The Upper Flat

“I learned (what I suppose I really knew already) that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back—that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street, isn’t it?” 

"At Bertram's Hotel"

Now I think about it, it's been a while since I last stayed in a hotel...

It was Kujuu Masanosuke who made the Palace Side Hotel into one of the biggest and most succesful in Tokyo. While the hotel started out modestly as the Palace Hotel with only about fifty rooms, Kujuu's aggressive, but inspired leadership led to the organization growing into a gigantic 35-floor hotel, with two-thousand rooms and seventy event halls. Recently, the Tokyo Royal Hotel had been catching up, and even overtook the Palace Side Hotel's at the top, but Kujuu managed to arrange for a deal with Clayton International Corporation, routing their international visitors to Japan to the Palace Side Hotel to create a very steady stream of income. The deal is almost signed and done, though there are some internal objections to the deal within the Palace Side top management. So when Kujuu was found murdered in his private suite room on the 34th floor, the police had plenty of people to suspect: was it someone on the Palace Side Hotel side, or perhaps someone of the competition, who feared the CIC deal? But what puzzles the police even more, is the double locked room situation in which Kujuu's body was found in Room 3401. His suite consists of a living room and a bedroom. Obviously, the door connecting to the living room to the hallway was locked, but the connecting door betwen the living room and bedroom was also locked from the bedroom-side. The hotel room key was found on the bedside table, while the other known spare and master keys, in possession of the housekeeping captain of the 34th floor, the hotel manager or kept in the key safe, were confirmed to no have been stolen during the night, when Kujuu was killed. Hiraga, one of the detectives on the case, happens to be dating Fuyuko, who is Kujuu's private secretary and the person closest to Kujuu, as he had no other relatives. It is therefore not strange that Fuyuko becomes a suspect, but she has a perfect alibi for the murder, as she had spent the night with Hiraga when Kujuu was murdered. Early on, the police however manage to solve how the murderer managed to kill Kujuu in the double-locked room, a method which also needs an accomplice. The police don't know yet who the murderer could be, so hope the accomplice will confess everything, but the accomplice is found dead in a hotel room in Fukuoka almost immediately after an arrest warrant was issued. Finding a half-faded note in the toilet, the police eventually manage to identify a man whom they suspect killed Kujuu and the accomplice, but the man has an alibi for the murder in Fukuoka: he checked in before noon at a hotel in Tokyo to work in his room, and checked out late that night. He has no real alibi for the time he was in his hotel room, but at the same time, it would have been impossible for him to commit the murder in the fourteen hour gap, as the police can not find any trace of him having taking the train or plane from Tokyo to Fukuoka, and time-wise it would be nearly impossible in the first place. Can the police still capture this suspect in Morimura Seiichi's Kousou no Shikaku ("The Blind Spot in the High-Rise" 1969)?

Morimura Seiichi was a novelist who started out writing business books originally, but eventually moved on to mystery fiction: Kousou no Shikaku was his debut work as a mystery novelist, with which he won the 15th Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1969. I had heard his name before, but I have to admit I never looked up his work until he passed away about one year ago. That is not to even imply he was a minor novelist though, in fact, he was one of the most succesful mystery novelists in Japan. He was a member of that oh-so very exclusive club of mystery novelists who had over a billion copies of their books in circulation. To put in perspective, an extremely succesful modern-day writer like Higashino Keigo finally managed to reach that milestone last year. Other people on that list would be Nishimura Kyoutarou, Akagawa Jirou and Uchida Yasuo, writers I know and have read, but Morimura was a blind spot in my reading until now. I don't think all of his works are puzzle plot focused, but I at least knew this one was, so there was no better place to start that this book.

