Dead Man's Cavern

"Ragnarok, the end of the Viking world with a terrible winter that covered the Earth in ice, when vile crimes were rampant and all humanity lost."

"Max Payne"

I wonder if at those detective fiction courses at university they actually have locked room murder lectures...

During a holiday, Narumi, the self-proclaimed great detective of the Sealed Door club, invites his fellow member Kakeru (who was recently made his debut as a mystery writer), to go on an adventure together. While Narumi hesitates to tell Kakeru exactly why, they are travelling to a small village deep in the mountains of Gifu called Kagerou Village. When they arrive, they notice a strange church-like building in the middle of the village. They chat a little with the local people there, when they hear a cry coming from the nearby cliff: one of the Jizou statues has toppled on top of her, trapping her legs. Narumi and Kakeru quickly help her, but she then tells them her friend Yasoshima Daisaku fell off the cliff down in the swamp below. There's a dangerous path along the cliff that climbs down to the swamp, so Narumi and Kakeru carefully make their way down to look for Daisaku, who fortunately is safe: he is a firefighter and has experience with this. A tremendous storm starts as they climb up the path however, and it's becoming too dangerous to walk up this way. Daisuku instructs Narumi and Kakeru to find shelter in a cave halfway up the cliff path, while he goes further up to secure a way for them. Narumi and Kakeru are just inside the cave when the ground shakes, causing a cave-in that blocks off the entrance. To their surprise, they find there were more people inside the cave, and as they talk with these people, they learn this cave runs beeneath Kagerou Village and that in recent years, it has actually been converted to a cave hotel: the "church" Narumi and Kakeru had seen above is a wedding venue, and an elevator there goes down to the main part of the cave, which is surrounded by several rooms. The hotel is a somewhat eccentric attempt to attract tourists to the region. They also learn that Daisaku is a local who is to be married soon to Tsugumi, who is one of the people in the cave, as she was being shown around.

The group makes their way back to the main "lobby cave" to take the elevator back up, but when the elevator doors open, they find the nearly deceased Nanako, a local high school student: she's been shot in the cage. When she's asked who did this to her, Nanako points her finger at... Kakeru before she dies. While Narumi can quickly prove it couldn't have been Kakeru who shot her considering they just arrived there, the local people are still a bit suspicious about these two outsiders. They learn the elevator doesn't work anymore and for some reason, there's also no answer when they try the intercom connecting to the wedding venue above, even though there should be people there, and Daisaku should also know they're there. While afraid the murderer might have attacked the people above too, the people below in the cave can only wait, so they stay in the hotel rooms for the night, with Narumi warning everyone to keep their doors locked in case the murderer is still down in the cave, but his warning is not enough to prevent another murder the next morning. When one guest doesn't respond to calls from outside, Narumi and Kakeru try to open the steel door, but are only able to bend it slightly to create a gap, but the gap is enough for them to see the inhabitant is lying dead on the floor. But she has also written something in blood on the floor that seems to point to Kakeru again! Who is the murderer in the cave, and can Kakeru prove this time he really isn't the murderer in Kirisha Takumi's Ragnarok Dou - Akazu no Tobira Kenkyuukai Kagerou Numa he ("The Cave of Ragnarok: The Sealed Door Goes to Kagerou Swamp", 2000)?

Ragnarok Dou is the third entry in Takumi Kirisha's Sealed Door series, about the colorful members of a college club specializing in opening sealed doors. Last year, I read the first book in this series, Doppelgänger-kyuu - Akazu no Tobira Kenkyuukai Ryuuhyoukan he ("The Doppelgänger Palace - The Sealed Door Club Goes to the Ryuuhou House", 1999), which was also Kirisha's debut work. You might wonder why I skipped the second book and went straight for the third book in the series. Well, like with Summer Apocalypse a few weeks ago, I didn't actually choose this book because it was a book in this series. I was looking for books with dying messages as the theme, so when I learned this book had a dying message lecture, it found a place in the to-be-read pile, despite it meaning I would be reading a series out of order. Again. As always.

So yeah, the theme of the book is dying messages and it might be surprising to learn Narumi, the self-proclaimed great detective, comes up with a dying message lecture fairly early on in the book. While he namedrops Doctor Fell, Nikaido Ranko, Mercator Ayu and Sorachi Masaya as eminent predecessors when it comes to presenting a lecture on a specific trope in mystery fiction (locked rooms, no footprints in the snow, motives for creating locked rooms and alibis, respectively), I do have to say I find Narumi's alibi lecture really original. While I have seen dying message lectures before (disclosure: I translated Arisugawa Alice's The Moai Island Puzzle), the one in this book is quite original in that because it is about a message: being there's a sender and receiver, this lecture actually consists of two seperate sections (chapters). In the first Narumi presents a categorization of the type of dying messages a victim may leave behind to denounce the murderer (writing, oral, etc.), so the medium of the message, while in the second part, the lecture goes in detail about why said message might be misinterpreted/not understood (so the signife of the message). But what I liked especially about this lecture, is that it is in fact not just a fourth wall-breaking moment, or just two chapters where Kirisha shows he has done his homework and to provide the reader with context to understand how his twist on the dying message in this book will work. While I can't give details because it spoils one of the cleverest elements of this book, Narumi actually has a fantastic reason to actually be holding a lecture about dying messages, and it's precisely because he does this, they're in the end able to solve the case. Narumi might be a self-proclaimed detective, but.... he's actually truly a very clever detective, who in every other series would have been the protagonist. Narumi's just not lucky here, as the club president Godou is just a little bit smarter than Narumi (though less active). At any rate, I have seldom seen a lecture in a mystery story used in such a clever way in-universe, and that alone makes this worth a read, I think.

