A Scary Night with a Snow Beast Fright

"No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty."

"A Christmas Carol" 

A few months ago, I reviewed Killer X, a novel written by Nikaidou Reito and Kuroda Kenji, and the first of the Killer X trilogy, which are about murder mysteries set in ski resorts in Japan that also feature "Killer X", a mascotte figure of a stationary brand. Merchandise with the cute, former monk-turned-assassin figure features in all the three books, though I won't call the character really a major theme in the two novels I have read. Two, I say, for today's post is about the second book in the series. You should also briefly skim through the review of the first Killer X book to learn more about the authors of the books first hid their identities under a pen name and how the Killer X trilogy is also just the last three entries in a tetralogy.

Anyway, Nikaidou Reito and Kuroda Kenji's Sennendake no Satsujinki ("The Killer on Mt. Sennen", 2002) is set on the fictional mountain of Mt. Sennen in the Y Prefecture. Fumiko is a Japanese woman who teaches at a Japanese language school in Australia. Most of her students are actually around her age and just call her "Fumiko" instead of "Sensei" and when they learned she hailed from Y Prefecture in Japan, they decided that they'd have a ski trip to Mt. Sennen with Fumiko: her students are of course not allowed to speak any English during the trip. Lately, strange rumors about Mt. Sennen have been making the rounds: two different persons have appeared at the hotel Fumiko and her group are staying at, claiming to have come from a few days in the future. Fumiko and her students are all relatively accomplished skiers, so they are going to heli-ski from Mt. Sennen. They'll be dropped off at a high point with a helicopter and then follow the course to the pick-up point. However, they apparently get off-track and end up near the torii gate which is where the time-jumping supposedly took place. It turns out their their navigator intentionally sends them off-course, because he's interested in the so-called time-wormhole and he knew nobody would be willing to follow him voluntarily. By that time, the weather has taken a turn for the worse and it's already too late to turn back, so they are forced to stay in one of the empty mountain lodges near the gate. However, they get murdered one by one by an unseen murderer, and the only clue pointing at the murderer is a diary that purports to come from the future in which all the events that have happened, were already written...

Sennendake no Satsujinki is slightly shorter than Killer X and is this time not confined to a single building, but basically set within a small, closed circle high up in a mountain that's closed off because of the snowfall. The group is trapped there, but they have access to a small mountain lodge, and as they later discover, a second one that's actually nearby but originally barely visible due to the snowfall. It's here that the friends get murdered one by one, while the survivors are getting more neurotic by the minute, as they also have possession of a diary that's supposed from their future, and it details everything that's happened, and will happen, and they're basically afraid to know what their future will be. This main storyline is interrupted a few times with a second storyline set at the hotel that is more about setting-up the motive.

The premise of a time-wormhole is an interesting idea, and the concept does actually play a role in the way the mystery is set-up in this book, but because the book isn't clear on whether time travel is actually real or not until very late in the book, it feels not completely fair, as obviously, your theories would change depending on knowing whether time travel is actually feasible or not. The murders themselves don't really depend on any time travel-trickery though, with most of them just being 'well, any one of us could've done that' type of killings, or at best 'okay, at least these people wouldn't have been able to do it'. While some of these murders do rely on tricks ultimately, they remain relatively simple: partially because the group is trapped in a snowstorm on a mountain, with no real opportunities for a thorough investigation. Some of the tricks behind the murders also rely on dynamics I'm not a huge fan of, but your mileage may vary there. 

Rather than figuring out how these murders were committed, I'd say the main mystery's focus lies more on what connects all these murders: who would've have a reason to be committing these murders here while there's stuck on a mountain, cut-off from the outside world? The set-up for this reveal is probably the most memorable part of the book: some of it might be guessed early on because of the somewhat obvious clewing, and I don't think the execution is as good as it could've been, but I think the underlying idea is good. A lot of the heavy lifting is done in the secondary storyline though, making the main storyline ultimately feel more like a horror film plot, focusing more on the reactions of the group getting smaller with each consecutive murder and allowing little room for actual investigations/deductions. It's actually a complete contrast with the previous book, which was absolutely packed with all kinds of ideas: this one is definitely more limited in scope, and while I haven't read enough of Kuroda's standalone work to realize recognize his hand, this limited scope certainly doesn't help Nikaidou's style, who usually is at his best in terms of mystery plotting, tricks, and atmosphere in longer stories.

It's kinda a shame Nikaidou and Kuroda decided to go with a completely fictional location and background story this time, I think. While their story requires the rumours of a person travelling through time, they didn't even bother to pick a real existing prefecture or mountain. I'd loved to see this story using the local stories/myths of an existing place, perhaps reworking them a bit (i.e. a place known for disappearances, and then rewriting them so it turns out these disappearances were actually people being displaced in time). The previous book was specifically set in the prefecture of Hokkaido, near the city of Otaru, so it just felt jarring to have the story now take place in... Y. It'd have made more sense if they had used another place famous in Japan as a ski resort (and it's not like they don't have enough of them in Japan), rather than a made-up place, as it weakens the theme of the series. 

A character from the previous book (as well as Hakuginsou no Satsujinki by Nikaidou Reito and Aikawa Akira) appears also in this book by the way, but under an assumed name. This character is also 'connecting tissue' between the books, so in that sense, it's perhaps better to read these books in order, but it's not like you see that much development for this character across this books, it's more like a surprise reveal each time to realize X is actually also Y from the previous book.

You'll probably have guessed by now I'm not that huge a fan of Sennendake no Satsujinki: I think the first Killer X novel was just better conceived as a huge treasure box of perhaps not hugely impressive box, but still stitched together in a very competent manner, resulting in an overall entertaining story. In comparison, Sennendake no Satsujinki is not only smaller in scale, but is also less intricately plotted as a mystery novel and simply have fewer bells and whistles, making it not a bad book per se, but at the very least, it's a book that simply has less going for it. Thematically, it is stronger than the first book on some points, but picking an absolute favorite between the two of them won't be difficult. There is one more Killer X book waiting for me, so it'll be interesting to see what direction that final book will go.

Original Japanese title(s):  二階堂黎人, 黒田研二『千年岳の殺人鬼』