To Wake the Dead

Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' 

And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

"Stayin' Alive" (Bee Gees)

It would have been cool if an iron fan had been used as a murder weapon...

Disclosure: I have translated Arisugawa Alice's The Moai Island Puzzle.

A young teacher is strolling down the beach one morning, when she happens to come across a young man who seems a bit... lost. As she talks with him, she learns the man suffers from acute amnesia: he has no idea who he is, and why he is here at the beach. He has no wallet or any form of identification on him, only carrying a beautiful Japanese fan. The woman immediately notifies the hospital and the police, who start looking into the man's origin. The man turns out to be a gifted artist, skilled at drawing portraits, which of course immediately reminds of the Piano Man. Eventually, the police manage to identify the man: he is Takemitsu Souichi, the youngest son of Takemitsu Housen, a famous artist specializing in Japanese paintings. His father has already passed away, leaving his mother and three siblings, as well as his uncle and aunt. However, Souichi left his home over six years ago and has not been in contact with his family since, and therefore his family is just as surprised to learn he finally resurfaced, but with no memories of his past life. Souichi is taken back to his home, The Genbu House, located in Takaragaike, Kyoto, a Japanese manor which is neighbored by his uncle and aunt. His family, who haven't seen him in over six years, are not sure how to react to his amnesia: his sister for example seems to think the "new" Souichi has a far better, more assertive attitude than the Souichi she knew, while his brother misses "his" Souichi, and his mother seems reluctant to push Souichi too much into trying to retrieve his memories. It is during this time, a murder occurs at the house: Morisawa Yukie, an art merchant who has known the family for many years had visited the house and left, but the next morning, her dead body was found in the annex in the garden where Souichi lived. Souichi himself has disappeared too, as has the Japanese fan, but oddly enough, the annex was locked from the inside when the victim was found, and Souichi's keys are also found inside the house. So how did the murderer kill the merchant in a locked annex, and escape, and where is Souichi? Criminologist Himura is asked for assistance by the police, and he of course brings his good friend Arisugawa Alice along, who has been asked by his editor to write the book The Japanese Fan Mystery.... in Arisugawa Alice's Nihon Ougi no Nazo ("The Japanese Fan Mystery", 2024).

The latest entry in the Himura & Alice series (AKA the Writer Alice series) has an interesting title: when Ellery Queen's The Door Between was first announced to serialize in Cosmopolitan, it somehow was reported in Japan that the story would be titled The Japanese Fan Mystery, and it is a title that has always stuck with Japanese mystery fandom, even though it was not true and there is of course no such Ellery Queen novel. This story starts with Alice being asked by his editor to write a story with that title, and gives him a lot of reference materials on fans, and we first see Alice struggle with all kinds of ideas that involve fans, like locked room murder tricks that use fans. And none of them are really good, to be honest, though that's the joke of course. The actual story is connected to fans because Souichi had a beautifully illustrated Japanese fan in his possession when he was found, earning him the John Doe name "Mr Fan" for a while, but it is a bit of a shame the actual object isn't really "used" in the mystery plot.

The mystery thus revolves around a murder in a locked annex, as well as the mystery of Souichi's disappearance, and the question of why he had lost his memories and what he had been up to in the last six years or so since he ran away from home. That said, it should perhaps be noted that unlike the very mystery-plot-focused books in the Student Alice series (disclosure: I translated The Moai Island Puzzle), the Himura and Alice series usually have more room to be a bit more character-introspective,  and that is certainly noticable in this book, where a major portion of the book is dedicated to hearing the thoughts of all the family members and other related people on Souichi, both how he was as a child to how they think they should approach Souichi now he has lost his memories, and their views on how to move forward into the future. Personally, I have to admit I found the book to be moving a bit too slow, but Nihon Ougi no Nazo will probably entertain people who are into the human drama aspect of someone suddenly disappearing for years, and then coming back as a different man. Some parts are great in characterization, while mystery-wise, you could easily just not have them, and still have the mystery work. I know I am slightly more extreme when it comes to 'minimalist puzzle' mystery fiction, so I assume other readers will find these segments far more interesting (and I wouldn't even say I found them dull, just a bit long).

