Fatal Paradise

"But, Mr. Hira Dass, decapitation is not an American mode of murder!"

"Clues of the Caribbees" 

There's something about reading a book about travelling around the islands of the Caribbees every morning in a packed train during rush hour in Tokyo...

T.S. Stribling (1881 - 1965) was an American author who wrote many adventure pulp stories. For the magazine Adventure, he wrote detective stories starring the psychologist sleuth Doctor Poggioli, who is the main detective in the 1929 short story collection Clues of the Caribbees: Being Certain Criminal Investigations of Henry Poggioli, Ph. D., in which the American doctor Poggioli is travelling through the Caribbees. His reputation as an accomplished amateur sleuth often precedes him, and as he makes his arrival on each new destination on his trip across the islands, he is often asked to assist in criminal investigations, as he has a knack of arriving just as some kind of mystery or other problem has occured that requires the mind of the great detective to solve.

I fist heard about this book from Norizuki Rintarou; he was talking about mystery fiction and mentioned this book as an example, and even spoiled a certain twist of one of the stories. The way he explained it sounded really silly, but as I was interpreting and not an active party in the conversation, I couldn't really ask him more about it. Fast-forward a few months, and I come across the Japanese translation of Clues of the Caribbees in a bookshop, which helped put it back on the to-read list again. And so I got started on the book (the English version, mind you) and yep, the thing Norizuki talked about was really as silly as he made it sound like!

I do have to warn you, this book is full of racist language. As you can guess, most of the racist language is spoken by the white population, aimed at the people of color, though basically everyone from any country gets something stereotypical thrown at them, including the Dutch. Still, most of the language is about the local people and while arguably, Poggioli is less racist and more progressive than most of the other people in this book, that's just a relative thing. 

That said, I do think the book does offer interesting ideas and concepts to the reader of mystery fiction. While the book's story format of 'a great detective arrives at some new place, solves a crime there' seems familiar, Stribling is surprisingly already playing a lot with genre expectations and tropes in this 1929 book, and I can see why this book would have made an impression on Norizuki. Each story explores in a way the fallibility of the Great Detective, whether it's through an internal fault, or external causes, and some of the things Stribling pulls off here are honestly brilliant, even if the core mystery plots themselves are often rather simple in set-up and development.

The book opens with The Refugees, in which Poggioli is asked to assist in a murder investigation in Curacao, led by police insecptor Karel Heinsius. The Magnificent Pompalone is a deposed dictator of Venezuela, and the custom is to let these ex-dictators roam free in Willemstad until they leave forever, just to keep the peace. Pompalone stays in the excellent Hotel Saragossa. When Heinsius hears someone has died there, he fears for some kind of international scandal, but upon arrival, he learns it's the proprietor, Senor Grillet, who died. While an initial examination seems to suggest heart failure, the doctor found clues that indicate Grillet may have died because a connection between Pompalone and his deceased wife, mother of his dear daughter Hortensia. Because Pompalone and his secretary were the ones who ate breakfast with Grillet before he died, Heinsius has more than enough reason to suspect either or both these men, but what reason could they have for killing Grillet? As a who- and howdunnit, this story is well set-up. While the story is quite limited in terms of scale, with few suspects, Stribling manages to make this into a very memorable story by making excellent use of irony as a theme of the story. Irony plays a huge rule in the way the murder is committed, and irony plays as much a role in the way the story eventually ends. 

In The Governor of Cap Haitien, Poggioli arrives on Haiti, where his reputation gets him involved in... a rebellion! Poggioli is asked by the governor of Haiti to help fight Jean LaFronde, a voodoo master whose army of followers is growing rapidly, threatening the authorities' hold on the island. The governor has tried to send spies to Jean LaFronde, but LaFronde for some reason can always smoke out the spies, while others become so convinced of his voodoo powers they betray the governor. The governor asks Poggioli visit LaFronde, as he ensures Poggioli LaFronde will treat the American with respect; this will give Poggioli the chance to expose the charlatan's trick, the idea goes. Poggioli isn't really a huge fan of the idea, but gets roped into the scheme nonetheless. Can he indeed see through the voodoo magic? Once again, Tribling makes good use of irony as an underlying theme of the story. This story is less of an interesting mystery story compared to the first one; much of LaFronde's voodoo magic is based on rather basic magic tricks we all know nowadays, so it fails to make much of an impression. One could argue there are two major twists in this story, one involving how LaFronde is captured and the other in terms of how Poggioli's presence on the island actually allowed for the authorities to get LaFronde. Of these two, I'd say the latter is more interesting as an idea, though just barely.

