The King is Dead

“The trial cannot proceed,” said the King in a very grave voice, “until all the jurymen are back in their proper places—all,” he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as he said so.  

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Huh... they did the title for these covers in yellow twice in row now...

Disclosure: I am a member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. But as always, I didn't vote for the stories this year.

Honkaku-Ou is the annual summer anthology collecting the best honkaku short stories published the previous year, as selected by the members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. The publication is basically a companion to the Honkaku Mystery Award, which is awarded to the best published book (novel or short story collection) each year. Short stories often get lost as time passed by, as they are commonly published in magazines or online. Unless they are later collection in a short story collection or an anthology like this one, short stories can become difficult to track down several months later. Anthologies like Honkaku-Ou ensure these stories can be easily found. The current format of five, six stories in 1 volume started in 2019 and I have been discussing the books annually since, and there have been some really cool inclusions in these books, so I was of course also looking forward to this year's entry: Honkaku-Ou 2024 ("The King of Honkaku 2024").

Honkaku-Ou 2024 opens with Ja, Kore wa Satsujin tte Koto de ("Okay, So This Was Murder") by Higashigawa Tokuya, and the story is part of his Ikagawa City series (disclosure:  I translated Higashigawa Tokuya's Lending the Key to the Locked Room, the first book in the series). This is a hilarious inverted mystery, where Oomaeda Noriyuki plans to kill his uncle, Tokujirou, in order to become owner of Oomaeda Pharmaceuticals himself. The idea is Noriyuki will use the trick from a locked room murder mystery he read as a kid to make it seem like his uncle committed suicide in the annex of his seaside mansion, where his uncle usually sleeps. Noriyuki sets the plan in motion, and while the moment when his uncle didn't die immediately and was about to grab a pen to write down a message on the floor was a bit scary, his uncle died before he could hold the pen, so with that, the scene is set. The following morning, he drags his younger brother Toshiyuki and his aunt to the annex to discover the body after his uncle didn't appear at breakfast. Their aunt faints upon the sight of her husband's apparent suicide, but Toshiyuki reveals something to Noriyuki he hadn't been aware of: their uncle had a life insurance, and his two nephews are beneficiaries, but no money will be paid out in cases of suicide. So Toshiyuki suggests to his brother... to make their uncle's suicide appear like somebody killed him, using a locked room murder trick! Soon after, familiar faces from the Ikagawa City Police Station arrive, but can Noriyuki manage to walk this tight rope of 'multiple truths'? Absolutely hilarious story, and I really like the simple, but inevitable mistake Noriyuki made that of course eventually leads to the police solving this case of suicide/murder. Nothing complicated here, but a real short, but nice showcase of what can make trope-relient puzzle mysteries so much fun.

Yuuki Shinichirou was featured in last year's anthology too with a story in the same series as Akuryou Taisan Tebasaki Samgye-tangfuu Soup Jiken ("The Case of the Evil Spirits Begone Chicken Wings Samgye-Tang Soup"). And yes, that's another odd title. The narrator in this series is a struggling comedian, who has a part-time job as a kind of Uber Eats driver. One of the shops he works for is rather special: it is one cook who pretends to be running multiple restaurants offering different cuisines, but it also serves as a detective agency. By making very specific orders, usually combining different dishes which usually have no business being ordered together, clients can engage the detective/cook's services. The delivery guy acts as a kind of Watson, delivering the food, but also interview the client for details and occasionally do some extra research. In this tale, the cook is hired to investigate a rather creepy happening in an apartment complex: the client says food has been delivered to the empty apartment next to his more than a few times now. The food was placed in front of the door, and at first, the client thought it had been delivered to the wrong door, but nobody on his floor had ordered any food. This repeated itself more than a few times. Eventually, food and other items were even delivered to another empty flat on a different floor in the building too, where somebody had committed suicide before. After installing camera security and an auto-lock front door to stop the delivery men, the phantom deliveries stopped, but they never figured out who made the orders and why. Or was it really a ghost who wanted something to eat? I still don't really get the necessity of the set-up of the cook and the uber driver, but I do like this mystery. It's a harmless one, but the idea of food being delivered to an empty apartment is pretty creepy, especially if it's one where somebody died in the past. The explanation for the ghostly deliveries is not only convincing, but Yuuki does a great job at setting up the clues, making it a really fair story too.

Kitayama Takekuni's Mikansei Gekkou - Unfinished moonshine ("Unfinished Moonshine") is written as a homage to Edgar Allan Poe, and starts with the narrator visiting Toudou, an old writer friend, who wants to consult the narrator on something important: Toudou says he found an unpublished and unfinished manuscript by Edgar Allan Poe, but the manuscript has been occupying his mind since, making him hear "their" voices who tell him he needs to finish it. The problem is: Toudou doesn't know how. The manuscript tells the story of someone who returns to his destroyed home and runs into a girl in a hut outside of town, who soon dies. The man then goes to sleep in a lookout tower, with a view of the hut, but the following morning, the whole hut has disappeared completely. Toudou doesn't know how the hut could've disappeared, meaning he can't write the conclusion, so the narator must come up with a solution. This is a cute (?) short story, brimming with Poe themes, imagery and references. The explanation for the disappearing hut is rather simple and rather underwhelming on its own, but I think Kitayama did a great job using the Poe framing device to lay out all kinds of hints, though I think that it might be a bit too obvious because a certain hint is probably better hidden for Japanese readers than for those who also regularly read English. It's perhaps not the kind of solution you'd expect from Kitayama for an impossible crime, but it fits the setting well.

Aosaki Yuugo's Ningyo Saiban ("Mermaid Trial") is a story in his Undead Girl - Murder Farce series, and I have to admit I haven't read the books, nor have I seen much of the anime series yet. This story is apparently a prequel story revolving around a murder trial in which a mermaid was the suspect, and where the reporter Annie Kerber first became acquainted with the protagonists Aya (a decapitated head) and Tsugaru, her wise-cracking assistant. It was the first trial involving inhumans in eighteen years in Trondheim, Norway. Holt was a well-known public figure in Trondheim and notoriously anti-inhumans, which made it all the more shocking when after a gunshot, his family found him dead outside at the lake, with the mermaid bending over him. It appeared the mermaid had killed him and was busy trying to set-up the scene to make it look like Holt had gotten into an accident with his row boat, but the family quickly captured the mermaid. As per law, nobody has been able to talk with the mermaid save for the prosecutor. That is, until Aya appeared at the trial to defend the mermaid. The story then unfolds in a familiar courtroom mystery manner, with both sides interrogating the suspects (with their testimonies also serving as the way the reader actually learns about the precise circumstances of the murder), and Aya of course slowly picking up on small contradictions that eventually build up to a major revelation. This is a competently constructed mystery, with short, but good deductions based on the testimonies and physical evidence, though it perhaps lacks a bit in actual surprise, as in: none of the revelations made in this trial feel as triumphant and shocking as you'd like them to be. There are some clever turnabouts though, and on a technical level, I think this is the best story in the collection.

Araki Akane's Kotoeawase ("Checking Answers") starts with the death of the narrator Touma's adoptive father, who was found by Touma as he was lying in the snow-covered garden, bleeding heavily from a cut in his neck. It took five minutes for the ambulance to come, and in the ambulance, his father's final words to Touma were that he loves him and that Touma should take care of himself. When things have settled down, the young teacher however starts having doubts about what he heard. Why didn't his father say anything about who cut him in the neck? With the realization that Touma actually only heard what he wanted to hear from his father, and that it might in fact have been a completely different message, garbled as his father's strength faded, he tries to reconstruct his father's last word and find out who did this to him. This is a story that deals with a theme very important to dying messages (the interpretation of what was said), and it takes on this time in a rather surprising proper linguistic manner, exploring various ways in which Touma could've misheard what his father said. Ultimately, that does make the story feel a bit weak, because it feels a bit arbritrary what could be considered a "plausible" interpretation of the message, and what isn't. I think that thematically, it's a strong story, but all the talk about whether a certain word couldn't be that other similar-sounding word soon becomes a bit boring.

