Puzzle for Pilgrims

"It's morphin' time!"

"Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers"

No, that's not weirdly specific compression: the cover illustration is really pixelated.

Disclosure: I have translated works by Norizuki Rintarou and Abiko Takemaru.

As reflected by the winners of the same-named Mephisto Prize, Mephisto is a magazine providing entertainment fiction, with a focus on mystery, but not exclusively so, as it also features storie encompassing scifi and other genres. It has gone through a few formats since its inauguration in 1994, and since 2021, it has become one of the perks for subscribers of the Mephisto Readers Club, being published four times a year as its club magazine, featuring serializations of for example the newest House novel by Ayatsuji Yukito, but also original stories written for the magazine. In 2023, author Norizuki Rintarou became the chief of a project focusing on the classic detective device of the Challenge to the Reader, or in this case, a challenge to subscribers of the Mephisto Readers Club. Each story would be published in two parts: the problem part would be published in the magazine itself and end with a Challenge to the Reader. The reader would have a few weeks to send in their answer, complete with the proper logic behind it, and then the solution would be published online after the deadline (and they'd have live-streams with the writers to look back at the stories). Norizuki approached five other authors to write a story with a Challenge to the Reader, and while the Challenge to the Reader is commonly associated with the pure whodunnit, he interestingly also divided the stories in three groups: they would do two whodunnits, two whydunnits and two howdunnits. Early 2024, these six stories by the authors Norizuki Rintarou, Houjou Kie, Abiko Takemaru, Tanaka Hirofumi, Kitayama Takekuni and Ibuki Amon were collected in the volume Suiri no Jiken Desu ("It's Morbin' Time" "It's Inference Time"), finally giving non-subscribers also access to these stories.

I myself was not a member of MRC at the time, but I had seen Houjou Kie talk about her contribution to the project last year, and as I am a big fanboy and know she's good at these Guess the Criminal/Whodunnit + Challenge to the Reader-style stories, I of course wanted to read her entry too, so I was more than thrilled when I heard the stories would be collected in an anthology. Norizuki, Abiko and Houjou were also all members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, where these two-part puzzle-like Guess the Criminal scenarios (with a Challenge to the Reader) are a club tradition, so I knew they'd have experience with the format, and I was already familiar with the works of Kitayama and Ibuki, and I've enjoyed their works too, so I was very curious to see how they'd do the Challenge to the Reader too. Tanaka was the one author I hadn't read yet, and his entry was quite fun too, so I might read more of himin the future.

As mentioned in some of my older posts on the tradition in the Kyoto University Mystery Club, these scenarios are generally a lot closer to "pure puzzle"-esque than a normal mystery story and one important factor is that these stories really need to be solvable. When the Challenge to the Reader comes, all the hints must be given, and more so than "conventional" mystery stories, the logical chain from hint, to insight, to conclusion must be solid and not stretched too far apart: these stories generally don't expect you to come up with a brilliant locked room murder trick just by seeing the vague hint of a needle lying on the floor. Usually the process is plotted with a lot more hints, to keep the game fair. This would especially be the case for this project, as readers were encouraged to write in their answers, and had to explain the logical process (not a guess!) by which they arrived at their conclusions. So going into these stories, that was certainly something I kept in mind and I was also curious as to how it'd work with the whydunnits and howdunnits: as I explained in this article, the Queen-style whodunnit feels very fair as it's often based on the process of elimination and observed facts, whereas stories might feel less fair, because they expect the reader to "imagine" something.

The book opens with a story by Norizuki himself, titled Higisha Shibou ni Yori ("Due to the Death of the Suspect"). The last Norizuki I read was King wo Sagase last year, which was about the trope of the murder exchange, a theme I noted he liked as he had written about it in other stories. And he really likes it apparently, as this story is about it too! Mystery novelist and amateur detective Rintarou is visited by his friend Iida, who introduces him to Kajitani Kouhei, a financial planner who is being suspected of murder by the police. Kajitani is in fact somewhat of a swindler, and he had convinced Kajitani Iwao, a retired ship's cook, to adopt him, and take out a life insurance, with Kouhei as the beneficiary. Iwao was, not surprisingly, killed, but Kouhei has an alibi for that night. However, near the crime scene the former city councilman Mizoguchi Takanori had been seen, and it happens his wife was also killed just the week before: the police suspects Takanori and Kouhei swapped their murders, but the police cannot be sure, as Takanori committed suicide while in the custody of the police. And why go through the trouble of swapping murders, only to commit suicide immediately afterwards? But if there was no murder exchange and Kouhei has an alibi, who then killed Kouhei and Takanori's wife?

I have to admit: this set-up with a murder exchange wasn't what I had expected of a whodunnit scenario by Norizuki, though the foreword did mention him leaving the more traditional type up to Houjou. This story is great though: while fairly limited in cast of suspects, the chain that logically points to the murderer is very sound, and this is a prime example of a story that is clearly written to be fair, and that is willing to be "solved" and surrender to the reader, as long as the reader will do the bare minimum of sorting the clues in the story out and keep a good eye on who knows what at what time and things like that. 

Houjou Kie's story is titled Fuudani-kan no Satsujin ("The Whodani House Murders"): the Whodani House is the home of the jeweler Hatano Rokuhiko. The house consists of two buildings, which are connected in the middle by a glass house courtyard. Other people in the house include his two sons, his wife, his mistress and his secretary. And of course our narrator Uzuki, the maid and also a thief. One night, just as she hopes to steal a valuable painting from the living room, she first hears one muffled pistol shot going off, and five minutes later two more, but much louder, which also attracts the attention of other people in the house. She makes up some excuse for being in the living room at night with the lights off, and they go off looking for the butler, who for some reason doesn't show himself despite the ruckus. The butler is in the East Wing, while the living room is in the West Wing, so Uzuki and the secretary go to the security room, but they find the butler shot to death with two shots with a pistol from Rokuhiko's collection. When they want to report to their master in his bedroom back in the West Wing however, they find him shot to death too, and it's clear it was done with the same pistol. But who in the house managed to kill two people in both wings, while Uzuki was in the living room, which you need to pass in order to enter the connecting glass house courtyard?

This is the type of story I assume with a Kyoto University Mystery Club-style whodunnit scenario, and it's good one! Sure, it feels very "puzzly", but that is what I like about these stories, and man, this story is dense with clues. Houjou's work in general is quite dense when it comes to the pure mystery plot, but considering the page count, I'd say this might be her densest work yet, though I would admit that having this much density in a novel-length story might be a bit tiring. Still: this is a must-read if you want to learn how to these kind of fair-play Challenge to the Reader-style stories using a process of elimination: each step in the logical chain is explained clearly, allowing you to slowly cross out names on the suspect list until you end up wth the last name: the killer. Some clues are very obvious clues, but that's not a problem, as it's figuring out how to combine them that makes these stories so fun. Houjou also manages to hide more than a few suprises despite it being a relatively short story, but then again, it's so densily plotted you'll find crucial information everywhere, from the figures to the Challenge to the Reader itself. Definitely my personal highlight.

