Choosing Sides

A place for everything and everything in its place.

(Saying)

Time for my single anthology review of the year... And yes, it's a bit late this year...

Disclosure: I am a member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. However, I didn't vote for the stories this year.

Every summer, the Honkaku-Ou ("The King of Honkaku") anthology is published, collecting the best honkaku short stories published the previous year, as selected by the members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. The selection of short stories basically acts as a counterpart to the Honkaku Mystery Award, which is awarded to the best published book each year. Short stories are usually published in different magazines or online, which can make them difficult to obtain at a later stage, so having all the chosen short stories collected in one book is quite convenient. The Honkaku-Ou format was started in 2019, as the previous format also included the year's best mystery-related essays chosen by the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club, but while not every year was as strong as others, I do think the last two years had really strong contenders, some of them I'd even consider candidates for my own best-read mysteries of those years. So I had been looking forward to the 2023 edition too. 

Honkaku-Ou 2023 (2023) opens with Imamura Masahiro's Aru Heya Nite ("In A Certain Room"), and apparently, this is the first short story Imamura wrote that is not part of a series. Oh, and another disclosure message: I translated Imamura's Death Among the Undead and Death Within the Evil Eye. This is, interestingly, considering his other works, an inverted mystery and opens with a scene where Kengo tries to talk things over with Yuuka his... girlfriend? ex? and things go horribly wrong, ending with her death. Because he snuck in the apartment building, he figures he might get away with it if he can spirit her body away for a while, and he's just done stuffing her body in a suitcase and about to leave the place, when an attorney appears at the door, who says he has an appointment with Yuuka, as she wanted to discuss something with him regarding a rather pesky stalker. Kengo pretends he's Yuuka's brother, hoping to fool the attorney long enough to get out of here, but the attorney seems to notice a lot of little things that add up to a big truth while he's in the room... This is a rather short story, and it's one I like better for the turnabout climax at the end of the inverted mystery, when things inevitably go wrong for Kengo, than for the build-up. While I like the big "twist" you often have in inverted mysteries that is presented here (when you realize the murderer made a truly fatal mistake), the minor mistakes and faults the attorney notices in the build-up feel less strong, and don't really give that satisfying feeling you often have even with smaller points like in Columbo. Not a bad story by any means, just a bit underwhelming on the whole.

Yuuki Shinichirou was featured in the 2020 edition of this anthology, and returns with the oddly-titled Koronde mo Tada de ha Okinai Fuwadama Toumyou Soup Jiken ("The 'If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade' Fluffy Egg Pea Sprout Soup Incident"). This time we follow a kind of Uber Eats driver, but one of the shops he works for is rather special: the restaurants is also actually a detective agency. By making very specific orders via the app, clients can engage the detective/cook's services, who uses a select number of trusted Uber drivers to visits to the clients to gather the necessary information to solve the case. This time they are working on a case of a dead woman found in an apartment building that went up in flames. While people were watching the smoke outside, a woman saw another woman who mumbled "Good for him!" and then ran into the building. Later this woman was found dead in one of the apartments, which was occupied by her ex, who escaped from the fire in the building in time. Because of his connection to the victim, police are of course investigating him, but as the woman was seen going into the building herself, it doesn't seem it was his fault she died, but why did she go inside in the first place? At first sight, I thought the idea of an Uber-detective-service sounded fun, but I didn't think it was really used meaningful here. I assume this story is part of a series, but the way the story was told with bits of the driver returning to the cook to discuss the case didn't help the pacing of the story. The fire incident itself is not super complex and I think many will guess early why the woman went to the building herself, but I liked it enough, so I thought it was a shame the story read a bit awkward.

Shiotani Ken's 20XX-nen no Shuki ("Accounts Dated 20XX") consists of a series of reports written by different people, portraying a unique dictatorship led by the Great Leader X, who guides the strictly-led nation. The first account is from A, the director of Camp 33 in the Kanto region, a training camp where men are trained in several skill fields. His account to his superiors says nothing is wrong at the camp, but the next report already introduces to B, the replacement of A, as A was caught lying in his reports. B reports on the death of K, an injured man who had been sent to the camp to recover, but who accidentally died during his stay at the camp, a fact A tried to cover up. More letters follow, which slowly delve into the secret behind K's death. This was a short, but fun story, with each letter changing your views on what was said in the previous letter. It's not really fair play puzzle in that sense, as the writer of each new account always knows much more than the reader, but it's cool to see how the case changes and events described in earlier accounts can suddenly take a completely different meaning. The world described in these letters give this story both a very large, and small scale: apparently this is a North Korea-esque society, but at the other hand, all we see of this world is through these letters, which are all about events occuring inside a special training camp, so ultimately you don't see that much of this unique society. This would be cool to see in a full series.

According to Yagi Jun's own introduction, Chikusare ("Fatal Blood") was written as a horror story, so he was surprised it got picked for this anthology. It's about a sister, who joins her younger brother and his two children on a camp, as his sister-in-law is too busy with work to go with them. During their time outdoors, the sister remembers how there's a shrine in the forest here, with a cursed stone which can cut ties between people if you put the blood of the one you want to cut ties with on the stone. But as time passes by, she starts to see her younger brother act suspiciously with a cloth with some blood on it... This is indeed more of a horror story than a straight puzzler, revolving around the sister's suspicions about her brother's actions. Not bad per se, but also not really what I expect to read in an anthology like this. Had it been written more as a straight mystery story, I think I would have liked it better, because the last revelation is good, but the hinting/foreshadowing is a bit weirdly paced because it's more a horror story.

Araki Akane's Doukou no SHE ("Fellow Traveller SHE") is about Yuuko, who is going to kill somebody. She boards the night bus with just a kitchen knife inside her coat pocket, ready to strike when she arrives in Tokyo. The woman next to her however almost immediately notices the knife, and says she'll tell the driver, but Yuuko places the knife against the woman, Ruri, and tells her to stay quiet. The bus makes its way towards Tokyo, occasionally stopping at rest areas. During one of these stops, the passenger in front of Yuuko and Ruri says his phone and wallet was stolen from his bag in the overhead rack, and when they look around, the wallet is found inside Yuuko's bag! Yuuko knows she didn't steal the wallet, and immediately suspects Ruri pulled the stunt off to get out of her predicament, but how did she manage that while being kept at knife-point? A very thrilling story, though mystery-wise it is a bit... convenient? Like, I know people doze off in a night bus, but would nobody have noticed what was going in with that bag considering what was done with it in order for the wallet to end up in Yuuko's bag? The mystery of the smartphone is better, and I like the final turn of events regarding Yuuko's intended murder overall very much too though.

Shirai Tomoyuki's Moterean no Tekubi ("The Hand of the Moterean") starts with a group of three looking for crystallized fossils on the island of Posta, the realm of Gods. Once upon a time, an alien species called Moterans lived on the island, but they are now all extinct, and having been in the ground for so long, the three think they might find fossils turned into gemstones here. They eventually do find a cut-off hand, which is a bit weird, so they dig even further and far deeper in the ground, they stumble upon an arm. When they dig dozens of meters further, they find a body with a missing arm, and also signs they were naked when they died. This however leads to a very puzzling question: how did this Moterean's body end up like this on Posta Island, naked, and with their hand and arm at completely different depths in the ground? The one Shirai story I ever read was pretty gross and I hear that's his thing, but that was fortunately not the case here. This was an interesting archeological mystery. While I think the 'big' twist in the middle wasn't as surprising as it was probably intended, I liked the theories posed as to how parts of the fossil ended up seperated so far. The scale of the story encompasses thousands of years, so it's a weird "murder mystery" in that sense, but I really liked how this was used to come up with a very surprising explanation for the fossil being like that, as the misdirection really takes advantage of the unique setting.