The final story, Saigo no Hitoshigoto ("His Last Job") by Miyauchi Yuusuke,  is about a writer on music, who decides to write a piece on Caustic, an indie duo consisting of lead singer and bassist Yuhara Seiichi and Shiga Makoto on the guitar and side-vocalist. In 2013, while they were recording their third album, Shiga died in the recording studio: he had been bashed in the head. However, Yuhara didn't report the murder until many hours later, even though he had been in that same studio. Eventually, their manager was arrested, but rumors always floated around that it was the eccentric prodigy Yuhara who murdered Shiga, and that their manager took the fall for him. The writer decides to learn more about the way in which Caustic fell apart,  and eventually arrives at a very surprising conclusion... Interesting story about a crime set in the past, in which a suspect was actually arrested and tried, but still, doubts exist about what actually happened, like Christie's Five Little Pigs. The crux of the problem lies in the question why Yuhara didn't report the murder immediately, as you are usually wont to die if somebody is murdered in the same room. The solution doesn't require as much imagination as the story pretends, partially because it is clewed and hinted at early on, so in that sense, it's a fair solution, but it does seem to show its card too early, making the finale, despite having a twist, feel a bit underwhelming.

On the whole, this year's Honkaku-Ou proves to be another fairly decent anthology, though I do think it starts off stronger than it ends, and it misses a story I am really a fan of this year, though I do greatly prefer this one over last year's. And perhaps it's just me, but because most of the stories included in this book are pretty short (and the volume itself isn't very long either), I do often find myself liking the more lighthearted stories better. I often read this anthology while reading other things, so I'll be reading a different book and occasionally squeeze in one of the stories in this volume, but I always end up liking the ones offering mystery and a laugh the best. So that'll always skew my view on these books, I guess. Expect another look at the Japanese short story mystery scene next year! 

Original Japanese title(s): 『本格王2024』:東川篤哉「じゃあ、これは殺人ってことで」/ 結城真一郎 「悪霊退散手羽元サムゲタン風スープ事件」/北山猛邦「未完成月光 Unfinished moonshine」/ 青崎有吾 「人魚裁判」/ 荒木あかね 「答え合わせ」/宮内悠介「最後のひと仕事」

Enemy Match

"A good fight should be like a small play, but played seriously. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract. When he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits all by itself."

"Enter the Dragon"

I do really hate how the English in this cover is cut off halfway... Just add those last few letters on the front side...

Imoriya Mato is a high school student who at first sight might appear to be a somewhat self-absorbed girl who's good at playing cute in front of the (male) senior students, but looks deceive, and that is why she is chosen by her classmates to be their representative in the Fool's Smoke Game, a tradition at Hoojiro High School. Each year, all the classes and clubs fight to get the best possible location for the school festival, being the roof: if the weather is good, you have the largest space here, with a nice view and most people will eventually arrive there, ensuring great visitor numbers (and thus earnings from whatever stand or stall the class or club will operate). To ensure everyone has a fair chance at getting the roof spot, the Fool's Smoke Games are held: the representatives of all the parties who want the roof compete in special one-on-one games, and the winner moves up in the tournament chart. Mato, accompanied by her friend and "witness" Kouda, soon has her first major game with someone of the Student Council, the organization that up until now was managed to secure the rooftop for themselves via the games. The game they play is Glico with Landmines, a variation on the weighted Rock Paper Scissors game. Her opponent however is perhaps as intelligent as Mato, resulting in a game where both sides constantly try to outsmart the other via various strategies. The outcome of the game results in Mato gaining the respect of the student council and she soon becomes known at the school for being good at these games, which of course gets Mato involved in more games with major stakes, from a club being at risk of being banned from a cafe unless Mato wins, to games involving a lot of money with other schools. Can Mato outsmart everyone in these variations of children's games in Aosaki Yuugo's Jirai Glico ("Glico with Landmines", 2023)?

Long ago, I wrote a review of the (live action) Liar Game series, based on the same-titled manga. It's a series I think is a prime example showing a mystery story does not need to be about crime, locked room murders, ingenious alibi tricks or anything remotely close to what most people would usually associate with the mystery genre, as mentioned in my post on what I think a "mystery" can be in mystery fiction. Liar Game focuses on a series of games (with very high stakes), but these games are not games of chance: they can be won by logical reasoning, by rigging the games while playing the game "fairly" (finding loopholes in the rules given) and often, the fun was that it was the protagonist who somehow rigged these games in their advantage, making them the "culprit", but also presenting a howdunnit mystery of how they could've rigged the game, without violating the rules. Liar Game however was indeed a fair mystery at the same, giving the viewer all the necessary clues/set-up that allowed them to arrive at the same conclusion as the protagonist too in a logical manner, meaning "you" too could have found a fool-proof way to win a game which seems to be one of chance. The series also focused a lot on strategies and counter-strategies of the various players, and the "if you think I think you think I am planning to do this..." element will also be very recognizable to readers of logic game mysteries like Death Note and Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning.

Jirai Glico is a connected short story collection that follows the same tradition as Liar Game by Aosaki Yuugo. He made his debut with Taiikukan no Satsujin ("The Gymnasium Murder") and was touted by the publisher as the Heisei-era Ellery Queen. Jirai Glico is published by a different company and while this book isn't directly inspired by Ellery Queen, one could say his style of writing mystery fits perfectly in the logical game subgenre: Queen-esque deduction chains often focus on "who knows what at what time and what influence does that have on their logical decision taking?", which is exactly what the meat of the stories in Jirai Glico is: we see five different familiar games transformed with additional rules, and we focus on the various, evolving strategies of the participants as they try to outsmart each other. And yes, part of what makes Jirai Glico so interesting is that the five stories all focus on existing games most of us will know, but with a few added rules that completely transform these familiar games into highly strategic matches. The result is a book that has been received very well critically as well, as it recently won the 24th Honkaku Mystery Award.

The title story Jirai Glico ("Glico with Landmines") for example is based on Glico, a weighted Rock Paper Scissors game, where the winner of each single match is allowed to take a number of steps on a staircase. Winning with rock means you can move three steps (Gu-ri-ko/Glico), scissors nets you six steps (Chi-yo-ko-re-i-to/Chocolate), as does paper (Pa-i-na-tsu-pu-ru/Pineapple). The first one to reach the top of the fifty step high staircase is the winner. The variation however is that at the start of the game, both Mato and her opponent are allowed to hide three landmines on any of the steps of the fifty-step staircase: whoever lands on a step with a landmine, will be sent down ten steps. What starts out as a simple game of chance with Rock Paper Scissors, however soon becomes a fascinating game of strategy, with both parties trying to logically deduce where the other placed their mines on the steps, and trying to figure out how to avoid those steps by tactically choosing which hand to play. Aosaki has a lot of fun letting his complex style of plotting loose on this game, and you could say the conclusion of the game is perhaps a bit predictable if you're familiar with these kinds of stories, the climb to the conclusion alone is definitely worth it, as you get to follow two geniuses trying to outsmart each other over... Rock Paper Scissors.

Bouzu Suijaku ("Monk Memory") has Mato helping out the school's karuta club: the members got into a row with the owner of a cafe they often frequented, and now they got banned completely. The student council, fearing the ban will hurt the school's reputation, hopes to smooth things over with the owner, but he refuses, until Mato challenges him in a game. He accepts, and proposes they play a game of memory/pairs with Japanese poem cards. Japanese poem cards have different illustrations on them, and can be roughly divided in three categories: princesses, men or monks. The extra rules involve these illustrations: finding a pair of men means you add that pair to your own pile and you get one new attempt at finding a pair. Pulling a monk pair however means you not only lose the turn, but all the cards currently in your possession go to the discard pile. A princess pair in turn is the best hand, as you not only keep the pair and get another attempt, you also obtain the complete discard pile at that point. They agree the person with the most cards in their possession at the end of the game will be the winner, with Mato's win condition being that for every ten cards he has, one member is allowed back, meaning she'd have to win all the cards in order to lift the ban on all the members. Mato starts this game of what seems to be just memory with more rules, but she soon realizes her opponent is cheating somehow. How is she going to win this game against a cheater? Well... by playing the game fairly... or does she? Bouzu Suijaku is a fun story, as we see Mato manipulating the game in a way to not exactly cheat, but to in a way to bend the rules a bit to fend off the cheater opposite her, and that coupled with a game that looks simple at first sight, but once again is deceptively deep, makes this a rather engaging tale of strategy.