Abiko Takemaru's Osanasugiru Mokugekisha ("The Witness Was Too Young") is a whydunnit, which is probably a lot harder to put in a "fair play format", so I was curious how this would work out. We follow the police officer Hashitani Kaoru of the Community Safety Division, who is asked to assist with a murder investigation: Kiyomi, a pregnant mother, has for some reason stabbed her husband Haruto to death right in front of their son Subaru. He called the neighbors for help, but by that time, it was already too late. Kaoru has received training to talk with children, and is of course more suited to talk with Subaru than the angry-looking homicide detectives, so Kaoru is to see if she can get a little bit more information out of the shocked boy, as his mother is in the hospital in a dazed state and not available for questioning herself. The story of the boy whose his mother just came back home, pushed him away and started a fight with her husband sounds odd, and the boy can not imagine why her mother did that, but eventually Kaoru manages to figure out why. And this story works surprisingly well as a fair-play story. I have the feeling this story can also be "guessed" without any hints at all, but still, Abiko did plant proper hints, which allow a less imaginative reader to still arrive at the solution in a logical manner, and I find that very impressive. The solution is also pretty memorable, and overall, I'd say this tale too is good.

Tanaka Hirofumi's Perry no Haka ("The Grave of Perry") is the first of three historical stories: I am not sure why he, Kitayama and Ibuki all went for a historical setting. Perry no Haka starts in 1933, when a scholar visits a small village to open a tomb there. The scholar learned about the tomb via documents left by an ancestor, who worked as a (kind of) policeman in the Edo period, just around the time the Americans came to Japan, demanding them to open their borders for trade. The story then jumps back to the first arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry with his black ships at Edo, using the threat of their ships to first hand over a document demanding the Japanese to open their borders and saying they'd back one year later, expecting a positive answer from the Shogun. Meanwhile, we also learn about a worker in the kabuki industry who for some reason is visited by some Americans during this first visit, and one year later, when the black ships return, this man is found murdered, having been shot by the Americans. But why, and what does his death have to do with the tomb that is opened in 1933? This story has an interesting premise, focusing on Perry's arrival in Japan and the reaction to his fleet, and the way the mystery ties to actual history is quite clever. Hint-wise, I think it ultimately works out well: while I think the Perry-period story alone might not be enough, the prologue does provide enough context for the reader to make the necessary deductions, and while the story itself is not as densily plotted as Houjou, meaning there is much more "historical fluff" to flesh out the story, it is certainly a solid entry.

Kitayama Takekuni's Ryuugoroshi no Kunshou ("The Medal of the Dragonslayer") also has a story-within-a-story structure, as we first follow the narrator and his sister in Finland, who recently lost their grandfather. There's a safe in their grandfather's room, but they don't know the combination. They suspect a hint might lie in the stories he always told his grandson, though both believe their grandfather just loved tall tales. The clue might lie in a story their grandfather told about his father, who during World War II had been tasked with assassinating a nazi officer: while Finland had been working with Nazi Germany to fight off the Soviet Union, balance was going to shift soon, so they wanted to sabotage the operation, but without openly offending the Nazis. The operation occured during the transport of the railway gun Siegfried: two Fins (one of which their great grandfather) and two nazi officers were sitting in one carriage which was not connected to the other cars, meaning they could not leave it while moving. Meanwhile the Nazi commander was sitting in his own luxury carriage, which was connected to the railway gun carriage. The commander was seen to be alive when they boarded the train and set off. However, when they arrived at their destination, the commander was found on the roof of the railway gun wagon, at the controls, having been stabbed with a bayonet. But how could their great grandfather have done that, while he was in a different railway carriage, with three other witnesses?

You know, knowing Kitayama's work, I had actually expected a much more bigger, over the top trick. This was surprisingly.... normal. Okay, not really normal, but in comparison with his other works... I'm a bit torn on this story, to be honest. It's a good mystery story, that is for sure: I am familiar with other variants of the trick used here, but this specific iteration feels original to me, and it makes good use of the setting and of course, the idea of the murder happening on a moving train while we know the murderer is being watched, is pretty cool. But I don't feel this story is exceptionally fair, at least, not the degree we have seen in previous stories. While the story can be solved based on the hints, I feel this one does require a bit more imagination/intuitive guessing on the part of the reader, while personally, I think these stories with a Challeng to the Reader are the most satisfying when they do not require that, and allow someone with no imagination at all still solve the mystery by properly identifying all clues and following them to their logical conclusion. So in any other book, I would have liked this story better, but here it felt a bit off. 

Ibuki Amon's Hatozaki Taii no Homare ("The Honor of Captain Hatozaki") is set in Manchuria, where the detective Tsukisamu Sanshirou is sent by military command to investigate a certain unit. Command has been receiving letters accusing high ranking officers in that unit of illegally selling supplies to Koreans and other factions. However, command is actually aware of that, but turning a blind eye because they know that unit is stationed in a rather harsh place, so they give them a break. When the accuser threatens to blow the whole affair up if no measures are taken, Tsukisamu is sent (under the guise of being a journalist) to capture the accuser and silence him. Tsukisamu actually, by sheer coincidence, almost immediately learns his target is Captain Hatozaki, but during a skirmish, Hatozaki is injured and the surgeon won't allow Tsukisamu to question him just yet. In fact, Hatozaki was in a pretty bad shape and some of the medicine applied to him have put him in a rather confused state, so while he has been given sedatives now, he has been locked inside a room in the medical quarter's for his own, but also other people's safety for when he wakes up. Tsukisamu sees Hatozaki sleeping in the room, but has to wait until he wakes up. In the middle of the night however, as Tsukisamu wanders around the military complex, he sees someone shooting the lock off the door to Hatozaki's room, and while he and the surgeon immediately nab the guy, when they open the door to check inside, they find Hatozaki gone! But how could that be: the door was opened only just now by shooting the lock off, so neither someone on the outside, nor Hatozaki on the inside could've opened the door earlier.

This story has a bit of the same as the previous story, where it's an okay howdunnit, though not feeling as well-clewed as the other stories. The howdunnit itself is not as good as the Kitayama story, though I guess it's more solvable than that story too, with more hints. Oddly enough, I think the best part of this story is the whydunnit behind the culprit's actions; that part is actually really original and by far the most memorable part of the story and I would actually have preferred to have seen this worked out for the whydunnit part of the project, rather than it now feeling as a "bonus" to a howdunnit.

The book has a bonus section, where the autors themselves take on the stories of the others, and they can be interesting to read. You can really see how their thinking processses work and how they pick up on clues and more. The accompanying essays on the project are also I think also very useful to aspiring writers, as you can get an idea of how they plot these kind of logical problems and have to explicitly make it solvable.

Suiri no Jiken Desu is on the whole a really solid volume though, and a must-read if you're into fair play puzzle plot mystery. While these stories don't really offer much room for characterization or fleshing out of the background, they are good showcases of how to do stories with a Challenge to the Reader, and especially Houjou's story is a great example of how to plot clues and how to guide a reader's thinking process in identifying the culprit. It's very likely this will end up as one of my favorite reads of this year, and I hope they'll do a similar project again in the future!

Original Japanese title(s): 『推理の時間です』: 法月綸太郎　「被疑者死亡により」/ 方丈貴恵 「封谷館の殺人」/ 我孫子武丸　「幼すぎる目撃者」/ 田中啓文 「ペリーの墓」/ 北山猛邦　「竜殺しの勲章」/ 伊吹亜門「波戸崎大尉の誉れ」

番外編： A Smart Dummy in the Tent

So for the last two months or so, I kept telling myself, don't forget to write an announcement, it'll take no time at all, it'll just be a short post.... And in the end, I still didn't manage to write this thing in time...

