The Case of the Photo Finish

 Where do I 

Fit in the picture of your world

"Impossible" (Nadia Gifford)

Most of the books I discuss on the blog are part of a series, and I have mentioned before that's because I generally do like reading series. It's just convenient knowing, with some wiggle space, what you could expect from a certain book in advance if it's a series work, so I often end up reading a book in a series I am already familiar with (or perhaps of a writer I already know). If I read a book with the most brilliant alibi trick ever, it is just unlikely a book in the same series (written in the same period?) will turn out to be the absolute worst mystery novel I ever read, or at least, I assume so. So when I don't have any titles I want to read immediately for one reason or another, I usually end up picking up a book in a series I already know.

Not all series actually benefit from... being a series though, I realized as I read Aizawa Sako's Invert II - Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku ("Invert II - The Blind Spot in the Finder", 2022). This is the third book featuring Jouzuka Hisui, an attractive, mysterious woman who is a self-proclaimed "spiritual counselor". In the brilliant first book from 2019, Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui ("Medium - The Medium Detective Jouzuka Hisui"), we learned that as a spirit medium, she had the power to channel of the deceased and see flashes of their dying moments. In the book, she teamed up with a mystery writer, who had to reverse-engineer Hisuis visions and find real proof and come up with a supporting line of reasoning to present to the police, as they weren't likely to believe them just saying "she channeled the victim". The book was exciting from start to finish, and could surprise you any time because it would use Hisui's abilities in rather unexpected ways. The second book, Invert - Jouzuka Hisui Toujoshuu ("Invert - A Collection of the Inverted Stories of Jouzuka Hisui" 2021), managed to keep this element of surprise and an air of mystery surrounding Hisui by presenting inverted mystery stories: by this time, the police is, reluctantly, working with Hisui as they recognize she has certain abilities that allows her to pull of things others can't, even though they don't really understand how and in Invert, we followed three different murderers who would be approached by a rather mysterious woman who'd claim she had channeling powers. At first, none of these murderers believe her of course, but you can imagine the shock when she tells the murderers things only the victim would know happened at the time of the murder, and she'd slowly connect those visions to real evidence of their guilt. What made this book work, once again, was that we never saw too much of Hisui and never knew what she had up her sleeve: in the first book we saw from the POV of the mystery writer who had to interpret her visions, in the second book we mainly follow the murderers. Invert II - Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku is, as the title suggest, however following the same format as the first Invert: the book contains two stories (one short story and one basically long enough to be considered a novel on its own). This of course already takes away a bit of the surprise element, as the book more-or-less follows the same formula as the previous book and it does feel like more of the same, which is very disappointing: I remember being very excited to realize how the format had changed between Medium and Invert, allowing for more surprises and mystery around Hisui, but Invert II just follows the trodden path.

Which isn't helped by a second element of this book I didn't really like: the focus on Hisui as a character. I think this is because the Jouzuka Hisui series had turned into a multimedia franchise by the time these stories were written: there's a manga adaptation by the artist behind the The Decagon House Murders manga and a live-action drama series started airing around the same period Invert II - Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku was released (with the first story adapted in the series too). The live-action series is pretty interesting by the way because it actually changed titles midway: the first half was based on, and named after Medium, but once they got past those stories, the series changed titles to Invert, and a new promotional poster was released, making it technically a "different" series (and of course, the stories then shifted to the inverted mystery format). But I have the feeling both stories found in Invert II were written with this expansion into different media in mind, with a bigger focus on Hisui as the protagonist, with probably more scenes focusing on Hisui personally and her private life in this book alone than in the two previous books combined. Like I mentioned earlier, one of the reason I think both Medium and Invert worked so well was because Hisui was a rather mysterious, hard-to-read character, which allowed for cool surprises sprung on the reader, but Invert II moves away from that and instead decides to reveal much more about her. The result is a book that is an okay inverted mystery story collection, but which misses that *extra* element of surprise the other two books had that made them especially good. Invert II is a normal inverted mystery collection, in a series that had been above normal, so it stands out a lot.