When the story returns its focus to the questions of who committed the murder in the locked annex, and where Souichi has gone off to now, we are treated to some great deduction scenes we have come to expect from Arisugawa. Interestingly enough, Himura himself does say that while he usually goes for truth borne from the logical inferences based on the evidence, this time we have Himura almost turning things around, coming up with a theory that can be supported by the evidence they have, but which ultimately is difficult to stand indepedently as logical proof, because so much of the background of the case is left in the dark. That said, the way Himura logically shows who the murderer is, is really good. Unlike a really cool locked room murder trick, it's kinda hard to explain "clever" lines of deduction and what makes them so good, but I really like the one here: Himura pushes his deductions to answer a question which seems very trivial at first, but the logical implications of this conclusion allow him to determine who the killer is, and it's this jump from what seems like an inconsequential deduction, to suddenly solving the whole case, is great. Nothing beats the one deduction line from The Moai Island Puzzle, of course (that one is... unbeatable perhaps...), but if you like that one, you're sure to like what Arisugawa does in this one too, though the set-up is far simpler (just a disappearance + one murder). Oh, and don't expect too much of the locked room murder, as always in these Queenian stories, it's more the why that is used in clever ways than the actual how. There is a hidden tragedy that is unveiled as Himura explains how and why the murder was committed, and it is here Arisugawa does a great job at connecting the 'story' of Souichi and his family to the core mystery plot, presenting a sad, ironic tale of death that was lurking beneath the surface.

This story was serialized in Mephisto starting in 2023, so some time has passed since the height of the pandemic, and Arisugawa (the author) does bring it up quite a few times as the story progresses, with little comments how not long ago, they couldn't even just go out to eat normally and things like that. It's interesting how references like these really "date" the Himura & Alice series, and like The Simpsons, shows that these characters (and their surroundings) are "timeless", as they haven't really aged since the first book (46 Banme no Misshitsu) and that came out in 1992 and now they survived the pandemic! Interestingly enough, Nihon Ougi no Nazo is actually touted as the book written to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the series (how many modern mystery series do you know that have been running for so long?!), though its serialization started a bit late. But that is also why this book was released in two versions, one regular pocket, as well as a luxurious hardcover.

I happened to have re-read the first novel a while back, so that made the changes in Arisugawa's style in over thirty years rather obvious, but as a whole novel, Nihon Ougi no Nazo is a far more complete work, with a dramatic tale about a young man who lost his memories, and his family coping with that realization, with a locked room murder mystery forcing everyone to readjust once again. The core mystery, while limited in scope, offers Arisugawa to show off once again how great he is at impressive lines of deduction that start out from seemingly innocent clues but then are nurtured into brilliant logical proofs that point beyond any doubt towards one culprit, but it does take a long while to get there.

Original Japanese title(s): 有栖川有栖『日本扇の謎』

Much Ado About Murder

We that are young 
Shall never see so much, nor live so long. 

"King Lear"

These re-releases by Tokuma have really cool art...

Kaji Tatsuo's Lear-Ou Misshitsu ni Shisu ("King Lear Dies in a Locked Room", 1982) is set soon after the second World War in the ancient capital of Kyoto. Takeshi is a student at the prestigious Third High School, a school affiliated to Kyoto University and which would later be absorbed into it (note that under the old school system, this "high school" basically corresponds to the first years of modern-day university). The students of the Third are highly respected around the city, and due to their superior education, the students also tend to... have interesting characters, resulting in them all calling each other by nicknames. Takeshi, known as Bon to his friends, is roommates with Iba, better known as King Lear (because he's a realist -> riarisuto -> ria -> Lear) and they live together in what is technically just a storehouse: the owner is still storing valuable items there, but wants someone to keep an eye on things out of fear for burglars, so he's having these two students live inside the front part of the storehouse, using them as basically live-in guards. Bon has a part-time job as a Kyoto tourist guide, and after showing a visiting elderly couple around town, and being thanked very generously with a meal, he returns to his home, only to find a fellow student, Bart ("Beard" in German), standing in front of the storehouse: he and another friend had visited King Lear earlier, but he forgot his wallet, and has now returned to get it back, but for some reason, King Lear won't open the door for him, which is very odd, as he called to say he was coming. When they peek inside through the keyhole, they see to their great surprise King Lear is lying motionlessly on the floor. Bon finds his own key and opens the door, but it is too late for King Lear: he is dead. Police investigation indicates he had been injected with a poison in his arm, but there were no signs of resistance on his body, suggesting he was caugh off-guard by someone he trusted and furthermore... the door of the storeroom was locked from the inside and the key was found inside Lear's trouser pockets. This however soon results in Bon becoming the main suspect of the murder: excluding the owner of the storehouse, Takeshi had the only other key in possession, and he actually had a bad relation with King Lear as of late, as they were both in love with the same woman (Bart's Schwester (sister)), though it seems like Bon had been the victor. It doesn't help that Takeshi's alibi of showing a couple around Kyoto can't be verified by the police. Bon's friends don't really believe he's the killer though, so his friends, including people like Reich (rich), Magen (stomach) and Razor start investigating the case too, but are they truly ready for that, for deep down, they do know it is likely the murderer is a person in their circle of friends...