Last year, Locked Room International released the hilarious impossible crime mystery The 8 Mansion Murders by Takemaru ABIKO, translated by yours truly. That was not the first time Abiko had been translated to English, as some of his work for videogames (like The Starship Damrey (3DS)) had already been available in the West, but The 8 Mansion Murders was his first proper mystery novel which had been translated into English. I was obviously happy to see that the novel was received pretty well when it released (if you haven't read it yet, please do). For those who enjoyed the novel, I have good news, as more Abiko is available now. The June/August 2019 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (which should be available right now) features Abiko's impossible crime short story A Smart Dummy In The Tent (orig.: 1990), once again translated by me. The story is part of Abiko's Mario series, and stars a... ventriloquist's dummy as the detective. Yoshio is an incredibly gifted, but somewhat clumsy ventriloquist who performs together with his puppet Mario. However, Yoshio's great secret is that Mario isn't just a tool of his trade, Mario's a whole seperate personality of Yoshio. And despite his arrogant and wise-cracking personality, Mario's also actually really clever and sharp, which comes in handy in A Smart Dummy In The Tent, when Yoshio and his love interest Mutsuki get involved with an impossible crime that occurs in the backstage area of a circus tent.

Those who enjoyed the comedy and banter of The 8 Mansion Murders should really check out the story, as this one too is immensely fun to read, while the impossible crime angle of the story is also quite original, really fitting to the circus setting. I hope you'll enjoy the read! To end with a completely uninteresting note: I have been to the circus in real life only once, when I was a kid!

As for other projects and related announcements, that's a tale for another day. Another day that might not really ask for a DeLorean, but some patience will be necessary.

Long Shot

一射入魂

(四字熟語）

One's whole soul into one shot

(Japanese idiom)

Disclosure: I translated Abiko Takemaru's The 8 Mansion Murders. Also: the cover of today's book is amazing (the angle!).

Shinozaki Rin is a high school student who has been practicing the art of kyudo, or Japanese archery, since junior high. She's quite good at the martial art too, but as of late, she feels she might've hit a ceiling in her development cycle. While she trains several times a week in the school's archery club together with the other club members, she has also arranged she can visit the home of the retired teacher Tanahashi for some extra training. Tanahashi, who is an excellent archer herself and who used to be in charge of the school club, has a small private archery dojo built inside her own garden, and while she does not coach Rin anymore, she has allowed Rin to make use of the dojo for an hour or so in the weekend. One day however, Rin arrives at her old teacher's home only to find her path blocked by the police. A man was found dead with an arrow in his chest inside Tanahashi's archery dojo, and it is suspected that Rin's old teacher accidently shot the man when he walked into the dojo from the back door. Rin's knowledge of all the customs of Japanese archery allows her to poke a hole in the police's story and point the finger in the direction of the real murderer, and Rin unwittingly becomes famous a her school as the attractive prodigy archer detective. To Rin however, that's just more noise in her head as she tries to become better at archery in Abiko Takemaru's short story collection Rin no Tsurune ("The Sound of Rin's Bowstring", 2018).

I definitely have a weakness for mystery stories that involve specific fields or professions, and of course utilize those fields to come up with unique mystery plots. Come to think of it, I haven't read many stories that really utilize specific sports in the plot, save for the semi-frequent ones in Detective Conan (which can be both fun and educational). Anyway, I certainly knew very little about kyudo/Japanese archery and I can't think of any mystery story that's really built on that theme, so in any case, Rin no Tsurune wins points with its original subject matter. The specifics of kyudo are explained pretty well in this novel, emphasizing the fact that kyudo isn't 'just about shooting an arrow in the target', but also a highly ceremonial martial art where the spiritual/meditative aspect of the sport is at least as important as being able to aim and shoot.

Rin no Tsurune is both a mystery story and a YA novel, and perhaps it's best mentioned right away that while the book starts off with a fairly strong mystery vibe, this becomes less and less as you progress in the book. The first few stories feature some "classic" mystery situations that involve archery: the first story is about the murder at Tanahashi's home, but there's also a story for example about an expensive bamboo bow which has disappeared from the school dojo even though everyone was there training and the exit was being watched. The solutions to all these "conventional" mysteries involve specifics to kyudo, but it's a shame Abiko's not always playing fair: some deductions are based on facts about kyudo or the circumstances which aren't disclosed to the reader in advance, but only when Rin explains what has happened. So it's unlikely the reader, even if they had the knowledge about Japanese archery, would be able to completely solve these cases, and most of the time, you'll just go "Alright, that makes sense given the information you have just given me but not before". The way Rin deduces in the first story why it's at least unlikely the victim was shot by accident makes absolute sense for example in a logical way, but you'll never be able to guess it if you don't have knowledge about Japanese archery, and even then it's not really solvable, as the physical clue on which the deduction is based isn't explicitly mentioned until Rin does in her explanation.

After the first three stories or so however, the emphasis of the book definitely shifts towards the more conventional young adult novel, with some minor everyday life mysteries. Rin learns how other people see kyudo, she has her own teenager problems with what to do in the future and how she'll give kyodo in place in her life, and we also have semi-funny parts with Nakata of the school's newspaper club, who wants to make a movie about the "prodigy archer detective" Rin and the beautiful captain of the archery club Yuko (semi-funny, I say, because he's basically just stalking two girls with a camera). At this point however, the "mysteries" presented are hardly anything solvable to the reader however, and are more related to the psychology and motivation of the characters ("Why did they do that?"-type of mysteries). Some might enjoy this better than I did, but I was rather disappointed the "classic" type of mysteries were completely gone in this second half of the book.

As a YA sports novel, Rin no Tsurune can definitely entertain though. We follow Rin in her year as she slowly learns more about the sport she already thought she knew, and we see how all the characters all see kyudo in a different manner and want something else from the sport. We even have a tournament, because every sports story needs that!

Rin no Tsurune can perhaps better be described as a YA sports novel, that also has a few episodes featuring a mystery plot, than a mystery story with a sports element in it. I myself would've preferred the latter to be the case to be completely honest, but I did find the book entertaining as a sport comedy-type of story, especially as I knew next to nothing about kyudo before. But yeah, it's not as focused a mystery novel as you would first hope or expect and I wouldn't recommend this one if you're specifically looking for a puzzle plot mystery about Japanese archery.

Original Japanese title(s): 我孫子武丸『凛の弦音』

番外編：The 8 Mansion Murders Released

I really should stop doing announcements of upcoming announcements, because it always leaves me with next to nothing to say with the actual announcement...

So yeah, I have little to add to my previous post, but to say that Takemaru ABIKO's The 8 Mansion Murders (original Japanese title: 8 no Satsujin) is now finally available as both a trade paperback and e-book, translated by me and published by Locked Room International. The previous shin honkaku mystery novels brought by LRI were obviously inspired by Agatha Christie (The Decagon House Murders) and Ellery Queen (The Moai Island Puzzle), while also having their own, distinct voice: The 8 Mansion Murders continues that trend of building on the context of Golden Age mystery fiction, but within a modern, setting as the impossible murders committed with a crossbow within a curious 8-shaped house invoke clearly the spirit of John Dickson Carr, which is even emphasized with a genuine Locked Room Lecture. The 8 Mansion Murders is also by far the funniest novel I've translated until now, but don't let the comedy fool ya! Publishers Weekly said in its starrred review the book is "one of the funniest and cleverest novels of its type to hit the English-language market in years."