The first story is also a bit simple in set-up despite its length. In Seija no Kototsute ("Message of the Living"), Hisui and her assistant/housekeeper Makoto end up stranded on the road with their car, next to a dangerous-looking cliff, during a storm, so they run to the nearby house with the lights on they passed just a minute ago. They ring the bell and hope to be offered shelter until the storm is gone, but find the door open and a surprised teenager in the hall looking at the two beautiful women in wet shirts. But the reason Souta is surprised is actually because this isn't his home and the woman who lives her is lying upstairs dead with a knife in her body. This is actually the second house of a classmate of Souta, and Souta had been hiding here after running away from home. Never could he have dreamed the house would be used this very day though, so he fell asleep in one of the bedrooms, but then woke up when he heard the woman coming inside the house. After accidentally making a noise, the woman came upstairs suspecting a burglar and before Souta knew what had happened, they were struggling, they both fell on the floor and when he woke up, the mother of his classmate was lying dead in front of him. He had just cleaned his hands and face when Hisui and Makoto stepped inside the hall, so, yes, he was very surprised at the sight of the two women. As they're already inside, he can't really send them back outside in the storm, so he finds himself forced to play the role of someone who lives here, allowing them to stay here until the storm is over. Normally, a teenage boy would be more than excited about being to spend the night in a house with two beautiful women and his hormones certainly clouds his judgment at times, but there's still the body upstairs, and keeping up the lie of him living here becomes harder and harder as Hisui starts asking more questions...

Okay, this is an inverted mystery, but as Souta didn't plan any murders and he's honestly completely surrpised by the sudden stay of Hisui and Makoto, he obviously keeps making small mistakes and rather easy-to-see through lies. It's not really satisfying as an inverted mystery, as even Souta himself knows the lies he's been making are just barely believable ("I'm not on any of the family pictures because I don't like being in pictures") and while Hisui and Makoto usually let things slide, many parts of the Challenge to the Reader Hisui presents to the readers at the end of the story aren't really impressive: she asks us to identify what put her on the trail of Souta being not a resident of the home, while as the reader, you feel more like "in what way was Souta ever believable as a resident of this house???". Souta is just stumbling from one lie to another, so unlike most inverted mystery stories, it's not like you are trying to find the one flaw in an otherwise perfectly planned murder and the tone of the story, where Souta is also just fighting his hormones and fantasies of being alone with two beautiful older women, of which Hisui especially isn't shy of some physical contact, and your mileage will vary on that comedic element of the story. The big mystery is of course how Hisui will eventually find the corpse. There are some parts of the problem-solving that depend on things I usually like: Queen-like deductions based on physical evidence (like a woman's wallet lying on the table and wet sneakers outside) that allow Husui to deduce what happened, but some of these deductions seem a bit iffy, and one negative clue in particular didn't really work for me, because it was too much of a jump for me to have readers guess that would be missing simply based on what was found. So this was not my favorite story in the series by any means.

The second story, Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku ("The Blind Spot in the Finder") has Hisui becoming friends with Junko, a photographer who shares an interest in mystery fiction. Little does Hisui know that Junko's interest in mystery fiction actually sprang from the fact she's been planning murders, as she wants revenge on the bullies who are responsible for her younger sister's suicide many years ago. The victim is Kanon, a popular model who went freelance a while ago, who has no idea the photographer she has asked to take her new photographs is actually the sister of the girl she used to bully in high school. Kanon has been tormented by a stalker lately, so she had moved to a somewhat remote lodge near the mountains for some privacy, and it was here where her body was found in the bath tub, with some signs indicating her stalker had broken in and after a struggle, stabbed her. Police investigation however also leads to finding Kanon had contact with Junko lately about a photo shoot, and that Junko's sister's suicide had been caused by Kanon. She's questioned just to be sure, but she has an iron-clad alibi: for on the day Kanon was killed, in the afternoon (the estimated time of death), Junko had been together with... Hisui, going on a photo shoot date together. Hisui confirms she had been with Junko the whole day, spending the day at a park with Junko taking pictures of Hisui. She is also reluctant to look more into the case, as Junko's one of the few friends she has made since returning to Japan, but as the police investigation digs deeper into things, Hisui realizes Junko's alibi might not be as strong as believed.

While this is an inverted mystery story, we don't get to see the details of how Junko managed to have her alibi with Hisui for the time of the murder, so that's a big part of the mystery for the reader too. Another point about this story, is that it's only about Junko for about half of the narrative: a lot of the story is dedicated to Hisui herself, where we learn about how she's really fond of Junko as she has troubles making friends and this leading to her dilemma of not wanting to suspect her friend of murder. This look into Hisui's personal life and feelings on a case are what doesn't really work for me personally in this volume, as I loved the mysterious vibe of Hisui in the previous stories. This story is rather long, I have read full novels of about the same length, but for me, the story could've left these Hisui-focused parts out, and be about half the length it is now for a better, more focused mystery story, but I guess this focus on Hisui as a character is an intentional change in direction for this series. As a mystery story, I think its merits lie especially in the way to how it is proven how Junko managed to fake her alibi: the trick itself is perhaps not very surprising, though it's set-up well, but the clues leading up to this conclusion are really good: focusing on the state of physical evidence, theorizing about why they are in a certain state, and combining all of that together to a comprehensive line of reasoning. This is certainly the best part of the story: if the story had only been about the trick of Junko, it would have been an okay, but not remarkable story, but the clues leading to the conclusion defnitely make this better than it would've been otherwise.

