There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do
She gave them some broth without any bread
Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed
I have these cloth book covers I use whenever I read Japanese bunko-format pockets: it keeps the books clean and these cloth covers are more pleasant to hold in your hands while reading. While bunko pockets should have the exact same dimensions, meaning you can use the covers for all bunko pockets, the bunko pockets from Kobunsha tend to be like one single millimeter too high for my cloth covers, so I can't use them. Which is really annoying.
All the stories in this series feature an official English title, so the title page of Kidd Pistols no Manshin - Kidd Saisho no Jiken also says The Self-Conceit of Kidd Pistols - The Kidd Pistols' First Case. This is a fairly short story, that is more about fleshing out the characters than really providing an interesting mystery plot. In the first part, we have Kidd Pistols himself narrate the story, telling us how he grew up in the slums of London as the son of a good-for-nothing Irishman and a somewhat too enthusiastic London housekeeper. By seventeen, Kidd has already left his home and was working part-time at the punk/B&D fashion shop Monde, where he also met Pink (whom he first described as looking like "a Dutch wife"). It was a bad neighborhood, but it was home to both of them, so the fact that there had been a mysterious series of suicides around here bothered them. Curiously enough, the people who died followed the pattern of the nursery rhyme tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man. But when Kidd's own father too dies under circumstances that seem to suggest suicide, he's not convinced this is just a coincidental series of suicides and he starts to harbor suspicion towards the people from the World Church of Absolute Truth which has been active around this neighborhood lately. Buuuut, like I said, this is not really a mystery story. There is some kind of locked room mystery here, but Kidd's theory is never confirmed in any way, and the punchline of this tale basically makes this cynical modern horror story that explores the background of Kidd, rather than the puzzlers we usually see in this series.
This story forms a set with the last story of the volume, Pink Belladonna no Kaishin - Bondage Satsujin Jiken or The Reform of Pink Belladonna - The Bondage Murder Case, but this one is like a much better version of the first. The first half is once again mostly monologue where Pink tells her background story, which isn't directly related to the mystery plot of the second half. Though for people who have read Yamaguchi's excellent Death of the Living Dead, there's an interesting revelation here about Pink that explains why I was always mixing up those two characters. Anyway, this story also explains why the PlayStation videogame Cat the Ripper, based on the Kidd Pistols novel The 13th Detective, had a hilariously confusing bad ending scene where the nameless protagonist is tortured by Pink in a SM mistress outfit: this story explains that Pink was being trained in Germany to become a high-class bondage mistress for a short period. After that, she ended up in the north of London in the punk/B&D shop Monde, where she became best friends not only with Kidd, but also the young prostitute Demi. Demi recently got a new client who was into SM and tonight she was going to meet with this client again. Pink would be going to a concert with Demi after Demi was done, but when Demi doesn't appear, Pink decides to go to Demi's work room where she stumbles upon a horrible sight: Demi's pimp was knocked out lying on the floor, but Demi herself had been tied up, her face horribly beaten up and her genital organs cut from her body. A bloody message on the walls by "Jack" invokes images of Jack the Ripper of course. Pink vowes to avenge her friend and find the 'client' who killed Demi. Guessing who did it is rather easy due to the limited number of suspects, but the story does a good job at tying the underlying plot to the Mother Goose song in question in terms of theme. It also makes use of the theme of bondage in a clever way to create a mystery plot that is not only well-clewed, but also gives a good reason why it was Pink who figures the case out. You don't need to have expert knowledge on bondage, but it does make sense that Pink would be the first to realize why that item was used like that.
Sarawareta Yuurei or The Kidnaped Ghost, and Shitsuji no Chi or The Blood of the Butler are both very short stories that seem to invoke Agatha Christie's short stories. In the first story, Dr. Bull is asked by his old friend Brandon to help Ann Peebles, for whom he has acted as a loyal manservant for decades. Ann was a famous actress, whose infant son Jimmy was kidnapped twenty years ago. Even though she paid the ransom money, Jimmy was never returned and with that, she lost the only child she'd ever have. Jimmy remained on her mind since, and recently, a fraud spirit medium has been trying to close to Ann, which obviously worries Brandon. Dr. Bull swiftly sees through the medium's tricks, but then Ann gets a phone call by a voice who says they're Jimmy, singing a song only Jimmy and Ann would know. This is followed by a ransom note telling Ann to pay ransom money for Jimmy, exactly like the letter twenty years ago. But why would someone pretend to have kidnapped the ghost of Jimmy? In The Blood of the Butler, Mercule Boirot, Kidd and Pink run into car troubles in the middle of nowhere on the way back from solving a case, but they are offered a lift by Marshe, a journalist on his way to the manor of Henry Tarbot, Earl of Workshire. Marsche is writing a series of articles on that old British tradition, the butler, and he has it from good sources that Tarbot's faithful Langdon is the quintessential butler. Arriving at Tarbot Manor however, they find that Langdon is not all the butler they had expected him to be, and other minor incidents seem to bug both the detectives and Marsche. Ultimately, both The Kidnaped Ghost and The Blood of the Butler revolve around one major piece of misdirection, making the reader assume one thing while it's actually the opposite. Once you notice what that is, it's pretty easy to figure out what's really going on. So very like Christie's short stories.
