Trouble in Warp Space

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." 

"Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There"

I don't like doing reviews of the same author in a row, so I'm glad I got to sneak Death Come True in between...

Tanabata "Kick" Kikuno was one of the members of the local idol artist group Blue Sky G as a high school student, but after the trio disbanded, Kick enrolled in the police academy and after graduation she was assigned to the National Police Agency. An attractive former idol in the force was considered to be beneficial to the image of the police, but after the rookie detective managed to solve a murder case with the help of the good men and women of the Homicide division of the Metropolitan Police Department and the brilliant police data analyst Shinkai "Angler" Yasukimi, people higher up in the NPA started to get nervous, as they fear the highly popular and capable detective might climb the career ladder faster they can. Attempts are made to undo Kick's posting to the MPD Homicide division, as any successes made there by Kick are bound to boost her career and make things more difficult for others. But it's not only internal politics that trouble Kick, but also international relations. Kick and "Angler" are sent to Boston to protect the Japanese MIT exchange student Sanjouin Haruhiko: as the scion of the Sanjouin clan, who have served for generations as important diplomats, Haruhiko is expected to become one of Japan's most important diplomats in the future. Haruhiko is also friends with Norman Kirk, son of a US senator who is currently on the committee negotiating an important US-Japan trade treaty in the making, and figures in the upper echelons of Japanese politics are convinced that Haruhiko's connections are essential to the negotations.

However, both Haruhiko and Norman's names have been found on a hit list. Some days ago, the body of Norman's bodyguard was found in a car hidden in a state park. There were also clear signs two other people had been killed and buried somewhere in the park, though their bodies have not been discovered yet. In the victim's pocket, the FBI found a letter signed by the "Quantum Man," who swears to avenge "Fiona" by killing the seven people who caused her death. It turns out Haruhiko, Norman and five others formed a little group of friends who regularly used drugs and that their dealer Fiona had been killed during a turf war while she was trying to buy cocaine for them. The Quantum Man apparently blames these seven for Fiona's death. So three of the group are already dead, and the first murder was apparently committed under impossible circumstances: the first victim had entered a large storage unit to retrieve their stash of drugs while the others were waiting outside the only entrance. The others were alerted by a pistol shot and rushed inside the storage unit, but inside they could not find a sign of the murderer. But how could the Quantum Man have shot somebody inside without being seen enter or leave the building and with all exits watched? The investigation in Boston ultimately doesn't lead to new results, but a few weeks later, Kick is shocked to learn that Haruhiko, Norman and the two remaining persons on the list are coming to Japan because of intensified trade treaty negotiations. A succesful murder attempt on the son of a US senator would surely lead to an international scandal and weaken Japan's position in the negotiations, so it's in everyone's interest to prevent any further murders. The whole party stays at a fancy hotel in Tokyo owned by the Sanjouin family, which boasts advanced and effective security measures like a moat and motion sensors surrounding three sides of the hotel grounds, a special VIP building with elevators that can only be operated with a valid room key and an intelligent hotel layout which allows security cameras to cover every inch of the non-private sections of the hotel without any blind spots. And yet the Quantum Man succeeds again! Can this murderer really never be observed directly, but only by proxy through their actions? The higher-ups are willing to make Kick the scapegoat for the blunder, so her only way out is to solve these impossible murders before she's demoted in Katou Motohiro's Quantum Man Kara no Tegami - Tsukamaeta Mon Gachi! ("Letters from the Quantum Man - Those Who Make The Arrest Win!" 2017)

I've been reading Katou's mystery manga Q.E.D. and C.M.B. irregularly for a while now, but ever since I learned Katou has also been writing a novel series, I've been quite curious about them. The first entry in Katou's Tsukamaeta Mon Gachi! ("Those Who Make The Arrest Win!") series about former idol Tanabata "Kick" Kikuno was published in 2016, followed by sequels in 2017 and 2019. And now you might wonder: "Huh, I can't remember seeing a review of the first novel, but this post is about the second novel..." The answer is: I didn't pay attention and put the second novel in my shopping cart instead of the first by accident. All well. Everything I thought I needed to know was explained in the first few pages anyway, so you can definitely start with the second novel if you wish to do so. By the way, readers of Q.E.D. iff and C.M.B. might remember the character Kick, as she has also appeared in crossover stories there. There's one big Katou-verse going on, and it was actually surprising we didn't see any explicit Q.E.D. references in this novel, given that the first part of the novel is set in Boston and MIT, where Q.E.D.'s Touma lived and studied for some years.