Having caught the attention of the student council president, Mato is approached by her in Jiyuuritsu Janken ("Free-style Rock Paper Scissors"). Recognizing Mato's talents, the president hopes to get Mato under her control, and she challenges Mato to a game of free-style Rock Paper Scissors: if she wins, Mato will become a member of the council and thus has to do the president's bidding, while she promises Mato to locate a certain friend she lost contact with for her. free-style Rock Paper Scissors is in essence a very simple game, being the normal rock paper scissors, only both players are allowed to add one extra move each. They have to show each other the "form" of the move beforehand, but the effect (which other moves lose to it/beat it) is only known to the judge. Thus the two players must play Rock Paper Scissors with five moves, of which one move they themselves created, but the other remains unknown. What results is the story I perhaps liked best, because the president isn't fooled by Mato's act of playing cute, and both go in with guns blazing right from the start, trying to figure out what the effect is of the move the opponent created. The result is a fantastic battle of the wits, as both are willing to "sacrifice" wins in order to deduce the precise effects of the other's hand, while also making sure not to lose the whole game themselves. What is also fun is that this game involves a physical element like we see in competitive karuta, where people try to peak at their opponents' hand beforehand to predict what move they will use, making it much easier to visualize this as a very dynamic game.

Mato ends up having to follow the president's orders, which means she now has to play a game against students of Seietsu High, and a lot of money is at stake now in Daruma-san ga Kazoeta ("Daruma Counted"), as they are playing for Scholarship Chips, which are worth a lot of money at Seietsu High School, and winning enough will easily put you through college. Mato finds herself playing a variation of Daruma-san ga koronda (known as statues/red light green light/fairy footsteps and many more names), where the two participants are dubbed the killer and marker, with Mato becoming the killer. The two are standing at opposite ends of a park, and as in the normal game, the marker has to turn their back to the killer and count. The killer tries to approach the marker during this count, but it's game over if the marker stops counting, turns around and observes the killer moving. The killer has to take each step on each count of the marker. The variant rules for this game have the two players inform the judge beforehand about what they will do the next turn: the marker has to decide on how much they will count, after which they will turn around. The killer similarly has to decide on how many steps they will take beforehand, but is required to take all steps they decided upon, even if it's fewer than the marker's count: this will mean an instant game over. The killer has to reach the marker within a certain number of turns to win, while the marker has to count at least a specific number within X turns. While there is some strategic discussion on, this story is definitely the simplest of them all, and I found this was the easiest story to guess Mato's strategy. It's mostly intended to be a funny story to set-up the finale of the collection though, so I guess it works in that way.

After winning the previous game, Mato finds herself facing her greatest foe yet in the final game Four Room Poker. In this poker game the players have to bet their chips on each round, and of course the strongest hand wins. The hands in this game consists of three cards, but what makes this game of poker special is that every player can pick their own hand. After dealing the first hand of three cards to both players, players can choose to discard up to three of their cards. They are then given five minutes to enter three of four rooms in any order, where the rest of the cards of the deck have been laid out face down on tables. Inside these rooms, unseen by the other player, they can pick any card they want (but are only allowed to touch the number of cards they have to draw). The cards have been laid out according an undisclosed rule, and that's where this game becomes tricky: the only way the players can learn how the cards have been laid out, is to discard cards and drawing new cards each round, and hoping they can figure out how the cards are laid out by seeing what card they drew, but both players will draw, which will disturb the initial layout and making it harder to deduce what card lies where, and as the game proceeds, less and less cards remain, making it harder to create the hand you want. The result is the story that is definitely the most complex to grasp, as the physical aspect, where the players have to go in the rooms each time, adds a whole new dimension to the game of poker. It allows for some game shenanigans you also see in Liar Game that are somewhat unfair to the reader, as you could argue that one of them is cheating, even if the story doesn't consider it as such. So it is harder for the reader to predict how the game will go because of sometimes loose interpretation of the rules, but the way the two players try to outwit each other and react to each other's strategems is a delight to read!

What's more to say about the book? Jirai Glico is an enormously entertaining book that will show that you don't need murders or even anything remotely criminal to present an outrageously fun detective novel, that at the same time will offer you more logical reasoning and deductive chains you'll see in most mystery stories. Definitely worth the read!

Original Japanese title(s):青崎有吾『地雷グリコ』: 「地雷グリコ」/「坊主衰弱」「自由律ジャンケン」/「だるまさんがかぞえた」/「フォールーム・ポーカー」

The Dark Side of the Door

And the more that I knocked 

The hotter I got 

The hotter I got 

The harder I'd knock 

I just gotta break through the door

"Gotta Knock a Little Harder" (The Seatbelts)

I got the e-book of this book for free from BookWalker, but I still think that was a rare pricing error, because it was free for only half a day and I couldn't find any announcements about it being distributed for free...

Two weeks ago, I reviewed Aosaki Yuugo's short story collection Knockin' on Locked Door, which introduced the reader to a detective agency bearing the same title as the book. Run by Gotemba Touri and Katanashi Hisame (and their part-time assistant/housekeeper Kusuriko), the two detectives specialize in completely different types of crimes: Touri specializes in impossible crimes (howdunnit), while Hisame focuses on inexplicable crimes (whydunnit) and whenever a client appears at their offices (something that doesn't happen often enough), both detectives always hope it's their kind of case, because usually, the other one is forced to play assistant to the other. Touri and Hisame know each other from university, where they studied criminology with two other friends withw whom they sometimes cross paths: Ugachi is a police detective who usually doesn't really like working with her old study mates, but she knows they're the best at what they do. Meanwhile, the fourth member of their criminology class has made a career on the opposite side: under the name "Cheap Trick" Mikage has been working as a crime consultant, creating murder plans (with "cheap tricks") for his clients and occassionally, Touri and Hisame find themselves having to work on a case that involves their old friend. In Knockin' On Locked Door 2 (2019), the reader is treated to six new adventures of the titular detective agency.

The first Knockin' On Locked Door was an entertaining series of stories by Aosaki, where he combined his Queen-esque plotting focusing on chains of deductions based on (the state of) physical evidence with plots that usually revolved around the impossible, the inexplicable or a combination of both. While the book, on the whole, was quite good, it was also the mystery equivalent of popcorn or a bag of crisps: each story was very short, following the exactly same four act structure, and usually focused on a single idea and while most of the stories were usually at least "okay" and some really good, it was also the type of collection that just fades away easily because everything felt so light and formulaistic. Knockin' On Locked Door 2 is basically more of the same, so if you didn't like the first one, you'll find nothing to change your mind here: it's still a very light-hearted short story collection where almost all stories follow a formula, and while usually the stories are well plotted and some are really clever, it's really similar to the first book. In fact, I read both books in quick succession, and it took me a while to actually get started on the reviews, but I honestly couldn't remember which book had which stories, because they were all so samey, despite being about very different situations each time. And okay, it probably didn't help I waited like over a year before I got started on the reviews...

The opening story Ana no Aita Misshitsu ("The Locked Room With A Hole") is about a kind of locked room. Or at least, it was at one point in time. A man was found murdered in the shed where he usually spent his days off working on DIY furniture, lying across a table he had been working on with a driver in his head. The door of the shed was locked from the inside, the key found with the man, and no windows a person would fit through.... but there is a gigantic hole in the back wall, cut open with a power saw. So considering there's a hole in the wall it isn't really a locked room, and the fallen paint can and the paint on the floor in front of the door suggests why the murderer did this, but can Touri and Hisame figure out who the murderer is based on the state of this odd locked room? Yes, they can, and it's a technically sound story, with a good focus on physical evidence which allows you to deduce a lot of the crime yourself, though I have to admit the initial impact of the gigantic hole in the wall is much bigger than the surprises you'll find later in the story: it's a fine detective story and there's a good way in which the hole is used to deduce who did it, but the idea of the hole itself is a bit more impressive than the deductive chain leading to the culprit

A woman is found murdered in Tokei ni Matsuwaru Ikutsu no Uso ("A Few Lies About A Watch"), and the main suspect is her boyfriend, with whom she had a row earlier that evening. However, the boyfriend has an alibi, as he was performing on stage with his band, while the time of death of the victim is determined by both forensic investigation and her broken watch, and the boyfriend most definitely has an alibi for the time the victim's watch stopped at. Of course, the police doesn't blindly trust a stopped watch, but the victim's watch was a special case: it is a limited edition radio-controlled watch with the special "feature" nobody can actually change the time of the watch! The makers were so confident in the clock's accuracy, it actually doesn't even feature a crown, and can only be opened by the makers (battery replacements are of course free of charge). As nobody could've tampered with the time of that specific clock, it appears the boyfriend has a solid alibi, but is it really so solid?  The idea of how this "perfect alibi" is created is a bit artificial (who's going to buy such a watch?) but the clues in this story that point out how the murderer managed to create this alibi are really cleverly hidden in the story, and result in a satisfying tale of deduction, as in hindsight, you realize you really should have solved this mystery yourself considering the obvious clues. I also think this is one of the few stories where the characters unique to this story really make an impression, instead of being a bland A, B or C who'll be forgotten by the time the next story starts.