ABIKO was the third author to debut from the Kyoto University Mystery Club, after Yukito AYATSUJI (The Decagon House Murders) and Rintaro NORIZUKI ('The Lure of the Green Door') (ARISUGAWA Alice was also a student in Kyoto, but he was at Doshisha University). ABIKO's career in the mystery genre expands beyond novels, as he was also the mastermind behind the epoch-making Kamaitachi no Yoru videogame for the Super Famicom in the mid-90s, changing the form of mystery games (an English-language localized version titled Banshee's Last Cry is available on iOS/Android). The Starship Damrey (3DS) and 428 - Shibuya Scramble (first English release in 2018) are some other games he worked on that are available in English, but The 8 Mansion Murders will be the first time one of his novels is published in English translation.

For those who have read LRI's earlier releases of (shin) honkaku mystery novels: you probably know what you can expect, so why wait? For those who haven't yet: I actually think this is the most accessible one until now. Like with the other novels, there are a lot of references to classic mystery fiction, but the banter of the characters in The 8 Mansion Murders is really funny to read and the main impossible mysteries are a blast.

And that's it for today's service announcement. I hope you'll enjoy The 8 Mansion Murders!

番外編：The 8 Mansion Murders

It's that time of the year again! Hay fever? Well, yes, that too, but the last few years, the early spring has also been the period for me to do a service announcement that should interest those who like Japanese mystery fiction.

In 2015, I was more than excited to announce that Locked Room International would publish Yukito AYATSUJI's The Decagon House Murders, and that I was responsible for the translation of that ingenious homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. The year after, we followed up with Alice ARISUGAWA's The Moai Island Puzzle, a mystery novel I personally see as one of the greatest Japanese experiments in deduction, beating Ellery Queen at his own game. Both these novels were excellent examples of the shin honkaku, or new orthodox mystery novel movement that started in the second half of the eighties in Japan, when a group of young university students started making their debuts as professional writers with puzzle plot mysteries that harkened back on the Golden Age, but with an imbedded meta-concious tone. In 2017, I worked on The Ginza Ghost, a short story collection of (mostly) impossible mysteries from the 1930s-1940s by Keikichi OSAKA, a brilliant master of the short story who sadly enough became a forgotten writer after World War II, but who has recently regained a very appreciative audience.

For 2018, we're going back to shin honkaku, back to modern puzzle plot mysteries that pay homage to Golden Age mystery fiction, but also build upon that and even dare to go further. By now it's known that the shin honkaku movement was born in Kyoto, as most of the shin honkaku writers originated from Mystery Clubs from universities in the ancient capital of Japan. The most influential was the Kyoto University Mystery Club, where writers like Ayatsuji and Norizuki came from (Arisugawa came from Doshisha University's MC). For Locked Room International's third shin honkaku novel, we have the first novel of the third author who debuted from Kyoto University Mystery Club. Takemaru ABIKO's The 8 Mansion Murders was originally released in 1989, but the English version is scheduled to be released coming May. The novel's a tribute to the impossible crime mystery in the spirit of John Dickson Carr, which also happens to be a hilarious adventure. Comedy is a trademark of Abiko, but don't let the funny bickering between the various characters fool you, as the core is as classic as you can get, with impossible murders inside an odd, "8"-shaped house and! and a genuine locked room lecture!

Publishers Weekly has an early starrred review up and deemed The 8 Mansion Murders "one of the funniest and cleverest novels of its type to hit the English-language market in years." My own review from many years ago can be found here. Of the novels I've done for Locked Room International now, I think The 8 Mansion Murders is not only by far the funniest, it's also the most accessible I think, with a more classic, but certainly not less entertaining set-up.

Takemaru ABIKO writes mystery plots for a wide variety of mediums, and has especially been influential in the videogame world. The game Kamaitachi no Yoru was a genuine game-changer for mystery games back in the mid-90s (the first where you had to input the name of the culprit yourself!), and an English localized version is available on iOS and Android under the name Banshee's Last Cry. He has also worked on the 3DS mystery/science-fiction game The Starship Damrey and on certain scenarios of the fantastic 428 (English release 2018). The 8 Mansion Murders however will be the first time one of his novels will be translated into English.

Anyway, I hope you'll have as much fun with The 8 Mansion Murders as I had with translating it. The book will once again feature an introduction by Soji SHIMADA, and (a lot!) of footnotes both by the author himself and me. For those who enjoyed The Decagon House Murders and/or The Moai Island Puzzle, I'd say this is a must-read, as it builds on the same tradition, but with a very different tone from those works.

Make Up Tonight

記憶のファイルを風がめくってくわ

take it easy, it's not easy

「Make Up Tonight」（河合夕子）

The wind's leafing through the files of my memory

Take it easy, it's not easy

"Make Up Tonight" (Kawai Yuuko)

Nazotoki Live ("Mystery Solving Live") is a mystery program produced by NHK with a unique twist: viewers at home (as well as three studio guests) are encouraged to participate actively with the mystery-solving process. The show consists of two parts: a mystery drama part, which is occasionally interrupted by a live studio segment. It's during these breaks that the guests (as well as the viewers) are asked questions related to the mystery drama, that help organize the facts and clues presented in the drama part. Everyone is given a few minutes to think and answer, with points awarded to correct answers (viewers at home can input their answers through their TV remotes, the studio guests can do it live in the studio). Then the show returns to the mystery drama again, and rinse and repeat until the mystery is solved. A perfect score results in eternal fame (a similar show, Anraku Isu Tantei, actually offered a monetary award by the way)

The show appears on television about once a year, and last year, I reviewed 2016's Shikakukan no Misshitsu Satsujin Jiken ("The Murder Case of the Locked Room of the Square House"), which was written by Ayatsuji Yukito. It was the first time I saw the show, but I really loved how they made an otherwise complex mystery very accessible to the viewers at home, as it was a fair mystery plot, but it was also obvious the creators did their best to keep it comprehensible for the viewers at home, as a live mystery drama is another format than a book for example, which asks for different approaches.

The shows are always written by mystery writers, and 2015's entry of this show, Bihakujima Satsujin Jiken ("The Bihaku Island Murder Case"), was written by Abiko Takemaru. In a way, he's perfect for these kinds of shows actually, as he has a lot of experience with recreating the fun of mystery fiction with the help of interactive media. The highly influential novel game Kamaitachi no Yoru was a creation of his for example. The two episodes of this show were broadcast on July 18th and 19th, 2015. Bihaku is a Japanese word meaning 'beautifully white', referring to the classic Japanese idea of beauty that says a woman's skin should be white. The word is often used for skin care products. Bihaku Island is thus a nickname the island got because a local fruit is being used in the products of a succesful make-up company. The director of that company is visiting the island because she'll model for a new company promotion poster. The members of Detective Club CATS, Miko (the brains), Momo (aspirant-photographer) and Momo's brother Ao (policeman) are also part of the group, because Momo got a job as photography assistant. It doesn't take long for Miko, Momo and Ao to see that the director of the make-up company is a rather unpleasant woman, and as decided by the Laws of Mystery Fiction, this director is of course the victim in this murder mystery. Miko and Momo, as well as the studio guests and the viewers back home, will need to figure out what the victim's dying message meant and most importantly: who did it?

For those interested in videogames: it might be interesting to learn that game creator Ishii Jirou was one of the studio guests. He has directed games like 428, but also produced games like 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, so he has quite an affinity for mystery fiction. In fact, he did exceedingly good in this show. Takumi Shuu, creator of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney game series, would also be a guest the following year by the way.

