Model Crime

「でも何ていうか、あなたはそうは見えなかったから」

「よく言われます」

『最後の一冊』

 

"But you see, you didn't look like you were the boss here."

"I'm often told that."

"The Last Volume"

I don't remember when I first heard of mystery author Ookura Takahiro, but I know quite a few years passed between me first learning of him, and me actually getting to know something written by him.  Surprisingly through, my first experience with Ookura was through Detective Conan. Ookura was the scriptwriter for the 2017 Detective Conan theatrical feature The Crimson Love Letter, but in the lead-up to the release of the film, he also wrote the screenplay for episode 829, The Mysterious Boy, of the animated TV series, which was the first time I had seen anything created by Ookura. The Crimson Love Letter was an excellent mystery film (and the novel version written by Ookura was also okay), so I grew very interested in seeing more of Ookura's work, and what better way to start than with one of his more famous creations? And yes, I know he's also working on the 2019 Detective Conan: The Fist of the Blue Sapphire, but the trailer didn't really manage to hit the right places for me quite yet.

Fukuie is a small woman with short, black hair and a pair of frame-less glasses who is often mistaken for a college student, but she is in fact a lieutenant of the Metropolitan Police Department, in charge of homicide investigations. Despite her unassuming appearance and sometimes even careless habits (she often forgets her police badge), criminals are warned not to underestimate this woman, as she has a keen eye for details, and no matter how crafty a plan might be, you count on in it that Lieutenant Fukuie will not only figure everything out, she'll also be sure to come up with some way to actually arrest the criminal with proof. Whether you're a librarian trying to save the library from being sold off or an actress killing off her blackmailing rival, Lieutenant Fukuie will always find the weak spots in the criminal's plan and bring everything tumbling down in Ookura Takahiro's short story collection Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu ("The Greetings of Lieutenant Fukuie", 2006), which also carries the alternative English title of Enter Lieutenant Fukuie.

The Lieutenant Fukuie series is one of Ookura's best known series, especially as it has also seen TV adaptations. Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu is the first book in the still-running inverted detective series. As in the tradition of all great inverted mystery fiction, each story is told from the perspective of the culprit, who carries out their murderous plan. At first, their plans seem foolproof, but then the lieutenant appears, and starts picking out small contradictions left here and there. It might seem Lieutenant Fukuie is just guessing, but by the time the culprit realizes how crafty Fukuie really is, it's already too late and for the reader, the fun of the mystery lies in not guessing whodunit, but how Fukuie is going to figure out what really happened. The Lieutenant Fukuie series is obviously heavily inspired by Columbo, though something interesting has to be mentioned here. Ookura has penned several official novelizations of Columbo in the past and while Ookura was credited as "translator" for these novelizations, he was the person who actually wrote these novels (the prose) especially for the Japanese market. These novelizations were based on the original screenplays of existing episodes, or plot outlines for unfilmed stories, which Ookura then had to expand into a novel-form. For these books, people like Columbo creators Levinson & Link, or other screenplay writers were credited for the "original work", though technically, they didn't write the specific novel form of these stories, which were entirely Ookura's invention and don't exist outside Japan. In a way, it's no wonder Ookura would later write his own inverted mystery stories about a police lieutenant.

By the way, the animation sequence accompanying the fiftieth ending song of Detective Conan (La PomPon's cover of Zard's Unmei no Roulette Mawashite) has the regular cast dressed as characters from several famous police and detective TV dramas, and Ran is featured as Lieutenant Fukuie, looking in her bag for her police badge as always.

One thing I find difficult about writing about inverted mystery stories is figuring out how much I should write about the plot actually, as in most inverted stories, a lot is already revealed to the reader. In fact, the fun in these stories often lies in the fact that although the reader knows more about the facts of the case than the Lieutenant, she'll usually still out-think you. In order not to spoil too much, I'll keep my summaries for the four stories rather short. The volume opens with Saigo no Issatsu ("The Last Volume"), which stars Amamiya Sachiko, head librarian of the Enamito Library. Enamito Kousuke was during his life a true connoisseur of books and when he retired, he had his secretary Sachiko become head of his own library, but after his death, the library became the property of his son Hirohisa, a no-good bum who is keen on selling off everything as soon as he can to get some money. Sachiko plans to kill Hirohisa in order to save the library, and she dresses the scene so it looks like Hirohisa had snuck into the library himself in order to steal some rare books to sell. This first story is a not particularly baffling, but still entertaining mystery, with a few different points that attract the Lieutenant's attention which a careful reader will also notice. Some of these contradictions are presented quite open (fact A and fact B don't mesh), but some also require the reader to make another, logical assumption (if both fact A and fact B are true, that must mean fact C), and this also keeps the reader on their toes in this fairly short opening story.