Ugachi Keibuho, Jiken Desu ("Lt. Ugachi, it's a case!") is almost like a spin-off story, as it focuses on Ugachi instead of the duo from the detective agency. Ugachi is investigating the apparent suicide of a writer, who fell off the seventh floor balcony of his room. A witness of an opposite building however states they saw a woman in the apartment above the victim's room looking down her balcony too around the presumed time of death, but she never called the police and the body was only reported much later. The woman living one floor above actually worked with the victim in the past, and she had been sexually harrassed and assaulted by him, so she has a motive, but the problem is that the victim's apartment was locked from the inside, and the key was found inside his room, so how could the woman have made it look like a suicide? It's a story that works best as a spin-off story I think, as while the howdunnit itself isn't really memorable and the physical clues pointing to the truth of what happened are a bit too mundane, I think it works perfectly as a story where Ugachi herself is the main detective, giving the reader a story that isn't strictly about how or why, but manages to turn it in a kind of different mystery.

In Kieru Shoujo Ou Shoujo ("The Vanishing Girl, The Pursuing Girl"), the two detectives are hired to find a girl who disappeared from a tunnel running beneath a road: her friend spotted the girl from the other side of the road, waving to her. The girl then entered the tunnel which should've taken her to the other side of the road, but no matter how long her friend waited, the girl never showed up at the other end of the tunnel, nor was she seen returning back to the entrance of the tunnel (the opposite side of the road). Little time has passed so the police hasn't been informed yet, especially as the friend's not sure whether the girl disappeared by choice or against her will, so Touri and Hisame start investigating the dorm where the girl lives to see if they can find any clues about her disappearance. The investigation is surprisingly more focused on the why of the impossible disappearance than the how, and while in the end, that does work in the story's advantage, it still reads a bit weird. Not a big fan of this story though, as both the why and the how feel a bit underwhelming, and you really wonder whether this was the most logical thing for the culprit to do.

Mottomo Manuke na Dekishitai ("The Stupidest Drowned Body") has Touri and Hisame investigate a very odd death orchestrated by their old friend Mikage AKA Cheap Trick. A IT company president was found drowned in an exclusive club members only pool one early morning. The man had drowned about eight hours earlier and had been lying in the water since, but... there had hardly been any water in the pool when he died! The previous evening, after a reserved party at this pool, someone had drained the pool of the water, which was only discovered at midnight. The caretaker switched the water management tool on again at midnight, and it would take about eight hours to fill the pool again, just in time for the morning swimmers. It seems thus that the victim had somehow managed to drown himself while there was basically just a puddle lying on the pool floor. But of course, Mikage is behind this, so there was some trick to how a drowned body appeared in an empty pool. By far the best story of the whole collection, it's always with these Mikage stories a cheap trick by which this inexplicable murder was created, but still a very memorable one, and the idea of the victim just drowning in his swimming wear in a puddle in a basically empty pool is just really silly in the good sense: just inexplicable enough for an interesting murder mystery, without being overly dramatic.

Door no Kagi wo Akeru toki ("When The Door Is Unlocked") is the final story, and brings the old four university friends together, when Mikage suddenly appears again and challenges his old friends to solve a locked room mystery they all know very well, because it's something that happened to themselves a few years ago, when they were studying criminology together. In a flashback, we are told how the four of them were working together on their graduation project, which involved investigating a real crime, when one of them was assaulted: the victim was found bleeding from his neck and an ambulance had to be called immediately or he wouldn't have lived to tell the tale. However, the house he was found in was locked from the inside, and the key was found inside a cup in the living room where the victim was found. Mikage now wants them to solve what really happened back then. A story that is more interesting as a flashback case fleshing out the relations between Touri, Hisame, Ugachi and Mikage rather than as a locked room mystery itself, as the trick behind the locked room is really old and a lot of readers will probably be familiar with one or more variants on the exact same idea. Aosaki obviously wouldn't be himself if he wouldn't pay good attention to clewing, but still, it's not a really memorable locked room mystery on its own merits, and works better as a story for those who wanted to learn more about the protagonists, especially as previous stories follow a formula so rigid, so this one stands out.

So like the first collection, Knockin' On Locked Door 2 is a lot like popcorn, a light snack that never really disappoints, but in comparison tot the first book, I'd say this one is not as good. The first one simply had more stories I really liked overall. I don't really hate any of the stories in this second volume, but I don't think the highest highs of this volume are as high as those we saw in the first volume and while some readers will like the attempt to flesh out the characters a bit more in the two outlier stories in the second volume, I found it, on the whole, just a tad weaker.

Original Japanese title(s): 青崎有吾『ノッキンオン・ロックドドア２』:「穴の開いた密室」/「時計にまつわるいくつかの嘘」/「穿地警部補、事件です」/「消える少女追う少女」/「最も間抜けな溺死体」/「ドアの鍵を開けるとき」

The Door-to-Door Deception

Gave it all that I got

And started to knock

Shouted for someone to open the lock

I just gotta get through the door

"Gotta Knock a Little Harder" (The Seatbelts)

It's not as bad as how it went with Kubinashiyakata no Satsujin, but still, I wrote this review 12 months + a week after reading the book. And then the review still had to wait a few months for publication! In the time between me writing this post and it getting published, they actually announced a live-action drama is in production, which will start airing in July and it's directed by none other than Tsutsumi, the director of the original Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo drama series, Keizoku and of course Trick!

Knockin' On Locked Door is the title of a 2016 short story collection by Aosaki Yuugo, the name of the title story in said collection and the name of the detective agency run by Gotemba Touri and Katanashi Hisame, though their part-time assistant/housekeeper Kusuriko will probably argue she's actually one trying to get the agency to be succesful. While both Touri and Hisame can be a bit eccentric in their own ways, the unique part of their agency is that the two detectives are very specialized and that they are in a way equal co-workers, but also minor rivals. For Touri specializes in impossible crimes (howdunnit), while Hisame focuses on inexplicable crimes (whydunnit). Each time a new client arrives at the agency, both detectives of course hope they'll be the one to handle the crime, as the other is usually just forced to play assistant for the other and thus have the most boring day ever, though on lucky days, they come across cases that require the abilities of both these detectives. Occasionally, they meet with old acquaintances: Ugachi is an old college classmate who is now a police detective, though she's usually not a big fan of seeing her old friends again nosing around at her crime scenes. Another old college classmate is also in the business of crime, although that is literal: unlike the previous crime-fighting trio, Mikage has chosen the path of the criminal consultant, planning crimes for others to commit, and occasionally, their paths cross, finding themselves on opposite sides.

Knockin' On Locked Door is in a way a book with a very rigid formula, as the stories basically always utilize either a howdunnit or whydunnit focus, or a combination of both. The idea of multiple detectives with different methods can be fun, like seen in Morikawa's Hitotsu Yane no Shita no Tanteitachi ("Detectives Beneath One Roof" AKA Two Detectives and One Watson), where the two detectives were bascially the Ant and the Grasshopper. Or a book I only recently reviewed: Sailor-Fuku to Mokushiroku features the trio of Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii who all focus on different aspects of a crime: Kyouko focuses on the whodunit, Mizuki on the howdunnit and Marii on the whydunnit.This approach however is very different from Knockin' On Locked Door: in Sailor-Fuku to Mokushiroku, the three detectives focus on the same mystery, but from different angles. Knockin' On Locked Door however isn't about the angle from which a crime is examined, but it's the intrinsic type of the mystery that determines whether Touri or Hisame will take the initiative in the investigation. This sounds better than the actual execution however. For obviously, each story will still feature both characters and most stories try to have something to do even for the detective who is forced to play assistant, but it's seldom you really feel it was really necessary to split up the questions of howdunnit and whydunnit across characters, and the synergy between the two elements isn't always as strong.