I have to be honest, and say that as a mystery show, I think 2016's Shikakukan no Misshitsu Satsujin Jiken was a lot more enjoyable. Not that Bihakujima Satsujin Jiken is a bad mystery story. It's only... too predictable. The mystery genre, like most genre fiction, is very dependent on tropes, whether they're used straight or subverted. Bihakujima Satsujin Jiken however uses all tropes in a rather straight, uninspired way. A dying message? Of course it's never what it seems at first sight. And of course the one with the camera was assaulted because he filmed something he shouldn't have. As a pure whodunnit, this story relies on the old-fashioned 'elimination' method to arrive at the right criminal (identify characteristics the murderer must have or must not have, and then comparing them to those of the suspects, and eliminate everyone who does not fit the description from the list), but the manner in which the list of suspects is cut short is again rather classic, and never surprising. In fact, I think studio guest Ishii commented on each question that 'If we'd go the classic way, then the answer would be...' and he got it right every time. If you're familiar with these kinds of whodunnit mysteries, this story is a bit too classically structured, and there's little new to be found here. I also found it frustrating there were a lot of obvious red herrings. I don't mind red herrings, but at least give them some meaning, rather than dumping a truck load of them in the story, but never bothering to flesh them out in a meaningful manner (like hinting at subplots that never come to fruition because they were just red herrings; that's just lazy. Give them some closure!).

What I think is great about this show is how it allows for mystery stories that are usually too complex for television. The intermezzzos between the drama parts allow for the studio guests, but also the viewers to organize all the new information they get. The goal of the questions asked during these intermezzos are in fact precisely that: organizing information / pushing the ideas of the viewers in the right way. Because there's a bit of help along the way, the stories themselves can become much more complex than the usual mystery drama. You'd think that having to create a fair play mystery with participants (studio guests and people at home) would result in a mystery plot that'd be easier to solve, but not here: the writers make use of the extended time, and the fact they can gently guide people to the solution through the intermezzo questions to create plots that are quite complex.

One important factor is the fact all participants have access to "evidence cards": the necessary clues to solve the mystery. These cards, which show all the characters and evidence (for example, a card with the dying message), allow everyone to keep all the important facts at hand. Another interesting feature is the use of the homepage: during the broadcast of this show, people could go the official website to find additional evidence, like a panorama picture of the crime scene, so people could examine the crime scene themselves. In the studio, they even have handy alibi charts ready for the guests. I really like how the program really gives the viewers at home a good look at everything in detail. With all the facts at hand, the focus is less on small details, but more on the logic of getting everything to fit (and I like that better in a mystery story).

Overall, I'd say Bihakujima Satsujin Jiken is an okay mystery story that fits perfectly with the unique concept of the program, but it's also a story that is rather predictable and perhaps too classic. I had hoped for something like Shikakukan no Misshitsu Satsujin Jiken, which had something extra to surprise the viewer with. I wouldn't say this show was lacking, but it was definitely nothing more than I had expected.

Original Japanese title(s): 『謎解きLive 美白島殺人事件』

A Riddle For Puppets

ほら　ti ta ta ta

ガラスの針 十二回の刻（とき）を打てば

聖なるの夜　七頭の影が

無力な人形　に手を伸ばす

『Marionette Fantasia』 (Garnet Crow)

Look ti ta ta ta

When the glass hands strike twelve

On the holy night, my shadow reaches its hand out

to the lifeless puppet

"Marionette Fantasia" (Garnet Crow)

Clowns. Puppets. I fear them. That's all.

After a great performance at a kindergarten by ventriloquist Yoshio and his little partner Mario, kindergarten teacher Mutsuki 's interest in the shy, but gifted young man is aroused. But as the two get closer, Mutsuki discovers Yoshio has a secret: the puppet Mario isn't just a tool with which Yoshio performs his art, but is a seperate personality within Yoshio. Getting a bit too deep into ventiloquism has given Yoshio both a gift and a curse: his ventriloquism is fantastic, but unlike Yoshio, Mario has a fast mouth and can't always be controlled. But Mario is also in possession of some very impressive deductive facilities, which come in handy as Mutsuki, Yoshio and Mario have a tendency to run into crimes in Abiko Takemaru's short story collection Ningyou wa Kotatsu de Suiri Suru ("The Puppet Deduces From The Kotatsu", 1990), first of a four part series.

Ningyou wa Kotatsu de Suiri Suru is the first story, and lends its name to the collection. After a show in a kindergarten, Mutsuki discovers the secret of Yoshio and Mario. The three work together to find out what the connection is between a series of mysterious events that have been happening at the kindergarten since after Yoshio's show: rabbits have died, a food bucket has been pushed over and other little, yet worrying events. And....the solution is pretty obvious, as it is very similar to that one famous short story of a very, very famous writer. The focus of this story lies not in the mystery of the kindergarten, but simply on the introduction of the main characters Mutsuki, Yoshio and Mario. And even more: the writer goes some length in fleshing out the kindergarten environment, with fellow teachers and the children popping up, but they don't actually reappear in later stories:  in the afterword writer Abiko Takemaru says he had indeed first planned to use the kindergarten as a recurring setting, but for some reason it just didn't happen.

Ningyou wa Tent de Suiri Suru ("The Puppet Deduces In The Tent") is easily the best story in the collection and a fun short locked room mystery too! Yoshio is booked for a big circus-esque outdoor show with magicians, card throwers and other performers and after a great show, Mutsuki, Yoshio and Mario go backstage to one of the resting rooms in the big top circus tent, where they talk with some of the performers. Then one of the performers is found murdered in his own resting room on the other side of the big top, and the only suspect is Yoshio's good friend and fellow ventriloquist Haruka, who was the only person who had entered and left that specific resting room with the victim. The entrance to the room had been under constant observation by people of the staff working nearby, so either Haruka did it, or the murderer managed to get into the observed room... unobserved. The solution Mario comes up with is simple, but good and really fits the atmosphere of the story collection: nothing too complex, but satisfying and quite memorable.

In Ningyou wa Gekijou de Suiri Suru ("The Puppet Deduces In The Theater"), Mutsuki, Yoshio and Mario happen to see the inspector they met in the previous story during a theater perfomance of Der Ring des Nibelungen. They are told about the recent murder of a CEO, who had left a semi-dying message: his diary showed that the victim had been dreaming of being assaulted since a long time ago, by someone or something he called "Siegfried". But the police have no idea whom the victim meant with Siegfried. Even after watching (sleeping through) Der Ring didn't help, so the inspector asks for Mutsuki and Yoshio for help (he doesn't know that Mario's the one who solved the previous case). A semi code cracking / dying message story about finding out the identity of the murderer based on the victim's diary  (similar to Arisugawa Alice's Yaneura no Sanposha) and it's... an okay story. Like many stories that are based on purely the interpretation of a dying message, the final solution can feel a bit arbitrary and this time, it also involves dream interpretations, but I think this was not a bad story at any rate.

And I wouldn't say that the final story, Ningyou wo Nakushita Fukuwajutsushi ("The Ventriloquist Who Lost His Puppet"), is bad per se, but definitely the weakest of the four in this collection. Yoshio is booked for a performance on TV, but the case which holds Mario disappears from the dressing room after Yoshio's show, and then Mario is found 'murdered' in the parking lot of the broadcasting studio. Who would go the trouble of 'killing' a puppet? And can Mutsuki and Yoshio solve the problem and avenge Mario's death? My main complaint about this story is that the main deduction that drives the story towards its conclusion is based on a very ridiculous prejudiced idea, which seemed only appropiate for a fake solution. Also, it's very similar to the first story actually. There's some nice bits about Yoshio having to deal with the death of his other personality, but as a mystery story, I don't really like this finale.

