The Third Bullet

"Sometimes, I just want to put this gun right against her head, and ever so gently, pull the trigger."

"Death on the Nile" (1978 film)

Huh, it's been over 13 years since I first heard about this book, and through that the Mikikaze series... and I end up reading this one as the last of the novels in the series...

Minami Mikikaze, professional photographer and amateur detective, is asked by his high school friend Kazuya for desperate help: Kazuya is the defendant in a double murder case, and the prosecution's case against him is very strong, as he was found together with the two victims inside an apartment room which was locked from the inside. The two victims were ex-convicts, who were working for a company that was actively recruiting ex-convicts to help them get their lives on the rails again. When they didn't show up for work, their boss went to the apartment room, but found it locked with the key, latch and door chain, so the building's caretaker had to break open the door. Inside, they found the two men shot through their head, one lying near the door, the other sitting on a sofa, with an unconscious Kazuya sitting next to him and the pistol lying on the floor. Based on what the three men were wearing, it seemed like they were planning to commit a robbery, but Kazuya denies everything: he knew the two men, because he once helped his brother-in-law who had written an article on the company's commendable efforts to help ex-convicts on their way back into society, but he swears he was not planning something criminal with them: he only had something to discuss with them, but after drinking something, he lost consciousness, so he claims to have no idea why the two men were shot to death, and why the door was locked thrice. The police investigation however fingers Kazuya as the culprit and some months later, the case is all ready to be handled in the court, at which point Kazuya asks Mikikaze to help solve this locked room mystery. Mikikaze manages to get hold of a lead, which leads him to the United States to visit a certain witness, but while talking with this witness, he's knocked out by something in his drink, and when he wakes up... he finds himself lying next to the dead witness he was talking to, in a locked room! Finding himself in the exact predicament as his friend, Mikikaze knows he's on the right track, but can he save both himself and Kazuya in Tsukatou Hajime's F no Madan ("The Magic Bullet of F" 2004)?

F no Madan is the second novel in the Minami Mikikaze series following Agni no Atsui Natsu, and with that, I have now read all the full-length novels in this series (I still have to read two short story collections). Misshitsu Kingdom (Kingdom of the Locked Room) is still by far the best one in the series by the way, but this novel too will probably interest locked room murder enthusiasts, as they will probably recognize the set-up of this novel: yes, this is Tsukatou's take on Carter Dickson's The Judas Window, focusing on the trial of a young man accused of murder because they were found in a locked room, with a murder victim in the same room. Of course, the similarities are in the base setting, as here we don't have a locked room in a large country house, but a very urban setting, with a triple-locked apartment in a city just across a giant department store. And there's the mirrored situation, where Mikikaze visits a witness at a farm in the American countryside and wakes up in a room with a dead body, but the twist here is that Mikikaze is aware the murderer is outside the room and busy "completing" the locked room situation. The book jumps back and forth in time, with the Mikikaze segments being in the present/real-time, and the segments that go over how Kazuya was discovered in the room and the subsequent investigations by his attorney set a few months before that. As you can understand, the Mikikaze segments are far more exciting, as Mikikaze knows the murderer is busy setting things up to make him into a scapegoat, but the fact he's been drugged and his own weak heart (and the fact the murderer is likely armed) prevent him from doing anything reckless to apprehend the killer, even if he knows the murderer is still in the house.

The book itself doesn't hide the fact it's basically a tribute to The Judas Window by the way, and I do recommend reading that one first before reading F no Madan. While the latter does not explicitly spoil the former, it is clearly written as a modern take, and while Tsukatou adds a lot of original, and frankly told very clever twists to it, I think you do get more out of it if you know the underlying context too. 

Purely seen as a locked room mystery, I think that F no Madan has both really clever parts, but also parts that do demand the reader to just with certain things. As a modern take on The Judas Window for example, I think the concept Tsukatou used is really clever, and the way it's a surprisingly safe method for the murderer to commit a double murder in a triple-locked room is quite memorable. However, to get everything into position, the murderer would need to manipulate a lot of moving parts and actors, and especially the latter part feels a bit unbelievable at times. This isn't a murderer who subtly manages to force someone to act in a way that benefits them, this is almost truly being a puppeteer, because it's quite unbelievable different actors would all exactly act in the way the murderer would need them to act without even one moment of hesitation. So in that sense, the locked room situation does feel a bit cheap, as too much works out for the benefit of the killer, simply because it needs to do so. On the other hand, I really love some of the preparations the murderer did do in order to make things go the way they needed to: I still don't think his preparations would've ensured everything would go the way they needed, but that one action they did explicitly take beforehand, in order to ensure at least two actions would be taken by one of the people they needed to manipulate, was done really clever, and worked perfectly to strengthen the trick of the triple locked room. That part alone does make this a memorable locked room, as it shows Tsukatou's eye for detail.

The present-day situation, where Mikikaze finds himself trying to fight the sleeping drugs he's been fed and figure out how to escape the room, without alerting the killer in the house, is an exciting read, and it does hold hints that are also applicable to the Kazuya locked room, but the story moves very slowly in those segments and ultimately, this part is far more simple than the Kazuya locked room, so it's not as surprising mystery-wise. It's more a grand way to allow Mikikaze to solve things and confront the killer.

While the book feels a bit artificial due to the machinations of the killer going so perfectly, F no Madan does happen to also be the one book in this series where Tsukatou clearly tries to work more on characterization and even tackles social school problems: a lot of the Kazuya-focused chapters focus on Kazuya and his stance in life: part of the mystery revolves around the question why he's so reluctant to talk about why he was visiting the two victims, if he was not involved in anything criminal and we learn a lot about his views on societal problems. I thought these parts were a bit too longwinded, but there's an interesting subplot hidden here that deals with his motive for keeping silent, and while it's not really presented as a "solvable" problem, the idea itself is good. Personally, I could've done with a tighter plot with less of the character musings, but your mileage may vary. I do have to admit I was surprised that early on in the book, we get a diagram of the crime scene, and then the narrative moves more to exploring Kazuya's character and his relations to everyone, and when the story returns to the locked room, we get the crime scene diagram again... and I do mean again, because it's the exact same diagram. As if Tsukatou himself suddenly realized he had drifted from the main mystery too much and feared the reader might've forgotten about it, so he showed you the same picture twice to jog your memory.

Also: for some reason the book does not really explain what the "F" in the title means..

Personally, I liked F no Madan the least of all the Mikikaze novels, though that's not very surprising: it's hard to beat the brilliant combination of the locked room mystery with Ellery Queen-esque deductions of Misshitsu Kingdom, of course I'm going to like the even more Ellery Queen-inspired Aru Girishia Hitsugi no Nazo ("A Greek Coffin Mystery), and in the end I prefer the brevity and focus on the mystery of Agni no Atsui Natsu simply better than the more prosey F no Madan, but readers who like more characterization, or the way the book builds clearly on The Judas Window might feel very differently. I do think it's a decent locked room mystery, and definitely worth a read if you have already read The Judas Window.

Original Japanese title(s): 柄刀一『Fの魔弾』

L'Île aux trente cercueils

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream.

 

 So blended bank and shadow there, 

 that each seemed pendulous in air — 

 

so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began. 

 "The Island of the Fay" 

 

You know, that would be an interesting setting for a mystery story, an island where they have these GIGANTIC crosses and some kind of impossible crime happens, like a body appears right on top of the highest cross...

Mephisto is a long-running magazine of publisher Kodansha focusing on mystery and other entertainment genre fiction, featuring columns on literature, but more importantly serializations of for example Ayatsuji Yukito's House novels. While it used to be distributed "normally" as a magazine, its current incarnation is only available if you are a member of the Mephisto Readers Club, with the seasonal release of Mephisto being one of the perks that come with a subscription. Currently the magazine is for example running running the serialization of Ayatsuji Yukito's Futagokan no Satsujin/The Twin House Murders while the last two years, it had Arisugawa Alice's Nihon Ougi no Nazo ("The Japanese Fan Mystery"), which got a book release in 2024. But the subscription also includes other content, including a series of flash fiction by various mystery authors who have to work with the same opening or ending line, and also regularly updated mini-columns on mystery fiction on various topics. Mystery Island was originally a series of short, one-page columns running in the first half of 2024 penned by six critics, who all discussed eleven mystery stories set on... an island. The closed circle setting of an island, where nobody can go to or escape from and you have a limited pool of suspects, is of course a very popular one in mystery fiction ever since And Then There Were None and there are quite a few worth recommending to others, but even I hadn't expected you could discuss 66 different stories. Later the same year, publisher Kodansha published all these columns as one book (with a great cover!), also titled Mystery Island.