I have to admit this book surprised me a few times plot-wise. I had heard about this book being about a perfect alibi, so I was first surprised with a double-locked (hotel) room murder... and then I was surprised again when that double-locked room murder was solved basically two or three chapters later, after which the book focuses indeed on an alibi-cracking plot. The book opens with a cool floorplan of the 34th floor of the Palace Side Hotel, which is designed like an elongated three-pointed star... but because the locked room is solved so early in the book, you basically never page back to this floorplan, as it's not really relevant to the whole book. A weird choice, because it would have made more sense to just insert that floorplan in the early chapters, instead of at the start of the book. The locked room is solved fairly early, and as you can perhaps guess, the trick is fairly simple. In fact, it was so simple it caught me off-guard. You see, Morimura really goes into detail in his explanation of how hotel doors work, their auto-lock functions, the whereabouts of the spare and master keys and who keep watch over them and all of that, but the solution is in comparision incredibly straightforward, in comparison to the meticulous analysis of the many other (wrong) possibilities. The solution to the how will probably not impress anyone, though I have to say that Morimura's very detailed examination to write off the other possibilities was surprisingly impressive, even if the conclusion is so simple.

It was at this point, I started realizing this was very much like a Freeman Wills Crofts-inspired police procedural. The book moves very, very slow and deliberate, examining each minor step carefully and showing you one thing at a time, before moving on to the next item on the list. I also learned that Morimura in fact used to work at a hotel, which explains why his descriptions of the workings of a hotel are so detailed, which again, factors in how meticulous his investigations are when it comes to hotel affairs. He has great knowledge about procedures in a hotel, how different staff sections work with each other, the manner in which shifts being taken over, how spare and master keys are being supervised, check-in and check-out procedures, guest-staff interactions, even the way how employees from different hotels would interact with each other, all of that comes into play in this book, and each time, the descriptions and explanations are detailed, yet clear. These depictions of hotel workings are definitely a highlight of the book.

Once we arrrive at the Fukuoka murder, you get a book that very much reminds of Matsumoto Seichou's Ten to Sen for very obvious reasons, as there too a murder occurs in Fukuoka, but the main suspect is in a complete different part of the country. In this case, the alibi of the suspect isn't absolutely perfect, as they are only seen checking in and out of the hotel before noon and before midnight, but the police can't find any traces of the suspect having taken the plane from Tokyo to Fukuoka, not even with a fake name. While there are indications of what the murderer must have done after the murder, they don't seem to match the timeline the police try to make for the suspect, as they couldn't have done and still make it back to the hotel to check out (and be seen by someone who knows him). What follows is a very slow, Crofts-esque chipping away at the alibi of the suspect. This process is slow, and is basically always two steps forward, one step back. Each time, the police think they have a brilliant idea of what the suspect could've done to go to Fukuoka to commit the murder, but then they learn it couldn't have been accomplished in that specific way, so then they have to figure out another way, leading to another new idea, and once again learning it doesn't quite work that way. This jerking around takes quite some time, and while you do feel the police are very slowly making progress, it's definitely a police procedural style, where you see that a lot of police work is just... repeating motions and slowly, but surely crossing out possibilities. The murderer's plans are muti-phased and quite complex, and I quite like that, because that explains why the police keep thinking they've got it, but then have to adapt again, but a lot of the steps taken by the killer in this book, are quite outdated. Obviously, this book was published in 1969 so I assume it would have worked like that back then, but 99% of what is done here, would not fly in 2024, and some things, I may have heard once in my life about, like I know things worked like that back then, but I had no active memory of that, so while it didn't feel unfair (that's just how things go with older books), Kousou no Shikaku is definitely a product of its time (in fact it feels very much like a Showa-era story). It's a feeling I also often have when reading Crofts, but Crofts' books are of course much older than this one, and I read plenty of books written in this period, but because this book, like Crofts' work, is so methodical and focuses so much on the details and exact workings of the infrastructure and service industry, sometimes you feel the differences in time more than other books written in the same time, but don't go in as much detail in such things.

Not a big fan of the way the accomplice was portrayed in this book at all by the way, a lot of the actions of the accomplice only seemed to help the killer, but not the accomplice, even at a time where it was clear the killer was also going to kill the accomplice after Kujuu... 