In fact, it's the opening story Knockin' On Locked Door that does this the best, and while this sounds very negative (don't worry, the book is overall really good), I did think it a shame the book almost peaked right at the start. The two detectives are asked to investigate the death of an artist, who was found murdered inside his locked atelier. Which doesn't make sense, because why wasn't the death dressed as a suicide if it was in a locked room anyway, and why were the paintings thrown across the floor and only one of them painted red? Thus we have a mystery that is both a locked room (the impossible) with very weird features (the inexplicable). The synergy between these two elements is at its best in this story. While the exact why is rather hard to guess, but the way how the why actually explains how the locked room was executed is brilliant, and the trick behind the how is quite clever, yet simple too. Together with the next story, the best story in the collection.

The second story, Kami no Mijikaku Natta Shitai ("The Dead Body Whose Hair Was Cut Short") I already read back in 2017 because it was featured in an anthology. The leader of a small theatrical troupe was found murdered in the small, soundproof apartment the group had been renting for their rehearsals. The body was discovered in the bathroom, wearing only her underwear and for some reason, her long hair had been cut short and been removed from the crime scene. Evidence seems to be pointing towards someone among her three fellow members, but why would anyone want to cut the victim's hair off? A case that is about the inexplicable, and the problem of the cut hair reminds of a certain mystery novel by a well-known Japanese author, the story itself is glad to tell you. I liked the story back in 2017 and now I still do, being very much a story done in the Queen-style as you'd expect of Aosaki. So a focus on physical clues and the state in which they are found, which tells us about what the culprit did or did not do. Some parts of the mystery might require a bit more imagination/guesswork than you'd usually see in a story in that format, but overall, the explanation of why exactly the culprit took the victim's hair with them and why she was left in her underwear in the bathroom is really good, and the story is despite it short length constructed really well.  

Dial W Wo Mawase! ("Dial W!") has a title that is a play on the Japanese title of Dial M for Murder and starts off with two different clients appearing at the agency, so Touri and Hisame have to split up and work on different cases: Touri is looking into the death of an old man who seemingly tripped and died on the street during a midnight stroll, while Hisame has to examine an old safe, which for some reason doesn't open despite its now deceased owner actually left clear instructions as to how to open the safe. The story is again short, so it doesn't really surprise when we later learn the two cases are connected, and I do think the connection is really clever: the death of the old man and the safe intersect in a very interesting manner, and logically explains why both events have occured. The reason why I don't think this story is as strong as the previous two is mainly because the initial split in "two" cases seems rather too obvious, as you just know right away the two things will connect in one way or another, and because the first half of the story focuses at two different investigations, things move rather fast and feel a bit underdeveloped, even in comparison to the other (all very short) stories.

Cheap Trick has Touri and Hisame investigate the murder of a company executive, who had been afraid for his life for a while. He was shot with a rifle in his study through the window, but because the man had been expecting an attempt at his life, he had thick, black-out curtains hanging in front of the windows, making it impossible for anyone outside to snipe them. Yet the man was shot in his study in his chest and found lying near the window, even though he was avoiding the window all this time. So how did the sniper standing beneath the window know the victim would be near the window to be able to shoot him, despite the curtains? It turns out this murder was planned by Mikage, Touri, Hisame and Ugachi's old classmate who know engineers murders for others as a consultant, making this case a personal thing too. Like the title suggest, this one is a pretty cheap trick, in the sense it's fairly simple to guess. Aosaki tries to make it a bit more difficult by adding one element, but even that's a bit too obvious. Not the strongest story in the collection.

Iwayuru Hitotsu no Yuki Misshitsu ("A Locked Room in the Snow In a Way") has Touri investigate the death of a man who was found with a kitchen knife in his chest lying in the middle of the snowy field that lied between his own workshop and that of his brother, with whom he had a big row. The only footsteps in the field are those of the victim (and the persons who found him in the morning) and there are no fingerprints on the snow. A classic no-footprints-in-the-snow set-up, and as you may expect, a lot of the story revolves around Touri proposing many familiar solutions (using the knife as a projectile etc.) to this old trope which get rejected until they arrive at the real solution. Which isn't super exciting on its own, but I have to say the misdirection going on in this story is fairly good, making a solution which without the context would be very disappointing, still a story that is saved by competent plotting.

Juuendama ga Sukunasugiru ("Too Few 10 Yen Coins") is perhaps better translated as The Ten Yen Coin, because it's a play on the Kemelman story The Nine Mile Walk. This story is the odd duck out, not following the usual story format. Agency assistant/housekeeper Kusuriko tells her employers about a strange phone call she happened to overhear, of a man on his smart phone. The line she remembers is "I have too few 10 yen coincs. I need five more." The line stuck with her because the 10 yen coin is worth so little (100 yen is basically the equivalent to 1 euro/1 dollar), so in what situation would you need specifically 10 yen coins, and in such an amount the caller would say they had too few of them and needed five more? Like The Nine Mile Walk, this initiates a discussion that allows the two detectives to come up with various explanations for this specific line and the intended use of these 10 yen coins, taking in account the precise context of the phone call Kusuriko overheard. It takes a long time for the detectives to arrive at the explanation which seems rather obvious to me, though I guess people who are much younger than I might find it more surprising? It's a story that may have been more surprising many years later from now, but I find it hard to believe that it's that hard to guess what this is about.

Kagirinaku Kakujitsu na Dokusatsu ("A Poisoning with Extreme Certainty") is about the death of a politician, who collapsed after drinking his glass of champagne during a speech. Poison was detected in the remainder of the champagne, but a check of the security footage shows nobody forced that specific glass of champagne on the victim, nor did anyone have any chance to put any poison in the glass after it had been picked. The murder is once again the work of Mikage, making this another personal case. Perhaps the least memorable story of the collection, and unfortunately, also the last story. The how of the poisoning can be guessed very quickly once you get through the initial investigative scenes, and from there it's basically a problem-free race to the finish. There are interesting ideas to the crime as regards to some of how it was all timed by the planner of the crime, but still, once you realize how it was done the rest of the mystery falls like a set of dominos.

But looking at the whole collection, I'd say Aosaki did a good job with Knockin' On Locked Door on the whole. If you're looking for depth however, this might not be your book: each story is really short (though usually structured well), with the characters basically just doing their usual two catch phrases/the same comedic act or something like that at the start of a story before moving on to the main mystery, but most of the mysteries are plotted well, and while I do think the book peaked with its opening stories, it's an excellent read if you're looking for something easy to read and yet crave puzzle plots. 

Original Japanese title(s): 青崎有吾『ノッキンオン・ロックドドア』: 「ノッキンオン・ロックドドア」 / 「髪の短くなった死体」 / 「ダイヤルWを廻せ！」 / 「チープ・トリック」 / 「いわゆる一つの雪密室」 / 「十円玉が少なすぎる」 / 「限りなく確実な毒殺」

The Burglar in the Library

"Everything in red. I keep thinking of that darned scarlet letter."

"The Scarlet Letters"

I think I'm in the minority here, but I really can't study in libraries. I always found it amazing how fellow students managed to study in the university library, because I really couldn't focus in a public space like that. Seeing people studying in family restaurants in Japan was the other extreme, of course.

