The Second Shot

Prepare for trouble!

And make it double!

"Pokémon"

I read today's book as a digital release, but I have this slight annoyance with the bunko-size pockets published by some publishers like Bunshun (of today's book) and Kobunsha, as their bunko-size pockets don't actually fit in my bunko-size bookcovers. For some reason, they are just a few millimetres too high... why can't they just use the normal size...?

Akari is still in high school, but managed to win an award with her mystery short story. This of course meant the first step in a long and succesful career in the industry of mystery writing... or at least, so she had hoped, but she's hopelessly stuck on coming up with a plot of her first original book. According to her not-so-scrupulous editor, there are plenty of high school student girls who win an award with a story, but then fall of the radar because they are unable to write a follow-up work, so Akari certainly feels the pressure to not become one of them. Fortunately for her, her brother is a police detective, assigned to the Homicide division of the Metropolitan Police Department, the most prestigious section of the whole police organization. Thanks to the auspices of their father, a Senior Commissioner at the MPD, Daisuke's placed in the career fast-track, despite him not being the fastest thinker on the force. Reality is stranger than fiction, they sometimes say, so Akari decides to nag her brother for juicy inside information about weird crimes that have recently occured, hoping they will inspire her and serve as a basis for her first book. While straight-laced Daisuke knows he shouldn't just tell his teenager sister about confidential investigations, Akari is a lot wilier than her brother and always manages to fool Daisuke into bringing her to the crime scenes and have her meet the witnesses and suspects (with the story that it's part of her social studies class). And the crimes Akari hears about do sound like they would work as mystery stories: from a dead body that appears in a storehouse that is always kept locked to the same pistol being used in two different crimes at two different locations at the same time, there's plenty of inspiration to be found in Kurachi Jun's short story collection Doppelgänger no Juu ("The Pistol of the Doppelgänger" 2021). 

I have to admit, after reading the excellent Hoshifuri Sansou no Satsujin ("The Murders in the Mountain Lodges beneath the Shooting Stars"), which was my first time reading a work by Kurachi, I started looking into what more he had written, and Doppelgänger no Juu was one of the books that attracted my attention most. But not because the blurb on the back sounded especially appealing or anything. It was simply the cover: the art is so charming and attractive, and I knew I wanted to read this book sooner or later. I didn't know about the premise of the book until I opened it.

The book opens with Bungou no Kura - Misshitsu Kuukan ni Gotsuzen to Shutsugen Shita Tasatsu Shitai ni Tsuite ("The Storehouse of the Literary Giant - Regarding The Murder Victim Who Suddenly Appeared Inside a Locked Space"), where Akari manages to convince Daisuke to bring her to the murder scene involving the author Tokuyama Asen. Or to be exact, Tokuyama's storehouse. For Tokuyama Asen's been dead for some time now, but he's a well-respected figure in the world of Japanese literature, and the local municipality has been in talks with Asen's grandson to have Asen's house converted to a museum. Asen also had a large storehouse in his garden where he worked and kept his own book collection, which actually has a few rare editions and other collector's items. For the moment however, there's no budget reserved for this project, so for the time being, the plan was for the grandson, a civil servant attached to the town's culture preservation section, an acquaintance of the grandson attached to the literature faculty of a university and a local antiquarian bookseller to sift through the contents of the storehouse together, see what books can be sold to create an initial budget and see where they go from there. For about a month, these four have been meeting in the weekends at the storehouse, which is kept locked with a big padlock because of the valuable books inside. Last weekend however, one of the four didn't appear at the usual time, so the other three decided to go inside first, but to their surprise they found the fourth member already lying dead inside. The grandson, the only person with the key to the storehouse, swears absolutely that the key never left his side though this whole last week since their last meeting and he has an alibi for the time of the murder, so how did the body appear inside the storehouse?

As I have grown used to with Kurachi's work, this is a very well-structured and plotted mystery story, with comedic undertones (with Akari coming up with ways to fool her brother in doing her bidding and some sibling fights), but I have to say that this story is rather long considering the plot, and that is something that holds for all three stories in this volume. I feel all of these stories could have been at least one-third shorter, and they'd still feel as fleshed out as they are now mystery-wise. Some of the conversations just go on for much longer than they should, and they ultimately do make the mystery story feel less interesting too, at least to me, because while I do think the way clues and theories are set-up, say the technical writing of the mystery story, is good, I also feel like Kurachi have done more considering the rather lengthy... length of the story. In this story, the mystery revolves around how the dead body could've appeared in the storehouse despite the grandson saying the key never left him since the last weekend when they cleaned the storehouse. Kurachi, as a writer who works clearly in the Queen tradition, does a good job at laying out clues that allow you to build multiple theories to solve this impossible crime, and at the same time, he lays out other clues that disprove those theories, until you arrive at a simple, but elegant solution, but considering that took about 150 pages, I feel it's a bit too simple and there could've been one more twist or extra surprise to really sell the story, especially as the core problem (a body appearing in a locked space) isn't particularly unique when it comes to impossible crime tropes.

