"The third one is always the worst."
"X-Men: Apocalypse"
Okay, in reality, of the mystery series I read, it's seldom the third one that's actually the worst. Also: when I ordered this book, I was totally expecting it to end up somewhere on my end-of-year best list due to the previous two volumes... Pretty frustrating when errr, that doesn't happens.
Misshitsu Satsujin Game - Maniacs is the third volume in Utano's Misshitsu Satsujin Game series and you may remember that I've enjoyed the previous two volumes a lot. The various locked room murder mysteries that appeared in the linked short stories were usually very well constructed and a delight to read, but Utano also made brilliant use of the overarching storyline of the chat room. There were all kinds of little surprises that really made the chat room and its users feel alive and were used as meaningful concepts for the plot, like when one of the murderers had a perfect alibi for their "turn" because the murder occured during a video chat session where they were discussing a different murder. Manics however is a bit different from the previous volumes. It's definitely not considered the "3.0" of the series, more like a side story. That's obvious immediately when you see the actual physical book, because it's barely half the size of the previous volumes and the contents too are considerably weaker than the full-sized volumes: usually all five characters get a chance to act as quizmaster, but in this volume, we only have like two-and-a-half case to solve.
The opening story Q1: Rokuninme no Tanteishi ("Q1: The Sixth Detective") is by far the strongest story of the whole volume. Over the course of nine uploaded videos to a major video streaming site, we see the usual five participants in the chat room: The Mad Header wearing their Darth Vader mask, aXe with a hockey mask, Zangya-kun and their turtle, Professor Ban Douzen with sunglasses and an afro and the silhouetted torso of 044APD. It's aXe's turn and he reveals he has killed a tech writer called Idei Kenichi in his studio apartment in Tokyo. On the night of Idei's murder, his neighbors and downstairs neigbor heard a loud noise from the apartment. The downstairs neighbor thought it a bit strange and when Idei didn't answer the door both at night and the following morning, the neigbor decided to notify the owner of the apartment building and when they entered the locked apartment, they found both a toppled bookcase and Idei lying on the floor. He had been hit fatally on the back of his head, but the door and all the windows had been locked from inside and the police is inclined to rule it an accident. However, this was a genuine murder committed by aXe, but the locked room isn't the only problem the others have to solve. For on the night of the evening, aXe had also been videochatting with Zangya-kun and 044APD and those two saw live how aXe had been driving around all the way in Nagoya and that he had been stopped by the police and fined there for using his phone to videochat while driving. So how could aXe have committed the locked room murder in Tokyo at the same time he was being presented his one-of-a-kind fine in Nagoya?
The new plot about these chat sessions being uploaded on a video streaming site adds a weird new dynamic to this series, as we are introduced to a new character: Sagashima Yukio is an ordinary fan of mystery fiction who is absolutely fascinated by these videos a friend sent him, and like any true mystery fan, Sagashima too tries to figure out aXe's murder scheme (not realizing that countless of other people on the web have seen these videos already and that the web's drowning in theories written by everyone). The concept of a third party trying to solve the case serves as the overall storyline for this volume (previous volumes, while short story collections, also worked towards a climax in a way). The case itself is... perhaps a bit simple, but a lot of it does make good use of the unique story setting, justifying the shakier parts of the plot. The way the locked room itself is made is a very modern variant on an otherwise very, very old way to create a locked room, and that also holds for the actual murder method (the murder weapon is also part of the mystery). The underlying concepts are pretty corny, but the variations are undoubtedly very, very modern and yet realistic, making use of normal objects we consumers can buy. aXe's trick with which he got hold of their alibi for the murder is basically an extension of the ideas seen in the actual murder and as a whole, one can definitely say aXe's 'quiz' has a clearly defined theme, even if the actions he actually took were surprisingly simple.What I did really like however was when the weaker points to the plot were shown: Utano makes clear that what is usually considered to be a weak point in an attempt to create a locked room murder, doesn't hold for this particular setting and he makes a convincing argument. The result is that Utano is able to create locked room murder situations that a reader might usually dismiss as unrealistic or unreliable, but which do make sense in the context of this series, allowing for pretty unique murders.
