the jump. So the title The Tragedy of One doesn't even really make sense in the TV drama, because all the connections to "One" didn't appear on TV. 

In the original book, the story was written from the POV of Yamakura Shirou and because of that, Rintarou didn't appear that often on screen. But you can't do that with the leading actor in a TV production, so we see a fair amount of him. Because the character is not particularly talkative though, they added a new character to the Norizuki household. In the original novels, it's just father and son Norizuki, but in this special they added a very talkative housemaid with a love for TV mystery shows. This Djuna to the Norizuki's Queen household is supposed to add a 'relatable' POV for the scenes at home, I think, but her bright personality doesn't really fit the overall atmosphere of the story, I think.

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎　（原）　『犯罪資料館　緋色冴子シリーズ　赤い博物館』、法月綸太郎　（原）　『誘拐ミステリー超傑作 法月綸太郎 一の悲劇』

Publish or Perish

「認めたくないものだな、自分自身の若さゆえの過ちというものを・・・」

『機動戦士ガンダム』

"Nobody cares to acknowledge the mistakes made because of their youth"

"Mobile Suit Gundam"

I read a lot, but my reading pace always has a slow start. I usually read several books at the same time, but it usually take ages for me to go through the first hundred pages or so of any given book. But when I am past that threshold, I suddenly go full gear, and finish the rest of the book in less time than it took me to get through the first hundred pages. That's why it's kinda rare for me to have books lying around that I've read halfway through. Books where I got stuck somewhere in the first hundred pages? Sure. But halfway? I am usually going to fast to stop there... Today, a rare case of a book which was read only halfway through.

Zero Banme no Jikenbo ("The 0th Casefiles") is a mystery anthology released in 2012 with big names like Arisugawa Alice, Ayatsuji Yukito and Norizuki Rintarou. But the twist behind this anthology is that the stories collected here, were all written before these writers made their formal debut as professional writers. Most of these were written in university it seems. In a sense, Zero Bamne no Jikenbo is just a collection of 'amateur' writing, but for fans for any of these writers, these unpublished stories are of course interesting, as it shows how some writers grew from their amateur days into the people they are now. As a piece of fanservice, this anthology delivers the goods and it is also a good motivation for amateur writers now: if they see what kind of stories the professional writers now used to write, they'll probably see that everyone had to start somewhere and that all have humble origins.

I originally bought Zero Banme no Jikenbo when it was released, because it fitted with the theme of my thesis on early New Orthodox detective fiction writers. And after reading the stories and the essays by Arisugawa Alice, Norizuki Rintarou, Abiko Takemaru and Ayatsuji Yukito, I put the book away because that was all I needed for my research. In the end, it took me another year before I finally read the rest of the volume.

A large number of the stories collected in Zero Banme no Jikenbo are guess-the-criminal (hanninate) stories, which I once explained as:

These scripts are more like pure logic puzzles than 'proper' literary stories: there are unwritten rules like a Challenge to the Reader, 'there is only one murderer', 'strength of motive is of no real consequence' and 'all the hints necessary to solve the crime are in the story' (therefore, nothing/no person outside the world described in the story exists) and most of these plots are solved through a Queen-esque elimination method: determine an x amount of characteristics the murderer must have (i.e. must have been left handed, must have had access to the room, must have etc.) and see who fits (or does not fit) the profile. Some might think Ellery Queen's novels feel a bit artificial with the challenge to the reader and all, but these guess-the-criminal scripts are really taking this game-element of detective fiction to the extreme

A lot of the writers in this anthology were members of university mystery clubs (like the Kyoto University Mystery Club), where guess-the-criminal scripts are common practice. Arisugawa Alice's entry, Aozameta Hoshi ("The Pale Stars"), is a good example of how such a story works, and it just happens I have translated it a long time ago, so I refer to that post if you want to know more about that. Abiko Takemaru's Figure Four is an extremely nonsensical dying message story, but Abiko admits that he would never ever have chosen this story for publication if not for the goal of the anthology: at least you can see that not all writers started out grand and fantastic. In that sense Figure Four is a great example. And maybe it's interesting to note that the Hayami siblings appear in this story.

