A Little Night Work

“I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.” 

"The Big Sleep"

Brown covers lately...

A few weeks back I wrote about Hikawa Tooru's debut novel Makkura na Yoake. Hikawa was strongly inspired by Ellery Queen, by not only using a same-named detective character who was an aspiring mystery author, but also by presenting the reader with a pure, logic-based whodunnit where a chain of deductions ultimately proves who the murderer was. Hikawa made his debut via the Mephisto Prize, which is awarded to unpublished authors (of novels), but Hikawa hadn't been keeping all of his eggs in one basket. As many starting novelists do in Japan, he had sent in different manuscripts to apply for different publishers' newcomer awards. He ended up winning via the Mephisto Prize, but that's what makes his second novel quite interesting. Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle ("A Locked Room is a Sleepless Puzzle", 2000) was actually originally a manuscript Hikawa had written for the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award, where his story did made it to the final selection (alongside manuscripts by Tsukatou Hajime and Shirodaira Kyou among others!). It wasn't picked as the winner, obviously, but oddly enough it was later picked up not by Kodansha, through which Hikawa made his debut via the Mephisto Prize and who published his first novel. Even weirder is that this second book, of which the original title was Nemurai Yoru no Tame ni ("For A Sleepless Night"), was also not published by Tokyo Sogensha, the publisher behind the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award. It was Harashobo that published Hikawa's second book, and because of that, we end up with something that might annoy some people: Hikawa Tooru wrote five books in total starring his same-named detective, and four out of those five books are published by Kodansha under the same label as pockets. But this second book was published by a different publisher, in a complete different format, with a large hardcover format, so if you place this series in order on your bookshelf, this book will stand out a lot.

The book starts, not surprisingly, at night, at the offices of the publisher Touto Shuppan. Hikawa Tooru is having a meeting with his editor Komiyama, who is very enthusiastic about Hikawa's work and they're adding the final touches to Hikawa's book to have it published so Hikawa can finally make his debut as a novelist. The meeting turns into a normal chat, with some drinks Komiya keeps at the office, and they're occassionally joined by some other people who are still at the office late at night, like the part-timer Ueno and the managing director. When it's about time to leave the building, they get out of the editor's office. Hikawa happens to look down the hallway, where he sees the managing director step inside the elevator. He approaches the elevator, only to see another office worker lying on the floor just around the corner behind the elevator, nearly dying! The man's been stabbed, but manages to say he was stabbed by the managing director, who Hikawa just saw taking the elevator up to the executive floor on the sixth floor. Hikawa and his editor quickly decide to warn the guard and the other people still staying in the building, but then they learn the outside door has been blocked from the outside. A printer's salesman who had been visiting another editor and an artist elsewhere in the building for a final check on a cover, but has not been able to go out the building because something's blocking the door from outside. They learn the phone line's also been cut, meaning they're all trapped inside the building now, with a killer! But when the elevator is stopped again, they find.... the managing director also stabbed in the back inside, dead. But who could've killed the director, and why, and why did the director kill the first person?

Before you start asking me: yes, most of the time this book isn't about a locked room. The setting is a closed circle, and there are some impossible crime features to the crime, but most of the time, this book does not focus strongly on the impossible aspects of the crime.

Anyway, this was a book that felt very similar to the first, and also very different, and part of that is probably because this was originally written for a different type of newcomer award. This was originally written for the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award, and perhaps that is why this one feels far more puzzle-focused than the first novel, as the Mephisto Prize isn't as puzzle mystery-focused in general. This book also has something that really helped an aspect I found tiring in the first novel: the middle part was very slow, as a lot of time was spent just jumping between characters, with Hikawa occasionally dicussing theories with others and few revelations made until the very end. This book is a lot more interesting in that regard due to the closed circle situation. In the earlier parts, they try to find every person in the building, while being careful not to run into the managing director, but later, when the director himself is found dead in the elevator, things still remain tense because they really don't understand why he ended up dead too, and whether there is another killer in the building, or perhaps it turns out one of them is the killer (you can guess what the answer is). They also try to find ways to contact the outside world or to open the door, but this leads to some interesting observations regarding the closed circle. Because the door is locked from the outside, it means the killer is outside the building, right? Meaning this is the reversed idea of a locked room or a closed circle, being the killer who intentionally closes off a space to show they couldn't be inside during a certain period, and the discussions regarding this topic will appeal to mystery readers alike.

This leads me to another thing that made this book a lot more enjoyable in the middle parts than the first book, and that's the presence of a rival for Hikawa in the form of his edtor Komiyama. At least, he becomes a rival because this is the second book published, but if this had been the first book, I suppose you were supposed to think Komiyama was the real protagonist and that Hikawa was just a Watson? Komiyama, as an editor of mystery stories, is a great expert in mystery fiction and uses his knowledge to lead the investigation in the building, as they realize they can't escape anyway until the morning shift people arrive at the office and set them free. Hikawa himself too acknowledges Komiyama is actually a better detective than him, being more pro-active in both voicing his deductions and acting upon them. But because we as the reader know the true series detective Hikawa, there's a certain tension in these segments as you are waiting for Komiyama to make a mistake somewhere which Hikawa will correct. This makes the middle half a much more entertaining read than the first novel. Having a genre-savvy character around also allows for more indepth theorizing about the events, making this a far more puzzle-focused book.

The murders themselves, as in the acts themselves, in this book are quite plain and straightforward by the way, with people just being stabbed. So the puzzle is really focused on figuring out why the first person was stabbed by the managing director, and how the managing director ended up dead too (as he couldn't have committed suicide like that). There is as mentioned a minor impossible aspect to the story, as the back door was blocked from the outside fairly early on in the night (the front door is automatically locked outside of office hours, meaning people coming or leaving in the night have to take the back door, where the night guard is) and after the first murder, Hikawa sees the elevator move up to the sixth floor, until it is called down again and the managing director's body is found inside. Meaning that if there is an unknown murderer loose, they should be on the sixth floor, but when they go up the elevator to the sixth floor, they find it completely empty, meaning there couldn't have been a murderer up here anyway, especially as the door to the staircase is locked from the inside too. The book therefore starts to focus a lot on the alibis of all the characters inside the building, to see if any of them could've killed the managing director, and this is coupled with a lot of Queen-esque deductions about who could've have known what at what time to allow for a certain action. Stuff I like a lot personally, and it made this a very entertaining read.

Ultimately, I do have to admit the solution is fairly simple, and I think genre-savvy people like Komiyama would likely think of the real solution as a very viable candidate very early on. That said, while I think a lot of readers can intuitively guess the solution, the logical road to the solution is definitely worth reading too, as you can clearly see Hikawa is a Queen devotee, and in these kinds of novels, it's not about guessing what the solution is, but having an actual chain of reasoning built on the evidence and testimonies and actions of all the characters, and in that regard, Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle is quite solid too.

Overall, I think I liked Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle better than the first novel. While the first novel had a better final chain of reasoning leading to Hikawa identifying the murderer, I think that on the whole, this second novel was much more readable, while still staying close to the Queen style despite being a closed circle story too. While the solution to the impossible aspects of the story might be a bit simple in design in comparison to the logic needed to solve it, I do think this was a good novel that makes me want to read the rest too.

Original Japanese title(s): 氷川透『密室は眠れないパズル』