The Vanishing Game

 「死体の入れ物といえば、これに勝るものはない」

『ここに死体を捨てないでください！」

"There was nothing better than that to put a dead body in."

"Don't Dump Your Bodies Here Please!"

Oh, wow, it's been this long since I last read a book in Higashigawa Tokuya's Ikagawashi series? Man, at one time I was reading at least one of these books a year....

Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! ("Don't Dump Your Bodies Here Please!" 2009) opens with a a phone call from Kaori's younger sister Haruka, which turned Kaori's day complete upside down. It was still early in the day when an unknown woman suddenly barged into Haruka's apartment, and in her sheer surprise and fear, Haruka accidently stabbed the woman with her fruit knife. Unwisely, Haruka fled her room, leaving the body behind. By the time she had come to her senses, she found herself in another prefecture and called to her sister for help. Figuring that the police isn't likely to believe her younger sister's story, especially as she fled the scene of the crime, Kaori declares she'll take care of everything for her younger sister. Kaori learns her sister did really tell her the truth, as the dead body is still lying in Haruka's kitchen. Going through the victim's wallet, she learns the victim was called Yamada Keiko, a woman who had no connections whatsover to Haruka. Kaori decides she needs to move the body away from Haruka's room, and dupes the young man Tetsuo into helping her. Tetsuo drives a truck collecting large recyclable trash, and they decide to use the old contrabass case he collected to hide Keiko's body in. They drive off in Keiko's car, and after wandering around the edges of town to find a place to dump the body, they decide to drive the car, with Keiko inside, into the allegedly bottomless Moon Crescent Lake on Bonkura Mountain outside Ikagawashi City. It's only after they've sunk the car the two realize they're now stuck on the mountain without a car and after a long, long time of being lost, they find refuge in an inn with hot springs on the mountain. What should've been the end of a long night however is just the beginning, as it just so happens a certain private detective, his asssistant and their landlord have also arrived at the same inn, as they are looking for a client who never showed up for her appointment: a certain Yamada Keiko.

Like I said, I read a lot of the Ikagawashi series in the earlier days of this blog, but my last review related to this series dates from 2014, when I reviewed the TV drama Watashi no Kirai na Tantei ("The Detective I Don't Like"), based on the books of this series. Like most of Higashigawa Tokuya's series, the Ikagawashi series is a humorous detective series, which combines snappy dialogues and slapstick comedy with proper puzzle mystery plots. This series is particularly unique in that it basically has no fixed main detective character, and the series is therefore titled after the city where these cases take place. The overly self-confident private detective Ukai Morio, his slow-witted assistant Ryuuhei and their landlord Akemi (who doesn't like poking around as a detective, but simply needs to make sure Ukai pays his rent) are often at the center of things, but usually Inspectors Sunagawa and Shiki also end up as focus characters, and any of these characters is able to solve (part of) the mystery at hand.

Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! too has three perspectives for the reader. First we have Kaori and Tetsuo, who dumped the body and are then treated to several surprises at the inn. First they find that a weird middle-aged man (Ukai Morio) is asking around about Yamada Keiko, and with time, Kaori and Tetsuo even start to suspect Ukai, Ryuuhei and Akemi killed the woman in Haruka's room, not knowing that at the exact same time Ukai and Akemi arrive at the conclusion that Kaori and Tetsuo must've done killed their client who never showed up! And then there's the police, who have their own suspicions too. A lot of the comedy is derived from seeing the same situation from various perspectives, but that's of course also the way the reader will eventually solve the puzzle. Several other incidents occur in this novel besides the mysterous death of Yamada Keiko: the following day, the owner of the inn they're all staying is found dead, ostenstibly drowned after he fell into the river during a midnight fishing session. There are also suspicions of foul play, but it seems that most of the viable suspects have a perfect alibi, as they were watching a live soccer game of the national team together, making it impossible for most of them to go all the way to the man's fishing spot and back in time. Kaori and Tetsuo are also confronted with another surprise: they happen to come to Moon Crescent Lake the following day again, but not only learn it isn't even remotely 'bottomless', they are unable to find the car they dumped despite the super clean and clear water of the lake! But why did somebody remove the car with Keiko's body from the lake and how?

Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! keeps the reader from start to finish entertained by juggling between these various characters and showing everything from various perspectives, and this structure definitely helps out the underlying mystery plot, as it'd be a bit simple if left on its own. Some of the elements are somewhat easy to guess, for example the matter what Yamada Keiko was doing in Haruka's apartment anyway, though the death of the owner of the inn, and the disappearance of the dumped car are linked in an interesting manner with a somewhat original solution, though I do have trouble imagining how practical this trick would actually be. There are some neat, but obvious clues left here and there and overall, this is a very fair mystery novel that isn't too hard and can be quite satisyfying to read.

Oh, and a small note, but don't you just hate it when they suddenly change the style of covers suddenly? The earlier pocket releases of this series featured a very different style, but at some point they changed it to have these comic characters, and republished the older novels too with the new covers. The thing is: I think these new covers are really fun. So now I have the four older pockets in the old style, and only this novel in the new but better style...

Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! is also the last novel in the series for the moment by the way. It is followed by three short story collections, but I am not sure when I'm going to read those books. Parts of them were already used for the drama adaptation, so I am already familiar with almost half of them. Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! for me however was a safe, familiar return to a place I know well. It's perhaps not the best novel in this series (it isn't), but it's a consistent and funny mystery novel that does everything you'd expect from a novel in this series.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉 『ここに死体を捨てないでください！』