If people thought the characters in The Decagon House Murders were obnoxious by using nicknames like Ellery and Carr: I assure you, the reverse weaboos in this novel who call each other Bart and Magen and each other's sisters Schwester are worse...

Kaji Tatsuo (1928-1990) was a mystery author who debuted in the fifties and kept on writing until he passed away in 1990. Last year, I discussed Kiyosato Kougen Satsujin Bessou ("The Murder Villa in the Kiyosato Plateau"), a novel which managed to surprise me in a way I really hadn't expected, so I knew I would be reading more of his work, something made easier because publisher Tokuma has been re-releasing some of his novels the last few years, and they also happen to feature very nice cover and inner art!

My interest in this book at first lay in the fact it was set around students of the Third High School, so basically Kyoto University: I myself studied for a year at that university, and there are actually still remnants of the Third High School to be found around the main Yoshida Campus. However, for me that was just a 'Huh, that sounds interesting for me personally' thing, but once I started reading this book, I was pleasantly surprised by the way Kaji really focused on the lives of the students. This is for a large part also a story of growth, a story about students who are not quite adult yet and perhaps think too much of themselves as students of Third, but who have lived through a war and now try to build a future for themselves by proving themselves at this school, not only to the outside world, but especially to themselves and their direct peers. This results in some really colorful characters who are full of pride, but who do really show you glimpses into the lives of the respected elite students of Third in Kyoto and it's the interactions between these characters that really drive the plot, as ultimately, this is best read as a tale of mystery focusing on motive, rather than the locked room of the title.

Though I have to say: I do really like the locked room mystery of this novel. The book is split in two sections, one set immediately after the murder on King Lear. Bon (Takeshi) is more-or-less accused of the murder by the police, while his friends, led by Razor (who is one year above the rest) tries to prove Bon is innocent, leading into them coming up with all kinds of potential theories about how the room could've been locked from the inside, and who the murderer could be. At the same time, we get (a lot) of flashbacks to the time leading up to the murder, and we learn how both King Lear and Bon first learn about Bart's Schwester by coming across her photograph, and then the two of them both trying to woe her by visiting her home, under the pretense of  wanting to visit Bart during the holidays. Yes, this is pretty stalkery behavior. The roommates become romantic rivals, which according to the police is a motive for the murder, even though it was Bon who managed to win the sister over, and King Lear who was, for the moment, the loser in the love war (meaning King Lear had a motive to kill Bon, not the other way around). Eventually, a kind of conclusion is reached which points to someone else, but true answers are never obtained and the truth behind King Lear's death remained vague.

The second part of the book is set many decades afterwards, when Bon's son hears about the ordeal his father lived through in the past and he starts to get an idea of how King Lear could've been killed by someone inside a locked room. This part is interesting, because we see Bon in a very different role, and we hear what happened to everyone after the murder: some managed to accomplish their life goals, some ended up completely different and there's a distinct, sentimental tone here, as for some characters, you really wish things would have ended differently.

The locked room murder is thus more like the driving force that changed everyone's lives in this young adult novel, though as I said, on a technical level, the locked room mystery is pretty good. I love how it basically reversed a certain dynamic often seen in simpler locked room mysteries to create something original, and while the concept on its own is very simple, it works great here, especially in this specific setting (old building in Kyoto soon after the war). However, what is even more memorable is definitely the motive behind the murder. While I am not a big fan of some of the workings behind the murder (too many moving parts), the motive is one that really fits these characters attending Third. I wouldn't call the motive completely original in all aspects (it isn't, and it's likely you'll have come across variants of the same idea in other mystery novels), but it is incredibly well-integrated in this tale of mystery, growth, dreams of the future and wanting to escape the shadow of the war, and because of that, Lear-Ou Misshitsu ni Shisu feels like a very complete and balanced novel.

So I was once again very pleasantly surprised by Kaji Tatsuo. Lear-Ou Misshitsu ni Shisu is pretty short, but a very well-balanced mystery novel that will even appeal to non-mystery readers. The setting is original, and Kaji really makes fully use of it, and he has a rather colorful cast of characters to keep the reader entertained too. I am certainly going to read more of him in the future too.

Original Japanese title(s): 梶龍雄『リア王密室に死す』

A Model Murder

"Well, I don't like it! I don't like the whole idea being associated with Wham, Pow and Zap! It just isn't me!"