Michio Shuusuke's Hariganemushi ("Horsehair Worm") is part of a series where each story includes a QR-code to a Youtube audio file, where you get to hear a specific scene/moment from the story. I think this is a pretty cool idea, but on the other hand, it's not really used in a meaningful manner in this specific story. I guess that's because the prose story has to work on its own, so you can not really have the audio track be the actual solution or a vital hint, but still, it's little more than a gimmick now. In this story, we follow a cram school teacher who is stalking one of his students: he has given her an USB charger, but in fact it's a listening device, and the last few days, he's been following her to her home, and listening from his car to the sounds from her bedroom. While doing this, he learns more about her home situation, which is quite grave with an abusive step-father. Things eventually explode in the household, but there's nothing the teacher can do. But what did really happen in the house, and what was it he was actually listening to? I think the problem with this tale is there's no real surprise? It's more a thriller than a detective story, as even at the end, when a detective-like figure explains everything, it doesn't feel like an explanation, because the teacher heard all of this himself and... there was no mystery or anything. The audio track you get to listen at the end, is also just part of a scene the teacher was listening to, with the exact same phrases, so all the audio track offers is just... hearing the scene acted out.

Overall, I think Honkaku-Ou 2023 was not as strong as previous entries. The last three years, there was always at least one story I really, really liked, making the whole collection worth reading, but while there were stories I simply liked in this year's edition, I don't think any of them were really must-reads. I think my favorites are Shiotani's story for having a unique premise and a good build-up to the solution, as well as Imamura and Shirai's entries for their more focused story-telling, but even then, it's not like I think these alone make this really a worthwile read. Oh well, I guess there's always next year!

Original Japanese title(s): 『本格王2023』: 今村昌弘「ある部屋にて」/ 結城真一郎「転んでもただでは起きないふわ玉豆苗スープ事件」/ 潮谷験「二〇XX年の手記」/ 矢樹純「血腐れ」/ 荒木あかね「同好のSHE」/ 白井智之「モーティリアンの手首」/ 道尾秀介 「ハリガネムシ」

Door to Death

One year ago, I asked about whether anyone knew about any interesting honkaku-focused Discord servers, and as it appeared there wasn't one yet, I decided to open the Honkaku Discord server myself. And today it's been active for exactly one year! At the time, I hoped the server would attract about perhaps thirty members after some time, but to my great surprise, that number was reached much faster than what I had expected, and the Honkaku Server has been a fun place to talk about mystery fiction, from not only Japan, but across the world and in different mediums, from books to games. We've also been doing regular book clubs, even of stories and novels written by fellow members. I haven't really name-dropped the server lately here, so I guess it's about time I do it again, as you're sure to have a great time there if you like chatting about mystery fiction!

Invite link: https://discord.gg/z3HMSmf8qd

Vampire Bats and Scaredy Cats

The world seems full of good men—even if there are monsters in it.

"Dracula"

I have to admit, as much as I like reading short story collections, I really don't like writing reviews for them because they either become too long, or I try to discuss them too briefly...

The last few months, I have been reading the Charles Bertrand stories by Kagami Masayuki, an author who debuted in 1999, but died very young in 2013, having only published three novels and one short story collection, and a handful of uncollected stories. While the uncollected stories were eventually collected, and published posthumously in 2022, it's still a shame this writer who was strongly influenced by John Dickson Carr published so little, His main detective is Charles Bertrand, a character strongly modeled after Carr's Henri Bencolin character, both being former spymasters and current Paris magistrates. I felt the Carr influence very strongly in the first two novels I read (especially the first!), with stories with grandeur focusing on locked room murders and other impossible crimes set in the interbellum and I would definitely recommend a Carr fan (who can read Japanese) to try and trace the Kagami books if possible (they are not in print anymore). The third novel is going for rather a hefty price in the used market though at the moment, so after reviewing the first two books, I skip now to the fourth and final book published during Kagami's life-time: Shibarikubi no Tou no Yakata ("The House with the Hanging Tower"), a 2011 collection featuring five stories with the Paris magistrate Bertrand and his American nephew and assistant Patrick Smith solving a series of impossible crimes, all with a supernatural theme.

While visiting England when he was younger, Charles Bertrand got involved in an old-fashioned duel to the death, but in a very different form than usual. Henry Goodfellows had been accusing Francois Manolisque of being a fraud psychic, whil Manolisque claimed he could make an astral projection of himself and thus commit acts far away from where his physical body is. And thus, the challenge was born: Francois Manolisque declared he would kill Goodfellows, but his astral body would do the job, while his physical body remained in his own home, commonly known as the House with the Hanging Tower, tied up and observed by witnesses. On the night of the duel, Manolisque is put in a suit of armor, and tied to a chair and put inside an underground room in the house. Five witnesses, including Bertrand, keep an eye on Manolisque in the coming hours, until the designated period is over. They check at intervals whether Manolisque is still there. The dagger with which Manolisque declared he would kill Goodfellows is also kept safely inside a box by these five men: with one having the key, another person knowing the code to the combination lock and one physically watching the box itself. Hours fly by and nothing seems to happen, and when it's past the deadline, the five witnesses enter the room again, but to their great shock, they find Manolisque dead inside the armor. And what's more: he's been shot to death, even though the armor is completely intact and nobody ever heard a shot. Meanwhile, Goodfellows is also found dead inside his home thirty miles away, and he was stabbed to death. Shockingly, they learn Goodfellows had shot at his assaillant, and the bullet found in Manolisque matches Goodfellows' pistol, while when they open the box, they find the dagger is stained with blood. At first sight, it seems Manolisque did indeed manage to send his astral body to Goodfellows and that they eventually killed each other, but is that really the case?

The title and opening story Shibarikubi no Tou no Yakata ("The House with the Hanging Tower") is also by far the best story of the book, and I don't mean that because the rest is so awful. It's just a really neatly constructed story that isn't super long, but full of details that help set-up the puzzle and the solution. I don't really get the title to be honest: while there is a dead person eventually found in the tower of the house, the main mystery is of course how Manolisque could've ended up shot to death while he was inside a suit of armor, in a room that was observed by five different people, and how he could've killed Goodfellows at the same time, who was in his own home thirty miles away. I don't think the solution is super surprising, as there are just so many elements necessary to facilite the solution, it's likely you'll think of at least one part of the solution yourself, and from there you could work your way through the whole thing, but the construction o the whole operation is really good, with a keen eye for detail and clues, and the result is simply an incredibly solid impossible crime.

Jinrou no Kage ("The Shadow of the Werewolf") details the first time Patrick assisted his uncle in his investigations. At the time, Paris had been shocked by a series of abductions of young women. When the first woman was found dead, her body was covered in countless of wounds, with the fatal wound being a bite that crushed her throat and people of Paris starting to call the murderous kidnapper the Werewolf. When the wife of Duke Loreine is threatened too, police officers are posted around the duke's home, but they are unable to prevent a tragedy: The wife is staying inside a locked room by herself, but when she doesn't react to calls by the maid and she and the duke look through the keyhole, they find the wife's been decapitated! They manage to open the door, but while the maid has gone to call for reinforcements, the duke is attacked and bitten too, and the "Werewolf" escapes with the wife's head, But how could the werewolf have entered the house, and the victim's room, and later escaping, without the police noticing? The story is rather simple, and a lot of elements have a few similarities with another Kagami story I read recently (* I basically read all of them "recently" as I acquired the books soon after another), so that made the solution probably a bit easier to guess than normal. More a story that is enjoyable due to the pulpy shock factor than being a highlight of the collection.

