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.
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.
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