After arrival on Martinique in The Prints of Hantoun, Henry Poggioli becomes friends with the Chevalier Gervais Antoinette Beauhart Marion de Creviceau, who also has an interest in the philosophic aspects of crime. The two hold different opinions regarding crime and decide to carry out a wager, which involves solving the first case to be brought forth to the police court of Fort-de-France. This happens to be a robbery in the Banque Nationale, and the two quickly start spewing deductions that seem to point at different directions. Which of the two will turn out to be right? This is a fun story in concept with two detectives trying to outsmart each other while trying to solve the mysterious bank robbery. The trail of false clues however doesn't always make internal sense, so while the overall beats of Poggioli vs Creviceau are fun, the story feels a bit underwhelming as an actual mystery story.

In Cricket, Poggioli is staying in Bridgetown, Barbados, where the American psychologist finds himself roped into a murder investigation that occured among the Britons on the island, after a game of cricket. The main suspect is on the run, but his mother begs Poggioli to prove his son innocent. The adventure Poggioli has from this point on is absolutely one to remember, though perhaps not for the reason you'd first suspect. The story builds on a logical manner, based on clues uncovered during Poggioli's inquiry, but the manner in which his deductions lead to the culprit is surprising, and it's basically a miracle that at the end of the story, he manages to leave the island knowing he solved the case in such a splendid manner, for at the mid-point, you really start to worry whether Piogolli can pull it off. 

In the final story, A Passage to Benares, Poggioli arrives in Spain, Trinidad and ends up witnessing a Hindu wedding procession entering a temple. The sight is so magnificent, Poggioli for a second is reminded of the theory of Nirvana, and he suspects the temple's architect may have deliberately designed the building's curves, colors and planes to induce the viewer to achieve Nirvana. He decides to spend the night in the temple as an experiment. He is however shocked when he later learns the bride of the wedding procession he witnessed the day before, was found murdered at the temple this morning, making Poggioli a suspect. This is definitely the highlight of the book. The motive for the murder is incredibly original, and while it borders on the mad, it works for me. The way the story also deals with Poggioli as both a detective, and a suspect, in this story is also inspired, with a conclusion that is basically as crazy as the motive for the murder. The ending is sure to linger on in your mind for some time. 

Anyway, there's a lot of racist stereotypes and language to go through, but if you can ignore that, Clues of the Caribbees: Being Certain Criminal Investigations of Henry Poggioli, Ph. D.  honestly is a short story collection worth reading. While the individual stories might not always make an impression on the reader on their mystery merits alone, the way Stribling explores the tropes of the genre, especially those associated with the Great Detective, is impressive and memorable. The things he does here, are things you'd expect of a modern-day writer all immersed in meta-discussions on the detective genre, not someone who is mostly writing for pulp magazines in the 1920s. I for one am really interested in the other Poggioli stories now.

The Stolen Show

“Come, Watson, come!” he cried. “The game is afoot."

"The Adventure of the Abbey Grange"

Not a huge fan of the cover to be honest, it's kinda hard to make out what it is, especially digitally....

