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〜』

Murders On-Line

ユーチューバー罪でタイホされた
『ポプテピピック』

"Arrested for Youtuber crimes"

"Pop Team Epic"

In an article I wrote earlier this year, I noted how I think many contemporary mystery authors still seem to struggle with implementing modern technology in mystery stories, let alone supernatural elements. For some reason, modern technology seems to frighten a lot of writers, as if their mere existence render a puzzle plot mystery impossible (spoilers: that's not true). It's really weird if you think about it, as smartphones and everything are a normal part of our lives now, and I bet a lot of the readers of this article now are reading from either smartphone or tablet, but few mystery authors seem to be able to incorporate these essential parts of our lives in puzzle plot mystery stories in a consistent, regular manner. Both Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo can be seen as the rare occassions, with both series following the development of consumer technology during their serialized run fairl closely. Conan's usage of technology in particular is very noticable, with one of the first stories ending with Conan calling Ran on a public payphone, while nowadays the series often features mystery stories where smartphones and apps are used.

This is definitely a reason why Yukashina Miho's short story Nimannin no Mokugekisha ("Twenty Thousand Witnesses", 2019) was a surprisingly pleasant read, as it's so clearly set in today's society, without relying solely on that notion to present a capable mystery plot. Yukashina debuted this year as a professional mystery author with this story by winning the 16th Mysteries! Newcomer Award. This is basically the sister award to the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award: both are organized by the same publisher and both awards includes a publishing contract for the newcomer for their work, with the Mysteries! Newcomer Award meant for short stories, and the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award for novels. In the case of the Mysteries! Newcomer Award, publication means being published on paper in the literary magazine Mysteries! and as an individual e-book release. Nimannin no Mokugekisha was originally submitted with the title Tsumabiraka ~ Hokenshitsu no Fushigi na Sensei ("The Full Details -The Curious Teacher in the Infirmary"), but it got a title change after it won the award. And to be honest, I like the current title much better.

The story starts with Yuuko visiting the infirmary of the high school of her best friend Junna. Junna had died on the evening of the first of March, falling from the Shin Yodogawa Oobashi Bridge in Osaka and drowning the Yodo River. Junna had been pregnant, and both her mother and the police reached the conclusion she had become desperate and committed suicide. Yuuko however knows this is not true. The day before her death, Junna had visited Yuuko, saying she was going to elope with the father of her baby, but on the night of her death, minutes before her fall, she called Yuuko, saying something was wrong with her boyfriend and that she was afraid and needed help. Nobody believes Yuuko's story however, so she decides to visit Junna's school, as Junna had told Yuuko that their school nurse was someone she could trust if she ever needed any help. While at first Yuuko's surprised to learn that the school nurse Amagai is a man (even if only a temp just filling in for the regular nurse for a period), she soon learns he's indeed more than meets the eye. Yuuko confides to Amagai that Junna's boyfriend and father of her baby is a person known as  "Shiiga", a Youtuber fairly popular with people their age. Junna was supposed to elope with him, but he betrayed her and threw her off the bridge. While Yuuko has also voiced her accusations to the police, there's one problem: Shiiga has an alibi, an alibi which is vouched for by twenty thousand witnesses! For on the night of Junna's death, he was doing a live Youtube broadcast from his room between nine and ten, exactly the period when Junna fell of the bridge. He had twenty thousand viewers during the live stream, with whom he interacted, meaning he could not have killed Junna, even if Yuuko's convinced he did it. So how's Amagai going to crack this alibi?

Youtubers, live streams and chat boxes, it's all a part of the modern life now, so indeed, why not a story where a live stream is the alibi? In essence, it's really no different from the impossible alibi stories where the murderer is on stage while committing a murder, or if you want a more modern counterpart, where the murder is committed while the killer is chatting with someone on the internet. What makes Yukashina's story enjoyable however is that is not relying solely on this story element. While the idea of twenty thousand witnesses is really great, she treats live streams as a matter of fact, and nothing more special than any other part of modern media. Amagai for example uses the internet to google all the facts he needs to know, because, well, that's what all of us do. He's not even technology-savvy, but he can do basic Google searches like any other person. While I think the basic gist of this alibi was created can be guessed fairly easily, I think Yukashina did a good job at not bettng everything on one card: in order to conclusively prove the alibi is false, you need to attack the problem from multiple angles, which are quite nicely clewed in the story. The story does not require any special knowledge about social media or technology that the average person wouldn't know nowadays, but also does not pretend like we live in a world where all of that is strange: it's a matter of fact that they are part of the modern society now, so it simply uses everything that is available. One could definitely point out that the seperate lines of reasoning that Amagai proposes to prove the thing's fake aren't particularly surprising, but Yukashina combines all these ideas in a coherent form, resulting in a compact, but surprisingly dense story that is satisfying from start to finish.

After reading Nimannin no Mokugekisha, I decided to dig up another story which won the Mysteries! Newcomer Award which I had lying around. Ibuki Amon debuted in 2015 with the short story Kangokusha no Satsujin ("Murder in Prison" 2015), which is ironically the complete opposite of Nimannin no Mokugekisha, as it's set in the past, to be exact, the early days of the Meiji period (1868-1912). Hirabari Rokugo was a warrior during the revolution that brought forth the Meiji rule, and while he originally fought on the side of the imperial forces, he eventually turned against them due to their treatment of those who fought during the revolution. It took a lot of trouble to capture Hirabari, who was transferred to Rokkaku Prison in Kyoto. Political motives had led to his incarceration in the former capital of Japan: figures in positions of power feared what Hirabari could reveal about their (dirty) roles during the revolution and wanted him executed as once, while the Ministry of Justice of course wanted to get as much information as they could get out of Hirabari. However, Hirabari's execution was decided upon surprisingly early, so the justice officials Shikano Moromitsu and his superior Etou Shinpei travel to Kyoto to bring Hirabari the bad news he's going to be executed that very day. Hirabari is eating his congee breakfast while Shikano tells him this, but he suddenly keels over. The man's dead almost immediately, as his food had been spiked with poison. This leads to a problem, for everyone in the prison who had the opportunity to poison the food, also knew Hirabari was going to be executed that day, so who would go the trouble of poisoning the man?