So Invert II - Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku didn't manage to impress me as much as the really impressive Medium and the entertaining first Invert. This is due to a directional change I personally didn't really like, and that combined with the fact we only have two stories now, one of which is probably intentionally a bit lighter and more comedic than usual, we end up with a volume that has very little of what made the previous two volumes so memorable. The title story is a fine inverted mystery story with a focus on the logical reasoning leading to the downfall of the murderer, but I don't feel this book is a must-read in comparison to the previous two books, and to be honest, if an Invert III is released, I'll probably wait for a while before I return to this series, as I don't really feel compelled to read more of Invert right now. Though I'd be enticed to read more of Hisui again of course if the series takes another directional change, because I know Aizawa can come up with really surprising twists with this series when not sticking to any specific formula..

Original Japanese title(s): 『invert II 覗き窓の死角 』：「生者の言伝」/「覗き窓（ファインダー）の死角」

To Wake the Dead

「わたしの手法は、このルーブ・ゴールどバーグ・マシンのようなものですから」 

『invert 城塚翡翠倒叙集』

 

"For my methods are similar to this Rube Goldberg Machine."

"Invert - A Collection of the Inverted Stories of Jouzuka Hisui"

These covers are gorgeous!

One of my favorite reads of 2020 was Aizawa Sako's Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui ("Medium - The Medium Detective Jouzuka Hisui" 2019), a brilliant book where the reader was treated to a very unique experience. Jouzuka Hisui is an attractive spirit medium who can channel spirits of the deceased and see flashes of what happened in their last moments. Normally, you'd think that having a medium capable of channeling the victim would be cheating, but Aizawa managed to turn this completely around. For one, Hisui could only see vague fragments of the past, and more importantly, she was quite aware that the police isn't just going to believe her visions, and she knew she'd need to have real evidence to support her supernatural visions. This made Medium an incredibly memorable reading experience: while Hisui's supernatural visions would vaguely in the correct direction, it was still a pure detective novel, meanng that they basically had to reverse-engineer each vision to see how they'd fit the crime scene and still come up with the logical explanation for the vision and find evidence to support whatever Hisui saw. It's like you were only shown a small section of the longer mathematical answer in advance, but you were still required to find all the steps leading up to that part yourself, and you still had to work towards the conclusion to find out who did it and how to prove it. That coupled with a brilliant story structure, made Medium one of the best plotted books I had read in 2020.

So when I learned a sequel had been published, I knew I had to read it. But Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui had such a unique premise and execution, there was no way Aizawa pull off the same trick again, so I did wonder how this book would work. Though I guess the title gives it away immediately: Invert - Jouzuka Hisui Toujoshuu ("Invert - A Collection of the Inverted Stories of Jouzuka Hisui" 2021) is a short story collection with three inverted mystery stories, where we follow murderers who come up with brilliant plans to hide their crimes, but who suddenly find a mysterious woman in their way claiming to have supernatural powers. At first, they don't believe this woman of course, but when she starts poking around based on her visions and starts coming closer and closer to the truth, these murderers slowly start to realize that even though they may have safeguarded themselves for any earthly obstacle when planning their perfect murders, they may have forgotten to account for the supernatural.

Shifting the focus to the murderers and using an inverted format is actually quite brilliant I thought as I started with this book, as it fits the concepts introduced in the first book perfectly: in inverted mysteries you are also shown large parts of the answer ("how the crime was committed") in advance, but there's still the puzzle left of where the murderer made a mistake and how the detective is going to prove their guilt, so in terms of ideas, this is still very close to what Medium did. And there's the added joy of seeing each new murderer cope with Hisui: of course nobody is going to believe a woman who claims she has supernatural powers and who seems to be 'receiving' signs from the netherside about a crime, but as she starts looking around and voicing her guesses, the murderers realize that while they managed to fool the police, she's actually the only person to come close to the truth. Hisui fits the archetype we know so well from Columbo so well, being a charming, disarming woman who turns out to be much more dangerous than she appears at first. Note that by the time of this second novel, Hisui is already trusted by the police, and with their help, she's able to go undercover each time to approach the person she suspects, and while her visions give her an inital edge, she, like the reader, has to use their powers of observation and reasoning to figure out what the murderer did exactly and how to prove it. This book also takes from the Ellery Queen television show and Furuhata Ninzaburou by the way, for Hisui always addresses the reader directly when she has figured everything out and prepares for the climax of each tale. Also note that this volume does spoil a few of the stories in Medium, so you'll want to read these books in order.