Overall, Kousou no Shikaku was pretty entertaining. The depiction of how a hotel works is the highlight for me of this book, but the methodological manner in which the crime is solved is definitely going to appeal to people who also enjoy Croft's slower police procedurals where an alibi is slowly, very slowly, but surely cracked. I definitely found this an interesting first encounter with Morimura's work, so I might read more in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 森村誠一『高層の死角』

Still Waters

So when in tears ]

The love of years 

Is wasted like the snow

"The Forest Reverie"

I think this is the first time I read a "general" fiction book by publisher Tokuma, all the other Tokuma books I ever read where Ghibli-related...

Kaji Tatsuo (1928-1990) was a mystery author who debuted in the fifties of the previous century and basically kept on writing until his death in 1990. Publisher Tokuma started re-publishing some of his books in their label Tokuma's Selection about two or three years ago, and these books have pretty interesting covers, which was what first caught my attention. I hadn't heard of Kaji before, and actually thought initially these were newly written novels, but apparently they have been around for decades, and I saw a few mystery authors I follow on Twitter (...) be quite positive about them, so I decided to pick one up. Kiyosato Kougen Satsujin Bessou ("The Murder Villa in the Kiyosato Plateau") was originally published in 1988, so it was one of Kaji's last novels to be published. The book opens with the arrival of a group at a villa in the Kiyosato Plateau, a popular place for people with means to have a second home. The group of five sneak inside the house with a copy of the key they made earlier, and quickly lock the door behind them. This is a second home the art collector Kawakuchi Kouei had built for his son, but it is not used right now as the son (the stereotypical spoilt son who loves women) has gone missing, and the group plans to use this house for some time. The leader of this group, Katsuura quickly orders the other four to check the rooms and prepare for their stay here. Yoshinobu for example will be cooking for everyone, Ruriko (his girlfriend) helps him move the groceries inside, while Takamori and Kure (who don't really get along with each other and were already arguing upon arrival) start checking out the rooms, while Katsuura disconnects all phones except for one. While checking out the house, they find a shocked woman in one of the bedrooms: Akie tells them she's the daughter of Kawakuchi and that she decides on a whim to come here. The five tell her they have no intention of harming her, but they will be staying her for a few days, waiting for a certain phone call, and they'll be together until then. After a while, Akie learns from Yoshinobu that the five have robbed a bank. They are now staying low in the villa, waiting for their leader to pick up the money from where they hid it, so they can split the money. That is why nobody is allowed to go out of the villa (afraid of traitors), and all the phones are disconnected. They all pick a room to stay in, and Yoshinobu starts preparing dinner. Everyone is waiting for Takamori, who comes stumbling in the room late, but then falls on the floor: he has a dagger in his chest! But who could have stabbed him? Everyone was at the dining table, and they are sure there was nobody else besides Akie in the house... or are they? 

Interesting first experience with Kaji's writings! On the whole, the book follows the very familiar trope of the closed circle situation of a villa during a snowy night, though technically, this is not really a closed circle that is cut off from the world due to the snow: the group of five choose to not leave the villa, because they robbed a bank and have to stay hidden for a while in this house. This is an interesting idea for a closed circle, the "self-inflicted" closed circle (like the sect in Arisugawa's Jooukoku no Shiro), where a (believable) reason has to be given why these people don't just step out of the house and call for help from the police. It works here, I think, partially also because we have Akie, an extra character who is not part of the robbers, so they have even more reasons to not just leave while she has seen them and talked with them. I'd love to see more of these self-chosen closed circle situations actually...