Overall, I think Ningyou wa Kotatsu de Suiri Suru is a fun short story collection. The atmosphere is light and pleasant, with just a bit of main character teasing that we've come to expect from Abiko Takemaru (see also the Hayami siblings series and especially Tooru in the Kamaitachi no Yoru series). A (seperate personality inside a) puppet as an armchair detective is a pretty original and the collection, while short, is quite varied. Ningyou wa Tent de Suiri Suru in particular is quite good as a locked room mystery.

But I can't be the only one who thinks that having a seperate personality represented by a ventriloquist' dummy is a bit creepy, right? It's supposed to be cute and all, I think, but I can't help but think this will all go wrong one day and Mario will go wild.

Anyway, Ningyou wa Kotatsu de Suiri Suru is a short, but fine collection with a slightly scary protagonist, but if you don't have a fear for dolls, you should be fine.

Original Japanese title(s): 我孫子武丸 『人形はこたつで推理する』: 「人形はこたつで推理する」 /  「人形はテントで推理する」 / 「人形は劇場で推理する」 / 「人形をなくした腹話術師」

Risky Room

番人：「そこまで脱獄を・・・一体何がお前をそうさせる？！」

囚人Ａ：「プリゾン・ブレイク！」

囚人Ｂ：「海外ドラマか！マジかよお前？くだらないって」

番人：「…参ったな。あれ、面白いもんな。」

『レッドシアター』：　ジャングルポケットＸ牢屋

Guard: "Why do you want to escape from this prison that much? What is driving you to do all of this?!"

Prisoner A: ".... Prison Break!"

Prisoner B: "A television series! You serious?! That's just stupid!"

Guard: "...Damn. I have to admit, that is really a cool series!"

"Red Theater" Jungle Pocket X Jail Sketch

I said to myself last month, I have a review backlog of four, five items, so I should post a bit more often in November. And then I noticed we're already about one third into the month with just one review finished. Aaargh. Man, november? It's almost time to start thinking about which pieces of mystery fiction I consumed this year were the best!

The 2013 film Kankin Tantei ("The Confined Detectives") starts with a fateful encounter between Ryouta and Akane. Might sound like the start of a romantic movie, if not for the fact the two are standing in the apartment across Ryouta's one, and that the inhabitant of this apartment, the model Rena, lies dead on the floor. Both claim to have just discovered the body, but seeing the doubtful eyes of Akane (a friend of Rena), he decides to take Akane prisoner in his room, until he can find evidence to clear his own name. Akane, tied to Ryouta's bed, however seems not even fazed by her imprisonment and claims she will be able to solve Rena's murder even from the confines of this room. The time limit is the next morning, when Rena's absence from her work will be noticed. Can Ryouta and Akane solve the murder from within this 'locked room'?

When I first heard about this film, I was really interested. It is based on a comic written by Abiko Takemaru (who seems to dabble a lot in 'modern' media like games and manga) and the concept of basically an armchair detective movie, only with the detectives confined to a room, i.e. a locked room mystery of sorts (if you interpret the words in a different way), seemed awesome.

I used the part tense, because while the concept was fun, the execution was less... intellectually stimulating, as it was basically actress Natsuna in a variety of alluring poses tied to a bed. Which is definitely an effective way of making the detective genre film a lot more atttractive.

As a detective story, Kankin Tantei does a lot wrong, but also a little bit good. The first half hour has a great sense of speed, as Akane and Ryouta slowly learn more about each other through deductions (in a Sherlock Holmes way), and try to find out why both of them were in Rena's room. It never goes really deep, but I guess it works for a film (which just offers less room for really deep, abstract deduction chains). It's also in this first half where Akane and Ryouta slowly find out who might have killed Rena and why.

The fact that they first used 'normal' deductions to figure each other out kinda sets the viewer on the wrong track, because a lot of the inital discoveries surrounding Rena's murder is done by the Wondrous Internet and Magic Applications and Hacking For Dummies. Which... is kinda lame. The truth behind Rena's murder is very disappointing too, and the 'hints' laid down are ridiculous; as if they suddenly remembered they actually needed a murderer, and hints leading to him, and forcefully wrote them in the script. A lot of the happenings in this movie feel like script filler (especially the second half of the film), which is seldom a good thing, and especially not in a detective movie, which ideally is a neatly structured story presenting a good mystery.

There is also the 'problem' of Akane sorta trying to escape from her imprisonment. The first few minutes are quite tenseful, when she's tied to the bed (and Ryouta for no other feasible reason but to live out his fantasies sits on top of her as if that is the most logical way to keep a kidnapped girl quiet), and you're not quite sure what's going to happen and if she's going to escape, but after that first part, you'll see plenty of chances for Akane to get help, but she doesn't. The concept of a confined detective, a detective being forced to solve a crime can be quite exiting (see the last story in volume 38 of Detective Conan for example, but here there never seems to be any real danger. Akane teases Ryouta a lot, even though he is supposed to be her imprisoner. It doesn't help that a lot of the scenes of Akane tied up are obvious fanservice shots with actress Natsuna, so it's kinda hard to take them serious.

But I said the film did some good, right? Well, the puzzle of Rena's murderer was solved kinda badly, there is one aspect of the mystery that was actually done quite well. The hints were nicely spread across the whole movie. During the whole film, I had wondered about little bits and pieces of the plot, thinking they were just signs of bad writing, but all these little things actually came together in a logical way and it was quite well done, I think. If only the whole plot had seen this much care.

While not a great movie by any standard, I am glad I can say Kankin Tantei isn't a total wreck and I did find several aspects quite amusing. Not something to really recommend, but if you have nothing else to do, want to see a bit of mystery, a bit of Natsuna tied to a bed, then it's not that bad a film.

Original Japanese title(s): 『監禁探偵』

Murder in Three Acts

「好き好き大好き　好き好き大好き

好き好き大好き　愛しているって言わなきゃ殺す」

『好き好き大好き」(戸川純）

"I love you, I love you, I really love you 

I love you, I love you, I really love you

I love you, I love you, I really love you

If you don't say I love you, I'll kill you"

"I love you, I love you, I really love you" (Togawa Jun)

My first encounter with Abiko Takemaru was probably with the fun Tantei Eiga, but I mostly associate him with games. He is strongly connected with Kamaitachi no Yoru and Trick X Logic, excellent detective games and while not a detective game per se, I have been having a bit of fun with his newest game. Besides the above, I've read his Hayami siblings series, which is a light-hearted, orthodox detective series which usually goes through the familiar and loved motions, but occasoinally has trouble really setting it apart from the crowd. At any rate, these works of his all feature a humorous tone to them, which is why I always associated Abiko with humor. Which might have been wrong.

Abiko Takemaru's 1992 novel Satsuriku ni Itaru Yamai ("Illness Into Massacre") starts with the arrest of Gamou Minoru, a serial killer who had been killing and raping women (in that specific order) in Tokyo. Like the famous Jack the Ripper case, this serial killer also had the nasty habit of cutting off breasts and other body parts from his victims. The story then rewinds and we are told how this horrible case started from the viewpoints of three people: Minoru, the serial killer who has finally found 'true' love by embracing necrophilia; Masako, who lately has started to suspect her son from being the infamous serial killer and Higuchi, an elderly ex-cop, who lost a friend to the serial killer and wishes to find the murderer.