A very different kind of story than Nimannin no Mokugekisha, as it's purely a whydunnit. Why poison a man who was going to be executed and decapitated in a few hours? While there are a few people who seem more likely to have done it than others, there's still the question of why it was done in such a conspicious manner, as suspicion was bound to fall upon only a very limited circle of suspects.  The surprising truth is wonderfully fitting to the time period and singularly unique. While it may be a bit difficult to guess on your own, I'd say Ibuki also did a good job at setting the reveal up with proper hinting to the reader, meaning they too have a fair chance at guessing what that motive could possibly be, even if it's really a motive that only exists in very specific context. But definitely a memorable story.

Anyway, both these stories were entertaining and offered unique situations that makes them stand out in your mind. Ibuki Amon kept on building on the world of his debut story by the way: his first standalone book release Katana to Kasa ("The Sword and the Umbrella") was released last year and is a short story collection featuring further adventures of Shikano. It's definitely a book that's on the radar now. Yukashina Miho only debuted officially last month, as her story was featured in the October 2019 issue of Mysteries!, but I'm definitely keep an eye on her future work too if she chooses to continue writing.

Original Japanese title(s): 床品美帆「二万人の目撃者」
 伊吹亜門「監獄舎の殺人」

The Adventure of the Wary Witness

「スタート！その時だった。僕の頭に新しいスタートという言葉が思い浮かんだ。」

『語り＠学校』（爆笑レッドシアターコント）

"Start! Then it came to me. The words Fresh Start popped up in my head."

"Narration @ School" (Bakushou Red Theater sketch)

There exists a very lively market for self-published material (doujin) in Japan, ranging from doujin fanzines, comics, music, games to anything you can think off. I myself have dabbled very little with doujin material here though. Most recently I did review the three volumes of the excellent mystery manga Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura, which were originally published as doujin comics (they are now available digitally through a major publisher). In terms of games, I only tried a few, being two installments of Flower Bridge Infinity's Akito Date series and Rengoku - Kamaitachi no Yoru 2 Another, a fan-sequel to the original Kamaitachi no Yoru videogame. Today, I try another doujin game.

Armchair Detective is a mystery videogame in development for PC, iOS/Android by the doujin circle ADVangelist. An interview about this game dating from 2016 states that ADVangelists' Zeroaya was actually just a senior in high school at the time, so the developer/writer behind this game is quite young, but it sure doesn't mean you should underestimate this game! The full game is slated to be a 5-episode long game but the first episode was released in November 2018 as freeware with the title Armchair Detective Case.1 (subsequent cases are not scheduled to be freeware). You take up the role of Makina Mirai, a college student who has a part-time job as a secretary/assistant/help at the Kusanagi Detective Agency. Kusanagi Shiina took the agency over from his father and is a somewhat messy, but ultimately extremely sharp private detective, who even enjoys the patronage of the police. In this first episode, Mirai is lamenting the fact no clients have been coming to the agency (meaning no pay for her), when Gousawa Kenji, a befriended police detective appears with a job for Kusanagi, but it happens to be one that utterly shocks Mirai, as she learns that her landlord, Nishijima Hiroaki, was killed last night. The elderly Nishijima ran the little Nishijima Home Appliances, while also renting two rooms out in the back of the building (one to Mirai). Last night, Mirai stayed at the agency for a big clean-up, but Gousawa himself happened to be visiting Nishijima Home Appliances for a purchase, but a loud scream followed by a power failure brought him to the second floor, leading to the discovery of the body of Nishijima, who had been beaten to death by one of the urns from his collection. Gousawa has now gathered all the people who were on the premise around the time of the murder at the agency, as Kusanagi specializes in "group interrogations". Mirai however says she wants to solve this case to avenge her landlord's death.

Armchair Detective Case.1 is a good example of a game that does not try to reinvent the wheel for the nth time, but cleverly makes use of tried-and-true game mechanics for mystery adventure games, combining them to create a somewhat familiar, yet satisfying experience. The game revolves around two major mechanics that make up the mechanic of "crowd interrogation": zapping between multiple testimonies at the same time, and following up on certain statements by pointing out contradictions. Both these concepts should sound familiar to mystery adventure gamers. "Zapping" between various bodies of text is what made games like 428 and Machi so unique, as you had to "zap" between 5-8 narratives starring different characters, and guide each of these narratives to their ending, while keeping an eye on how one event in narrative A could also impact the developments of narrative B, C or more. Zapping between the various perspectives also allowed you to learn clues from various angles (some characters could learn about X, some about Y), and carefully puzzling all the various narratives together could be a very satisfying mechanic. Meanwhile, pointing out contradictions in testimony through evidence in order to push the narrative forward as a game mechanic has been the invention of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney series and has since been a very popular game mechanic in detective games, and is utilized in for example the Danganronpa series.

After a short introduction to the characters and the initial set-up in the prologue of Armchair Detective Case.1, you'll be allowed to read trough the testimonies of all the witnesses/suspects. These testimonies are presented not in the form of dialogue, of the witness telling Mirai directly what happened, but are shown in the style of a novel video game, with third person prose projected on a background, with music/sound effects accompanying the text (no character art is shown in these parts). Each of these testimonies is divided in chapters, and you can zap (switch) between the testimonies of all four witnesses. These novel parts are written in the third person, but one has to be really careful here: each of these novel parts are solely based on the testimonies of the respective witness, so it is quite possible that they are misremembering or confusing things, or even intentionally lying. Each of these testimonies must thus be treated as individual texts by unreliable narrators. This is also shown very ingeniously through the presentation in the game, for whenever you "leave" the current testimony, the screen will zoom out to show the characters discussing the testimony, which itself is also projected on a seperate television. This emphasizes that what you are reading is nothing more but an interpretation of what happened, as told by that particular witness.