The six critics are Aoto Shino, Ooya Hiroko, Katayama Daichi, Sengai Akiyuki, Masamune Q and Miyake Kaho, who each take on eleven mysteries set on an island. They obviously did have some discussion about how to divide the works, as they all will discuss a few of the really famous ones, like And Then There Were None, Jukkakan no Satsujin/The Decagon House Murders, Gokumontou/Gokumon Island and Evil Under Sun, but each of them will also tackle some minor titles you likely had never heard about or wouldn't have expected to be discussed specifically. There is a good selection of both older titles and new ones, with some titles so recent they basically released the same year as when the columns were originally running, like Yuuki Haruo's Jikkai ("The Ten Commandments"). There's also quite some variety in the works discussed, from classic puzzle plot mysteries like the titles mentioned above, but also horror-mysteries like Sawamura Ichi's excellent Yogen no Shima ("The Island of the Prophecy") and weird fantasy-hybrids like Shimada Soji's Alcatraz Gensou ("Alcatraz Fantasy").

The Mystery Island columns however are very short, as they were originally published via LINE (a Japanese social chat platform) and it's best not to look as Mystery Island as a reference book, but rather as a coffee table book, the type of book you just pick up to peruse for a few minutes to read a short column and which you'll lay down and only return to after a while. The tone of each of column is pretty casual, usually containing personal anecdotes of how the critic came into contact with the story in the first place. Each column is basically just a page long, so there isn't much space to discuss any work in detail: they mostly get away with giving a brief outline of the work in place, and add a paragraph on its merits as a mystery story/mystery story set on an island. So for those who want to really know why a specific story is interesting as an island mystery, the columns might feel a bit too short, as they can never really delve deep into the themes and specific characteristics of the work in question, but for those who simply want simple pointers to decide what to read next, Mystery Island is quite effective as they really don't discuss enough to even remotely spoil anything. Because the six authors together do manage to introduce a great number, and a great variety of works, it's likely any reader will find a work they hadn't known about that sounds interesting. At least, I know I have a few new titles on my 'someday, I will read this' list I had not ever considered before. That said, the definition of 'mystery fiction' is quite broad, and seeing a title like Battle Royale here does feel a bit like cheating, but oh well, it's 66 titles, they're allowed to use a (very) broad definition.

Originally, these columns were posted on the subscribers-only Mephisto Reader's Club LINE account, and each column would be followed by a short poll on something kinda connected to the book in question: the one on Gokumontou for example asks if you were the killer, which of the four modern-day actors of Kindaichi Kousuke would you like to have as your opponent. The book release includes the outcome of each of these polls and also contains a write-up of the editors' meeting with the six critics, where they decided how to divide the work, which gives the reader a bit more insight into the selection process.

Oh, and moving away from the contents of this book, and discussing this book as... a book: besides the great cover, it also features some really cool character art by Kikuni Masahiko for all the six critics, in the same style as the silhouette characters of the authors featured in the shin honkaku anniversary anthology 7-nin no Meitantei ("The Seven Great Detectives"). The physical release also has a rather unique slipcase: the slipase is actually open on two sides (instead of one), so normally a book you'd place inside could slip out from the other side... but because this is Japan, the book of course also features an obi (a thin paper wrapper), and it's the obi that keeps the book in place. Really odd design I have never seen before.

 Mystery Island is a rather interesting release now I think about it. It was originally written for subscribers to the Mephisto Readers Club, so in a way, for an audience that is probably more interested and knowledgeable about mystery fiction than the average reader, but as a book, Mystery Island works better as a casual coffee book table than a "reference book for die-hard mystery fans". It's easy to pick up, read a column or two and lay down again, and while none of the columns really go deep enough to really become informative or provide you with some eye-opening revelation, they do a good enough job to point you to the existence of some stories you may not have considered otherwise, or help you decide what famous mystery set on an island you should tackle next, if you hadn't read that one masterpiece before. I wonder if a project like this could be translated/released in English too to casually introduce both the well-known, as well as the lesser known island mysteries from Japan to an English-reading audience, considering its more casual tone.

Original Japanese title(s): 青戸しの, 大矢博子, 佳多山大地, 千街晶之, 政宗九, 三宅香帆『ミステリーアイランド』

Murder A La Mode

Paris in the fall, the last months of the year, at the end of the millenium. The city holds many memories for me, of cafes, of music, of love, and of death.

"Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars"

This review was originally scheduled to be published in August last year, but another review took its place so I pushed to the far end of the waiting queue...

Art dealer Akatsuki Hiroyuki is the brain behind an explosion in the popularity of the artists of the École de Paris (the School of Paris) with an extensive book on its major players, but one evening, the man is found dead in his study in his manor, which also functions as a private art gallery. After hearing a loud noise, his butler hopes to check up on his master, but he finds the door locked. When he unlocks the door, his master lies dead on the floor with an army knife in him, there's a smear of blood on the window's lock, and below in the garden, footprints are found in the sand. Outside, the watch dog is also found dead, having been poisoned, making this a double murder, but how could the murderer have escaped the locked study with the door and window locked from the inside? Inspector Unno soon realizes the impossibility of the situation, but unfortunately for him, his direct superior Oobeshimi is rather eccentric, and more interested in accusing the first people that come to mind or commenting on how beautiful the widow is. Unno is also surprised by his cousin Shinsenji Shunichirou, who had been traveling the world for a few years, but had just returned to Japan to visit Akatsuki's gallery. Shunichirou, as a gifted artist himself, is desperate to see the gallery, so plans to give tips to his uncle so the case can be solved quickly. It seems likely Akatsuki was murdered because of his work as an art dealer, so Shunichirou recommends his uncle to read Akatsuki's book on the École de Paris, and of course, we as the reader know this book will be important as Fukami Reiichirou's 2008 novel is called École de Paris Satsujin Jiken ("The École de Paris Murder Case"). 

École de Paris Satsujin Jiken is the first in Fukami's art-themed series of mystery novels, and when it released, it managed to rank in at a respectable ninth place in that year's Honkaku Mystery Best 10 ranking. Earlier, I read Fukami's Mystery Arena and I loved that book, but that's basically all I've read by Fukami, so I figured it was about time I'd read more by him. I do think this book was the first time I ever heard of Fukami, having seen this book reviewed on the (now defunct) On the Threshold of Chaos blog. I don't really have any affinity with art, but as this was one of Fukami's better known works, I felt this was probably a good work to return to Fukami with.

I do have to say, as something not particularly interested in art, getting into the book was a bit difficult, as each chapter starts with sections taken from the in-universe book by Akatsuki on the artists of École de Paris. You'll get to read "scholarly" writings on artists like Soutine and Kisling, on their personal history as well as on their art style and more, and while these sections are relevant to the plot, they do really read as excerpts from a completely different book, and depending on your interests, reading about the life of Soutine might not be very exciting. But again, these sections are relevant to the case (which is not only made clear by these excerpts, but also by Shunchirou saying that out loud), and I have to admit: the way the École de Paris ties in back to the mystery plot is honestly quite good, with real history being used for the murderous plot in a very clever way. This is by far the best, and most memorable part of the book. Fukami made his debut by winning the Mephisto Prize, and while this is his second book and not the actual prize winner, you can recognize a bit of the tropes you see in a lot of Mephisto Prize winners, with a focus on specialist fields of knowledge and flaunting said knowledge. In this book, it however stays firmly connected with the mystery plot and isn't just there for entertainment purposes, and I'd say this is an example of the "trivia mystery novel" done well.

As for the rest of the book though, I found it a bit too light-weight, I guess? The main mystery is the locked room mystery, but while the École de Paris does tie back to parts of this mystery in a satisfying way, the actual physical dynamics behind the mystery were rather simple, and you could only barely call it an actual variant to a rather often seen solution to the locked room mystery. While I think it's pretty guessable, the actual clewing to this solution was also a bit lacking, meaning it doesn't feel nearly as satisfying as the reveal regarding the connection to the École de Paris. 