The collection opens with Unjou no Harema which also has the English title Murder on the Cloud. Yoshida Naomasa's legs never quite recovered from the accident partially caused by Komaki Shigehito when they were younger, and Komaki had always felt responsible for that. He always kept at Yoshida's side to help him, but many years later, Komaki finds himself still chained to Yoshida and basically working as a ghost-programmer for Yoshida's software studio. Yoshida definitely has marketing talent, but he is nowhere the programming prodigy he pretends to be. Komaki is, but all the programming work he and his colleagues do is basically put on Yoshida's name, even for projects Komaki himself came up with. Fed up with this, he decides to kill Yoshida for the sake of the company and himself. He creates a fake alibi, pretending to be alone at the office at night working on a server problem during the time of the murder, while in reality, he had killed Yoshida in his apartment and had dressed the scene like Yoshida had slipped and hit his head. The police initially seems to go with this interpretation of the scene, but then a police consultant appears who claims to have supernatural powers, and while as a man of science, Komaki doesn't believe her at first, her visions turn out to point towards the truth.

A very competent, even if slightly unsurprising, inverted mystery story. While the reader isn't shown everything Komaki did and it's slightly technical because Komaki's alibi depends on him working on a server problem that could only be fixed at the office, they can probably make a good guess how Komaki's alibi trickery was done, but Hisui's visions do point out interesting contradictions about the crime scene and it's of course these mistakes that ultimately lead her to the truth. The "final" mistake which ties Komaki to the murder conclusively is clever and something every one will recognize, and yet not think off until Hisui points it out, but it lacks impact. With these kind of stories, you want the murderer making a mistake that seems really big in hindsight, but which they, the detective and the reader missed until that moment. The 'gimmick' at the end in this story would have been perfect as a set-up, but it is at the same time such a small mistake, it makes you feel like "Well, okay, it's pretty normal that someone would miss that."

Houmatsu no Shinpan, or Bubble Judgement, starts with the murder on Tagusa Akio by the elementary school teacher Suezaki Eri at the school. Tagusa, a former employee at the school, had been blackmailing Eri with videos secretly shot inside the restroom stalls at the school, and the man was even selling the videos he had of the children making use of the restrooms. The man was better off dead of course, so she lured him into the school late in the evening, pretending to pay him off. Not suspecting anything, Tagusa was quickly killed by Eri by surprise, who threw him off the building, making it appear like Tagusa had been trying to break into the school by scaling the wall and falling to his death. When a school counselor is appointed to the school to help the children cope with the trauma of the incident, Eri doesn't seem to suspect much, but when the attractive psychologist starts talking about possessing supernatural powers and having friends in the police force, Eri starts becoming suspicious of the woman's movements, and she realizes the woman is slowly, but surely uncovering the truth behind Tagusa's death. The final piece in the chain is nicely hidden in the narrative, so when Hisui points out what mistake Eri made, it's actually quite satisfying despite it being a relatively minor point. In that regard, I think it worked better than the previous story, because the build-up to the reveal was better. The overall story is a bit slower though, as Eri's plan is less complex compared to the one in the first story, and more of the story revolves around Eri slowly seeing through who the mysterious school counselor really is.

It's nearly impossible to not think of Columbo when you think of inverted mystery stories, so most people will quickly recognize the core plot of Shinyou Naranai Mokugekisha, or Unreliable Witness, as it's very similar to the early Columbo episode Dead Weight. Unno Yasunori runs a very succesful detective agency which also has a habit of 'asking for favors' from some of the people they investigate in exchange for silence on the matter, but Sonemoto, one of Unno's employees is about to make everything public, so Unno decides to take matters into his own hands. As a former homicide detective and an experienced private detective, Unno is quite knowledgeable about murders of course, so he kills Sonemoto and dresses the scene to make it seem like Sonemoto committed suicide. For a moment Unno suspects somebody in an opposite building saw him committing the murder through the windows, but figuring there's too much of a distance, he quickly finishes things. And as he had planned, Sonemoto's death is initially investigated as a suicide, but a mysterious woman appears in front of him claiming to have supernatural powers who says Sonemoto's death may not be a suicide. Unno however has contacts with the police and quickly learns that he has to be careful around Hisui and he also learns of the presence of a witness: a female writer living in the building opposite the crime scene had seen someone struggling wth someone else. Realizing that she is the only person who can link him to the crime, he makes contact with her. He's relieved to see she doesn't recognize him at all, but meanwhile Hisui's deductions are getting closer to the truth. Unno realizes that the police investigation can only continue as long as there's a witness who claims to have seen something happening at the crime scene, so he befriends the witness, taking her out for dinner and everything, while also planting seeds of doubt about her testimony, hoping she will withdraw her witness account. Hisui know what Unno's doing, but can she convince a woman who is in love with the murderer?

