I got the e-book of this book for free from BookWalker, but I still think that was a rare pricing error, because it was free for only half a day and I couldn't find any announcements about it being distributed for free...
The first Knockin' On Locked Door was an entertaining series of stories by Aosaki, where he combined his Queen-esque plotting focusing on chains of deductions based on (the state of) physical evidence with plots that usually revolved around the impossible, the inexplicable or a combination of both. While the book, on the whole, was quite good, it was also the mystery equivalent of popcorn or a bag of crisps: each story was very short, following the exactly same four act structure, and usually focused on a single idea and while most of the stories were usually at least "okay" and some really good, it was also the type of collection that just fades away easily because everything felt so light and formulaistic. Knockin' On Locked Door 2 is basically more of the same, so if you didn't like the first one, you'll find nothing to change your mind here: it's still a very light-hearted short story collection where almost all stories follow a formula, and while usually the stories are well plotted and some are really clever, it's really similar to the first book. In fact, I read both books in quick succession, and it took me a while to actually get started on the reviews, but I honestly couldn't remember which book had which stories, because they were all so samey, despite being about very different situations each time. And okay, it probably didn't help I waited like over a year before I got started on the reviews...
The opening story Ana no Aita Misshitsu ("The Locked Room With A Hole") is about a kind of locked room. Or at least, it was at one point in time. A man was found murdered in the shed where he usually spent his days off working on DIY furniture, lying across a table he had been working on with a driver in his head. The door of the shed was locked from the inside, the key found with the man, and no windows a person would fit through.... but there is a gigantic hole in the back wall, cut open with a power saw. So considering there's a hole in the wall it isn't really a locked room, and the fallen paint can and the paint on the floor in front of the door suggests why the murderer did this, but can Touri and Hisame figure out who the murderer is based on the state of this odd locked room? Yes, they can, and it's a technically sound story, with a good focus on physical evidence which allows you to deduce a lot of the crime yourself, though I have to admit the initial impact of the gigantic hole in the wall is much bigger than the surprises you'll find later in the story: it's a fine detective story and there's a good way in which the hole is used to deduce who did it, but the idea of the hole itself is a bit more impressive than the deductive chain leading to the culprit
A woman is found murdered in Tokei ni Matsuwaru Ikutsu no Uso ("A Few Lies About A Watch"), and the main suspect is her boyfriend, with whom she had a row earlier that evening. However, the boyfriend has an alibi, as he was performing on stage with his band, while the time of death of the victim is determined by both forensic investigation and her broken watch, and the boyfriend most definitely has an alibi for the time the victim's watch stopped at. Of course, the police doesn't blindly trust a stopped watch, but the victim's watch was a special case: it is a limited edition radio-controlled watch with the special "feature" nobody can actually change the time of the watch! The makers were so confident in the clock's accuracy, it actually doesn't even feature a crown, and can only be opened by the makers (battery replacements are of course free of charge). As nobody could've tampered with the time of that specific clock, it appears the boyfriend has a solid alibi, but is it really so solid? The idea of how this "perfect alibi" is created is a bit artificial (who's going to buy such a watch?) but the clues in this story that point out how the murderer managed to create this alibi are really cleverly hidden in the story, and result in a satisfying tale of deduction, as in hindsight, you realize you really should have solved this mystery yourself considering the obvious clues. I also think this is one of the few stories where the characters unique to this story really make an impression, instead of being a bland A, B or C who'll be forgotten by the time the next story starts.
Ugachi Keibuho, Jiken Desu ("Lt. Ugachi, it's a case!") is almost like a spin-off story, as it focuses on Ugachi instead of the duo from the detective agency. Ugachi is investigating the apparent suicide of a writer, who fell off the seventh floor balcony of his room. A witness of an opposite building however states they saw a woman in the apartment above the victim's room looking down her balcony too around the presumed time of death, but she never called the police and the body was only reported much later. The woman living one floor above actually worked with the victim in the past, and she had been sexually harrassed and assaulted by him, so she has a motive, but the problem is that the victim's apartment was locked from the inside, and the key was found inside his room, so how could the woman have made it look like a suicide? It's a story that works best as a spin-off story I think, as while the howdunnit itself isn't really memorable and the physical clues pointing to the truth of what happened are a bit too mundane, I think it works perfectly as a story where Ugachi herself is the main detective, giving the reader a story that isn't strictly about how or why, but manages to turn it in a kind of different mystery.
