The Wild Brood

One little nigger boy left all alone

He got married and then there were none

First impressions are ever-lasting, so I always imagine Kidd and Pink from these books exactly like they appeared and sounded in the PlayStation game Cat the Ripper, even though that was err... quite a bad game (though the voice-acting was okay).
 

Last year, I reviewed Yamaguchi Masaya's amusing The 13th Detective, a gamebook-turned-novel which was set in Parallel Britain, which is not a world where Brexit didn't happen, but a world that is similar to ours, but different at key points (for example, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was a comedy, not a tragedy). The most important difference however is that all the fictional detectives we know, like Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Gideon Fell or Father Brown, all exist in Parallel Britain. Their successes led to Edward's Law in Great Britain: detectives belonging to the Masters of Detective Association are allowed to lead and command any official criminal investigation for 72 hours, during which the police force must follow the detective's orders. Due to the superior position of the MDs in this world, Scotland Yard has been reduced to a lowly supporting role, and nowadays most police officers are just punk hooligans or slackers who consider policework nothing but a job like any other.

The mohawk-bearing Kidd Pistols is one of these punk police detectives of Scotland Yard. He and his girlfriend/subordinate Pink Belladonna form the National Unbelievable Troubles Section (NUTS) inside Scotland Yard, where they deal with weird incidents that normal police detectives can't handle, and therefore they often have to team up with rather eccentric MDs, like Sherlock Holmes Jr. (one of many who claim to be the son of the great detective) or Dr. Bull (a disciple of Dr. Fell). While Kidd is often mistaken for just another of those lazy, good-for-nothing punks who work at Scotland Yard, Kidd is actually often capable of out-thinking the proper MDs in the nutty cases he handles by acting exactly like a punk, not confirming to fixed views and looking at things from a completely different angle. In Yamaguchi Masaya's short story collection Kidd Pistols no Boutoku ("The Blasphemy of Kidd Pistols", 1991), we are presented with four NUTS cases patterned after Mother Goose rhymes which involve, among others, a dead hippopotamus, a plastered piece of shit and a locked room murder committed by the Jamaican spirit Duppy.

Kidd and Pink are called out to the home of the legendary actress Elizabeth Skinner, who lost her first love of her life in the war, and got dumped by her second love. After that, she remained cooped up in her own home for fifty years, never ever setting a foot outside anymore, only eating and drinking each and every day. The only people she let inside her house were her maid and her solicitor. Her pitiful life also ended in a pitiful way, because the rather corpulent Elizabeth was one morning found murdered in her home (and with corpulent, I mean they needed Kidd, Pink and two others to move her body out the house). Traces of poison are found in her dinner of the previous day, but the whole case doesn't jive: Elizabeth wouldn't have let anyone inside, the maid who prepared the food could hardly be so foolish as to poison the food she made herself and there are no traces of unlawful entry in the house. Kidd, Pink and Sherlock Holmes Jr. therefore have to figure out who murdered a poor woman who hadn't even gone outside even once in fifty years in the opening story "Mushamusha, Gokugoku" Satsujin Jiken, which also carries the English title The "Victuals and Drink" Murder Case.

The mystery revolves around how the murder could've taken place considering the rather unique and curious circumstances of the crime scene (the woman never let anyone she didn't know inside), and the exact location of the body. There are some pretty smart ideas going on here (I love the deductions revolving the location of the body). The solution does require you to deduce the actions of a certain person based on some clews which might not be completely farfetched, but do lack a bit of convincing power.

In Kaba wa Wasurenai or Hippopotamus Can Remember, Kidd, Pink and Sherlock Holmes Jr. find themselves investigating the murder on a zoo owner, and his pet hippopotamus. The victim left the dying message "H" on the floor with his own blood, but the mystery is of course why the hippopotamus was killed together with its master. As a whydunnit mystery, this story is rather simple as once you remember one early scene, you're very likely to figure out what happened exactly, but capably clewed.