Definitely the highlight of the volume! Unno is a great adversary for Hisui, as he has inside information about her powers, and is quite knowledgeable about murders. This leads to a cat-and-mouse game that goes back and forth, as both parties try to cover their own mistakes while simultaneously attempting to catch the other on mistakes. This means this story has a lot of threads and little contradictions for Hisui to pounce upon, but Unno always manages to turn things around so he's in the clear again. And there's a "Joker" in this game in the form of the witness who at one hand does want to do the right thing, but who is also in love with Unno and slowly being tempted into doubting her own testimony. As mentioned, this set-up does remind a lot of the Columbo episode Dead Weight, which also had the murderer charm an eyewitness to make her withdraw her testimony, though the conclusion of this story is far more brilliant, with a incredibly clever trap set by Hisui which few people will see coming, least of all Unno. It's a trap that works because it features Hisui and her powers, and someone like Columbo would never be able to pull the same idea off, which makes this a very satisfying end to an amusing read.

On the whole, Invert - Jouzuka Hisui Toujoshuu is never as clever or surprising as our first encounter with Hisui, though that is understandable, as Medium was really an outlier in terms of quality and plotting. Invert is not as clever, but it's still a very good inverted short story collection that makes clever use of the spirit medium plot device by having the murderers first shocked by a claim that they believe can't be true, but then we see Hisui digging deeper into the meaning of her visions, which actually lead her closer to the truth and based on real evidence too, and witnessing this shift from the supernatural to the practical from the side of the murderer is truly suspenseful.  Medium is the better book, but for those who enjoyed that book, I'd recommend Invert too.

Original Japanese title(s): 相沢沙呼『invert 城塚翡翠倒叙集』: 「雲上の晴れ間」,「泡沫の審判」,「信用ならない目撃者」

The Cinderella Ballet Mystery

Never reveal the secret to a trick

Practice to perfection

Do not repeat tricks in front of the same audience

(Howard Thurston)

You know, I'm not even sure whether I have ever seen a magic show in real life myself.

After reading the phenomenal Medium last year, I knew I had to read more by Aizawa Sako, and what's a better way to start than with his debut novel? Aizawa made his debut as a professional author by winning the 19th Ayukawa Tetsuya Award with Gozen Reiji no Cendrillon ("Cendrillon at Midnight", 2009), an interconnected short story collection. It's a book that's always been lingering in my head because I really like the cover art, but I didn't even know the author of the book was named Aizawa until his name first registered with me after reading Medium. Sugawa is a very ordinary high school student, who has a very ordinary problem on his mind: he's probably in love with his classmate Torino Hatsu, but he doesn't know how to approach her. He fell in love with her when his sister brought him to a magic bar, where Hatsu happens to be working part-time. Hatsu is a wallflower in the classroom, with no real close friends and always disappearing during lunch break so she can eat all by herself, so Sugawa was absolutely stunned by her shining appearance when doing table magic for the customers at the bar and since his visit there, can't stop thinking about Hatsu. When the two come across an odd mystery at school, Sugawa notices it has parallels with the magic tricks Hatsu showed at the bar, and asks her if she can solve it, hoping they can become friends in the process. 

I  have to admit that after finishing Gozen Reiji no Cendrillon, I was a bit disappointed that this book was not an absolute masterpiece like Medium was. Of course, no author is able to create mindblowing classics one after another, so my expectations were neither realistic nor fair (especially not as this was Aizawa's debut work), but after letting some time pass before I started on this review, I found it easier to look at Gozen Reiji no Cendrillon as a work of mystery that tries to accomplish something very different, while also laying the foundation for Medium in terms of format. Like Medium, Gozen Reiji no Cendrillon is a collection of short stories, which are strongly connected to each other. Events mentioned in one story are carried over to the next, and the final of the four stories here manages to make one cohesive narrative out of the whole book by pullng various plots threads from the other three stories together to form one tapestry. The big difference however is that Gozen Reiji no Cendrillon is also written to as a YA novel. There's a lot of focus on the high school as setting, with Sugawa's attempts at wooing Hatsu, to Hatsu's attitude towards school and her classmates and we also see other characters struggle with their lives at high school. This focus on the school life of the teenage characters also form the driving force to the mystery plots of this book: most of the mysteries we see here are more-or-less everyday life mysteries, not really crimes, but less serious, but still puzzling incidents that occur at school, and often revealed to be connected with very human motives. The book is perhaps best compared to the Classic Literature Club/Hyouka series.