The title story Doppelgänger no Juu - Futatsu no Chiten de Douji ni Jiken wo Okosu Bunshin Shita Satsujinsha ni Tsuite ("The Pistol of the Doppelgänger - Regarding the Murderer Who Divided Themselves and Committed Crimes At Two Different Locations Simultaneously") is similarly a story that feels a tad too long, but the premise is at least a lot more appealing. One afternoon, a convenience story in the northern parts of Tokyo is robbed in broad daylight, by a masked man wielding a pistol who for good measure even shot some holes in the ceiling, but fortunately nobody got hurt. Around the same time, people in a tenant building hear some fighting going and shots fired at a shady detective agency located in the southern parts of Tokyo, and when later someone goes to check, the detective is found shot in his office. When the police reconstruct the murder and check the bullets in the body, they find out the bullets match the bullets shot in the ceiling of the convenience store, meaning they were shot from the same weapon but not only that, they learn that the two crimes must have occured practically simultaneously, with only one or two minutes difference, even though it takes about two hours to drive from the convenience store to the murder scene! How could the same pistol be used in two crimes that occured simultaneously at completely different places? I find this problem a lot more alluring than the one from the first story, and I think the clewing is better too. Once again, there are also enough clues that allow the reader to make wrong guesses/deductions, but I think the one major clue that allows the reader to tie these two crimes together is really clever, both the idea itself as well as the manner in which the clue is presented to the reader, hidden very well within the story and yet the moment it pops up again in the denouement you immediately realize what it actually means and how that could've made this impossible crime possible. This is the title story of the book for a good reason, for it is definitely the best story.

The previous story is clearly the best in the book, but I can't say for sure whether the last story, Tsubasa wo Haeta Satsui - Konseki wo Issai Nokosazu ni Kuuchuu Hishou Shita Hannin ni Tsuite ("Malice With Wings - Regarding the Murderer Who Left No Footprints and Flew Through the Sky") is better than the first story or not. Technically, the story is definitely "bigger", with more misdirection, clues and potential for false hypotheses and the manner in which it builds on theories to lead to the final solution is also better than the first story, but I think that the final solution is also a lot easier to guess than the first story, and some might even guess what happened by the time the basic premise is presented. Here Daisuke tells Akari about an elderly, rich man who was found dead in a teahouse in his garden. He was hanging from a rope hanging from a beam near the ceiling, and as his wife died some months earlier and the only footsteps found in the December snow from the main house to the teahouse were those of the man (only going) and the tracks of the wheelchair of his eldest son who found him the next morning, the police initially thinks it's a suicide, but the police detectives are also aware that the man's three sons all had their eyes set on their father's riches, and that any of the three might've wanted to get their inheritance early. But at the same time, it was impossible for any of them to commit the murder: the whole garden between the main house and the tea house was covered in snow and only the earlier mentioned tracks were found, and physically speaking, none of the brothers could've committed the murder either: the two oldest sons were involved in a car accident some months ago, which put the oldest son (who lived with his father) in a wheelchair, and the other a broken arm, which means none of them could've hung a man from a beam two metres high, while the youngest son is just physically too small and weak to have done the same. A rather traditional "which of the three" mystery story, with all three suspects having a specific reason for why they couldn't have committed the crime, which is strengthened by the fact there were no footprints left by the murderer in the snow. Technically a sound story, with all these classic elements and a proper build-up to theories and the discarding of them, but ultimately, it can't hide the fact that the solution isn't nearly as surprising as the story pretends it is. While not a disappointing solution per se, the fact that these three stories all feel a bit long-winded anyway doesn't help. It is a perhaps a good example of a technically solid story, but for a premise that shouldn't be used in a story of this length.

But did I like Doppelgänger no Juu? Yes, I did, and especially the title story is worth a read, as it's truly a solid mystery story. The other two stories however feel similar to me in the sense that they are structurally well-plotted, with thoughtful clewing, false hypotheses, and a proper logical build-up to the solution for the impossible crimes. Impossible mysteries often have a tendency to be just mystery stories that require the reader to have a spark of inspiration or just "think of the solution" based on one vague clue, but that's never the case with Kurachi, who often uses false theories to lead you to the true solution in a logical manner (theory X isn't true, but that if you consider this aspect of theory X, perhaps Y is possible). However, both the first and last story feel much too long for what they offer, as the base impossible crimes in these stories are fairly simple, and I feel that had these stories been shorter, I would have been more impressed by what was accomplished in a certain page count, while now, I have the feeling these stories were made muuuuch longer than they should've been just so these three stories would be the length of one book together. So in terms of mystery writing, this is a solid book, but it's not always as surprising as you'd hope it to be.

Original Japanese title(s): 倉知淳『ドッペルゲンガーの銃』:「文豪の蔵　密閉空間に忽然と出現した他殺死体について」/「ドッペルゲンガーの銃　二つの地点で同時に事件を起こす分身した殺人者について」/「翼の生えた殺意　痕跡を一切残さずに空中飛翔した犯人について」