Magatta Hanzai or The Crooked Crime has Kidd and Sherlock Holmes Jr. investigate a series of strange incidents: first a pet shop owner is killed followed by the murder on a businessman, who had purchased two cats from said pet shop owner. The businessman was discovered inside the junkyard/atelier of an artist with whom he had cut financial ties recently, as the "art" the man made was a bit too eccentric considering the cost. The victim's body had been covered in plaster, exactly like the artist's best known works, which obviously seem to suggest the artist had something to do with it, but Kidd manages to arrive at a completely different truth. This is the longest story in the collection, I think, and there are some good things going on here, like a very good, well-supported fake solution and some really neatly hidden clues (though it also has to be said that one early scene is very likely to attract a lot of attention because it's so obviously out of place, it has to be relevant to the solution). I think this plot might've even worked well as a full-length story.

The Punky Reggae Murder starts with the seaside live concert Sound System Live, organized by a pirate radio station. The main attraction is without a doubt Buster Solomon and his band the Little Criminals. Buster who started out as a poor boy in the slumps of Jamaica, has now become an major hit in Parallel Britain with his reggae music. He is also a devout believer of Rastafari and uses his music to help out the Labour Party in his home country, as they support Rastafari. This has earned him the treats of right-wing activists, who are likely the ones who are sending him and his band threatening letters with verses from the nursery rhyme Ten Little Niggers, signed by Duppy (a Jamaican evil spirit). Despite these threats, as well as physical fights between his two publishers who would wish the other's dead, Buster intends to play at the fund-raiser concert tomorrow. Everyone in the band, the publishers, as well as Kidd, Pink and Dr. Bull (who were invited through Pink's connectons) stay in cottages overlooking the sea that night. Kidd is called on the phone in the night by Buster, saying he thinks Duppy is hanging outside his cottage, followed by a cry for help. Kidd rushes to Buster's cottage, only to find the front door locked. The french windows on the seaside terrace however are opened, and inside they find Buster, stabbed in his chest and his dreadlocks cut. And to the party's surprise, they find (red) herrings spread around his head, like the verse "A red herring swallowed one and then there were three" from Ten Little Niggers. At first, it is assumed the murderer escaped across the terrace, but a narcotics detective, who had been sent here on a tip regarding a big heroine deal, had been watching the terrace all the time, and had seen nobody leave that way. As the front door was locked, this means this was an impossible murder, as the murderer couldn't have escaped any way from the cottage. Meanwhile, another band member is found dead in the cottage next door, and he has three horrible slashes on his back, like "a big bear hugged one".

The background setting of Rastafari and Jamaican religions is rather original and something I at least had never seen in detective fiction before. The use of Ten Little Niggers/And Then There Were None as a theme is of course a risky one, as anyone would be tempted to make a comparison with Christie's work, but this story is quite different, and manages to do very different things with the same rhyme. The fundamental idea that is played out here is not extremely original, but the clewing (with the red herrings) is fairly accomplished. The locked room situation too is not particularly awe-inspiring, though it is connected well, and naturally to the other events going on in this story, so it doesn't feel like it's just there because we needed a locked room murder (note by the way that Dr. Bull is an expert in locked room murders, which is why he's featured in this story rather than Holmes Jr.) One other major clue however is a bit harder to get: it is based on two physical clues, and while one of them is rather cunningly hidden (though to be honest, I had no idea that existed in that form, so I wasn't able to figure that out), but the other one is hardly addressed until the moment Kidd actually explains it.

My first introduction to Kidd Pistols as a character was a bit strange, as the game Cat the Ripper is really weird, and while I did like the novel adaptation The 13th Detective, Kidd wasn't really the protagonist there. Kidd Pistols no Boutoku is thus the first time I've read "proper" Kidd stories, but these Mother Goose rhyme-inspired stories are quite entertaining. The setting of Parallel Britain allows for some odd, but funny scenes (like Pink constantly stealing things even though she's a cop) and ex-drug addicts and other punks functioning as the world's narcs and coroners, and most of the stories are plotted well as mysteries, with rather crafty clues at times. And it's only now in this final paragraph that I realize that these stories all feature rather unique motives for actions, which adds to the zaniness of this world. Anyway, I'm certainly interested to see how the other adventures of Kidd and Pink will turn out!

Original Japanese title(s): 山口雅也『キッド・ピストルズの冒涜』: 「むしゃむしゃ、ごくごく殺人事件」/「カバは忘れない」/「曲がった犯罪」/「パンキー・レゲエ殺人（マーダー）」