Once Upon a Thriller

"The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat."

"The Masque of the Red Death"

There's something comforting about reading a book by someone you used to read a lot, but haven't in a while.

Oh, wow, my last review of a Higashino Keigo work dates from 2014? It's been a while! Higashino is an author I read a lot in the earlier days of the blog, and I am still of the opinion he's a great choice for those studying Japanese and who want to try to read their first books completely in Japanese, because his writing is really smooth and easy to understand (somewhat like Agatha Christie in English). But yeah, I haven't read very much of him lately, which can be attributed to two factors, I guess. One is that Higashino, especially nowadays, as a mystery author, is definitely more a 'broad entertainment' writer. Which isn't a bad thing per se, considering his huge success both in Japan and abroad, but Higashino's mystery stories are often written for a much broader audience than 'just' readers of mystery fiction, and his books are often written more as mainstream entertainment stories. Great material that lends themselves for countless of adaptations and the focus on human drama in his books are of course an element that have made him popular, but I have to admit I generally don't enjoy those stories as much, because I am a very boring reader who is content with just a puzzle plot and don't per se need human drama. Of course, I don't think all his earlier work is perfect and his later work rubbish, because I really don't (I love The Devotion of Suspect X!), but there's definitely a general shift towards the type of story I'm not looking for, so I hadn't really been reading his books the last few years. Which brings me to a second reason: only a handful of his works are available as e-books and he's one of the few authors still in print (and selling really well) whose works are basically almost only exclusively available on paper. So then comes the matter whether I really want to add one of his books to a physical book order, and often his books just end up lower on the priority list.

Anyway, so I finally got around to reading a book by him again. Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken ("The Masquerade Mountain Villa Murder Case") from 1990 is one of Higashino Keigo's earlier mystery novels and while the period setting definitely feels like late eighties/early nineties, in terms of style it feels quite modern, in the sense I could definitely imagine if Higashino had written this book with the idea of it getting adapted for the small or silver screen eventually. Of course, this book was written long before he became the super popular author he is now, so that's of course not the case, but you can definitely recognize how even among his earlier works, you can find mystery novels that were really written for a much broader audience than those who exclusively read detectives, being much closer to a thriller or a suspense novel, with a good dash of human drama. The book is set a few months after Takayuki lost his fiancee Tomomi, whom he first met when she caused a car accident that ultimately injured her more than her 'victim' Takayuki. They got to know each other after the accident, growing closer and getting engaged. The plan was to hold their wedding in the mountain villa of Tomomi's parents, a place they visited each year, but one day, after making arrangements near the villa for her wedding, Tomomi had a deadly car accident, driving her car of a cliff-side road. Several months later, Takayuki is invited by his parents-in-law to come to the mountain villa, as they intend to stay there a few days as they do every year, and the couple Nobuhiko and Atsuko would be honored if their son-in-law would come too. Other guests include Tomomi's brother Toshiaka, Tomomi's cousin Yukie, Tomomi's friend and mystery novelist Keiko, and Nobuhiko's secretary and physician. 

However, during the first night, two armed men manage to sneak inside the mountain villa and they take everyone hostage. The two men are bank robbers, and they had actually planned to stay in this villa for a day until their boss could pick them up. The mountain villas in this neighborhood are just holiday houses and often nobody's staying there, so the bank robbers hadn't expected to find any people in this villa when they picked it as their temporary hide-out a few days ago and made their own false keys. The two men decide to just stick to the plan and hold everyone hostage inside the house, keeping them all in the living room, while observing them from second floor balustrade. But as the stress starts to build among the hostages and they hope to find a way out, they start to realize that some of them don't think that Tomomi died in an accident, but that her death was orchestrated, and furthermore, those people think that the person behind Tomomi's death is right here! The two bank robbers are quite interested in this story as they have nothing to do anyway while waiting for their pick-up, but the following morning, after everyone was allowed to stay in their own room (one bank robber remaining in the hallway to watch all doors), one of the guests is found murdered in their room! At first it seems only the bank robbers could have commited the murder, but why, and nobody really believes they did it, so who of the house guests is wearing a mask and the real murderer, and how did they do it because they were all locked up in their rooms?