The opening story Karamawari Triumph ("Futile Triumph") introduces the reader to Sugawa and Hatsu, and follows Sugawa's first attempt to strike a real conversation with his silent classmate. During his hopeless attempt in the school library, the two notice that the magazines of one of the shelves of a bookcase have been put there in reverse, with the spine inwards. Only one of the magazines there is placed correctly, with the spine to the outside, but why would anyone pull such a weird prank? The odd sight reminds Sugawa of one of the card tricks Hatsu showed and he decides to involve Hatsu in the mystery and ask if she can solve it with her knowledge of magic in an attempt to become friends with her. I like how the mystery of someone could quickly turn all the magazines in the shelf around is solved: a good look at the physical state of the "crime scene" allows the attentive reader to deduce how the magic was accomplished. And like a magic trick, it's deceivingly simple, yet capable of fooling you. The road from that point to the who, and especially why has fewer clues, and I think one extra step there in the logic would've made it a much better story.

Kyouchuu Card Stab ("Card Stab in the Heart") starts with a small private table magic show by Hatsu in the music room for two classmates and a senior student. After the show in which Hatsu uses a knife, they all leave except for the senior student, who has to practice for a piano contest. On her way home, Hatsu remembers she left her knife in the music room, so she returns there together with Sugawa, only to find an empty music room, as the senior student has gone to the bathroom. But to their shock, they find that someone has used Hatsu's knife to damage a table, carving three "F"s on the table surface. Who would do this and why? This time a tale that focuses more strongly on the reasons why someone would leave such a message on the table. Ultimately, it's not really a story where the reader is expected to be able to solve it before Hatsu does, but it works perfectly fine as a school drama mystery.

In Ate ni Naranai Predictor ("Untrustworthy Predictor"), Sugawa picks up a notebook of Itakura, a classmate who is known for her fortune-telling. He notices a list of classmates in a specific order, but when the grades for their English test are announced, he realizes that the list in Itakura's notebook corresponds exactly to the people with the best grades for this test. She appears to have real fortune-telling powers and she even claims she has seen the ghost of a student who committed suicide last year. Sugawa at first doesn't believe in the ghost, until he sees a ghostly figure in a locked classroom, but when they open the door, they find it empty! Two incidents that are not directly connected save for Itakura as a lynchpin plot figure. The trick with the list of students is simple, but very magic-like and it makes good use of very natural (wrong) assumptions of people. The disappearing ghost from the classroom has a very simple explanation in terms of mechanics (how it was done), but the explanation for it is fantastic: it's very specific to the school setting and both original and convincing.

Anata no Tame no Wild Card ("Wild Card For You") is the final story and revolves around the ghost of the girl who committed suicide last year. Someone has been using her account to post on the school message board, but why? This story is more focused on fleshing out the characters, with Sugawa finally learning more about Hatsu's past from a classmate and all kinds of minor references regarding the various characters who appeared in previous stories all coming together to form one single narrative thread. As a mystery story, I didn't find it too exciting, but as the finale to a YA school drama with a mystery-theme, it's okay. 

For the readers looking for a YA school drama mystery, Gozen Reiji no Cendrillon is a safe and entertaining read: the individual stories have some interesting ideas for mystery plots, while the overall story manages to portray interesting characters with Hatsu, Sugawa and their classmates as they spend their days at school. It's written in a way I think that even those who don't like mystery novels can enjoy it as a YA novel, but like I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't have minded it if had been a bit more mystery-oriented, as sometimes the core mystery plots felt just one or two elements short of becoming far more impressive experiences. There's a second volume out, which I might try out too.

Original Japanese title(s): 相沢沙呼『午前零時のサンドリヨン』:「空回りトライアンフ」/「胸中カード・スタッブ」/「あてにならないプレディクタ」/「あなたのためのワイルド・カード」

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

The vision of your own dreams

You might see it through

It's in your voice... 

"Your Voice" (Nadia Gifford)

It's almost like eight out of ten books discussed here will feature supernatural or science-fiction elements, whether it's "just" the suggestion of, or actual supernatural powers. And in general, the latter category actually seems to have an even better track record...