Despite the "serious" excerpts from the art history book, the book has a slightly comedic tone overall, mainly personified by Inspector Oobeshimi, who is constantly saying everything he thinks out loud, always immediately going for the easy explanations, offending and showing no regard for other people, and Unno having to cope with such a boss. I didn't really find Oobeshimi funny though, and while this series stars Shunuchirou as the detective and it's clear right away when he first appears it's he, and not Oobeshimi is our hero, the book is mainly told through Unno's eyes, and he (naturally) mostly narrates his investigation as led by Oobeshimi, so you are constantly confronted with Oobeshimi. For me, this also meant the investigation felt incredibly slow as Oobeshimi was always barking up the wrong tree. Your mileage may vary here, but after a while, I found Oobeshimi more tedious than the art history lessons at the start of each chapter. Shunichirou is also portrayed as a slightly eccentric figure, roaming the world as a freeter and having more than a few things to say about Japan's rigid, stagnate culture and society, and he's infinitely more interesting to follow, but unfortunately, he appears far less in the book compared to the police characters.

So overall, I thought École de Paris Satsujin Jiken was a bit of an uneven novel. I really liked how the actual history of the École de Paris was used for the mystery plot of the book, but the two other major elements, being the locked room and the tone of the book, couldn't really convince me. That's why I don't think I'll be reading the other books in this series soon, though never say never.

Original Japanese title(s): 深水黎一郎『エコール・ド・パリ殺人事件』

The Dream Team

“You see what I’m driving at? I’m made to dream the same dream, night after night, night after night—and then—one day the suggestion is too much for me—and I act upon it. I do what I’ve dreamed of so often—kill myself!”

"The Dream"

I still can't help but feel a bit annoyed by how the covers of this series all look so samey. I like the art style, but I wish there had been more variation beyond "Shiina on the cover".

With most practioners of magic being persecuted in the medieval witch hunts, mankind lost both knowledge on magic, as well as the people who were capable of performing it, but for the last century, people have been rediscovering and re-examining magic, which by now has developed into an academic field. There are only six known magicians on the world, but magic can be studied by anyone as an academic theme, the same way not all Literature students actually write literature, but can study about it. Japan however is still merely a "developing" country when it comes matters magic,with Jousui University opening Japan's very first Magic Faculty this very year, though they got a scoop: they managed to employ Sakyou Shiina as one of their teachers: Shiina is one of the six known magicians on the world, who are strictly monitered and managed by the Order of Zenith in London. In the first semester, narrator Amane was picked to be in Shiina's class along the girls Ririko, Hio, Imina, Rie and Chisato who grew up as childhood friends. At the end of the first semester, the annual Jousui University Campus Festival is held. On the first day, Amane and the other girls got involved in a strange incident that kept them captured inside the General Studies A building, but thanks to Shiina, all of that was revolved. The following day, Amane wakes up after a night of drinking with the girls of Shiina's class, but a memory of a dream haunts our narrator: in the dream, someone was being chased by a masked killer down a corridor with classroom: this someone was pinned down and strangled by this masked murderer. Amane actually has experience with dreams of the future before, which all came true, and these dreams were always of the very near future of other people close to Amane. Shiina explains that this is indeed a kind of magic, and that it can be very difficult to go against the future foretold. However, because Amane had been sleeping in the classroom with the other girls when the dream appeared, it is likely the future victim will Ririko, Hio, Imina, Rie or Chisato and furthermore, because they are to go to a masquerade event today at the campus festival, it seems clear the attack will occur then. The group goes to the General Studies A building as planned to participate in the Mystery Club's masquerade event The Castle Masquerade Murder Case: the participants are to solve a murder by looking for clues in rooms in the "castle" (classrooms which have been decorated to function as castle rooms), while wearing cosplay, because it's actually a joint event with the cosplay club. Everyone picks a different costume and starts wandering around the "castle", but Amane has only one goal in Kuzumi Shiki's Tricksters M (2006): to prevent a murder.

This is the fourth book I've read in the Tricksters series and... it's actually the fourth entry! If you've been reading this blog for a longer time, you might remember I actually read the third book, Tricksters D before the second novel, Tricksters L. While I guess most people usually read things in order, I do recommend you to really do that here, as Tricksters M (M stands for "Masquerade") is literally set the day after Tricksters D, during the same campus festival and most of the supporting cast in M also appeared in D (members of the Mystery Club). One new face is Okurina, the brother of Imina, who curently studies magic at the London University of Magic, but has returned to visit the festival and who himself is a former member of the Mystery Club, and he was known as a great detective while studying here.

I enjoyed the first Tricksters: it was a fun to read light novel that used magic in a clever way tell an entertaining and clever mystery story. In Tricksters, magic is still a developing academic field, so the number of possible magic spells are still fairly limited, all with clearly defined limitations, which makes magic as a plot element in a mystery story feel fair. I think as mysteries, L was better than D in terms of how the mystery was constructed (even if it had the bad luck of me reading a book with very similar setting/ideas just before it), though D was certainly more original in what it attemped to do. Tricksters M this time however didn't quite manage to capture me as well, though it does a few things differently on purpose.

The theme of the story this time is precognitive dream, which Shiina explains is indeed real magic and we learn at the beginning what the 'rules' are to these dreams, meaning as the reader, we can safely assume that yes, something is gone to happen during the masquerade. This time, we have Amane trying to prevent a crime from happening, which is an interesting twist. The dream is vague however, and it's based on the little Amane remembers, the reader needs to deduce who is going to be attacked, who is going to be attacked, and where this will take place. One thing I found odd was that there was no floorplan/diagram provided in the book. Early in the story, Amane and Shiina first deduce the attack is likely to going to happen in one of about a dozen candidate classrooms, based on which side of the hallway the door in the dream was, as well as the length of the hallway. As Amane participates in The Castle Masquerade Murder Case and starts poking around to see who would have any motive to attack one of the girls, we learn some other facts that help cross out other potential crime scenes: the problem here is that we don't really have any way to cross out these locations ourselves, we only hear "after the fact" that classroom A was facing a certain way, and therefore not the room of the dream, or that classroom B was out because it was located in the wrong corner or something like that. So this process of finding the real crime scene feels very passive. There is one clever, final clue to determine which room it is of the final few candidates, but again, this would have been so much more convincing as a fair game if we actually had proper floorplans and diagrams (because the way it is done in prose only, the clue feels a bit too weak, so more "supporting" clues would have made it much better).

As for determining who the attacker is and who the victim... I thought this part was a bit weak. I think the idea Kuzumi was going for works well enough as a concept: you have the interesting idea of an "inverted" whodunnit, where you start with knowing there is an attacker, and from there need to deduce about an impending crime, and what Kuzumi ultimately tries to pull off using this concept is fun too as a mystery, as a conventional mystery novel wouldn't be able to pull this off. But the book is very short, and you don't really get to see much of the characters, so none of it feels really surprising, as yeah, of course she's going to be the victim, you hardly hear anything about the other girls! Don't get me wrong, I think the base concept Kuzumi was going for is good, and mystery-wise, really clever things can be done with it, but here it felt rather underwhelming. I do think the things done with Shiina's role in resolving this mystery are clever, almost treading upon Late Queen Problems! This book however does feel lighter on the mystery aspect (the masquerade doesn't even start until halfway into the book!), probably because it's also written to serve as a turning point in the series' narrative: Shiina is clearly grooming Amane to become a detective, and he is being very hands off now and providing very little guidance to Amane. This is reflected in the character of Okurina, who was a great detective himself when he was in the Mystery Club, but who now seems to regret having taken that path, showing Amane a possible future.

Tricksters M also contains a short story set about a flower shop, but it's really short, and doesn't add much (it's also not related to anything, just something to fill out the volume).

So I wasn't a huge fan of Tricksters M: while these books are never really long, I felt the mystery was a bit too light in this volume and while it has cool ideas, I feel like with a few rewrites, it could've been much better, as I think the idea of prophetic dreams and all can be used very cleverly in mystery novels (heck... I translated one!). The next two volumes form one story that serves as the finale of the series I believe, so I will eventually get them too.

Original Japanese title(s): 久住四季『トリックスターズM』

The Stranger in the Shadows

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
"Genesis" (King James version)

I wouldn't say I lived *at the foot* of Mt. Hiei, but the place I was staying while living in Kyoto was pretty near Mt. Hiei, relatively speaking...