The bedroom town of Mikura in Shiga Prefecture is given an ugly wake-up call in 2007 when a group of four children attending class in primary school start to act erratically and then lose consciousness: it is soon determined they fell victim to to LSD. They learn from one of the victims that they thought they had taken a weight-loss medicine : someone on the internet had posted a message about having left hidden stashes paper laced with a diet solution across town for people-in-need to find. The police of course starts a great hunt for the madman who plants LSD for children to find, but the drug is surprisingly hard to locate, resulting in this variant to be called "Vanish". Inspector Yoshinaga Makoto is heading the investigation into Vanish, but also considers its his responsibility to educate children on the dangers of LSD and other drugs, as he notices the local children seem to think LSD is something cool. The police starts a campaign to educate children via school visits, and they employ the help of the quintessential hero actor Shidou Masakazu, whose breakout film was filmed in Mikura. Yoshinaga and Shidou visit schools together and it is the charismatic Shidou who makes an impression on the children, educating them properly on the dangers of Vanish. However, it turns out Shidou is also a gifted amateur detective and thanks to his close cooperation with Inspector Yoshinaga, the actor manages to lead the police the the mastermind behind Vanish. This fantastic feat earns Shidou the respect of all in Mikura and because he enjoyed his time in town a lot, he decides to become a local politician, trying to improve life for all in the hilly town and making sure it stays drug-free. He soon climbs the political ladder and becomes a member of the House of Representatives, though he keeps a constant eye on the quality of life in "his" town. His eye for attention for Mikura earns him the nickname King of Mikura.

Fifteen years later, Mikura is still a peaceful bedroom town that owes much to Shidou. Kanata, a former child actor who has failed in making more of his acreer, however hates Shidou, as he thinks Shidou's a hypocritical criminal. He suspects Shidou's been "spiriting away" drug addicts away from Mikura, including one of his acquaintances, and have them die elsewhere to maintain the image of a drug-free Mikura. Kanata is approached by Mariko, daughter of the now-deceased Inspector Yoshinaga, who shares his hatred for Shidou. She suspects Shidou is in fact a drug dealer himself, having obtained a stash of Vanish himself 15 years ago after catching the mastermind. Mariko suspects Shidou uses this stash of Vanish to control the market prices of LSD in the region, giving him control over the crime syndicates there. Mariko thinks a hiking app developed by Shidou's company is the secret: the Mikura Sports Hills App is a GPS-based app that allows people to set out custom hiking routes along the hills of Mikura, which you can share via codes with other people using the app. Mariko is convinced Shidou's been "dealing" Vanish by sharing MSHA codes that lead to hidden stashes of Vanish. Kanata wants to believe Mariko, but they need proof so they decide to do what any sane person would do: they make their own clone app of MSHA. The idea is that Shidou takes legal (or illegal) measures against their app, it'll be proof he's really dealing Vanish via MSHA, as he wouldn't want his potential customers to use the wrong app. Mariko and Kanata enlist the help of two more allies ("Hiking Man", a hiking blogger and "Protractor", an app developer), but immediately after the succesful launch of their app, Mariko is kidnapped. The heroes receive a message from an unknown party that states they have Mariko and that Mariko's friends are to play a game via their own GPS app: they have to find an unspecified destination within the time limit if they want to save Mariko, but how are they going to find a place *somewhere* in the region without any hints? Can the friends save Mariko and expose Shidou's true intentions in Shiotani Ken's Yuukai Gekijou ("Staged Kidnapping". 2025)?

Sorry for the somewhat chaotic explanation of the set-up of this story, but Yuukai Gekijou starts out with a lot of exposition. Shiotani Ken likes to use unusual set-ups for this books (like a fictional 18th century European country, or a story featuring the ghost of a great detective),  and while Yuukai Gekijou is "just" set in contemporary times with no sci-fi elements, it does rely a lot on the history of the legendary drug Vanish in the town of Mikura and the plan of Kanata and Mariko to implicate Shidou is honestly a bit convoluted: they suspect he's not the "hero who vanquished Vanish by identitfying its mastermind together with Inspector Yoshinaga" fifteen years ago, but that he took a secret stash of Vanish, or perhaps even the recipe, and that he's using that stash now to maintain his political grip on the town and the region, using his own-developed GPS-based "hiking app" to deal Vanish. By creating their own clone app to confuse potential clients, she's sure Shidou will take some kind of action against them, which would confirm their suspicions about Shidou. However, as soon as their app is done, Mariko is kidnapped. 

