Trapped in Paradise

"Thou shalt not kill"

Exodus 20:1–17 (King James Version)

I think the first time I encountered the "person who always tells the truth/person who always lies" riddle was in a Super Mario Choose Your Own Adventure book...

Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii all attend the prestigious St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy, a missionary school run by the Vatican in Japan. Technically, the school isn't even located in Japan, for the three inter-connected artificial islands near Aichi are part of the Vatican grounds and there's even a passport check whenever people enter and leave the grounds. The school of course provides excellent schooling and many prominent families want to send their daughters to the place, but St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy is also a unique schooling situation due to its inclusion of detection in its curriculum. The detective is a protected position in today's society, requiring certain qualifications. St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy is the only place that allows students to study the art of detection at the secondary school level before even entering university. Each spring, the St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy always organizes a special excursion for all students, that mixes up students in all years: two first-years, two second-years and two three-years. Each group of six is then sent to a different location where they have to solve a crime. In reality, the crimes they all encounter are role-played by enormous groups of actors and other people in on the game (the Vatican has money). Each group also won't know what's coming until they are confronted with their specific case, as they only get basic instructions to go to their initial start location. While Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii all participated last year too as first-year students, this year they find all three of them in one group, despite that being very unusual as it's usually two students per year: they are also joined by two first-years and two third-years (as usual). The group are given instructions to board a particular chartered bus and find they're travelling through Aichi Prefecture, where Mizuki also hails from (her knowledge of the local dialect helps them actually communicate with the people in the countryside who speak very thick dialect). As they drive through the mountains however, their driver suddenly dies. They initially think this is part of their excursion, having to "solve the murder of their driver", but it turns he's actually dead, and even their school wouldn't arrange for something like that. The girls however decide to walk the remainder to their destination, as they'll fail their excursion if they don't make it in time. On the way however, they all pass out, and by the time the last one realizes they have been drugged, it's too late.

When the girls wake up, they find themselves in a curious place. They are located in what might be best described as a gigantic donut:there's a huge lake, with a strip of land with house and other buildings surrounding the lake, but beyond the strip of land are just gigantic walls: they're in an open spot that's completely surrounded by unclimbable mountains. The girls are also accosted by men in military uniforms, who accuse them of being spies of the empire. After a while, Mizuki manages to puzzle things together: they are in Utsuhaka Village, a small community that lives deep in this open spot in the mountains, and the people here don't know World War II has ended. The people here had isolated themselves from the outside world during the war, and have been living here since in relative peace, but without any knowledge of the outside world. The only exit out of this place was a tunnel through the mountains, but decades ago the military blew the tunnel up, locking everyone inside. Now there's a small unit of soldiers (some are children of the original soldiers) stationed at the former entrance of the tunnel, but unfortunately for the students, it also happens that some of those soldiers have been murdered. As the only outsiders here, it's perhaps only natural the girls are accused of the murder, but as they try to prove their innocence, the girls also realize the people in this village are... devout Catholic Christians: the people here were originally hidden Christians who lived here precisely out of fear of persecution. The girls manage to prove they're also Christians and are saved by Father Lucas. The girls can't explain how they arrived here, as they just passed out and then woke up here, but Lucas can't help them out of this place: nobody has left this place in decades, so all they can do is live out their lives here in service of the community. The girls learn the village is divided in four sections, corresponding to the cardinal directions, each part housing a different wing of the authorities of the village (church, military, doctor, firefighters etc.). The girls also learn everyone in the village has to be a devout Christian, as nobody can afford to be ostracized by the rest of the village (nobody can leave the village, so ostracization means certain death as you can't get by all on your own). And that makes the murder on the soldiers... impossible, because the ten commandments forbid anyone from commiting a murder. The police officer also asked everyone whether they committed the murder, to which everyone in the village said no: nobody can lie due to the commandments (bear false witness), which means nobody committed the murder. However, during their stay in the village, more people are killed, so it's clear somebody's going against the ten commandments, but who? That is the great mystery in Furuno Mahoro's Gururiyoza Satsujin Jiken ("The Gluriyosa Murder Case" 2013).

Gluriyosa is actually the word "Gloriosa" by the way, but then adapted to the Japanese language and then further transformed across time due to accents.

