Circle of Blood

潔くカッコよく生きていこう・・・

たとえ2人離ればなれになっても・・・

take my revolution 

「輪舞 - Revolution」（奥井雅美)

Let's live on bravely and heroically...

Even if the two of us will be seperated...

take my revolution

"Rondo - Revolution" (Okui Masami)

I tried to delay writing this review a couple of times: I just have so little to say about it. I really dislike writing reviews about books I feel somewhat indifferent about. With books I don't like, I can at least point out what I don't like and make comparisons with better examples with similar ideas. With great indifference comes... a great distinct lack of writing hooks. At least in my case.

Getting in the special crimes division had been rookie detective Kominato Shinsuke's wish, so there was much joy when he was appointed there as the subordinate of the veteran Umikata Fusanari. At least, that was until he learned that Umikata was an extremely lazy detective and that Kominato was mainly appointed to him to keep an eye on his boss. So he cherished his free days when he was released from babysitting Umikata, but his day at the horse races turned into a normal working day nonetheless. The man standing behind Kominato in the crowd was stabbed, falling on top of him, making him the first person to "find" the victim. When Umikata arrives at the scene, the veteran quickly recognizes the murder as the handiwork of Tsutsumi, a local gangster he knows. While not a professional assassin, Tsutsumi has committed several murders for his gang and Umikata says there's no need for the police to look for him: the orders for these kind of men are not just to kill their target, but also to confess to the murder with some fake, private motive and do the time for them so the gang won't face any trouble from this. The news that Tsutsumi himself was killed right after the first murder therefore came as a surprise to Umikata, but they quickly figure out who Tsutsumi's murderer is. But then this person is killed too... What lies behind this chain of murders in Awasaka Tsumao's Shisha no Rinbu ("Rondo of the Dead", 1985)?

This is the first of Awasaka's two novels starring the duo of police inspectors Umikata and Kominato, which now I think about it is pretty interesting, as practically all the books I've read by Awasaka up until now featured amateur detectives (EDIT: Yeah, I read this book and wrote this review long before I read Youtou S79-Gou. I shuffled a lot with this review) Well, A Tomoichirou was technically a secret agent of the Tokugawa Shogunate so something like a police officer, but his descendant A Aiichirou is a photographer, and other books featured for example magicians as detectives, or an ex-boxer-turned-financial-detective... I was kinda surprised to see a normal police detective duo as the protagonists. But once you see the banter between Umikata and Kominato, you're quickly reminded that you are indeed reading an Awasaka novel, as the comedic tone is instantly recognizable. In this novel, most of the comedy is derived from the very lazy inspector Umikata and the way he uses his subordinate Kominato. Umikata is actually a fairly competent detective when he puts his mind to it, being capable to make sharp deductions based on the smallest of hints, but he usually prefers the easy way out of things, and would rather have things sort themselves out than having to interfere himself.

We are not presented with an impossible crime or something similar this time, but an enigmatic problem that is featured in both the title of the novel, as well as revealed quite early in the narrative: there is some kind of murder relay going on, with the murderers of one case turning into the victims of the next one. This theory is proposed by Umikata very early on, and most of the novel is therefore not really spent on figuring whodunnit, or even howdunnit, but finding out why this is happening, and how they can stop it. One gripe I have with this novel is that the device of a murder relay is made clear very early on in this book, but there's little extra added to the plot from that point on. Most of the book is seeing how the relay further unfolds with the police as mere onlookers after the fact, so for a very long time, it feels you're reading about events you already knew were coming. As a mystery novel, I think the idea is that the appeal comes from guessing how this relay will eventually end, and Awasaka does play with the conclusion of this game, but on the whole, I'd say Shisha no Rinbu is a better in idea than execution. Whereas his debut novel 11 Mai no Trump was a tour-de-force in clewing, Shisha no Rinbu's clewing is pragmatic at best, as it's boring and hastily done, without properly going through the process of foreshadowing ~ pay-off.

"Simply going through the motions" is not the right way to explain it, but Shisha no Rinbu's plot feels so...bare compared to other Awasaka's novels. The initial idea of the murder relay is definitely alluring, but then it just... happens and there is little there to turn the idea into a real experience. The comedy between Umikata and Kominato is okay, but never as fun as in the A Aiichirou series. The captivating insight into special fields of interests like stage magic or toys as seen in other novels isn't here either. The expect and subtle clewing and foreshadowing that made other novels a delight is nowhere to be seen here. There's just too little in addition to the first idea, and while I wouldn't say Shisha no Rinbu is a bad novel, I have read enough Awasaka by now to know he could do much, much better than here.

And because the overall plot is fairly light, there's little I can add to what I've already said by now. Shisha no Rinbu has a great starting point with a murder relay as the focus, but it does not try to go far beyond this initial idea, resulting in a novel that feels a bit barren. The conclusion too will not come as a total surprise, and yet you feel it could've been pulled off better if we had seen more of Awasaka's A game here. So a missed chance here.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『死者の輪舞』