Urazome Tenma series
The Gymnasium Murder AKA The Black Umbrella Mystery (2012)
The Aquarium Murder AKA The Yellow Mop Mystery (2013) 
The Kazegaoka 50 Yen Coin Festival Mystery AKA The Adventure of the Summer Festival (2014)
The Library Murder AKA The Red Letter Mystery (2016)

The Kazegaoka Library serves an important community role for the Kazegaoka district of Yokohama, from meeting spot for the elderly, place where a child picks their own books to read, to studying spot for the local students. One early September morning however, two librarians find that someone has used the library in a very different manner: they find the college student Shiromine Kyousuke lying dead on the floor, surrounded by a few books which flew off the bookcase. Kyousuke, a regular of the library, was beaten to death with a hardcover copy of Yamada Fuutarou's Encyclopedia of Human Death. The police investigation soon stumbles on various problems, ranging from how and why Kyousuke snuck into the library in the first place to why he was killed in such an odd place. But what stumps the police the most is the dying message left by the victim: there was a Japanese character "ku" (く) written in blood, but the protagonist on the cover of the popular detective novel Radio Control Detective was also encircled with blood. With no explanation for the two messages, the police decides to call in their "consultant" Urazome Tenma: an incredibly lazy, yet brilliant high school student who ran away from home and is now living in secret on the school premises. Earlier in the year, Tenma managed to solve the murders in his school's old gymnasium and in the local aquarium, and even though he's right in the middle of his end-of-semester examinations, he decides to focus his mind on the body in the library in Aosaki Yuugo's Toshokan no Satsujin ("The Library Murder", 2016).

Oh, man, I love the covers in this series. Anyway, Toshokan no Satsujin, which also carries the alternative English title The Red Letter Mystery, is the third novel in the Urazome Tenma series, and the fourth entry overall. The paperback pocket edition was released in September 2018. Aosaki made his debut with 2012's Taiikukan no Satsujin, the first in this series, and his publisher already lauded him as the "Heisei-era Ellery Queen" then (little did they know at the time that the Heisei era wouldn't last that much longer). As this nickname, and the alternative English titles of his novels suggest, Aosaki is heavily influenced by the Queen school of mystery fiction: this type of mystery focuses on long deduction chains based on physical clues and on the identification of characteristics of the killer: clue A, B and C tell us that the killer must be D, E and F, and only X answers to that description. For those who enjoy a true pure puzzle mystery plot, one that really challenges you into logically deducing who the murderer must be, Toshokan no Satsujin offers exactly what you want.

Like the early Queen novels, the crime scenes in this series are set at semi-public areas, from the school gymnasium to a local aquarium. In this novel's case, we have a public library. And I say semi, in each case, there are still restrictions to the accessibility of these scenes: in the gymnasium murder case, we actually had a locked room murder, while in the aquarium case, the murderer must've been in the backyard area of the aquarium. In Toshokan no Satsujin, the public library scene is restricted because the murder occured in the night inside the library, and obviously only a couple of people could've gone inside the library at that time. The book has a nice diagram of the library to help you visualize the place, and it's actually also quite handy while deducing some of the actions of the murderer. Now I think about it, spatial movement is one of the more important factors in Aosaki's mysteries: you'll always be focusing on the actions of the murderer, but that also includes where they went in what order, as it's exactly that what usually allows you to identify some important characteristic of the killer ("if they first did X, and then went upstairs to do Y, then that means Z").

But physical evidence is always the foundation to solving the case. I can tell you right now, you are never going to solve this 100%. I mean, this is a clever book, an incredibly clever book even, and that also means the deduction chain necessary to identitfy the murderer completely is very, very long. The starting point of these chain focuses on several pieces of evidence, most notably the two dying messages, the books spread around the body and several smudges of blood around them. In order to solve this case, you'll need to develop multiple threads of reasoning based on these pieces of evidence and work with them simultaneously: sometimes you'll be intertwining these threads, sometimes you'll be following them independently of each other. I'd be impressed if you managed to get more than half of the conditions you should end up with, as these are really tricky, but well-founded deductions. Not even the one chain The Moai Island Puzzle is as complex as what's done here. What luckily makes Toshokan no Satsujin a readable experience that there is sort of a halfway point: Tenma's explanation of the case isn't completely end-loaded, but he will reveal a couple of his deductions throughout which help the reader out and result in story development, and especially one reveal in the middle is good: the reader actually has the advantage over Tenma, but even then you might not guess what Tenma's going to reveal then. As an experiment in deduction however, Toshokan no Satsujin is fantastic, as it showcases a lot of different ways of how to develop one single clue into a full chain of thought. I'd hesitate recommending it to someone who has never read such a type of mystery novel however, as the explanation part after the Challenge to the Reader is really long: there's just so much the book expects you to deduce to figure out whodunit.

The way Toshokan no Satsujin handles the dying message by the way is great. Dying message stories can be a bit of a hit or miss if they focus on the meaning of the message, like they usually do. Sometimes the solution is far too farfetched for something written by someone dying, other times the meaning is far too obvious. The meaning of the dying messages do matter in Toshokan no Satsujin of course, but Tenma actually manages to deduce quite a lot about the identity of the murderer not based on the meaning of the dying messages, but how they were made. As I've mentioned earlier in a post on clues: these type of mysteries focus on the actions and inactions of the actors involved, and the reason why certain actions (or inactions) are taken. Toshokan no Satsujin does a tremendous job showing how the circumstances that led to the creation of these messages are a clue on their own, giving the meaning of the message less importance. This alone makes this a worthwhile read.

Don't expect much of the motive though. I mean, motives almost never ever matter in these types of elimination-method-mysteries, where you're identifying specific characteristics of the killer, but even as someone who doesn't really minds weak motives, I have to say that the motive of the killer in Toshokan no Satsujin is portrayed really weakly. It basically comes out of nowhere and doesn't even really make sense. The logical prison built around the suspect is solid, but you really wonder why that suspect committed the crime in the first place. The novel also focuses much more on its recurring cast, and don't expect to learn much about the suspects either besides some basic characteristics.

Moving away from the core mystery plot (gasp!), I found this a fairly entertaining and funny novel as usual. The geeky Tenma offers loads of obvious and less obvious to manga, anime, TV drama and other outings of popular culture (really fun to see how many of these you get), and the banter between his "assistant" Yuno and her classmates about school and other stuff is always amusing to read. All the four books in this series are set in the same year by the way: Taiikukan no Satsujin and Suizokukan no Satsujin are set before summer break, the short story collection Kazegaoka Gojuuendama Matsuri no Nazo is set during summer break, and Toshokan no Satsujin is as said set in early September, in the week of the end-of-semester exams (each chapter is in fact named after the exams held that day). The books can be read standalone, but there are always references to people they meet and other stuff to earlier stories (no spoilers by the way), so it does pay off to read them in order, especially as there's a very light sub-plot of Yuno trying to learn more about Tenma's background with each novel (though that's moving really, really slowly).

I had been looking forward to reading Toshokan no Satsujin for a long time now (as I waited for the pocket release...) and I'm happy to say that it definitely met my expectations as a logic-focused puzzle plot mystery. It's at one hand a very accessible novel, with a lot of easy banter and a YA vibe, but the core mystery plot is as complex as you can get, and if you're not used to this, I can imagine people getting frustrated at the enormous long chains of reasoning Tenma explains at the end. For fans of early Ellery Queen or The Moai Island Puzzle for example: this is the goods! Smart, surprising deductions based on seemingly meaningless clues, and a plot that makes good use of the public library as its crime scene. Personal favorite for this year, but it might be a bit too Queen-ish for some, despite the lighter YA fiction atmosphere throughout the novel.

Original Japanese title(s): 青崎有吾『図書館の殺人』

Sing A Song of Sixpence

"No lesser crime than murder will suffice."

"Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories"

Not that this is a bad cover (to the contrary!), but I do miss the bold use of the color yellow of the previous two volumes.... 

Urazome Tenma is almost an urban legend at his high school, as while he's easily one of the top students there, Tenma seldom interacts with his fellow classmates and the few that do know him, mostly know him for being incredibly lazy and selfish. What even fewer people know however is that he's actually living on the school grounds, as he's secretly confiscated one of the club rooms after having run away from home. Most of his free time is spent on his hobbies, like watching anime, reading manga or sleeping. But that Tenma's actually capable of miracles if he sets his mind to it, as was proven in the few months before the summer holiday of his second year, as he managed to solve the impossible murder that happened inside his school's gymnasium, as well as a gruesome murder that was committed in the local aquarium. Aosaki Yuugo's Kazegaoka Gojuuendama Matsuri no Nazo ("The Kazegaoka 50 Yen Coin Festival Mystery") details a series of smaller adventures that Tenma and his friends encountered during the summer holiday after the previous two cases happened.