What follows is an exciting game in the mold of Die Hard 3, where the heroes are being bossed around. They are sent a code for their own clone GPS app, with a "hiking route". However, only the starting destination is shown. Upon arrival, they are only given the message to find "the destination, located somewhere in the region". Because the original message specified they could call for help, the local police force led by a co-worker of the late Inspector Yoshinaga, are there to help them too, so soon hundreds of police officers are using their phones trying to physically reach as many places in the region in the hopes of triggering the "destination reached" message, but what is the intention of such a roundabout game?

And that's where Yuukai Gekijou becomes a truly fun mystery book. For we see all these characters playing the GPS game while also trying to deduce why they are being asked to play along to play a variant of Pokemon Go. The actual game itself has the police and the heroes try and work together to find an unspecified location somewhere in the region, which is of course like looking for a needle in a haystack. This soon leads to the realization that the location must be deducible, as they have no other hints that point directly to where they are supposed to go. So the GPS game itself functions like a mystery. However, that is just the surface level, as there's also the mystery of why the kidnapper is telling them to play this game in the first place. If Shidou's really behind Mariko's kidnapping because they were interfering with his drug dealings, why set-up this game and not just kill Mariko? If he isn't behind this, who has a reason to kidnap Mariko or who would have reason to make them use their clone app? They soon realize there's something odd about Mariko's kidnapping and the showy way in which the kidnapper is trying to have them all participate in a game, and reluctantly comply while trying to figure out why. A lot of these whys are kept vague to the reader for quite some time, but you can feel something isn't quite right, and that combined with the actual game of hide-and-seek being played out as the heroes and the police try to comb a huge region, makes for some thrilling reading. And what makes this book especially fun is that...Shidou's a  fantastic character.

We first follow Shidou in the prologue chapter, where we learn how he and Inspector Yoshinaga teamed up together to find the mastermind behind Vanish and how he later built a political career. In the present though, we only see him through the eyes of Mariko and Kanata, and indeed, everything he does, does seem to suggest there's something hiding behind his facade of "the former actor-turned-politician who cares about Mikura". There's something shady about him, which is why nobody, not even the reader, trusts Shidou when he... arrives at the scene and proclaims he too will participate in the GPS  game and help search the region in the hopes of finding the destination location and saving the daughter of his former buddy. The man is charismatic, but you could interpret everything he says and does either way, and you are never really sure whether Mariko and Kanata are actually right about the guy, or that he's truly a good person and that someone else's behind Mariko's kidnapping. Shidou as a character is such a fun mystery, keeping you guessing about his true motives until the very end, and it makes the whole book such a great read. I would LOVE to see a live-action adaptation of this book and I would be so curious as to who could play such a charismatic role.

Shiotani Ken generally likes using unusual settings for this story, and while this book is set in modern, contemporary times, it does stand out because of the story's use of modern technology like GPS, GPS-based apps, social media and even LLM. "Protractor", the volunteer developer of Mariko and Kanata's clone hiking app has developed their own chat app as well as an LLM, and as a thank you, the team agrees to help train his LLM and use his chat app to help improve it. The LLM actually plays a role in the story as a fun "extra member of the team" as his presence often helps lighten the chat conversations a bit with his comments and even occasionally genuinely manages to help out. The other pieces of technology are also vital to the set-up of the mystery in this book and they are integrated very wel: this is not a book where the technology is just there because it's modern, it's there because even the simplest usage of it helps develop the mystery in meaningful manners. The extensive use of modern technology in Yuukai Gekijou funnily enough make it feel almost futuristic, even though we all use the things described in this book.

 I do think Yuukai Gekijou takes some time to get really started; the prologue is interesting, but then the reader is treated to a very huge shift in tone and pace, and we get a lot of exposition about Mariko's suspicions abou Shidou and her plan to lure him out and the exact workings of the clone app they're developing. Once the actual GPS game is set in motion and we see everyone trying to play the game while also trying to figure out how to save Mariko/find the kidnapper, that's when the book jumps back on track and it remains hugely entertaining until the very end, when we learn the true scope of the whole kidnapping business. While the book is perhaps slightly less focused compared to other Shiotani novels I've read, it's still a recommended read.