Perusing the magazine The Charms of Kyoto, detective Kisarazu Yuuya comes across an article on Shirakashi Munenao, a famous painter and sculptor who lives with his extended family in a bizarre manor located at the foot of Mt. Hiei in Kyoto. The article featured photographs of the interior of the home, which consists of three storeys, that are off-set, creating a kind of "ladder" effect which nothing beneath the second and third floors. One of the photographs showed a symbol in the house interior which immediately captured Kisarazu's attention, as it was connected to a case he never managed to solve: three years ago, the bodies of a man and a pregnant woman were found after a landslide. They were obviously killed, but the police didn't manage to identify the bodies, and neither could Kisarazu even after being brought onto the case. He did find a platinum ring near the scene, with the exact same symbol which he know learns is somehow related to Shirakashi Munenao, which convinces him the two deaths are somehow connected to him.

Kisarazu's not the only one interested in the Shirakashi's though, as the reader is also introduced to Anjou Norisada, who has recently been moved internally to the editorial department of The Charms of Kyoto. His mother died some years ago, but on her death bed, she confessed to Norisada she wasn't his real mother. She wasn't able to bear her own children, so she had actually kidnapped a baby at a train station, snatching him from his real mother and jumping in a train as the doors closed. While his mother had always treated him with much love and he considers her his real mother, Anjou is naturally also curious to his blood parents, and the only clues he has are his name, "Norisada" (the name his real mother shouted as the train departed) and a ring with an unusual symbol and like Kisarazu, Anjou too noticed the symbol belonged to the Shirokashi family. He confesses to Kurata, the senior editor at the magazine who wrote the article, about why he's interested in Shirokashi Munenao, and Kurata promises to help him get close to the family. Kurata became friends with Akika, the daughter-in-law of Munenao as they share an interest in classical music, so Kurata invites both Anjou to come along to a concert Akika will also be attending, creating an opportunity for Anjou to ask about the symbol. Kurata also arranges for an interview with the great artist himself at his Kyoto manor and promises to bring Anjou along so he can find out whether he's actually born a Shirakashi, but Kurata becomes sick and now it's Uyuu who's put on the interview together with Anjou, Uyuu, who survived the tragedy on Kazune Island and then got caught involved in a series of arson, has more things to worry about than this interview though, as he's contemplating marriage with Touri, his girlfriend since Natsu to Fuyu no Sonata.

Uyuu and Anjou arrive on a snowy day at the Shirokashi house, which is happily inhabitated by four generations of both the Shirokashi and Nachi family, who have a strange relationship: all four generations consists of marriages between these two families: Akiko for example married her cousin Munenobu, who is the son of Munenao: Munenao is married with his cousin Nobuko, while Munenao's twin sister Sadaka is married to Nobuko's twin brother Noriaki, and the same for the generation above them. Akiko and Munenobu also recently had their first child, who is of course the great pride of the two families. During the interview with Munenao, Uyuu learns Munenao, as do the rest of his family, consider themselves a divine family, free of the shadow of the devil. They believe light gave birth to two gods, one male and one female, whose offspring bathe in the light, but once someone has been tainted by the devil, they will forever bear the mark of the shadow: the Shirokashi and Nachi families however consider themselves the light. Despite Uyuu's focus on their job of doing an interview, Anjou manages to find more clues that indicate he was indeed born as a member of the Nachi family, and that he might be Akika's brother, but why did his birth mother never report his kidnapping to the police, and why do the Nachi and Shirokashi families pretend there never was another child? Anjou manages to confront Akika privately and suggests he might be her brother, to which Akika reacts utterly shocked. She promises she'll explain tomorrow, but she can't say anything now. Anjou grudgingly agrees, but it turns out he'll be staying longer at the house than expected, as heavy snowfall prevents Anjou and Uyuu from returning home immediately, and they are offered dinner. After dinner, Akiko goes to practice the piano, while everyone else in the house also goes around doing their own business, but later that night, when her mother goes looking for Akika, she makes a most horrid discovery: Akika's head is laid out on the piano, her body missing! The police is called, and soon Akika's body is found in the incinerator outside the house, but when the police start investigating everybody's alibi for the hour after dinner between when Akika left everyone, and her head was discovered, they realize something odd is very going on: not a single person of the nine members of the Shirakashi and Nachi households, as well as visitors Uyuu and Anjou, would have had time alone in order to decapitate Akika and move her body to the incinerator: all eleven persons in the house have enough of an alibi to prevent them from being the murderer! But how then was Akika killed in Maya Yutaka's Mokusei no Ouji (2000)? Anjou wants to know, Kisarazu is also convinced Akika's murder is connected to the mysterious deaths of three years ago and Uyuu... he is not sure he wants to know, but he tries his hand at breaking the murderer's impossible alibi after he remembers the two great detectives Mercator Ayu and Kisarazu Yuuya seem to have high hopes for him as a detective.

Mokusei no Ouji is the third book, and I believe the last book in Maya Yutaka's Uyuu cycle, a set of three books that star Uyuu, a young editor who works at a magazine and who has the worst of luck as he keeps getting involved in traumatic murder cases and while he *kinda* tries to solve them one way or another, it never goes the way he, and the reader, want to see. These books also feature appearences of Maya's two other main detective characters, namely the great detective Mercator Ayu, and the detective Kisarazu Yuuya (and his Watson Kouzuki), who both seem to think Uyuu has the potential to become a great detective himself, so they encourage him to try and solve the problems he faces himself, but somehow Uyuu never seems able to answer their expectations. The way Maya plays with tropes of the mystery genre is of course well-known by now, and both Mercator and Kisarazu play around with the notion of the "great detective" trope, and in the case of Uyuu, we have someone who we constantly follow as a protagonist, who does try to detect and who is actually encouraged to do so by two bonafide accomplished detectives, but... he always fails. That's Maya for you.

As the text on the obi suggest, the main mystery of Mokusei no Ouji revolves around every suspect in the house having enough of an alibi for the murder of Akiko. Discounting Uyuu and Anjou, who can vouch for each other, the other nine people in the house all had their own things to tend to in the hour between Akika leaving the room, and her head being discovered. Some would be be in the presence of others for most of the time, while others would be mostly alone, but none of them have no alibi at all: everyone is seen by someone else at various points in the hour in question, and that means nobody has enough time to 1) kill Akiko in the music room, 2) decapitate her and 3) move her body (without the head) from the music room to the incinerator outside without being seen. The layout of the house is by the way pretty insane, as it lacks a real "main hallway" to all which rooms are connected, and instead you constantly need to go through one room to reach another room: this alone makes it basically impossible for the murderer to have moved the body without being seen.

The murder that is made "impossible" because everyone has an alibi is of course a familiar trope of the genre, and especially in Japan there are many authors who actually make this type of story their forte, but of course it wouldn't be Maya if he'd just do this straight. And that is why after the (first) murder, you are treated to paragraph after paragraph in which EVERYONE's movements is explained in detail. And I mean down to the minute. There are (synchronized) clocks everywhere in the Shirokashi house, which means they all know exactly where they were/what they were doing at what time. Furthermore, because there are so many rooms and small corridors between those rooms in the house, Maya decided to number them, instead of writing their names. The result is you get paragraphs like "Munenobu was in 1, so he could have taken route 2, 3 or 4 to get to the scene 5, but his father-in-law was in room 3 from 6:23 until 8:25, so Munenobu could only have taken route 3 after 6:25, while route 2 and 4 would be occupied from 6:24 and 6:33 on, meaning there'd only be the 6:25-6:33 gap for him to kill Akiko and go back via route 4, but that's too short and he does have an alibi for 6:35-6:41 on, so..." And that for all the characters in the house, and all the viable routes. It doesn't help all the family members of the Shirokashi and Nachi family have very similar names: the names of all eleven members are comprised of combinations of just eight kanji, so all the names look visually the same.

