Don't you just get excited when you open a mystery novel and you discover there are floorplans or other diagrams inside? There's just something romantic about a visual depiction of the setting of a story. In some stories, having a clearly drawn map might be necessary in order for you to solve the mystery, while in other stories, the map is merely there to assist the text, just to make things a bit more clear and perhaps to add a bit of flavor. And as I've also mentioned in my reviews of novels like Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken and Murder Among the Angells, settings like houses, mansions or castles can also act as a character on their own in mystery stories, and floorplans really help giving life to these sinister settings.
For this short post, I wanted to show a couple of floorplans that made an impression on me. I won't be talking about them too much, as in some cases one can even figure out something important by looking at these diagrams if you know what to look for, but I think that no matter what, these floorplans just look impressive.
Ayatsuji Yukito - Meirokan no Satsujin ("The Labyrinth House Murders", 1988)
The title basically says it all. After his debut novel The Decagon House Murders, Ayatsuji continued with this series featuring the creations of the architect Nakamura Seiji and this third novel features an underground 'house' designed after the Labyrinth of the Minotaur, and the building is absolutely insane.
Shimada Souji - Naname Yashiki no Hanzai ("The Crime at the Slanted Mansion", 1982)
The second novel in Shimada's Mitarai Kiyoshi series has an interesting diagram, as it's drawn with depth. Floorplans with perspective aren't really common actually, and I really like how this house looks with the tower.
Nakai Hideo - Kyomu he no Kumotsu ("Offerings to Nothingness", 1964)
These floorplans are a bit smaller in scale compared to the previous ones, but I love the hand-drawn feeling of these plans. Kyomu he no Kumotsu is an infamous anti-mystery novel where the protagonist detectives try to figure out how a murder was committed even though there's no proof it's a murder and they just want it to be a murder because it's more fun and they hope more murders happen. These plans of course help them with their deductions.
Ayatsuji Yukito - Kirigoetei Satsujin Jiken ("The Kirigoe Mansion Murder Case", 1990)
Another novel by Ayatsuji. Technically, Kirigoetei Satsujin Jiken isn't part of Ayatsuji's House series, though the connection is heavily hinted at and the floorplan certainly seems similar in its complexity. This one is remarkable because of its sheer size, and this is just the ground floor!
Nikaidou Reito - Jinroujou no Kyoufu - France (" La Terreur Château du Loup-garou La Second Partie: France, 1997)
Jinroujou no Kyoufu is a mammoth of an impossible crime mystery, consisting of four volumes of 600~800 pages each. These 8(!) floorplans are of the Blue Wolf Castle, which lies in France. A serises of horrible murders and other gruesome crimes happen in this gigantic castle, but what makes this a true terrifying experience is that this just half of the mystery: the Blue Wolf Castle is just one half of a set of twin castles, and another series of murders happen in the Silver Wolf Castle, just across the border in Germany. The Silver Wolf Castle has the exact same layout as the Blue Wolf Castle, but the happenings that occur in these two castles is just amazing, and one can sense the scale of this story just by looking at these castle plans.
Chisun Inn
Oh, wait, this isn't from a mystery novel. This is in fact a floorplan of the Chisun Inn, a hotel located in Nagoya, Japan. Which also happens to look exactly like something from a mystery story. The hotel is designed in a spiral form, with a lot of rooms in a fan form, but one can easily imagine this to be the setting of a series of murders, right? I for one would make sure my door was locked and double locked if I were to stay here, as there's bound to be someone who's planning some kind of ingenious alibi trick or an impossible murder!
Anyway, these were a few floorplans from mystery novels that made an impression on me because of how they were designed, the scale of the setting or simply how they were drawn. Feel free to leave a comment with the floorplans from mystery novels (or TV series/manga/games) that made an impression on you.
For some reason, mystery novels and diagrams go back a long way. As early as Poe's The Gold Bug (1843), there is a diagram of a cipher. Charles Warren Adams published The Notting Hill Mystery in 1862 and 63. It includes diagrams of a marriage certificate and of a letter. R. Austin Freeman (no surprise) was a pioneer in this sort of thing. In John Thorndyke's Cases (1909), a short story collection, there are no less than 5 diagrams, including a map of a murder scene, a code diagram, and the famous Aluminum Dagger. In Crofts's The Cask (1920), the first or one of the first Golden Age novels, there is a diagram of some footprints. By 1925, Lynn Brock has one area map and 2 diagrams in The Deductions Of Colonel Gore.