As a closed circle mystery however, Kiyosato Kougen Satsujin Bessou is pretty predictable for about 80% of the book. The cast is pretty small (and the book is short), so the counter of survivors goes down rather quickly, and a lot of the murders are fairly straight-forward. There's often an element of impossibility/implausibility involved with the murders, like when one of them is poisoned, or another is found dead in the hallway even though it doesn't seem anyone could've done it time-wise, but these impossible angles are not really played up to very strongly, and most of the time it seems they shrug it off as 'oh, but perhaps it could've been done anyway'. I think the impossibility angle is kinda hard to achieve, because ultimately, the setting is just one villa, and there's only that much "unobserved" space in a house with 6 people in it, so I guess it would be difficult to really make it feel impossible, but the book tries to feel both claustrophobic, while also trying to sell some deaths as semi-impossible in a setting that's not really suited for it, so that kinda fell flat for me. When you learn the solution to most of these murders, you'll probably just shrug and say 'sure, okay, I guess that works.' (and probably shake your head at the first one). The middle murder might be the most interesting, using a rather unexpected prop in a clever way to create a kind of impossibility, and the hints pointing at the prop can be rather tricky.

But, I have to say, the book really got me at the end. The ending went in a direction I had not expected at all, but in hindsight, I have to admit it was really pretty well telegraphed. Some moments I simply thought there was weird writing, but it turns out they were clues building up to the ending. If the book had not featured this ending, it would have at best an average closed circle mystery (mostly saved by the middle murder), but I have to say this ending does pull the book into the 'oh, I think that was worth reading' territory. The misdirection works really well in this book. The motive of the murderer was not as convincing I think, it might be a 'your mileage may vary' thing, but I think that overall, the book was worth the time I spent on it.

So I did enjoy Kiyosato Kougen Satsujin Bessou as a short read. For a long time, the book develops as a rather predicatable closed circle thriller with on the whole, not really inspired murders, and while the ending may not be the kind of eye-opening conclusion you'll remember for decades like And Then There Were None, I do have to say the book will probably end up a lot better than you'll initially expect based on the middle part of the book. It's a short novel anyway, so it's not like it'll take up much of your time, but it'd be a shame if you'd give up early on it, as I did really like the ending. I'll probably try out more of Kaji's work in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 梶龍雄『清里高原殺人別荘』

Il Nome Della Rosa

「俺の名を言ってみろ」

『北斗の拳』

 

"Say my name!"

"Fist of the North Star"

As I write this review, I also looked back at the older reviews for this series and it's absolutely insane how this series manages to maintain this incredibly high level of quality throughout.

Toujou Genya series
1) Majimono no Gotoki Tsuku Mono ("Those Who Bewitch Like The Evil Spirits", 2006)
2) Magatori no Gotoki Imu Mono ("Those Who Are A Taboo Like The Malicious Bird", 2006)
3) Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono ("Those Who Cast A Curse Like The Headless", 2007) 
4) Yamanma no Gotoki Warau Mono ("Those Who Sneer Like The Mountain Fiend", 2008)
5) Himemuro no Gotoki Komoru Mono ("Those Who Stay Inside Like A Sealed Room", 2009)
6) Mizuchi no Gotoki Shizumu Mono ("Those Who Submerge Like The Water Spirit" 2009). 
7) Ikidama no Gotoki Daburu Mono ("Those Who Turn Double Like The Eidola", 2011)
8) Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono ("Those Who Resent Like The Ghostly Courtesan", 2012)
9) Haedama no Gotoki Matsuru Mono ("Those Who Are Deified Like The Haedama", 2018)

10) Maguu no Gotoki Motarasu Mono ("Those Who Bring Forth Like the Demon Idol", 2019) 

11) Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono ("Those Who Are Sacrified Like The Shunned", 2021)

