The Landing Ticket

朝だ始発だ電車が走る

5時半発の埼京線 

遙か遠くの会社を目指し

今日も電車が走る

It's morning /  The first train / The train is running

The 05:30 of the Saikyo-Line

On my way to the company faraway

The train is running today too

「電車で電車でGO!GO!」（Junkie As Machine/Zuntata)

I try to read at least one novel a year (partially) set in the city of Fukuoka. The first review of last year was Gekisou Fukuoka Kokusai Marathon - 42.195 Kilo no Nazo for example. I started with today's book because the summary mentioned Fukuoka as part of the alibi, but sadly enough, the reader doesn't actually get to visit the city themselves and the few mentions to the city are pretty sober. Ah well, I'll still count this as my 'one-in-a-year' as the story, at one point, does revolve slightly around specific Fukuoka geography.

Disclosure: I have translated Arisugawa Alice's The Moai Island Puzzle.

One morning, Yukari receives a call from the police with horrible news: her older sister Megumi (her only living relative) was found murdered in her holiday villa near Lake Yogo, just north of Lake Biwa. Megumi and her husband were to stay there a few days starting the day before, but business had prevented Shinichi from leaving his antique shop, and Megumi, who had arrived at the villa early, would spend the first night alone at the lake. She was murdered the following morning, and the police had discovered her body thanks to an anonymous phone call. Because her life insurance seems rather extravagant, the police and Yukari suspect that Shinichi killed his own wife with the help of his twin brother Kenichi, but the twins have perfect alibis: on the morning of Megumi's murder, Shinichi recalled he had an earlier made business appointment, and he took the Shinkansen train south to Fukuoka to meet with a collector there. Twin brother Kenichi too had been on a business trip that morning, travelling by train all the way up north to Sakata in Yamagata. Both arrived at their destinations in the afternoon, and several witnesses confirm having seen the two men at their respective routes at various points like the station. Yukari confides her suspicions about her brother-in-law with the mystery author Sorachi Masaya, a mutual friend of both Megumi and Shinichi, and Megumi's former boyfriend during college. Together they hire a private detective, who can't seem to find anything suspicious about Shinichi. The investigation runs into a wall until several months later, another body is found at the Lake Yogo villa. Another anonymous phone call leads the police to a body with the head and hands removed. The police is quite sure that the body belongs to either Shinichi or Kenichi, but both men have disappeared and it's impossible to tell which brother the body belongs to.

Magic Mirror (1990) is the third full-length novel by Arisugawa Alice, after Gekkou Game (1989) and The Moai Island Puzzle (1989). It was also his first novel that wasn't part of any series, and while I have read quite a lot by Arisugawa by now, it took me until now to read a non-series work by him. While his first two novels were clearly written in the spirit of Ellery Queen and the school that puts emphasis on logical reasoning, Arisugawa's third outing takes inspiration from F.W. Crofts, Ayukawa Tetsuya and (early) Matsumoto Seichou, being a mystery revolving around uncrackable alibis and an emphasis on time tables. In fact, like often seen in Ayukawa and Matsumoto's work, we actually have real train time schedules featured in this book. It's one of the elements that set Magic Mirror apart from the two earlier novels starring the student Alice, which are patterned after the more fanciful "good old closed circle on an isolated island/area closed off after a volcano eruption" tropes, while Magic Mirror is a a bit more realistic in tone (don't worry, it's still a puzzle-oriented mystery).

The first half of the novel revolves around the attempts of various parties trying to figure out whether Shinichi on his own, or with the help of his twin brother, killed Megumi and by extension, how they managed to have a perfect alibi for the time of the murder. Shinichi seems the most suspicious at first, but witnesses have seen him purchasing a ticket to Hakata Station, buying gifts at the station and he arrived in time at his business relation's place in the afternoon and a similar story holds for Kenichi. A large part of this mystery is solved early on in the novel by one of the characters, though the theory is still imperfect due to the existence of one piece of evidence. Due to that, the character has to abandon their theory for the moment, but this final hurdle is actually relatively easy to solve for the reader. While you can solve it "in a perfect" manner by actually examining the time schedules etc. included closely, I bet most people can instinctively make a good guess about how that piece of evidence was cooked (and check afterwards with the schedules). So this part is a bit easy, because a good part of the trick is already presented to the reader early on, while that last step is not as hard as the story pretends it to be. This murder feels the most 'realistic' in the sense that a lot of the mystery revolves around real time tables of means of transportations and real Fukuoka geography, so if you liked Matsumoto's Points and Lines, you'll feel right at home here.

The second murder, of the unknown decapitated body, is a lot more interesting though. What is interesting about Magic Mirror is that it starts off telling you there are twins involved. Usually, you'd think having twins in a story about a perfect alibi would be very, very cheap. In Magic Mirror, even knowing twins are involved doesn't mean you'll instantly figure out how Megumi was killed, and the plot device of the twins is turned upside down in the second half of the novel, when we are presented with a body which belongs to one of the twins, but you don't know which. This part is a bit more engaging: there's a part where Sorachi is convinced the man suspected by the police must be innocent, so he tries to find evidence to support that man's flimsy alibi of having been drinking at various places on the night of the murder. This part features a small, but nicely foreshadowed trick hidden within the man's testimony about his movements. But the murder on the unknown victim itself also proves to be an interesting murder: it makes fantastic use of the notion of twins, utilizing them in a very original manner to do something. I can't say too much because that would spoil the game, but I really like how the culprit used the fact that Shinichi en Kenichi were twins to completely befuddle the police investigation. I also like the one slip-up the murderer made that forced their hand as a concept, but as it was used here, it did feel like a bit too much coincidence: the murderer would have made a pretty brilliant plan for the murder, but goofed up at rather silly and trivial moments.

I have mentioned this novel before in this blog, as this novel is probably best known for its Alibi Lecture in the penultimate chapter and in my post on taxonomies/typologies/lectures, I made a short translation of the points raised in that Alibi Lecture. The Alibi Lecture is of course inspired by Doctor Fell's Locked Room Lecture, but the funny thing is that this is actually a lecture: Sorachi is invited by a college mystery club to hold a lecture on the Alibi Lecture he wrote in one of his novels, and in this chapter, Sorachi explains the types of tricks used in mystery novels to create a perfect alibi. Like in most novels featuring such trope lectures, it's an implied Challenge to the Reader to see if they can guess what kind of trick this particular novel is using, and perhaps even guess if this book is using a completely new type of solution. The Moai Island Puzzle featured a short Dying Message Lecture by the way. Obviously, both murders use some kind of alibi trick, and I don't consider it really spoilers to say that Arisugawa has of course come up with variations that are original on their own, and like it should be, the Lecture functions as both a solid clue to the reader (as it helps people not familiar with these types of stories), as a clever piece of misdirection (diverting the reader's attention by onlylisting what is seemingly possible, while pointing away from the actual solution).

Usually when I finish a novel, I have a fairly good idea of what I actually think of the story, and that also influences how I write the review. With Magic Mirror, I have to admit I was less enthusiastic about it when I first finished it, but as I am writing this review the following day, I notice I'm a lot more positive about the book now. While I think the final 'obstacle' in solving Megumi's murder is far easier than the book pretends it to be, I find that Magic Mirror does a really good job at utilizing the themes of the perfect alibi and twins in mystery fiction: it poses alluring mysteries to the reader that incorporate the fact we all know twins are involved and the second murder especially is interesting because of that. The result is a novel that keeps up a good pace from start to finish and which should entertain fans of the perfect alibi story.

Original Japanese title(s): 有栖川有栖『マジックミラー』

Bear Witness to Murder

Three little Soldier Boys walking in the zoo;

A big bear hugged one and then there were two.

Disclosure: I translated novels by both Arisugawa Alice (The Moai Island Puzzle) and Ayatsuji Yukito (The Decagon House Murders). And in case you're still looking for Christmas presents...