Original Japanese title(s):  潮谷験『誘拐劇場』

Wrong Number

I kind of liked it your way
How you shyly placed your eyes on me
Did you ever know that I had mine on you?

"Eyes on Me" (Faye Wong) 

I don't actually have the edition with this particular cover, but I can't find any decent images of my version and I don't really feel like scanning it...

After nearly two decades of carrying a certain secret around, a former driver for a certain ministry decides to write a letter to the son of a man he knows who was done wrong. The man in question was the deputy director involved in a great scandal involving selling of government land to private parties: while it were his superiors and certain private businessmen who cooked up the scheme, it was the deputy director who practically had to arrange all the deals, and when the news got out, the deputy director "very conveniently committed suicide". ostensibly being the "mastermind" behind the scheme and with his death, the real people behind the scandal went scot-free. The driver happened to overhear the scheme to shift all the blame on the deputy director when he was still working at the ministry, and finally confessed everything in his letter to the (for the reader unknown) son of the deputy director. This sets a plan of revenge in motion aimed at the people involved in the plot, with things starting "innocently" with threatening letters/calls, but eventuallly revenge manifests itself in the form of murder. However, who is the murderer? In Ishizawa Eitarou's 21-nin no Shiten ("21 Perspectives", 1978), we follow 21 different characters in as many chapters as they all get involved in the scheme one way or another, but is the murderer one of these people? 

Ishizawa Eitarou was a mystery author who debuted in 1962 and remained active until his death in 1988. He was a very prolific writer in the short story form, and he even won the 1977 Mystery Writers of Japan Award for the short story. Many of his stories are set in the city of Fukuoka, which is how I first got to hear about him: I lived for a year in Fukuoka, so every year, I try to read at least one book set there, as there are obviously rarer than books set in Tokyo. Not all of his book are available digitally too, so I haven't really gotten started on him yet (read a few random short stories). 21-nin no Shiten is the first full book/novel I read by him and not coincidentally, it is set in Fukuoka.

The book's most unique feature is with no doubt the structure of following 21 different characters in as many chapters. Each chapter follows a different character, who are all involved in the story in different ways. Some characters are very much part of the plot of revenge, like one of the businessmen who actually profited from the illegal land-selling plot and who has now become one of the most prominent businessmen in the island of Kyushu: he's soon made aware someone is after him because of what he did in the past, and he tries to find out who is threatening his cushy life. Other characters we follow are less directly involved, like a ferry worker who happens to become witness to an event that will later become relevant to the plot. It is seeing all these characters interact in a giant web that makes 21-nin no Shiten interesting, as characters who are alluded in one chapter might make more prominent appearances later on or even be featured as a chapter's main character. As the book continues, what may be just a vague name mentioned off-man, will be slowly transformed in a true character with a fleshed-out backstory. The novel does start out very slow, as you don't really have an idea of what everyone is up too and you aren't really quite sure how everyone is connected to each other, the avenger's plot, or the attempts of the people involved in the corruption scandal to evade the avenger.

As a mystery novel however,  I do have to admit it didn't quite manage to deliver in the way I had hoped it would. While the idea of making the reader follow 21 different characters in sequence, and making you guess whether and/orw which one of them is actually also the avenger who is first sending threatening messages to those involved in the death of the deputy director and eventually actually committing murder, the plot feels chaotic exactly because we are reading about so many characters who sometimes are just barely involved in the plot. You basically even have chapters who are about people who basically just happen to witness a single-second moment that in the grand scheme of things isn't really important. So after a while, things feel a bit muddled as you realize some chapters and scenes are just more about filling out the book, rather than having real relevance. The murderer's plot, as revealed in the end, is also a bit weird at times, with the overall plan seemingly being more about allowing the author Ishizawa to include enigmatic scenes throughout the book that puzzle the characters involved, than really about the murderer having a consistent, logical plan. There's also the added problem of not all characters are as rewarding to follow: for example we also follow an international couple with an open relationship that we see through different POVs, but you could really remove every single scene about their relationship and like a whole chapter of one guy who falls in love with the woman in the couple, and the mystery itself would not have changed, which might even have worked better as ultimately. There are more of these moments where characters only hint at something that might have been interesting, if it had actually been fleshed out more or at least become integrated in the mystery, but now you hear a little about them, but then the story drops it because we're moving away from their POV.

