Fragments of Memories

このままずっと笑顔を見つめていたいだけさ

記憶という両腕に君を抱いて

『Just Before The Sunrise』

I just want to keep looking at your smile

Holding you in these arms called memories

"Just Before the Sunrise"

I really should reconsider my writing style: delaying reviews because I can't come up with introductions (which usually have nothing to do with the actual review) is a bit inefficient...

It had been a while since I last read something by Shimada Souji and because it was recommended by a couple of people, I decided to read Nejishiki Zazetsuki ("Screw-Type Zazetsuki"). The novel stars Shimada's series detective Mitarai Kiyoshi, who debuted in 1981 as an astrologist, but became a full-time private detective in 1987. I hadn't read any Mitarai novels after that, so I was kinda surprised to see that between 1987 and Nejishiki Zatsuki (originally published in 2003), Mitarai Kiyoshi had become a professor specializing in brain science at Sweden's Uppsala University. A man called Egon Markut is brought to him, who seems to have severe problems with his memory: his short-time memory seem to be disfunctional and he even forgets he met Mitarai when the professor leaves his office for a second to get some coffee. Egon seems to have perfect memory up util one specific point in his life, but he has no idea what happened then. The only clue Mitarai has, is a novel Egon Markut wrote: Return to the Tangerine Tree Republic, a fantasy story starring 'Eggy', who visits a fantasy world inhabited by elves who live on top of trees, men with no noses and people with detachable, screw-type heads.

No, I didn't choose a book with a man with amnesia and a narrative-within-a-narrative structure again on purpose.

In a sense, Nejishiki Zatsuki is sorta reminiscent of Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken, Shimada's debut novel. Both stories feature Mitarai Kiyoshi as an armchair detective, with a document functioning as his only clue. But this time, the document is clearly a fantasy story and this is where the novel starts to crumble, in my opinion. The document in Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken worked, because it was set in reality and narrated as such. Deducing from one single sentence in Harry Kemelman's The Nine Mile Walk worked, because it was set in a certain time and period. Heck, Watson's unpublished document in Queen's A Study in Terror worked, because it was a honest narrative. But Nejishiki Zatsuki's Return to the Tangerine Tree Republic doesn't work as a fair document. Sure, Mitarai manages to deduce a lot from it, by literary analysis and comparisons with reality, but it is a lot more shakey, a lot more vague than the utterances mentioned above. It never feels convincing and Shimada occasionally allows for Mitarai to check his deductions (which are of course confirmed), but it feels very forceful: the deductions don't become real because they are convincing enough and are the most logical conclusion drawn from the evidence, it' because the fictional creator arbitrarily just decides that it is the truth in this novel. Which is of course true for all works of fiction, but you need to have at least some level of plausibility to really work.

In the end, Mitarai manages to deduce the truth behind what made Egon's mind go boom, but the case itself is so simple, it's almost unbelievable the same author wrote novels like Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken and Naname Yashiki no Hanzai. In his early novels, a main characteristic of Shimada's work was an almost idiotic grand mechanical trick. As if he was working on a different scale of life. He would use hammers and drills instead of thread and needles to make a locked room, and still be subtle about it. In Nejishiki Zatsuki, you're left with a case that anyone could solve the moment the vagueries of Return to the Tangerine Tree Republic solved.

In the end, it feels like Shimada wanted to work with the premise of having to solve a real-life case working from a fantasy book, but the problem is that none of the elements really work here: at one hand, we have the too vague fantasy book that allows for very broad deductions, making Mitarai's deductions feel plausible, but not 100% convincing. The way Shimada makes these deductions truth feels forced. On the other hand, the real-life case to which the fantasy book refers to feels too bland and you're left with the feeling that you just worked yourself through a 600 page book without an equivalent pay-off.

And oh, had I already mentioned that a new English translation of a novellette by Shimada Souji is to appear in EQMM soon?

Original Japanese title(s): 島田荘司 『ネジ式ザゼツキー』