I don't plan to find me some Christmas mystery stories when the season approaches, but coincidences do happen, resulting in today's review. Anraku Isu Tantei ("The Armchair Detective") was a brilliant television drama series created by mystery writers Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice, produced irregularly between 1999-2017. Earlier, I have discussed the episodes ON AIR (2006) and ON STAGE (2017), with the latter later being confirmed by co-creator Ayatsuji as being the last episode of this series, at least in the usual format. If one considers the detective genre to be an intellectual game that challenges the reader (viewer) to solve the mystery themselves, than this show was the ultimate example of how to present a mystery drama as a game. Each story consists of two episodes: the first episode introduces the viewer to all the characters, the events leading up to the murder and the subsequent investigation. All the hints and clues necessary to solve the crime are shown in this first episode, while the solution is revealed in the second episode broadcast the following week. Sounds like common sense of course, but this point was of particular essence for this show, as viewers were encouraged to write in that week with the answers to the following two questions: 1) Who is the murderer? and more importantly: 2) What is the logical process by which you arrived at that conclusion? The winner, drawn from the people who submitted the correct answers, was presented with a sizeable money prize.  The show thus provided the ultimate challenge to the armchair detectives at home and one of the more impressive parts of the show was how it had to walk the line between being difficult enough that not everyone would arrive at the correct conclusion, along the correct route, but not being overly complex so nobody could guess who the murderer was in a logical manner.

Anraku Isu Tantei no Seiya ~ Kieta Teddy Bear no Nazo ~ ("The Holy Night of the Armchair Detective ~ The Mystery of the Vanished Teddy Bear~", 2000) was the third installment of this show, the first episode broadcast on December 21 and the solution episode following soon after on Christmas. We are introduced on Christmas Eve to Kumako, a young woman who recently found a new job, but her boyfriend sadly enough can't see her on Eve, so they plan a date for the twenty-sixth. The twenty-sixth is also the first day of Kumako working at NATO (Nihon Action Team Office), a small scale stunt action series production team, which recently got a small hit with the television tokusatsu series Athlete 4. It's also the last office day for the year, so everyone is present at the office. Kumako is introduced to all the staff and actors, but she soon learns her new workplace is also a den of intrige and hate, with love triangles, post-divorce fights and rumors of embezzlement flying around. In the evening, Kumako waits for her boyfriend in a restaurant, but she's stood up and she only comes home after a lot of drinking. At home, she finds an e-mail waiting for her by Norie, her new colleague who plays Athlete Purple in Athlete 4. To her surprise, Norie says she killed the boss of NATO at the office and that she'll commit suicide too. By the time Kumako had reported this to the police, it's already to late: NATO's owner Inoue was found with his head bashed in with his own golf club at the office, while Norie set fire to herself at her own home. The police however determine that Norie did not commit suicide, but that she was already dead by the time the fire was started. It thus appears someone else must've killed Inoue en Norie, and the main suspect is a suspicious figure spotted by the guards of the building that houses the NATO offices. The two men saw a figure dressed like Santa Claus carrying a large sack on his back leave the building that night, only moments after the Inoue murder must've happened. The Santa Claus costume was stolen from NATO's costume wardrobe, but there's another missing object: the rare, large teddy bear Inoue kept as a memento in his office. But why would the murderer steal a teddy bear or dress up like Santa Claus? Eventually, even Kumako is accused of the murder by the police, which is when she decides to use the magical flute she was gifted a few days ago, of which she was told it would save her from danger. The flute is of course the item that summons the titular Armchair Detective, a mysterious entity who is ratiocination personified and who can prove without any doubt who is in fact the true murderer.

The show was conceived as a puzzle plot mystery drama where the reader could participate, so to start off with some statistics: the television station received 36,731 (!) entries for this particular installment, the highest amount of participants in the history of the series. 21.5 percent of the respondents guessed the identity of the murderer correctly, but only forty respondants, or mere 0.1 percent, actually got the process right of correctly identifying the murderer/eliminating the other suspect. The numbers will thus tell you it was pretty hard to get all of the story right. I have seen most of the episodes of this series now, and I thought this was one of the easier episodes actually (it was), but getting full marks would've been difficult.

Because as always Ayatsuji and Arisugawa came up with a deliciously tricky story. The second episode starts off with every major character in the story being transported to the dimension of the Armchair Detective, who then goes through the long chains of deduction that lead to the identity of the murderer. The tone here is rather comedic, with each character trying to argue why they aren't the murderer. There are a few meta-rules here that help the viewer out: there is always only one culprit (no accomplices), everything shown on screen (including the time stamps) is correct and nobody besides the murderer lies intentionally. Still, you need to pay attention very well to keep up with the Armchair Detective while he eliminates the suspects one by one and crosses off false solutions. I mean, how many detective shows do you know that spend between thirty minutes and an hour purely to the explanation of a crime? In order to solve the crime yourself, you need to reference the time stamps of each scene and sometimes check the backgrounds very carefully for hidden clues. In some episodes, the zoom-and-enhance trope can be rather persnickety (and kinda unfair in pre-HD TV broadcasts), but it's done fairly err, fair here. As mentioned, this show has to be both difficult, and also fair enough for the viewer at home (anyone can come up with an unsolvable mystery), and I think this episode is definitely one of the better efforts. It helps this show isn't about locked room murders etc., as they are harder to present in a truly fair manner. You can show a thread and needle on the screen, but it's not really fair to expect from the viewer to imagine what could've done with that. This show is about eliminating suspects, so you have to determine what the murderer must have done or known, and then see which of the suspects does or does not fit that profile. You'll definitely have to rewatch scenes a few times to get it though, and unless you have photographic memory, it's impossible to solve this in one go. There are a few scenes in the first episode that do stand out as being obviously 'oh, this scene is used to prove that this character couldn't have done this or that' but this doesn't hurt the experience, because you still need the context of the murder to understand how this becomes revelant in the elimination process.

In this case, the mystery revolves around two questions: Why the Santa Claus dress-up, and why steal a gigantic teddy bear after committing a murder? At first, the problem seems so trivial and also meaningless, but when the whole solution is presented, you'll see how neatly everything fits, and how all the odd movements of the culprit actually made perfect sense considering the situation. The problem of the teddy bear in particular is great, with a convincing reason as for why it had been spirited away from the office, one that seems so obvious in hindsight. The misdirection is quite clever, and while I kinda knew which characters I could already eliminate based on some of the scenes, I still couldn't make out exactly how the teddy bear was involved, so I was pleasantly surprised when it was all explained to me.

Anraku Isu Tantei no Seiya ~ Kieta Teddy Bear no Nazo ~ is in general a strong installment in this series, and while I'll be the first to admit that this series can be very fussy about its visual clues, I'd say this was actually one of the entries that didn't expect everyone in 2000 to have HD recorders to be able to solve the mystery. Some of the scenes do telegraph themselves too obviously as being clues, but overall, the mystery of the disappearing teddy bear is an amusing one, resulting in a very well-constructed mystery drama show that also does its job well as a Christmas-themed mystery.

Original Japanese title(s): 『安楽椅子探偵の聖夜 〜消えたテディ・ベアの謎〜』

E=Murder

aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ

(Fermat's last theorem)

I'm horrible at the exact sciences.. I imagine that if Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou did its unique style of mystery telling not with mathematics or similar fields of science, but with literature or a field like that, I'd be a lot more enthusiastic.

After reading a couple of volumes of Katou Motohiro's Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou series and the sequel series Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou iff the last year, I realized that I don't have any interest in reading all the adventures of the brilliant, MIT-graduated prodigy Touma Sou and his classmate Kana. There are definitely some interesting stories in this series, especially when the stories involve mathematics and other special fields of interest of author Katou himself, but few stories are truly memorable as mystery stories, so I have decided I am just going to pick my stories now, instead of going through all fifty volumes of the original series, and another dozen or so for the still running sequel iff, as that's just too pricey. Fortunately for me, special anthology volumes were released earlier this year, with the three mystery authors Tanaka Yoshiki, Tsuji Masaki and Arisugawa Alice each editing their own volume. These volumes seemed interesting enough, and when I asked for story recommendations a while back, I noticed a number of the recommendations I got happened to have been selected for Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou The Best - Arisugawa Alice Selection (2019), which made it the most logical next step in my reading of this series.