As you progress in each testimony, you'll pick up certain key phrases that are saved seperately in a record. You can click on these words to learn more about them (the banter by the characters about these words can be funny, but also contain hints of how to proceed). As said, testimonies can contain mistakes, sometimes by accident, sometimes by intent. At times, the memories of the witness can just be too unreliable, and they can't proceed without something to jog their mind. The key phrases are used at these points to move the story forward. For example, the first witness Gousawa states early on he was asleep, but was suddenly awakened by a loud noise. In the testimony of another person, you learn that at that same time, they were having a fight with their girlfriend. You can these use the key phrase about the fight they had on Gousawa's testimony, who then remembers it was the noise from their fight that awakened him, and then he continues his testimony. This is similiar to the story blocks in games like 428 and Machi, where one narrative can only proceed if you do something else first in a different narrative. But the key phrases are also used to point out contradictions in the testimonies. Person A might be lying for example, but a key phrase gained from Person B's testimony can prove the lie. Once you have correctly pointed out a lie, the witness will usually change their testimony (sometimes whole chapters are completely altered), which of course eventually leads to new key phrases that allows you to uncover other lies. Like in Ace Attorney, you'll eventually figure out who of the four committed the murder by eliminating all the contradictions you come across.

What makes this in a way more complex than Ace Attorney is that you're juggling multiple contradiction-filled testimonies at the same time. In Ace Attorney, you're always faced with one single loop of 5-6 parts long, with which you can interact with a list of evidence to point out a contradiction. In Armchair Detective Case.1, you're juggling four seperate loops of 10-15 chapters long simultaneously. You can mostly choose the order in which you tackle them yourself, but in order to proceed with all testimonies, you'll have to switch narratives a few times, as you'll need to gather the correct key phrases that allow you point out contradictions/force someone to continue with their testimony from other testimonies. So there's a lot more you have think about. That coupled with the fact the testimonies themselves are not only longer, but also more likely to contain big lies, and you're left with plenty to consider as you try to figure out this puzzle (though this first case does help you out a lot).

As for the mystery plot itself, it's a fairly small scale story and as a tutorial case, it does hold your hand quite a bit, but there's some nice moments where you realize some persons have been telling big lies for a few chapters, and trying to fit the contradicting parts of the four testimonies together can be fun. The identity of the culprit is a bit easy to guess, but the game does a good job at really using all the discoveries you made during the whole case to prove how they did it. This first chapter also contains multiple hints and references to a greater story, which will no doubt be the driving force for the whole game.

I also have to say, I was quite impressed with the presentation of this freeware game! Like the little thing with the testimonies projected on the television set I mentioned before, these little touches ADVangelist added to the game all quickly add up to give this first chapter a really polished feel. The division on pure novel part and parts where the character art is shown is also a rather inspired concept I think, as it really sets the testimonies apart as seperate texts which you can't trust.

So yeah, the two hours or so Armchair Detective Case.1 takes were spent very well, and with pleasure. This first chapter was released in November, but I have no idea what the projected release schedule is for the rest of the game. This beginning however really impressed me, and I am quite interested to see how the full story will unfold and how the zapping contradiction mechanic will be fleshed out in later chapters, so I hope the full game gets finished, and perhaps released on consoles (because I usually don't play games on my laptop). I already posted the link above, but just to make sure: Armchair Detective Case. 1 can be downloaded as freeware from Freem!.

Original Japanese title(s): 『Armchair Detective Case.1』

The Case of the Distressed Lady

「大変失礼ながら、お嬢様の単純さは、まさに幼稚園児レベルかと思われます」

「聖なる夜に密室はいかが」

"I might be speaking out of line, ma'am, but you're simplemindedness is basically the level of kindergarten"

"How About A Locked Room On Holy Night?"

I very seldom read books by the same author one after another. No matter how much I might like a writer, or for example when I suddenly become hooked on a certain series, I almost always wedge another book in between. I guess I just like to have some variation, and not stick with an author for more than one book at a time.

Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de series
Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de
Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de 2
Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de 3
Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de (first impressions TV drama)
Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de (theatrical release)
Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de (audio drama)

Today's book is therefore a rare exception. Last time, I reviewed Higashigawa Tokuya's Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de, an excellent short story collection of which I knew the contents already from the 2011 TV drama adaptation. I had bought the book long, long ago, but it remained on the to-be-read pile because I wanted to forget most of the details of the drama before reading the original stories. After reading that book however, I decided to continue with the sequel, which I had bought together with the first volume back in 2012. Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de 2 ("Mystery Solving Is After Dinner 2", 2011) continues the adventures of the female police detective Houshou Reiko, who unknown to her fellow officers, is in fact also the insanely rich heiress of the Houshou Group. Each day after work, while she's enjoying a luxurious dinner, she likes to lament about her well-meaning, but not particularly competent superior Inspector Kazamatsuri and the difficult cases she's saddled with, but her mysterious butler Kageyama always manages to solve the cases simply by listening to his mistress' stories. Unlucky for Reiko is that Kageyama also has a very sharp tongue and he doesn't hold back his (polite) comments about his mistress'  intelligence as he explains how it was done. This collection features another six of these mysteries to be solved after dinner.

It shouldn't surprise the reader that this second volume is simply 'more of the same'. Each story follows the same rough outline of Reiko and Kazamatsuri coming across a new murder and them questioning everyone involved, and at the end of the day, Reiko tells Kageyama everything, who solves the case like the armchair detective he is (even though he remains standing of course, as he's a butler). The stories do have a tendency to feel a bit alike after a while (especially as I read the first two volumes after another), and often revolve around a crime scene with something out-of-the-ordinary (a naked body; a victim who had her hair cut after the murder; a victim who had her boots on in her apartment even though that's not done in Japan). Usually there are three suspects, and the key to solving these stories is figuring out why the crime scene turned out the way it did, and from there deduce who it was. For those who saw the drama: I think every story here was also adapted for the series (together with the stories from the first volume), but if I remember correctly, some of the stories were mashed together for the two-part finale.