 

In Wendigo no Sasayaki ("The Whisper of the Wendigo"), Irene Simpson hopes Charles Bertrand can help her uncle Abner, who is apparently being threatened by the widow of Joseph Desbitt, brother of Arthuer Desbitt whom many years ago, helped Abner on his deer hunts in Canada, but who disappeared mysteriously. In fact, it was only recently Joseph too visited Abner, hoping to learn the truth behind the disappearence of his brother, but he could not believe what Abner had to tell: according to Abner, the two had gotten lost on their way, and one night, they were attacked by something that he believed was the Wendigo, and it was the Wendigo who took Arthur's life. Joseph obviously didn't believe this story, but he was later also found dead under mysterious circumstances in Abner's home, which prompted the visit of Joseph's widow and a help to come to Abner to find out what really happened to the Desbitt brothers, and they are not willing to play nice with Abner, who in turn keeps denying any fault. The widow and her companion are allowed to stay at the house, but the following, the companion is found dead in the garden of the Abner residence, but the death is impossible: the man must've dropped from a tremendous height, but considering his location, he obviously did not fall from the clock tower from the neighboring lot. The only explanation seems to be... a Wendigo lifting the man up in the sky and dropping him. Or is it? I think I like the basic idea behind how it was done, but the clewing is a bit sparse, and there's not that much synergy with the Wendigo/Canada backstory, so as a whole, the story feels a bit chaotic? I think I'd have liked the main trick to the impossible fall better if it had been used in a different story where the reveal is set-up a bit better and where *a certain thing* doesn't feel like it came out of nowhere.

The last two stories do feature Charles Bertrand, but are at the same time also directly inspired by two John Dickson Carr stories: Vampire no Tou ("The Vampire Tower") is based on the (backstory mystery) of He Who Whispers, while Circe no Shima ("The Island of Circe") is based on The Burning Court. I haven't read the last one, so I don't know how similar the two are, but Vampire no Tou is very similar in terms of set-up, about a man falling of a tower while he was alone there, and the entrance being watched, and also focusing on a woman who is rumoured to be a vampire. While the actual solution is a bit different from He Who Whispers, it's still very similiar, and if you're familiar with the Carr book, I think you can guess a lot in advance. So I am guessing Circe no Shima is similar. It is about a mysterious woman (a witch) who is seen to commit a murder in a room, but who then disappears completely. Technically, it's a good, solid impossible crime story, but I kept wondering about how much of this would be similar to The Burning Court, so that did distract me. I am fairly sure that someone who has read The Burning Court, might enjoy this story better as a kind of pastische/homage (not to say the story is bad, but I kept wondering how much of it was just mirroring the original story).

This book features insert illustrations by JET, who also did manga adaptations of works by Ellery Queen and Yokomizo Seishi. The art is truly amazing, and you can really see how Bertrand was based on Bencolin!

In the end, I do think Shibarikubi no Tou no Satsujin was the weakest book by Kagami I have read. While the title story is great, and it alone makes the book worth reading, the rest never reaches the same heights. The middle two are a bit 'okay, they're not really bad, but not really memorable either' and the two stories directly inspired by Carr stories, or at least the one I knew, was better, but stayed a bit too close to the source material, taking away some of the surprise. While the art is awesome, I wouldn't say this book is top priority if you want to read Kagami.

Original Japanese title(s):  加賀美雅之『 縛り首の塔の館』:「縛り首の塔の館」/「人狼（ワーウルフ）の影」/「白魔（ウェンディゴ）の囁き」/「吸血鬼（ヴァンパイア）の塔」/「妖女（キルケー）の島」

The Losing Game

「兄は兄。僕は僕ですから」

『内田康夫DSミステリー 名探偵・浅見光彦シリーズ「副都心連続殺人事件」』

"My brother is my brother. And I am myself."

"Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery - The Great Detective Asami Mitsuhiko Series: The Fukutoshin Serial Murder Case"

Last year, around this period, I had a short run of reviews of old Nintendo DS detective adventure games... I've only got one for this year though.

I think there's some kind of rule for licensed Nintendo DS games based on the works of famous mystery novelists to have insanely long titles, because after the Nishimura Kyoutarou and Yamamura Misa games, we also got Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery Meitantei Asami Mitsuhiko Series: Fukutoshin Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ("Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery - The Great Detective Asami Mitsuhiko Series: The Fukutoshin Serial Murder Case") in 2009. As the title tells you, the game is based on Uchida Yasuo's long-running Asami Mitsuhiko series: Mitsuhiko is a freelance writer for a travel magazine, who travels all across Japan to touristic destinations, and of course, he often ends up getting himself entangled in murder cases. Not rarely, he ends up being a suspect too, though the local cops usually regret detaining Mitsuhiko whenever they learn he's the younger brother of the current head of Criminal Affairs of Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department. While the series is adapted quite often for the small screen, as far as I know, this Nintendo DS game is the first and only time the series got a game adaptation (with an original story). The story starts familiar enough: Mitsuhiko teams up with a new photographer (the player), but he also receives a letter from a girl, whose father recently passed away. This Senkawa Akihiko was one day found dead in his bed by his daughter Mafuyu, but while the police has deemed it a suicide, she can't believe her father would leave her all alone in the world. Senkawa worked in the sales department of the car manufacturer Y, so while working on his article, Asami also visits the Y headquarters along the Fukutoshin Metro Line to see whether there could be a different reason for Senkawa's death. He soon learns three months ago, Nakamori, a co-worker of Senkawa was murdered, which quickly puts a different light on Senkawa's death, and so Mitsuhiko starts digging in Senkawa and Nakamori's past.

I'll just refer to this game as Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery to keep it short. The game is, as you'd expect, an adventure mystery game of the command-style variety, where you use standard commands like "Talk" and "Go to" to visit various locations and talk with various characters to gather information. At key moments you'll be asked questions to show you're on the right track, or you have to solve small puzzles like figuring out a code. Nothing surprising here, though I must admit that right from the start, I was rather pleasantly surprised by the production values of this game. While it's not big AAA-title for the DS, I have to admit I had never expected it to be this good: there are official tie-ups with for example the Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line (which had only opened completely one year before the game's release) and Mercedes-Benz, there is a fair amount of animated characters and the voice work! Most characters are voiced, some by very big names like Ootsuka Akio and Tani Ikuko, and a staggering amount of scenes is voiced, not just some key scenes, but also minor scenes. The Nishimura Kyoutarou and Yamamura Misa games looked a lot cheaper than this and to be honest, I have seen enough non-licensed "for gamers" games that aren't produced with as much care as this game. Though, the music is quite... boring.

And as a mystery adventure game too, Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery is very, very boring. It's a shame the story and gameplay isn't as interesting as the production values would suggest. The story does hit all the usual Asami Mitsuhiko tropes, like Mitsuhiko being seen as a suspect by the police until they learn who his brother is, Mitsuhiko being scolded by his mother Shizue for loafing around and not marrying, we visit Karuizawa in a short segment to have our obligatory "tourist destination trip" and where we learn a bit about a local tourist spot and of course, the mystery plot focuses more on entangling human relationships and their motives, rather than solving tricks, so if you're an Asami Mitsuhiko fan, you might be satisfied with that alone (and yes, I do realize this game is of course also marketed to exactly those people, and not mystery gamers per se). I do have to say I am kinda disappointed the game is so Tokyo-centred. I get they got the Fukutoshin Line deal, but the way every location happens to be near around one of the Fukutoshin stations and one plot point was tied directly to the line felt a bit forced. But when translated to an actual interactive game, this story just doesn't really work in a way to be interesting. All you do is just go from one location to another and go through the conversations in order. The segments where you need to answer some questions correctly to show you've "deduced" something to proceed are just questions asking you repeat the little fact you learned five minutes ago, and the few puzzle segments where you solve a code aren't fun either. The game has multiple endings (bad endings), but as far as I know, they are all just directly choice-dependent, like choose to go to location A first means instant bad ending, location B first and you're fine. Which isn't really interesting either. 