Yep, Maya isn't really expecting the reader to be mentally engaged in solving this puzzle and it is intentionally designed as a very tedious conundrum with people moving about every few minutes, making it impossible to really grasp where everyone was at what time. He takes the intricately plotted alibi puzzle, like we have seen in works like Obelists Fly High and Suizokukan no Satsujin, and takes it to its extremes, creating an insanely monstrous puzzle that would only be comprehensible in an interactive visual format (moving the characters on the floorplan along a timeline similar to games like Unheard or Lucifer Within Us), but is likely to just drive readers of the novel insane. Or mentally disengaged. Funnily enough, Maya then also presents us with a group of people who are insanely engaged with this puzzle: in A, we learned how Uyuu started visiting a group of mystery fiction fans, with Kisarazu one of the members. Uyuu has become a full member by this book, and with Uyuu having been on the scene, and Kisarazu being interested in the murder himself, all the members try and solve this impossible alibi puzzle. The outcome of this competition is pretty hilarious actually, in the context of Maya deconstructing the alibi puzzle trope, and I think everyone feeling a bit underwhelmed by the solution is exactly what Maya was trying to go for with this formadible-looking puzzle.

That said, that doesn't mean Maya doesn't do interesting things mystery-wise in this book.  There are actually very clever hints pointing to the solution of the alibi trick, and while  you might shrug at the actual practical answer to how the murderer managed to kill Akika despite having a perfect alibi, Maya uses it as a stepping stone to ask more important questions, which ultimately revolve around the matter of motive: why was Akika killed, and is it in any way connected to Anjou trying to look for his birth mother? The answer is horrifying, and while I think one important aspect of the motive is probably pretty guessable due to the way Maya has structured this novel, the grand motivation behind everything is absolutely nuts, in the good sense of the term, and I dare say it's basically impossible to guess this was going to be the reason Akika was killed. This might be a good time to also note that this book does touch upon certain plot points of A, and you'd better have read Natsu to Fuyu no Sonata and Tsubasa Aru Yami too, because this book not only spoils/very suggestively talks about the endings of these books, they are also thematically connected, with a common theme linking them and basically all of them ending in a "world-ending" catastrophe. I love the insaneness of the background behind Akika's murder in Mokusei no Ouji, and I feel it's really only Maya who could pull this off, but I think it works even better with the context of the previous books, so I really recommend you reading them in order. The book also serves as a semi-epilogue to Tsubasa Aru Yami, so in that sense, also worth a read.

Mokusei no Ouji is also the one Uyuu novel I think that is the most... balanced? As a Maya novel, it of course plays with the genre tropes in a catastrophic manner, but it's infinitely more readable than Natsu to Fuyu no Sonata, with Anjou being a character you want to root for as he's looking for his birth mother (he's a bit mean to Uyuu though) and a narrative that is pretty easy to follow, and as a mystery, it's also more engaging than A, and if you kinda skim over the alibi part of the book, you still have an interesting, though totally batshit insane motive waiting for you. But it's also a lot more enjoyable to read after reading the previous two Uyuu novels, due to the story and thematic links. But definitely worth reading if you're invested in the Uyuu cycle!

Original Japanese title(s): 麻耶雄嵩『木製の王子』

The Witch's Curse

ひとつの目で明日をみて

ひとつの目で昨日を見つめてる

「The Real Folk Blues」（山根麻衣）

 

With one eye I look at tomorrow 

With one eye I keep staring at yesterday 

 "The Real Folk Blues" (Yamane Mai)

To be really honest, I wish we'd move away again from these covers, with a close up of a face, even if the illustrations themselves are pretty...

Three years after Heathcliff Bloodbury left the family home to wander the world, he finds himself hurrying back, as his mother Charlotte, ravished by disease, is about to die. Not once in those three years had he come back to the Bloodbury Manor, better known as the House of Eternity as the first Bloodbury had the manor built next to a waterfall symbolizing the eternal tears he shed for his deceased wife. When Heath arrives home, he learns Charlotte has already passed away and this younger sister Cordelia, who was born both blind and unable to walk, has been making the arrangements for their mother's funeral instead. Heath apologizes to his beloved sister, declaring he will take his place as the new head of the Bloodburys and give their mother a worthy send-off. Several guests have already been invited to come that same day for the wake, including uncle Edward and cousin Jefferson, as well as Chesterton, a local clergyman and one of Charlotte's close friend. One face however Heath had not expected to see: Gyro is an obnoxious self-proclaimed great detective, who had been hanging around the family ever since Heath's father Theodore died three years ago. Theodore was found dead in his locked study, with a noose around his neck: the remains of a rope hanging from a beam made it clear he had hung himself and the rope had snapped. Gyro however claims it was not a suicide, despite the head butler having seen and heard the master alive in the study when he locked the doors for Theodore to let him rest: meaning nobody gotten in the study to kill Theodore, and get out again. Despite that, Gyro has been dogging the family for many years now, and he especially has suspicions about Heath, who left his home immediately after his father passed away.

Another surprising guest is Lilyjudith Air, a young woman who claims to have been friends with Charlotte and said once she saw the announcement of Charlotte's death, she headed straight for this house from abroad. As there's a storm coming, every guest, including Gyro, is offered to stay at the house for the night, so they can all attend the ceremony tomorrow, as well as the reading of the will, which is kept safe by the head butler. The following morning however, Cordelia doesn't appear at the breakfast table, and when she doesn't answer the door, and it turns out it has been bolted on the inside too, they break the door open to find... the poor girl sitting in her wheelchair... without her head, as it's rolling on the floor in front of her. Heath nearly goes mad from seeing her sister murdered in such a cruel way, but is also perplexed by the fact this was a locked room murder: the door was locked and bolted, and while the window was open, it has bars and you can barely get anything through the window, especially not without disturbing the rose bushes beneath the window. As they are not able to inform the police because of the storm, everyone has to stay put in the house. Heath goes out looking for clues and happens to find Lilijudith deadly injured. He looks into her eyes as she passes away and... finds himself having returned to the start of the previous day. Lilijudith reveals to Heath she is a witch with a curse: the curse of rewinding her own death, and the curse of taking people with her. Every time Lilidies, the clock rewinds to put her back 24 hours back in time, complete with all her memories. The last person with whom she locked eyes before dying also retains all their memories of what happened. Lili explains she has actually been killed multiple times ever since she appeared at the House of Eternity, each time after Cordelia is found murdered. She makes a deal with Heath: he's to help her survive to learn the contents of Charlotte's will (her main objective for coming here), while they'll make use of her powers to learn who killed Cordelia and why, and use that knowledge to prevent her death. For this reason, Heath and Lili must stick together each new time loop, as Heath must be there to lock eyes with Liijudith whenever she dies, and if the occasion demands it, Lili or Heath must even be willing to start a new loop themselves  (i.e. Lili commits suicide or Heath kills her) to ensure they'll reset the loop in time and Heath will retain possession of his memories. How many time loops will it take and how often will Lili have to die in order to save the lives of both Cordelia and Lili in Minami Asov's 2024 novel Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken - Majo wa X to Shinu Koto ni Shita ("The Super Serial Murder Case at the House of Eternity - The Witch Chose To Die With X") .

Locked rooms, reliving the same days over and over again and witches? No, this is not Umineko...

But those key terms were definitely the reason why I decided to pick up this book. Time loops are an often seen concept in mystery-related games, but you don't see them used as often in books actually. Of course, it's because interactive games often do lend themselves better for stories with time loops, as you can more easily allow the player to play through several loops (or even have them go back and replay), or for example use jump systems to jump to specific parts of the story where a story will diverge from the original loop, allowing for complex time flowcharts. That has been the case since Kamaitachi no Yoru, where you don't jump in time formally within the game, but where the player is constantly going back to earlier parts of the story in order to find a way out of the closed circle murder mystery. In that sense, a novel, with a linear way of storytelling, and using solely the medium of words (prose), might be actually less well suited for time loops, as reading the same parts over and over again isn't fun, and on the other side, it is difficult to make different time loops easily understandable to the reader: a game can use nice interactive figures or flowcharts to show you how each time loop is different or the same or in which time you are, but a prose story, even if it uses diagrams, will have more difficulties with that.

In that sense, I often did have the feeling Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken would have worked better as a game, than a novel. The book shows you the "worst" loop possible, of Cordelia being killed in the locked room and Lili dying, and then things are explained to Heath (and the reader) regarding Lili's powers, the limitations to her powers and the task that awaits them. But then Lili also explains she had experienced seven loops before, all with different outcomes and people acting differently, so that suddenly adds a lot more "relevant data" to the puzzle right from the start, that might be difficult to process. A game would have been able to present this in a much more organized manner.