Alibi wo Goshomou de Gozaimasuka ("Would You Like An Alibi?") has Reiko and Inspector Kazamatsuri working on the murder of a 35-year old woman, who was found in the staircase of a largely empty tenant building. The coroner's report, and a sighting of a neigbor who saw her leave the apartment building, put her death between 19:45-21:00, giving the victim enough time to get from her apartment building to the place where she was killed. The main suspect is her ex-boyfriend, who dated her for seven years, but suddenly dumped her so he could date, and soon marry, the daughter of an executive of his company. The man has an alibi though, as he spent the early night with an old colleague, after which he spent two hours in a cafe, as vouched for by the owner of that coffee shop. Kageyama's explanation for how this alibi was created has some really good ideas, and some less inspired ones. The way Kageyama explains why it is very likely that the suspect is indeed the murderer is absolutely brilliant: the hint for this is hidden both in your face, but also subtle enough for anyone to read across it (I know I did). But once pointed out, you realize how obvious it should've been. The way the alibi was actually done however is far more crude, and a bit disappointing considering how good the set-up was.

Koroshi no Sai wa Boushi wo O-Wasurenaku ("Don't Forget Your Hat During A Murder") has Reiko and Kageyama vistiting Reiko's hat shop, as she's working on a case that is connected to hats. A woman had been killed in her bath tub, and it was discovered that not only the victim's phone and computer were missing, but also her hats from her closet. But who would want to steal a woman's hat collection? This is a very tricky story, but the moment Kageyama explains why the murderer would want to take the hats with them is fantastic: the explanation is logical, convincing and one can see that Higashigawa did his best at setting everything up, though it still requires a bit of imagination on the part of the reader. Once you know why, the story turns into a whodunnit, and while it's a simple one, it's expectly plotted, even complete with a false solution! Definitely one of the best stories in this volume.

Satsui no Party ni Youkoso ("Welcome To The Party With Murderous Intent") starts with Reiko arriving at the hotel where the sixtieth birthday party of the father of her friend/rival Ayaka is held. Ayaka, Reiko, as well as two other heiresses, were all members of their university's seasonal sports club, and have kept their friendship/rivalry alive all the time. During the party, the daughter of the owner of the hotel (who was also acquaintances with Reiko and her friends) is assaulted in the glass house on the roof garden of the hotel. The only thing the victim could say before she was taken to the hospital was that was assaulted by a woman in reddish dress, who she didn't know, but looked familiar. Besides Reiko and her three friends, there were only three other women who answered to the description of the attacker, but who of them was the assailant? Again a story that has strokes of true genius, but also elements that feel a bit underwhelming. One part of the mystery is basically only solvable if you know a certain piece of trivia. A different clue in regards to the identity of the attacker is very tricky, and perfectly executed here. The setting of this story is used to its fullest to make this trick possible, and it's quite easy to imagine how this would've gone. It requires the most careful of readers to even get an inkling of what is being played here.

Seinaru Yoru ni Mittsutsu wa Ikaga ("How About A Locked Room On Holy Night?") has Reiko in a somewhat bad mood on the morning of December 24th, especially after Kageyama asked what her plans were for the night. She takes the bus to her work, but runs into a woman who says her friend was killed. The victim was living in a small house, which save for the entrance was encircled by a concrete wall, with everything covered in the snow of the night before. The only tracks leading to the entrance were the foottracks to and away from the house made by the friend who discovered the body, and a bicycle track made by the victim when she came back last night. At first sight it seems the victim might've fallen from the loft, but the neighbor's testimony of having seen someone's shadow after she heard the fall that would've killed the victim, seems to suggests it was murder. But how did the murderer escape the house without leaving any traces in the snow? Like Koroshi no Sai wa Boushi wo O-Wasurenaku, this story can be tricky, as it requires you to deduce the existence of an object that has not been mentioned explictly before, but I think it's much easier in this story. Once you get to that point, it's almost a straight line to figuring out how the murderer escaped the house. The whodunnit is simple and short, but surprisingly well done, with subtle hints that allow you strike you out the people who certainly couldn't have done it.

Hanayagi Electric Appliances was a household name, even before the scandal, and then the tragedy became the talk of the town. Hanayagi Kenji having a mistress was a scandal: him dying in a traffic accident was a tragedy. But tragedy never comes alone, we learn in Kami wa Satsujinhan no Inoch de Gozaimasu ("Hair Means the Life of a Murderer"), as one morning, the housekeeper of the Hanayagi household wakes up to find something burning in the living room, where she finds a dead body. At first, she mistook the body for one of the family, but it turns out the victim was Yuuko, Kenji's niece, who often came to visit the Hanayagi home to visit her cousins. Usually, the housekeeper would recognize her of course, but for some reason, Yuuko's beautiful long, black hair had been cut and burned in the fireplace. Strangely enough, I've read a couple of stories about bodies of whom the hair was cut (here and here for example), and this one is another interesting one. Deducing why the hair had been cut can be a bit difficult, I think, though there are a couple of nice clues that hint at something big behind the missing hair. This story is definitely not plotted as tightly as previous ones, but still an okay story.

Kanzen na Misshitsu nado Gozaimasen ("There Is No Such Thing as a Perfectly Locked Room") is about the death of an artist: on the day of his demise, his niece and a freelance writer were about to enter his atelier, when they heard him cry out and something loud fall: inside the atelier, of which the wall was covered in a gigantic fresco, they found the artist with a knife in his back and a stepladder which had fallen over. At first sight, it seemed like he was working on the wall with the knife when he fell over, but it seems unlikely he could've stabbed himself in the back then. But if it was a murder, how did the murderer escape, as the two who first discovered the victim were standing in front of door of the building when they heard him scream, and there are no other windows in the atelier through which the murderer could've escaped. A story on which your mileage will probably vary a lot: I really liked the way the escape route of the murderer was hinted at, but I didn't like the escape route itself.  So the way Kageyama arrived at the solution, I thought much more interesting than the solution itself.

