The Baited Trap

"That's the second biggest monkey head I've ever seen!"
"The Secret of Monkey Island"

With many readers nowadays moving to consuming their books in a digital format, we have also seen writers and publishers moving to ideas and formats that make use of the physical format, to provide an experience that is enhanced by the paper format, and that also holds for the mystery genre. There are of course the Escape Room-esque books that include puzzles (some even that require you to fold or cut certain pages), books that make use of the way a physical book can have fixed layouts and fonts (as opposed to e-books that allow you change font and font size) and as a recent minor trend in Japanese publishing, making use of unusual book sizes. In Japan, there are of course the familiar book sizes like tankobon, bunko and shinsho, which are certain standard book sizes that most publishers adhere too. But as of late, we have also seen books that use unusual formats, like Chinen Mikito's Swipe Genkin ("Forbidden to Swipe"), which presents itself as a smartphone (you read through the story via "screenshots" of the home screen, chat, photo and other apps) and the book itself has a size that is very similar to a modern smartphone.

Shirai Tomoyuki's Hon wo Yomu no ga Chouhayai Hito no Atamatte Dou Nattenno Satsujin Jiken ("The What-Goes-On-In-The-Minds-of-People-Who-Read-Super-Fast Murder Case", 2026) is even smaller though, as the book is a mere A7-size! In fact, Shirai and their editor were present at the Honkaku Mystery Award ceremony this year, and they were handing out small pocket tissue packs out as promotional material for this book, as the book is the same size as a small pack of tissues! Anyway, the book is both small and very short, so while it's a standalone release, it's basically the length of a short story, so there's not too much I can write about the story without giving too much away.

The book starts with the murderer announcing their intent on killing someone, after which we jump to the POV of a young boy, who is, surprisingly, recruited by a secret organization to defend Earth by keeping an eye on an alien who is living disguised as a human on Earth. The boy has to keep an eye on Big Burp, who lives and works in an office visible from the boy's room. Big Burp however really just resembles a real human, running a business built on the reputation of Big Burp's uncle, who was world-famous fast reader of books. The boy witnesses Big Burp being killed by a person.... and when the police arrive at the place, it turns out Big Burp was just a human and not an alien in disguise, and that he was really just murdered by someone. But by whom?

As mentioned, this book is basically a short story, so soon after the murder has happened, we are introduced to a very small cast of suspects who could've wanted to murder the victim, as they were all not happy with the way the man was running the family business. Shirai crafts a capable whodunnit mystery, but of course, this is a very short story, so nothing really mind-blowing goes on here... BUT, then we come to the matter of why this book was printed in an A7-format, which is really small, even for Japanese book formats (which are generally smaller than books published in the West).

What Shirai does here, is a fun idea on its own: indeed, the book being the way it is, does function as a clue to solving Hon wo Yomu no ga Chouhayai Hito no Atamatte Dou Nattenno Satsujin Jiken. What is more interesting is perhaps how it is not a direct clue per se: it is not like examining Hon wo Yomu no ga Chouhayai Hito no Atamatte Dou Nattenno Satsujin Jiken will provide you with the answer to the mystery of whodunnit, nor is it a "puzzle" to be solved like Real Escape Room-books. No, the book format of Hon wo Yomu no ga Chouhayai Hito no Atamatte Dou Nattenno Satsujin Jiken is just something that will point you to the correct direction, and it works quite elegantly.

That said, considering this is a short story, and the book is fairly small, I can't help but admit the book is relatively expensive. Of course, printing a non-standard-size book will probably be more difficult than a standard book, but still, it's relatively pricey for something that provides an interesting idea in terms of clewing in a short story, but little beyond that.

Also, perhaps now I should also admit I bought this and read this digitally... Would the physical version have given the clue an extra dimension? Sure. But to be very honest, just knowing what the book looks like in real-life (I've seen it in the store) is technically enough for the clue to work...

SoHon wo Yomu no ga Chouhayai Hito no Atamatte Dou Nattenno Satsujin Jiken is an interesting experiment that uses the physical paper format to faciliate the mystery plotting, but I can't say it's much more than an interesting experiment. It's a fun idea and it's great to see authors play with the book format, but it would have been more interesting if we had seen a longer book (short story collection?) that would've used the smaller book format in different ways in each mystery. As it is now, it's a single idea that kinda works, but is it truly more than just a gimmick? Hard to say.

Original Japanese title(s): 白井智之『本を読むのが超速い人の頭の中ってどうなってんの殺人事件』