The story itself I have to admit, was surprisingly on-par with other Asami Mitsuhiko books I have read. The game scenario is credited to the Asami Mitsuhiko Club by the way, the official fan club run by author Uchida Yasuo himself (it was disbanded in 2015 after 22 years). The books are not really the kind of puzzlers I prefer to read, but at least fans of the series will probably like this as it doesn't stray from the formula and feels like a genuine Mitsuhiko tale. At its core, the story does have things I do like, regarding how the whole series of murder is set up, though motive-wise, things feel a bit weak, and that way they tried to make the murderer feel symphathetic (because it's a human drama-focused mystery) didn't work at all for me. Not sure if the writers actually were trying to portray them as sympathetic, or were just overdoing the "explanation of the motive", but it was a really weird climax... Some parts felt a bit forced though, like the trip to Karuizawa, but at least we got to visit... Uchida Yasuo there.

Which was odd. In this game, Asami Mitsuhiko is actually well-known as the amateur detective, because the in-universe Uchida has written the books based on his adventures and those have been adapted for television too (like in the real world). He's at least famous enough for people to recognize him occassionally, and for Mafuyu to write him a letter in the first place. And yet there'd still be police detectives in Tokyo who don't know him? Or somehow Mitsuhiko's editor doesn't keep a better eye on him, considering Mitsuhiko's tendency to skip work to work on a case? The choice for the player being Mitsuhiko's photographer was also a bit weird. At the end of the game, you're actually being ranked for how good of an assistant you were to Mitsuhiko, but the rating system is a bit vague for that. You're ranked based on answering the questions correctly or doing the right suggestions to Mitsuhiko, but... "Mitsuhiko's assistant" isn't a character in the books, so you can't really know "how" you're supposed to act. I'm not sure why they didn't have you be Mitsuhiko himself...

But in short, the only thing Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery Meitantei Asami Mitsuhiko Series: Fukutoshin Renzoku Satsujin Jiken has going for it as basically its production values. As a mystery game, the story feels like an Asami Mitsuhiko tale, but it's not fun at all to play as a game, with too much hand-holding and not really requiring the player to ever think for themselves about the case and mysteries. Now I am starting to wonder whether there are actually games based on existing mystery novel series that are interesting on their merits as video games?  Perhaps I should try YAKATA Nightmare Project, based on Ayatsuji's House series one day...

Original Japanese title(s): 『内田康夫DSミステリー 名探偵・浅見光彦シリーズ「副都心連続殺人事件」』

Dead Man's Hand

"It's good to be the king."

"History of the World: Part 1"

To be honest, I really dislike writing posts on books I feel... very indifferent about.

Disclosure: I translated Norizuki Rintarou's short story The Lure of the Green Door.  

A group of four gather in a karaoke box. While at first, this might seem like a normal gathering of friends, we soon learn the four barely know each other. But they have one thing in common: they all have someone they want dead. The four agree to exchange murders: by trading murders, they can secure an alibi for themselves when the person they want dead is murdered by someone else for them. Of course, they will have to commit a different murder in return. By having four people exchanging murders, they hope to fool the police completely, as a simple 1 - 1 trade might be discovered. They use a pack of cards to decide who gets which target and the order in which the murders have to be committed, as well as exchanging basic information about the intended victims with the would-be murderer. And in time, the game starts. Inspector Norizuki gets involved in one of these murders, but the discovery of a playing card leads to his son Rintarou realizing a murder exchange might be hidden beneath the murder. Can he and his father figure out who the murderers are in Norizuki Rintarou's 2011 novel King wo Sagase ("Find the King")?

King wo Sagase is at the moment the latest novel in the Norizuki Rintarou series featuring the same-named Norizuki Rintarou, a mystery novelist who sometimes assists his father Inspector Norizuki in difficult cases, mirroring the Ellery Queen/Inspector Queen dynamic. While a few short story collections followed afterwards, this is still the last long adventure of Rintarou, and also the last book I hadn't read of the series, so I guess I finally caught up, even though the Norizuki Rintarou books are among the first I ever discussed here.

The theme of the book is a murder exchange... which strangely enough a rather common theme in Norizuki's writings. The short story [Libra] Shukumei no Majiwaru Shiro de ("At the Castle where Fates Cross") is about a murder exchange too and is apparently a kind of proto-version of King wo Sagase, while one of the earliest non-series Norizuki's I read, Double Play, also tackles the same theme, While not about a murder exchange, I also have to think about the short story Abekobe no Isho ("The Switched Suicide Notes"), where the wrong suicide notes are found with the wrong people. You do get a sense that Norizuki likes... people swapping things.

This book does take on a different form than most Rintarou stories and the other novels, because it is about a murder exchange, and therefore takes an inverted mystery form in at least the first third/half of the book. We are told about the meeting of the four conspirators right away, and see them dividing the playing cards that decide who will kill who and in what order, after which we follows some of the murderers committing their crimes. When Inspector Norizuki and Rintarou become involved, it doesn't take them too long to start suspecting some kind of exchange is going on based on the clues they found, and I have to say it was this part which does feel a bit rushed, because okay, how swiftly would you usually really connect two or more seemingly unconnected murders by suspecting a murder swap? But I guess the realization has to come at one point for the book to shift gears, as from this point on, we focus more on the Norizukis investigation into the suspected murder exchange.

It's here the book takes a surprising turn. The book starts out as an inverted mystery story and we as the reader already know there really has been a murder exchange, but some things in the criminal plan go wrong, which quickly allows Inspector Norizuki and Rintarou to focus in on the murderers, who of course wish to escape the claws of justice. They come up with a plan to fool the Inspector, and this is basically the main mystery of the book: we already know who the murderers are and the murder exchange, which was the "initial" line of defence, has been exposed, so now they have to come up with a new line of defence using the cards they have been dealt. This becomes a more conventional puzzle, but I wasn't really a big fan of the overall plot, I think. I'm not really sure why. I think part of it is that it feels very much like a puzzle: a lot of the mystery demands of you to remember the real names of the four murderers, their nicknames they use among each other and the cards they were given at the start of the story and at times it really just feels like a sudoku-esque puzzle where you need to determine symbols A/B/C. And after reading other murder exchange stories by Norizuki, I guess some of the surprise of the twist lacked impact, as a lot of it did feel familiar in terms of themes. There is an interesting twist in theory, but it's basically portrayed in a rather cumbersome manner, and after at least two other stories with the same theme, little of King wo Sagase really surprises.

Perhaps someone who hasn't already read Norizuki's other murder exchange stories will enjoy this one better, but for me, King wo Sagase was just too short, with too many elements that feel too familiar to really impress me. In general, I also think the short stories with Rintarou are better as puzzlers, so I guess that this book was fighting an uphill battle with me, but while it's my last Norizuki Rintarou novel for now, it's sadly also probably my least favorite, not because it's actually bad, but having read all the other works in this series, it just doesn't manage to surprise as much, nor does it provide a deductive chain as entertaining as other Rintarou stories do manage to offer. I'm glad I have read all the Rintarou books now though, and I hope new short stories will come!

Original Japanese title(s): 法月綸太郎『キングを探せ」

Phantom of the Knight

"Only you can put the king in check, vigilante. Move according to the rules, or it's the end of the day."

"Batman: The Animated Series"

I wish we could return to the schedule of having three or four new Detective Conan volumes a year instead of the barely two we get now...

It's been about six months since we last saw a new Detective Conan volume so here we have volume 104. I am not really sure why they didn't time the home video release of this year's theatrical release, Kurogane no Submarine, with this volume, as there's a gap of over a month now even though they are usually quite good at timing these kinds of releases, but this is the way things go, and what do we have this time? A very, very disappointing volume indeed, that is only kinda saved by one story, but also not really. The volume opens with The Knight Was Witness, where we learn Inspector Shiratori is participating in an amateur chess competition. His girlfriend Kobayashi is there to cheer him on, as is fellow teacher Wakasa, and their pupils the Detective Boys. They also run into Kuroda, the Managing Officer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police (so Shiratori's superior), who also turns out to be quite the mean chess player. During the first round, someone plays Amazing Grace, which seems to unsettle a few of the players, who say something similar happened last year too. During the down-time between rounds, a few players who finished their games early chat and have some drinks, but then one person in the room suddenly has his drink shot into fragments by an crossbow arrow! Kuroda and Conan run into the hallway in the hopes of finding the assailant, but they onyl find a second victim in the men's bathroom, who not only has an arrow shot in his stomach, but next to him lies his belongings.... and a keychain figure of a Knight's piece, which Kobayashi had gifted Shiratori earlier.  He claims he lost the figure and that he had been making a call at the stairs. Security footage confirms nobody took the elevators after the victim arrived at the floor, limiting the number of suspects to three, plus Shiratori, who seems to be the main suspect considering his keychain was found next to the victim. But what are those blood smears in that magazine of the victim?

