Update on Crime

Something old, something new,
something borrowed, something blue

(Bridal rhyme)

One reason I don't often do anthology reviews is because I'm never able to fit all the tags I want to use within the character limit. So if I do an anthology review, it's likely of a relatively short one.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. I didn't vote for the stories this year though (or for any year since I became a member.... I read far too few new releases each year...)
 

The Honkaku Mystery Award is awarded every year to the best mystery novel published in the year as chosen by the members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. One of the qualifications to be eligible for the award is that the story must have been published as an individual, standalone release, which is of course seldom the case with short stories and essays, which are usually first published in magazines or other publications (short story collections are exceptions of course). That is why the top-rated short stories and essay of the year are usually collected in a special anthology edited by the the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. Until 2018, this annual anthology was titled Best Honkaku Mystery [Year], and contained up to ten different stories, as well as one essay on mystery fiction. However, the format was changed for 2019, and with that, the title too. Honkaku Ou 2019 ("The King of Honkaku 2019") is not only published in the muuuuuch handier, but smaller pocket format, it loses the essay and is also somewhat shorter than the previous releases, but its goal is still the same: to collect the best-rated mystery short stories of the year within one anthology.

Golgotha by Amemura Kou starts with the arrival of a letter by Akihiro's uncle Nakamitsu Eiichi, who says he'll be travelling for a while and he wants Akihiro to baby-sit his house for a while. Akihiro has only just arrived at this house out in a small village, when the phone rings. The man on the other side seems surprised by the fact Akihiro's answering the phone, and asks some questions about who he is and where his uncle is. The man also drops some names that don't ring a bell with Akihiro, but the man says he'll swing by right away. The man has a curious conversation with Akihiro, apparently hinting at something without really pushing the matter, and eventually leaves Akihiro with a present: a mystery novel titled Labyrinth By The Sea by Horinaga Saiun. A note was wedged between the pages, which says "Doorplate". Akihiro learns his uncle's house used to belong to the author Horinaga Saiun and starts digging in the life of the writer, slowly uncovering the trail the mysterious man has been laying out for Akihiro. Golgotha is more a thriller than a puzzle plot mystery: the mysterious visitor keeps feeding Akihiro small hints that seem to point towards something, but it's not like the reader is challenged to solve the puzzle themselves based on these hints. It's an okay thriller story, but perhaps not the story I had expected as the opening story of this anthology.

Gyakuen no Gogo ("Gyaku-en in the Afternoon") is part of Nagaoka Hiroki's 119, a series on firefighters (119 is the emergency number for fire and ambulance services). The "Gyaku-en" in the title refers to the sad happening when children die before their parents and the parents have to arrange for the funerals of their own kids. That is exactly what Yoshikuni Satoshi has to do, as his twenty-four year old son Yuuki died in the line of duty. Both men were firefighters and knew the risk of their profession, but Satoshi couldn't have imagined his son would fall off the fifth floor of a building while attempting to save a woman in her apartment. The story is set at Yuuki's funeral service, where Satoshi tells the people gathered (mostly collegues) about what kind of child Yuuki was and how proud he is of him. However, as Satoshi's speech continues, he starts focusing on the incident that took his son's life, and by the time he's showing pictures of the apartment of the woman who Yuuki failed to save, the reader is fully aware something's wrong with Yuuki's death. A very nicely clewed story, with clues that are hidden very naturally in the text, but which really take on a different meaning once you arrive at the conclusion. The main hint that sets things off is rather mundane if taken fully on its own, but it works surprisingly well as a 'jumpstarter'  for the rest of the reveals. I do find it kinda hard to believe that one character would do that in such an impulsive manner, but okay, I guess it was also kinda hinted at.

Tomoi Hitsuji's Biwa no Tane ("Loquat Seeds") stars Tsutabayashi, a young man with violent deaths hiding in his past, who still seeks redemption and hopes to find forgiveness from the people hurt. While Tsutabayashi tries to keep quiet about himself, his rare family name often often rings some bells with people, and he has been forced to quit his job more than a few times because his "colleagues" started to shun or harass him after finding out. That is also the reason Tsutabayashi at first didn't feel like informing the police when he discovered the body of a murdered high school student, a new victim of the serial killer who has been terrorizing the city. He does do his civic duty however, and to his surprise, he finds him invited by the division manager of his job. The man learned about Tsutabayashi's past due to an acquaintance at the police, but does not seem to be planning to ask him to quit his job. His son was a classmate of the victim found by Tsutabayashi, so they have a talk too, but while everything seems to end peacefully here, Tsutabayashi's past ends up exposed to his workplace, and he's forced to quit anyway. It's at this point Tsutabayashi decides he should try solve the murder on the student, as a way of redemption. The story was originally written for an anthology with "twist endings" as its theme, though I have to say the twist ending was kinda telegraphed too obvious. The rest of the story is also rather straightforward: some of the clues are literally "the killer dropped their personal belongings at the scene of the crime", so that's not really surprising. The underlying themes of the story are good though, and perhaps this story is best enjoyed for that.