Kazegaoka Gojuuendama Matsuri no Nazo ("The Kazegaoka 50 Yen Coin Festival Mystery") was originally published in 2014 as the third book in Aosaki Yuugo's Urazome Tenma series, and the first short story collection in this series. I read the paperback version, which was released in 2017. The book, as well as all the stories included, all feature alternative English titles by the way, which are not direct translations of the original titles. Aosaki is an author who is obviously inspired by Ellery Queen, and the previous novels all featured alternative English titles named in the Queen spirit ("The [Color] [Noun] Mystery"). In this book, the stories have English titles in the spirit of Ellery Queen's early short story collections The Adventures of Ellery Queen (and The New Adventures of Ellery Queen), and thus feature the title format "The Adventure of...".

The book opens with Mou Isshoku Eraberu Donburi ("A Rice Bowl Where You Can Choose One Extra Dish"), which carries the alternative English title The Adventure of the Missing Chopsticks. I had already read this particular story earlier this year, and even wrote a review about it, and there's little I want to add to that. It's a brilliant short story that presents a very normal, but puzzling mystery (Why did a student dump their tray and half-eaten rice bowl just outside the school cafeteria, even though it'd have taken no effort to bring it to the drop-off point?) as a meticulously constructed logic puzzle for the reader to deduce this seemingly nonsensical deed was done. It is a perfect example of the everyday life mystery, that changes an innocent, almost meaningless circumstance to an amusing mystery story by simply asking "Why?" and "How?" about things you normally wouldn't think twice about. The mystery also fits the school setting of this series perfectly, much more actually than the murders we saw in the previous two novels.

The title story Kazegaoka Gojuuendama Matsuri no Nazo ("The Kazegaoka 50 Yen Coin Festival Mystery"), or The Adventure of the Summer Festival, is set at a summer festival held at a shrine. Yuno's brother (a policeman) has to swing by with some drinks for the local policemen on guard here, with Yuno tagging along to enjoy the festival mood and food. She meets with Tenma at the festival, as well as with schoolmate Kaori and Tenma's younger sister Kyouka. During their chats however, they realize something weird is going on at this festival, for a great number of food stalls at this festival are returning all of their change in 50 yen coins, instead of the more common 100 yen coins. But why?

A surprisingly normal, yet weird puzzle, but one with roots in reality. For this story is actually a variation on a real-life mystery the author Wakatake Nanami encountered once when she was working part-time in a bookstore. Each Saturday, a man would appear with twenty 50 yen coins, asking her to exchange it for a thousand yen bill, with no explanation as to why. This enigmatic incident later formed the basis of a collaboration work published by Tokyo Sogen, with both professional mystery authors (like Norizuki Rintarou and Arisugawa Alice) and amateur writers offering their reasons to Wakatake's conundrum. A second volume was also released, with even more possible solutions.

But back to Aosaki's story. The problem is deliciously innocent yet puzzling, because whether you get your 200 yen change back as four 50 yen coins or two 100 yen coins shouldn't really matter, but it's still a problem that will slightly bug you. While the story revolves around such a 'nonsensical' problem, the actual plot structure is quite good, with proper hinting and even false solutions to put you off-guard (with adequate hints and proof to show why the false solutions are wrong). The solution is also wonderfully innocent, yet convincing enough to what at first sight might seem to be a rather mundane occurance.

Harimiya Eriko no Third Impact ("Harimiya Eriko's Third Impact"), or The Adventure of Rieko Harimiya, stars the titular Eriko, once a problem child who bullied others, but who of late has been trying to become a better person, or at least not a bully anymore. Part of the reason for her change is that she recently started dating Saotome, who's one year younger than her. Saotome is also the only boy in the school's brass band, and they are also rehearsing during the summer holiday at school. Eriko learns that the last few days, Saotome has been sent out to buy water for everyone to drink during their practice sessions, but that every time he returns, the girls have locked the room, forcing him to cry out loud for them to open the door for him. Eriko suspects he's being bullied by the other girls in the band, but can't really accuse them of anything considering her own past. Desperate, Eriko decides to ask Tenma to figure out why they're bullying Otome and to solve the problem for her.

This reminds me, the previous two novels were filled with both obvious and obscure reference to manga and anime, because of Tenma's hobbies, but as he isn't the main character in these stories, there are actually fewer of these references in this book. Or at least, I noticed fewer of them. The Third Impact from this story is obviously a reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion however. As for the story itself, it features a mystery that is obviously very strongly connected with the school setting (suspected bullying), but the truth behind the case is also wonderfully fitting, and is ingeniously hinted at through various hints and happenings that occur throughout the story. The everyday life mystery is a difficult genre, as it is difficult to have puzzling situations and solutions that are both mundane yet alluring. While the problem in this story might seem a bit too mundane, the solution is really convincing, but with just enough of wonder to surprise the reader.

Tenshitachi no Zanshomimai ("A Visit During A Lingering Heat By Angels"), or The Adventure of the Twin Angels, is about a curious incident described by a senior member of the school's Theater Club in one of his idea notebooks, with the writer claiming that he really experienced the following tale. He was one day dozing off after school soon after the summer holiday was over, but then made his way over to his classroom on the second floor, only to see two of his female classmates in a passionate embrace standing near the window. He quickly backed away, turning back to the hallway. But after some time, he decided to go in anyway, only to see the two girls had disappeared, even though he had his eyes on the classroom door all the time. So how did those girls leave that room completely unseen? The solution was something I had not thought off, though I think that Japanese readers have an advantage here, as it involves a certain custom not as common where I grew up, but more so in Japan (in fact, I first experienced myself in Japan too). Once you think off it, the mystery of the disappearing girls makes a lot more sense, and once again the hinting is impeccable, with careful wording and seemingly innocent statements always coming back at the end of the tale to explain what happened in a logical way.

The final full story in this volume is Sono Kabin ni Gochuui wo ("Please Mind That Vase"), or The Adventure of the Silent Vase, which stars Tenma's younger sister Kyouka, who studies at an elite junior high. She's having a talk with her friend Himemari in a classroom when it is discovered that the flower vase placed in the hallway outside the classroom was broken, with the shards, flowers and water spread all across the floor. As a member of the student council, Himemari obviously has to investigate who broke the vase, until she realizes something strange is going on: neither she nor Kyouka had seen anyone pass through the hallway while they were in the classroom, nor had they heard the sound of the vase breaking. So did it break on its own, silently? The story is very similar in idea to the earlier two novels in the series, as it focuses on the movements (and alibis) of characters and there's even a diagram of that section of the school for the reader to trace the movements of everyone involved, but the story feels a bit too hasty for its own good. The basic idea behind this story is to figure out who could've broken that vase without anyone hearing it, but the reader is given next to no time to contemplate the problem themselves, and the mystery itself feels much more 'constructed' than the previous stories, which felt much more natural and in line with the everyday life mystery. This story on the other hand features a character who acts just like the culprit in a complex mystery story with almost uncanny knowledge about the movements of all the other characters in order for them to commit that heineous crime of breaking a vase unseen and unheard. While this was in a way the M.O. in the two novels in this series, it really doesn't fit the tone of the other stories in this volume. So it's a bit too smart, a bit too 'conventional crime'-esque.

The volume also contains a very short bonus story, Sekai Ichi Ikokochi no Warui Sauna ("The Worst Sauna To Be In"), which is not a proper mystery story, but shows a bit more insight in Tenma's relation with a certain family member. I suspect it might also serve as 'laying the ground' for the fourth book in the series.

While the last few stories were not as strong as the first few, Kazegaoka Gojuuendama Matsuri no Nazo has proven itself to be an excellent short story collection that mixes impressively structured detective plots with incidents that seem mundane at first sight, but prove to be vexingly puzzling, resulting in very alluring everday life mysteries. The school setting is used to its fullest, and the volume also fleshes out the various characters and school setting better than the previous two novels, making this series a richer environment. I for one can't wait to read the next volume!