The volume starts with Jacob's Ladder though, which I already reviewed earlier, so I'll be skipping that story. The second story is Infinite Moon (originally in volume 20) and starts with the arrival of an email from Touma's Chinese friend Hu. Which is a bit strange, Hu was presumed dead, due to a heart disease he had been suffering of his whole life. The email to Touma also prompts a visit by the Shanghai Police, who tell Touma that Hu is known to them as a member of Xi Xing She, a crime syndicate in Shanghai led by four men: the two Liang brothers and the two friends Huang and Wu. While the gang was basically divided in two factions (the Liang brothers, and the two friends), the four bosses carefully kept everything in balance, until three weeks ago, when Huang was fished dead out of the river. While the police had trouble getting information out of the lower-ranked members of the Xi Xing She, it appeared Huang's murder was retaliation by the younger Liang, as Huang had killed the elder Liang brother earlier. The police hope that Touma's friend Hu can tell them more about the power struggle going on, but time is ticking as the remaining Xi Xing She bosses kill each other off, while Touma has to figure out Hu's mysterious message: Come to ϕ. I have read several stories with a series of murders, where the murderer becomes the next victim and then the second murderer becomes the next victim etc., so Infinite Moon was not really surprising to me. I like how Katou links the story with mathematical theories in infinity and 0, but the core mystery plot is not really surprising: a lot of pages are used to simply explain the basic setting, but after that, you don't really need much explanation/clue-hunting to figure out what's going on.

The Kurogane Manor Murder Case (volume 36) reunites Touma with Karasuma Renji, a cocky assistant-professor in Physics who has a soft spot for Touma. Karasuma is a "person of interest" to the police in the investigation into the suspicious death (apparent suicide) of Professor Kurogane of K University in Kyoto. It was Kurogane who had sent Karasuma away from K University all the way to A University and even then, Kurogane kept the brilliant Karasuma shackled: he arranged so Karasuma's research at A University would become a joint project with K University under the supervision of Kurogane's own pupil Shida, which would mean Karasuma's name would end up below both Shida and Kurogane's names on his own research paper when published. Kurogane however was found hanging in his study in his manor one day ago, precisely when Karasuma returned to Kyoto. Kurogane had no reason to commit suicide, but murder also seems impossible as there were no footprints in the snow around Kurogane's study, nor did the help see anyone come or leave the study that day. The police can't really pin anything on Karasuma, but at the wake in Kurogane's manor, a more obvious murder happens: an arrow is shot right in Shida's neck during the night, but due to the long, covered galleries of the traditional Japanese house, none of the suspects could have shot Shida with a bow and arrow from their respective positions, due to the distance and most importantly the low ceilings of the hallways.

The death of Kurogane in his study itself is rather simple, though I do like how it makes clever use of the way a traditional Japanese manor is built (Katou studied Architecture in college). One important hint to the whereabouts of the culprit at this crime site is rather brilliant though, being a reference to Zeno's arrow paradox, though it does expect the reader to guess a certain's character behavior for it to work. Shida's murder is... original, but kinda hard to swallow. The way the building is used to create an impossible situation is great: it makes references to a special archery competition that challenged people to hit a target from one end of a covered gallery to another, the low ceiling making it difficult to shoot an arrow far enough (as an arrow needs to get high to be able to fly further). Karasuma for example had a clean shot on the victim from his position for example, but he'd need to be the strongest person around to have made that shot straight across the gallery. The trick behind the murder however requires you to kinda roll with it: it's original and it definitely works better due to the visual format of the story, but it kinda expects you to a) to know that's possible in the first place and b) that it would actually succeed in one try (even if with some practice), for the arrow was just as likely to hit a non-vital part or simply miss the target. In fact, an acquaintance with experience with archery basically rolled her eyes in disbelief when she saw the solution.

Locked Room No. 4 (volume 40) brings Touma, Kana and Himeko as members of the Sakisaka High School Mystery Club to the classic mystery setting: a mansion on a remote island. Sparrow Tours is a small tour operator/planner specialized in unique experiences, and now they're planning to do a mystery tour on this island, where the participants have to solve a mystery (locked room murders) during their stay. The story for this tour is written by the mystery author Yoimiya Sodehara, and the three kids have come along to act as a test panel. Another 'outsider' is Komaki, the head of Accounting of the parent company World Tours, who says Sparrow Tours' expenses are way too much and that he needs to take care of it right away. Once the group arrives on the island, Komaki goes off on his own, while Toum, Kana and Himeko are presented with the three locked room murder situations of the tour (the victims being played by the various employees of Sparrow Tours who have come along). The three kids quickly solve the three locked rooms (to the frustration to the author Yoimiya), but when they go to the dining room to rest, they find it locked. When they unlock it, they discover the body of Komaki sitting at the dining table, with lit candles illuminating the knife in his chest. With the door locked and the window looking down a cliff, it seems the gang is being presented a fourth, unplanned locked room in their tour. The first three locked rooms are pretty much child's play, and the gang manages to solve them almost instantly. The fourth, main locked room is of course more interesting: it's not super complex, but makes clever use of all that has presented before (like always Q.E.D. stories usually take a long time to set the story up). It's pretty obvious who the murderer is once you see through the main piece of misdirection, but I think this was a nicely plotted tale within the usual 100 pages.

In Question! (volume 44), Touma, Kana and Loki arrive at a mountain lodge house after Touma receives a mysterious letter that says "Question!", featuring Fermat's theorem inside. Included were also directions to the mountain lodge, and curious as to the meaning of this letter, the trio decide to go there. There they find two other groups, who happen to know each other from the local family court: both an elderly couple and a younger couple with a daughter who are living seperately now and busy working out a divorce. At first, the two groups figured this was some kind of last effort by the family court to have the two couples talk things over, but Touma's presence obviously proves that idea wrong. All of them have received the same mysterious letter, though with different riddles. The story unfolds as a kind of treasure hunt, with the solution of each riddle pointing towards another riddle and all coming back to Touma's Fermat's theorem. Don't expect to do much mystery solving yourself as the reader, as that's pretty much impossible and a lot of the story is also devoted to Touma's lecture on Fermat's theorem. It's pretty easy to guess what the story is really about though. Detective Conan also often features stories like these, but I find them more enjoyable there, as they work better as standalone mystery stories with a riddle that can be solved by the reader themselves, whereas even with knowledge on Fermat etc., Question! is mostly just guessing.

Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou The Best - Arisugawa Alice Selection is on its own a fairly entertaining volume. Not a big fan of the opening and ending story of this selection, but the middle part is good Q.E.D. stuff and include some of my favorite stories I have read until now of this series. Arisugawa also obviously selected stories that showcase Katou's interest in mathematics and other academic fields: those topics are often mentioned in the Q.E.D. series, but they play an especially important thematic role in most of the stories included in this volume. I might also pick up one of the other The Best volumes in the future, as I think this approach (picking my stories to read) is probably the best way to enjoy this series for me.

Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩（原） 有栖川有栖（編）『Q.E.D. -証明終了- The Best 有栖川有栖Selection』

Borrowed Place

“I will now lecture on the general mechanics and development of the situation which is known in detective fiction as the ‘hermetically sealed chamber.’ Harrumph. All those opposing can skip this chapter."

"The Hollow Man"

Ever since Dr. Fell made the utterly shocking confession that he's in fact a fictional character in a mystery novel, we have seen more people, fictional or otherwise, thread in the good doctor's footsteps and take a look at the mystery genre in general, rather than a specific problem in a specific novel. Dr. Fell's locked room lecture provided a now infamous classification of how locked room murders could be achieved in tales of mystery and imagination, for example by making it seem like the crime happened earlier or later than thought, etc. The notion of attempting a taxonomy of a certain trope in the genre (that is, the locked room murder or impossible crime) is actually quite interesting, as it freely admits that there is no such thing as pure originality, and it is a clear confession that most of the time, every single idea in mystery fiction is just a variation of something else, some admittedly more inspired than others.

