Revelations of a Lady Detective

"Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God's good earth"

"The Lamp of God"

I'm not writing this review a year after I read it, but by the time this review is posted, it's definitely been more than a year!

The St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy is a mission school run by the Vatican in Japan. No technically, the school isn't even in Japan, for the three inter-connected artificial islands near Aichi are owned by the Vatican and people do have to show their passports when to enter or leave the islands. The academy is a prestigious school not only due to its special background, but also because it is unique as a secondary school focusing on the art of detection. The detective is a protected, and very important job in today's society and requires certain qualifications.  In Japan, you usually start studying to become a detective starting at the college level and can afterwards obtain the necessary qualifications, but the St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy already teaches its girl students to become a detective at the secondary level. 

Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii are all second year students who thus still have a year to go, but Miho and Nobuko, as third year students, have been in a fierce competition for forever to become the highest ranking student upon graduation. Graduating as the top student isn't just to show off, but has practical perks allowing you to become a detective earlier than usual, so both contenders have been aiming for the top, but it is clear Miho will end up highest. However, as the current number 1 and 2 on the rankings, the two of them are allowed to participate in a special test, that will also be reflected in their ranking, so both Miho and Nobuko participate. This winter test involves the twin bell towers of St. Arisugawa Girl's Academy, about seventy metres high. Miho and Nobuko are each brought to one of the towers, to a special room near the top. There they are locked inside, and are told that the one to win this test, is the one who will "approach the Lord the closest." Kyouko is asked to be a witness to the test: from the main building, she's to make sure both Miho and Nobuko will use their flashlight from their respective rooms to signal back to the main building to show they are willing to proceed with the test. The following morning however, a horrible sight is discovered: Miho and Nobuko are both hanging from the crosses on the top of the twin bell towers, and for some reason, Miho is completely naked. But what is equally enigmatic is the fact the two girls have 'switched places': Miho is crucified on the tower where Nobuko was staying, and the reverse holds for Nobuko. Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii are determined to find out what happened to Miho and Nobuko, and while none of them can solve this on their own, they are certainly capable of working together and combine their powers in Furuno Mahoro's Sailor-Fuku to Mokushiroku ("Sailor Uniforms and the Apocolypse", 2012).

First time I ever read anything by Furuno. I think it was the cover, combined with the title that first attracted me, as it suggested kind of Gothic horror novel with some Biblical Apocalypse themes which seemed interesting, but perhaps I should have done a bit more research. For allow me to say this right from the start: this is just part of a larger story, and as a book on its own, Sailor-Fuku to Mokushiroku feels quite uneven and incomplete. The first half of this book is in fact just world-building, explaining about the school, about its ties to the Vatican, about the role of detectives in this world, followed by a slice-of-life-esque section focusing on our protagonists as they experience their daily school life on the island at this unique school. If you're mainly reading this for the mystery, you have to be prepared for a very slow beginning that isn't immediately connected to the main mystery and what is even worse, a lot regarding the mystery isn't even explained in this book. Yes, we identify a murderer and know how they did it and why, or at least, we learn the "direct" reason for the murders, but we don't really understand why, and the book ends with a foreshadowing segment that hints at more adventures for our three heroines and suggesting we'll understand more about these specific murders as we learn more about St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy in subsequent books, but reading this on its own is not very satisfying, as you really feel like you only read the first part of a larger story and are missing things you should know. There are hints about how the Vatican is doing *something* at St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy, but we don't get much beyond the 'hinting' so the book leaves you with a rather unsatisfied feeling.

So the impossible crime of the two students leaving their locked rooms, swapping towers and ending up crucified on the crosses on top of other's tower only makes up for about half of the book and to be more exact, the set-up of this unique and alluring situation is in fact just a very, very small part of the complete book, because soon after we learn about this situation, we're already moving towards the solving of this mystery, though in a way that is quite interesting. For Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii all turn out to specialize in very different aspects of a crime: Kyouko focuses on the whodunit, Mizuki on the howdunnit and Marii on the whydunnit. What is even more unique is that at least in this book, the three aren't really working together to solve the crime, but they decide to look at the impossible murder from their own angles in three seperate groups (each of them finding a different ally to discuss the case with), so we get three seperate "solution" chapters where each of the three girls approaches the problem from a very different angle, but interestingly enough, the three of them do all end up implicating the same person. These three chapters, titled Scuderia Motivo, Scuderia Metodo and Scuderia Criminale make up most of the second half of the book and are surprisingly robust examinations of the impossible crime from their respective angles. Marii's whydunnit for example has a mini-motive-lecture, while Kyouko's whodunnit chapter has her listing all the viable suspects and examining one by one who could be responsible or not. But because the book moves very quickly from the "presentation" of the murders to the three chapters of Whodunnit, Howdunnit and Whydunnit, the reader isn't given much time to think about the case themselves, so the focus seems to lie more on watching the three detectives do their work, rather than really challenging the reader to solve it.

On the whole, I'm a bit torn on the solution to the otherwise awesome-sounding mystery. There are parts of the solution and mystery I find really interesting, and other parts feeling very underwhelming, like for example the victims having to act like complete idiots for this to even remotely work, even though they are the top-ranking students of their year! The howdunnit behind the mystery of the victims swapping towers for example is rather disappointing, with a solution that is so practical it takes away all the allure of the original mystery and the clewing for that part isn't that great. The way the Howdunnit and Whodunnit chapters slowly focus in on the (correct) motive and suspect is good, though it at times relies on a few shortcuts and taking a few things for granted that could've been debated more. I think that ultimately, the idea behind why this crime was committed and regarding some elements, how this was done can be quite interesting, and it certainly piques your interest to how the story will develop in later volumes, but the way it is done in this book, I can't help but feeling compelled to add a "but" after starting with "it has some good ideas, but....". 

So I'm torn on Sailor-Fuku to Mokushiroku. There are elements I like about it, like the Vatican conspiracy-angle which somehow involves the Apocalypse and a girls' academy in Japan that originally made me curious about the series, and the idea of having the three heroines each focusing on different aspects of a crime, that still allows them to arrive at the same answer is pretty awesome. The miraculous murder of the two victims somehow swapping towers and being crucified on top of them also has interesting points, which ties back to the way the mystery is solved in three different ways, but as a whole, there are just too many elements of the mystery I don't think work really well, or feel a bit too forced to be convincing.  I believe this series is now four volumes long, and there's a fifth volume that acts as a crossover with another Furuno series, but I am still not sure whether I'll read more of it. If the following books can skip on setting up the world like this first volume did and go straightforward to the adventures of Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii, then this could become something more interesting.

Original Japanese title(s): 古野まほろ『セーラー服と黙示録』