But we are thus dealing with the impossible murder on Cordelia, a possible murder on Lili and there's also of course the mysterious death of Theodore three years back. Which, by the way, has a really neat diagram, shown from no less than three angles. It's rare to see a locked room crime scene depicted in so much detail in a novel! It's weird by the way how easily this locked room murder, as Gyro declares it to be, is resolved rather... swiftly halfway through the book, when there's been barely any investigation into it: basicallly all you need to know to solve it, is relayed to you in the initial discussion about the apparent suicide, and it's in essence a rather basic trick, but the clues pointing to the culprit were done much better, and work thematically very well. The Cordelia murder is... actually in essence also very simple, though made much more complex due to the actions and motivations of the characters in the house. Who admittedly don't always get to do much in each loop (many characters don't do or say anything in a certain loop, so you sometimes tend to forget they were in the house...). The idea behind the trick behind Cordelia's death again is not as inspired as the way Minami sets up the clues, but then again, Minami does do a great job at tying Cordelia's death to the time loop plot device of Lili, with the two cooperating time travellers making the best of the time loops to find clues (by creating different situations each time loop) and create an outcome where Cordelia doesn't need to die.

 In fact, I do think the book is much better at using the time loops to bring an interesting mystery than using its locked room mysteries. Soon after Heath starts working together with Lili, he does start to have doubts about her: why does Lili know so much about his mother? Why is Lili's ultimate goal becoming witness to the reading of Charlotte's last will? What has Lili done in the earlier time loops she had before she started taking Heath back in time each time? It's here where Minami does the most interesting things with the plot device of rewinding death and taking people along, but also where the book at times stumbles as a mystery. Minami does really clever things with the time loops, and I think the actual reason why she picked Heath as her partner in her time loops is perhaps the most surprising and devilish mystery-related element of this whole book, and certainly a notion that makes this book worth reading. But as a mystery with supernatural themes, it's also not always 100% fair. The main rules of Lili's curses are conveyed to the reader fair and square, but then near the end you suddenly are treated to a few instances you were never told were in fact possible until that very moment! That immediately makes the book feel not as fair and clever as it could have been, despite the fact the supernatural elements that tie to the end could and should have been hinted at more thoroughly (though I suppose revealing some things early, might have put the attentive reader on the trail early too). For I do think Minami has all together a great collection of truly fantastic ideas in this book, but in order to play some of these games, a few cards are left unturned for too long. That said, I think the ultimate plan Lili is trying pull off in order to prevent both her own and Cordelia's death and get out of her predicament is conveived really well by Minami and it is what makes this book memorable.

Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken - Majo wa X to Shinu Koto ni Shita was the first time I read anything by Minami Asov, but it sure made me curious to more! As a time travelling mystery, the book does not pull off everything it tries to do perfectly, and perhaps it needed a few more pages to flesh out some of the loops more, but it does try to do really clever things with its time loop plot device. And yes, I did think the locked rooms could've been a bit more surprising (even if they are used in clever ways to synergize with other element of the plot), and I didn't think the supernatural elements were treated as fairly throughout the book, but on the whole, Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken offers a very interesting mystery novel about witches and time travelling and certainly worth a read.

Original Japanese title(s): 南海遊『永劫館超連続殺人事件 魔女はXと死ぬことにした』

Prediction: Murder

Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive

"And Then There Were None"

For some reason, after reading the prologue, I thought this book would be difficult to read in terms of writing style, but I ended up finishing it in about a day...

After continued harrassment by his boss led to a suicide attempt which fortunately was foiled by Sousaku's father, Sousaku returns to his hometown to recover. His childhood friend Jun of course tries to help Sousaku, as does the third friend of the group, Haruo. They decide to go on a trip together, and Haruo suggests going to Mukui Island, a remote island in the Seto Inland Sea. Mukui Island advertises itself as having nothing to offer and it's only inhabitated by elderly people, with all the young people having moved away from the inconveniently located island long ago. The reason they decide to go to Mukui Island is because of the psychic Uzuki Yuuko, who was immensely popular in the late nineties. Jun and the others actually once sent a photograph to Yuuko, asking whether that shadow in the background was a ghost, and they got featured in one of her books. The elderly Yuuko passed away after her visit to Mukui Island during a tour along the islands of the Seto Inland Sea, where she and a television crew would seek out paranormal activity. When she arrived on Mukui Island, she sensed an evil spirit on one of the two mountains of the island, and when she visited that mountain in the night, she suddenly collapsed. She died two years later, but she never quite recovered from whatever got to her on Mukui Island. During her lifetime, Yuuko also left several prophecies, and one of them suggest that twenty years after her death, on August the 15th, six people will die on the island where she too fell. 

Intrigued by this story and because of their own link with Yuuko, they travel to the island, arriving late afternoon on the fourteenth. While Haruo had made arrangements before, he's surprised to learn the inn owner suddenly refuses to offer them lodgings, saying the evil spirit will be coming down the mountain soon. They fortunately find another inn, where a few other outsider guests are, some of them also seemingly lured by the prophecy left by Yuuko. That night, they fall asleep, but when they notice Haruo's gone in the early morning, they go looking for him, and find him floating in the harbor. He's obviously dead and the one policeman on the island determines Haruo must have gone out in the night to buy something to drink and fallen into the water. Mainland police is informed, but due to bad weather it might take a while before they can come. One of the other guests, Kazumi, is a nurse, and she points out that despite what the policeman claims, it's clear Haruo was actually murdered before he was thrown into the sea. But as they deal with Haruo's death, they realize the other villagers on the island are being very succesful at avoiding them. Why? Are they involved in Haruo's death? Or are they afraid of the evil spirit which is said to leave the mountains this day? Or has it to do with Yuuko's prophecy six people will die today? Will the prophecy of the six deaths come true on Mukui Island, and is it the work of a human, or something supernatural? Those are the big questions in Sawamura Ichi's Yogen no Shima ("The Island of the Prophecy", 2019).

In a way, the release of this book on its own is pretty creepy. A book about a group of people visiting an isolated location, of which a prophecy has said that on that specific day, people will die? This book was actually released only a month after Imamura Masahiro's Magan no Hako no Satsujin, released in English as Death Within the Evil Eye (disclosure: I translated the book), so it's basically a complete coincidence two mystery novels about prophecies coming true were released within just a month of each other. The funny thing is Sawamura is mainly a horror writer, though this book is touted as him taking on the challenge of writing a proper (horror) mystery story, so it just so happened that on the rare occassion he decides to do focuson mystery, someone else wrote a story with a similar theme. Fortunately, they both do very different things with the theme.

As Sawamura is mainly a horror writer, I had never read anything by him, but I can say Yogen no Shima is a proper mystery novel that is honestly a lot of fun to read. Of course, a lot of mystery stories do rely on horror tropes (or at least, tropes to stir up some tension/excitement), so in a way, it's no wonder Sawamura does a good job at portraying the creepy island of Mukui, without even showing that much of the island/villagers (as the villagers mostly ignore the visitors from outside). The book does a great job at setting atmosphere, especially as it shows you small fragments of local folklore on Mukui Island that seem connected to the villagers' fear of the evil that roams on the mountain, like creepy black idols being placed around houses, supposedly meant to ward off evil. The story also puts the backstory of Yuuko in the interesting context of the boom in popularity in psychics/spirit mediums in the media in the nineties in Japan. We get references to the works of Yokomizo Seishi (the isolated village with its own customs), but also Mitsuda Shinzou and Kyougoku Natsuhiko (local folklore and rituals, and the origins of said folklore) and I was surprised to see this book addressing issues you wouldn't really see in the works of those authors (also has to do with the time period in which this book is set). I really liked some of the points it made regarding this theme, and it worked all really well in the context of this book, both as clues to the main mystery, as well as just painting a surprising background for the prophesized deaths.

As a detective novel, the focus lies not as much on the individual deaths (yes, of course more people than Haruo die), which are committed relatively straightforward, but more on how these deaths tie to a grander mystery, which connects the whole island and the eerie questions about why the villagers are so genuinely afraid of the evil said to lurk in the mountain and the mystery of whether the prophecy will come true or not. A warning here: don't look in the bibliography of this book, because it might tell you more than you want to know in advance, but I do reallly like how Sawamura wrapped up this mystery. I have seen (well, technically listened to) a mystery with a very similar solution before (and with a similar setting and also with ties to folklore...), but the way Sawamura ties this solution convincingly to the unique setting and folklore of Mukui Island, as well as the backstory of the prophecy, and the execution is a lot better than  I had initially expected it to be.

