The Case of the Captured Queen

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

"Through the Looking-Glass" 

 

The cover of today's book has an interesting design and looks quite good in real-life, not so much as a small image file... 

Rokuhara Azusa is a woman in her late thirties who works at the Citizen's Affairs counter of Matsumoto City Hall, handling complains and other problems Matsumoto inhabitants may encounter in their daily life. One day, Takatsuku Kenichirou, a judicial scrivener in his forties, wants a consultation regarding his wife Mutsuko. In the last few months, his wife Mutsuko has claimed twice someone has tried to attack her, though she has remained unharmed and both times, she was just at home and nobody else saw anyone who could've attacked her. Mutsuko has always been rather high-strung, so she might have just imagined things, but Mutsuko absolutely refuses to even speak with a psychatrist, having rather strong misconceptions about mental health issues. Kenichirou hopes the Citizen's Affairs people can help him. Azusa and her co-worker agree to have a talk with Mutsuko and arrange to meet them in a few days at their home, which Kenichirou and Mutsuko share with Mutsuko's father, a farmer, and her father's second wife. Azusa arrives at the home just as Kenichirou also returns from work and they are walking to the house, when they hear Mutsuko crying for help from above. She cries "No, please... Natsumi!" as she slowly retreats with her back to the open window and before anyone can stop her, Mutsuko tumbles backwards out of the window, to her death. Azusa rushes inside the house and locates the room from which Mutsuko fell, only to find the door locked from the inside. The police is notified, and one of the detectives put on the job is in fact Azusa's husband Tomoki. When the police break the door down and enter the room however, they find it empty: no sign of the person who pushed Mutsuko or at least scared her so she fell to her doom. 

While Tomoki is struggling with this locked-room murder, Azusa continues her work at City Hall, where she deals with a slew of other incidents that may or may not have a criminal side to them: an elderly man who lost his wife a while back and was going to place the urn with his wife's ashes in the family tomb, found an unknown extra urn in the tomb, which is usually kept locked with a padlock. Meanwhile, another citizen suspects he had been stalked by an unknown figure from the station. The work pressure is also starting to affect Azusa and Tomoki's marriage, so both try to resolve their cases as quickly as possible so they can focus on each other in Asane Juuji's debut novel Aka no Joou no Satsujin ("The Red Queen Murders", 2024).

Asane won the 16th installment of the Bara no Machi Fukuyama Mystery Award with Aka no Joou no Satsujin, which earned him the publication contract of his first novel. Last year, I read his Sennen no Whodunnit, a science-fiction mystery set a thousand years in the future and as I am writing this review, he has a new book in serialization, which features a title referene to Schrödinger's cat, so you'd think he's very science-fiction-inclined, but his debut novel is the complete opposite. And it's actually very easily explainable too. For this book stars a civil servant who works at city hall of Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture, and Asane in his real-life day job is in fact...  a civil servant who lives in Azumino, the city neighboring Matsumoto. So I wouldn't be surprised if Asane does in fact work at city hall and is now, or was at one time, assigned at working at the Citizen's Affair counter there. For this book is really rich in descriptions of the city of Matsumoto and its direct neighbors, from the vibe to geography, and the reader also gets an interesting look at the work they do at the Citizen's Affair counter, explaining how the people there are not experts in all topics per se, but they have a vast wealth of knowledge in various topics (because people come with all kinds of complaints and problems) and they generally have a good idea of how to proceed next or what experts to call in. So one moment, you might have someone who wants legal advice about property borders, the next visitor might be asking about financial problems, and it's quite educational to see how they first explore the options they have before they start referring the visitors to other means.

One also wonders how much of Asane's real-life experience is mirrored in the way Azusa and Tomoki's as civil servants (one at city hall, one at the police) negatively influences their marriage. The book focuses a lot on their relationship as the two deal with their own cases and get swamped with work. Azusa's getting more and more irritated by the fact Tomoki never tells her in advance whether they'll be having supper together or not, even though she also understands a homicide detective usually doesn't have the luxury of being able to free up their evening schedule every day of the week. Tomoki too knows he should try to communicate more, but practically speaking, his job simply doesn't give him much room to do much about that. While I'm not really a big fan of  the "detective has troubles at home" trope, it works here because Tomoki and Azusa each head different cases, so they are basically "each other's problem" and their relationship ties the initial murder case to the seemingly non-criminal cases Azusa's looking into in a very natural manner.