So ultimately, I think  21-nin no Shiten was more interesting for its concept, rather than the execution. I should confess that I also don't feel much for this book because it's less a puzzler and closer to a social school mystery (not surprisingly considering its release year), but I do think the book would've been much better had it been more focused, with a more relatable plan from the murderer. As the book is now, it feels too many scenes are just there to seem mysterious and have as many people as possible involved, and when you actually try to relate all these scenes to a consistent threatening/murder plan, it comes across as needlessly chaotic. I enjoyed seeing an older Fukuoka setting in the book though and the writing itself was fine, so I'll probably read more of Ishizawa Eitarou, though I doubt this was his best work.

Original Japanese title(s): 石沢英太郎　『21人の視点』

The Quick and the Dead

"Bring out your dead!"

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" 

You know what's great about discussing a mystery set in a world that works like in a Japanese fantasy role-playing game? The fact this one isn't even the first I discuss here! We really should have more and more of them!

August Aberhein is the second son of an impoverished noble family, which means he will inherit nothing and have to earn his own living. As many in his situation, he ended up enrolling at the Knight's Academy and after graduating as the best fighter of his class, he's ready to go on adventures and pay off his school debt... but as a new graduate, he can't find any decent jobs. It is a period of relative peace, meaning none of the lords are currently hiring new knights for their troops, leaving August only one option: signing up for the Adventurer's Guild. Here he finds himself hampered by the fact he's a new member of the guild. Each member is offered quests based on their rank, and you start out at the bottom, ranking up the more quests you succesfully complete. However, the novice level quests pay out next to nothing, and it'd take decades for August to pay off his debt. After nagging the guild receptionist for a while, he's shown a listing posted by a Corpse Retrieval Service, which pays well and has no demands regarding guild rank. August hurries to the office, where he finds a young girl running the place. Glacia's business retrieves dead people from dungeons: dead people can be resurrected in churches, but the resurrection ceremony demands for the actual body to be present. Often, party members have to leave their dead comrades behind as they're already heavily injured in battle themselves by the monsters in the dungeons, and it's people like Glacia who go in the dungeons and collect these corpses for their clients before the bodies are mutilated/decayed so much the resurection ceremony is rendered impossible. Glacia hires August, who proves himself to indeed have a talent for fighting monsters off, but he's obviously not as clever as Glacia, who proves herself not only a wily businesswoman and capable support magician, but also a very keen detective who can spot whenever things aren't quite right. Taki Keisuke's Meikyuu de, Shitai wo Hirou (2025), which also has the English title Pick up a Corpse in the Labyrinth and features illustrations by Kouzou Kazaru, follows August and Glacia as they go out, pick up corpses and solve mysteries along the way.

