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.
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.
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