Ongoing hostage situation, mystery revolving around Tomomi's death and an actual murder occuring under semi-impossible circumstances? Yep, there's plenty of thrills going on in this book, and that's probably its best part. It doesn't take long for the two bank robbers to show up in the villa and take everyone hostage, and while the hostages are being held captive, one of the bank robbers gets really interested in the story of Tomomi's death, and how Keiko, Tomomi's best friend, suspects her friend didn't *just* drive off a cliff, but that somehow someone arranged for that to happen, and that it's likely that this person is someone Tomomi trusted, meaning one of the house guests. This is of course not really helping the team spirit, especially as more curious things are going on. The hostages, while being watched by the robbers, have some freedom, and some of them try to cook up plans to warn the police: two policemen have already come round the house, inquiring very obviously whether the people here had spotted the two bank robbers on the run, though obviously, the robbers held them under gunshot and made them lie about that. Still, they realize there might be someway to escape the villa and warn the police, but curiously enough, they find some of their attempts to warn the outside world, like a message written in the sand outside, erased by someone. Because none of the bank robber mention anything about their attempts, it seems they didn't discover the message, but who did? When the second night, one of the house guests is murdered in their room, the bank robbers swear they didn't do it, and after some debating, it does seem unlikely the victim would've let any of the robbers in their room during the night without making any noise and one of the hostages was also kept in the hallway, with the bank robbers, as an extra insurance, but she too says she didn't see the robbers go the room, so how was the murder committed and is the murderer then one of the other house guests? The story basically never lets you, or the hostages, rest, as there is always *something* going on, and that's why I mentioned earlier how this would be perfect as a television film.

How does the book fare as a mystery novel? Well, it's a bit uneven. There are some interesting parts, like Tomomi's death, or the semi-impossible murder in the villa, but a lot of those elements don't feel very satisfying as a mystery novel, because the clue-to-solution time is often rather short, so you don't really get that "Aha, so that's how it was!" feeling due to the short build-up time. The facts regarding Tomomi's death for example are given you in small bursts throughout the book, but the really important facts come relatively late. The focus of the book is more on the suspense angle, but I also feel like small things, like spreading the hints out more, or like a little diagram of the villa itself, would have helped the book a lot. The way the hostage situation with the bank robbers, and their involvement in the murder is eventually resolved is more interesting, though again, while certainly guessable, it's not like there were really well-spread hints or clues regarding the climax. Funnily enough, the bunko pocket release of the book includes a commentary essay by Orihara Ichi, who considers Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken to rank among Higashino Keigo's best three books, but he also hates the book. Why? It happened to feature the exact same trick Orihara himself had used in a manuscript he had been working on! Orihara tells how he bought the book on release and halfway through started to fear the worst, and it came true, and as Higashino's book was already released and all, he had to abandon his own book. Interesting to hear how two authors arrived at the same idea in a similar time period and you can tell how frustrated Orihara was when he knew the thing he had been working on had already been done just a bit earlier by Higashino.

I have the bunko pocket release, a format which generally comes with a slipcover like most Japanese books, but for some reason my copy came with a second slipcover. And the art on it is actually very nice and in terms of style, I prefer it to the actual cover, only.... I don't know how this cover is related to Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken. The girl on the cover is far too young to be any of the women in this boo, and the room itself is not like any of the rooms in the mountain villa described in the book. I mean, this room doesn't invoke any notions of a mountain villa or a hostage situation or anything like that, right? I guess the mask is the one thing that comes from the title of the book,  but that's like a really tiny, tiny connection. I know that a few other Higashino pockets came with second slipcovers in the same style if you bought them at Tsutaya, but this book wasn't bought there, so I don't really understand this second cover....

Do I think Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken is one of Higashino's best three works? Probably not. Mind you, it's a short, but thrilling read from start to finish, and taken as a work of entertainment, it is a good work, offering a suspenseful story with a lot of story developments and mysteries both in the present and past. Looked at it as a mystery novel solely, it does feel like it could've been much more if the book had been a bit longer, as some of the better story elements of this book would've benefitted from more "runtime" allowing for more depth, It's not a book I would go out of my way for to recommend as one of Higashino's best, but if you're looking for something short, but fun to read between some 'bigger' mystery novels, this is a good palate cleanser. Nothing to ambitious, but basically a popcorn flick.

Original Japanese title(s): 東野圭吾『仮面山荘殺人事件』