Kasumi Ryuuichi's Golgotha no Misshitsu ("The Locked Room of Golgotha") is an example of a locked room murder done well in a guess-the-criminal format, which is difficult, because this format is more precise than a 'normal' locked room murder mystery (all the clues must be present and it must be the only answer possible). But it is also very obvious that this was a guess-the-criminal script and not a full fledged story: the solution part, given after the Challenge to the Reader, is just a dry, to the point memo saying who did it and how you can prove it. Fubousou de Hito ga Shinu no Da ("Somebody Will Die At the Fubou House" by Murasaki Yuu), with a murder happening on a Mystery Club holiday is based on fairly basic trick and the 'surprise' ending isn't really surprising, but I like how the story is obviously written for fellow (Seijo University) Mystery Club members, as it deals with club activities and the characters based (presumably) on real members at the time. Finally, but certainly not least is Norizuki Rintarou's Satsujin Pantomine ("Murder Pantomine"), a great puzzle plot story that shows why these guess-the-criminal stories, even if not 'real' literature, are so fun. And the anecdote that at the time, these scripts were read out by the writer for all members to listen to is at one hand surprising, and on the other hand not really. In a time where typewriters and wordprocessors were rare, it does make sense the writer would just write out his own copy, and then read it out to the other members. Of course, I am just used to the sight of 20~30 copies of the stories being handed out to the members present... By the way, the detective character Norizuki Rintarou appears in this story, but written with a different character for "rin" (the name was changed when the writer became a professional).

The rest of the anthology consists out of non guess-the-criminal stories. Takada Takafumi's Bachasvilleke no Inu ("The Hound of the Bachasvilles") is a nonsensical what-if variation on The Hound of the Baskervilles. I only read the first novel of Takada's QED series, but it seems this story has very little of the QED vibe, save for the excessive referencing to the original Holmes novels (the lists of references in the QED novels are huge!). Hatsuno Sei's 14 is about a comedian being stalked by seven different people from all ages and sexes, but he has no idea why. More of a thriller than real puzzle plot mystery, but I have never read anything by Hatsuno, so no idea how this work fits within the big picutre. The same holds for Migawa Korumono's Judgement, about a murderer and a girl he picks up at one of his crime scenes. Never read anything by her, so not sure if Judgement is representative of her work in general or not.

And while I have never read anything by Kirisha Takumi neither, I have to say I was kinda surprised by his Tsuzuki Michio wo Yonda Otoko ("The man who read Tsuzuki Michio"), which was a fun inverted mystery where a certain scruffy policeman talking about his raincoat and his wife visiting Japan is messing up a perfect crime in process. Great stuff here, but it took me a bit before I recognized who this Philip was (as it's just one of his unofficial first names...). A lot of Nishizawa Yasuhiko's mysteries have a supernatural element (psychokinesis, timewarping etc) in conjunction with a totally fair-play puzzle plot, but Mushitori ("Bugcatching") is more science fiction than mystery. It's fun though: two men are in charge of monitoring a grand scale fake arrival of aliens on planet Earth: these aliens are in fact high-level androids of the US government. But what is the goal of the project, and why do some android models keep coming back with bugs that lead to self-existential doubt?

Finally, Ayatsuji Yukito's Toosugiru Fuukei ("A Scenery Too Far Away") is the story about Hiryuu Kouchi, who after the death of her mother, has been haunted by mysterious letters and other events. And I could write a bit more about it, but this story was actually rewritten as Ningyoukan no Satsujin, with most of the main plot and some names intact. They are very alike, so you really don't have to read both of them, though it is interesting to see how Ayatsuji fleshed out one of his old stories to something new and longer. This 'amateur' story was actually sold at one time, as it was included in one of Kyoto University Mystery Club's annual magazines in the past: I actually have a (digital) copy somewhere of Toosugiru Fuukei in a handwritten script!

For fans of the writers included in this anthology, Zero Banme no Jikenbo has its high points. Realizing how the young amateur writers and students behind these stories turned into professional writers afterwards can work as an inspiration for aspirant writers, as while there are quite some good mystery plots here, few stories have the refinement of professional writers (and also important, editing). And of course, a lot of the stories collected here are guess-the-criminal scripts, which aren't meant to be experienced as literature anyway. If you are familar with more than a few writers in this collection, I would recommend Zero Banme no Jikenbo and also if you're interested in seeing how guess-the-criminal scripts work (as you don't see them often in 'official' publishing), but it might feel a bit weak as a standalone mystery anthology without the context. Because when you think about it, this is just a collection of amateur writers, even if they're all professional writers now! If the novelty factor appeals to you though, great stuff here! I know I enjoyed it.

Oh, and one final note: I can only use up to 200 characters for the tags (cross-references) for each post, so I was only able to attach the tags for a few writers.

Original Japanese title(s): 『０番目の事件簿』: 有栖川有栖　「蒼ざめた星」 / 法月綸太郎　「殺人パントマイム」 / 霧舎巧　「都筑道夫を読んだ男」 /　「我孫子武丸　「フィギュア・フォー」 / 霞流一　「ゴルゴダの密室」 / 高田崇史　「バカズヴィル家の犬」 / 西澤保彦　「虫とり」 / 「初野晴　「14」 / 村崎友　「富望荘で人が死ぬのだ」 / 汀こるもの　「Judgement」 / 綾辻行人 「遠すぎる風景」