First thing that has to be mentioned: the text can be quite graphic at times. Really graphic. In fact, I really do wonder why it is so graphic. It only seems to be there for the shock-factor. I mean, OK, we have a necrophiliac murderer, so it is already a bit nastier than your regular serial murder mystery, but you really don't have to go into every detail of how and when and especially how. I get it's a horrible murder without pages on how Minoru is getting sexually aroused and how he did this and that to his victims. It's something completely different from the actions we seen taken by romantically clumsy protagonists of Kamaitachi no Yoru and the Hayami siblings series!

Written several years after the infamous little girl murder case (where Miyazaki Tsutomu killed several young girls and sexually abused / ate parts of their corpses), Satsuriku ni itaru Yamai touches upon sensitive parts of the society at the time. And I won't go into that in detail, because I figure there are probably reviews out there that discuss that better than I could and there is probably a lot of material out there that are more informative on the issues of families growing apart, the father as a male role model to the son, etcetera etcetera, but for those interested in the topic, you might want to check out Satsuriku ni itaru Yamai and vice versa.

So is there value in reading Satsuriku ni itaru Yamai, besides the graphic descriptions of the murders? Yes, and no. If you can make it through the murders and manage to get into the tales of the psychopathic Minoru, the paranoid mom and the self-blaming Higuchi, then you'll be served a neat surprise at the end of the story. At the end. After going through all the gory and disturbing murders. It is a fun thing Abiko did here in regards of the plot (though, strictly speaking, it seems to serve no other real function than just being a surprise aimed at the reader), but people might give up halfway through the story, never reaching that special moment. Of course, if you're into slash-horror, than you'll have no problem with the novel and than it's definitely a great read, but don't expect clean blows with blunt instruments and polite, dandy suspects in a country house.

Satsuriku ni itaru Yamai is often counted as one of Abiko Takemaru's best, if not his best novel, which probably depends heavily on your taste in mystery novels. I defintiely like the classic 8 no Satsujin a lot better than this novel,  though it definitely is a memorable one, even if mostly for the gore.

Original Japanese title(s): 我孫子武丸　『殺戮にいたる病』

Haunted House Hang-Up

 「恋人同士だったわけであるまいし、いい加減、ふっきらなければ。いつでも学生時代の思い出を引きずるなて、女々しすぎる　―われながら、そう思う」

『真かまいたちの夜　１１人目の訪問者（サスペクト）』

"It wasn't like we were dating. I have to stop thinking about my student days and get over it like a man, I thought"

"True Night of the Kamaitachi - The Eleventh Suspect"

March will probably be a bit light on review posts, because I'll be moving back to the Netherlands in a few weeks, meaning my reading schedule will suffer a bit. Then again, I haven't been posting in a regular schedule since... quite some time anyway. It wouldn't be much different from previous months, if I were to post four or five reviews in the last week of March, I guess..

Readers of this blog might remember that I absolutely love the Kamaitachi no Yoru ("Night of the Kamaitachi") games. The first game introduced us to the duo of Tooru and Mari, who find themselves trapped with a brutal murderer in a pension cut off from the outside world because of a snowstorm. Tooru and Mari returned also for the second and third game, but with the story of this duo (and the accompanying cast) finished in the third entry, Chunsoft was free to create a new cast and setting for the latest Kamaitachi no Yoru.

Shin Kamaitachi no Yoru 11 Ninme no Suspect ("True Night of the Kamaitachi - The Eleventh Suspect") starts with aspiring young writer Sakamaki Kaito traveling to the prefecture of Iwate to gather information for his newest book. He's booked for a stay at the pension Brownie, which lies somewhere far away in the snowy mountains (of course). At Brownie, Kaito is reunited with Tachibana Kyouka, the girl whom he has been in love with since college and who (secretly) serves as his writing muse (in fact, Kaito only came to Iwate, because Kyouka's parental home is here). Kyouko in return is here in her function as the editor (and aspiring reporter) for a travel magazine. Kaito sees this as a chance to rekindle his friendship with Kyouka, but this wouldn't be a Kamaitachi no Yoru game if something didn't prevent the couple from getting closer: a dead body is found in the bathing area. And disappears. Only to reappear again. With the roads blocked because of the snow and the strange phenomenon of Brownie having eleven guests, even though only ten guests made reservations, a night of fright starts for Kaito and Kyouka.

Kamaitachi no Yoru X3 introduced a complex storyline zapping system, but Shin Kamaitachi no Yoru is in many ways back to the basics. We're back to the simple sound-novel system of having text on the screen (accompanied by backgrounds and silhouettes as the only visuals) and the player is presented with choices at several points, which determine how the story develops. Make the right choices and you unravel the mystery, make the bad choices and you end up dead. Probably. This was done expertly in the first Kamaitachi no Yoru, where it starts out as a 'normal' detective game, but make the wrong deductions and the wrong choices, and everyone starts suspecting each other, usually resulting in splatter-horror. Yet these bad endings don't come out of nowhere and they usually contain small hints that lead you to the real ending.

Which is maybe why I didn't really like Shin Kamaitachi no Yoru. It is the only sound-novel I've played until now where I actually got the real ending in one go. Without seeing one bad end. Normally, you'd be happy with such results, but seeing bad endings is one of the more amusing points of the Kamaitachi no Yoru games. You could make an argument then for me to purposely aiming for bad endings, but that isn't fun either. I want to get fooled, to be tricked into a bad ending. Not trying to die on purpose. This point is also related to how easy this time the story was: I had actually already solved the case before we even found the body (can you call it solving then?), because of the all-too obvious hint that pointed at the murderer. I kept hoping that it wouldn't end up the way I suspected it would, but no such luck.
 
It's of course somewhat of a contradiction, like Takumi Shuu noted: with mysteries, you want to solve the case yourself at one hand, but you want to get baffled by the case too. You want to be able solve it, and also not. It is hard to really solve this conundrum: Takumi Shuu tried to solve it by constantly presenting the player with new, contradicting situations, allowing you to solve, get baffled and solve again. Novels usually only have one solution, giving them only one chance to baffle the reader, which is also the one chance of giving the reader the pleasure of solving case (if they managed it). And I think that Kamaitachi no Yoru coped well with the conundrum by constantly trying to lead you to bad endings (thus baffling / surprising the reader several times), but you do get that triumphant feeling readers also seek when you finally reach that good ending. With Shin Kamaitachi no Yoru, I feel like I missed out on a big part of what makes the series so good.

The things I did like? The original Kamaitachi no Yoru had a slight supernatural tone to it, with people suggesting that 'sickle weasles',  youkai, might have commited the murder. The second game also had this supernatural tone to the story, but the third game got rid of that. This time, we're presented with the legends surrounding good and evil zashiki warashi, which is a really fun theme and actually weaven quite good in the story. Also, I liked the new heroine Kyouka a lot more than old protagonist Mari. Kaito on the other hand is even worse with interacting with his love-interest than old protagonist Tooru, which can be a bit tiring.

Shin Kamaitachi no Yoru is released on both the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita (I borrowed a Vita), which actually shouldn't really matter for a game that is mostly text. But however Chunsoft felt a need to modernize things. In a bad way. First up is the 3D search mode, that forces players out of the text and has them looking for suspicious spots in a location. This is a first in the series and implemented in quite a bad way (let's ignore the fact that the Vita version is set default at a 3D search mode that uses the gyroscope!): you have no idea what you're supposed to look for and you only get one chance to investigate something. You're just out of luck if you chose to look at the table instead of the chair, even though there is absolutely nothing that would indicate why one item would be more worthy of some attention than the other.