Horror novelist Toujou Genya is also an accomplished amateur scholar in folklore, which is why his old university friend Fukuta needs his help. Fukuta plans to marry Amagami Ichiko, a girl who, like himself, works in the toy company of his parents. Ichiko hails from Mushikubiri Village in the Inanagi region, and her family is one of the two wealthiest clans in the small community. Fukuta's mother Katsuko is very much fixated on social status. Katsuko is also fond of Genya, as he is former nobility, so Fukuta wants Genya, with his knowledge of folklore, to explain to Katsuko what an important role the Amagami family has in Mushikubiri Village, by explaining the Rite of the Ina and its connection to the Amagami family. The Rite of the Ina is a centuries-old ceremony that used to be conducted widely in the Inanagi region, but now, about a decade after the Second World War, the Amagami family is one of the few that still does it. In principle, the ceremony is conducted by everyone whenever they turned 7, 14 and 21, as is connected to the fact children in the past died easily: while children were especially prone to die before their seventh birthday, the Rite of the Ina was to ensure that even after turning seven, they would be warded from evil and not be 'taken by the demons.' For that, every child is given an "Ina", or "the Name of the Shunned" when they turn seven. The Shunned is basically a "shadow self", a fictional replacement who shall undergo all the misfortune and every bad thing that would otherwise happen to the child itself. The child must therefore never utter the name, nor ever react to the name by turning around when called by that name, for then all the misfortune that the Shunned had been enduring in their place for all those years, will bounce back to the actual child. When they turn 7, 14 or 21, the participant needs to take a talisman with the Name of the Shunned, and make their way through a path through the forest up the mountain to throw the talisman in the waterfall there to appease the Shunned. 

When Ichiko did the ceremonies, she remembered she felt as if something had been following her all the time, calling out her name and trying to attract her attention, and when she was fourteen, she even ended up nearly dead. Genya does some minor research on the ceremony and the following day, he manages to convince Katsuko that the Amagami's long-running tradition indeed is connected to their historical social status in the village, setting Katsuko at ease about the upcoming marriage, but that same day, Ichiko and Fukuta receive a phone call telling them that Ichiko's half-brother Ichishitarou died yesterday, while performing the ceremony at age 14. What's more, it seems like he was murdered right in front of the waterfall, in a rather brutal manner with him being stabbed in the eye with a weapon coated in poison! Ichiko of course needs to travel back to Mushikuburi Village to attend her brother's funeral, but Fukuta and Katsuko are also asked to come along, as they have not met Ichiko's family yet, and they hope they can also properly discuss the marriage between the two too (and Ichiko thinks her very conservative and stubborn grandfather Genzou, the patriarch of the family, might be a little less stubborn due to the family tragedy). They invite Genya along too, as he has a personal interest in the Rite of the Ina but also local funeral rites. When they arrive in Mushikuburi Village however, the local police seem to know of Genya's reputation as an amateur detective too, and they hope he can also shine some light on the death of young Ichishitarou. He and his twin sister Itsuko are actually illegitimate childs of Ichiko's father Taiichi. Ichiko's two oldest brothers died in the war, her third brother was deemed too weak character-wise by his grandfather to become the next patriarch and Ichiko will marry into Fukuta's family, so Ichishitarou would have become the next patriarch, but it seems some people in the Amagami family were quite against Genzou's decision, but did one of them kill Ichishitarou during the ceremony? Sightings of a figure with a horn for an eye on the day of the murder also roam around, fueling rumors something otherwordly might have committed the murder, but could that really be true? Genya, reluctant as always, tries to figure out who killed Ishitarou so his friend can marry safely in Mitsuda Shinzou's Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono ("Those Who Are Sacrified like the Shunned", 2021).

This is the eight novel in Mitsuda Shinzou's Toujou Genya series (the eleventh entry in total) and ever since I started reading these books about five years ago, I've been an absolute fan of them. The way Mitsuda mixes horror with brilliant puzzle plot mysteries is amazing, and I especially love the focus on folklore. Basically each novel is set in some (fictional) obscure, isolated community in the mountains or near the sea, with their own local, centuries-old ceremonies and rites, tied to religious history. While the ceremonies themselves are fictional, a lot of the dynamics and interpretations presented throughout these books is based on genuine folklore studies, so a lot of what you read in these books is actually applicable to actual Japanese religious customs and rites. These books are incredibly informative, but also work very well as horror stories: while being detective stories, the books usually do include elements that are not really explained, suggesting there really is something supernatural out there, even if they have no direct connection to the murder plots. While I started late with reading this fantastic series, I have been buying the pocket releases on release ever since I have caught up, and Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono is at the moment the most recent release, so I'm finally really completely up-to-date!