Death in mystery fiction is usually a permanent thing: it is usually what makes the act of murder a criminal one, an act that deserves investigation and a reaction fueled by justice. There are of course a few mystery stories where death isn't permanent per se (see for example Yamaguchi Masaya's Death of the Living Dead, translated by me!), but we can safely say the vast majority treats death as a permanent state. That is not the case in video games of course, where death is very often reset with just a push of a button or simply a "state" in a game that can be rewound via the use of a Phoenix Down or... visiting the church to have your party member ressurrected. The latter is of course a Dragon Quest staple and it's a Dragon Quest fantasy world that forms the basis of Ryuu's Meikyuu de, Shitai wo Hirou: like in those games, death isn't permanent and the church can undo deaths with a ceremony, but unlike Dragon Quests, dead team members don't conveniently float behind you in a coffin as you make your way back from a dungeon. In Pick up a Corpse in the Labyrinth, corpses are just... dead people, with mass and weight. Often people die in dungeons because they're underleveled and one death soon leads to another as enemy attacks start focusing on fewer and fewer people, so people often have to leave their dead party members behind and flee the dungeon, lest the whole party dies. People like Glacia pick up these corpses upon the request of their clients, or if the deceased is insured against their death via the guild. While death is not permanent in this world, life is still a valuable resource though: the resurection ceremony uses a rare magic resource, meaning it does cost quite a lot to have a person resurrected and you do need someone to actually bring you to the church to do that: it means that while murder can be "undone", it is not viable to just undo every death, not even in the case of murder. 

Meikyuu de, Shitai wo Hirou is an interconnected short story collection, in which August and Glacia encounter three different cases across three chapters, though there's an overarching storyline in which August, and the reader, learn more about Glacia's background. The first story, Housekigui no Ryuu ("The Jewel-Eating Dragons") shows us the first encounter between the stoic and proud August, and the money-obsessed and manipulative Glacia as they go on their first quest together. The quest itself sounds simple: they are hired by two adventurers, who lost a party member in a dungeon when they tried to get away with a jewel treasure. Fast dragon-monsters protect the jewels in this dungeon, and many adventurers underestimate their lethalness Glacia gladly takes the case, and during their first quest, we see how August and Glacia learn to work together to enter a dungeon, with August being a frontline fighter and Glacia casting support magic. As the story develops however and August and Glacia make their way to the corpse they're supposed to retrieve, we learn Glacia has figured out not all is "normal" about their objective, but what is this truth hiding beneath the surface?

This first story also serves as an introduction to the world of Meikyuu de, Shitai wo Hirou: while most of it sounds a lot like Dragon Quest, author Ryuu of course introduces some specific rules regarding how resurrection works and what you actually need for the ceremony in order to craft their mystery plot. Because of that, the core mystery plot remains a rather simple one: it is awfully easy to guess what Glacia also suspects about the quest they're undertaking. Ryuu does make good use of the world, magic and its rules crafted for this book and certain things laid out here will become relevant in the remainder of the book too, but the plot itself is somewhat obvious, which makes this more a story that is remembered for the potential it shows for the rest of the book.

The second story, Zangeshitsu ("Confessional") has Glacia and August visiting the local church to have a corpse resurrected. Glacia is a long-time "customer" of the church's services, but even so, even August can sense some reserve from the clergyman and his clerks in their attitude towards Glacia, hinting at some stigma surrounding her background. Nonetheless, they are happier with Glacia than with their latest resurrection, a wealthy wannabe adventurer who uses his family's wealth to bully everyone around them and even brings people around him in danger, while he himself has the financial means to get himself resurrected all the time thanks to his life insurance. He bullies the clerks in the church too, which is why everybody is happy when they find him dead in one of the rooms in the church, especially as it appears he committed suicide: the church generally does not resurrect people who have chosen their way out of life, as that'd be a waste of valuable magic resources. Glacia however soon sees not all is at seems, and even sees a chance to profit from this death.

This second story is definitely more engaging, with more suspects, a clearer-defined mystery and a more inspired use of the fantasy world and its rules. Whereas the fundamental concept behind the trick of the first story always works in a "realistic" world, the trick in this story is more firmly grounded in the magic rules of this work, making it a more satisfying story to read. What Ryuu again does well is naturally introducing the magic elements in the story and then incorporating them into the mystery plot. While not all of the misdirection works for me personally, I do appreciate the more intricate plotting of this tale, as well as the way Glacia deals with this case, as we are again shown that she's not a detective per se: she simply sees business opportunities, which also happen to rely on her detective skills at times. 