The book sports a marketing slogan stating that the first time you read this book, it's a mystery novel, and the second time it's a horror novel and that honestly really is a great description. While you can read it safely as a straightforward mystery novel, some of the mysteries that are resolved at the end of the book really invite you to read the book a second time, as knowing a certain facts truly changes a lot of the seemingly innocent scenes in the book into something much creepier. Even knowing what is coming.... nay in fact, knowing what is coming really makes this a scary book. In that sense, Yogen no Shima is written and plotted very impressively, being both rewarding as a mystery novel and a horror novel. 

Yogen no Shima is fairly short and could easily have been just a dime a dozen horror novel, but it's a really effective mystery and horror novel, a good example of a piece of simply well executed entertainment media. I believe Sawamura might have written a few more detective stories, so I'll try to find out what the titles are exactly, for this book certainly made me curious to his other mystery output. I don't think this will end up as one of my favorite reads of the whole year, but certain points of this book I will certainly remember for years to come.

Original Japanese title(s): 澤村伊智『予言の島』

Three Doors to Death

"That is so, monsieur. I ask of you if you have any knowledge of a man named Li Chang Yen?"

"The Big Four" 

I have to admit... I really love Christie's The Big Four, not despite, but because it's so deliciously silly.

What translated fiction does the translator read? Though I read mostly Japanese mystery fiction, I do occasionally read non-Japanese mystery fiction, and like everyone else, my choices are also limited by the languages I can read. So it is always a relief when mystery stories are translated to a language I can read. The Japanese publisher Hayakawa is one that focuses mostly on translated mystery fiction. One important source for translated short stories is Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine: this magazine originally started as the Japanese version of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, but after their licensing deal stopped, they switched over to the current name. Each issue features both serialized stories as well as complete short stories, and the last few years, Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine has been focusing a lot on Chinese-language mystery fiction, even featuring a fixed corner with a new translated story basically each issue. Today, I will be discussing works of two young modern-day authors who have been influenced by Japanese mystery fiction, one known as the Chinese Ellery Queen, and the other as the Chinese King of Locked Rooms, with all stories translated to Japanese by Ai Kousaku.

Shi Chen is a well-known Chinese mystery novelist who is strongly influenced by Japanese shin honkaku mystery fiction and his works have earned him the nickname of the Japanese Ellery Queen. He also runs his own mystery-fiction based book shop in Shanghai. Despite these credentials, his list of translated works in Japan is still criminally short, and none of his novels have made it across the sea, so for now, I'll have to do with short stories. Rinshitaiken wo Shita Onna ("The Woman Who Had A Near-Death Experience") was originally published in 2015 and features Shi Chen's detecting duo who had only debuted that very same year: the mathematician Chen Jue and his Watson, the historian Han Jin. In this story, Han Jin draws his friend's attention to a remarkable article by Professor Guo, who has devoted his life to researching near-death experiences. A few days ago, he manages to interview a woman who had been announced dead, but could be resurrected 40 minutes later. The woman does have vague memories of what happened after she was supposed to have died: some of the motifs are quite familiar and are mentioned in many such experiences, like the sensation of passing through a tunnel or across a river, but the woman had even more memories. The moment Chen Jue reads this account however, he suspects a hidden murder might have been committed, and he starts contacting the right people in a hurry to locate the hospital where the woman is staying. What in the woman's near-death account set off the alarms in Chen Jue's head, and what is the murder he fears may have happened?

A very interesting set-up for the story! The story is fairly short, and can be divided roughly in two segments: the first third or so, we deal with what feels a bit like some of the second period novels by Shimada Souji featuring Mitarai Kiyoshi, where the reader is first confronted with a fantastical experience or dream, which is then analyzed and shown d to be some kind of metaphore for an acual event. In this case, the generally "stereotypical" account of how the woman started passing to the other side contained clues that allowed Chen Jue to guess something's not completely all right. While the clue are there, one could argue that Chen Jue's reaction to those clues was a bit strong, as this only works if you can assume that every single detail is absolutely correct, while I wouldn't even trust my own memories of certain details even if I have been completely awake and focusing at the time, let alone if I was near death! The second half has Chen Jue examine the murder, for of course, he was indeed right and the near-death account did lead them to the discovery of a corpse. This then leads to a Ellery Queen-style second half, where we also discover only a select group of people could have committed the murder on the victim, and you're asked to deduce who it is by eliminating the other suspects based on the known facts. This process is done fairly well, though I do really think one certain condition that allows the reader to cross off some suspects, feels a bit unconvincing. While I do like the deduction process introduced here, it's just that... surely there would have been a better alternative to introduce a similar line of reasoning without that object? Because it just seems so unconvincing to me there would be no better/easier/more convenient substitute for that object, and it makes this part of the deduction process feel very artificial, even though I do like the general idea of what Shi Chen was going for. But yes, this is definitely the type of story I would expect from someone with the nickname of the Chinese Ellery Queen, and it does make me very interested to see how he'd a full-length novel!

Sun Qinwen is an author I have discussed in the past already, as I reviewed his first novel Lindongzhiguan ("Coffins in the Cold Winter") last year. He in turn is known as the Chinese king of locked room mysteries and a successor to John Dickson Carr. While his first novel was published under his own full name, he had already published many short stories before that novel under the name Jiding. Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine has featured three of the Jiding stories these last few years, two of them I'll be discussing now. Both stories star Wang Jiayi, a police detective, as the narrator. He's a fairly intelligent detective himself, but he also finds the university student Xia Shi to be more than a match for him: he met the young woman at a party for fans of mystery fiction and has since become smitten with her, though at the moment, they are just friends. In Namida wo Noseta Dangan ("A Tearful Bullet"), Wang Jiayi is visited by a woman whose father recently passed away, as she found a strange entry in her father's diary which seems to indicate somewhere a crime has happened. The diary entry is dated just before his death, and her father, who worked for a renovation company, writes about he and a new part-timer had been sent to a manor to renovate a basement room which had been locked for many years, with the key missing. They managed to break the door open... only to find the skeleton of a man lying in the room, with the basement key next to them. The hole in the skull, and the bullet they find in the wall seems to suggest this man had been shot. But the door was locked from the inside: so it couldn't have been a murder (for then where did the murderer go), nor a suicide (for then where is the pistol?). The owner of the house however wanted to hush things up, and offered the father and the part-timer a lot of money to keep quiet and to seal the basement again. As a murder might have taken place, Wang Jiayi starts investigating and finds out where the father had been working before his death. The owner of the mansion however of course denies a body was found in his basement, stating they just sealed the basement because the damp environment caused by the nearby lake made it not suitable for use anymore. Wang Jiayi suspects he lies, but then this man dies too: he had been fishing and was seen by a witness to enter a hut alone and he was about to prepare his fish when he suddenly keeled over in his kitchen and was dead. Because nobody was seen to have entered the hut besides the victim, it seems this was just an accident, but is that truly the case?

This story deals with two locked room situations, one in the past (the basement) and one in the present (the house owner). I do have to admit I find it disappointing the two locked rooms aren't really connected thematically: while there is something that connects the two situations, it's not like one side works as a strong clue/misdirection for the other per se, so they feel very disjointed. The present-day murder is more of a joke solution I think, it's basically unhinted and then the solution is sprung upon the reader, and it's not a really exciting solution in any way. The past death has a rather surprising solution I liked a lot: the basic idea is a bit simple, but original, and what I like best is how Sun clewed the solution here. There is another layer of mystery that only becomes apparent later in the story, but I wasn't really a fan of that; it works better in the original Chinese I can tell, but in the Japanese translation, it's difficult to convey the exact same idea without feeling a bit unnatural simply due to cultural differences.