Gururiyoza Satsujin Jiken is the second novel in The Sailor Uniforms & The Apocalypse series, which focuses on the trio of Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii. In this series, the three girls are all better at a different aspect of crime solving, and they always end up dividing the denouement: Kyouko focuses on the whodunit, Mizuki on the howdunnit and Marii on the whydunnit. The books also form one greater narrative, and one of my criticisms of the first novel were indeed that it felt very much as simply the prologue, with many suggestive scenes and episodes which hinted at a greater thing being set in motion, only you don't get to see any of it. That holds too for this second novel, where we again see scenes that suggest there's something big awaiting the three girls and that their training as a detective will be used for something else, but what that actually is, is not made clear here. So that's certainly a thing to remember if you want to start with this series.

People familiar with Japanese mystery fiction will probably quickly recognize this as a kind of parody on Yokomizo Seishi's Yatsuhaka Mura/The Village of Eight Graves, from the name of the village to the way there are 8 great authorities in the village and there's even a duo of elderly twins and some caverns! The setting of a village that still thinks Japan is in the war is pretty interesting, as this is effectively a time travel story. Technology in the village is also outdated, having not seen the enormous developments even in consumer technology, so life is extremely simple here. Which is also what makes the investigation difficult for the girls, as everyone is also quite simple, being quite sure that the ten commandments are enough to prevent anyone from committing murder or from lying, while we as the reader roll our eyes as we see more and more people getting killed. As more people are killed, the girls also notice the murderer might be doing a mitate murder, i.e. murders that are committed following a certain pattern/made to mirror a certain pattern (like nursery rhyme murders), and we even get a whole mitate lecture in this book, which alone makes this a very interesting work to read.

The way the mitate aspect of the mystery was utilized was extremely original by the way, and one of the more memorable examples of this kind of mystery, as it provides a rather novel motive for the murderer to commit to the mitate pattern. I love how the pattern was hidden so brilliantly in the narrative, as most readers would honestly never think of it, but Furuno actually starts hinting at the pattern fairly early on, and it somehow doesn't feel unfair, even if it does demand of the reader to make certain logical steps that might be a bit too far apart. Still, I absolutely love how Furuno used the mitate trope in this novel and how it is woven into the greater story regarding the village.

In a way, this is a kind of isekai mystery, where the detectives find themselves in a world that is not quite like our own, and in this case, the book feels a bit like the riddle where you have people who can only tell the truth, and where there's one liar. The way Furuno expands that idea to a whole village is pretty cool, especially by basing it on the ten commandments, and while near the end, it does feel a bit like a 'logic puzzle' at times, I have to say I was surprised Furuno managed to come up with a fairly convincing way to pull this off and not just write it off as simply 'yes, the murderer lied.'

The solution part of this novel is also enormous, as Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii all get their own, quite sizeable chapters to explain the crimes in terms of their own specific topics (who/how/whydunnit). It's nearly thirty percent of the book that's devoted to the denouement (and the book's not short in the first place), so that gives you an idea of the scale of the tale. I'm still not quite sure how necessary the split in three parts actually is though. Sure, the three girls speak in very different manners and thus explain their parts very differently, but the girls have been together most of the time, and share their information, so ultimately, it feels like a very arbitrary choice to have the three girls each explain things seperately, especially as each of the girls do seem to understand parts of the mystery beyond the scope of their own "responsibilities": it's not like they only figure out their own specific parts, for their stories make it clear they do understand other parts too at least partially (i.e. to explain the whydunnit, for some part you'd to know whodunnit), but for some reason they do only talk about their designated parts. But it's very satisfying to see the three girls tying the many murders since their arrival in the village together in such an epic manner, and there's a lot to love here, as Furuno really makes great use of the very unique setting of Utsuhaka village to carve out a one-of-a-kind mystery.

That said, I do have to admit I found the novel to be far too long, and with the ongoing narrative without real closure, it's not a very accessible book, or at least, I would only recommend this after reading the first one, but that is a lot to ask of someone for example interested in this book mainly for the mitate murders, or the way it uses the liar/truth teller riddle as the core of its mystery.

So there are parts of Gururiyoza Satsujin Jiken that really make it a very memorable mystery novel, as it makes fantastic use of its very unique, isekai-esque setting to explore themes like the mitate mystery and the notion of telling a lie. On the other hand, it is a very long novel too, and a lot of the underlying story is not really explored in detail as it's presented as part of an ongoing narrative. If you read the first book though, I'd definitely recommend this one too, as this one is genuinely the better one of the two, not just as a sequel in a series, but as a mystery novel an sich.

Original Japanese title(s): 古野まほろ『ぐるりよざ殺人事件』

Death in a Ghost Town

"Fire in her eyes, ice in her voice."

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles"

Two Conan-related reviews in a week! Three actually!

