The Moonstone Castle Mystery

誰だ？とびっきりのrivalは

どこだ？まじりっけなしの勇者たち

正々堂々 Say say do 

「くすぶるheartに火をつけろ!!」（影山ヒロノブ）

 

Who? My greatest rivals are  

Where? Heroes who aren’t impure

Fair and square, Say say do

"Light the Fire in Your Smouldering Heart!!" (Kageyama Hironobu)

A lot of the modern Japanese honkaku and shin honkaku works I discuss here, are written on the shoulders of Giants, and not alongside those Giants. By which I mean, many contemporary Japanese puzzle plot mystery novels are written with the concepts of Golden Age detective fiction in mind, but few are them are really "copies" in the sense that you'd mistake them for books actually written in the Golden Age and in fact clearly, build on the concepts. For yes, you may see the familiar tropes of Golden Age detective fiction from locked rooms to alibi tricks in these books, but there are numerous points that show that contemporary puzzle plot novels are indeed, contemporary, written in a completely different context than the books written in the actual Golden Age, besides the fact that many of these books are set in Japan of course. Take the time setting for example: many books are simply set in "the present", which in some cases means a full century since GAD! Normal consumer technology like smart phones and tablets are normal for us now as series like Detective Conan use them a lot in their puzzles, showing how fair-play puzzle plot mysteries don't only work in ye olde Golden Age with limited technology, but how one go beyond that. And then there's the meta-angle: a lot of contemporary mystery fiction from Japan is aware the genre didn't appear out of nowhere, but that there were Giants in the past, often building specifically on their works or themes. The Decagon House Murders (disclosure: I translated it) isn't even shy about its inspiration, featuring characters who have nicknames taken from Golden Age detective authors and a lot of early parts of the book revolving around their discussions of mystery fiction. But also think of the post-modern Late Queen Period problem, a theme Ellery Queen wrestled with in some of their later books, and which is incorporated in the works of Norizuki Rintarou and Maya Yutaka. Some books play with these meta-themes, subverting your expectations based on the work of the Giants, some try to develop a theme further. And another angle that shows these books are indeed not limited by the notion of what is "A Golden Age Mystery" (TM) is of course the way how mainstream it has become to incorporate supernatural or scifi elements in contemporary honkaku and shin honkaku mystery fiction: from fantasy settings like Wonderland (alice) or a world where alchemy exists to actual ghosts and other yokai existing, modern Japanese mystery does a lot to explore the idea of how broad the concept of a "fair play detective story" can actually be by using settings you simply didn't really see often in actual Golden Age mystery fiction.

And then there's Kagami Masayuki, who in the early 2000s basically said "Screw all of that, I am going to write the Golden Agiest mystery that ever existed!" (*unsourced quote).

Kagami Masayuki debuted in 1999 as a mystery author with several short stories he wrote for anthologies, but it was in 2002 he made his "big" debut with the full novel Sougetsujou no Sangeki ("The Tragedy at the Twin Moon Castle") and would continue on writing three more books and more short stories, but he died suddenly in 2013 in his early fifties. A short story collection collecting his uncollected stories was released posthumously, as recent as in the second half of 2022, making his bibliography list only five books long, which is a shame going by what's found in his first novel Sougetsujou no Sangeki. In a way, this book is incredibly refreshing because of the fact it really sets out to emulate a Golden Age mystery novel, and especially the work of John Dickson Carr. Carr's influence can be sensed throughout the whole book, but the interesting past is that Kagami, unlike many of his comporary fellow mystery authors, takes on this challenge of doing a Golden Age mystery novel on those terms alone. He faces the challenge face-on, with no narrative trickery, no fantasy or sci-fi background, no focus on comedy, no Late Queen Problems or meta-discussions on the state of honkaku mystery fiction. This is Kagami, saying "I am going to write 1930s style mystery story, exactly like Carr would have done and do it on those terms alone!" I have seldom read a contemporary Japanese mystery novel that is so... straightforward in tackling this theme and the result is surprisingly good!