"The Comic Book Crusader"

Manga adaptations of mystery novels have a long history: in fact, the first third or so of Fukui Kenta's seminal work Honkaku Mystery Manga Zemi ("Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar", 2018) is solely dedicated to discussing manga adaptations of mystery fiction from both Japan and outside of Japan. While I generally discuss original mystery manga on my blog, I have discussed a few of these adaptations, like  Meitantei Thinking Machine: Kanzen Datsugoku ("The Great Detective The Thinking Machine: The Perfect Escape"), an adaptation by Kuwata Jirou (of Bat-Manga fame!) of "The Thinking Machine" short story The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle and also Kagemaru Jouya's adaptation of Yokomizo Seishi's Yatsu Haka Mura ("The Village of Eight Graves"), a comic adaptation so important it actually made detective Kindaichi Kousuke a household name in Japanese popular culture. Today I want to briefly discuss three other manga adaptations of existing mystery stories, and look at the way they adapt the source material in very different ways.

First up is the manga Ellery Queen no Bouken ("The Adventures of Ellery Queen") by JET, a manga artist who has worked on many adaptations of mystery fiction like a lot of Kindaichi Kousuke novels as well as Sherlock Holmes and Lupin. This manga originally ran between 1994 and 1995 in the magazine Mystery DX and adapts four stories from the same-titled short story collection by Ellery Queen: The Two-Headed Dog, The Bearded Lady, The African Traveller and The Seven Black Cats. It's the art style that might attract attention first: ever seen such a broad-shouldered Ellery? The way panels are laid-out on the page also make it immediately clear JET mainly draws shojo (girls) manga, as it especially reminds me of the 70s shojo manga artists. Anyway, the four stories adapted by JET are not really my favorites from The Adventures of Ellery Queen, so I was a bit surprised by the selection, but I do have to say JET does a good job at doing fairly straight adaptations. Some stories feel a bit drawn out: each story is nearly 100 pages long, but I don't think all of them need all of that space, but on the whole, JET manages to capture all the important points of each story in a good, captivating manner. 

The two animal-themed stories, The Two-Headed Dog and The Seven Black Cats benefit a lot from the horror-style story-telling: The Two-Headed Dog deals with sightings of a ghostly dog near a Cape Cod inn Ellery ends up in, while The Seven Black Cats has Ellery investigating the mystery of an elderly bed-ridden woman who supposedly hates cats, but buys the same kind of black cat every week from the same pet shop. To be honest, both stories are okay mystery stories, but I have always felt they are more like Sherlock Holmes or even Father Brown stories, rather than stories that play to Queen's strengths. The Bearded Lady on the other hand I think is one of the quintessential Queen short stories, dealing with the weird dying message of someone painting a beard over the face of a woman in a painting, The mystery of The African Traveller is in a way a very Ellery Queen-esque story: Ellery teaches a criminology course to a select group of students of three, and he takes them to a live crime scene, giving them the assignment to figure out who did it, with them all going their seperate way to develop their own theories. Of course, they all arrive at different solutions (that being the Queen trope), showing off Queen's plotting skills to build theories based on physical evidence: while this part is interesting, it's the actual murder itself, and the solutions arrived at that are not really interesting on their own. As said, the manga adaptations do not differ greatly from their source stories, and thus this manga didn't do much to change my mind.

I've got the bunko pocket edition of this manga by the way. There is also a two-volume release as well as as a convenience store manga release, which is actually how I first learned about this manga. Convenience stores sometimes have cheap reprints of older manga that are specifically only sold in convenience stores, printed on a large format and on cheap paper like with manga magazines. I spotted the manga while on a trip with the Kyoto University Mystery Club, but didn't buy it then because it wasn't convenient for me to drag a big magazine with me at the time... but the problem with convenience store manga is that they disappear very quickly from the distribution system and unlike normal manga, they usually don't really appear in the used market. But I am glad I got the bunko version, as this is printed on better paper and it even has a color splash page!

And now we go from a faithful adaptation, to not-so faithful adaptations: Tsunoda Jirou, a mangaka best known for his occult-horror manga like Kyoufu Shimbun (Newspaper of Horrors) adapted three of Yokomizo Seishi's Kindaichi Kousuke novels, being Yatsu Haka Mura ("Village of Eight Graves"), Inugamike no Ichizoku ("The Inugami Clan") and Akuma no Temariuta ("The Devil's Handball Song", released in English as The Little Sparrow Murders"). The original plan was actually to release seven of these adaptations by Tsunoda, but plans were changed, so we only have three. And I only read the latter two, as I haven't found the Yatsu Haka Mura adaptation yet. I first learned about these adaptations a while ago, when I came across the original releases of these manga in a used book market... only they were selling for a price I couldn't justify to myself considering their state: with the paper all yellowed and with those rusty stains. Fortunately, I managed to find good bunko versions of Inugamike no Ichizoku and Akuma no Temariuta relatively soon afterwards. However, I was hugely surprised once I actually started reading them. And that was not only because the stories were set in contemporary times (the seventies), nor the fact that Kindaichi didn't look at all like he's described in the book (more like a bookish professor here).