So while Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de 2 was not surprising in terms of story format, this volume was quite entertaining once again. Despite the short length of each of these stories, Higashigawa manages to come up with very intricately plotted whodunnit plots, with excellent clewing and also alluring crime scenes. Some of the things he manages to pull off here are really tricky, with some hints that are almost screaming in your face in hindsight, but always go undetected by the reader the first time. For people who have seen the drama, I'm afraid only the third volume has stories you don't know yet.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉『謎解きはディナーのあとで2』：「アリバイをご所望でございますか」/「殺しの際は帽子をお忘れなく」/「殺意のパーティにようこそ」/「聖なる夜に密室はいかが」/「髪は殺人犯の命でございます」/「完全な密室などございません」

The Case of the Rich Woman

「この程度の真相がお判りにならないとは、お嬢様はアホでいらっしゃいますか?」

「殺人現場では靴をお脱ぎください」 

"As you don't even see through the truth of something as simple as this, I assume, ma'am, that you are a fool?"

"Please Take Your Shoes Off At A Murder Scene"

A while back I decided to read, and review Kishi Yuusuke's short story collection Kagi no Kakatta Heya even though I already knew the contents more-or-less. I had seen the TV drama series which was partly based on the collection, but as quite some years had passed since I saw the series, I figured now was as good as any time to read the original book. Reading Kagi no Kakatta Heya reminded me of a similar case, of a book I had bought, but not read as I had seen the TV drama adaptation already.

It was in 2011 when I first read a work by Higashigawa Tokuya, and a few months later, I caught the TV drama Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de ("Mystery Solving Is After Dinner"), which was based on one of his novel series. The show was absolutely brilliant and I soon started to read a lot more of Higashigawa's works, though I didn't write much about Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de back then: a short first impression of the TV drama, a review of the theatrical film and a review of an audio drama were basically all I had, until I reviewed the third Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato volume in 2015. But today, I go back to that very first short story collection of Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de ("Mystery Solving Is After Dinner", 2010). Houshou Reiko is a young female Homicide detective who unknown to most of her colleagues (and especially her arrogant and womanizing superior Inspector Kazamatsuri), is in fact the insanely wealthy sole heiress of the Houshou Group, which has a hand in pretty much everything. Each night, after a hard day of work, she likes to enjoy her luxurious banquet, as she ponders out loud about the cases she's working on. Her butler Kageyama seems to have a knack for detecting too, as he is always able to solve the most mysterious cases just by listening to his mistress. Kageyama however also doesn't hold back with the verbal insults towards his mistress, as most of the cases seem so simple to him, that it appears his mistress must be 'dense', 'even more stupid than the lowest-level amateur around', or something worse.

While I think all of the six stories collected in this volume were also featured in the TV drama, I had forgotten just about enough of them for most of these to feel fresh to me. The overall mood of Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de series however is something nobody is likely to forget, and it is one the TV drama also managed to capture perfectly. Higashigawa specializes in comedy mystery, with almost comic-like characters and funny banter, but don't let his jokes fool you: Higashigawa is really good at hiding clues and other important elements in his comedy, and that combined with a good sense for constructing mystery plots, from locked room mysteries to the more deduction-based stories, makes his work always a joy to read. The Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de series is distinctly different from some of his other series like the Ikagawashi series and the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series, as Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato takes on an armchair detective format, with Kageyama helping his mistress (accompanied with some verbal abuse) with her cases at home. Interestingly enough though, it's Reiko who sits in the armchair, while Kageyama, as her butler, is of course the one standing.

The opening story, Satsujin Genba de wa Kutsu wo O-nugi Kudasai ("Please Take Your Shoes Off At A Murder Scene"), is the one story I have mentioned several times on this blog, as it was also the source material for both the audio drama and the first episode of the TV drama. I still consider it one of the more memorable stories, even though the story seems so simple: a young woman was found murdered in her room, but what seems so mysterious to Reiko is the fact the victim was found wearing her boots. Wearing your shoewear inside your home is a big no-no in Japan (as it'd ruin the flooring), so while it seems like a trivial matter, it's still extremely weird for the victim to be found like this. The chain of deductions Kageyama manages to create based on this fact and other testimonies from the victim's neigbors' is convincing however, and quite satisfying, especially with a hint that builds on another aspect of Japanese culture.

Koroshi no Wine wa Ikaga Desu Ka ("How About A Killer Wine?") has Reiko working on a case that at first seemed like a suicide, but might actually be murder: a wealthy elderly man was found dead in his room, and poison was detected from his glass of wine. As the bottle itself didn't contain poison, and the victim was notoriously fuzzy about clean glasses, it doesn't seem likely anyone but himself could've poisoned his glass. His children had protested heavily against his intended marriage with his housekeeper, which might've driven him to suicide, but some small matters have Reiko suspect this was foul play. The trick behind how the glass of wine was poisoned isn't that impressive: it seems like rather straightforward way to poison the wine for me. More impressive is the way Kageyama then proceeds to deduce the identity of the murderer, by focusing on the actions the murderer must've taken. The hinting is a bit crude and one could argue that the reasoning is a bit too easy in rejecting some other possibilities, but it's an okay story.

Kirei na Bara ni wa Satsui ga Gozaimasu ("Murderous Intent Is Present in Beautiful Roses") starts with the discovery of a dead woman in the rose garden of Fujikura Kousaburou. The victim had been brought to the Fujikura home by Kousaburou's son, who intended to marry the woman, despite protests of his parents and Toshio's brother-in-law. Kyouko was now dead however, placed on a rose-covered pedastal in the rose garden. The one question that's on the detectives' mind is of course why the woman's body was in the rose garden. This story is fairly similar to the previous one, as it wants you to deduce why a certain action was taken, and then use that knowledge to deduce who the murderer was. This story is much better plotted, with both a good reason for why the body was found where it was found and an excellent structured whodunnit plot that allows you identify the murderer. The story does require you to deduce the existence of a certain object not mentioned before, but it is actually fairly well-telegraphed.