Volume 107 of Aoyama Goushou's extremely long-running Detective Conan was released in April to coincide with the release of this year's theatrical release Detective Conan: One-eyed Flashback, as they always ramp up the marketing around this time of the year, timing several releases together. The manga in particular is timed very specifcially with the film release, always featuring a story that is somehow connected to the film, for example featuring the same guest characters or having thematic ties. This does mean that mid-April is usually a hard deadline for the manga, with no room for compromise. Because Aoyama Goushou has been working more slowly in the last decade or so, with the serialization of the manga often taking breaks after a story has been finished, it's been harder and harder to actually fill out a complete volume each time: they can't wait for enough material to be made first, because certain dates do require a release of the manga. And thus volume 107, like previous volumes, cheats a bit by only featuring ten chapters of the manga, instead of the usual eleven, with behind-the-scenes storyboards/rough sketches of the manga used to fill out the page count. As a plus though, this volume features three complete stories, so no stories that are continued from the previous volume or continue into the next.

The volume opens with The Five They Met, where Ran finally recalls how she and Shinichi had met a certain group of five young police cadets when they were young: Shinichi had accidentally broken a faucet in the park with his soccer ball, but they were helped by the cadets. It takes some time for Shinichi to be convinced they are really police cadets, but once that's over, they confide to the five about a strange ghostly adventure they had last night: they had gone to an old decripit house, when they saw fiery fish swimming in a pond, a ghastly snake-like apparation jump out of nowhere, and the owners of the house even took a picture of the children, with a creepy oni face floating behind them. However, once the cadets hear about these strange happenings, they seem to suspect something's not right about the house so they go have a look...

This is one of those stories we have seen very often over the last decade where the focus lies more on the underlying story of explaining how certain characters met, rather than on the mystery plot. So it comes to no surprise that the mystery here is very simple: the question of "how" Shinichi and Ran became witness to all those ghostly appearances depends basically on 'specialist' knowledge or trivia, and that's seldom a really interesting basis for a mystery unless the build-up is really good, and as for the "why", that is pretty easily guessed. Perhaps it's a bit more surprising to the Japanese reader, but considering where I'm from, it was literally the first thought I had because it's not rare at all to see similar news articles where I come from...

The Truth Behind the Fire of the Dead is the story that loosely ties to the 2025 Conan film One-eyed Flashback, as this story is set in Nagano and of course stars the trio of the Nagano Prefectural Police: Inspectors Yamato and Koumei, and detective Uehara. Kogorou, Ran Dr. Agasa and the Detective Boys were going to ski in Nagano, but because Kogorou caught a cold, he and Ran are staying home. Dr. Agasa and the Detective Boys do swing by the Nagano Prefectural Police however, as detective Uehara had prepared some souvenirs for Kogorou to thank him for all he's done in the past for them. The kids get a tour around headquarters, but then run into the Compass Detectives: a group of influencers who check out haunted places, who derive their name from the fact they all have a kanji for a cardinal direction in their family names. Like the Detective Boys, the four members of the Compass Detectives have known each other since their childhood. There were actually five members, but Takehiko, the brother of Nanjou Kaori, passed away three months ago: the five of them were staying in a ski lodge, but while two of them were out for groceries, an earthquake happened, which led to a fire in the lodge. Kitakura Yuuta managed to carry Itou Tamaki out of the lodge, but couldn't find Takehiko. After the fire was extinguished, his remains were found trapped beneath a fallen cabinet. The four Compass Detectives are now visiting the police, because forensics have managed to retrieve the data from Takehiko's smartphone. The Compass Detectives are now heading to the ski resort Hakuryuu, where Takehiko died and are attempting to catch the ghostly apparation "The Fire of the Dead", a local Nagano supernatural phenomenon which claims that if someone thinks hard enough of a deceased person, their spirit can manifest itself in this world as spontaneous fire. The Detective Boys were also going to Hakuryuu to ski, and because Mitsuhiko is a huge fan of the Compass Detectives, they are allowed to watch them film as Itou Tamaki, the star of the channel, tries to contact the ghost of Takehiko. But just as things seem to end in a dud and they wrap up filming, her sleeve suddenly catches fire out of nowhere! At first, they think it could be a fluke, but then strange things happen to the other members too, from smoke appearing out of nowhere to someone's sleeve catching fire while he's driving a car. Is this really the handiwork of a ghost, or is someone playing tricks?