No, it was because Tsunoda surprisingly injected a lot of his occult-horror mangaka DNA in these adaptations, creating very original takes on these Yokomizo classics and making them feel that more creepy.  Yet, the core plots remain intact. So yes, Inugamike no Ichizoku is about the awful will left by Inugami Sahei, which leaves his immense fortune to Tamayo, the granddaughter of a family friend, on the condition she marries one of his three grandsons. And if they all die, she will be free to choose whoever she wants to marry. Because this story is now set in the seventies however, an interesting conundrum is created: in the book, the oldest grandson, Sukekiyo, went missing during World War II and the will can't be read until he is found. When he is eventually found, it turns out Sukekiyo was greatly wounded in his face, forcing him to wear a mask (which creates doubts about his true identity). Because this story is set so long after World War II, Tsunoda created a completely different reason for Sukekiyo to be disappear and have his face damaged, and it's a pretty brilliant take: Tsunoda creates a completely new backstory for the Inugami clan, that ties them to Inugami (dog spirit) cults: it is said that the Inugami clan controls dog spirits, which allowed them to amass a fortune, but sometimes, this backfires and one of them becomes possessed by a dog spirit. The only way to get a dog spirit out of the possessed is by driving it away by fire, even if it means killing the possessed person... and that's what happened to Sukekiyo: he was thought to have been posssessed, and while torturing the poor guy, the building caught fire, leading to his disappearance. The way this gives meaning to the Inugami name, and adds a creepy cult backstory using occult powers really makes this feel like a Tsunoda manga and it strangely really fits in this story. Most of the story unfolds similar to the original novel, though the climax is much more... thrilling and it actually makes Tamayo a very powerful character in this manga.

But things really become crazy in Tsunoda's adaptation of Akuma no Temariuta. Yes, Kindaichi still goes to remote Onikoube Village and he's still involved in investigating an old murder case where a swindler err... swindled a good deal of the villlage nearly two decades ago, but this time, the murders aren't committed according to a centuries-old song that one sings while playing a ball, no, this time the murders are based... on the lyrics of a kind of metal band of three women who perform topless. Yep, the titular "Devil's Ball Song" is their hit song, and the three singers actually all hail from Onikoube Village. But while they're back visiting their village, they get killed one after another, following the lyrics of their hit song... This is a very original take on the story: the original novel is about family feuds in small isolated villages, a single singer who managed to escape the village and make a huge career and people being killed after the lyrics of a song long forgotten, but here we have the three potential victims all being fairly friendly to each other, as they form a band together (and I have to repeat: they perform topless and I have no idea why). And yet... the major plot points of the book remain the same: like in the book, there was a swindler in the village many years ago, but here, the swindler was a person in the entertainment (singing) industry, tying back to the band. The three girls may not be presented as members of the "prominent" families of the village, they have created their own importance by being a nationwide popular band. Tsunoda is really good at keeping the actual mystery parts completely intact, even if he changes the looks and feel of the story a lot: in this case the imagery of the band, with creepy dolls and stuff, really suits his occult-horror style. The lyrics of the song are completely original by the way, and they lead to even creepier deaths in the manga than in the book.

Anyway, this was a brief look in manga that took very different approaches to adapting the source material. Personally, I don't think Ellery Queen no Bouken is really worth the trouble reading, unless you are 1) simply interested in all things Queen related and/or 2) interested in seeing a rather attractive Ellery in sometimes funny scenes like kabe-donning his old man. The Tsunoda Jirou adaptations of the Yokomizo Seishi novels on the other hand transform so much about the original work, while keeping the core mystery plots intact, I do feel they are worth a read: they are truly adaptations of those novels, by Tsunoda Jirou, and nobody else could've adapted them in this manner. He really managed to rewrite the stories in a way that respected the original novel, while also playing on his own strengths, resulting in very unique adaptations.

Original Japanese title(s): JET『エラリークイーンの冒険』, つのだじろう『犬神家の一族』,『悪魔の手毬歌』

The Man in the Mirror

"Mirror, mirror on the wall..."

"Snow White"

For a change not writing a review of this series months (years) after reading it...