Interestingly, I think of all I've read of Katou until now, I think this novel was the one I enjoyed the best overall, as one complete product. Theme-wise, there are a lot of similarities with Q.E.D. and C.M.B., but I think the balance between the various elements and their variations was the best here. The tone of the novel is a bit comedic of course like Katou's manga series, but there's more. For example, at first the athletic Kick seems to follow the model of the female sidekick figures Kana and Tatsuki from Q.E.D. and C.M.B., but she's given a lot more depth as the narrator of the story and while she's ultimately not the detective-character (that's "Angler") and occassionally out of her depths as a rookie detective, she's a pretty sharp character who is entertaining to follow. And while she also shows off her athletic skills, Kick's antics aren't just physical. Over the course of the story, several people in the NPA try to get Kick kicked out of Homicide and make her the scapegoat of any mistakes made during the operation, but Kick manages to slip away in rather clever ways. These segments make up for smaller, but interesting mysteries that invoke the spirit of the Q.E.D. stories that focus on logical contradiction and human psychology. The manner in which Kick manages to evade demotion after the hotel murder in particular is brilliant: properly set-up and clewed, the solution not only saves Kick, but manages to chase the conspirators into a corner in an amusing manner. It makes Kick a more interesting protagonist to follow than for example Touma and Shinra in Q.E.D. and C.M.B. respectively, as Kick is more of the underdog who still manages to hang on. The underlying storyline of the internal politics inside the MPD and NPA surrounding Kick's posting to the homicide division make Kick's own narrative interesting, especially as it also ties into the overall investigation in meaningful ways.

References to fields of science are of course the bread and butter of Q.E.D. and as Kick's hunting after the Quantum Man in this novel, we find naturally some references to quantum mechanics (Yes, the Cat's here too. Or not). In this tale, the circumstances of impossible murders committed by the Quantum Man serve as a way for Katou to write, in a simple and accessible manner, about some basic concepts of quantum physics. The murderer seems to defy normal physics in any case, as they can enter and leave places under observation without being detected at all, as if they can simply walk through walls. The most surprising ones are the double murder in the hotel, where the murderer manages to enter their victims' hotel rooms and leave without ever appearing on the security cameras and another murder where someone wearing a bulletproof vest is shot in the heart, even though there was nobody standing at the place where the shot was fired. The whole book is filled with impossible murders, though I have to admit I wasn't always as impressed by them. The first one for example is very simple and I don't think the misdirection works very well. In other cases, I can appreciate the basic ideas behind these murders, even if they rely on familiar ideas, but they don't always seem feasible in the context of the story: the murderer must've been one very busy and also very lucky person, as it's nearly impossible nobody noticed anything during all the preparation of the murderer. The Quantum Man is of course unmasked as a normal person who only appeared to have done the impossible, but the things they did do require so much luck, they might as well be someone defying the laws of nature. If it had only been a single instance of these murder plots, I wouldn't have thought too much of it, but when the murderer pulls off things like that one time after another without anyone ever asking questions, it's almost like they're really superhuman.  Reminds a bit of the murderer in The Tragedy of X. That said, I did like how Katou stringed these murders all together to create the illusion of the Quantum Man. And the murder situations themselves are alluring.

The detective-character of this series is the data analyst and former FBI agent Shinkai "Angler" Yasukimi. It's no surprise he reminds a bit of the protagonists of Q.E.D.. and C.M.B., though you see less of him because Kick's the one who's narrating and she has different tasks. I liked how near the end, the discovery of certain object allows Angler to set his trap to catch the murderer: the way he deduces the implications and true meaning of the object is truly clever. The stories I've read of Q.E.D. and C.M.B. don't often feature this kind of reasoning, with a focus on the interpretation of the physical evidence (as often seen in Ellery Queen-inspired mystery fiction), so that was a nice change. Though the rest of the impossible murders are more in the spirit of Katou's other series, with the focus more on looking at the known circumstances from a different angle and reinterpreting what we know already, rather than by finding physical clues or building a case through chains of deductions.  The plots in Katou's mystery manga also involve human drama, sometimes up to the extent that I think having a series detective kinda undermines the story, but here the human drama is mostly reserved to the end and I like the balance much better.

But seen as one complete story, I really enjoyed Quantum Man kara no Tegami - Tsukamaeta Mon Gachi!. It was fun to read, the various impossible murders are strung together in an interesting way through the Quantum Man even if the solutions aren't always as convincing, and while it's not a short novel, plenty of stuff happens here to keep the reader entertained from start to end. I'll definitely also pick up the rest of the series in the near future.

Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩『量子人間からの手紙 捕まえたもん勝ち!』