In Occam no Kamisori ("Occam's Razor"), Lieuteant Fukuie is investigating the murder on associate professor Ikeuchi, who was seemingly killed by the same robber who has been roaming the neighborhood lately. The questions Fukuie has about the murder however lead her to Yanagida Yoshifumi, a university teacher who used to teach scientific investigation at the police academy, and who has actually taught Fukuie herself in her rookie days. What makes this story interesting is not only the fact we have an expert in crime investigation who commited the murder, the story is also written in a way so not everything about Yanagida's plan is explained right from the beginning, leaving also a few things for the reader to find out as they read on .For example, Yanagida steals a pack of cigarettes from the victim in their first scene, before the murder occurs, but the implication of that isn't explained until later. 

Aijou no Scenario ("A Scenario of Love") is about the actress Ogino Mariko, who's being blackmailed by her rival actress Kakinuma Emi to give up on a certain audition. Mariko kills Emi by feeding her sleeping pills, and then leaving Emi's car running in the garage so she'd suffocate. That way it'd seem Emi had simply taken her usual sleeping draught without switching her car off. A receipt of the things Emi bought at the convenience store gives Fukuie more than enough leeway to suspect this isn't just an accident. While the true motive of the murderer isn't really well-hinted at, I'd say that as a mystery, this short story works reasonably well with more than enough well-clewed parts that explain why Fukuie would start having her doubts about the whole case.

In the final story Tsuki no Shizuku ("Moon Tear"), Tanimoto Kichirou, owner of the Tanimoto Sake Brewery, kills his rival Satou of the Satou Brewery. The two had very different approaches when it came to sake: the Satou Brewery was producing in masses, but connoisseurs couldn't stand their awful sake, while the Tanimoto Sake Brewery did everything the old-fashioned way to maintain quality, but they could hardly produce enough to keep the company floating. Satou was trying to kill off Tanimoto Sake Brewery once and for all by adopting a cost leader strategy, which Tanimoto couldn't survive for long, so Tanimoto Kichirou killed Satou, making it seem like Satou had snuck into the Tanimoto Sake Brewery to spy on their sake and had fallen into one of the empty sake tanks. The decisive hint that shows Tanimoto killed Satou is quite brilliantly hidden within the text, and perfectly fitting for the story. Looking at this core mystery plot, I think this one is the best plotted one, with a really interesting situation for the reader to solve even though they should know more than Fukuie.

By the way, it's interesting how Lieutenant Fukuie is quite the nondescript character most of the time. While the spotlight's supposed to be on the culprit in Columbo, Columbo actually always has a presence on screen whenever he's in the scene. That doesn't really work with novels though. Mitani Kouki's novelization of his own Furuhata Ninzaburou series (also inspired by Columbo) shows this difference very well: while on the television screen, Furuhata has countless of quirky traits and commandeers every scene he's in, he's actually almost a traitless figure in the novel version, who appears only to put the pressure on the culprit. By putting as little emphasis on the detective character, the focus shifts almost completely to the psychology of the culprit and to how they view the detective. This is also more or less what happens in the Lieutenant Fukuie series, where Fukuie seldom becomes more than the woman with short black hair and frameless glasses who has an eerie smile on her face as she talks with the suspects.

Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu is on the whole a capable mystery story collection that really manages to scratch that itch for Columbo-esque inverted mystery stories. There's also surprising variety in these stories, so I am quite curious to see what other adventures Fukuie has in the following volumes and I'm sure I'll be seeing more of her soon here.

Original Japanese title(s): 大倉崇裕 『福家警部補の挨拶』:「最後の一冊」/「オッカムの剃刀」/「愛情のシナリオ」/「月の雫」