In Kieru Shoujo Ou Shoujo ("The Vanishing Girl, The Pursuing Girl"), the two detectives are hired to find a girl who disappeared from a tunnel running beneath a road: her friend spotted the girl from the other side of the road, waving to her. The girl then entered the tunnel which should've taken her to the other side of the road, but no matter how long her friend waited, the girl never showed up at the other end of the tunnel, nor was she seen returning back to the entrance of the tunnel (the opposite side of the road). Little time has passed so the police hasn't been informed yet, especially as the friend's not sure whether the girl disappeared by choice or against her will, so Touri and Hisame start investigating the dorm where the girl lives to see if they can find any clues about her disappearance. The investigation is surprisingly more focused on the why of the impossible disappearance than the how, and while in the end, that does work in the story's advantage, it still reads a bit weird. Not a big fan of this story though, as both the why and the how feel a bit underwhelming, and you really wonder whether this was the most logical thing for the culprit to do.
Mottomo Manuke na Dekishitai ("The Stupidest Drowned Body") has Touri and Hisame investigate a very odd death orchestrated by their old friend Mikage AKA Cheap Trick. A IT company president was found drowned in an exclusive club members only pool one early morning. The man had drowned about eight hours earlier and had been lying in the water since, but... there had hardly been any water in the pool when he died! The previous evening, after a reserved party at this pool, someone had drained the pool of the water, which was only discovered at midnight. The caretaker switched the water management tool on again at midnight, and it would take about eight hours to fill the pool again, just in time for the morning swimmers. It seems thus that the victim had somehow managed to drown himself while there was basically just a puddle lying on the pool floor. But of course, Mikage is behind this, so there was some trick to how a drowned body appeared in an empty pool. By far the best story of the whole collection, it's always with these Mikage stories a cheap trick by which this inexplicable murder was created, but still a very memorable one, and the idea of the victim just drowning in his swimming wear in a puddle in a basically empty pool is just really silly in the good sense: just inexplicable enough for an interesting murder mystery, without being overly dramatic.
Door no Kagi wo Akeru toki ("When The Door Is Unlocked") is the final story, and brings the old four university friends together, when Mikage suddenly appears again and challenges his old friends to solve a locked room mystery they all know very well, because it's something that happened to themselves a few years ago, when they were studying criminology together. In a flashback, we are told how the four of them were working together on their graduation project, which involved investigating a real crime, when one of them was assaulted: the victim was found bleeding from his neck and an ambulance had to be called immediately or he wouldn't have lived to tell the tale. However, the house he was found in was locked from the inside, and the key was found inside a cup in the living room where the victim was found. Mikage now wants them to solve what really happened back then. A story that is more interesting as a flashback case fleshing out the relations between Touri, Hisame, Ugachi and Mikage rather than as a locked room mystery itself, as the trick behind the locked room is really old and a lot of readers will probably be familiar with one or more variants on the exact same idea. Aosaki obviously wouldn't be himself if he wouldn't pay good attention to clewing, but still, it's not a really memorable locked room mystery on its own merits, and works better as a story for those who wanted to learn more about the protagonists, especially as previous stories follow a formula so rigid, so this one stands out.
So like the first collection, Knockin' On Locked Door 2 is a lot like popcorn, a light snack that never really disappoints, but in comparison tot the first book, I'd say this one is not as good. The first one simply had more stories I really liked overall. I don't really hate any of the stories in this second volume, but I don't think the highest highs of this volume are as high as those we saw in the first volume and while some readers will like the attempt to flesh out the characters a bit more in the two outlier stories in the second volume, I found it, on the whole, just a tad weaker.
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