Double Jeopardy

"Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions."

"And Then There Were None" 

The first time I saw the cover of this book, it was a small thumbnail and I could barely make out the garbage truck on the cover, so I thought it'd be like some weird Drifting Classroom-esque Umezu Kazuo story. Things don't get that crazy. 

Hitou travels with six friends to a small private island off the coast in Kumamoto Prefecture. The island used to be inhabitated by a few people, but has now become the private property of the aunt of Urai, one of Hitou's friends. Urai's aunt had cottages built on the island so it can be opened as a resort island. There's no established means of transportation yet though, so the group is brought over to the island by a chartered fisherman's boat and the fisherman is to pick them up in about a week, while the caretaker hired by Urai's aunt also there to entertain the group during their stay. However, Hitou has other plans. He's planning to kill all other six people on the trip. For Hitou was never really their friend. Several years ago, while the six targets were still in high school, they tried out drugs and while under the influence, were about to start a fire. A boy from another school spotted them, but he was caught by them and assaulted, with the victim biting off the tip of his own tongue during an attempt to escape. One of the friends took all the blame. Hitou was a friend of the victim and he swore revenge: after graduating high school, he intentionally picked a university where the six were living and found a part-time job where one of them was working. He became friends with him and was thus slowly introduced in their circle. And now they were going on a trip together: the perfect chance to just kill all of them. Hitou's plan is simple and self-destructive: he's going to poison all of them and then commit suicide, because he realizes this would be a severe crime. He even has a full confession that will be posted online automatically in a few days, where he explains why he decided to kill these people. After they arrive on the island, where they also find the caretaker waiting for them, Hitou makes sure to sabotage the one public pay-phone on the island: the only way to communicate with the mainland.

And thus, imagine the surprise when late on the first evening, one of the friends won't respond to any calls at his cottage. They break the door down and inside find... no living friend, but a corpse,  whose face has been bashed in horribly and with the tip of his tongue cut off. Hitou however did not commit this murder. Realizing there's a murderer on the island and that they can't call for help, the would-be murderer acknowledges it'd be too dangerous to continue his plans and even tries to swim back to cancel his scheduled online confession, but the sea has become too wild for him, and he is barely saved from the raging water. The next morning, they find another corpse: this was the friend who first discovered the previous body and he too has the tip of his tongue removed. And the following day, the same thing happens again... While Hitou was planning to kill them anyway it's not like he's really sad they're gone, he knows he isn't committing all these murders, so he needs to find out who the real murderer is in order to escape the carnage.

Three years later, a young woman working at a garbage disposal facility in Osaka is out on her rounds collecting garbage, when she finds the body of an old lady among the garbage. She reports it to the police, but she is immediately put in their custody: there is a serial killer on the loose in Osaka, who each time, has been killing the person who discovered the previous body. The victims are connected by the fact they all have part of their tongues removed. This immediately reminds everyone of the horrible series of murders that occured three years ago on an island in Kumamoto, where a Hitou Kiyotsugu had killed everyone on the island and made a full confession online....

Chigereta Kusari to Hikari no Kirehashi ("Broken Chains and a Sliver of Light", 2023) is Araki Akane's second novel after making her debut the previous year by winning the Edogawa Rampo Award. The book's main feature is probably the fact it is divided in two distinct parts, the first half set in 2020 on an island, while the second half is set in 2023 and starts off in the bustling city of Osaka. The two narratives are also clearly inspired by two Agatha Christie novels, a thing that is made very apparent when the characters themselves make references to Christie in the second half.  

The first half is of course inspired by And Then There Were None, as we have a closed circle situation set on an island, where everybody is being killed one by one. In this book however, we have the added tension of knowing Hitou was planning to kill everyone himself too, only someone else managed to get to them first. But who? The murders are also all connected through two mysterious facts: the murderer cuts off the tip of the tongues of all his victims, and for some reason, the next victim is always the person who discovered the previous body. Even though this is only "half" of the book, Araki somehow manages to really pack it full to the brim. There's the locked room situation of the first body for example, but there are more mysteries like one victim having been cut, even though they threw away all the knives and other potentially dangerous objects in the sea after the first murders. Araki manages to craft a great mystery in this book: the many props allow the characters to come up with various theories, and the grand denouement scene in particular has some great Queenian theories being posed based on the evidence we've all seen and been exposed to, which are then debunked as easily again with other evidence we also saw, but simply overlooked. 

The second part is set three years later and we learn about a serial killer in Osaka who for some reason has been committing murders similar to what by now has become known as the Hitou murders: when the police arrived on the island, they found that everybody on the island was dead and Hitou missing, but he had conveniently posted a full confession online. Maria, the young woman who found the most recent victim, is put under police custody and she soon becomes friends with one of her guardians. Maria also happens to be living with a young man (not her boyfriend), who happens to have bitten off the tip of his tongue some years ago... This part of the book is more inspired by The ABC Murders, as the one of the characters comments, as they are not sure why the serial killer is linking these murders in this way, and of course, the whole connection to the Hitou murders is enigmatic. As you can guess, these events are very strongly connected to the first part of the book, and they work very well as a "continuation" of the first half, while also going in a completely different way. This is not just 'part 2 by doing the same things again", this is a "part 2 that tries different things, but by building on part 1". And it's all in one book!

While I will be the first to admit I don't care about characterization that much in my mystery novels, even I have to make a special note about how strong the characterizations are in this novel. Hitou is a great protagonist and anti-hero, who is so full of hatred towards his "friends" for what they did in the past, but at the same time, you see glimpses of him struggling with the aftermath of each murder because... perhaps he did really become friends with them while he had infiltrated their circle. Maria too has a chip on her shoulder and has finally been getting her life on rails and is enjoying her work as a garbagewoman, when the whole serial killer thing confuses things once more. The strong-minded Maria is very fun to follow, as she does struggle in life, but still tries to make the best out of everything and she isn't kind to people who look down on her for doing so (cue: the veteran policeman who will regret looking down on her just because she's a woman collecting garbage).

The strong characterization does elevate Chigereta Kusari to Hikari no Kirehashi a lot, as some of the actions taken by the characters in this book do demand for those characters to have a lot of motivation/determination to do so, so Araki's strong character writing is in fact an essential part of the mystery, much more than I had ever expected.

I had read two short stories by Araki before (here and here), but this is the first time I read a full novel by her and Chigereta Kusari to Hikari no Kirehashi. It's quite long and ambitious, providing two fully worked out narratives inspired by Christie's work all in one book, but Araki pulls it off, and does that with both competence in the mystery writing as well as characterization. Recommended material!

Original Japanese title(s):  荒木あかね『ちぎれた鎖と光の切れ端』