The Mirror House located in the outskirts of Kamakura belongs to Kurozawa Matsutarou, a wealthy man who has many mistresses. The manor was once the home of the twins Kirika and Sumika and their mother, who was Matsutarou's mistress, but after her death, the house was extended with an identical annex, like a mirror and no less than 48 mirrors of varying sizes were installed in both buildings, giving the building its name. When the twins were still young however, Kirika wanted to end her own life and since then, Sumika has learned to live without her sister, especially as Matsutarou kept telling her to forget about Kirika and live her own life. Matsutarou is not a loving father by any means however, and his interest in his daughters is purely political. While he lets his daughters live with their mothers while young, he has them all moved to the Mirror House when they reach a certain age, as he wishes to marry them off in political marriages, and their stay in the Mirror House is merely temporary until Matsutarou has found the perfect partner for them, regardless of their own life wishes. This has already led to tragedy one time, as last year, one of his daughters chose death rather than being forced such a life. At the moment, Sumika is joined by four of her half-sisters: Mahiru, Kurara, Sachiko and Ruri, as well as five servants. One of them is Shizuka, the half-Russian Mary Poppins-esque personal maid to Sumika who occasionally has a foul (Russian) mouth. Matsutarou only visits his daughters once a year to check up on them and to announce their upcoming marriages, but this year, his visit coincides with a heavy storm, which means three of the usual servants are stuck in town, leaving only Matsutarou, his daughters and two servants in the house. At dinner however, lightning strikes, illuminating one of the mirrors he has given to each of his daughters, and invisible lettering written on one of the mirrors is reflected on the wall, saying "Death". This angers Matsutarou and he retreats for the night, but that night, he is found murdered in one of the mirror rooms, being stabbed in the back, but for some reason he was lying on the floor with his feet towards a mirror and his arms thrown in front of him, almost as if he was trying to flee from a murderer inside the mirror.... With no means to notify the police, can the people in the manor be truly certain no more murders will occur in Tsukihara Wataru's Kagamiyakata no Satsujin ("The Murders in the Mirror House" 2020)?

Spoilers: more people die.

Kagamiyakata no Satsujin is the fourth entry in this series starring the pro-active maid Shizuka who each time works at a different place as a personal maid for young girls. The books sometimes namedrop the places/families she worked for earlier, but the books can all be read indepedently and in any order. They are all fairly formulaistic too: each book is set in the Meiji period, and set inside an isolated house with serial murders happening, and Shizuka's always there to eventually solve the case, but what makes this series memorable, despite some hick-ups, is how Shizuka is used: each time she's confronted with a killer, she not only detects, but tries to find ways to proactively stop the killer by interfering with their patterns and that leads to interesting twist on familiar tropes in mystery, for example when in an earlier novel, Shizuka notices the murders are modelled after a set of paintings, so she proposes to just destroy all the paintings to upset the killer's plans. It's these interactions with mystery tropes that make these books fun to read.

In theory, this book has interesting elements: there's a house with two mirrored sections, there are 48 different mirrors spread across the house, the first victim is seemingly killed by his own mirror image in a mirror and threatening messages are written on mirrors to announce the coming deaths. A lot of it is tropey, but that is the whole focus of this series so it never feels too reliant on tropes. However, of the four novels I have read until now, I do think this entry was by far the weakest.

The main trope of this book is the "murder announcement": the killer writes messages alluding to deaths on mirrors before committing the murders and sure, that's a trope, but... Shizuka doesn't really manage to do something really original with this, she doesn't come up with some outrageous plan to turn this "habit" around and have it backfire on the killer, or propose anything unexpected to counter this. Because of this lack of interplay with the trope at hand, Shizuka feels far more passive than in the other books. Because these books tend to be very short and rather light, Shizuka's actions usually felt as one of the major parts of the mystery, and having this aspect of the tale weakened hurts the overall experience a lot. "Announcing a murder" is just less exciting than a murderer who decapitates people, or tropes like locked rooms or mitate... While a large part of the story does ultimately revolve around the question why the murderer would chose to utilize this device of announcing their murders, the answer arrived it isn't that exciting, and gives us a rather mundane explanation you might have seen mentioned in other novels that don't even explicitly try to play with tropes.

This pattern also carries over to the whole theme of mirrors in this book. Like, cool, we have a building that is mirrored with an annex, and they feature over 40 mirrors installed here and there... but we never get a floorplan of the building, so the whole concept feels criminally underdeveloped! I wanted to see cool clever things with mirrors which become clear once you start drawing lines in the floorplans, not just vague descriptions of where mirrors are placed! The way the mirrors are used for the murders in this book is far from surprising, and also not really well-hinted, so it feels underwhelming. There is a neat twist regarding the theme of mirrors halfway through the book, but the implications it has for the murders feel a bit forced, and ultimately, I feel this is the book in this series that would've benefitted of more page real estate: the book has many ideas that could've been worked out in more detail, but this particular label releases light novels of a certain length (relatively short) and thus the reveal feels not as satisfying as it could've been, as I think more pages to set-up the twist more with more foreshadowing would have made it a bit more impressive.