ReplyDeleteI don't know which mystery was the first to have a floor diagram. However, the first flat-out floor plan I have found was in Van Dine's The Benson Murder Case (1926). You stated that Van Dine was very popular in Japan, so he might be the source for all the rest of the floor plans. Van Dine is one of those authors who don't seem to me to get as much credit as pioneers as they deserve.
I note your review of The Greene and Bishop Murder Cases and their popularity in Japan. What effect did the earlier Benson book have? Has anyone else seen an earlier floor plan than Benson?
ReplyDeleteDiagrams and other figures in mystery fiction seem rather a logical combination, so it doesn't seem weird to me that they have a long history. With so much mystery fiction focusing on physical evidence or other objects, it's not strange authors would like to incorporate them within their tale in one form or another. It's also part of the appeal of mystery gamebooks, and the escape rooms now.
DeleteI don't hear much about The Benson Murder Case as an individual novel, nor here nor in Japan. It's usually discussed as 'the first Van Dine' or something in that spirit. I think that the first Japanese translation followed one or two years after the translations of Greene and Bishop, and while some people would've imported the original book of course, it wouldn't have been a widespread practice, I'd guess. As for the history of floorplans in mystery fiction in general, I'm also quite interested to hear if someone else has some ideas about that!
I did a bit more checking. The earliest floor plans I could come up with are in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). This book has 2 floor plans. I also note two floor plans in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd(1926). Benson has 3 floor plans and a diagram. I didn't see any in Canary. Greene (1927) has at least five(!). So as far as I can tell floor plans started with Agatha Christie.
DeleteThen I did a bit more checking. I figured that a mystery with the name The Mystery of the Yellow Room (by Gaston Leroux, 1907) might have some floor plans. Sure enough it has two floor plans, in addition to being a locked room mystery. So Gaston Leroux in 1907 is the earliest I can bring it. He wrote The Phantom of the Opera in 1910.
DeleteI have not read any of these books myself, but I know there a number of mystery novels from the late 1800s that have floor plans. Charles Felix's The Nothingham Mystery (1862) has one and Emilé Gaboriau used one in Monsieur Lecoq. Anna Katherine Green's The Leavenworth Case, published in 1878, has two floor plans.
DeleteBy the way, Monsieur Lecoq was published in 1868 and just noticed The Nothing Hill Mystery was already mentioned under Felix's real name.
DeleteYou are right about The Notting Hill Mystery. It has a floor plan. I saw the letter and certificate but missed the map because it serves as a frontispiece. That pushes floor plans all the way to the start of the detective novel. The king of the floor plans though still seems to me to be Van Dine.
DeleteWhich reminds me, my Leonaur-published double volume of Benson/Canary didn't include the floorplans, and TomCat was kind enough to scan the Canary one for me!
DeleteYukito Ayatsuji needs to design birthday cakes. Hidden compartments of secret frosting and a classic narrative trick where a seemingly vanilla cake actually tastes like chocolate if you cut it at a certain angle. Pushkin Vertigo is publishing an English translation of The Crime at the Slanted Mansion but I can't find a concrete release date. Can't wait to experience that map with context!
ReplyDeleteThis is wonderful news if true(about Shimada's book). I think I've heard before that it was to be published, but then remember reading that it would not be published at the end. If something new/positive has come up, then it would be great!
DeleteAll of these maps look great, but having finished Decagon House Murders not too long ago(thanks Ho-ling for your work!) I certainly would be more than happy to have my mind blown away by the labyrinth one :)
It appears to be true judging from this tweet of Pushkin Vertigo's books taken from their recent re-publication of The Master Key: https://twitter.com/Colorless_Ideas/status/955806194328788993
DeleteSeconding more Ayatsuji novels in English! *adjusts my Locked Room International honkaku prayer circle*
Regarding Shimada's book, I found a post on a chinese social media website by what appears to be a verified Shimada account. It says the english translation is slated for March 28th,2019. The post is back from January. Hope it's still true
Deletehttps://m.weibo.cn/status/4197253831050611
Not Japanese, but Clayton Rawson's 'Death from a Top Hat' has a nice plan, a photo from above of a doll's house style murder room.