On the other hand, the possibility of a taxonomy also emphasizes the game-like element of the genre, I think. I have mused over "winning the game of a mystery novel" before, but I think that efforts like the Locked Room Lecture really show this element very well for this particular form of game.  A well-designed videogame for example, will present obstacles and problems for the player to conquer and more importantly, build on that as the game continues. To take the famous level 1-1 from Super Mario Bros.: the very first section of the level, the game first teaches you can 'jump', it will show you can 'jump on an enemy' to defeat it, and that you can 'jump higher if you hold the button longer'. What follows afterwards are increasingly difficult variations on these notions: you might be asked to jumped consecutively, or beat multiple enemies, or do tricky jump combinations of various heights. The further you progress in a game, the harder it gets. But the thing here is: the game is designed knowing that you have cleared the previous obstacles. A good stage design knows you are in the possession of certain skills and the knowledge of how the game world works ('jumping on an enemy kills it') and how objects and enemies move in a game. In short: it teaches you to recognize patterns, and in a way, that is what mystery fiction also does. As the Locked Room Lecture shows: most examples of this particular sub-genre can easily be identified as a varation of a certain pattern. If you, as the reader, want to "win" this intellectual game, you need to be able to recognize the pattern being used despite all the misdirection and apply your knowledge to this particular version of the pattern.

The plot device of having a character in a novel suddenly hold a lecture about a certain trope in the genre can feel a bit pretentious, but I think it works if you take mystery fiction to be a game of wits. Going back to Super Mario Bros.: say you make it to stage 8-3. I can, assuming you didn't use the special warp pipes or had someone else help you, perhaps assume you have played the previous levels and overcome the obstacles and problems presented there. I can therefore estimate how good you are at the game (at least good enough to do X). That is a different story with a novel: Carr is not likely to know how much you know about the mystery genre, or locked room murder sub genre, if you pick up The Hollow Man. It could be the very first novel you ever read, or just the last in a decennia-long diet of only impossible crimes. The in-novel lecture can thus function as a gauge: by presenting the patterns, the author openly shows the difficulty level they are working at, allowing the reader/player to estimate their own position. Is this author operating at a difficulty level much higher than what I used to, or is it just right? So I am quite fond of these kinds of lectures.

There have been many writers after Carr who have played with the Locked Room Lecture (Amagi made a typology and example stories for each category), or more specific examples of the impossible crime like Nikaidou Reito's Footprints-in-the-Snow lecture. I happened to have translationed one on locked room murders myself even, with Shinji, one of the characters in Abiko's The 8 Mansion Murders, agonizing the suspects and the police as he babbled on about his own locked room lecture, heavily inspired by Carr's. Shinji also refers to a famous essay by Edogawa Rampo by the way, where Rampo doesn't just attempt to categorize the tricks behind locked room murders: Rampo decided to categorize every single trick from mystery fiction. I don't have a full translation of the essay, though I do have a short translation of the various categories Rampo identified. As mentioned in that post, Rampo also has an interesting taxonomy of unique motives featured in mystery novels.

But I have to say, I am infinitely more partial to in-novel lectures on genre tropes, rather than standalone essays. And I also think it's not a secret that I'm actually not so singularly focused on locked room murders and other impossibilities as some of the other mystery bloggers around. Therefore, I'm usually very fond of lectures on mystery tropes other than locked room murders, even if you don't see them a lot. Granted, not every type of mystery works really well in a taxonomy. The 'list-up-all-the-characteristics-of-the-culprit'-type of whodunnit as championed by authors like Queen, Arisugawa and Aosaki for example doesn't really lend it well for it, though I have made a feeble attempt in the past by sketching an idea for a typology for clues used in these type of stories.

But to mention a few other interesting typologies: Arisugawa's The Moai Island Puzzle (disclosure: I translated the English version) features a very short Dying Message Lecture by Maria, which I quite like because the dying message itself is a trope that is often used as just a minor touch to a mystery story, seldom taking the spotlight. Mitsuda's Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono has a very unique and specialized one, as it is about the topic of decapitated bodies. I mean, once you start thinking about, you'll quickly realize that a taxonomy of this trope is quite possible (the question being why a body is decapitated) as there are a few variations, but it's still a surprisingly original lecture topic.

I didn't really have a point to make in this post, but "hey, I like lectures" but to finish with some more thought-provoking, I thought I'd add in a translation of Arisugawa's categorization of alibi tricks. The alibi is of course a very important notion in mystery novels, and is often also a crucial element of "true" impossible crimes, as well as semi-impossible crimes ("He couldn't have done it because he was seen elsewhere at the time of the murder") and variants. Arisugawa's lecture is featured in his 1990 novel Magic Mirror, and unlike his usual Queenian efforts, this novel is actually more inspired by the work of Crofts, explaining the lecture. And I haven't read it yet, though I will eventually, of course.

Anyway, if you have something to say about lectures on any trope of the mystery genre, or perhaps the alibi lecture specifically, leave a comment.

ARISUGAWA ALICE'S ALIBI LECTURE

(from: Magic Mirror (1990))

1. THE WITNESS HAS ILL INTENTIONS.
- The witness is intentionally lying.

2. THE WITNESS IS MISTAKEN.
a. Mistaken time.
- The watch of the witness has been tampered with; mistaken day of the week or date; etc.

b. Mistaken location.
- The witness is mistaken about the location they were with the culprit (the exact apartment, train, mountain, river, etc.)

c. Mistaken identity.
- The culprit had someone impersonate them.

3. THE CRIME SCENE IS MISTAKEN.
- For example the crime is committed in the mountains of town A, but the body is moved to the mountains of town B to make it seem like the murder was committed there.

4. PHYSICAL EVIDENCE IS TAMPERED WITH.
- For example the faked photograph.

5. THE TIME OF THE CRIME IS MISTAKEN.
a. Made to look like it happened earlier than actually happened.
- For example the victim is made to appear like they were killed at 2 o'clock, even though it happened at 3 o'clock, and an alibi is obtained for 2 o'clock.

b. Made to look like it happened later than actually happened.
- For example the victim is made to look they still lived at 4 o'clock even though they died at 3 o'clock, and an alibi is obtained for 4 o'clock.

A. Medical trickery.
- The time of the crime is faked through tricks like heating or cooling the corpse, tampering with the contents of the stomach, etc.

B. Non-medical trickery.
Using non-medical tricks to accomplish 5a and 5b.

* Both 5A and 5B feature an a and b variant.

6. AN OVERLOOKED ROUTE.
- For example it takes one hour between points A and B, but an overlooked route between those points is only thirty minutes. This category is especially often seen in mystery stories about train timetables, but one can also think of shortening an one-hour hike from the mountains to mere minutes by jumping off a cliff with a parachute.

7. REMOTE MURDER
a. Mechanical trickery.
- A pistol that is fired through a clock mechanism etc.

b. Psychological trickery.
- Having a person under hypnosis or suffering from conditions like sleepwalking commit dangerous acts on their own.

8. GUIDED SUICIDE.
- Giving the victim such a tremendous psychological shock they commit suicide.

9. NO ALIBI.
- That what the culprit claims is an alibi isn't a real alibi at all, but only said to make other people think they have one.

Original Japanese source:  有栖川有栖　『マジックミラー』

Sea Breeze

We are all rowing the boat of fate

The waves keep on comin' and we can't escape

"Life Is Like A Boat" (Rie Fu)

I haven't seen much of Nara, now I think about it. Only spent half a day there in total. I guess I could've seen more of it when I was living in Kyoto as it's basically around the corner, but then again, a lot of Nara has to offer is basically also in Kyoto. Except for the deers of course.

Disclosure: I translated Arisugawa Alice's The Moai Island Puzzle.