Second problem is the use of voice actors to voice some lines of the characters. The text in Kamaitachi no Yoru is divided in dialogue lines spoken by the characters and the narration, and dialogue lines are often voiced, but not always. Which is really distracting. I'd rather they'd not use voice actors, as I've always felt Kamaitachi no Yoru was closer to a book than to any voiced medium, but if you do choose to use voice actors, voice all lines instead of 70%.

And to make it a real product of its time, Chunsoft also decided that you can download extra content for some extra money. The term DLC (downloadable contents) might not be as familiar to mystery readers as to gamers, but it is ridiculous I'd have to pay extra for scenarios which in previous entries were simply part of the whole package!

Overall a disappointing Kamaitachi no Yoru. This is not the way the series should go, and I hope Chunsoft takes a good look at what they want to do with this series.

Original Japanese title(s): 『真かまいたちの夜　１１人目の訪問者（サスペクト）』

Zero Focus

"The record, therefore, which I am about to set down is the first complete and unedited history of the Greene holocaust. It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to state that I have received official permission for my task. I feel that now the truth should be known, for it is history, and one should not shrink from historical facts. Also, I believe that the credit for the solution of this case should go where it belongs"

"The Greene Murder Case"

Warning: there is a big chance that the next post to be published, will be about Sherlock Holmes reincarnated as a dog. You have been warned.

Man, I have postponing writing the review for 0 no Satsujin for so long, that I actually read the sequel in the meantime. Yes, I am good at postponing things. So let's just make this a double review to get it all over with: today, the last two novels in Abiko Takemaru's Hayami siblings series. I had already reviewed 8 no Satsujin a couple of months ago and this is one of those rare, very rare cases where I read the books in a series 1) in the right order and 2) complete the series within a relatively short space in time.  The first novel in the series (also Abiko Takemaru's debut) was really fun and a well-constructed, but not particularly surprising impossible crime novel I t was not bad in any way however and Abiko has a very easy to read writing style, which makes his novels ideal as 'filler' material between 'heavier' reading material.

Police detective Hayami Kyouzou is having another difficult case in 0 no Satsujin ("The 0 Murders"), surrouding the small family of wealthy (and old!) heiress Fujita Katsu. Her only living relatives are her younger brother Genji and her nephew and niece Kushida Tatsuo and Hiroko. In fact, these people don't have any family of their own either, so these four people are all they have in the world. And someone is killing them, one by one, starting with the poisoning murder on not the old Katsu, but instead her young niece Hiroko! Why kill someone with no money? Who has any reason for killing off a small family with almost no ties to the outside world? Kyouzou has no idea, so he calls in the help of two experts on family holocausts in fiction: his younger brother and sister Shinji and Ichio, who happen to be huge fans of detective fiction.

The novel starts quite surprising with not a Challenge to the Reader, but a Notice of the Writer, where Abiko sorta tells the reader he left enough clues for the reader to deduce who the murderer is, and he is even so nice as to give you a list of suspects, saying that all other characters are definitely not involved with the murders. The tone of the Notice might not be very aggressive, but yes, this is just a nicer written Challenge to the Reader. I thought it pretty interesting as most novels don't feature a Challenge to the Reader until the point where all hints are given, which can also make a Challenge to the Reader come as a surprise. If you are not expecting it to be such a detective novel, your 'reading mode' might be totally different. In that sense, it is more fair to include such a Challenge at the beginning and I think it might also be a remnant of Abiko's time at the Kyoto University Mystery Club, where Guess the Criminal scripts are technically all stories feature a Challenge to the Reader.

The puzzle of the holocaust of the family is rather easy to solve though and while the story is definitely fun to read (again, Abiko's writing style is very easy to read), I wouldn't recommend this novel that easily. I would definitely recommend it if you like Abiko's sense of humor (as seen in his other novels, or Kamaitachi no Yoru) and it is certainly not a bad detective novel (though it is sure to be seen with some disagreeing eyes by some mystery fans), but it is also I think the weakest of the three Hayami sibling novels, with actually little incentives that keep the reader attached to the text besides the easy-to-read style. The slapstick humor is also toned down a bit, which makes 0 no Satsujin a rather dry and short book, that at times feels more like an extended plot-outline than a fullfledged novel.

Möbius no Satsujin ("The Möbius Murders"), set just after the events in the previous novel, presents Kyouzou with a new partner (the female detective Kijima) and a new case: a mysterious series of murders in metropolitan Tokyo. The victims vary from little children to elderly men. The only thing that suggests a link between the seperate murders: notes left at the murder scenes with enigmatic number-sequences on them ("2-2", "3-1" etc.). What is the missing link that exists between the seemingly random murders and will Kyouzou be able to stop the murderer? Meanwhile, we also follow the 'adventures' of a teenager called Shiina Toshio, who together with an unknown partner has been going around killing people...

Möbius no Satsujin starts out as a serial murder case like The ABC Murders, then turns into a missing link story like Cat of Many Tails, interspersed with suspense elements where we follow the named murderer. Seems a bit chaotic, but it works and the first two-thirds of this story are very fun to read. It might feel a bit light for some readers too: Abiko's trademark easy writing and slapstick humor kinda undermines the gravity of a serial killer on the loose in the city, but if you can accept that, this should provide for a few hours of entertainment.

Some elements of the the missing link part of the story are good, some not so. The link between the murders is a pretty original one, but the concept behind the enigmatic number sequences left at the crime scenes is almost impossible to guess a priori. The missing link is also revealed halfway through the story, shifting the focus of the investigation towards finding the murderers, but that part is definitely the worst part of the story, with a really unbelievable identity of Toshio's partner. It might have worked if this story was written in a different tone, but it just doesn't work here. It feels so out of tone, that it leaves a somewhat bad aftertaste, despite the entertaining main body of the story.

Taking these two novels together with 8 no Satsujin, it becomes a bit more clear what Abiko did with this series though. 8 no Satsujin featured an impossible murder, 0 no Satsujin the holocaust of a family, Möbius no Satsujin serial murders and a missing link. With all three novels, Abiko used a famous trope of older detective fiction, which he examined using the characters of Shinji and Ichio. Shinji and Ichio constantly reference Golden Age novels when contemplating about the cases, effectively acting as proxies for the genre-savvy reader. Abiko also subverses the tropes in several ways in his novels (I won't go into details for fear of spoiling people). Of course, the detective genre is one that makes extensive use of tropes and subversing them, but there is a difference between coming up with a new solution for an existing trope in the genre, and actually starting kicking at the fundementals of said tropes. These novels make Abiko's place in the history of New Orthodox novels a bit clearer to me at least.

Taken apart, these novels are certainly amusing stories, but they are not what I'd first think of when talking about the New Orthodox writers. I would not advice people to not read them either though, as they are competently written mystery novels. Taken as a set, the three Hayami siblings novels becme a place Abiko manages to have a small discussion about Golden Age novels. Together, they form a better way to explain his position within New Orthodox detective fiction, but I think that in terms of pure originality, Abiko's influence in the genre of mystery gaming is far more important than his novels, so if you had to choose, I'd say you'd need to go play Kamaitachi no Yoru instead.

Original Japanese title(s): 我孫子武丸　『０の殺人』 『メビウスの殺人』