Patrick Smith is an American with a mother of French descent and after studying in the old continent, Patricks moves to Paris, as that's where his uncle Charles Bertrand, a brilliant magistrate feared by all criminals, works and Patrick becomes Bertrand's assistant and chronicler. It's these books that lead to Patrick receiving a letter in 1931 from his old professor Neuwanstein, who is currently staying in the Twin Moon Castle, one of the castles in the Middle-Rhine region in Germany near the Lorelei. The Twin Moon Castle is the property of the Oelschlägel family, an ancient clan with a history going back many centuries. Traditionally, daughters are born in the family, and often twins too, and indeed, the current masters of the family are Karen and Maria Oelschlägel, and professor Neuwanstein is currently taking care of Maria, who is prone to having rather fierce mood swings. Other guests at the castle are the Hollywood actor Kurt Reinhart and his entourage. Reinhart has made it big as a "bad guy" actor in gang movies, but he actually grew up in the Twin Moon Castle, as his parents used to be servants here. When he fell in love with Maria however and tried to woo her, he and his parents were thrown out the castle. He's now back with his manager and a director, ostensibly staying at his old home while doing research on German castles for an upcoming film, but it's clear that's not his real goal, and professor Neuwanstein fears he's here to cause trouble and take revenge for what happened to him and his parents in the past. An unsuccesful attempt at poisoning led to the professor writing to Patrick, begging him and Bertrand to come to the Twin Moon Castle to investigate. 

Due to prior engagements, Bertrand is unable to go at once, so he sends Patrick in advance. At the dinner table however, Maria lets a bomb explode when she announces she's going to marry Reinhart and that's she's pregnant, which infuriates her sister Karen. The two fight and argue, and it's clear this will take a while. The following morning, Patrick wakes up to find a small group standing in front of the doors of the two towers that flank the main castle tower. On the left side stands the New Moon Tower, but the group is at the Full Moon Tower to the right. Last night, after their fight, Maria had retreated to the tower room at the top of the Full Moon Tower, but she hasn't been seen since and the tower door is locked and bolted from the inside. They break the door open, walk up the winding staircase to find the tower room door also locked from the inside. When they break that open too, they stumble upon a horrifying sight: a decapitated body lying on the floor. When they take a closer look, they find she was not only decapitated, but also de-handed, and near the body, they find the head and hands lying burnt on the floor. Only one window is open, but that one is facing the back of the castle, which is basically a thiry meter drop to the ground, which is then only three steps away from another 100 meter drop down to the Rhine. Considering Maria had her hands and head cut off and those parts were burned, it is clear she did not commit suicide, but how did the murderer escape as the tower door and the room door were locked from the inside, and the only open exit was a window looking down a very deep fall down? Or was the murder the work of the Black Knight, a legendary Oelschlägel ancestor who was killed by a gang of robbers, but who returned as a knight riding a flying horse to kill the men raping his daughters in the two twin towers and whose suit of armor is standing in the tower room to this day?

1930s setting, a medieval castle near the Lorelei, twin towers, a legend of a flying knight, suits of armors in the tower rooms, decapitations... Yep, you can tell whom Kagami was inspired by.

This is a pretty long novel, but it's stuffed with a lot of mystery goodness. The first murder (yes, first), is definitely the best: a woman murdered in a tower room, which is locked from inside, inside a tower which was also locked, and it is clear it was a murder due to the way in which they found the body, with its head and hands cut off and burned. The way the murder seems to mirror the myth of the flying knight who killed the ruffian raping his daughter in the tower room centuries ago is of course an added goodie. Basically the whole situation is absolutely fantastic as a whole, the high point of the novel. The trick behind this gruesome double-locked room for example makes great use of the unique setting, and while I personally would have liked to see an additional clue, it's still properly clewed and quite surprising. The motive behind why Karen was killed however is perhaps a bigger surprise, as it ties in fantastic with the way the murder was committed and why the murder was committed in a locked room in the first place. For this part alone, this book is already worth the read, because everything behind this murder works so well together in a way that is almost shocking, from method to motive and the whole appearance of the murder.