A meeting with a video production company about an original direct-to-video adaptation of one of his books brings Osaka-based mystery writer Arisugawa Alice from the west to Tokyo. His publisher in Tokyo also informs him his latest book is just fresh off the presses and ready to be shipped off, so Alice decides to swing by there too to see how the thing turned out. His colleague-cum-friendly-rival Akaboshi Gaku happens to be at the publisher too, and the two have a bit of chat (Alice naturally gifts the man his latest book). Akaboshi tells Alice he's working on a new mystery novel himself, and that he himself is actually about to leave for the west of Japan, for "Nara-by-the-Sea" to do some research on the theme of his new work: mermaids. Nara-by-the-Sea is a fancy phrase to describe Obama, a coastal town with many Buddhist temples which acted as the harbor for the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto, the greatest difference with those two cities of course being that Obama lies by the sea. The following day however, Alice learns that Akaboshi's body was found at the coast near Obama and it doesn't seem likely he'd commit suicide Alice and his friend Himura Hideo, who teaches criminology at Eito University, decide to find out what happened to Akaboshi in Arisugawa Alice's Umi no Aru Nara ni Shisu ("Death in Nara-by-the-Sea", 1995).

I think I mention this every time one of these series comes up, but the actual author Arisugawa Alice has two main series, both of which feature a character also named Arisugawa Alice. The Alice in the Student Alice series is a young student who acts as the Watson to the older student Egami, while in the Writer Alice series, we follow an Alice in his thirties who's a professional mystery author, who acts as the assistant to Himura Hideo, a criminologist. The interesting thing is that both these Alices write each other: the student Alice is a budding mystery author who writes about a professional mystery author named Alice and his friend Himura, while the writer Alice writes about a young student named Alice and his senior Egami. It's just a small thing that doesn't have any real bearing on either series, and it's not always mentioned either, but Umi no Aru Nara ni Shisu has a funny reference where someone mentions that the Alice there had written a novel called Something-something Puzzle, which is of course The Moai Island Puzzle which I translated.

Umi no Aru Nara ni Shisu is the third novel in the Writer Alice series, after 46 Banme no Misshitsu and Dali no Mayu, and also the first serialized novel Arisugawa wrote. It is obviously intended as a take on the travel mystery sub-genre: mystery stories that revolve around tourist destinations, the local culture/history and of course, the act of (recreational) traveling itself. It is a genre that is especially associated with television productions (obviously, as you can actually see the places), but also seen as a rather 'light' genre within mystery fiction, as often the mystery plots are of secundary importance, below the 'tourist' mode of the story. Travel is also an important theme in Umi no Aru Nara ni Shisu: Alice and Himura travel together to Obama in the hopes of finding what brought Akaboshi there and a trace of his murderer and along the way, the reader is told a lot about local Obama history and legends. In fact, one aspect I didn't really like of this novel is that it very often dumps a lot of information on the reader that feels too much as exposition. For example, there's a part where Alice and Himura talk about an Obama-related legend concerning the immortal nun Yaobikuni (it is said that you become immortal if you eat mermaid's meat), but you basically get to read an encyclopedia entry. This happens several times, where information that would've been more appealing to read in the form of an interactive discussion is presented as dry information (there's a part about The Exorcist too), and it results in a reading experience that is simply not as pleasant as one'd hope at times.

Travel also plays an important in the mystery plot. It doesn't take long for the story to focus on the alibis of the various suspects, and the attentive reader should notice right away the story is heading for an alibi-cracking plot, given the extreme focus on times and locations in the story (the importance of the alibis and the question of who could've murdered Akoboshi at that time and place is also emphasised a few times by Alice and Himura, so it shouldn't come as a surprise). The solution to it all is rather disappointing. There are basically two clues that point in the direction of the murderer (motive isn't a clue by the way) of which one is rather simple and basically nothing more than semi-trivia, and that would've fared much better in a short story, rather than a novel. The other clue is sorta okay, but very hard to imagine things would really work out that. It's especially hard to imagine in this time and age: perhaps it was more convincing in the early nineties of Japan in the certain field of industry this relates too. The circumstances that allowed this murder to happen in the first place are also a bit hard to swallow, and the actions of a certain character are just accepted as is without giving a convincing reason about why they would ever want to do that.

There is a second murder about halfway through the novel and tt features a method that has very little convincing power. There's an episode of Columbo that does the same actually, but it's similarly kinda hard to swallow there. The method also features something that wlll feel out-of-date. Of course, novels are always a product of their time, and I don't mind at all when I see things in novels that are obvious from a time I didn't know, but for some reason, I feel very differently about things and technology I myself do know and have used in the past, and that are outdated now. To me, part of the murder method feels like something from yesterday, but I can imagine that people from a generation younger than me will have no idea what they're talking about, yet it's also not far enough ago to feel "oh yeah, that's how things were done back in those days". Or maybe I'm just getting old....

Umi no Aru Nara ni Shisu thus isn't one of the high points in Arisugawa's oeuvre. It has an idea that might've worked better in a short story rather than a novel, but little of the rest of the novel really managed to impress. It is slow due to the many expositions and focus on alibis and while one can derive some entertainment from Alice and Himura's usual banter and perhaps the travel mystery angle on the town of Obama, there's never really a moment that really makes the reader sit up straight to see what's coming next. The Writer Alice series is much more popular than the Student Alice series and sadly enough, this has also its influences on the output, as while all the novels in the Student Alice series are really, really good, the Writer Alice is less balanced with more distinct higher and lower points, and Umi no Aru Nara ni Shisu is one of those novels that simply isn't as good as some of the other novels in the same series.

Original Japanese title(s): 有栖川有栖 『海のある奈良に死す』

Lucky Seven

時の流れには逆らえず色褪せてゆく想いもあり

「As The Dew」（Garnet Crow）

Unable to go against the flow of time, some feelings will fade away

"As The Dew" (Garnet Crow)

The cover of today's book is simple and clean, featuring deformed illustrations of the authors featured in this anthology, but I really like it!

Disclosure: I have translated works by Arisugawa Alice, Norizuki Rintarou and Ayatsuji Yukito, among which Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders.

Ayatsuji Yukito made his debut as a professional author in 1987 with the publication of The Decagon House Murders (org. title: Jukkakukan no Satsujin). The mystery novel had clearly derived its inspiration from the classic puzzle plot mystery novels like they were written in the Golden Age, but it was at the same time also clearly a product of its time, aware of the tropes from, and the discussions surrounding classic mystery fiction, and its story built further on that as a modern take on the classic puzzle mode. Ayatsuji's debut was only the start, as he was followed by many other debuting authors from a similar background (often college students) who'd write in what is now called the shin honkaku or "new orthodox" school of mystery fiction. 2017 is thus not only the thirtiest anniversary of The Decagon House Murders, but also the thirtiest anniversary of the shin honkaku movement. 7-nin no Meitantei ("The Seven Great Detectives", 2017) is a special anthology to celebrate this anniversary, featuring seven original stories on the theme of "the great detective", by seven representative authors of the early shin honkaku movement

The book is also known as part of the bookmark-gacha craze among Japanese mystery fans: three anthologies were published to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of the shin honkaku movement. A special series of a lot of bookmarks were made for these books, and you get one of them at random by purchasing one of the anthologies. A large number of them feature an illustration of one of the seven authors in 7-nin no Meitantei, together with an iconic quote from one of their works, while there's also one which features all seven authors. Behold the fans who try to collect all of them or find the one bookmark with their favorite author or quote. I got the one with everyone on it by the way.

The seven authors included in 7-nin no Meitantei have all been discussed at least once here on the blog, and as I noted in the disclosure message above, I have even translated some of their work. It might be interesting to note that five of these authors studied in Kyoto: Ayatsuji Yukito, Abiko Takemaru, Norizuki Rintarou and Maya Yutaka were all members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, while Arisugawa Alice belonged to the Mystery Club of his own Doshisha University. Many authors of the early shin honkaku movement made their debuts as students or soon after graduation, and were often active members in the Mystery Clubs (student clubs for lovers of mystery fiction) of their respective universities, which is partly why a lot of the early shin honkaku works featured so many students, and also why the books tended to be so incredibly genre-savvy (as they were written in rather skewed enviroments, among other mystery fans). Oh, one warning: I can only add a certain number of characters in the tags to each post, and I was not able to tag everyone/add all the related tags, so you'll have to click on the author links in the post itself for some of them.

