The Ruined Map

"Everything you were looking for was right there with you all along."

"The Wizard of Oz"

I always try to read at least one mystery set in Fukuoka each year, which isn't actually as easy it sounds. Kyoto is another story though, as there are tons of them out there.

I'll be perfectly honest from the start, and admit I have somewhat of a bias against Yamamura Misa's work. She was of course an institution in Japan, a symbol of the popular genre travel mystery, where the protagonists travel to popular tourist spots and solve murders or other crimes there while enjoying the local food or hot springs. The little that I've read of Yamamura, and especially the couple of TV dramas based on her work I watched solidified her image within my mind as that of The Stereotypical Two-Hour Suspense Drama, with a lite mystery plot that never really impresses. So I didn't start with too high expectations in her short story collection Kyouto Satsujin Chizu ("A Map of Kyoto Murders", 1988), which is about the coroner Enatsu Fuyuko, a beautiful 29-year old woman who was recently transferred from Tokyo to the Kyoto Prefectural Headquarters. The fact that the Coroner Enatsu Fuyuko series had been dramatized for television several times wasn't a good sign in my mind either.

And I was therefore quite surprised that most of the stories included in this collection are reasonably entertaining and sometimes pretty smart. There is however one major flaw that holds for all the stories here, and it's real shame, as this collection could have been much more than it is now. The problem is that while often these stories have pretty good ideas, like a locked room or something like that, but Yamamura for some reason doesn't really give the reader a chance to solve the puzzles themselves: Fuyuko is of course the detective, but almost every single time, she refers to a clue or something like that, that allowed her to solve the case. However, we as the reader never get to see before Fuyuko talks about them! Take the opening story for example, Shoujo wa Misshitsu de Shinda ("The Girl Died Inside A Locked Room"). A girl is found asphyxiated in a small cabin outside in the garden of her home, which she used as a study room, preparing for her entrance exams. With the doors and windows locked, and her head in a bag with paint thinner, it looks at first like a suicide, but Fuyuko realizes that not only was the girl pregnant, she was also strangled very carefully as to not leave any marks on her neck. Suspicion soon falls on the boy who she was dating, but the police can't do anything unless they can prove how it was done. Yamamura here comes with an okay locked room puzzle, but also with a very neat clue that leads to the solution of that locked room mystery. The clue is original, believable and.... could have been so satisfying had we as the reader actually seen it in advance, rather than first hearing about when Fuyuko explains how the job was done. Had this been written in a fair manner,  this would have been a pretty good story, now it's more focused on the 'shock' factor, but it simply doesn't sit well, as the decisive clue really comes out of nowhere, even if it's a pretty good one.

And that's pretty much the story for the whole collection. Gisou no Satsujin Genba ("The Faked Crime Scene") is about a newly wed couple of which the wife was murdered in the study, and the husband gone. Fuyuko makes some interesting observations in regards to to the room, which allows her to solve the case, but again, we don't actually get to read about those points until Fuyuko mentions them, even though these were some pretty original clues: the one big observation she makes by comparing photographs made at the discovery of the body, and more recent ones is quite smart, and another clue that helps her identify the true culprit would've been fun to work out had it been introduced properly. In Kieta Haiguusha ("The Missing Spouse"), Fuyuko catches a program on the television about a man and a woman that has run away together: their respective spouses (a pregnant woman, and a husband and child) are hoping they will return to their homes, but the runaway husband says it's all over and refuses to come back home to his wife. Later, the runaway wife is found dead, apparently overrun by a train, but Fuyuko realizes that the evidence seems off. Like the previous story, Fuyuko manages to solve this based on a clue that would've worked pretty smart in a visual medium, but now you only have Fuyuko mention it after the fact.

Suisen no Hanakotoba wa Shi ("The Daffodil Means Death in Flower Language") is about the death of a teacher in ikebana (flower arrangement), and focuses on the alibis of two suspects: a rivaling ikebana teacher in the same neighborhood who wasn't doing as good as the victim, and the fiancé of the victim, who was in fact not only a womanizer, but also seriously dating a younger woman at his work. Again a story that would've worked better in a visual medium perhaps, but most importantly, this story not only uses a clue that is left unmentioned until the last moment, but also builds on ikebana trivia which is of course only mentioned when Fuyuko explains everything. Kichoumen na Satsujinsha ("The Methodical Murderer") starts out with the kidnapping of a child, but he is soon found murdered. Evidence left on his body, like a tire track on his apron, suggests he was run over by a car after he was dropped off by the schoolbus near his home. The clue Fuyuko conjures out of nowhere this time however is not as inspired as earlier stories.

Oboreta Onna ("The Drowned Woman") is about exactly what the title says: a woman is found drowned in her home. The mystery? She was not only naked, she was drowned in her home with the water of Lake Biwa. A more conventional mystery story, with a problem that seems interesting at first sight, but not nearly as tricky or surprising as the earlier stories in this collection. Surprising however is the start of Kubi no Nai Shitai ("The Headless Body"), as it's about the discovery of a cut-up female body, of whom the head was missing. Eventually, the police manage to identify the victim as a woman who was reported missing by her husband, but the whole premise is a bit silly as there is absolutely no way this plan could've gone undetected. The final story, Hone no Shougen ("The Testimony of the Bones"), is hardly a mystery, as side-story-esque segment early on in the story gives away the motive, which is basically the only mystery in this story: why was an elderly man killed and why was he robbed from the remains of his son, who had died in World War II in Saipan and whose remains were only recently brought back to him?

So Kyouto Satsujin Chizu ended up as somewhat of a disappointment, but not because of the reasons I had first expected. As a mystery short story collection, this is a decent one, but it could've been easily much better had Yamamura written these stories in a more fair way. The clues she uses are actually quite good, but for some reasons she chooses not to mention them until the denouement. I guess that some readers might like the 'surprise', but I at least felt that while often the core plot's good, I felt cheated, or at least slightly annoyed, these clues weren't given due attention earlier. Perhaps these stories work better in a visual format, as many of the clues are kinda visual, or elsewise easier to show inconspicuously in a show, but as a book, Kyouto Satsujin Chizu is something that could've been much more.

Original Japanese title(s): 山村美紗 『京都殺人地図』：「少女は密室で死んだ」/「偽装の殺人現場」/「消えた配偶者」/「水仙の花言葉は死」/「几帳面な殺人者」/「溺れた女」/「首のない死体」/「骨の証言」