The Ice-Cold Case

Oh, this is the first time I read a book in this series since the publication of the English translation of Lending the Key to the Locked Room. Which immediately brings me to:

Disclosure: I translated Higashigawa Tokuya's Lending the Key to the Locked Room, the first book in same series as the book discussed today.

Ikagawa City series:
Lending the Key to the Locked Room
Misshitsu ni Mukatte Ute ("Shoot Towards The Locked Room")
Kanzen Hanzai ni wa Neko Nanbiki Hitsuyouka ("How Many Cats Do You Need For a Perfect Crime?")
Koukan Satsujin ni Mukanai Yoru ("A Bad Night to Exchange Murders")
Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! ("Don't Dump Your Bodies Here Please!")

Adaptations
Watashi no Kirai na Tantei ("The Detective I Don't Like")

The never really succesful private detective Ukai and his assistant Ryuuhei are hired by Komine Saburou, one of the wealthiest men in Ikagawa City. His entertainment facilities like karaoke boxes and batting centres provide the young people with something to do in this otherwise boring city, but Komine has a rather exciting job for Ukai. For Komine has recently received a threatening letter, which speaks of "revenge" among other things. Komine claims he has no idea what the letter is about, even though both Ukai and Ryuuhei suspect there's something shady about the man, but he wants Ukai to act as his bodyguard the coming days. While Ukai isn't really willing to jump in front of his portly client if some assailant would fire a pistol at the man, he agrees to take the job. Komine always spends the days around Christmas at the Squid House, a small hotel set in a secluded and private location as it stands at the very end of Tentacle Peak outside Ikagawa City. The day they drive off to the hotel also turns out to be the day with a tremendous snow storm, and on their way to Tentacle Peak, they find a young man who crashed his car in the storm. They take the unconscious man with them to the hotel and while luckily, one of the other guests here is a doctor, they are now all snowed in at Tentacle Peak for the moment. Ukai and Ryuuhei notice that their client has been acting very differently ever since he learned the name of the unconscious man however, and the following day, they find the unconscious man has disappeared from the room he had been sleeping in. Ukai decides to inform Inspector Sunagawa about these events, who immediately suspects something fishy is going on when he learns that Komine Saburou is involved: twenty years ago, when Inspector Sunagawa was still a rookie detective, he was involved with a gruesome murder case where the victim, Komine Tarou, had been cut in pieces. Saburou was the youngest brother of three, and the middle brother Jirou was identified as the murder suspect, but he disappeared twenty years ago. Sunagawa recounts this old case to his subordinate Shiki while they wait for the snow to calm down, but meanwhile at the Squid House, Saburou gets murdered himself. What is going on and how is the current case connected to what happened twenty years ago? That is the big mystery in Higashigawa Tokuya's Squid-sou no Satsujin ("The Squid House Murders", 2022).

Squid-sou no Satsujin is the long-awaited newest novel in Higashigawa Tokuya's Ikagawa City series, a comedic mystery series set in the titular city with an ensemble cast where we follow the (mis)adventures of private detective Ukai, his assistant/former brother-in-law Ryuuhei, Inspector Sunagawa, his subordinate Shiki and more characters. Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! ("Don't Dump Your Bodies Here Please!") from 2009 was the last novel-length entry in the series for a long time, and while it was followed by a few short story collections,  13 years is a rather long wait! While I have reviewed all the novels in the series, I haven't discussed the short story collections here yet, by the way. Some might find this strange, considering my love for the short story format, but some of the short stories I already know through the live-action drama series or anthologies, so the collections aren't really high priority, though I guess now I have read all the novels, I might as well get started on the collections too. Some will know that I really love Higashigawa's work and his distinctive style of combining slapstick comedy with really solid mystery plots and clewing and his work has been discussed very regularly on this blog.

Anyway, so back to Squid-sou no Satsujin. With a title like that, you're of course expecting something like Ayatsuji Yukito's House series: a closed circle mystery set in the titular Squid House with secrets and dark pasts. And early on, we are told about a past case where a body got cut up in six parts, and in the present, we're presented with situations that seem impossible at first sight, with the unconscious man disappearing from the hotel grounds and later Komine Saburou too disappearing from his cottage only to be found murdered later, and his murderer even manages to disappear even though Ukai chased them in the woods. I seldomly read story descriptions, so perhaps I was expecting too much simply based on the title of this book, for I was really expecting a classic country house style mystery, and I have to admit that at first, I was pretty disappointed when about half-way through the book, I realized that Squid-sou no Satsujin wasn't even trying to be anything of the things I described above. The "impossibilities" only seem like that for a few pages, but are immediately proven to be not impossible situations at all and the book doesn't even try to present them like that. The Squid House, while in possession of "a past", isn't really the super-atmospheric location with hidden passageways and some horrible dark secret you'd expect it to be based on the title and is... a pretty normal hotel all things considered. 

But in the end, I really did enjoy Squid-sou no Satsujin as a mystery novel, and it basically accomplished that by doing everything this series has always done in a great way, and not straying far from what you'd expect and want from an Ikagawa City novel. Like most stories in this series, the book follows a dual structure, with chapters alternating between the adventures of Ukai and Ryuuhei at the Squid House, and Inspector Sunagawa telling about what happened twenty years ago. Part of the msytery lies in realizing how these two events are connected exactly. For yes, Komine Saburou is the connecting factor, but what exactly happened twenty years ago, and how does that affect the current case? What works really well here is that a lot of the connections will seem rather obvious at first, but it's those small parts that don't really seem to fit that really start to bug you, and you know *something* isn't quite right, but it is difficult to identify exactly what. Elements like the unconscious man appear to be troublesome puzzle pieces that don't quite fit in either puzzle and this sense of uneasiness, where the "big picture" seems to fit save for some details, but you also know that's those details that are most important, can be felt throughout the book. The book therefore has a slightly slow start, as a lot of the mystery isn't immediately obvious to the reader, but as the book goes on and the two narratives slowly reach their respective climaxes, this sense of mystery, of knowing you don't know what is going on, becomes more tangible. And the explanation to all of this is great, and exactly what I'd expect from this series. There's some brilliant misdirection going on in this book and as always, a lot of clewing is hidden cleverly in the comedy. The moment you finally realize how those puzzle pieces that didn't seem to fit actually look like, is absolutely fantastic, as that's also when you see how those "sometimes long-winded comedy sections" were actually meant to point you in the right direction as a clue, and you simply completely missed the big shiny pointer. In essence, the "big puzzle piece" that connects the two cases is fairly simple, but it's executed great here and despite my earlier disappointment with this book not really being about an impossible crime or really using the country house murder format, I think this book manages to present a great mystery story.

So Squid-sou no Satsujin might not be exactly what you'd think it be based on the title alone, but taken on its own merits, and as an entry in the Ikagawa City series, it's a very solid entry, doing everything you should expect from this series in a great way, and ultimately even presenting a rather surprising solution that is both a bit silly (as you may expect from this series), but also cleverly clewed and in hindsight using a rather impressive act of misdirection. For those who have enjoyed the series before, Squid-sou no Satsujin is definitely a must-read.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉『スクイッド荘の殺人』