The finale has a more ambitious set-up than the previous two stories: in Necromancy, the guild sends August and Glacia to join a party on an academic quest: because the place is so dangerous, the guild has decided to combine the necessary party members for two different quests together and have them work together. They are to visit the Inverted Castle, a castle which was once cursed by a powerful sorceror after the king cheated him on a deal: as punishment, the people in the castle were magically bound to the castle by a barrier, the castle itself was turned upside down and necromancy magic was used to make the people in the castle living dead. The latter deed in particular is quite grave: a dead person can not be resurrected if they have been manipulated as the undead, as the original soul is "bumped out" of the body if they're put under the power of a necromancer, making it impossible for them to come back alive. These undead now still roam the castle and make the place incredibly dangerous, as the undead are particularly nasty enemies that are hard to stop. The party is to explore the dungeon this castle has become for academic reasons, but August and Glacia's quest is different: they are to retrieve the bodies of two people dear to Glacia, who died in this castle and whose bodies have not been found yet. While they are exploring the castle however, one member in their party is found murdered, and oddly, all the clues left on the scene seem to point at Glacia as the murderer.

This last story in the collection feels like a proper culmination of everything that has occured so far, utilizing the magic rules and specific uses we learnt about in the previous stories and also featuring characters from previous adventures and expanding on the hints we've had until about Glacia's background. Which is perhaps why it's a bit disappointing this is just a short story: the Inverted Castle is a great setting for a finale, but as the book features no maps and this is ultimtely not a very long story (in a not very long book), it does feel like the castle could've been developed a bit more. We ultimately don't see (read) that much of the entire castle. After The Underground Maze of No Return in Isekai no Meitantei 2 and the labyrinth dungeon in Sword Art Online Alternative: Mystery Labyrinth - Meikyuukan no Satsujin, the Inverted Castle feels like a place that could've been so much more: had this story been a full novel, or at least a novella, we could've seen more of this upside-down castle, which could've served as the scene for more mysteries. Anyway, we have "just" one murder now, when the body of one of the party members comes crashing down the ceiling during a monster attack: Glacia's dagger is sticking out of the body and more importantly, the fact the body had been hidden in the floor above points at Glacia: the inverted layout of the castle (which has the stairs upside down too) means no other person in the party can climb a floor up, as only Glacia possesses levitation magic. With Glacia being the obvious suspect, the other fighters in the party soon turn against her, vowing to kill her to incapitate her. August is of course Glacia's only ally, but can he protect her against multiple enemies?

The seemingly impossible murder is original, as Glacia's guilt relies on her knowledge of a certain magic spell, which seems a bit strange if you're not really used to mystery fiction set in fantasy/science-fiction worlds, but it works very natural here. Of course, the solution to this conundrum also relies on clever use of the established rules to magic, and again, I do like how Ryuu took the time to tell and show to the reader how everything works over the course of several adventures, because it makes the payoff to seeing how the magic is used here more rewarding. Meanwhile, Glacia and August are also dealing with the fact they're being hunted by the rest of the party as the suspect on the murder (and her ally) and here the book does take on the form of a more "conventional" fantasy-action story, but fortunately, Ryuu does also make great use of its world to set-off a few clever turnarounds, that are nonetheless properly foreshadowed and clewed. The motive for the murderer for picking Glacia specifically as the fall-girl is also memorable, being one that really only makes sense in this specific world.

For those interested in RPG-inspired mystery stories by the way, besides the aforementioned Isekai no Meitantei series and the Sword Art Online book, there's also Hayasaka's excellent RPG School.

On the whole Meikyuu de, Shitai wo Hirou is a pretty amusing book. It certainly uses an original premise, with a team that's just there to retrieve dead bodies in order to resurrect them: a premise that seems to go against the whole idea of a murder mystery as you can simply undo every murder and then ask the victim what happened, but Ryuu does a good job at explaining why it's not a "go-to" solution to every mystery in this book. While the book is a bit short, meaning some themes and settings are left not explored as deeply as I had hoped, the overall book is worth a recommendation, showing the fun possibilities that arise when you mix the mystery genre with other genres and their tropes.

Original Japanese title(s):` 龍圭介（著）、構造飾（絵）『迷宮で、死体を拾う』