This story unfortunately feels a bit similar to the previous one, with the tricks behind the sudden fires being things that rely mostly on trivia/specalist knowledge. The whodunnit is not very interesting either, as one character seems to be given the most 'suspicious attributes', so even if you don't exactly know how the fires were created, the fact character X has all the "unusual things" the other characters don't have already informs the reader too much. There's a nice subtle visual clue, but that' s not enough to make this an interesting story, nor are the short childhood stories detective Uehara tells to the Detective Boys about her, Yamato and Koumei. The one great scene is the moment Haibara finally gets "even" with Uehara after their first meeting back in volume 65.

The final story, Three Liars and a Fortune is funnily enough the most interesting story mystery-wise, even if it has no important story lore compared to the previous two stories. Ran has noticed her father has been behaving a bit strangely lately and discusses this with Conan. They overhear Kogorou on the phone discussing what to buy as a present for Ran, and it's clear he's speaking with a woman: after jokingly suggesting Kogorou might be having an affair, the two decide Kogorou must just be talking with Ran's mother, but then Eri herself shows up, making it clear Kogorou is talking to another woman. The three decide to tail Kogorou, as he has going to meet the mystery woman in a restaurant, but as they arrive at the station, three men, all holding identical paper bags, bump into each otherand all drop their bags behind Kogorou. The three men all look in the bags to try to find their own, but to their great surprise the bags all contain explosive stuff, and almost literally so: one bag contains a bloody knife and t-shirt, another bag contains a pistol and the third... a large quantity of money bills! The three men all claim the bag with money is their own, and deny they are the owner of either the bloody knife or the pistol. One of the men claims they are an attorney and that the money is actually ransom money, which is why the police can't be involved, so Kogorou takes the three men, and their bags, to a nearby restaurant to determine who is the owner of the money.

While this is a simple 'one out of three' type of story, the premise is hugely entertaining, with all three men obviously trying to claim the money as their own, while wanting to deny to have anything to do with the knife or the pistol. While it is soon determined the blood is fake, and that the pistol is just a model gun, the money still gives the other two men enough of a motive to try and claim it's their money. While determining which men are lying once again relies on trivia, the trivia used are far more commonly known in Japan than the ones seen in the previous stories, so it feels more fair, and even then I feel this stories has more clues than just those bits of trivia. While not one of the best 'one-of-these-three' stories in the series on the whole, I do think it has one of the best set-ups.

Unfortunately, the next volume is scheduled for next spring, so I guess no Conan manga reviews anymore this year... 

To ease the pain, I'll do the same as volume 107 and fill out this post with some fluff, adding another very important Conan-related review: that of this year's McDonalds' Conan tie-up. The Chicken Tatsuta burger is a fried chicken burger McDonalds Japan offers for limited periods, and last year, it was offered in the form of a collaboration with Detective Conan, being sold around the time the 2024 film The Million-dollar Pentagram was released. The collaboration returned this year, with two Chicken Tatsuta burgers being offered simultaneously, the classic one, as well as the Tartar Sauce Namban Chicken Tatsuta. I went for the latter. Like the actual dish Chicken Namban, this fried chicken in this burger is covered in a vinegar-based sauce, which softens the fried chicken a bit, and gives it a tangy bite, which is softened by the creamy (but also slightly tangy) tartar sauce on top. I don't eat fried chicken with tartar sauce that often, but the two go well together and as it's becoming hotter in Japan, the slightly tangy taste of this burger makes it easy to wolf down. The bread they use for the Chicken Tatsuta burgers is also great, soft and fluffy. They are also offering a McFizz lemonade with Setouchi lemon & yoghurt taste, which is also really refreshing. And the special Conan cup they serve it in has a cool gimmick if you drink all of it!

Anyway, volume 107 of Detective Conan once again continues the trend of the last few years, with Aoyama not being able to do a full-time serialization of the manga anymore, resulting in almost all stories having some kind of connection to the overall storyline/focused on revealing backstory lore, with the mystery plots taking a backseat and becoming more and more reliant on random trivia. Which aren't ingredients that result in a medicore story per se mind you: volume 100's The FBI Serial Murder Case in a way relied a lot on trivia too, but that was one of the best cases in the last decade. But that one too is already 4 years old... I can understand why Aoyama tries to make every other story more "important" to reward long-time fans, if he's tied to this publication schedule, but I have to admit I'm getting disappointed some of the films are getting more interesting mystery-wise than the manga...

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌 『名探偵コナン』第107巻

Fright House of a Lighthouse

"Jan 1 — 1796. This day — my first on the light-house — I make this entry in my Diary, as agreed on with De Grät. As regularly as I can keep the journal, I will — but there is no telling what may happen to a man all alone as I am — I may get sick, or worse ....."