As the proper cave entrance is blocked and the elevator broken, the people in the cave hotel find themselves in a closed circle situation, but an odd one, as at first, there's no reason to believe the murderer is still in the cave, and it in fact seems more likely the murderer is on the surface, having shot Nanako and then sending the elevator down. The pistol used to kill Nanako is believed to be the one that should have been enshrined in the shrine in the cave: it used to belong to a World War II pilot who crashed in the swamp. But if the murderer did go up, how come a second murder occured in one of the hotel rooms? The door was locked from the inside, and because it's a steel door with a very sturdy, submarine-esque turn-dial lock, Narumi and Kakeru can't even force the door open with a steel bar, only able to open a minor gap through which they could confirm the victim died. As the story progresses, more people are of course killed in the cave. Meanwhile, everyone is also worried about the people above, for Daisaku and other people should know people are trapped in the cave hotel (especially Daisaku, as his soon-to-be-wife Tsugumi is one of the people there!) and Daisaku's a firefighter who told Narumi and Kakeru he'd inform the rescue unit, but why is nobody coming to their rescue? This leads to a lot of speculation on Narumi's part, and it's here where the book kinda repeats some of the... I wouldn't call them faults per se, but it's definitely something that stood out when I read the first book.

For like the first book, this book does feature a large cast of characters like many closed circle murder mysteries... but the narrative is mainly focused on the recurring characters, in this case Narumi and Kakeru, and later other club members after everyone is rescued and they go over the case again to try and solve it. Most of the book revolves mainly around discussions between just the recurring cast as they go over theories and discuss what they could do next, and the side characters that only appear in this book barely get anything to say before they die. The worst example of this is Nanako, who appears as a dead person right away, and we hear some characters lament her death, but we don't actually hear about how they know Nanako, who she is, and why she was in the elevator or anything. She's just there, dead. Only much later you hear a throwaway line about how one character knew Nanako exactly. This happens with other parts of the story too, where you don't really understand what their role is and how character X knows character Y, because the story is focused on Narumi and Kakeru chatting among themselves, instead of with others. It does allow the story to focus on a lot of the detective plot, as Kakeru and Narumi obviously talk about the ongoing case, but some of the puzzle pieces remain vague because you don't hear the other characters speak up too often. And while I do think the members of the Sealed Door club are fun and their banter does mean we get intelligent, genre-savvy discussions regarding the mystery, like the first book, you do feel some of the other characters should have given more speaking lines to flesh out the mystery more.

As for the mystery itself.... it's really dense! You have multiple dying messages (in the broad sense of the meaning, so writing, gestures, in-actions etc.), a locked room murder, long deduction chains about how the murderer must have been moving both on the surface and in the cave, and while I do think sometimes feel a bit chaotic, ultimately, I think it worked out pretty well. The solution to the locked room isn't that interesting to be honest, and the closed circle situation is resolved in a rather easy manner, but the deductions regarding the dying messages and the reasoning chains that point to the murderer are more memorable, and they work really well in conjuction with the aforementioned dying message lecture. Parts of the backstory of the shrine in the cave, which ties directly to the motive, are interesting ideas, though it's debatable about how "fair" it was presented and at times, this backstory goes pretty weird ways: I wouldn't have found the revelations here in any way weird had this been for example a Nikaidou Reito novel, but this being my second book in the series, I hadn't quite expected Kirisha to tell us this kind of backstory. This is an element I think could have been worked out in more detail to feel both more shocking, but also less... coming out of nowhere. 

The book also provides some more insight into the history of the Sealed Door club and why club president Godou started the club, which likely will tie to the final, fourth book in the series, I assume. These books are easy and fun enough to read, so I will eventually get there, not sure whether I will read the second book first, or the last one though.

Ragnarok Dou - Akazu no Tobira Kenkyuukai Kagerou Numa he is a fun mystery novel that does some original things via its dying message lecture, and for that alone, I think this is worth a read. Like the first book, it's a story that focuses a lot on the recurring characters and often has a comedic tone to it, so like many character-focused mysteries, it's pretty easy to get into, and while because of that focus, I do feel the mystery isn't presented as strongly as it could be, overall, I do always end up enjoying these books. Solid entry, and I'll be sure to read the other two books in the series too.

Original Japanese title(s): 霧舎巧『ラグナロク洞 《あかずの扉》研究会影郎沼へ』