In Hanayome wa Misshitsu no Naka de Gozaimasu ("The Bride Is Inside The Locked Room"), Reiko is initially not involved as a police detective, but as the heiress of the Houshou Group, and as a personal friend, as her friend Yuri is getting married. The ceremony is held at the bride's (large) home, and while Reiko is not exactly happy that Yuri got married first, she still wishes her friend the best. When Yuri doesn't come back from her short rest, Reiko decides to look for her in her room, but it is locked from the inside, with no answer at all. When the door is finally opened with the spare key, they find that Yuri was stabbed in her back. Reiko's fast actions save Yuri's life, but the question is how the assailant managed to escape this second floor room, as the door was locked, and there were no footsteps found beneath the open balcony door. As a locked room mystery, people might be a bit disappointed by this one, but man! the clue towards the identity of the bride attacker is absolutely brilliant! I don't remember having seen this in the TV drama (I probably just forgot), but this clue is devilishly subtle and yet daringly in your face. In fact, this might be one of the best clues I've seen this year.

Futamata ni wa O-Ki wo Tsuke Kudasai ("Please Be Careful For Cheaters") brings the strangest crime scene in this collection, as the victim was found completely naked in his room! His clothes are nowhere to be found, so it stands to reason the murderer took them, but why? As he was seen in the flat elevator with a woman by his neigbor minutes before his death, and another witness saw a woman leave the apartment soon after, the police suspects a woman in the life of the victim was the culprit, but it appears the man was having relations with multiple woman, so which of them did it? The puzzle revolves around disagreeing descriptions of the woman who was last seen with the victim, but once you realize why those testimonies differ, the story leads to a very satisfying reason for why the victim was found naked, and it also gives the reader a nice final puzzle in figuring out which of the women was the murderer. Excellently clewed and executed,  and also one of the funnier stories to visualize.

Shisha kara no Dengon wo Douzo ("Here's A Message From the Dead") is about a rather particular dying message, as the message was erased before the police could get to it! The president of a money lending company was murdered, her head bashed in with a trophy of one of her sons, but the circumstances that led to the discovery of the murder are what made it so extraordinary: around nine in the evening, the bloody trophy was thrown from the garden into a room on the second floor, breaking the window. It had everyone in the house gather in the room, save for the victim who was then found. But why was the trophy thrown into that room, and what did the erased dying message say? This is perhaps the most complex of the stories in this collection, but within the same page count (and these are pretty short stories), so it feels a bit rushed at some points. Like seen in some of the other stories in this collection, Higashigawa likes to hide clues in utterances and interpretations of the used language, though it's not as elegant here as in the earlier stories. Still, it leads to a good set-up that allows the reader to reasonably deduce what the dying message said and who the murderer is.

Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de is thus a more than entertaining volume of well-constructed mystery short stories. Higashigawa excells in mixing comedy with a good mystery plot, and the short format, combined with the fast dialogues and funny scenes really work great. In terms of mystery plotting, Higashigawa shows he's very good at classic whodunnit plots, where he challenges the reader to deduce who the murderer is (usually from three suspects), based on actions the murderer must've taken while committing the deed. Once you recognize the pattern, you have an idea what to look for, but Higashigawa shows in these six stories he's also very capable of coming up with original variations that you aren't likely to see through in time. So a fun read, even if I already knew the plots from the TV drama.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉 『謎解きはディナーのあとで』:「殺人現場では靴をお脱ぎください」/「殺しのワインはいかがでしょう」/「綺麗な薔薇には殺意がございます」/「花嫁は密室の中でございます」/「二股にはお気をつけください」/「死者からの伝言をどうぞ」

The A.B.C. Murders

I walk to Green Fish to listen to the sound of silence.

A man who plays the harp gently shakes my hand

and he leads me in to the story of him. 

「廃墟のソファ」 ("Sofa in a Ruin") (Akeboshi)

I can't even remember when I read this book, but I think it was a good, two, three weeks ago. Better write this review down now before I forget even more.

Nowadays we might be looking at our smartphones or tablets while we take sips of our beverage of choice with too long a name, but in essence, the experience at a coffee or teashop the last century hasn't changed much. You enjoy a drink and enjoy a read, or maybe have a chat with someone else. And sometimes, that someone might actually be a detecting genius. Polly Burton is a newspaper reporter who often stops by the local A.B.C. teashop. Another regular customer in the shop is an old man who sits in the corner who always seems to be thinking about crime. While putting knots in a piece of string, and untying them, Baroness Orczy's The Old Man in the Corner (1908) tells Polly, and the reader, about the most baffling crimes and the even more shocking truth behind them.

I knew I had to read Baroness Emma Orczy's stories someday, but certain events finally left me with no other choice than to finally do it. Which might make it sound like I really did not feel like doing it. Anyway, The Old Man in the Corner (1908) is a short story collection featuring the titular old man in the corner, with two other collections, The Case of Miss Eliot (1905) and Unravelled Knots (1925), completing the series. Note that while the publication of The Case of Miss Eliot predates that of the book The Old Man in the Corner, the stories in the latter were actually the first to be written.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the stories, often about murder in the more affluent spheres of society, but there is one problem that makes it hard to discuss the dozen stories of The Old Man in the Corner indepedently. That is, most of them are actually based on the same fundamental trick and it is usually very easy to see what is going on once you recognize the pattern. That said, Orczy does manage to present the same pattern in a variety of ways that prevent you from instantly recognizing how the trick is used every time, but in general, a lot of the stories do come close to if you've read one of them, you've read them all. Which is a shame, because the stories themselves are fun to read. It's just that they're practically all built on the same foundation.