"The Light-House"

I don't think I have ever seen a real lighthouse in my life...

Motoroi Hayata was once a student at the prestigious Kenkoku University in Manchukuo, but the hypocricy of the Japanese empire and the war left him completely disillusioned, and since then, he has been trying to find a new purpose in life, one that help him give the war and all its victims a place in his mind. After a horrid experience in the mines in Fukuoka, Motoroi decides to become a lighthouse keeper. As Japan consists of islands, all the lighthouses along the coast are of course of vital importance to the country functioning and are state-controlled, but lighthouse keepers often live a lonely life: many of the lighthouses are found at lonely cliffs and other places far away from the nearest towns and while a lighthouse is usually manned by about three men, who might or might not also have wives with them, they seldom have the luxury to just go out for the night in the city to relax. While Motoroi was lucky enough to have been stationed at a lighthouse for two years near a small town that attracts tourists, his next assignment is less fortunate: he's assigned to the Kougasaki Lighthouse in the Gansei region in northern Japan. The lighthouse stands at the edge of a rocky cliff overlooking the wild sea and is quite far away removed from the nearest town: while you can barely make it in a day via a boat, the route via land leads through a treacherous forest, and will take almost a whole day and that's assuming you don't get lost along the way! Motoroi initially arrives on his first working day at the town and arranges for a boat to bring him to the lighthouse, but the sea is too unstable, and he is forced to stay one night at the local inn, and is told to try the land route the following day. He's given a simple map the following day, but as he walks through the forest, he feels something is watching him and he occasionally catches glimpses of something... white. This reminds him of the stories of Shiromonko-sama, a local supernatural being believed to roam this region. As it becomes night, he stumbles upon a small house in the forest, and inside he founds a young girl and an elderly woman. Motoroi is offered a meal and a warm place to sleep for the night, but he can't help but feel piercing eyes at him even as he's staying in the house. The following day, he gets new instructions and eventually makes it to the lighthouse, which for some reason he finds empty initially, which reminds him of the ghost story told among lighthouse keepers, about a lighthouse where three men were stationed at, but for some reason all of them disappeared: a diary of one of them indicated they had been feeling uneasy in the days leading up to the disappearence and talks about the stormy weather.... but the metereological reports say there was no stormy weather in that area during that period. When Motoroi finds himself settled at the Kougazaki Lighthouse however, he asks about Shiromonko-sama, and he learns that the head lighthouse keeper himself had experienced some very odd things in the time leading up to him being stationed here, that may be related to Shiromonko-sama, but were his experiences really supernatural, or can Motoroi give a more rational explanation in Mitsuda Shinzou's Byakuma no Tou ("The Tower of the White Demon", 2019)?

Byakuma no Tou is the sequel to the excellent Kokumen no Kitsune ("The Black-Faced Kitsune"), which I reviewed earlier this year. The book introduced the reader to Motoroi Hayata, who is trying to help rebuild the country by doing the dirty jobs, but who finds himself getting involved in mysterious situations involving local beliefs and monsters. Kokumen no Kitsune was initially conceived as a potential plot of Mitsuda's Toujou Genya series, which mixes folklore/tales of yokai and other supernatural beings with extremely well-written mysteries, but the focus on realism (in this case, the depiction of the life of miners during World War II and afterwards) meant the subject matter was deemed more suitable for a story not set within that world. Byakuma no Tou continues this trend by also focusing on the realistic circumstances of a hard and demanding job in post-war Japan, in this case, the life of a lighthouse keeper, and that is absolutely where this book shines the most.

The depiction of the lonely and harsh life of a lighthouse keeper is excellent, and Mitsuda's done a lot of research to make sure you really understand how hard their life must have been, being stationed at a lighthouse for a few years and then being assigned to a new place again. There's little time off, and as a lot of the lighthouse end up being in the middle of nowhere, only being visited by people bringing rations and stock equipment once every few weeks, these lighthouse keepers have to be mentally very strong, having no choice but to solve any problems they come across themselves. The team at the lighthouse is also more or less stuck with each other, as depending on the location, the nearest town might be quite far away, so you're constantly in each other's company, even on your days off. I also liked how Mitsuda depicts the life among lighthouse keepers themselves. When they are re-stationed, they are picked up by ships constantly cruising along Japan, picking up lighthouse keepers and dropping them off at their new locations as they go, so the lighthouse keepers then get time to socialize with each other, and exchange information about the locations they were stationed at themselves, and about the locations they are going to. That is also how spooky rumors regarding certain locations spread among them, and given how faraway from civilization some places are, it's quite understandable how ghost stories regarding certain lighthouses would spread, or for example the story about the lighthouse were all keepers disappeared. The isolated enviroment where lighthouse keepers had to live their lives in a way serves as the perfect breeding ground for ghost stories, and there's surprisingly a lot of synergy here. It's almost weird how we don't have more lighthouse ghost stories.