Kutsu no Naka no Shitai - Christmas no Misshitsu or The Body in the Shoe - The Locked-Room at Christmas is by the far best story in the collection and and starts with a Christmas invitation for Dr. Bull, Kidd and Pink to the house of Tania Shoemaker, the wealthy old woman in charge of the famous shoe manufacturing company. The four prodigal sons of Tania have also returned for Christmas (to badger her for money), but last night, she noticed some of her jewelry had been stolen. She has called Dr. Bull here to scare the thief into confessing to the theft and says she'll be waiting for the thief to come clean and return her jewelry that night. Tania does not sleep in the main building of the house, but in the annex: the building in the shape of a shoe was once the very first shoe shop she ran in East End, but has been moved brick by brick to its new location as a reminder to Tania where it all started. That evening, snow falls and when everyone wakes up on Christmas Day, the detectives notice there's only one single trail of footsteps in the snow that walk from the main building towards the large shoe building outside: the footsteps of Tania when she retreated to the annex last night. The detectives and the secretary go to the annex to bring her breakfast, but they open the door only to find Tania hanging from the ceiling. At first, they think it's suicide, but the fact that Tania was stripped naked and whipped after death makes it clear it's murder. When they find youngest son George in the room next door, having died of an overdosis of sleeping medicine, they think that he killed his mother and then committed suicide, but the medical examination shows he died before his mother. But how did the murderer of Tania escape the shoe-house without leaving their footprints in the snow?
Interestingly, this story was adapted as an episode for the interactive television drama Tantei X Kara no Chousenjou! ("A Challenge from Detective X!"), which ran for three seasons between 2009 and 2011. Similar to programmes like Anraku Isu Tantei and Nazotoki Live, viewers were encouraged to participate and solve the mysteries themselves. Viewers could register to receive a new part of a mystery story daily via e-mail, which always ended with a Challenge to the Reader. Participants could then submit on a form who they thought the murderer was and why. Later the corresponding episode would air with a live-action drama enactment of said story, which would include the actual solution. The adaptation of The Body in the Shoe aired on May 20 2009 as the final episode of the first season, but interestingly, this was the only episode in the whole series to not feature a live-action adaptation, but an animated adaptation. It's pretty short, but it tells the story pretty well and I guess larger-than-life characters like Kidd and Pink work better in animation (with a distinct, American indie comic style) than with real-life actors. Anyway, like I said, this is the best story in the volume, and I think it's an excellent example to explain why I am more a fan of mystery stories that focus on the logical process of determining who it was, rather than the more howdunnit-focused approach you often see with locked room mysteries. While this story revolves around the no-footprints-in-the-snow variant of impossible crimes, the trick the murderer used is incredibly basic and not even remotely original. If you'd focus on this howdunnit part alone, this would've made for a very disappointing story, but what Yamaguchi does really well here is plot out the path that shows whodunnit. The plotting has some great plotting to show why the murderer acted like they did. By focusing on all the actions the murderer took, including the very basic no-footprints-in-the-snow trick, you can guess what the circumstances were that made the murderer act like they did, and by determining the motive/cause behind each and every action taken, you can determine the identity of the murderer, because all thoses causes/motives only hold for them. It's a great way to mix up the impossible crime trope (which often focus on howdunnit) with the reasoning-focused mystery stories as seen in Queen's work (and in more modern times, authors like Arisugawa, Ooyama, Aosaki and more). This is also why I think it works great for an interactive mystery show like Tantei X Kara no Chousenjou!, as ultimately, the story focuses more on the actual 1+1=2 logical processes behind explaining the crime, which works a lot better if you want people to write in (as it's easier to 'grade' the submissions).
While the previous volume seemed to focus a lot on one single theme, the stories in Kidd Pistols no Manshin are more varied. While the first volume has definitely been the most consistent volume until now, the third volume has been interesting offering stories that explore the protagonists' backgrounds more or some shorter tales (whereas those in the second volume were all really long). That said though, I think the "conventional" The Body in the Shoe is definitely the stand-out story of the volume and the only one in this book that really matches the line of quality set in the first volume and partially the second. While definitely not a bad mystery collection, Kidd Pistols no Manshin should not be considered the entry volume for this series, as a lot of it works because there have been two earlier volumes that featured different kind of stories/stories of different lengths. Then again, most people do tend to read things in order unlike me. Anyway, only two other collections left, and I'm definitely going to stick around to see what other kooky adventures Kidd and Pink will have.
Original Japanese title(s): 山口雅也『キッド・ピストルズの慢心』:「キッド・ピストルズの慢心 -キッド最初の事件-」/「靴の中の死体 -クリスマスの密室-」/ 「さらわれた幽霊」/ 「執事の血」/ 「ピンク・ベラドンナの改心 -ボンデージ殺人事件-」
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