A dying message of course, and not a very interesting one either. Wordplay dying messages are seldom my favorite, and one major clue that serves as a kinda twist is telegraphed with such enormous lights, it's hard to miss. The story also seems only to be an excuse to serve as a prologue to the next story: Kuroda sees Conan solving the riddle of the Knight so fast, he decides to confide to Conan about an incident he got involved with 17 years ago in the United States, involving a bloody knight's piece...

And fans who have been reading Conan this whole time of course know what Kuroda's finally going to tell Conan about, as we have been getting hints about a murder case involving a wealthy person that occured 17 years ago for a long time ago, and we know the incident also involved Rum, the second-in-rank in the Black Organization that created the drug that shrunk Kudo Shinichi to his current child-form, forcing himself to play the role of Conan. We also know other suspicious figures were involved one way or another with this case, but not exactly how, so in The Truth of 17 Years Ago, we finally get the story told completely, via flashbacks of both Kuroda and Rum themselves, who has plans to assassinate a certain person involved with this incident. The case involves the death of the wealthy Amanda Hughes, an elderly lady with both financial and political powers, who is also an amateur chess player who recently became friends with a young, but very talented shogi player. She has caught the attention of a certain crime organization however, who plan to assasinate her at her hotel, where the shogi player is also staying. She indeed ends up dead, and others fall victim too to the organization, but Amanda left one curious message as she died, leaving lipstick on her watch and smearing her blood on a knight's piece on her chess board. Kuroda now hopes Conan can solve this message for him.

While this incident taking place 17 years ago is important in Conan-lore as it connects several characters to each other, and also clarifies the actions and motives of a lot of the characters finally (we only got hints and fragments telling us about that before), The Truth of 17 Years Ago is not a very interesting story mystery-wise. Not at all. The fact we got another dying message involving a knight's piece one after another doesn't really help, but the message as Conan solves it doesn't even really tell either Kuroda much, nor the reader: because the reader is also shown flashbacks of Rum (who was involved in the murder 17 years ago), we know exactly what occured when Amanda died, and while Kuroda and Conan didn't know, the message that is decyphered doesn't tell them much in the first place, and it tells us the reader absolutely nothing noteworthy, as we already know the contents of that message via Rum's own flashbacks! So as a mystery, the story isn't interesting at all. There's a secondary plot, where in the current day, we see Rum bossing his sniper assassins Chianti and Korn around to assassinate a certain person, but this plot point also didn't really work for me, because for some reason Conan, after hearing about Kuroda's story, somehow guesses an attempt at this person's life might be made this very moment, and while that is, miraculously, really the case, there is no way Conan could've known that Rum would attempt such a thing on that day at that time, and not on any other day. The created tension thus feels very fake, and ultimately, this story offers nothing mystery-solving-wise. It is just a gigantic lore dump. Which makes this story a must-read for people who want to follow the story, but that is the only reason why you'd be reading this story.

The Ghost Tale of the Man-Eating Classroom is set at Teitan Elementary, where a new transfer student in the class next door has been telling the kids the tale of a ghost who roams classrooms, demanding for food or else it will cause fires or destroy pots and things. Some kids believe him, though Conan is of course sceptical. But then, during lunchtime, the flower bed just outside the classroom catches fire! While Haibara manages to quickly stop the fire with water from a vase with flowers, Conan suspects it's certainly not a ghost who set fire to the flower bed and he even has an idea of what people in the class might have a reason for causing an incident, but on the other hand, nobody saw anybody near the flower bed before the fire started, and besides some burned chips, he also can't find evidence somebody set up some time-mechanism to set fire to the flowers (so the culprit wouldn't need to be there at the time the fire started). The story is... okay? I don't think the fire incident meshes that well with the ghost story (which is more about a ghost demanding food or else it gets hangry) and there's no way you're going to figure out howdunnit based on the hints given, but I think that as a whodunnit, it worked surprisingly well, because the howdunnit feels very natural in relation to the culprit (i.e. the actual means available to that person to create this incident), as well as the whydunnit. As in, the way the incident was started fitted well with the classmates of Conan as we know them from previous stories and also with their characters, so it didn't come out of nowhere. But still, the actual howdunnit is a bit lacking in clues, and there's just no way you'd arrive at that conclusion based on those hints.

Volume 104 ends with the first chapter focusing on Heiji and Kazuha taking the train with... Momiji (Kazuha's rival in love) and her butler, who seems to get involved in a rather mysterious incident while on the train. I am actually curious to how this story will develop further, but we'll have to wait for next year, when the next volume is released...

Anyway, Detective Conan 104 was not one of my favorite volumes of this series. The main story is important lore-wise, but not interesting at all as a standalone mystery tale, and the other two stories which are fully included in the volume are not very memorable either, either because it's another far-fetched dying message, or simply because it was a story that is intentionally not very big: you usually have such "smaller" stories after bigger event stories, which The Truth of 17 Years Ago technically is, and while I understand not all can be as good in bringing a lore-important, action-packed story while also providing a good mystery as volume 100's The FBI Serial Murder Case, this is the other end of the extreme, where it focuses so much on finally conveying some context to an event that had been hinted at over the course of many years, to the extent it forgets to be interesting as a standalone mystery too. Let's hope volume 105, scheduled for next year (probably when the new film releases in April), is better!

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌 『名探偵コナン』第104巻 

J.B. as in Jailbird

あなたの声で just next stage resume and "Revive"

「Revive」（倉木麻衣）

 

In your voice, just next stage resume and "Revive"

"Revive" (Kuraki Mai)

Never again...

Allow me to tell you about a person, who read the 2004 book Kangokutou ("Prison Island") by Kagami Masayuki in March, wrote a lengthy review of the like-wise very lengthy book and had scheduled the post to be published in August. This same person tried to edit something in the week before the post was to be published... and accidentally wiped the entire text of the post. And then the empty post was saved, overwriting the previous saved document. 

Sigh.

That person was me. For the first time in over ten years of blogging, I wiped an entire post that was ready and everything. And just the week before it was about to be published. And some months had passed since I had actually read the book and written the post, meaning I honestly didn't remember all the things I wrote about in the post. Today, I bring a post I can guarantee is not even half of what I wrote about originally, and in a way, it's just me trying to squeeze out the little I do remember out of me. At this stage, I honestly don't feel like re-reading the book anymore, so I am afraid that this, for both me and the readers here, will be the non-optimal solution, but I guess it's the best I can for now...