The anthology opens with Maya Yutaka's Suiyoubi to Kinyoubi ga Kirai - Ookagamike Satsujin Jiken ("I Hate Wednesdays and Fridays - The Ookagami Family Murder Case") and features his series detective Mercator Ayu. Narrator/mystery author Minagi is lost in the mountains, but finds shelter in the mansion of the recently deceased Doctor Ookagami. He had four adopted children, who form a musical quartet, and they are scheduled to perform at the mansion the following day for their annual recital. While Minagi is still recovering from his ordeal in the outdoor bath, he spots a cloaked figure making their way to a garden lodge overseeing a cliff. When the figure leaves again, he notices they have shrunk in size, and when he peeks inside the lodge, he finds distinct signs of a murder having occured there: blood, a weapon and a sinister sign featuring a quote from Faust, but there's no sign of any victim. Later, one of the adopted children is found murdered, together with another quote from Faust, but there is no weapon. More mysterious events occur in the mansion, but all is explained when brilliant detective (with a rather abusive attitude towards his "Watson") Mercator Ayu arrives on the scene.

The anthology starts right away with a screwball, because that's the only way I can describe this story. There's something of an impossible crime here (disappearing victim, disappearing murder/weapon), but what this story really is, is a parody on Oguri Mushitarou's infamous anti-mystery Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken. The mansion, the backstory of an eccentric person adopting four children who form a quartet, the Faust imagery, it's all straight out of Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken. Several other later story development are also clearly lifted from that book. The problem I have with this story is that it doesn't really work in its current form. The pacing of this story is incredibly high because it follows the plot of Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, but that was a full novel and this is a short story. The result is a story that I recognize as a parody on Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, but it doesn't do much but mirror a few situations and circumstances in quick succession. The core mystery plot is therefore a bit too concise for my taste, as the tale just tries to cover too much ground for a short story. And I happened to have read Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, but I can imagine that for someone who hasn't, this story will feel disjointed. I think this story would've worked better in a dedicated Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken tribute anthology. As a "Mercator Ayu taking on Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken" type of story, I guess it's okay, but I find it a strange choice for the opening story of this particular anthology. Then again, I guess Maya's work is seldom really straightforward.

Rakugo is a traditional form of Japanese entertainment, where a storyteller tells a comical story with witty dialogues, acting all the roles of the story themselves. Yamaguchi Masaya's Dokumanjuu Kowai - Suiri no Ichimondai ("I'm afraid of Poisoned Manjuu - A Deduction Problem") is part of a series where Yamaguchi builds on classic rakugo stories to turn them into mystery stories. The theme for this story is the classic rakugo story Manjuu Kowai ("I'm Afraid of Manjuu"). The retelling of Manjuu Kowai is followed by the continuation of the tale, where one of the major characters from Manjuu Kowai is murdered by a poisoned manjuu, just as he was about to disinherit his good-for-nothing sons. I liked the idea better than the execution, because the mystery part of the tale is basically a not-even-really-thinly-disguised variation of the "one of them always lies, one of them always tells the truth, who is the liar?" riddle. At this point, it doesn't feel like a story anymore, but just a slightly dressed-up riddle.

The previous story was set in pre-modern Japan, but Abiko Takemaru's Project: Sherlock is clearly set in the present, or even in the future. It tells the story of how a special computer database named Sherlock is built by a police IT engineer. Sherlock is a database that allows anyone to simply solve crimes by inputting the necessary data in it. Sherlock has a rich open source database of case files (both real and fictional) which is fed by a worldwide community, and by comparing circumstances and detecting patterns, the program can solve any mystery laid before it. This is a weird story: it reads more like a prologue for a longer story than an independent one, and while a murder involving Sherlock does occur late in the tale, it's not really meant for the reader to solve. There is potential for more in this story, but as it is now, it feels like you were only allowed to read the first chapter of many more.

Arisugawa Alice's Senchou ga Shinda Yoru ("The Night The Captain Perished") stars the criminologist Himura Hideo and his friend/Watson/mystery author Arisugawa Alice. Himura and Alice are on their way back from one of Himura's work trips when they decide to swing by a small villlage on the foot of a mountain where a murder happened last night. The victim, commonly referred to as the Captain, had been stabbed during his sleep in his home, and while a security camera nearby had caught the figure of someone fleeing the scene that night, this figure had covered themselves wisely in a large sheet of blue plastic, making it impossible for the police to identify them. The Captain had recently returned to his home village after a long life on sea, and his manly appeal had attracted the attention of at least two women in the village (one of them married), and it appears love-gone-wrong might be the motive. I have the idea the story is a bit longer than it needed to be (it is by far the longest story in this anthology), but the mystery plot is probably the best of the whole book. The structure is very familiar (short whodunit with three suspects), but it's expertly clewed. It's of course in the style of Ellery Queen, where you need to deduce what the murderer must have done on the night of the murder, how it was done, and eventually, who could've done those things we just deduced. The process as done here is great, and I think this is a good story to showcase how a good puzzle plot mystery doesn't need to rely on misdirection solely: it takes tremendous skill to lay down clues and puzzle pieces right in front of the reader, without any smokes or mirrors, and still have a puzzle that perplexes them, but the satisfaction you gain when you see how everything fits together is arguably even better than when an author uses aimed misdirection techniques.

Norizuki Rintarou's Abekobe no Isho ("The Switched Suicide Notes") features his series detective named after himself. Rintarou's father, Inspector Norizuki, has a weird case on his hands. Two suicides, one by poison, one by jumping off a flat. Suicide notes were also found at both scenes. So no problem, right? The conundrum Inspector Norizuki has however is that the suicide notes were switched: both victims had the suicide note of the other person! The two victims knew each other, and were both vying for the hand of the same lady, so they had no reason to be committing suicide together, but why did they have each other's suicide note? It's a wonderfully problem that feels realistic, and yet mystifying at the same time. The story unfolds by Rintarou proposing several theories to his father, which his father sometimes shoots down as he reveals a new fact he hadn't told his son yet, but the two do slowly move towards the truth. Or do they? A gripe I do have with this story that it is mostly built on theories: eventually the two arrive at a solution that is actually quite clever, and one that does seem to fit the facts, but they only arrive there by making several assumptions, and the story basically ends with the Inspector finally moving to check whether their theory is true. The story makes a good case for puzzle plots focusing on logical reasoning, with Rintarou proposing theories and having to adjust them as the Inspector introduces new facts, but it also undermines it a bit as we never leave the land of theories.

Utano Shougo's Tensai Shounen no Mita Yume Wa ("The Dream Of The Prodigy") is set in the future, starring the last few remaining pupils of the Academy, once the home to people talented in fields like hacking, engineering or even ESP, but once the war broke out, survival was the only thing left on everybody's mind. Acting on a rumor that the enemy country will launch a new destructive weapon, the students lock themselves up in the Academy's bomb shelter and while they do feel that something with tremendous power hit their city, they have no idea what happened outside because all communication was cut off. But then one of the students is found hanging. She appears to have committed suicide, but the following day another student is found dead right next to the first victim. Another suicide, or is there something else in this shelter? While this story does seem familiar, with its closed circle setting, it's not really a detective story (it is however a mystery story in the broad sense of the term). Explaining too much would spoil it, but the story is trying to work towards a certain conclusion, but that conclusion is barely clewed/foreshadowed, and the story is a bit strangely structured, with a very long intro, while it basically skims over the murders to jump the conclusion. Might've worked better in a longer format.