Konchuu Koushukei Shikkounin ("The Insect Hangman") has Wang Jiayi investigating the mysterious death of an insect researcher, while also dealing with the fact Xia Shi seems to have attracted another suitor in the form of an old classmate. Wang Jiayi and Xia Shi are hanging out at a McDonalds when Wang is approached by his old classmate whom he hasn't seen in years. The man is working at an insect research facility, and he invites the two to visit. They accept, but they find the director is missing. They start looking for him and arrive at a small storehouse, which is being used as a temporary place to keep their stag beetles as they are moving. They try to open the door, but find the door has been taped tight from inside. When they finally brreak the seal open, they find the director dead inside, with the window and the door all sealed with duct tape, and the glass cases where the stag beetles were kept all thrown on the floor, broken into pieces. The director himself is found sitting with his back against the wall opposite the door, having apparently strangled himself by tying a rope around his neck, fixing the rope against the wall, and then having his body weight do the rest. But why would the director, who loved insects more than anything else, have broken all the cases with the stag beetles?

The story starts with a reference to Carr's He Wouldn't Kill Patience, the famous taped locked room mystery and the tale also has a very short "lecture" on the taped locked room, so you can easily tell what the theme is of the story. As you might guess, this locked room mystery revolves mostly around a mechanical trick that allowed the murderer to kill the director in a room of which all exits are taped tight. The solution is a variation on a solution I had already encountered before, using a similar mechanic, but the 'props' used to create the taped situation are different, and in that way, the story feels original enough. One could argue it is questionable how practical this trick would truly be if executed, but the idea makes enough of an impact to be memorable I think. What I really liked however was that Sun didn't decide to only focus on the howdunnit: the threads he added to support the whodunnit and whydunnit of the mystery do really help make this story feel much grander, despite it being a relatively short story.

I had already read a novel by Sun Qinwen, and while I don't think the short stories I discussed today were better than the novel, they were definitely interesting enough to keep me interested in his output, so I will be sure to read more of them if more of his work becomes available in a language I can read. Shi Chen was the new experience for me, and his story was certainly enough to make me interested in trying out more of his work, as you can recognize the influence of both Ellery Queen, and modern Japanese shin honkaku authors in this short story and I am very curious to see how his longer stories turn out. So I do hope more of both authors will be translated soon!

Original Chinese title(s): 時晨 "濒死的女人 時晨", 文孫沁 "载着眼泪的子弹" , "昆虫絞刑官"

The Chocolate-Covered Contest

"Life is like a box of chocolates."
"Forest Gump"

Oh, wow, are we going from the yellow/brown covers for this series to blue? I love the art!

It's been over a year since I last discussed Ooyama Seiichirou's wonderful The Clockmaker Detective series here, which is perhaps better known nowadays as known as Alibi Kuzushi Uketamawarimasu ("Alibi Cracking, At Your Service"), which is not only the title of the books, but also of the live-action drama series. In January 2024, Ooyama started the third "season" of this series with the online publication of Tokeiya Tantei to Shinnen no Alibi ("The Clockmaker Detective and A New Year's Alibi"), the first story to be included in what should become the third short story collection. It took over a year for Ooyama to publish the second story, but it has now finally arrived,and you can read it for free on the J-Novel site of the publisher (the first story of this season is also still available). The basic premise of each story is of course the same: the unnamed narrator is a police detective who frequents Mitani Clockmakers, which is run by Mitani Tokino, a young woman who inherited the shop from her grandfather. As per her grandfather's instructions, she also offers an alibi cracking service, because alibis are are "time-related" and therefore part of a clockmaker's work. While he understands that passing on confidential information pertaining to police investigations to Tokino is probably not quite legal, and that it could cost him his job, it is also true that Tokino has managed to solve each of the problems he has brought to her, and that her exploits have helped the police immensely, even if his co-workers think it's him who has solved all these cases. Another reason for our narrator to visit Tokino frequently is the woman herself, as he's quite smitten with her and is trying to woo her.

The stories in this third collection seem to be themed after special events this time, for after the murder on New Year's Eve in the first story, this time we have a Valentine's Day-themed story with Tokeiya Tantei to Doku-iri Chocolates no Alibi ("The Clockmaker Detective and the Alibi of the Poisoned Chocolates"). The narrator this time arrives at the shop with some souvenirs from Kyoto for Tokino: his current investigation had brought him to the ancient capital, but with no clear results, he now has turn to Tokino for help. Hirata Yuuichi, a day trader, was been sent a box of poisoned chocolates and he died immediately after consuming one of them: the parcel had just been delivered, and soon after the housekeeper had given the box to Hirata, she heard how her master toppled loudly on the floor, convulsing in pain and by the time the ambulance arrived, it was already too late. The shipping documents on the parcel had been sent by Oohara Arisa, living at an address in Kyoto. The box also came with a letter, stating the chocolates, Miracle du Février, were a Valentine's Day gift. Because it seems a bit unlikely the poisoner would send the chocolates under her own name, the police don't believe the sender information, but when they call the number noted in the sender information section, they are indeed connected to Arisa, who does know Hirata, as she's in his day trading course, but she denies having sent chocolates to him.

The police do investigate her just to be sure, but it seems Arisa can't be the poisoner, as she has an alibi for when the chocolates were posted. The chocolates had been sent via the Kujira courier service, and by tracing the shipping slips, they trace the parcel back to a convenience store in Kyoto: it had been sent from that convenience store on the seventh of Feburary, with instructions for the parcel to be delivered on Valentine's Day. The chocolates meanwhile came from a specialty shop that makes special Valentine's Day chocolates each year, and they start selling at 10 am on the seventh of February. Because all nine chocolates in the box had been injected with poison, the police thinks the box of chocolates could have been posted at the convenience store at about twenty-five past ten at the soonest, considering the time needed to prepare the chocolates and moving from the chocolate shop to the convenience store. Arisa however boarded the Shinkansen train to Fukuoka at 10:32, meeting with a friend inside said train and they were travelling together the following three days. This makes it impossible for her to have sent those chocolates. However, as the investigations continues, the police learns Arisa has been deliberately hiding information from them that gives her a very clear motive for wanting to kill Hirata. But how could she have posted the box of chocolates at a convenience store at Kyoto's Matsugasaki Sakuragi-cho and appear minutes later in the Shinkansen train at Kyoto Station?

I thought Matsugasaki Sakuragi-cho sounded strangely familiar, but that's a part of town I passed by relatively often when I was living in Kyoto! At least, it's basically on one side of the river, while I went almost daily shopping on the other side of the river. And am I overthinking things, or is the name of Inspector Ayuta of the Kyoto police a reference to Ayukawa Tetsuya? You know, Ayukawa ('kawa' being 'river') and Ayuta ('ta' being 'field')...

Anyway, this is an interesting problem! While all of the stories in this series revolve around the seemingly obvious culprit having an alibi for the time of the crime, this is a rather interesting alibi, for the alibi revolves around the time the murder "weapon" was sent to the receiver/victim. Once a parcel is signed and been placed in care of the courier (and in this case, in the care of the convenience store until the courier comes and picks it up), you generally don't have any chance to tamper with it anymore. In this case, the parcel was also sent a full week before it would be delivered, and with a box of special chocolates that were first sold on that very day, so it doesn't appear like the suspect could've tampered with the parcel after she had left it at the convenience store, if she's the murderer. Oh, and it should be clear by now, but this is of course also Ooyama's take on Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case, taking its basic premise, but not (really) doing the multiple solution thing. I really like this problem, while I do think that when a certain fact is mentioned, the reader will likely be pushed very close to the solution, though a lot of the details are not that easy to solve.

In fact, I really, really love one of the clues in this story, one I really think is brilliantly hidden. I had in fact noticed that Ooyama had mentioned something, but at the time I thought that was just a cute detail he had added to flesh out the world, only for that detail to be used in the solution in a very clever way... With a story so much about moving objects, it seems almost silly I completely overlooked that one moving object. Absolutely a killer clue. The way Ooyama uses a rather cliche trope for an alibi trick to create a rather surprising "hidden alibi trick" is also very clever, and it really shows Ooyama has been specializing in these stories for some years now, as he's able to cook with familiar, sometimes even overcooked ingredients and still come up with something fresh.

But now I am wondering what the next story will be. Is it going to be a March story? One story for each month, something like Tokino's Labours of Hercules? But a project like that would probably span two volumes instead of one, similar to Norizuki Rintarou's Horoscope stories, considering the length of the previous books... Anyway, I sure hope the next story won't take over a year to come and that Ooyama'll pick up the pace from now on!

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎「時計屋探偵と毒入りチョコレートのアリバイ」