After the first murder occurs, Bertrand arrives at the castle, but not alone, as he's accompanied by Von Stroheim, a police inspector of the Berlin police force, but also an old friend and foe of Bertrand. During the Great War, Bertrand was an intelligence officer and his path crossed that of Von Stroheim many times, and during this skirmishes, they learned to respect each other very much. But Von Stroheim has never stopped seeing Bertrand as a rival, and this murder at the Twin Moon Castle seems like a good opportunity to see who is really the cleverest of the two. Von Stroheim arranges so he and Bertrand can also stay at the castle and in three days, they are to see who will come up with the more convincing explanation for this murder. At least, that was the original plan, but then more murders occur during their stay. And considering the castle is called the Twin Moon Castle and at this point, only one murder has occured in the Full Moon Tower, you can of course guess the next one happens in the New Moon Tower, and yep, it's another locked room murder. This time, they find the tower room of the New Moon Tower locked from inside, and when they peek inside, they see the decapitated head of the victim lying on the floor, with the key of the room in his mouth. The body, sans head, they find stuffed inside the suit of armor that belongs to this room. This locked room situation isn't as good as the first as a whole, though it has a lot of interesting ideas. Some parts miror the first murder in an interesting way for example, feeling like a "twin" to the other, but some parts seem overly... complex while the murderer really didn't have to do all of that to achieve the same effect. I think a lot of the seperate elements of this second murder are good and as a mechanical locked room, it has memorable parts, but it would have perhaps worked better in a different context, but here some parts of the whole operation feel like they were only done because of the whodunnit angle of the book: a lot of this part is used later in the novel as hints to identify the murderer, and because of that, Kagami has the murderer do a lot that basically only serves as a way to lay a trail of clues, but it feels a bit too artificial here, because you wonder why the murderer go all that trouble from their POV. 

Surprisingly, even more deaths occur after this second tower murder, but they are fairly minor in comparison, and only the third one deserves a minor mention, just because how ridiculous (in the good sense) it is: as a murder trick, it's hardly realistic, but it's so funny to just visualize and as it's not the main problem of the book anyway, it can get away with being a bit silly. As a whodunnit, I think it's pretty easy to guess who did it, especially with the aforementioned clewing and some other parts that stand out a bit too much, but that's not really a problem here: it's the why and how that really make Sougetsujou no Sangeki a worthwile book. 

But the most memorable part, at least for me, was again the way it really sets out to be a Carr-like mystery novel, not just in terms of exterior style, but truly as a work that could've been written in the 1930s. It loses many of the familiar tropes of shin honkaku mystery fiction from the meta-tone to having a true 1930s place/time setting and does not try to really subvert existing mystery tropes and the way it valantly takes on the challenge is fantastic, as the end result is really the kind of novel you'd expect from a 1930s Carr, and it's overall a good one too! Had you told me this was a 1930s novel, I would have believed it. The most meta the book ever gets is Bertrand mentioning being a friend of a certain Dr. Fell from London, but that's it.

So I think Sougetsujou no Sangeki does a great job at what it sets out to do: to present a locked room mystery like John Dickson Carr would've written in the 1930s, and on those terms alone. The result is a book that feels refreshingly old-fashioned, especially considering all mystery stories with supernatural/sci-fi elements I have been reading recently, and especially the first locked room murder situation is a memorable one, so on the whole a fantastic first novel. At the moment, all of Kagami's novels are out of print and only the recently published short story collection is easily available, so I'm a bit dependent on whether I see these books passing by for a reasonable price, but you can bet you'll see more Kagami discussed here!

Original Japanese title(s): 加賀美雅之『双月城の惨劇』