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.
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!
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