Fire, Burn!

"You call it hope—that fire of fire!"

"Tamerline"

When I read this... it was not a hot summer day, but a surprisingly cool one, and by the time this review is posted, it's probably a cold winter day...

Agni no Atsui Natsu ("Agni's Hot Summer") sounds like an adult video title, but it's actually the first novel starring the young photographer and amateur detective Minami Mikikaze, whom first made his debut as a character in a short story collection by Tsukatou Hajime. The story is told from the point of view of Seiji, a young man who is the second son of Kyoujirou, a famous fossil fuel scientist who is involved with several companies in the fuel and energy industry. Kyoujirou was married to Erika, mother of the brothers Kouji and Seiji, but she was murdered six years ago, and her murderer was never caught. They still hold a small service every year to commemorate Erika and after that, a small circle of family and friends gather at private resort that used to belong to Erika's grandmother: it's a huge park with a lot of green and even a hiking path, with several cottages and two communal buildings spread across the property. The whole resort is of course fenced off completely and the private park has been used by Kyoujirou as both a second home, as well as a more relaxed location to entertain guests and discuss business. While most of the people are already there on the day of the service, like of course Kouji and Seiji, but also their aunt (Erika's sister) and uncle, Kyoujirou himself had to bring some of his foreign guests back to the airport after the service, and he and his secretary stayed at the hotel that evening to return the day after. Upon his return to the resort, he has a business meeting with Kouji and one of his advisors, after which he goes jogging with Kouji and then they split up, with Kyoujirou retreating to his own room in the large main building. A perfectly normal, hot summer day.

Kouji and Seiji are relaxing on the terrace of Kouji's cottage, when they suddenly hear a loud crack, and when they look up and notice black smoke rising from the main building. They remember their father is still inside so run up to his room, as do the two other guests at the resort. The source of all the smoke is in Kyoujirou's private rooms, but they can't open the door, as a wild fire is raging inside. They quickly scan the other rooms in the main building, but can't find any trace of Kyoujirou, so it is feared he's indeed in his own room. When the firefighters have finally extinguished the fire, the room is completely lost: even the flooring has fallen through. And everyone's greatest fear is confirmed: Kyoujirou died in his room. But not the way they expected: Kyoujirou had been stabbed with a knife! It appears his murderer killed the man and then set fire to the room. The firefighters also find a memento of Erika, which had been placed at the small shrine in the other communal building just after Kyoujirou arrived at the resort that morning: Kyoujirou had been in the presence of other people since that moment, who can swear he didn't bring the memento to his room himself, meaning it must have been the murderer who placed it at the crime and arson scene for some reason. The fire was also surprisingly intense, being much hotter than a normal fire and even completely burning Kyoujirou's body, making his face completely unrecognisable, and it is suspected some kind of chemical was used to start the fire: in other case an unusual thing to do, but as the people here were all involved with Kyoujirou's fuel company... As there were only four people at the resort at the time of the arson, it seems clear one of them must be the murderer, but police investigation soon shows this seems impossible: witnesses not only the main entrance of the main building under observation basically the whole time after Kyoujirou entered, they also had eyes on each other most of the time, as they were all standing in front of their own cottages. Meanwhile, Seiji's aunt and uncle return to the resort to bring a surprising guest: Minami Mikikaze is a photographer who was supposed to make pictures of Kyoujirou for an upcoming event, but the young man seems rather interested in this murder case and soon asks some very clever questions...

It's interesting how Agni no Atsui Natsu is the first novel with Mikikaze, as it's actually really short. Most of the stories I read with Mikikaze, are relatively long: the phenomenal Misshitsu Kingdom (Kingdom of the Locked Room, 2007) is one of the longest locked room mysteries, but that is an outlier, of course. Still, in more recent years, Mikikaze has been starring in a sub-series with stories inspired by the first few Ellery Queen novels: some of the "short" stories (more like novellas) in these short story collections are much longer than Agni no Atsui Natsu, a standalone release, itself!