While this book does take on the usual format of most of the Genya novels, it does feel a bit different, though not as extremely different as Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono ("Those Who Resent Like The Ghostly Courtesan", 2012). As usual, we start with a horror-esque opening, where we are told about the Rite of Ina from the perspective of Ichiko, as she relates how she experienced her own Rites when she was 7 and 14, and the really creepy things that occured to her while she went up to the waterfall and back. While a lot of the information here is relevant to the overall plot, you can also easily read these first few chapters just as a horror story, and it really sets the mood, as we learn about the Shunned, a fictional being that only exists to basically suffer instead of the "real" person and must never be acknowledged by name. Ichiko's detailed description of the route up to the waterfall as she retells her own experience is also very important here. The route starts at a gate, and then goes up the mountain, going past a small path with a big rock in the middle, a shack of someone who has been ostracized by his own family, through a small cut-out U-shaped path until you come near the waterfall. The route is not actually completely closed off, as one could make it through the thick bushes and threes to get on and off the path unseen, but this would take a lot of time, and your clothes would not go unscathed, and this becomes part of the mystery of Ichishitarou's death, as while he died on the route to the waterfall, it was not physically a genuine "locked room" (sealed space), but considering the alibis of the suspects and how much extra time it would have taken to get on and off the path unseen via the bushes, they do treat it as practically a locked room mystery, even if it's not really one.

While there are other mysteries that puzzle the police and Genya, like the sighting of a figure dressed in white, and a figure with a horn for an eye, around the time of the murder, the investigation is mostly focused on the death of Ichishitarou, and especially the alibis of various members of the Amagami family, who might have a motive for wanting to kill Ishitarou, from father Taiichi or the third brother Sanshirou (who might have resented not being picked as the next patriarch), to Sanshirou and Ichiko's mother and grandmother, who might resent having an illegitimate child taking over the clan. I have to admit, I wasn't that big a fan of this problem. Previous books had true impossible crimes occuring during the rituals in those books, like murders happening a closed off area where only the victim was, but here we have a relatively open area, that is kinda treated as a locked room due to the bushes/forest/cliffs surrounding the route, but isn't really. It takes away a bit of the mystery, as you can never really discount "random third party appeared at the watefall, killed kid, and left again." The investigation also focuses on motive, but these motives are fairly static: they point out what motives each of the Amagami family members could have or don't have at all, and while there is one new fact introduced later on, that changes the motives a bit, that one new fact is basically a wild guess, that is only confirmed because the author wants it to be like that, so that doesn't feel very satisfying. The middle part of the book is also a bit slow, as Genya only enters the area after the murder already has been committed and the whole village is helping out with organizing the funeral for Ichishitarou, so he has trouble getting information about the family and the rite as everyone is busy. Of course, we later learn a lot of these slower parts do hold vital hints for the mystery, but after the chilling first few chapters with Ichiko telling how her own rites went, the book slows down considerably, with a slow start-up time for Genya's investigation, which again is very alibi-focused, and sometimes is really about "it takes 20 minutes to walk from this part to this part, 10 minutes to the next part, here a witness saw this, then another five minute walk..."

The relatively simple set-up of the murder leads to another anomaly for this series, as Genya doesn't even need to make a list of 50~80 questions that bother him about the mystery, and which act as a guide towards solving the crime! Previous books had Genya making these gigantic lists of every little thing that bothered him, from facts related directly to the murder to things that bothered him about about the rituals in question and their history and it was by answering all of them, Genya would eventually arrive at a solution, but this time, Genya doesn't even gets time to do that, as he is rather suddenly asked by the police to just point out who did it. As always though, Genya uses his "multiple solutions" method, where he just loudly voices a possible solution, examines it, and then discards it if he finds a flaw an moves on to a next solution. Some of the false solutions are fairly simple, but I really love the major "wrong" solution of this book! It is absolutely bonkers, but is absolutely terrifying and fits so well with the theme of the book and the Rite of the Ina. I am glad it wasn't the real solution because it was a bit silly, but man, thematically it would have been great, and I think I would have learned to accept it anyway.