I know someone like Christie also often reused patterns for different stories, but it's one thing to have some 'same pattern' stories spread across one's whole oeuvre of books, or just one single collection with basically just one pattern.

The writing is enjoyable though and it read a lot smooth than other writing from the same time, I think. In fact, I had initially thought that the stories dated from a good ten, twenty years later than their actual publication period. The settings might be a bit dated, but the writing feels quite modern.

I liked the armchair detective device of the old man in the corner, but the concept seems a bit underused in this collection. Sure, the idea of an old man in the corner of a teashop solving the most sensational crimes from behind newspaper is fun, but the old man in the corner of this collection always has prepared all the information needed from various sources and has often gone to the crime scenes/trials himself; which kinda means he isn't an armchair detective, in the sense that he is only sitting in his chair after having done all the necessary legwork himself. I like my armchair detectives to be a bit more sedentary. Also, I'd loved a bit more Polly-Old Man interaction.

The Old Man in the Corner is an entertaining short story collection with an armchair detective-ish character, though a lot of the stories in this collection are basically the same. I hope that the other collections feature more variety, because I do like Orczy's writing and her plot construction.

Rain Man

I walk down the lane

With a happy refrain

Just singin', 

Singin' in the rain

"Singin' in the Rain"

Now I think about it, I don't think I have that many books with a bright yellow cover...

It's raining cats and dogs, but as the Kazegaoka High School Table Tennis Club trains under the roof of the old gymnasium, it's business as usual. While the school also has a more modern gymnasium, this building is still used by several of school clubs, like the Table Tennis Club, the Badminton Club and the Theater Club. With the last classes finished, people walk in and out the old gymnasium preparing for their club activities. Table Tennis club members are doing warming up excercises while the Theater Club prepares the stage and raises the curtain. But to the shock of all in the gymnasium, the rising curtain reveals the stabbed body of the Broadcasting Club president on stage. A preliminary investigation by the police however reveals that this murder was committed under impossible circumstances: all the entrances to the gymnasium were observed or blocked since the time the victim entered the building, making this a locked building murder! Fearing that the police might accuse the Table Tennis Club captain as the most obvious suspect, Yuno, a fellow member, asks the help of genius student Urazome Tenma, a second-year who according to the rumors actually lives in the high school. The highly intelligent, anime otaku agrees to help (for a price) and sets out to solve the locked room murder in Aosaki Yuugo's debut novel Taiikukan no Satsujin ("The Gymnasium Murder", 2012).

The book also carries the alternate English title The Black Umbrella Mystery, which invokes the Ellery Queen spirit the book is indeed going for. In fact, the marketing slogan for Aosaki Yuugo is "the Heisei period Ellery Queen", which should give you an idea about the type of mystery you can expect from Taiikukan no Satsujin. And yes, a black umbrella is of importance to the plot.

Man, I've been waiting for years for the paperback version of this book to be released! Aosaki debuted in 2012 with this book and it caught my attention immediately: it had a very bright and catchy cover (the hardcover and paperback versions have different, but similar covers), the title was a funny parody on Ayatsuji Yukito's Yakata series and Aosaki was a follower of the Queen school of logic and reasoning. Still, if possible I try to get the paperback versions, so I waited until 2015...

And starting with the conclusion: Taiikukan no Satsujin is indeed a great mystery novel in the Queen tradition. Well, a locked room mystery might not seem Queen-ish, but the way the impossible murder is solved is definitely done with our beloved logical reasoning. In fact, I think Taiikukan no Satsujin is a good effort in conciling the logical reasoning type of mystery with the more mechanical type of locked room murders. Genius student Tenma logically deduces when the murder must have happened, the actions the murderer took after the deed and the only method by which the locked room murder must have been completed. The actual method of achieving the locked room murder is a bit disappointing, to be honest, as it felt a bit simple, but nothing but praise for the way with which it is proven that this was the solution, as it is a a great deductive piece of work. And for the fans: there's a proper Challenge to the Reader included!

And I think I've mentioned it earlier, but I have a weakness for mystery novels set at schools. I love the energy and wacky antics in Higashigawa Tokuya's Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series for example and there is a similar atmosphere in Taiikukan no Satsujin. The various students have funny dialogues with each other and the school dynamics come quit alive within the pages of the book. A minor point I have is the amount of students appearing in the story though: while they are actually practically all of them of importance to the mystery, I still couldn't shake away bad memories from the Insanely Homogeneous Student Group of 17(!) from Arisugawa Alice's Gekkou Game. Still, I think Taiikukan no Satsujin shows that juvenile characters doesn't mean juvenile mystery: Taiikukan no Satsujin is probably one of the complex plotted mysteries I've read this year and has the sort of logical complexity rarely seen outside of Japan nowadays.

Aosaki is a very young writer (born 1991) and it shows in his protagonist Urazome Tenma, an anime otaku who secretly lives in the high school. A lot of his dialogue is filled with references to anime and manga and while I am certainly not unfamiliar with those topics (heck, I write professionaly about those topics outside this blog), I have to admit that I didn't get all of the references, especially as many of them seem to refer to more 'recent' anime (I've rather conservative taste in that respect). Anyway, I can easily imagine that the characters in Taiikukan no Satsujin appeal better to a younger public, rather than the people who have been following the genre for more than three, four decades.

Anyway, I enjoyed Taiikukan no Satsujin a lot and I hope the paperback version of the other novels in the Urazome Tenma series follow soon. And as Aosaki is still very young, I am rather curious to see how his style will develop in the following years.

Original Japanese title(s): 青崎有吾　『体育館の殺人』

Death TV

「私に言わせれば、すべてのホラー現象はほらに過ぎない。超常現象を恐れてはならない。 Don't be afraid! どんと来い、超常現象！」

『TRICK』

"I say that all the horror phenomena in this world are nothing more than nonsense. Don't fear supernatural phenomena. Don't be afraid! Come on, supernatural phenomena!"