By the way, and also a disclosure message: I translated two of Oosaka Keikichi's lighthouse mysteries (The Monster of the Lighthouse and The Guardian of the Lighthouse) for the Oosaka collection published by Locked Room International, and they are both name-dropped by Motoroi in this novel: he's been reading them and other works by Oosaka. It would be funny if I ever get to translate this book too, I'd get a monopoly on Japanese lighthouse mysteries!

However, I do think that as a mystery story, this is not nearly as interesting as the previous book, and this one leans far more on the ghost/horror story element. Which is not a bad thing per se, as Mitsuda's probably better known as a horror mystery writer, than just a mystery writer, but for the most part, this book focuses more on the unsettling ghost stories that haunt lighthouse keepers, and there's not even really a focal "mystery" throughout the tale, which makes this a difficult story to discuss within the context of this blog. We basically have two narratives: we first follow Motoroi as he makes his way to the lighthouse, and on the way, he has a few strange experiences that involve him feeling he's being watched, him learning about the local demon Shiromonko-sama, a gigantic, white presence that roams the forest and the cliffs near the sea, and the mysterious house in the forest where Motoroi spends the night: he later learns the house is known as the White House and that the grandmother is a kind of priestress serving Shiromonko-sama as well as a midwife, and is seen in the town as a 'necessary evil': she's only 'used' whenever people need Shiromonko-sama's help or want to appease it, but otherwise everyone tries to avoid her and her whole family line. The bulk of the book however follows the tale of the head lighthouse keeper, who happens to have experienced very similar things to Motoroi. We are told of how he had already heard about Shiromonko-sama before he was stationed here, because long ago, he had been stationed at the neighboring lighthouse and like Motoroi, he too had sighted glimpses of a white being following him in the forest, and even ended up staying at the "White House" after getting lost. We then are told the story of how he met his wife, and how eventually they had something precious taken from them by Shiromonko-sama, but that is the extent of the mystery in this book: various curious and creepy incidents that occur to different people at different times. Eventually, Motoroi has an idea he can provide a rational explanation to most of these odd occurences. Some of his inferences show very clever twists, but overall, it's fairly... tame? I guess. The overall explanation relies on a few hard-to-swallow coincidences, though they become a bit more acceptable if you just see this foremost as a ghost/horror story, with a "rational explanation" tacked on. In fact, I think a lot of readers will probably appreciate this book better as a horror story, because it's really good as such. Mitsuda's a seasoned horror storyteller, and you can clearly tell from this tale, as he very effectively juxtaposes the very realistic depiction of a lighthouse keeper's life to that of the supernatural threat that hovers in the background. But as a mystery story, it lacks a clear, driving hook, and at times feels more like a collection of random ideas/mysteries. This might be disappointing especially if you come from the Genya novels and expect something as intricately plotted as those stories.

Nonetheless, I did think Byakuma no Tou was a fun read, but it definitely leans far more towards horror, and is probably better read primarly as such. I do really enjoy the way Mitsuda depicts these harsh professions in post-war Japan in such detailed manner and how he uses them as a device to tell interesting horror stories, so I'll definitely read more of this series: at the moment, there's also a third adventure with Motoroi, so I'll get to that eventually.

Original Japanese title(s): 三津田信三『白魔の塔』

Murder in Retrospect

"Who does not remember that, at such a time as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable far off places, the wo which is close at hand?"

"The Assignation"

This is the first time I actually caught a Detective Conan film on opening day. And I of course know Conan, especially the films, are huge, but when I arrived at the theater, they had seven films scheduled in the coming hour, and six of them were Detective Conan, with a new screening starting every ten minutes, which is insane.