Up until this moment, I thought this was an okay mystery novel, though not quite up at the level of the usual very high standard of the series. While I can't expect all novels in the series to be like the absolute high points Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono ("Those Who Cast A Curse Like The Headless") and Yamanma no Gotoki Warau Mono ("Those Who Sneer Like The Mountain Fiend"), it did feel like this novel missed something. It felt like a story that would have been absolutely great as a short story or novella, but a bit too lean for a full novel. But the final solution did manage to win me over! While I still don't think the actual murder on Ichishitarou at the waterfall manages to be really memorable, though it does lead to some very interesting clues. I did find it a bit disappointing to learn the actual meaning behind the Rite of the Ina (Genya realizes the underlying meaning behind the ceremony, giving meaning to each and every single part/action of the ceremony) was not a vital clue in solving the how of the murder, I have to say that thematically, it is fantastic, as it ties very deeply with the why behind the crime. The motive behind the murder of young Ichishitarou is absolutely brilliant and the absolute high point of the book. It is a motive that could only work in this world, in this community as portrayed by Mitsuda. A lot of minor things that bothered me about the book suddenly made perfect sense in hindsight, as yes, things would end up like that if that's the motive! The motive is so deeply rooted in the old-fashioned, isolated, restricted culture of Mushikubiri Village portrayed in the book, and while yes, this is a fictional village, the underlying dynamics behind the motive are very real, and you could almost imagine this motive leading to murder in the real world too (which is what makes these book so horrifying at times, as they are based on real folklore). The clewing in regards to this is excellent too. The book is great at misdirection, at not drawing your attention to the motive despite it, in hindsight, being addressed so many times, and a lot of the minor things I thought were odd, turned out to be connected to this too, only I never made the connection between the various things that bothered me. The motive is something you will never see anywhere else but here, and that makes this book definitely one of my favorite reads of the year.

Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono is a book that might not be as good as some of the other novels in the series, but that doesn't say much if the level of quality of the Toujou Genya series is consistently insanely high. Like Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono, this book does things just a bit differently, though it stays relatively close to the usual format, but the ending does show Mitsuda is still a master at his craft, providing a haunting conclusion with one of the most memorable and fantastically founded motives I've ever seen in mystery fiction. I can't wait to read the next adventure of Genya, whenever it comes!

Original Japanese title(s): 三津田信三『忌名の如き贄るもの』

The Mad Mermaid

It was many and many a year ago, 

 In a kingdom by the sea, 

That a maiden there lived whom you may know 

By the name of Annabel Lee

"Annabel Lee"

I seem to have been experiencing the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon regarding the city of Choufu. I recently heard about it (home of Mizuki Shigeru!), and since I see the place appear in all kinds of novels...

Budding mystery novelist Hikawa Tooru is on his way to the Choufu Welfare Hospital, where his old high school friend Ikuta Shun works as a psychiatrist there. On his way, he has a rather weird encounter with someone who seems to hit on him, or perhaps not, but that was not the strangest happening that day. When he arrives at the hospital, he is surprised to see fire trucks parked around there, and when he asks what's going on, he's told shocking news: his friend has died! A fire occured in one of the free offices, which was assigned to Ikuta that day. Inside that office, a burnt body was found, but its face has been rendered completely unrecognizable. Because Ikuta was supposed to be working that time at that office, and he's not found anywhere, the people at the hospital of course assume it was him who died, but both the police and Hikawa are familiar with tropes of detective fiction, and Hikawa in particular wonders whether the body is really that of his friend. But what if the body is not that of Ikuta, whose body is it, and is Ikuta then involved with this person's death? As he asks Ikuta's co-workers about how Ikuta was as a person, since they didn't see each other much any more after high school, he learns Ikuta was indeed always the person he was at school too, but could that have led to his death? Hikawa is determined to learn the truth in Hikawa Tooru's Ningyo to Minotauros ("The Mermaid and the Minotaur" 2002), which also carries the English title The Border-Line Case.

