Law of the Jungle

「 お前を信じる俺を信じろ」

『天元突破グレンラガン』

 

 "Believe in the me who believes in you!"

"Guren Lagann"

Final review of the year, but it's about a great book!

Ootoya Takashi was always content being a minor private detective, always observing cheating spouses and that kind of work, so at first, he didn't quite understand why the student Ririko wanted to be his assistant, and when she explained, he refused her at first. Ririko's mother, during her lifetime, had been a member of a cult, which had swindled her out of her money, leading to Ririko's father kicking her, and Ririko out of the house. After Ririko's mother's death, she learned the truth about the cult, and wanted to expose their tricks under the cover of a detective agency. Ootoya eventually gave in, and together with Ririko, he exposed a gigantic scam conspiracy. Soon, Ootoya himself became a well-known detective too, but the truth was that while Ootoya did indeed solve a lot of cases himself, it was actually Ririko who was often one step ahead of him, even though she was his "assistant." When one day, in November 1978, Ririko disappears, Ootoya becomes worried about her because they have made enemies in the past, but he learns quickly she has gone to the South American country of Guyana, to the community called Jordentown.

Jim Jorden claimed he could heal any illnesses and injuries, and started his own, Christianity-based cult. He gathered quite some followers in the United States, but also enemies: many people who have also left the cult, portraying Jim Jorden as a fraud and eventually, even politicians started to take a better look at him. Jim Jorden swiftly left the United States to found his own community in the jungles of Guyana, and he was followed there by about a thousand followers from the US and other parts of the world. The people of Jordentown mostly keep to themselves, led by Jim Jorden and his upper management members, but lately, US politicans have been putting political pressure on them, and Jim Jorden wants to move his community to the Soviet Union, with the help of a prominent US businessman with ties to the Soviets. This businessman however wants to know whether Jim Jorden really has powers to heal people, and after some negotations, Jim Jorden agreed to invite a team who will investigate whether his powers are real, and to observe the living conditions in Jordentown. Ririko had been chosen as one of these people thanks to her experience with exposing a fake cult, and she is joined by Jodie Randy, famous for exposing fake psychics on television, Yi Ha-jun, a Seoul University student who exposed a sexual abuse affair by the Christian church, and former FBI agent Alfred Dent, who has actually managed to go undercover, acting as an attorney for Jim Jorden. Ririko and the others however didn't return to their respective countries even though they were only to stay there for a few days, so suspecting they might be being kept captive by Jim Jorden, or worse, Ootoya himself travels to Jordentown with the help of a reporter childhood friend. When they arrive there, they learn Ririko and the others were held captive, because they didn't believe Jim Jorden's "miracles", so Jim decided to have his "guests" stay longer so he could convince them of his powers and report back to the businessman so he and his flock can go to the Soviet Union. As the people in Jordentown all believe in Jim Jorden as their "god" who can heal them, and some of them are such fanatic believers they are willing to kill for him (and the community is armed!), they have no choice but to stay there for a while, but they are fairly sure they won't be hurt because that would definitely mean no trip to the Soviet Union. The following day however, Dent is found stabbed to death in his room, and the room was locked from the inside. Was this an impossible murder? But in Jordentown, there is a man who can perform miracles, so is he the murderer? While Ootoya and Ririko try to solve the murder despite the unique circumstances, more impossible murders occur, but will they be able to uncover the truth, and get away safely? That is the question in Shirai Tomoyuki's Meitantei no Ikenie - Jinminkyou Satsujin Jiken ("The Sacrifice of the Great Detective: The Peoples Church Murder Case" 2022), which also has the alternative English title The Detective Massacre. 

The first time I read anything by Shirai Tomoyuki, was the short story Chibiman to Jumbo, which was beyond nasty, with a lot of gore. And I don't mean "decapitated people" gore, but a lot of vomiting and eating sea roaches and stuff like that. I was told "nasty" was something Shirai wrote a lot about, so I was kinda avoiding him, despite hearing also positive things about his mystery stories in terms of... mystery. So when I saw The Detective Massacre won the '23 Honkaku Mystery Award and ranked in first place in the Honkaku Best 10 2023, and I heard this one didn't have the gore, I picked this book up as my first Shirai novel, and I am so glad I did, as this is easily one of the best books I've read this year, and I can definitely see why it'd end up high on people's rankings!

It's of course clear right away this book was inspired by the real story of Jonestown in a lot of ways, and that is also the defining feature of this book: a story set in a very unique place, a closed-off town in the jungle, for a cult built around one single man, who rules the whole community and who is beloved by everyone as a god with healing powers. For Ootoya and Ririko, this is effectively a closed circle, as they can't just leave Jordentown alone and you definitely need a car to make it through the jungle to a landing strip, and of course you also need a plane to get away there. Due to the beliefs of the cult members, about a thousand of them in all ages (children go to school during the day, while the adults work on the fields to farm food), the impossible crimes also are not considered to be as grave or serious by them, as by the outsiders: impossible murders aren't strictly impossible for the cult members, especially not if those who are killed were punished by the heavens for opposing Jim Jorden and his followers. The result is a book with a fantastic, suspenseful and tense atmosphere, where you know any false move by Ootoya could perhaps lead to them being punished by the cult members right away for going against their rules and yet they do want to solve the murders.