Charles Bertrand, the brilliant Paris magistrate feared by all criminals has a past working for the French secret service during World War I. His old superior, Nathan de Eagleroche is now the head of the Parisian police and has a very special mission for Bertrand, with a very personal connection. Alexei Baldwin was a legendary criminal operating on both sides of the Canal, but who was eventually captured by a joint effort between the police forces of Britain and France: in particular it was Bertrand on the French side, and John Carterbone on the British side who managed to capture Baldwin during a raid, but during this attack, Bertrand fatally shot Baldwin's lover, who was carrying their unborn child. Baldwin was sentenced to a life-time in prison, but he swore he'd get revenge on Bertrand and Carterbone for destroying his operation and killing his loved ones. Baldwin was shipped off to St. Tantoine, an island just off the coast of Marseille, which once housed a castle, but holds a prison complex, as well as a closed-off mine. de Eagleroche has received anonymous information something is going on at the Tantoine Penitentiary Complex, and there are also signs a new smuggling operation is going between Great Britain and France making use of the old routes the Baldwin gang used, so that makes de Eagleroche nervous. He convinces Bertrand to join him in a visit to the island, and they'll also be joined by John Carterbone. But because they don't want to alert the people at the prison, they pretend it's a normal observational visit, which is why Patrick Smith, Bertrand's nephew and chronicler joins the trip, as well as two British art researchers, who truly believe they are here at the island because they have been given an opportunity to examine the parts of the medieval fortress still left on the island.

Arriving on the island, Bertrand wishes to see Baldwin, who is kept in a building seperate from the other prisoners, as the director of the prison claims Baldwin has a certain way to almost hypnotize people to do his bidding, and not even the guards are allowed to have too much contact with him. Carterbone and Bertrand are allowed to meet Baldwin, who however claims something will happen that night. The following morning, one of the prison director's head guards is found dead inside the building where Baldwin was kept: the door was locked from the inside, and what's more, Baldwin himself has gone missing! The director hopes to have Baldwin found on the island quickly, as he doesn't want to inform the mainland authorities about his failure, and fortunutely for him, a storm does prevent them from getting help for the moment. Guards are sent out to comb the island for the escaped criminal, but during this hunt, more mysterious murders occur like a prisoner ending up chopped up in pieces in his cell, a doctor getting hanged from the main tower, and a man suddenly bursting out in flames. Is this the work of Baldwin and will Bertrand be his final target?

Kangokutou was the second novel by Kagami Masayuki, an author who made his "big" debut in 2002 with Sougetsujou no Sangeki ("The Tragedy at the Twin Moon Castle"), but died early in 2013 in his early fifties. His debut novel was very strongly inspired by John Dickson Carr's work, and his detective, Charles Bertrand in particular was modeled after Henri Bencolin, sharing the same background story of being French spymasters turned magistrates and having an American narrator. Kangokutou was a very ambitious sequel, which is reflected in its incredible length, which is easily double the first book. The version I read consists of two volumes of over 500 pages each, in double columns. In a regular pocket release, this would probably put the book well over 1200 pages. Earlier this year, I read Tsukatou Hajime's Misshitsu Kingdom (Kingdom of the Locked Room), which was also around 1200 pages, so for some reason I ended up reading two of these impossible crime epics in one year...

I praised Sougetsujou no Sangeki for being nothing but a homage to Carr, where you could tell Kagami just thought: "I am going to write 1930s style mystery story, exactly like Carr would have done and do it on those terms alone!" and succeeded in that goal. If you had told me the book had in fact been a 1930s book, I would have believed you immediately, and the book was refreshing, knowing it was written in a period in Japanese mystery fiction where a lot of books relied on being a lot more meta-conscious, whereas Kagami played the game as straight as possible. That can be said of Kangokutou too, which is a very straighforward novel despite its length. During their stay on St. Tantoine, several impossible murders occur, while a manhunt is also being held on the island to capture the escaped Baldwin. The island is quite spacious, as it houses more than just the old fortress which now functions as a prison complex, with a big cross-shaped prison with an observation tower and four wings spreading from it as its main attraction. Further away from the prison is a lighthouse as well as an old mine which is now abandoned, because of a cave-in some years earlier, but that does mean there's plenty of place to hide for an escaped convict. Due to the very open nature of the island though, and the fact we hear about a lot of guards (about thirty) who never get a named role, but of whom we know are on the island and participate in the manhunt or otherwise in guarding the prisoners, the story never takes on the role of a closed circle mystery by the way. While the island and the prison is a bit creepy, and there's even a ghastly backstory involving the building where Baldwin is held, the island never feels really dreadful, because it somehow feels rather open as a mystery, with many people walking about in the background who just aren't important enough to earn a name. The book seems a bit claustrophobic at first, but as the story continues, you realize the place is pretty open.

Kangokutou is a long novel, and a lot happens during their stay on the island. In fact, while the story takes two volumes to tell, the denouement of the story happens about half-way through the second volume, meaning you get nearly 300 pages dedicated solely to explaining everything that's been going on. The mysteries range from murders happening in a locked room (cell) and someone assaulting Patrick and escaping unseen to a case of spontaneous combustion. I don't quite remember the details (because... I deleted the original post), but I think Bertrand has to address about ten different mysteries during his explanation of the case, all of them occuring on the island. I think I can safely say right away that in general, Kangokutou impresses more with its number of impossible crimes, than the actual quality. Not that all of them are bad, but of the ten or so mysteries, you can bet more than a few of mysterious deaths in locked rooms relied on Ye Olde Thread and Needle Trick. I am not against them per se, but having multiple of them in one book can feel tiring. 

There are some bigger set-pieces that are more memorable though. The spontaneous combustion, which involves one of the guards suddenly catching fire out of nowhere while standing at the central guard tower is clewed pretty cleverly for example, even if the trick itself is a bit forced. This type of clewing is hard to do I think in a book, but it works quite well here, and you really don't notice it until it's pointed out to you. The biggest set-piece involves the death of a prisoner in his cell and how the murderer managed to escape despite Patrick in the neighborhood of the supposed escape route. While I think the clues pointing to the trick were telegraphed a bit too obviously, which in turn then point too directly to one character, the trick itself is good. I have seen different variations on the same principle, but I always like it when it's executed in a succesful manner, as it requires a lot of planning plot-wise. I did miss some kind of synergy between the various impossible crimes. I wish some of them had a stronger connection between them, but more often than not, the impossible crimes in Kangokutou are discrete instances, and very little data pertaining to one incident, will have any bearing on another incident. That is something that kinda works agains the length of this book, because for the longest time, you just feel like you're reading seperate events that just happen to be happening on the same island, rather than one big epic.

The escape of Baldwin from his private prison, and the way he stays hidden on the island afterwards is probably the most memorable part of the book. He disappears fairly early on in the book after announcing something will happen on the night of Bertrand's arrival on the island, and indeed, the way he spirits himself away from the prison, leaving only a dead guard behind, is mystifying. The solution to how he got away is in hindsight so simple, but clewed cleverly through small actions and conversations. It is quite daring, as if, unlike me, you happen to think of the solution, it'll probably seem very obvious where he's hiding the way things work out, but I quite liked the gambit Kagami played. Kangokutou is quite stuffed, and while I don't think any of the tricks seen here are on their own as memorable as the first murder in Sougetsujou no Sangeki, I think that, keeping in mind some of these murders feel less developed, still an enjoyable murder mystery overall, even if none of them are truly jaw-droppingly amazing.

Oh, and by the way, I wouldn't recommend reading Kangokutou as a whodunnit. At the end, there are just too few suspects who made significant appearances, and were actually given names, who are still alive! The body count is fairly high in this book... I also think Kagami tried a bit too hard to come up with a surprising culprit despite this, because the build-up to the motive/backstory for the culprit is more than bit forced, relying on a lot of coincidence all somehow gathering on St. Tantoine on those days. Surely at the end, a lot of it almost fell comical, in a Mission Impossible-esque manner, where there had to be a surprising twist/connection behind everything.

As mentioned in the introduction, I wrote this replacement post months after reading the book and writing the first post, so I forgot about a lot of the points I did made originally, but overall, I think Kangokutou was an interesting follow-up novel to Kagami's debut. It continues the very much Carr-inspired atmosphere, this time (mainly) set in a prison on a small isolated island, and while not every single mystery is memorable on its own, the fact Kagami managed to stuff this adventure with so much mysteries to solve is already impressive. It's certainly one of the longer impossible crime-focused mystery novels, and people with an interest in Carr will probably find a lot to like about the book. In fact, I read later Sougetsujou no Sangeki was specifically modeled after Castle Skull, so I have a feeling someone with more Carr-reading experience than me might notice more Carr references in this novel too.

