And that wraps up another series...
Interestingly, this book also follows a different structure because it is the ending. In the previous three volumes, we had first the original novella with Ayumu, followed by two extra prequel stories with Kurumi and Kiyotaka. Which made sense, as they were just extras. These stories had also been posted online before. In this volume however, things are turned around: the book opens with the two stories which were posted online previously, but ends with the original novella.
The two short stories the reader first encounters are called Kinkyou Houkoku ("Update") and Kudan wo Korose ("Kill the Kudan") and are fairly short, and don't follow the same two-chapter structure of the previous short stories. In the first, we learn about a woman who has been killed, but in her stomach a handwritten note was found with the name "Kiyotaka" as well as Kiyotaka's phone number at the police station. While it is not likely he killed the woman and that she wanted to leave a clue to indicate her killer, Kiyotaka turns out to have a connection with the victim, as they used to date in college. But why did the victim have that note in her stomach? This is a fun The Nine Mile Walk-esque story where they speculate about why she'd have swallowed that note before being killed, and while the answer comes very soon after the introduction of the problem, it does fit with the humanistic angle this series sometimes takes. This story also has Kurumi meet with a younger Ayumu for the first time (he's still in elementary school in this story), who turns out to be quite clever like his big brother. In Kudan wo Korose ("Kill the Kudan"), Ayumu's old teacher confesses to killing her husband with a statue of a Kudan (a yokai with the head of a man and the body of a cow),because she believes the prophetic powers of a Kudan will only lead to misfortune. Ayumu however has information that seems to put the matter in a different light. Again, the story is very short, so you don't really get much time to think about this yourself too much, but it's an okay story considering the page count, and because of the yokai links and the type of deductions made, it does make you wonder whether Shirodaira was already playing with ideas for Kyokou Suiri/Invented Inference when he wrote this tale.
The main story is Koufuku no Owari, Owari no Koufuku ("Ending of the Happiness, Happiness of the Ending") which might also be the longest original novella of this four-volume series. It is also by far the best pure mystery story of the four, focusing on a clear murder mystery and using the extended page length to present a robust novella. Kurumi challenges Kiyotaka one last time, and this time, they are working on the murder of a wealthy man, who was very much into horse racing. Each Sunday, he'd bet on horses, but whenever he lost, he would write down the names of the two horses he lost to, and fold a very intricate origami model of a devil figure with head, arms, legs, fingers and wings, which takes hours to fold even if you know exactly how to do it. This Sunday, he was killed, but he had finished his origami model, meaning he had died some hours after losing his horse bet. During the race, his son, illegimate daughter and another son-in-law, who all had reasons for wanting to kill him for his money, were all with him at his house, but they all left after the race and had tea together, meaning they all have a perfect alibi for after the race, when the victim was working on his origami model. Because the names of the winners of that race were indeed written on that model, it means it couldn't have been prepared beforehand, because you can't know which two horses exactly would win that week. Ayumu helps Kurumi this time to see if they can beat Kiyotaka together.
As a problem, this is probably the most "normal" murder mystery we've seen in the novellas in this spin-off series, and it's a pretty good one. Nothing mind-blowing mind you, but it's a solid "which of the three suspects is the killer" type of story. They all seem to have solid alibis because they were together after the murder, but could any of them have somehow prepared the origami model beforehand, even though you could never guess which horses would win that week beforehand and prepare an origami model so complex it even takes a veteran hours to create? You can't prepare the model beforehand, fold it open, write names in and quickly fold it back, because the pen markings would be different writing on folded paper, and the model is so complex having folded paper would only make it more difficult to fold it back into the devil. The solution is close to the type of reasonings you'll find in Shirodaira's later Kyokou Suiri, in the sense that they very much focus on what a person would do to commit a murder, looking into hypotheses more than in actual physical evidence, though I'd say the foundation for the deductions is fairly sound here. I quite like the answer to the origami problem as a proof of alibi actually, being something I had not seen before, and the answer is just crazy enough to be fun, but also quite logical even from the POV of the murderer.
I also think that for fans of the series, this volume is probably the most interesting. The previous novellas were all set extremely early in the main series (like, two chapters in), so they seldom felt like Spiral stories, while the short stories were about Kurumi (who doesn't appear in the main series), Kiyotaka (who barely appears in the main series) and Madoka (Kiyotaka's surbordinate/later wife), who fortunately does appear in the main series a lot. Still, they often didn't really feel like Spiral. Ayumu however appears in all three stories in this volume and interacts with the other characters, so give an interesting look in his younger years and the way he thinks, the way the other stories didn't do as well I think (especially when it comes to him and Kiyotaka's relation).
And that means I am done with the spin-off novels of Spiral. Not all of them were as good as others: The second one is memorable as it has a crazy story, but also because of how it works as a proto-Kyokou Suiri, focusing on deductions and not the truth per se. The final volume Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna 4: Koufuku no Owari, Owari no Koufuku has the best selection of stories when it comes to conventional murder mystery stories, and you could even read this without any knowledge of the main series and still think it's a coherent volume, whereas the other volumes are a bit more chaotic as they have stories set both in the present day of the main series, and the stories set in the past with Kurumi and Kiyotaka. Anyway, I'm glad I have read these now because I had been aware of them for many years, but never got around to them until last year.
No comments :
Post a Comment