Ayatsuji Yukito's Kadai - Nue no Misshitsu ("Tentative Title: The Locked Room of the Nue") closes this anthology, and while it's technically not really a fairly clewed mystery story, it's a pretty heartwarming story that puts the thirtieth anniversary of shin honkaku in context. The story stars Ayatsuji Yukito, Abiko Takemaru and Norizuki Rintarou themselves, as well as Ayatsuji's wife Ono Fuyumi (a well-known horror/fantasy author herself), who were all members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club around the same period back when they were in college. Guess-The-Criminal is one of the oldest traditions of the club, where one of the members presents the first part of a mystery story to the others, ending with a challenge to the others guess whodunnit. The other members then have to guess who the criminal is, and explain the process that led to their conclusion. Nowadays, the stories are all written and printed out so everyone has their own copy, but back in the early eighties, these stories were told orally, so little remains of them now. Abiko remarks that a while back, he had a few drinks with Maya Yutaka (also a Mystery Club member who joined after them) and that he, while drunk, had said that he had once witnesses a really incredible and illusive Guess-The-Criminal story. The problem: he doesn't remember anything about it. Ayatsuji, Abiko, Norizuki and Ono all seem to have unclear, yet existing memories of such an event, which they vaguely remember as being titled The Locked Room of the Nue, so they start talking about what that story could've been, digging deep in their memories of the Mystery Club.

As said, this isn't really a mystery story, but closer to an essay where Ayatsuji, using the other authors as his fictional devices, looks back at his own time at the Kyoto University Mystery Club. As the four slowly start to remember more from the past, we also read about what the club activities were to what cafes they went to when they were still students, painting an image of the place and culture that would eventually lead to the birth of the shin honkaku movement. There are some nice moments, like when each of them remembers something else about the illusive story, to which Ayatsuji draws parallels with each author's writing styles, as well as a heartwarming ending. Read as a story that mixes autobiographical elements with a bit of fiction, I'd say this was an entertaining story for those wanting to know more about the shared past of these authors, but again, don't expect any detecting on your own.

7-nin no Meitantei has the usual ups and downs of an anthology, but in general, I'd say it's an interesting showcase of the work of the featured authors. The theme of "the great detective" worked better for some authors than others: Arisugawa Alice and Norizuki Rintarou's contributions were definitely the best detective stories included, and those stories featured their best known series detectives. Yamaguchi Masaya and Maya Yutaka too used their series detectives in their stories, though I found the stories themselves not as good as the previous two for various reasons. Utano Shougo and Abiko Takemaru on the other hand did not choose to go with their series detectives (partly because they haven't used them in decades), but tried to explore the theme of the Great Detective in stories that are almost science fiction, and your mileage on them might vary. Ayatsuji Yukito's contribution is not a mystery story at all, but a sort of nostalgic look back at a long forgotten past, before there was such a thing as shin honkaku, and works wonderfully as a closer for an anthology meant to commemorate thirty years of shin honkaku.

Original Japanese title(s): 『7人の名探偵』: 「曜日と金曜日が嫌い 大鏡家殺人事件」（麻耶雄嵩） / 「毒饅頭怖い　推理の一問題」（山口雅也） / 「プロジェクト：シャーロック」（我孫子武丸） / 「船長が死んだ夜」（有栖川有栖） / 「あべこべの遺書」（法月綸太郎） / 「天才少年の見た夢」（歌野晶午） / 「仮題・ぬえの密室」（綾辻行人）

Puzzle for Players

「私は安楽椅子探偵。それ以上でもそれ以下でもありません」

『安楽椅子探偵ON STAGE』

"I am the Armchair Detective. I am nothing more and nothing less than that."

"The Armchair Detective ON STAGE"

Disclosure: I translated novels by both Arisugawa Alice (The Moai Island Puzzle) and Ayatsuji Yukito (The Decagon House Murders) As far as I know by the way, the only things they really co-created are this show, and one of the stories in the mystery game Trick X Logic.

Do you know about the urban legend of the Armchair Detective? The tales go that there is a mysterious entity (who looks like Dr. Doom) who lives solely for the act of reasoning. He has solved countless of baffling cases through absolute logic, but is always forgotten by everyone involved with the case whenever he leaves save for the person who first summoned him to the scene. A small theater troupe has been making a succesful series of stage plays based on this urban legend titled The Legend of the Armchair Detective. The third installment of the mystery stage play however is met with some resistance: creepy messages are posted on the internet predicting the death of the Armchair Detective on stage. Performance of The Legend of the Armchair Detective III goes as planned though, until the last night of the show, when the Armchair Detective indeed drops dead on stage during his scene. Everyone is shocked to discover it's not actor Nakazaki Rakuta's face behind the mask, but that of his twin brother/assistant director Yasuo. Not long after, Rakuta's body is also discovered in the storage room at the troupe's office. Who killed the Nagazaki twins? That is a question not only the Armchair Detective can answer, but also you, the viewer, in the TV drama/game Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE ("The Armchair Detective ON STAGE, 2017).

Anraku Isu Tantei ("The Armchair Detective") is a TV drama originally created by mystery writers Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice for ABC, a local network in the Kansai region of Japan. It is essentially the ultimate Challenge to the Reader Viewer. Each story consists of two episodes. In the first episode, the viewer is introduced to all the characters, the events leading up to, and the events after the murder(s) and most importantly, the viewer is shown all the hints and clues necessary to solve the crime themselves. Viewers are then encouraged to write in with the answers to the following two questions: 1) Who is the murderer? and (more importantly): 2) What is the logical process by which you arrived at that conclusion? The winner, drawn from the people who submitted the correct answers, is presented with a sizeable money prize (500.000 yen in the 2017 edition) and eternal fame. The episode with the solution, detailing the complete process of how you should have deduced the identity of the murderer, is broadcast one week after the first. I have reviewed Anraku Isu Tantei ON AIR in the past, which was broadcast in 2006.

It had been eight years already since the Armchair Detective last appeared on television, so quite a lot of people were surprised by the sudden return of this almost legendary show. Things sure have changed in those eight years though, and while the show was still produced by a local TV station, Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE, the eight installment in the series, marks the first time the show was available to viewers throughout Japan through online streaming and on-demand services. The first episode was broadcast on January 5, 2017, the second episode on January 13.

In essence, Anraku Isu Tantei is at the core nothing more than a pure whodunit, with a few basic (written and unwritten) rules, including 1) there is only one murderer, 2) nobody will tell a lie (on purpose), save for the murderer, 3) everybody acts in a logical manner, 4) nothing "outside" what is shown exists (objects etc.), 5) motive is of no consequence and so on. Usually (and also in the case of Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE), your main objective is to identify a few characteristics of the murderer based on what you saw in the first episode, and use those characteristics to eliminate suspects. For example, let's say you have found evidence on the screen that prove the murderer was left-handed. Then you check for every suspect whether they are right or left-handed (or ambidextrous) and so on. I wrote a lengthy post on this 'elimination-style of mystery fiction' quite some time back now, but this is a form that is especially well-suited for the game-format of this show, because viewers can very clearly show the logical process of how they deduced the identity of the murderer ("Scene 1 proves the murderer was left-handed. Only X is left-handed. Ergo the murderer is X").

It's been eight years since the last episode aired, but Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE was still incredibly difficult. Not as difficult as previous episodes, true, but still, it's gloves off here. The truth behind the double murders on the twins is complex: you can identify the murderer based on basically two characteristics deduced from the crime scenes, but arriving at those two points will require lateral thinking by the viewer, as well as a very keen eye for detail. Still, as you listen to the solution in the second episode, you really can't help but cry out: "Ah! That makes so much sense!". Tthough admittedly, there were a few points where I could see the logic behind it, but did not see it as the one and only possible interpretation possible.