On the other hand, the cult members aren't like brainwashed Kali cult members, but often ordinary people from the US with their own personal traumas, which they finally learned to cope with thanks to their life in Jordentown and the teachings of Jim Jorden. While they believe in Jorden, they are also, on the whole, peace-loving people who just want a place for themselves to live without being judged by others, and while initially cautious for the strangers, they do welcome Ririko and the others to Jordentown and are eager to show how great their community is and how they'd like to move to the Soviet Union in order to continue this life. It's under these circumstance we have these murders, and we clearly see how people on one hand know murder has occured, but also try to give these deaths a certain meaning that fits with their lives and their beliefs, again resulting in a very unique atmosphere that really makes this a one-of-a-kind mystery novel.

Over the course of this novel, several murders occur during their stay in Jordentown, that are in principle simple, yet impossible. A man murdered in his bedroom, but with the key inside the room, a woman who was poisoned during a tea party, but the other women are all fine, things like that. The situations themselves are fairly small-scale and taken on their own, they might not be super impressive. However, The Detective Massacre manages to use these seemingly "small" murder situations in conjunction with the unique setting that is Jordentown to present an absolutely phenomenal mystery novel. That is in part already hinted at by the text on the obi of this novel, which tells the reader the solution part of this book is 150 pages long (close to 40% of the book!). Mechanically, these impossible crimes might seem simple, but because they are in such an odd place, where people literally believe in miracles and thus impossible occurings, the detectives have to go a long way to not only logically explain how things happened and the reason for that, they also have to explain why these murders aren't impossible, while at the same time, the explanation needs to accept the existence of miracles, because the people here believe in them. So the solutions often have to go a roundabout way to explain things, because the detectives have to incorporate the "common sense" that exist in Jordentown, while also arriving at a logical explanation acceptable for them. This leads to some brilliant pieces of deduction that only work in Jordentown and no other mystery novel. The book is also full of false solutions, as it takes a while for the detectives to arrive at the actual truth, but it's amazing how Shirai structured this book. The same situation allows for several false solutions, but they are all properly hinted at, and while not all of them are as clever and you quickly realize these must be false, it's still impressive how he managed to properly hint all of the false solutions as well as place the clues for the counter-argument to the false solutions, and also have a final solution ready. Fans of the works of Brand, Berkeley and Queen, with deeply structured false solutions that build on each other and stuff like that will definitely like this book too.

The placing of clues and foreshadowing in The Detective Massacre also deserves a special mention. Shirai does a fantastic job at placing all kinds of hints that come back much later for these false solutions, not only in the form of actual physical evidence being referred to later, but also situations or moments that seemingly have nothing to do with the murders, but that are mirrored in surprising and clever manners to become relevant to those murders. Some segments really just sound like nothing more than small characterization snippets used for a cheap chuckle, but then turn out to be applicable to the murder mysteries too by looking at those stiuations from a very different angle. It might be because of the weird location that is Jordentown, but it's easy to look at Jordentown as its own thing, so it's extra surprising when you see moments "outside of Jordentown" suddenly being used in a clever way to set things up that happen inside Jordentown.

The two detective characters of Ootoya and Ririko are also used in a really good way. The two detectives (technically, Ririko is Ootoya's assistant) have very different approaches when it comes to the question of what a detective is, and what they do, and that also results in them going for approaching the people of Jordentown very differently, and also trying to explain the murders in very different ways (hence there are not only false solutions, but actually different strands of solutions, where they work from different angles precisely because Ririko and Ootoya look at the people of Jordentown, and what they believe in, very differently). The ending, which puts Ririko and Ootoya at very completely sides in terms of "what being a detective is about" is amazing, as it really gives meaning to why we have two different detective characters. Some of the set-up to the final stretch of the book doesn't feel as strong as other parts of the book, but ultimately, it's a book that'll stick in your mind for a while, and the ending will play an important role in that.

This book also appears to be part of a series which follows the title convention of "Meitantei no..." ("The Detective...") but I don't know how strongly connected these books are, if at all, in terms of story. Story-wise, The Detective Massacre feels fairly self-contained, but there are a few references and characters who might be series characters? I guess there's one way to find out...

But as Stan Lee also wrote, 'Nuff said. Meitantei no Ikenie - Jinminkyou Satsujin Jiken or The Detective Massacre is a fantastic mystery novel, which uses a unique setting to tell the kind of detective story fans of Brand, Berkeley and Queen are likely to love with its many (properly built-up) solutions, but it's also a great book on its own as it uses the setting of Jordentown to present a mystery story you really won't be seeing anywhere else. Even something like Queen's And on The Eight Day doesn't quite come close to this. One of my favorites of this year, and I hope to read more of Shirai's work in the future.

Original Japanese title(s):白井智之『名探偵のいけにえ: 人民教会殺人事件』