A Script for Danger

「警察？あんたが？」

「はい」

「保険会社の人かと思った」

「よく言われます」

「禁断の筋書（プロット）」

"You're with the police?"

"Yes."

"I thought you were selling insurances."

"People often do."
"The Forbidden Plot"

Even with series I like, I usually don't get farther than two books a year, so in that regard, I'd say that Mitsuda Shinzou's Toujou Genya series has been a real anomaly these two years. And that also holds for the series I'll be discussing today.

Because this is the third time I'll be reviewing Ookura Takahiro's Lieutenant Fukuie series here this year. Though I'm pretty sure this will be the last one this year: I read the paperback pocket version of this series, but the most recent two volumes are at the moment still only available in the larger format. In essence, this series has not changed a bit since the first volume. In this Columbo-inspired inverted mystery series, we follow both the criminals in each story, as well as Lieutenant Fukuie, a mysterious young-looking woman who is often mistaken for everything but a homicide detective. Her keen eye for detail, her extensive knowledge about the most obscure fields of interests and most of all, her almost frightening focus on the case at hand (she hardly sleeps) always allow her to pick up the little mistakes of even the most perfectly planned crime, and while some might try, nobody mangaes to escape the Lieutenant for long. Fukuie Keibuho no Houkoku ("The Report of Lieutenant Fukuie", 2013) also carries the alternate English title Enter Lieutenant Fukie With A Report and features three new stories of criminals who are unlucky enough to find her on their case.

Three? Okay, if I had to mention one thing that is different from the previous two volumes, it's that this volume features only three stories instead of four, as the middle story is about twice as long as the usual story length. Besides that, it's still the comedic inverted short story series it's always been. Like Columbo, Lieutentant Fukuie has a lot of comedic traits, mostly her forgetfulness in her own private matters, even though she's a mad computer when it comest to her cases. Scenes of Fukuie forgetting to switch on her phone or simply leaving the thing at home, or having to borrow money from her subordinate to pay her cab because she lost her wallet add some personality to a woman who'd otherwise be an almost perfect cop, being able to outwit both criminals and even the brass in her own organization in her pursuit of justice. Fukuie is even portrayed as an almost supernatural being similar to a fairy at times, as many of the witnesses she questions often end up in a better mood after she's finished her business with them. This series features a lot of witnesses by the way: each story has like five or six segments told from the POV of a witness who happens to be visited by Fukuie, so that goes on top of the segments that focus on the criminals themselves and the parts where Fukuie interacts with her fellow detectives.

In the first story Kindan no Plot ("The Forbidden Plot") we are introduced to Kawade Midori, a manga artist who feels herself forced to kill off Miura Mariko. Once they were best of friends and worked together as aspiring manga artists but eventually, only Midori was approached by a publisher to become a professional. Mariko on the other hand became an editor at a publisher and later the head of the sales department. Mariko however never forgave Midori for abandoning her and going pro solo, and in her new position of power, Mariko has slowly been killing off all the projects involving Midori. When Midori realizes that even her new serialization is in danger of being cancelled before it has even started, Midori decides to plea with Mariko, but when she's laughed away, she killed her old friend in a rage. She dresses the scene to make it seem like Mariko had slipped in the bathroom (Mariko had injured her leg earlier and was using a crutch). Things of course don't go as she had plotted when Lieutenant Fukuie appears, who manages to not only immediately prove it was not an accident due to the seemingly insignificant fact of an open bathroom door, but she also quickly finds Midori's trail, who is desperate to make her new series a grand success. On the whole a good, but perhaps not particularly outstanding story. In essence it's built around the same concept of most of the other stories, with Midori not aware of a certain fact as she committed the crime, which eventually ties her to the murder. As always, this is presented in a reasonably fair manner to the reader, so getting there is always satisfying. Like Columbo, Fukuie will also point out countless of other, minor contradictions that the reader is often also capable of guessing, and this keeps the story from start to finish interesting to read, but Kindan no Plot is not particularly better than the usual Fukuie story (or worse, for that matter).