Original Japanese title(s): 加賀美雅之『監獄島』

The Adventure of the Secret Partner

Sparking!!

"CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA" (影山ヒロノブ）

 

Sparking!!

"CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA" (Kageyama Hironobu)

I do love my Detective Pikachu tote bag and mug I got with the game... I wish more mystery media had merchandise...

Two years ago, Tim Goodman moved to Ryme City in search of his father Harry, a private detective who went missing. Tim teamed up with his father's partner Pikachu, who turns out to be able to talk, though Tim is the only person who can understand him. The coffee-addicted Pikachu suffers from memory loss and can't quite remember how Harry disappeared, or explain why he can talk with Tim, but the two work together to find Harry and in their search for leads, they manage to protect the city from a nefarious plot involving "R", a drug that could make Pokémon go wild. Two years later, Tim and Pikachu still haven't managed to find Harry, but the city has finally recovered from the major incident: Tim and Pikachu are to be awarded for their efforts by the city, which is also launching a new campaign to promote itself as a city where humans and Pokémon live together. The ceremony however is disturbed by a Corviknight, a gigantic black raven-like Pokémon , swooping in on the podium. Is someone using R again to control Pokémon? As Tim and Pikachu investigate the case, they slowly learn this all is tied to Harry's disappearance, and with the first real lead in two years, they are determined to learn about Harry's fate in the Nintendo Switch game Kaette Kita Meitantei Pikachu (2023) or Detective Pikachu Returns.

When I first wrote about Detective Pikachu in 2016, I honestly didn't expect it would take so many years for us to finally get the whole story. It was in 2016 when the Japan-exclusive, download-only Meitantei Pikachu ~ Shin Combi Tanjou ("Detective Pikachu ~ Birth of a New Duo") was released on the Nintendo 3DS, which first introduced us to Tim and Pikachu, and brought us the first detective game within the Pokémon franchise. I truly hope I don't have to explain what Pokémon is, but in short: Pokémon is a gigantic media franchise that started with videogames, but also features animated series, theatrical releases and muuuuuuch more. The games are about the titular Pokémon (Pocket Monsters), about 1000 different species of creatures with special powers. People use them for a variety of activities, from pets to using them for Pokémon fights and having them help with work. Pikachu, the best known Pokémon for example, is a yellow mouse species of the Electric type, capable of generating electricity for attacks. Meitantei Pikachu ~ Shin Combi Tanjou ("Detective Pikachu ~ Birth of a New Duo") was the first time a mystery adventure game had been made with Pokémon, but this release was basically only a preview: it was about three chapters long, and stopped just after Tim and Pikachu got their very first lead. It would take another two years before the first full game was released on the 3DS. It turned out the 2016 release was really just the first third of the final product Meitantei Pikachu (Detective Pikachu), a game which I quite enjoyed as a detective game set in the Pokémon world, as it actually did interesting things by combining the concept of Pokémon (creatures with unique powers) with puzzles and a mystery plot. But while the game did provide a full story, the disappearance of Harry was not resolved yet at the end of the game, so we had to wait for a sequel. Which took a long time to come. A live-action film of Detective Pikachu was released in 2019, which did provide a full story, but of course, it didn't follow the game exactly, so I always wanted to see how the story would be resolved in the games. And now it's 2023, and we finally have our answers!

Detective Pikachu Returns is a direct sequel to the 3DS game, with many references to events and characters from the first game. While not absolute necessary, it is recommended to play that one first as the two games do form one single narrative. Going back to my own reviews of the 3DS releases, I would say that this new release is still very similar to the previous release in terms of gameplay. During their hunt for answers, Tim and Pikachu constantly come across problems they have to solve or mysteries that need to be explained, ranging from identifying a thief to finding a way through a hidden temple. After collecting both physical evidence and witness testimony at the scene, Pikachu will lead Tim through some questions to see if they can solve their conundrum (= testing the player). Once the problem is solved, the story progresses, bringing new locales and new challenges for the duo. Rinse and repeat. This was how it worked in the 3DS games, and how it works now. It is not a very challenging game by any means, though that is also because it is clear this is aimed at a younger audience, and it works perfectly fine as a "first mystery adventure game". You usually just find all the necessary evidence and testimony, and then Pikachu will condense that information in usually three or four "hypotheses" based on everything you know. Of course, only one of them will be correct, while the others wrong. A game for an older audience would probably implement a step between that, where the player themselves has to use the evidence first to create a hypothesis, and then have those hypotheses as possible solutions, but again, this is for children, and thus I don't really see a problem with the game condensing this process a bit, as the proposed solutions by Pikachu are still logically based on the evidence you collected, both the correct and false solutions, and at least the questions and their related answers make sense, unlike Detective Conan: The Mirapolis Investigation, which for some reason always had questions that didn't precisely match up with the correct answers, leading to frustrating gameplay. This game adds some moments not found in the first game, where Pikachu teams up with other Pokémon to solve puzzles, like having to shove boxes to clear a way like Sokoban, but these moments don't really add very much in terms of gameplay.

Detective Pikachu is unique in the sense we get Pikachu as a partner, who can communicate with other Pokémon. Mystery-wise, you can just think of Pokémon as intelligent animals with specific powers, or perhaps even as yokai and this opens up possibilities for interesting mysteries. In a "normal" detective story, you can't really have people ask random animals whether they saw the culprit pass by, or whether they themselves were part of a criminal plot, but in this game, it is possible. Pokémon all have unique special powers, which allow for unique mystery plots a we have Pokémon who can fly, turn invisible, can see through walls and all of that, but at the same time, for basically all people who know Pokémon, this still results in a fair play detective story, as this is all shared knowledge: we all know Pikachu can use electric attacks, we all know Gengar is a ghost. It's not secret I love mystery fiction with supernatural/magical elements in them, and Detective Pikachu is really no different from that, heck, I'd say it even feels fairer to a lot of people, because players know the world of Pokémon and their position in the fictional society very well.

That is also why however I was a bit disappointed this game had so many chapters that focused less on providing such mystery plots. The second and fourth chapter don't really have a clear main mystery, and are also set in locations further away from society, resulting in not very interesting plots mystery-wise, and the way Pokémon are involved with them. The second chapter in particular is a bit more puzzle-focused, where you are just exploring a ruin, and constantly solving minor puzzles to clear the way so you can move deeper in. In the original 3DS game too, the best parts were those where Pokémon were used in human crimes, set in very human-filled locations, and that's the same case here, only it's a minority of the cases in Detective Pikachu Returns that deal with that. The first case is probably the case that adhers to this preferred model the most, dealing with a jewel theft from a large mansion, with Tim and Pikachu having to deal with both human and Pokémon suspects, and investigate who'd have the opportunity and means to pull off the crime. A later chapter involves a gigantic wave of Pokémon causing trouble in Ryme City, leading to them being detained by the Pokémon Protection Bureau, the police-equivalent for Pokémon. These Pokémon however claim they are innocent of the crimes they are accused of, and Tim and Pikachu work slowly to verify their alibis and try to figure out whether someone is setting these Pokémon up and why. These plots are the most fun, as you see a lot more of how Pokémon are integrated in human society and how their powers could be used for crimes, or for solving crimes, which is something you sometimes see depicted in the anime, but less so in other Pokémon games (which focus for example more on trainer battles, or collecting Pokémon etc.). But I have to say, on the whole, I do think the 3DS game was better in terms of balance, as Detective Pikachu Returns just dedicates less time of its playtime to these mystery plots, as the more story-drived episodes are more about solving minor obstacles on Tim and Pikachu's way, rather than about solving things like impossible crimes.