ReplyDeleteHaven't read that one yet, though I think I got the e-book a long while back together with another Merlini. At least, I know I got two Merlinis, but I can't remember which ones :P
Delete"Don't you just get excited when you open a mystery novel and you discover there are floorplans or other diagrams inside?"
ReplyDeleteYes! I love it when I come across a floor plan or diagram in a mystery. Whether they're merely decorative (Van Wyck Mason's The Fort Terror Murders or can actually help you solve the crime (Szu-Yen Lin's Death in the House of Rain.
I don't have a personal favorite, but one map I particularly liked is the map of the apartment in Stacey Bishop's Death in the Dark. It not only showed the layout of the apartment, but also what everyone was doing at the time of the fatal shot and includes the scene of three of the suspects looking out of the window at a passing fire engine – which is also included in the floor plan. A really well drawn, nice looking floor plan.
By the way, a former member of the John Dickson Carr forum and GAD mailing group, the late "Grobius Shortling," made a detailed, multi-floor plan of Castle Skull, but the map was lost when the JDC forum and his mystery website went down. I should have saved it.
Maps that showin where everyone was and other extra info are pretty common in videogames, but you don't really see them in books,so that sounds nice! In games though, I really like the interactivity of them, with floorplans being updated, character avatars being moved around to explain the exact movements etc.
DeleteArisugawa's An Illustrated Guide to the Locked Room 1981 - 1998 was mentioned a while ago in the comments, but that book has some nice illustrations of several locked room mysteries (both Japanese and non-Japanese), including floorplans (more detailed ones, like the ones from Kyomu he no Kumotsu).
Which reminds me, the TV drama Kagi no Kakatta Heya / The Locked Room was absolutely wonderful with its scale models! Each episode is about a locked room, and the detective Enomoto (a security consultant who's also very likely a burglar) makes cute little diorama models for each situation, which he uses to explain his various theories to the sidekicks.
Hello, is it possible to contact you by E-Mail?
DeleteI completely forgot that I included the Stacey Bishop diagram in my review of Death in the Dark. So you can feast your eyes on that floor plan over there.
DeleteSomeone mentioned Dell Mapbacks and the map, or rather illustration of the Central Park scene, on the back of Kelley Roos' Sailor, Take Warning subtly hints at the solution. The Dell Mapbacks are a good example of how maps of large areas, floor plans and diagrams can enhance a detective story.
Ocelot: Assuming you mean me, and not TomCat, no, sorry!
DeleteTomCat: Oh, that Death in the Dark one does look nice! Like I mentioned with the Kyomu he no Kumotsu one, I really love these floorplans with a hand-drawn feeling. The Mapbacks look awesome too.
I concur. Is there any way to contact you beside awkward posting of endless questions in the comments? For some reason, blogspot's system of automatic notification frequently fails, and these get lost.
DeleteBy the way, is it possible to learn who holds the copyright on mapbacks? And are they separate from the individual covers as whole.
Sorry, I just prefer to keep a certain distance in terms of direct communication ^_~
DeleteAs these things are usually commissioned by the publisher, I'd assume that the covers and maps of the Mapbacks belong to the publisher and not the author (of the novel nor of the illustrations). Might be a complex case-by-case errr.. case too :/
lately i have been scouting google for olden dell backmaps. it's such a shame that publication houses have taken a dip when it comes to aesthetics. it's well known that multiple art design can push consumers to purchase multiple versions of the same book. harry potter took advantage of that with illustrated versions, ipad-exclusive content with interactive pages, etc. but as a whole? book design is as mediocre and basic as it comes in the west.
ReplyDeletei live in france, and cover art is so freaking boring here. the paul halter books published by le masque are just a yellow page with white text. and the maps inside aren't "glorified" at all. they're just....there and roughly drawn too.
i wish we could get a whiplash in the industry with well thought-out books, especially in the mystery/thriller genre which bases all its attractiveness on intrigue and eyebrow-raising.
Man, having interactive floorplans on app-versions of novels would be great! Somewhere between a game and a novel. One could do really cool stuff with that!
DeleteAwesome news commentdwellers. Slanted House on 31st January 2019, Pushkin Vertigo, just wait.
ReplyDelete