Ningyo to Minotauros is the fourth novel in the Hikawa Tooru series, written by the same author, following the Ellery Queen model not both in this form, but also by how the character of Hikawa Tooru solves the crimes in these books, with a focus on chains of deductions, physical evidence and the conclusions one can make based on them, and eliminating suspects one by one off a list until the last suspect ends up being the murderer. As in previous novels, the crime takes place in a semi-personal circle, with Hikawa Tooru being friends with the (supposed) victim this time, while in previous novels too, his friends and people he worked with ended up being victims and/or suspects. Story-wise, we have some references to earlier novels (including the second one, which was published by a different publisher than the other books), but there's not much of story development here, as Hikawa is still a struggling novelist at this point, still waiting for his first book to be published.

The book starts rather sudden, with just a few moments before Hikawa arrives at the hospital, only to hear his friend (very probably) died in the fire. Shocked by the loss of his friend, Hikawa goes around the hospital, asking Ikuta's co-workers what kind of person he was at the hospital, as Ikuta was a very unique person at high school, one of the few people Hikawa could really get along with, and he wonders whether or how his personality could've led to his death, as he was the sweetest guy around. During his "investigation" Hikawa gets to know several people around the hospital, from nurses to fellow doctors and even some of Ikuta's patients, and they all seem to agree Ikuta was not the kind of person to get himself murdered. Some of the women Hikawa talks to even seem to fancy his old friend, which hurts as hell, knowing he just died so young. Because of previous cases Hikawa got involved with, he also gets fed some confidential investigation information from a friend with the police, which slowly give Hikawa a better idea of what happened before he arrived there. 

As a puzzle however, Ningyo to Minotauros isn't that interesting. Perhaps it's because the setting is very limited, with few characters who were at the hospital at the time of the fire, meaning there are very few suspects, and most of the book is just devoted to Hikawa interviewing people about where they were at that time, with almost no other story developments after the initial scene of Hikawa arriving at the hospital. After that it's just a lot of talk about Ikuta, and occasionally some talk about alibis of where everybody was before the fire. The idea is of course you've got to check whose alibis are actually confirmed and which are just based on the suspect's own testimony (without supporting proof), but this is something Hikawa Tooru has already done in previous books, and each time it just felt... too bland. This focus on timelines is very technical, but it is also told in a very dry manner, and because there are usually few other developments in the story, it all feels very clinical, with little to keep the reader entertained but hoping the next bit of information will be interesting. Previous novels however were a bit lengthier than Ningyo to Minotauros, which allowed for a bit more variation and more insight in the characters, but that is a bit lacking here, especially as a lot of the book is devoted to drawing a portrait of Ikuta, at the expense of the actual (living) suspects. 

There ultimately isn't like something clever or trick behind the arson in the office, and while there's some meta-talk about the unrecognizable corpse, this does not remain a mystery for long as the police just have the body examined and they arrive at a clear answer relatively soon (before the actual conclusion), so the mystery ultimately really revolves around who committed the murder and set the office on fire, and therefore, the matter really just revolves around alibis. While there are a few clever clues that point to the murderer at the conclusion, leading to an interesting revelation about the whole first scene (the final step in determining the murderer is interesting), I still find this the least engaging book of the series until this point. There's just too little really interesting about the mystery and the way it is solved, and I guess there's some interesting talk about gender studies here (hence the Japanese title), but it's not enough to really keep my attention.

As a fan of Queen-esque mysteries, it's a bit of a shame that while on a technical level, Ningyo to Minotauros certainly follows the model in terms of chains of deduction to identify the murderer, the very brief story is told in a rather dry manner, despite the "personal" angle about Hikawa's friend either being a victim, or otherwise involved in the mysterious death, and while the chain shown here would be okay for a short story, it's not enough to carry a whole novel, at least, not the way it is told. One more of these novels to go!

Original Japanese title(s): 氷川透『人魚とミノタウロス』