Kagamiyakata no Satsujin is thus my least favorite of the Shizuka novels until now. It doesn't help the major trope it focuses on doesn't allow for that much original plays, but the murders themselves are also a bit disappointing, with some underdeveloped tricks and while there's one big twist halfway I do like as a concept, that too should have been given more build-up space for maximum effect. At the moment, there's one more volume, so I'll probably read that one too, but I might wait a bit, because this one was quite disappointing.

Original Japanese title(s): 月原渉『鏡館の殺人』

The World's End

"We cannot conceive of a life other than this one - of a life after death. We can visualize only a continuation of what we know. We have no real belief in a God."
"Death Comes as the End"

It's just a feeling, but I have a suspicion a majority of posts on snow-themed mystery stories on this blog are actually published in the warmer half of the year...

As I announced in my review of The Werewolf Murder Case in volumes 14~16 of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Kindaichi, Age 37"), the plan was to wait until a full story was released before I'd do another review of this series within the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo franchise, where we follow a now middle-aged Kindaichi Hajime as he gets involved in murder cases despite not wanting to solve mysteries anymore. But then it was announced this series would wrap up last year. So I figured, as stories in this series usually carrying over across multiple volumes, I might as well just wait until the last volume is released to do a review of the remaining volumes. So volume 18 of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo was released earlier this year... and I completely forgot to get the volume. So that explains why this review is coming now so late after its release. Anyway, volume 16 first starts with the very last chapter of The Werewolf Murder Case, where we learn about the motive for the murders in that case (yes, it's revenge, it's always revenge), but then it's back to business as Hajime's assigned to a new project for his event-organizing company: Hijiri Island, a mountainous island in Hokkaido wants to drive its economic activity by profiling itself as the perfect resort for backcountry/off-piste skiing. Hajime and his subordinate Marin are to check out the place and will be staying in a lodge high up in the mountains, a place only reachable via helicopter. They will be joined not only by someone from the municipality, but also by the backcountry ski team of the skiing club of the Imperial Women's University, a prestigious club whose members often appear in the World Cups. The team always trains here, so they know the grounds well, so Hajime and Marin will be questioning the young women about the mountains in order to develop the place as a resort. Everyone is to stay in a newly built lodge, but the evening they arrive, they find someone has tampered with the heating, and it's slowly starting to become freezing cold inside. 

Fortunately, the old lodge is 500 meters away from the new lodge, and everything should still work there, so they decide to move to the old lodge: the men go first to make sure heating there does work and to carry the kerosene, while the women will follow later with the food supplies. The men have just arrived at the old lodge and starting to prepare for their stay here, when the women in the new lodge use a walkie talkie to contact the men: one of the skiers has gone missing, and there's blood in the hallway. Two of them return to the new lodge, while Hajime and the municipal official stay in the new lodge, but then they discover the body of the missing skier: her head has been cut off, and placed on her lap! When everyone has moved to the new lodge, they learn that their radio is not working and the skis have gone missing, making it impossible to contact with the outside world nor to go down the mountains themselves. By discussing the case, they discover that while nobody has an actual alibi for the murder, as they don't know what time exactly the victim was killed, everyone does have a soft alibi: nobody could've carried the body from the new lodge to the old lodge unseen: the round-trip would've taken quite some time, but nobody was gone for long times/went unseen between the time the victim was last seen alive and the time the body was found. Soon one of the women suggests it's the headless skier: two years ago, a team of skiers got stuck on the mountains when the weather suddenly changed for the worse. Stuck in the cold and with no way to call for help, the team's leader volunteered to ski down the mountain alone to get help. However, after she left, a rescue helicopter found the remaining team members, but the leader never made it off the mountain alive. Only her cut-off head was later discovered: someone had strung piano wire between trees, so when the leader was hurrying down the mountain to get help...  Some say a headless skier is now haunting the mountains, but is this ghost also responsible for the murder, or is this the work of a living and breathing human?

You know, The Headless Skier Murder Case, which spans volumes 16 and 17, has a funny setting. Closed circle settings in this series are often either on an island or somewhere in the mountains... so why not set the story on a mountain, on an island, writer Amagi must've thought. But if this fusion of ideas sounds like he was trying to cook something grand, I'll have to disappoint you, as The Headless Skier Murder Case is a surprisingly simple case, basically revolving around one single trick. The mystery revolves around the fact nobody is ever gone long enough to allow them to carry a dead body and their head to the other lodge and return, which thus gives them all an alibi. This mystery is repeated later, as another dead body is found, this time at the new lodge while everyone was staying in the old lodge. The problem is that it is really just this mystery that drives this story, and the solution is not only a concept we have definitely seen previously in this series, in those stories we ususally get more than just this one idea, so there they can at least benefit from being presented as more difficult puzzles as they are interwoven with other ideas. Here, the problem is presented so bluntly it's nearly impossible to not guess what's going on. The big surprise is actually when the murderer is revealed and they start explaining their motive (yes, it's revenge, it's always revenge), as we learn how this person had been directed by a certain character to commit these murders: while the identity of this person won't be revealed until the next story, I *kinda* suspected who it was, though I thought it would be cheap, and then it turned out it was really that person and now I have no idea how this is going to develop in future series. 