Q2: Hontou ni Mienai Otoko ("Q2: The True Invisible Man") also consists of two problems, but unlike aXe's problem, this story revolves around two unrelated murders, though tied by the theme of "the invisible man." The first murder victim of The Mad Header was Honnouji Haruka, a stage actress who had a solo act in a small theatre for three days. She was murdered between the afternoon and night act of her last day, but nobody saw the killer walk in or out of her dressing room. When one of the receptionists came to deliver some flowers sent to Haruka, they found her lying dead in her dressing room. But for the last three quarters of an hour, while Haruka was still alive and overheard rehearsing in her dressing room, both sides of the little hallway in front of her dressing room was watched by the props man backstage on one side, and the receptionists on the other side. The second problem is set at a tech lab in a university, where one of the students was sitting at one of the desk in the back of the lab. Other students were sitting at the front side of the lab, but couldn't directly see the victim because of bookcases blocking the view. But while the hallway door was always in view of the other students in the lab, The Mad Header still managed to kill the victim sitting in the back of the room, without anyone noticing them. Both problems feature really lame solutions. And that's done intentionally. In previous volumes, there were always shorter intermezzo stories with joke solutions that were just silly or really outdated wedged in between the masterpieces of the volume. This story falls in that same tradition, but the problem is that this volume is really, really short and almost half of the volume is therefore used to present two locked room mysteries that were never intended to be memorable or impressive. The one in the theatre is basically a slightly updated version of a very old trick to create a locked room mystery (and Sagashima too notes this solution is pretty boring), while the university murder borders on science-fiction, being reliant on a very specific type of technology that may or may not exist. In the previous volumes, these kind of problems were usually posed by Professor Ban Douzen as fictional time-wasters while waiting for the actual problem, but it's just disappointing to see almost half of the volume dedicated to this.
Q3: Soshite Dare Mo Inakatta ("Q3: And There Were None") and the follow-up story don't even really have a locked room murder mystery to solve, but tie up the overall story of the person who's been uploading the chat sessions on video streaming sites. Professor Ban Douzen wants to switch things up a bit and not tell the other participants about the murder afterwards, but have them participate in real-time. He has started a live video stream of their chat room, showing the familiar chat windows of the five in one window. In the stream, we can also see Professor Ban Douzen has posted the other four others at specific locations surrounding a certain building. A sixth chat window is also visible on the screen, which shows a man in a bathrobe. X is to be the victim and he is present in a room in the surrounded building. Professor Ban Douzen claims he'll be able to kill X even with aXe, Zangya-kun, The Mad Header and 044APD standing near all the exits/vital points and he dares them to stop him either going in or out. I won't go on, because that would definitely spoil the surprise, but let's just say this isn't really a locked room murder mystery anymore. The story is used to spring a surprise on the reader regarding the uploaded videos of the chat sessions and how these three cases relate to each other in secret, and there's some admittedly interesting meta-musings going on, but it feels like a concept that should have had a full volume to build up to. Now the build-up to the 'punchline' feels lacking, and you're left with a story that might have been more, but which feels imcomplete and rushed.
Misshitsu Satsujin Game - Maniacs is not touted as a full-fledged third volume in this series, but even as a side-story, it feels lacking. There's basically only one single serious locked room murder story here and while I think it could've served perfectly as an opening story for any of the volumes, I don't think it's impressive enough to be basically carrying this whole volume, which is, sadly enough, what it has to do, as the remaining stories lack the depth and originality we have learned to expect after the previous two volumes. There are some interesting ideas here that the book tries to explore by making these video chats public and having a third party attempt solving them, but as this book is really short, there's simply no room to work out any of these ideas into something substantial. I hope that we'll see a full-fledged 3.0 volume in the future, because I wouldn't want this to be the end of a series after the previous two high points.
Original Japanese title(s): 歌野晶午『密室殺人ゲーム・マニアックス』
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