The logical chain that leads to the culprit is definitely not short, but it is so satisfying to get to the end of things. Though I do have the feeling that this episode was in a way 'easier' than previous episodes　(it's less mean), but that it did ask for a lot more 'boring' work from the viewer. Making a time table of where everybody was at what time for yourself is pretty handy for example (that's what all the timestamps are for in the episode!) Also, in a puzzle plot mystery novel, it's easy to flip some pages back to check up on something, to reread that part about some minor detail that might be an important hint (I do so often). This is also required with this show: it is utterly impossible to solve this show with just one viewing (unless you have photographic memory). It's definitely easier now than eight years back, now we have digital recorders and on-demand streaming services, but if you want to solve this crime, you'll need to look really carefully for clues, zooming in on the background and stuff. On one hand, I think it's brilliant. This is a visual format, so of course yeah, come on with visual clues and other clues that make use of the medium. On the other hand: as a viewer, it's also not particularly fun to zoom in on a wall to look for a fly resting there, as an example. Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE is a fair mystery story that is solvable, but a challenging one too. It is not as mindwarping shocking as some of the earlier entries in this series though (Ayatsuji commented after the show they tried to be 'gentle' as it was the first episode in almost a decade).

Last year, I reviewed the 2016 installment of Nazotoki Live, another TV show with an interactive format. There they helped the viewer organize all the information and important clues at set points throughout the show, making an otherwise complex mystery plot understandable by breaking the logical process in steps. In Anraku Isu Tantei, the viewer has to do all of that themselves. There is of course a monetary award involved with this, so that's a logical design choice, but it's interesting comparing the two shows. In terms of complexity, the two don't differ that greatly on the whole, but Nazotoki Live helps you on the way, while Anraku Isu Tantei will make you work very very hard on the problem.

The way the character of the Armchair Detective was incorporated in the story itself was fun too. The Armchair Detective is a really fun character, and the solution episodes are often a blast to watch not in the least because of him. The solution episodes are also very meta-concious: all the involved characters are transported to the world of the Armchair Detective, and together with the suspects, he explains the logical elimination process by showing the corresponding scenes from the first episodes as his proof. This explanation process (which includes false solutions and faulty hypotheses) takes an about an hour on average: the plots are just that complex (and therefore of a scale seldom seen on TV).

After the second episode, it was revealed 6819 people submitted an answer. While 60% did guess the identity of the murderer correctly, only 32(!) submissions out of those nearly 7000 got the logical process of elimination correct. So only 0.47% of all the entries guessed the murderer in the correct way. In the end, Ayatsuji and Arisugawa had to choose the 'most elegant' answer from those 32 correct answers, but they couldn't pick one single winner, so there were two winners for Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE.

Anyway, Anraku Isu Tantei ON STAGE was definitely an entertaining addition to the series. As always, it shows how a true fair play mystery plot can work out on the screen, but like previous installments, it can be very tough at times, and sometimes it's asking the viewer to look at rather small details on the screen too much. Still, there is still an air of magic around this show, with the money prize and the meta-approach to presenting the solution to the viewer in the second episode that makes this an unique experience as both a mystery show and a game. I think that's the word I was looking for. Experience. Anraku Isu Tantei is always an experience. Let's hope the Armchair Detective will be summoned again in the future soon.

Original Japanese title(s): 『安楽椅子探偵ON STAGE』

Walking Into The Sunset

「思うだけなら勝手です。読者を説得できると信じるのなら、小説にお書きになればいい。警察や裁判所で通じなくても、フィクションとしてなら成立するかもしれません。」

『朱色の研究』

"You can think whatever you want. If you believe you can convince your readers, write it down in one of your novels. Even if the police or courts won't accept it, it might work as fiction."

"A Study in Vermillion"

Lately, it seems I've only been writing reviews once a month. Though I usually write 3, 4 reviews in one or two days then, so I average out on one review a week (which is the schedule I want to keep on this blog). It's really been a while ago since I wrote my last review, though it shouldn't really be noticable for the readers.

Oh, and the disclosure message: I translated Arisugawa's The Moai Island Puzzle.

Criminologist and university teacher Himura is often asked to help with police investigations, but it's rare for him to be asked for help by one of his own students, especially as his professional assistance to the police is a secret. Akemi has developed a strange phobia for the color of deep, intense orange (vermillion), which means she can even pass out by looking at the setting sun. The origin of this phobia comes from her association of the color with several family tragedies in the past. She hopes Himura can solve a murder that happened in her own personal circle three years ago, to which Himura agrees. And it appears there's something going on, because Himura has only started when one very early morning, he and his friend Alice (a mystery writer) are asked to go to a certain apartment room in a flat (known as the "Ghost Flat") near Alice's home. There they find the dead body of Akemi's uncle, and clues indicate that this new murder might be related to the murder Himura was asked to investigate. The investigation quickly shows that one person is suspicious. No, it even seems like this person was the only one capable of committing the murder, thanks to the testimony of both Himura and Alice, but Himura thinks there might be more behind this in Arisugawa Alice's Shuiro no Kenkyuu ("A Study in Vermillion", 1997).

The drama Himura Hideo no Suiri was broadcast early this year, based on Arisugawa Alice's Writer Alice series. From the first episode on, it was clear that the series would also include an adaptation of Shuiro no Kenkyuu, with early appearances of Himura's students, including Akemi, so I decided to quickly read the original book, before the drama adaptation would appear on TV. Note that this review is posted now, even though I read the book late January...

Whereas I think all of the books in Arisugawa Alice's Student Alice series are really complex, and also fun mystery novels, I have found the books in the Writer Alice series to be less consistent in quality. Shuiro no Kenkyuu is one of the books I personally didn't really like. The book is split in two parts: in the first part, Himura and Alice are investigating the murder on Akemi's uncle in the empty apartment room. Evidence and testimony point to one person at first sight, but after some good sleuthing by both Himura and the proper authorities, a sorta surprising reveal is made. I say sorta, because I actually already saw the same trick used one in Detective Conan already (though this book pre-dates that Conan story). It has ties with the impossible crime, but saying more might spoil what's going on. Then again, the trick itself isn't really surprising, considering the elements you're given and that's why I thought this part was very slow: this trick would've worked much better in short story form, rather than as part of a longer story, especially as its links to the second part are superficial at best.

In the second part, Himura and Alice finally get around to investigating the murder that happened three years ago (as asked by Akemi) and it's here where the story takes on a Five Little Pigs-approach, with Himura and Alice questioning the people who were involved with the incident in the past. I thought this second half was weak at best. Unlike Christie, who mostly focused on psychological evidence, Shuiro no Kenkyuu focuses on an interpretation of physical evidence to arrive at the solution. This is certainly not surprising as Arisugawa is obviously inspired by Ellery Queen who so often used physical evidence to point to the murderer. However, Shuiro no Kenkyuu's line of reasoning is fairly weak compared to the impressive feats Arisugawa has already shown in earlier books (for example, Kotou Puzzle). In the end, the book focuses much more on the motive of the murderer, which is nearly impossible to 'deduce' from the facts and goes deep into the human drama more often found in Higashino Keigo's work. Which can work, but not in this way, where it's not intertwined with the complete work. In Shuiro no Kenkyuu the human drama motive really appears out of nowhere.and it makes the whole narrative feel disjointed.

In my mind, I associate the Student Alice series with the closed circle trope, set in isolated locations like islands or little villages. As a counter, I associate the Writer Alice series with the city and indeed, a lot of the (short) stories are set in Osaka, Kyoto and other urban settings. But despite my 'gut feeling', Himura and Alice do actually appear often in isolated settings in the novels, like in 46 Banme no Misshitsu or Sweden Kan no Nazo. And I enjoy those stories actually a lot better than the novels in the series set in 'open' settings, like Dali no Mayu or Shuiro no Kenkyuu.

As the time I'm writing this, the TV drama Himura Hideo no Suiri still has some episodes to go before Shuiro no Kenkyuu, but I guess that the selection for the book is an understandable one. Human drama is obviously something they want in drama shows, as it attracts also viewers not especially into mystery fiction. Personally, I thought the book was just a mediocre entry in the series. Arisugawa has written much better mystery novels, also within the Writer Alice series, so I wouldn't recommend this as a must-read.

Original (Japanese) title(s): 有栖川有栖　『朱色の研究』