Because of its relatively limited length, Tsukatou has to move pretty quickly, and the first half of the book might feel very artificial: it's clear he's just setting up all the pieces of his mystery, moving characters around to get them into position and to give you all the necessary clues. As often in the Mikikaze series, his writing style is one the reader really needs some adjusting too: while the language Tsukatou uses is not complex at all, his narration style can make his stories somewhat hard to read, as he often likes to start a scene kind of in media res, with characters talking about information you had never heard about, and then it jumps back again to introduce said information, but it's not like the in media res beginning adds anything mystery-wise: there's no payoff, just a short moment of confusion. He might as well have presented all the information in chronological order from the beginning, as he always just explains everything properly a few pages later. He does this a few times every chapter, so it makes his stories far harder to reader than they should be. It's somewhat reassuring to know he did this from the beginning, and it wasn't something he developed recently... Anyway, the first half can be a bit boring as you'll hear about how character A wasn't watching the main building for two minutes, while character B saw character A for three minutes etc., but do pay attention, because Tsukatou manages to cram a lot of clues and foreshadowing in this segment, which do pay off in the second half.

Agni no Atsui Natsu is not formally an impossible crime, but it is practically one: there was only a very limited window of opportunity (two minutes) for the murderer to get in and out the main building where the victim was without being seen by any witnesses, in which they then would have needed to kill an adult man and somehow set fire to the room. While such impossible crimes usually focus more howdunnit, Tsukatou clearly enjoys the Ellery Queen-mode of culprit-focused deductions more, something we also saw in Misshitsu Kingdom and of course the Nationalities books, but I was surprised to see it being his preferred mode in this first Mikikaze novel too. Tsukatou does a great job exploring how each of the suspects could perhaps have committed the seemingly impossible crime, which involves the murderer retrieving Erika's memento, go in the main building unseen, commit the murder, set fire to the room and escape the main building again: it is here you might be surprised to learn how so much of the (slow) first half ends up being used as a clue upon which to build chains of reasoning, and of course, those densely laid-out clues are also used to disprove many of these otherwise convincing sounding theories. I honestly fell for some of the false theories, thinking I had an idea of what happened, only to be proven in a completely fair and logical way how that wouldn't work.

As more and more theories are crossed out, few possibilities remain of course, and ultimately we arrive at a solution that might not be super surprising, but I really liked the logical route to that revelation. To be honest, the actual howdunnit behind the murder on Kyoujirou seems a bit doubtful in terms of actual feasibility, but in the end, that's a relatively minor part of the novel, as the focus lies more on the logical process of determining who of the suspects could've committed the crime in that way, and considering this is actually a very short novel, I find the result quite impressive: I've read much longer novels that don't have even half the number of properly clewed, but false theories or feature so many "traps" for the reader. The way the current murder ties back to the murder on Erika six years ago also has some clever features: while it is mostly an "epilogue" thing and you aren't really expected to solve that murder based on the clues provided, there's a really cool element to it that honestly could've been explored more, and it would have made this novel a bit longer/give it more volume. As it is now, it's definitely a puzzler-type of story and little beyond that, but delving more into the past murder would've given us more context to why certain characters acted certain ways.

So Agni no Atsui Natsu is a very short, and very focused mystery novel that doesn't try to be anything more than an Ellery Queen-type of whodunnit puzzler, but considering the page length, it's quite impressive how much Tsukatou managed to stuff in the plot. Is it perfect? No, it definitely has holes and parts that could've been fleshed out more to make it a more convincing novel, but as someone who loves these kinds of deduction-chain-based mysteries, I'd say Agni no Atsui Natsu is worth a read, especially as an example to see how you can have a(n) (quasi) impossible crime, and not focus on the howdunnit. Tsukatou does this better in Misshitsu Kingdom of course, and that is a must-read I think, but that book is also six times longer...

Original Japanese title(s): 柄刀一『火の神（アグニ）の熱い夏』