Toda Yoshinaga's Negaisasa ("Wish Tree") is set at the end of the Edo period and stars a patrolman called Toda Souzaemon. His prey, a notorious swindler, leads Souzaemon to Maruya, one of the better known "establishments" in the entertainment district. The swindler had been using his earnings to spend several nights with Peony, the top girl of Maruya, but of course, he never should've stayed for so long at one place, as that's how Souzaemon managed to catch him. Souzaemon becomes interested in Peony himself, not as an object of lust, but as an adversary in the game of Igo, so he too starts visiting the girl. Maruya itself has been in financial problems lately due to the useless spendings of Tomizou, who married into the family of O-Sen to become master of Maruya. Tomizou became obsessed with Shiroinugami, a deified form of a white dog from England which died near Mt. Fuji and whose deaths Tomizou happened to witness. Since then, Tomizou has been using all his money on dog idols and import from the West like sofas, tables and coffee. O-Sen plans to kill her husband, but wants to make it seem like it was Shiroinugami's curse that did it and sends a fake threatening letter. On Tanabata (July 7), the day the dog was born, her husband conducts a strange dancing ritual to appease Shiroinugami. Souzaemon is asked to watch Tomizou. Tomizou is surrounded on three sides by four-part panels, while Souzaemon sits in front of the open side. Souzaemon doses off slightly due to the long ritual, but then Tomizou suddenly falls down, having been stabbed by a sharp instrument. But how could that have happened: Tomizou was surrounded by the three panels (which are undamaged), and Souzaemon was sitting in front of the open side, and while he was drowsy, he surely would've seen someone carrying a weapon appear right in front of him. The way this impossible murder was committed can be guessed quite easily, but it fits really well with the historical setting of the story, making it quite memorable. It's definitely a good example of how a good background story/setting can elevate a plot idea.

Chibiman to Jumbo ("Chibiman and Jumbo") by Shirai Tomoyuki is the nastiest story of the anthology. Susumu is the poor slave of the three fat speed-eater brothers Mogura, Moguri and Moguru, who in order to maintain their speed-eating empire Munch Land, are willing to torture and kill people on a whim (actually, they enjoy killing and eating them too just for fun). But what they don't need is exposure. Some days ago, Munch Land held a Sea Roach Speed-Eating Contest between Moguru (stage name Jumbo SP) and Chibiman, a female speed-eater. They had to eat a bucket full of sea roaches (with some "Throw-Up Pauses" planned in between). The contest seemed to be going in Chibiman's favor, but then she suddenly started to convulse, and dropped her head in the bucket of sea roaches. To the audience, they lied that Chibiman was just feeling bad, but in fact she had died. The three brothers first agreed to kill off Susumu and make it seem like he had cannabalistic tendencies by stuffing Chibiman's remains in his stomach, but Susumu pleads for his life, saying that Chibiman was clearly poisoned and that the poisoner might be after the brothers too. Susumu is given one day to find out who killed Chibiman, but he has quite a problem to solve: why was only Chibiman's bucket of roaches poisoned, was she really the intended victim and what was the motive for this murder? This is a really weird, distasteful story with gangster speed-eating brothers who are apparently in a habit of killing and eating people, and Susumu himself is hardly a hero, making filthy jokes and kicking women in the stomach so hard they have to throw up too. It makes it really hard to care about any of the characters in this story. The core mystery plot is fairly complex though: the motive for poisoning the sea roaches is really original and probably the best part of the story, but I thought the way Susumu suddenly realizes who the murderer was, was a bit too sudden without much build-up.

Tantei Daihon ("Detective Script") was written by Ooyama Seiichirou as a homage to Abiko Takemaru's Tantei Eiga and follows the same basic idea: Playwright Kasuga Sousuke barely survived a fire in his home, and while he's in the hospital, the members of his theater troupe are left with the little that remains of their upcoming murder play. The policeman who rescued Kasuga from the fire only found a partially burned scenario, so the actors have a start of a murder mystery that happens on a remote island, but not the solution. As they discuss the story, each of the actors comes up with a solution that indicates their own character as the murderer. Madoy's FGO Mystery: The Meihousou Murders I reviewed earlier this year was also clearly inspired by Abiko's novel by the way. It's by far the shortest story in the anthology, but Tantei Daihon is still a surprisingly tightly-plotted story with several fake solutions. The final solution is clever: if you just follow the clues "straight", you're likely to run into a wall, but once you figure out the true meaning of a certain passage in the screenplay, everything is turned upside down, allowing you to arrive at the correct solution. I love this type of whodunnit setups, where you can cross out most of the suspects if you simply carefully follow each clue, but there's one final clue that asks for a bit more imagination in interpretation, which can turn everything around. Short, but satsifying.

To be honest, I have the feeling previous Best Honkaku Mystery anthologies were not only beefier, but also more satisfying as puzzle plot anthologies. Honkaku Ou 2019 in comparison is not only shorter in page count, but fewer of the stories really fitted with my own personal interest: stories like Golgotha and Biwa no Tane are for example thematically strong examples, but seen purely as puzzle plot stories I find them on the whole somewhat disappointing. Nagaoka Hiroki's series on firefighters seems interesting though. As the short story form is still going strong in Japan, I think having these anthologies that collect stories from different magazines is really great and some of the previous Best Honkaku Mystery anthologies I read had some fantastic stories, but the selection for this year was not exactly what I had been expecting.

Original Japanese title(s):  本格ミステリ作家クラブ（編）『本格王2019』: 飴村行「ゴルゴダ」/ 長岡弘樹「逆縁の午後」/ 友井羊「枇杷の種」/ 戸田義長「願い笹」/白井智之「ちびまんとジャンボ」/ 大山誠一郎「探偵台本」