Kuramochi Yuika, a receptionist at a department store, approaches her friend and mystery writer Kougetsu Shirou to accompany her on her visit to a spirit medium. Yuika's been seeing weird visions of a weeping woman and a fortune teller has advised her to go see the spirit medium Jouzuka Hisui, as she's supposed to be the real deal. Kougetsu is not only a mystery writer, but also occasionally assists the police in their investigations as a criminal profiler, so he's a bit sceptical at first, but the way in which Hisui manages to sense both Yuika and Kougetsu's professions from their aura is astounding, giving his first moments of doubt. The beautiful spirit medium senses some lurking danger from Yuika's aura, and wants to take a look at Yuika's apartment. They agree to meet a few days later, but Yuika doesn't appear at the station as promised and when Jisui and Kougetsu make their way to Yuika's address on their own, they find Yuika lying dead in her apartment. The crime scene suggests someone pushed Yuika, causing her to hit her head on the table, killing her. The initial police investigation focuses on two scenarios, the murder being either the work of a notorious neighborhood burglar or one of Yuika's personal acquaintances with stalker tendencies, but Hisui reveals she can in fact channel Yuika's spirit in her dying moments. Hisui's vision is vague, but it does reveal the culprit was a woman, who was apparently looking for something as Yuika's consciousness faded away forever. Kougetsu is now however facing a problem: the police isn't likely to believe Hisui's vision, so now he has to figure out who killed his friend based on Hisui's vision and also find supporting proof, as the vision alone won't have any value when talking to the police. After the duo manages to solve Yuika's murder, Kougetsu and Hisui run into more mysterious cases that require Hisui's unique powers, but Hisui's also foreseen her own imminent and only Kougetsu can prevent her death in Aizawa Sako's Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui ("Medium - The Medium Detective Jouzuka Hisui" 2019).

Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui has been one of the more prominent releases of 2019: it managed to rank in several of the annual top ten mystery rankings organized by Japanese publishers and in the period between me purchasing this book and actually reading it, it also won the 2020 Honkaku Mystery Award, which usually means fans of puzzle plot mysteries will enjoy the work. Personally, it was the premise that really manage to hook me in. As you may have noticed, some of the best, fair-play mystery fiction I've read these last few years feature supernatural elements, like the murder-fable short story collection Mukashi Mukashi Aru Tokoro ni, Shitai ga Arimashita, the mega-hit Shijinsou no Satsujin and its sequels/adaptations, Kobayashi's wonderful mysteries based on Alice in Wonderland and E.T.A. Hoffman's works, the time-travelling mystery Jikuu Ryokousha no Sunadokei and the yokai mystery Invented Inference. Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui obviously features a spirit medium and while often mysteries featuring spirit mediums feature frauds, you also have examples of great mystery fiction featuring real spirit mediums and where their powers serve as a source for original mystery plots like in the 3DS game Gyakuten Saiban 6/Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice.

Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui follows an interlinked short story collection format and the first story, The Weeping Woman Murder, serves as a good introduction to show how Hisui's visions can still work in a fair-play mystery plot. It's established right away that Hisui's powers definitely have their limitations. For example, Hisui can sense emotions and feelings like guilt from people's aura, and also sense whether one's aura is being under attack by someone else, but obviously, she can't just go to the police and say that this or that person 'feels' suspicious. But her powers do allow Kougetsu to deduce who isn't the murderer, allowing him to focus on the real culprit and finding tangible evidence. Basically, the stories revolve around Kougetsu being put on the correct rail right from the start thanks to Hisui's powers, but it's Kougetsu who has to reverse-engineer her visions and find real proof and come up with a supporting line of reasoning. It reminds of Morikawa Tomoki's Snow White, in which a magic mirror would show the answer to a mystery, but where the detective still had to think of a convincing deduction herself, because people would not believe her if she'd just say the answer. Invented Inference falls in the same family too, where Kotoko invents inferences to lead to the conclusion she already knows beforehand because ghosts and other supernatural beings help her. In The Weeping Woman Murder, fragments of Hisui's vision and what she senses from auras help Kougetsu on the right path straight away. Hisui even reveals she knows the murderer's a woman the moment they discover the body, but ultimately, it's Kougetsu who has to figure out the meaning of the actions of the woman seen in the vision, its implications and who the murderer is. And on top of that, he has to come up with a line of reasoning that supports his theory, a line of reasoning that doesn't rely on Hisui's powers, because obviously, the police wouldn't believe any of that. The result is a truly interesting story that shows what makes a mystery story so fun, as it plays with the notion of what a mystery is and also with the idea that a logical deduction doesn't need to be true, only convincing and entertaining.

In the second story, The Murder in the Water Mirror Manor, Kougetsu and Hisui are invited to a small barbecue party at the Water Mirror Manor, the lakeside second home of the celebrated mystery writer Kurogoshi Atsushi. Having heard about Hisui from Kougetsu, Kurogoshi hopes Hisui can find out whether his home is really haunted like his family thinks and if so, he hopes she can do something about it. But this is kept hush-hush, and Kougetsu introduces Hisui as his Plus One to other mystery authors and editors invited to the party. Kougetsu and Hisui are to stay at the Water Mirror Manor that night, as do three other guests. The detective duo stay up most of the night in the living room that connects the manor's two wings to see if there's any spectral activity and it's during this period that the three other guests all pass by the living room at one time or another, as the bathroom in the wing with the guest rooms is curently broken. The following morning, Kurogoshi is found to have been bludgeoned to death in his study in the other wing. Kougetsu and Hisui were in the living room during the estimated time of death, so the murderer must be one of the three persons who passed by the living room, but... Hisui can tell right away who the murderer is based on their auras. The problem remains the same however: how is Kougetsu going to prove that? A strange vision seen by Hisui serves as a clue to what happened, but can Kougetsu also find supporting evidence for that?