Detective Conan manga & movies:
Part 1: Volumes 1 ~ 10
Part 2: Volumes 11~20; The Timebombed Skyscraper (1) / The Fourteenth Target (2)
Part 3: Volumes 21~30; The Last Wizard of the Century (3) / Captured in Her Eyes (4)
Part 4: Volumes 31~40; Countdown to Heaven (5) / The Phantom of Baker Street (6)
Part 5: Volumes 41~50; Crossroad in the Ancient Capital (7) / Magician of the Silver Sky (8) / Strategy Above the Depths (9)
Part 6:  Volumes 51~60; Private Eyes' Requiem (10) / Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure (11)
Part 7: Volumes 61~70; Full Score of Fear (12) / The Raven Chaser (13) / Lost Ship in the Sky (14)
Part 8: Volumes 71~80; Quarter of Silence (15) / The Eleventh Striker (16) / Private Eye in the Distant Sea (17)
(You will find the links to the reviews of volumes 70, 72~76, 78, 82~105 and the films Quarter of Silence (15), The Eleventh Striker (16), Private Eye in the Distant Sea (17), Dimensional Sniper (18), Sunflowers of Inferno (19), The Darkest Nightmare (20), The Crimson Love Letter (21), Zero the Enforcer (22), The Fist of Blue Sapphire (23), The Scarlet Bullet (24), Bride of Halloween (25) and The Black Iron Submarine (26) and The Million-Dollar Pentagram (27) in the library or via the Detective Conan tag)

The "sleeping detective" Mouri Kogorou receives a phone call from Sametani Kouji, a former co-worker who unlike Kogorou is still with the Metropolitan Police Force. He is investigating a shooting incident in the mountains that occured ten months ago involving Inspector Yamato of the Nagano Prefectural Police, and because Wani learned Kogorou has worked with him on a few cases in the past, he wants to ask Kogorou a few questions. The two are to meet in Hibiya Park the day after tomorrow, but when Kogorou, daughter Ran and Conan (the high-school detective turned into a child) arrive in the park, they are witness to Sametani being shot by a hooded assailant. While Conan gives chase on this turbo-powered skateboard, the assailant manages to escape in the hustle and bustle of the city. The Metropolitan Police Department suspect it was Sametani's investigation into the Nagano case that led to the attack, so Inspectors Satou and Takagi are sent to Nagano Prefecture, with Kogorou inviting himself to the team. The Tokyo inspectors meet with their Nagano colleagues Inspector Yamato, Uehara and "Koumei", and learn about the case ten months ago: Inspector Yamato had been chasing a convicted criminal on the run deep in the mountains of Nagano, near the Nobeyama Radio Observatory, when a third party suddenly shot at him. A terrible avalanche followed immediately, which swept Yamato away. While a search was initiated, they could not find the inspector, and he was initially assumed missing in action, but some time later, it was discovered Yamato had survived the avalanche and had been recovering in a local clinic. He had however lost the use of one eye after being shot, and he had also lost his memories initially, though he eventually recovered most of his memories and is now working again full-time as a police detective. Yamato however has no precise memories of who or what he saw the second before he was shot and the avalanche occured. However, if Sametani was shot because he was investigating this case, it seems likely Inspector Yamato himself too will become a target too because he is an actual eye-witness and involved party. Can they find out who the mysterious attacker is sealed within Inspector Yamato's memories before it's too late in the 2025 theatrical release Detective Conan: One-eyed Flashback?

Detective Conan: One-eyed Flashback is the 28th film in the long-running Detective Conan series originally created by Aoyama Goushou, with Sakurai Takeharu, a veteran in the animated adaptation of the series, once again responsible for the script. He was previously responsible for Private Eye in the Distant Sea, Sunflowers of Inferno, The Darkest Nightmare, Zero the Enforcer, The Scarlet Bullet and The Black Iron Submarine, and One-eyed Flashback shares a lot with especially the last four titles on the list: these films feature stories that build a lot on storylines and character arcs of the main series, and if you are not up-to-date with those storylines, you might feel left behind because these films are not really accessible without the proper prior knowledge (though they are generally fun as action films anyway). This is especially the case for One-eyed Flashback, where a large part of the story revolves around an untold episode from the main series: when we first met Inspector Yamato in the Fuurin Kazan case in volume 59, we heard bits and pieces about his backstory: he had been missing for some time after a certain incident in which he lost the use of his eye (hence the cross-shaped scar across his left eye) and had only recently recovered and returned to his work as a detective. In subsequent stories, we'd learn about his Chinese proverb-spouting rival/friend Morofushi Takaaki aka "Koumei" (Kongming) and how he'd been involved in finding Yamato, but exact details about what caused Yamato's disappearance, and how he lost his eye, were never given in the original manga. So to get the most out of this film, you ideally want to have seen/read the previous stories involving the Nagano Prefectural Police. If you are invested in the Nagano Prefectural Police trio, I do really recommend watching this film, as it clears a lot up regarding Yamato's background. While the events in the film-series of Conan are not "canon" per se for the manga (buildings don't blow up every week in the manga), series creator Aoyama Goushou does always provide the basic ideas for each film, and offers "stories he can't tell in the manga medium" to the film production committees, and ever since the first film, characters and pieces of backstory told in the films are considered as "canon" for the manga. 