The final volume of this series, The Sealed Space in the Sky Murder Case, starts with Hajime confronting his old nemesis The Puppeteer from Hell, a "crime consultant"-esque character who helps people bent on revenge by supplying them with perfect crime plans. While the Puppeteer has been in prison all this while, Hajime knows the Puppeteer has disciples: they call themselves the Olympian Gods, with the Puppeteer as Zeus the omni-god and Hajime has already encountered and captured a few of them. But after a conversation with the Puppeteer and a hint from his cousin Fumi, Hajime realizes one of the Olympian Gods, Hephaestus, is actually a person near him: he deduces Hephaestus is someone at his work, and that Hephaestus, with the help of another inside person at the company, has been keeping tabs on Hajime, which is why all these murder cases have been happening to Hajime each time he's gone on a business trip. Hajime has a pretty good idea of who Hephaestus's accomplice in the company must be, but the moment he decided to keep tabs on her, she ends up dead: ostensibly via suicide by throwing herself off the rooftop of the company building. She had borrowed the key to the rooftop to water the plants there, and as the key was found in her pocket, the rooftop door was indeed closed/locked and the guard kept the spare key safe, it looks like a genuine suicide, but Hajime knows better: Hephaestus must have killed their accomplice to silence her, and used a "sealed space in the sky" murder trick to challenge Hajime himself. But how could Hephaestus left the rooftop after the murder, as the door to the rooftop was locked (with the victim down below in possession of the key) and no way to reach the surrounding buildings? Hajime knows this is his chance to nab Hephaestus, and narrows the pool of suspects to a handful, but the list includes not only his direct superior, but even his faithful subordinate Marin...

For a story that is mostly about very quickly wrapping things up and features a very simple trick for its main mystery, I have to admit I liked it better than I had initially expected. A lot of the initial chapters is about trying to bring back the whole story about the Olympians back to the foreground again, as it's not been a priority plot element throughout, usually only being mentioned at the end of a case if the murderer happened to be one of the Gods and forgotten again, but here we get a crash-course on the related previous events and a rather cool deduction by Hajime about who he thinks Hephaestus' accomplice is and why. This is the type of hinting and plotting you very often see in Conan, using its serialized format to plant clues within various stories, across a longer period of time, but Kindaichi basically never uses this, with far more compartmentalized storytelling (and very loosely connected stories), so it's cool to see it utilized here. The 'Sealed Space in the Sky" mystery is relatively simple, with rudimentary visual clues and like the previous story in essence a one-trick-pony, but I do like that the focus in fact does not even lie on the howdunnit, but the whodunnit, as we see Hajime then utilize the howdunnit to cross off the suspects of the list, using Queenian logic to identify Hephaestus. This series more often uses a straightforward way to identify the killer (X making certain utterances/doing certain things/in possession of certain things), so seeing a Queenian chain, even if very short, is pretty cool.  The identity of Hephaestus is perhaps not as interesting as the direct aftermath, as the gameboard is reset to lead into the next series. We do get a brief explanation why Hajime swore off solving mysteries long ago, but we don't get the details, but then it's basically off to the next series. And very literally too, as this volume also included the first chapter of the new series: Kindaichi Papa no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Dad Kindaichi"), in which Hajime has been a father for a few years while running his own detective agency.  Hajime's new client instructs him to go a certain place on a certain date, and because Hajime is a very responsible father and definitely knows what's going to happen whenever he goes to a remote place, he decides to take his son with him and the two find themselves arriving at an old decrepit hotel that's absolutely safe and where no murders will happen...

Anyway, that wraps up Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo. I have to admit, the initial shock factor of seeing a suddenly aged Hajime quickly waned after the realization that storywise, these cases weren't that different from the usual affairs save for a few rare exceptions like stories with a more urban setting. Some ideas never really come to full fruition I think, but as a limited series, it at least had more direction than the 20th Anniversary series or 30th Anniversary series. The last story at least does a lot to make it feel more like a series on its own, so that helps, though I can't feel super excited about the deal of the Olympian Gods basically halting midway, and I'm still not sure what to think about that one character turning out to be one of the Gods too... I guess I'll have to keep on reading the new series to see if Amagi decides to actually end some of these plotlines anytime soon (I mean, I know Conan is long, but at least it has arcs that actually start and end).

Original Japanese title(s): 天樹征丸（原）、さとうふみや（画）『金田一37歳の事件簿』第16~18巻