Unlike the first story, this story straightout reveals who the murderer is by name, which might make you think it'll be easy, but oh-no! This is a very tricky story: the deduction chain that revolves around Hisui's vision is something you'd expect to see in Queen's work, revolving around the actions taken by several characters and the implications of those actions. The story makes good use of the backstory of the manor, but what really seals the deal is that even if you figure out what Hisui's vague visions actually mean, you still have a lot to do, as Kougetsu's ultimate goal is always to come up with a line of reasoning supported by the physical evidence! So even if you've "done" Hisui's part of the mystery (identifying what the vision was about and its implications), you still have to figure out a seperate line of deduction that will lead to the same conclusion, a line of deduction that will convince the police to act. The clewing for that is pretty clever too: it's not super surprising, but I have to admit I don't think I've come across this particular version of the idea before, though older variations are fairly common.

In The Serial Murder Case of the Female High School Student Strangulations, Kougetsu is having a signing event, when he's approached by a fan. In the last year or so, several of Natsuki's schoolmates have been strangled to death. The police investigation has led to no results at all, so Natsuki hopes that Kougetsu can help find the killer. Because of his track record, the police allow him and his "assistant" Hisui to join the investigation and start snooping around the high school. Hisui soon senses the police is on the right track, but before they can act, another victim falls... Fearing the culprit may be feeling cornered, they try to act before more victims follow. This story is a bit simpler in set-up compared to the previous stories: Hisui's powers don't really lend them well for this type of case, so while she's able to point the police investigation to the correct direction early on, it's actually Kougetsu who has to do a lot of the heavy lifting himself this time, using the few hints Hisui manages to convey to him to figure out who's the serial strangler. The focus lies a bit more on the interpretation of physical evidence this time, but the climax of the story really works well a supernatural-themed mystery.

The final story VS Eliminator Kougetsu and Hisui are asked to find another serial killer: several women have fallen victim to this murderer for the last few years, who has been mentioned a few times in previous stories as well as in the story intermezzo parts. It's hard to explain this story without giving too much away, but this story is excellent and works wonderful as the conclusion to the whole book, and it elevates the work to a genuine must-read of the genre. Early on in this story, we find out that Hisui's powers actually don't really mesh well with this type of case: the previous stories established that Hisui usually needs to be physically at the murder scene to be able to have her visions, or she must come in close contact with suspects to feel their aura. It's because of this that Kougetsu doesn't feel much for involving Hisui in this case, as her powers may attract the attention of the killer and in any case, her powers don't really apply here, but Hisui's still determined to find the serial murderer. What follows is a fantastic tour-de-force in deduction that show off Hisui's real powers in full might: whereas the previous stories seemed to prove the limits of Hisui's gift, VS Eliminator actually turns everything around: in a mesmerizing super-flashback scene we see how all those moments that only seemed to prove the limitations of Hisui's supernatural powers and all the other events actually all line up in a single arrow, proving in fact how utterly overpowered Hisui's skills really are. This story really invites you to read the book all over again from the start, as many scenes suddenly take on a different meaning, and you see how carefully author Aizawa has been planning this climax, with Hisui's power being proven to be much more than the reader is first led to believe. Each previous story turns out to be foreshadowing this conclusion with proper clewing, while also telling a good mystery tale on its own, so it's like each story was telling two stories at the same time: one "front" story, and a "back" story that is only revealed in this final tale. But while Hisui's newly revealed powers ultimately allow them to catch the serial killer,  the book still holds on firmly to the fact that this is a fair-play mystery novel, built on brilliant deductions and actual physical proof.

Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui is definitely a masterpiece of the genre, one that really shows off how supernatural elements do not hinder a mystery plot, but can actually greatly open up possibilities when used well. The individual short stories are entertaining on their own, showing off several ways in which pure logic and supernatural elements can work together, but it's really the final chapter that makes this novel more than 'just' a memorable mystery. This is an absolute must-read, and I wish most mystery novels would spend at least half the amount of planning effort Aizawa poured into this novel: the chains of deductions displayed in this novel are fantastic and the pay-off at both the micro and a macro level of this novel is something indeed very few novels manage to accomplish.

Original Japanese title(s): 相沢沙呼 『Medium 霊媒探偵城塚翡翠』