And also watch this film if you're a Kogorou fan. It's been a while since he's been featured so prominently in the films (certainly not fter his original voice actor Kamiya Akira had been replaced by Koyama Rikiya starting Lost Ship in the Sky). Though to be honest, due to certain scenes in the film I really wished Kamiya Akira was still in this role... And regarding another voice change: while I had already heard Kusao Takeshi as the new voice of Amuro in the television anime series a few weeks ago, he had more "significant" scenes in this film as someone who helped Conan keep up to date with the police investigation, and I got used to him pretty quickly.

As a mystery film though, One-eyed Flashback is very simple, presenting itself as a police procedural. We realize very quickly that the assailant is trying to keep something that happened in the Nagano mountains ten months ago a secret, and that they are willing to go very far to keep it a secret, even targeting active police detectives. Meanwhile, the Tokyo detectives, in cooperation with their Nagano and Yamanashi Prefectural Police colleagues and Kogorou, hope to get a clue regarding the assailant's true identity by investigating the incident that occured ten months ago: Yamato had been chasing after a convicted armed robber, who had previous robbed a hunting rifle store with a conspirator. Ultimate this case is very simple in structure with few characters involved, and that leaves also little room for the current case to become interesting mystery-wise, as the accent lies on "somebody's shooting at these police detectives!!". The few attempts at misdirection are feeble, though I do really like the most direct hint pointing at this film's culprit: a very simple one, but it was implemented very competently. And I wonder whether something they did in regards to the culprit was a coincidence or not, but that was pretty funny too as a meta-clue in hindsight. Funnily enough, I can almost imagine this as one of those longer lore-based stories we see in the Conan manga lately, where the core mystery plot is just a vehicle to allow Aoyama to develop the underlying storylines/characters, as the last few years, these stories have featured simpler and simpler mystery plots. With the plot being less bombastic than previous film, the main story of One-eyed Flashback feels more like it could have been in the manga, if you ignore the ridiculous action scenes. So don't be watching One-eyed Flashback for the mystery, as it's nothing special. When scriptwriter Sakurai pulls out his old "political thriller" card (something he uses a lot in his Conan films), the story does become a lot more interesting to be honest, as he gives a certain character a fantastic scene in the post-credits, but the political angle not really deeply connected with the mystery save for informing us of the culprit's motive. 

A large part of the film is also set at the Nobeyama Radio Observatory by the way (as it's near where the avalanche happened ten months ago), which is not only a place Dr. Agasa and the Detective Boys visit in the film... I happened to have visited it myself too earlier this year. After the initial trailer of One-eyed Flashback was revealed last year, it became clear the Nobeyama Radio Observatory, and its 45-m radio telescope would be featured heavily in the film, so I visited it in January when I was nearby, figuring I should probably have a look at it because there was a non-zero chance it would get blown up in the film considering that's generally what happens in Conan films with structures with an iconic look! Picture above was taken by me by the way! It was cool to have seen the real place first, and then reproduced in the film again, as it was really the exact same place and layout... well, except for how it's depicted in the climax of the film, but that's artistic licence for you...

While I did enjoy my time in the theater a lot, I do have to say Detective Conan: One-eyed Flashback is probably best seen if you have done your homework first, and don't come here for mainly the mystery. It is a story that feels like it could have been a "somewhat drama/moviefied" adaptation of a manga episode with a somewhat subdued police procedural as its main framework to tell a story that had gone untold in the manga until now, focusing on Kogorou (who wants to know why his friend was shot) and Inspectors Yamato, Koumei and Uehara of the Nagano Prefectural Police, whose lives are still obscured by the shadow of the avalance ten months ago. So very much recommended for those who liked cases like Fuurin Kazan from the main series. The film ended, as per tradition, with a teaser for the 2026 film. Not super excited because it appears we'll have another character-focused film again and I am not particularly a great fan of this character, so not sure where the story will go, but whatever it'll be, I'll be sure to watch it!

Original Japanese title(s): 『名探偵コナン　隻眼の残像（フラッシュバック）』

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』