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.
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