It's also a missed opportunity the side quest mechanic wasn't used more extensively. You can now help other people and Pokémon who have their own problems while you're working on a case, but besides them mostly being (cute) fetch quests, each chapter usually confines you to a certain location (with several sublocations), and you don't really get to revisit locations from previous chapters. Which I don't really understand, as many locations are actually interconnected, so making the game a bit more "open-world"-esque would really not have changed much, but for example, you can enter certain streets in the first chapter, but which are closed off in the third chapter. Just keeping everything open would have made for a more lively setting, and also allowed for more interesting side-quests spanning chapters, or for example still offer minor human-crime mysteries even if the chapter's main focus is on a human-lite setting.

Story-wise, the game does finally provide a conclusion to the quest of Tim and Pikachu looking for Harry, so in that sense, I'd definitely still recommend this game to anyone who played the 3DS game. People who have seen the live-action film will probably recognize a lot of the cues in Detective Pikachu Returns, and it seems likely the producers of that film already had access to a rough outline of the events of this game, but still, the games are their own world, and I still had fun playing the game. Also, the game is cute. Really cute. I took soooo many screenshots of this game, just of Pikachu babbling, making funny comments or simply walking around.

Detective Pikachu Returns is undeniably a very simple mystery adventure game, but I don't ever think it ever aspired to be anything but that, and while I do think the 3DS game was the better mystery game overall, I did have fun playing this game and finally finding out what happened to Harry together with Tim and Pikachu. While I can't deny I would have wanted to see more of the human-Pokémon society-focused crimes in this game as they are by far the best moments of the series, I did enjoy my time in Ryme City again. It would be fun to see another Detective Pikachu game that would explore the potential of these supernatural-themed mysteries more, and perhaps aimed at a slightly older audience, but I can only hope! For now, I'm just glad we finally have closure after seven years!

Original Japanese title(s): 『帰ってきた　名探偵ピカチュウ』

The Organ Speaks

"It's not a ghost. It's a player piano."

"Scooby Doo, Where Are You?"

Speaking of man-eating pianos, go watch the Japanese horror film House!

Earlier this year, I reviewed Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna 2: Koutetsu Banchou no Misshitsu ("Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning 2: The Locked Room of the Steel Gang Boss"), the second spin-off novel of the Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna or Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning series, originally a a mystery(-themed) manga created by writer Shirodaira Kyou and artist Mizuno Eita which ran from 1999 until 2005. While the main series focuses on young prodigy Ayumu's adventures as he delves into the mystery of the "Blade Children", something his older brother was handling before his disappearance, the novel series seem quite detached from this main narrative, being set very early in the story chronology, when Ayumu has recently met the very nosy and busybody school newspaper club president Hiyono and they're often hanging out in the school club room, with Ayumu occasionally, despite him usually not really wanting to, getting involved in minor mysteries to solve. I started with the second book because I didn't have the first one yet and I knew the second one was particularly well-received, even beyond a Spiral audience, and it was funny how just a few weeks later, I read a completely different novel that actually started with a dedication to the second Spiral novel, showing how it really influenced some people. 

Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna 3: Elias Sauer no Hitokui Piano ("Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning 3: The Man-Eating Piano of Elias Sauer"), once again written by Shirodaira Kyou and illustrated by Mizuno Eita, follows a similar set-up to the second novel, featuring a novella that was originally written for this book, as well as three short prequel stories Ayumu's brother Kiyotaka back when he was in the police force. These stories were originally published online and were often split in two, featuring a "Problem" part and a "Solution" part. These stories are pretty short, and I won't be discussing them here this time. They are usually fairly solid, but not particularly memorable puzzlers, and if you're a fan of the series, it might be fun to see Kiyotaka a bit more around, as he seldom appears in the main series. The main story however is about Ayumu and Hiyono of course, and starts with a girl who suddenly addresses Ayumu on the street. Curious Hiyono of course wants to know who she is, and despite Ayumu's attempts to ignore her, Hiyono eventually learns that the girl's called Yuzumori Fumio, and that the two used to go to the same piano school. A year ago, Ayumu apparently hlped Fumio with something, and Hiyono learns that this involved Fumio's grandmother Tamaki. She was a very unhappy woman. The Yuzumori clan was a very prominent family, but the son seemed not fit to lead such a family, being a failure business-wise, and having four children from a previous wife to care for. That is when his father decided he should marry Tamaki, who worked in one of the Yuzumori's businesses. She was an "ordinary" woman, but worked incredibly hard and was very intelligent, but burdened by her parents' debt. In exchange for relieving her parents of her debt, Tamaki was to marry into the Yuzumori family and become the mother of the four children. The marriage remained loveless however, and while it was undoubtedly her brains that allowed the Yuzumori business to grow, her personal life was never enrichened. She was married into the Yuzumori clan, but had no inheritence rights at all, and in fact possessed nothing at all, while she had no true blood relation with "her" children either. This seemed to have embittered the woman, which is why Fumio was always a bit afraid of her grandmother. 

One year ago, Fumio was called upon by her grandmother, who showed her a piano. She told Fumio the story behind the piano. Two centuries ago, it was found inside a ship which had sunk to the bottom of the sea during a storm. It had been sealed tight, so the piano itself was still intact, but when they opened it, they found the body of a young boy inside: Elias Sauer. Since the piano's recovery, it seems its owners constantly end up dead, with the piano's cover falling and breaking its victim's necks. But why did Tamaki tell Fumio this story, and does this have to do with her grandfather's death five years prior?

(Minor comment: by the time this review is posted, it'll be November. This is in fact the first book I finished in 2023 back early in January... I really have the bad habit of not writing reviews in time)

I called this a novella, but it's basically just a very short story. Interestingly, it has basically nothing to do with the main series of Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning in terms of themes or style, like the previous book. It's like author Shirodaira just had these ideas for novels, but knew he couldn't get them published as standalone stories so just forced Spiral into them. So I wouldn't recommend these novels per se if you are looking for material similar to the main series, because they're not even similar, not even to the earlier chapters of the manga which had more of a 'case-of-the-week' structure. Interestingly, this story too features an narrative-within-a-narrative structure like the second novel. Whereas the second novel spun a whole outrageous history of gang wars between schools across Japan, this book comes with a creepy story of a man-eating piano which has killed several owners in the last few centuries.

Unlike the second novel however, there's no clear mystery in this story, and that's basically also what makes Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna 3: Elias Sauer no Hitokui Piano as a book, and as the title story, a bit... boring. After Fumio had been told about the piano, she became really afraid of the piano, but she never knew what her grandmother really wanted to accomplish by telling her that story. She only remembers her grandfather would also play this same piano, but he died some years ago, so what relevance could the story now have? But it's at this point already Ayumu basically arrives at an interpretation of the situation, and he confronts Tamaki about why the story was told to Fumio. It's a very straightforward story, relying on an intuitive mode like a Christie or Chesterton story, and because the solution basically follows immediately after.... no real mystery has been presented, the story feels a bit underwhelming as a tale of mystery and detection. I think the story might be more fun if it hadn't been a Spiral story, but just something completely independent of anything, but as it is now, it just reads as a very weird installment in a longer series, having next to nothing to do with the main series. It almost reads more like a horror story, and while I guess there is a twist, I didn't think this was a very remarkable story mystery-wise.

So I didn't like Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna 3: Elias Sauer no Hitokui Piano ("Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning 3: The Man-Eating Piano of Elias Sauer") nearly as much as I did the previous book. It's just too little, and what is offered still doesn't provide for a very memorable mystery story. The extra short stories give the book a bit more content, but still, on the whole, this is not a very remarkable volume on its own, and certainly not a book I'd recommend to anyone who has not read Spiral, and even then, I wouldn't really make it a priority. I think my next one will be the first novel, before I tackle the last one because that one seems to have a slightly different set-up.

Original Japanese title(s):  城平京(著) 水野英多(イラスト) 『小説　スパイラル～推理の絆3　エリアス・ザウエルの人喰いピアノ』