Original Japanese title(s): 青崎有吾　『風ヶ丘五十円玉祭りの謎』：　「もう一色選べる丼」 / 「風ヶ丘五十円玉祭りの謎」 / 「針宮理恵子のサードインパクト」 / 「天使たちの残暑見舞い」 「その花瓶にご注意を」 / 「世界一居心地の悪いサウナ」

Gathering Pieces

わりと昔からとめといてたまに読み返す頭んなか

その言葉は言葉にはエコーがついてる

「エコー」（ユニコーン）

I've been saving them up from rather long ago / I sometimes read them again / inside my head

Those words / There's an echo to those words

"Echo" (Unicorn)

If you have ever browsed in the comic department of a bookstore in Japan, you might have come across them: preview booklets. When a publisher decides to push sales for a certain series (for example because there's an anime or live adaptation coming up, or the comic won an award), they'll often work together with bookstores to promote the series. Projects like these often involve little cards placed around the store with comments on the work in question by the bookstore employees themselves, the infamous hiratsumi method of getting attention (putting heaps of the books in question in front of the book cabinet with the cover facing up, instead of putting them inside the cabinets with only their spines visible) and of course preview booklets. These booklets are not meant for readers to take away (and are often chained to the cabinets), but allow perusing customers to read a chapter for free (new comic books are often wrapped in foil in Japan). They are obviously an effective way to introduce new readers to a series and I myself have also bought comics after reading such booklets.

My favorite live action drama of 2016 was Juuhan Shuttai! ("Reprint Ready!"), which was based on a manga about a manga editor and the story behind how a manga is made, from the artist, to the publisher all the way to the bookstore and customer. One of the episodes was about how the marketing department of the publisher decided to promote a series and create preview booklets. I was quite surprised to learn that they actually use overstock of the books to create these preview booklets; they cut out the first chapter from the complete book to create a new booklet, and throw the rest away. It was quite shocking to see they sacrifice whole books to create a smaller book, but I guess it makes more sense than printing extra books before you even know whether the promotion will improve sales.

(If you ever want to learn more about how the manga industry works in Japan, go watch Juuhan Shuttai! or read the manga! It's both fun and informative, especially as it looks at the complete industry, rather than just at the artists or editors)

You don't see these booklets in Japan for 'normal' books (i.e. the non-comic kinds), as reading a comic is a lot easier than reading the first chapter of a novel inside a bookstore, but with the growing popularity of e-books, publishers have been making these kinds of free preview booklets available digitally. Obviously, practical costs are basically nil compared to having to cut out books, repackaging them and sending them off to bookstores, so I expect this practice will grow out to be quite similar to the comic preview booklets.

As I quite enjoyed Aosaki Yuugo's debut book Taiikukan no Satsujin ("The Gymnasium Murder", 2012) some years back, I decided to read the free preview booklet promoting Aosaki. Aosaki Yuugo no Aisatsu ("Greetings from Aosaki Yuugo") consists out of an extended preview of Taiikukan no Satsujin, one complete short story in the same series, as well as an interview with Aosaki and a complete list of his works. As I already read Taiikukan no Satsujin, I will refer to that review if you want to know my feelings on that story. For this review, I'll only focus on the short story included in this booklet, part of Aosaki's short story collection Kazegaoka Juuen Matsuri no Nazo ("The Kazegaoka Ten Yen Festival Mystery", 2014), a book I definitely intend to purchase when the paperback version is released.

Mou Isshoku Eraberu Donburi ("A Rice Bowl Where You Can Choose One Extra Dish") is part of the Urazome Tenma series and is set just a few weeks after Urazome managed to solve the impossible murder in the school gymnasium in Taiikukan no Satsujin. Yuno and a friend are having lunch in the school cafeteria when the lady who runs the place cries out she found a tray with a half-eaten rice bowl outside the cafeteria, hidden beneath a window. Because the cafeteria is so small, students often took their trays outside, but as many students didn't bother to bring the trays back, the cafeteria introduced a fee-system: you had put a 100 yen deposit if you wanted to take your tray outside. But even then some people decided it'd be easier to leave their trays somewhere around school, so one week ago, a new strict rule was announced: if they'd ever find something that hadn't been properly returned to the cafeteria, they wouldn't allow people to take their trays outside at all anymore. Fearing that nobody will be able to eat outside from now on, Yuno convinces Urazome to find out who left that rice bowl outside, in exchange for free meal tickets.

This is the first time I read a short story by Aosaki and I really liked it. The main novels in the Urazome Tenma series are meticulously constructed logic puzzles about murder, but this story was much more in line with an everyday life mystery, as the 'crime' is rather light (leaving a tray and bowl outside). Yet, one shouldn't underestimate the mystery, because Urazome first points out some peculiar traits of the tray (for example, why was the main dish left untouched, while all the rice has been eaten and why wasn't the tray brought back even though it was like three steps away from the drop-off point?). The way Urazome first deduces the physical traits of the 'culprit' and even the motive based on a single, physical clue is very much in line with the Queen school, which is natural, as Aosaki is obviously inspired by Queen's writings (his publisher even goes as far as selling him as "the modern-day Queen"). The solution is wonderfully simple, but oh-so-fitting to the setting. I really enjoyed this story, as it makes a solid (even if short) logic puzzle out of an otherwise very mundane problem.

It's also the first time the Urazome Tenma series really felt like a high school mystery. Sure, the previous books were about school clubs and set at Kazegaoka High School, but still, murder feels far away removed from high school life. A problem at the school cafeteria is much more alluring as a school mystery, in my mind. Now I think about it, it's funny that that other school mystery series I love, Higashigawa Tokuya's Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series, is also often not very 'school'-like. The novels are about murder, like the Urazome Tenma series, and while the short stories are not about murder, they do often feature assault and other 'real crimes'. The atmosphere in both series is similar though, with a lot of high-paced, witty dialogue between the students. Another point is that for once, the Urazaome Tenma series isn't overrun with characters. Seriously, the novels are great puzzle plot mysteries, but Aosaki has a tendency to go overboard with the number of suspects/involved characters, especially as most of them are all students. This short story had a nice, small cast.

As I figured writing a full post on one single short story is rather stretching things, I decided to read another short story by Aosaki. Kami no Mijikaku Natta Shitai ("The Dead Body Whose Hair Was Cut Short") is part of Aosaki's short story collection Knockin' on Locked Door, which is about two detectives sharing an office. Touri Gotenba specializes in impossible mysteries, while his partner Katanashi Hisame is an expert on incomprehensible crimes. This particular story was selected as one of the best Japanese short mystery stories published in the year of 2014 by the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan, and included in Honkaku Mystery Best 2015. Kami no Mijikaku Natta Shitai starts with a case broker bringing a case for Katanashi, as he has found an incomprehensible murder. The leader of a small theatre troupe was found murdered in a small, soundproof apartment the troupe rented for rehearsal. She was found in the bathroom, wearing only her underwear and for some reason, her long hair had been cut short and been removed from the crime scene. Evidence seems to be pointing towards someone among her three fellow members, but why would anyone want to cut the hair of the deceased?

The problem is similar to that from a certain book originally published in the Kappa Novels line, the characters in this story comment as they investigate the mystery, and indeed, I know exactly which book they mean and it did sound similar at first (I am not linking to the review on purpose, as the characters didn't want to say it out loud either). Yet, Aosaki manages to come up with a completely different solution to the mystery, one that is both original and satisfying. Like with the previous story, this one is very focused on physical clues (the cut-hair of course, but also more), and their interpretation (why is X in a certain state or why was Y used or not used in the first place?), and I have to admit, I usually like these kinds of clues the best (or at least a lot better than psychological clues). I did like Mou Isshoku Eraberu Donburi more than this story though, but that's because I really like the setting and mystery of that one. In terms of surprise, but also clueing, I'd say that Kami no Mijikaku Natta Shitai is a better constructed story.

This is the only story I have read in the Knockin' on Locked Door series, and it does sound interesting, with two detectives specializing in different kind of mysteries, but who do support each other in their respective cases. I might be picking this up (again, if a paperback version is released. I don't have the money, nor the space to buy hardcovers all the time).

It's been rather chaotic post, about preview booklets and two unrelated short stories by Aosaki, but my concusions are: preview books are good. Aosaki writes good short stories. Paperback releases should be released faster. Yep, that's about it.

Original Japanese title(s): 青崎有吾 『青崎有吾の挨拶』 / 「髪の短くなった死体」