Anyway, the story starts with the seemingly impossible death of Mutsuko: Azusa, her co-worker and Kenichirou watched as Mutsuko cried out in fear of someone called Natsumi, and then fell out of the window of her room, which they found locked from the inside. So who scared Azusa to death, and how did they escape the room? As the book is fairly realistic, one doesn't need to fear for old-fashioned needle-and-thread tricks hiding behind this locked room. In fact, the police is so pragmatic in this book, they initially just decide to ignore the locked-room mystery, assuming the killer must have had made a spare key for themselves. Their investigation focuses on the elusive "Natsumi", whose name Mutsuko uttered before she died. The police figure that if they catch Natsumi, she'll be able to explain how she managed to lock the room. So the first half of the book feels a bit like a police procedural, as we follow Tomoki and his senior partner Fujita as they comb through Mutsuko's past to find someone called Natsumi whom she might fear. 

It is only in the last third we see a larger focus on how the locked-room mystery was done. While one of the suggested fake solutions is a bit funny if you imagine it, it's dismissed fairly quickly and easily (and I think a lot of readers wouldn't have fallen for it anyway as the main argument to dismiss it is fairly obvious), the final solution is an interesting variation of a trick I have only seen a few times, which in turn is basically just an inverted variant of something that is very common. Because of the realistic approach of the book, one can't deny it feels a bit unfair here, as this method will never always 100% lead to this outcome every single time, but I do like the basic idea behind the trick, especially as Asane did his best at organically at planting certain pieces of knowledge that are necessary to solve the locked-room mystery. It's specialist knowledge you need, but Asane at least went the effort at providing some pointers to that knowledge and did that in a way that shows he wants to play the game fairly.

Azusa meanwhile deals with some other problems, of which the "locked family tomb" sounds the most interesting at first: a man and his two sons are going to place the urn with the mom's remains in the family tomb, but when they unlock it, they find a fifth urn inside, even though there should only be four at the time. Because the space where the urns are kept is usually locked with a padlock, this is effectively a locked-room mystery. However, the solution to how this was done is quite disappointing: there's nothing clever about how it was done, and it's also not really hinted. However, Asane does do a good job at then connecting this "crime" to the locked-room murder mystery of Mutsuko. The same can be said of the mystery of a mysterious stalker who follows a few people from Matsumoto Station to their home. When Azusa is first consulted about the matter, she advises the visitor to go to the police, and there they learn more people have filed a report about some stalker following them down the streets. 

Not very surprisingly, as the story progresses, we learn these various incidents are in fact somehow connected, one strand of investigation turning out to actually be a clue necessary to solve another. This Judge Dee-esque approach works up to an extent, though it is of course rather "lucky" all these cases that were brought to the Citizen's Affairs desk happen to be connected one way or another. I do like the whole picture that is revealed when all is solved, with one main plot being set in motion causing unforeseen ramifications elsewhere in the city. While coincidence does play a role in the whole matter, I think the plan of the culprit of this mystery has some cool ideas that feel surprisingly "realistic" even though much of the book is devoted to the mystery of a vanishing assailant and a two locked-room mysteries.

Oh, and the Alice in Wonderland reference in the title (The Red Queen)? Yeah, you don't have to think about that, it really doesn't become relevant until the very end once everything is settled...

I wouldn't recommend Aka no Joou no Satsujin on its merits as a locked-room mystery to be honest, but overall, I did enjoy the book. The work definitely benefits a lot from Asane's own experience, as the real-life parts that depict the city of Matsumoto and the work done at City Hall truly give this book a unique vibe and while I thought I wouldn't like the whole marriage trouble plotline with Azusa and Tomoki, it worked surprisingly well to connect the various incidents together as we see the couple tries to balance life and work, with the lives of some of the people they meet during their work mirroring their own lives and possible future. The core mystery plot is a bit winding and relies on coincidence in a few instances, but I like the way Asane weaves several aspects of the varied work done at the Citizen's Affairs counter in one story. So surprisingly, despite the book opening in chapter one, section one with a locked-room murder, I actually liked this book especially for its grounded realism and the way it used for the mystery!

Original Japanese title(s):  麻根重次『赤の女王の殺人』