Shoujo no Chinmoku ("The Girl's Silence") is by far the longest story in this series until now, being twice as long as the average length. One year ago, the Kuriyama Group (a yakuza organization) was disbanded, and the now deceased head asked his right hand Sugawara Tatsumi to take care of the 13 members, by helping them find a proper job and keeping them on the straight path. This was of course no a simple task, as few businesses are eager to hire former gang members and it's been a heavy year for Sugawara finding a place for his flock in society and making sure they wouldn't go back to the underworld again. Kuriyama Jirou, younger son of the former head, wants to bring the Kuriyama Group back again though, and kidnaps the daughter of his brother Kunitaka. Kunitaka had always lived a normal life removed from the gangster-business of his father, but now Jirou wants Kunitaka, as the proper heir to the Kuriyama Group, to gather up the members of their old group and attack their nemesis to start a new gang war. Desperate to stop Jirou from undoing everything the old head had wanted, Sugawara quickly takes steps to locate Jirou's hide-out in the mountains using Kanazawa, a former Kuriyama Group member who went to another yakuza group. Sugawara kills both Jirou and Kanazawa and makes it seem the two abducted the girl together and then killed each other in a fall-out. Eventually the local police find the girl alive and unharmed, standing in a pool of blood of the two dead men. It seems like an easy case at first, but Fukuie quickly deduces there might have been a third person present at the crime scene. Sugawara however is desperate not to get caught as long as the members of the former Kuriyama Group still need his help.

A very long story, which in fact doesn't do anything different from the other Fukuie stories in terms of plot, only being longer. It really does drag a bit due to its length, though I have to say that Sugawara is by far the most sympathic murderer we've seen in this series until now. We see a lot of him due to the length of the story, so it helps his story arc is actually engaging to follow, while we also see a bit of more Fukuie's scary side as she also tackles some corrupt cops in the anti-organized crime unit.

The last story, Megami no Hohoemi ("The Smile of The Goddess") features an unlikely duo of murderers: an elderly couple, of whom the wife is mostly confined to a wheelchair. The story starts with the duo making a bomb, which they plant on an unsuspecting man. The elderly man calmly waits to find the man with the bomb step inside a van with two other man, and then coolly detonates the thing, blowing a car up in broad daylight in the busy shopping streets of Ginza. It turns out the three men were actually bank robbers on the run, who were about to strike again. At first, the police suspects the three had a bomb ready to blow up the safe of their new target, as they had used a bomb the last time too, but small details like the fact the van was parked a block away from their target and a restaurant which had a fake reservation bring Fukuie to the old couple, who thoroughly enjoy Fukuie as a person, but whose sharp questions show she's right on their trail. The final fact Fukuie uncovers to prove the old couple did is really cleverly done and even after Fukuie revealed the fact initially I didn't quite comprehend what the implications were, leading to a delayed "Ooooh, of course!" sensation. The part where Fukuie explains how the couple horribly misunderstood part of the robbers' plan would've been better as a fair-play part in a visual format I think, as it's really cleverly done, but in novel form, it's just told to the reader, and there's no way they could've figured out that part themselves.

I don't sound particularly enthusiastic about Fukuie Keibuho no Houkoku perhaps, but it's really a well-done inverted short story collection. After reading three volumes in a (for me) relatively short period of time though, the stories do feel similar in terms of set-up, so by now, I might be missing a genuine feeling of surprise. All three volumes until now have maintained a very good level of quality in terms of readability and plotting, so any of these volumes is a safe read, guaranteed to satisfy a mystery reader. That said, I do think it's a good thing that I'll have to wait a while for the paperback pockets to be released before I'll see the Lieutenant again.

Original Japanese title(s): 大倉崇裕　『福家警部補の報告』: 「禁断の筋書（プロット）」/「少女の沈黙」/「女神の微笑」