"TRICK"

I usually begin a post with a little paragraph on something not (directly) related to the main topic. Why? Because I think it's too confronting to go to the core of the story right away. Or something like that. I just like it when there's a little buffer between the start of a post and the main story. Aaaaaaaand that was today's introduction.

The Armchair Detective is a mysterious entity dressed like Doctor Doom who lives purely to deduce. Whenever he is summoned, he teleports all important actors involved in a mystery to his realm, and shows with absolute logic who the murderer is in any given crime. Ever since the Armchair Detective helped the clairvoyant Ashida Luna solve a serial murder case that had baffled the police two years ago, Luna is thought to have real supernatural powers. This time, she is asked to do a live psi trailing session in the TV show Friday On Air, to discover the whereabouts of the missing student Sanjou Miyabi. And the production team behind Friday On Air praise the gods for their decision to use Luna in their show, because the dead body of Sanjou Miyabi is discovered only thanks to the psychic's amazing powers. But then Ashida Luna is killed before she gets a chance to use her clairvoyant powers to find out who killed Miyabi. Can the viewer solve the murders on Miyabi and Luna before the Armchair Detective appears to reveal the truth in Anriku Isu Tantei On Air ("The Armchair Detective On Air")?

Anraku Isu Tantei ("The Armchair Detective") was a TV special series which ran irregularly from 1999-2008. The show was written by veteran puzzle plot writers Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice and designed to be the ultimate challenge to the viewer. Each episode consisted of two parts: the 'problem' part, which introduced the murders, all the suspects and most importantly, all the necessary hints to arrive at the solution, was broadcast in the first week. Viewers were then encouraged to send in questionnaires with 1) whom they think was the murderer, and 2) how they arrived at that conclusion. The 'solution' part was then broadcast in the second week, usually baffling the viewer with lenghty deduction chains presented by the supernatural being the Armchair Detective. Anraku Isu Tantei On Air was the sixth production, originally broadcast in 2006.

The format of the Anraku Isu Tantei shows is obviously inspired by so-called guess-the-criminal (hanninate) scripts. These scripts are more like pure logic puzzles than 'proper' literary stories: there are unwritten rules like a Challenge to the Reader, 'there is only one murderer', 'strength of motive is of no real consequence' and 'all the hints necessary to solve the crime are in the story' (therefore, nothing/no person outside the world described in the story exists) and most of these plots are solved through a Queen-esque elimination method: determine an x amount of characteristics the murderer must have (i.e. must have been left handed, must have had access to the room, must have etc.) and see who fits (or does not fit) the profile. Some might think Ellery Queen's novels feel a bit artificial with the challenge to the reader and all, but these guess-the-criminal scripts are really taking this game-element of detective fiction to the extreme (see also the game Trick X Logic, which takes the same format to a videogame).

And slightly off-topic, but writing these kinds of stories is a pretty important activity in the Kyoto University University Club: one member would write a story, while other members would try to solve it. All the stories that have been published within the club are written on the wall of the club room, and when I was there two years ago, there had been around 400 stories done ever since the tradition started. My name and story is also somewhere there on the wall, by the way.

Anriku Isu Tantei On Air is the first time I watched the show. I love it for its experimental format as a detective show that tries to involve the viewer in an active manner, but it also shows why this format might not be the best for a TV show. Normally, you'd go through a guess-the-criminal script once and then go back in the pages to check up on everything. For example, you'd find out the murderer had to be left-handed at the end of the story, so you'd go back and flip through the pages to see who was right-handed and who left. A good guess-the-criminal script will have several characteristics for a murderer (and play with that too), so it's important to go back and forth to check on all the facts.

However, this is hard to do with a TV show. The video format is not really made for a viewer to go back and forth to check up on everything. And I can assure you, it's impossible to solve the complete puzzle in Anraku Isu Tantei On Air in just one session. If you really want to get to all details, you'd have to watch the first episode at least two, three times and that's only if you already have a good idea about who did it. The DVD of Anraku Isu Tantei On Air does a reasonable job at assisting the viewer, as all the chapter stops are set at moments with crucial information ("X's Alibi", "Y's Alibi" etc.). But even then, you'd need to watch the episode several times. For the viewers who watched this live, they had to have taped the episode, or else they'd never been able to solve the case. Oh, and for your information: when this episode was broadcast in 2006, 19566 people had sent in answers: 6,5% of the respondents (1271) had guessed the correct murderer, while only a mere 0,3% (58) also presented the correct logical arguments to support the suspicion. And people complained the Ellery Queen TV show was too difficult!

But I still think this is really worth a viewing though. One of the reasons I love mystery fiction is because of the puzzle element, the game element behind it and I have never seen a detective TV show treat that aspect as interesting as with Anraku Isu Tantei. The solution is fantastic, with a grand deduction chain leading up to the reveal of the murderer. The plot of this particular episode also makes impressive use of its format as a video: while I admit some of the hints are just barely fair (Maybe a second in a ninety minute show is hardly fair!), there is one amazing hint that could only have been pulled off this convincingly because it was a TV show, and not for example a novel. That said, it's also quite complex, maybe even too complex for a TV show. To put things in perspective: whereas a 'normal' detective TV drama might spend ten, maaaybe twenty minutes on explaining the crime, Anraku Isu Tantei On Air's solution episode takes over an hour to go through all the evidence and logic chains to reach the murderer. I loved how they did it, complete with "quoting" specific scenes to build their arguments, but I can imagine that the casual viewer might not appreciate stories this complex.

I really did like Anraku Isu Tantei On Air, but it's also quite easy to see its flaws. It's a great experiment of a game puzzle-esque detective show on TV and the plot itself is great, as expected from big names like Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice. On the other hand, it might be a bit too complex, as you really need to watch the episode several times if you want to even think about solving the murder yourself. The scale of the story and the impressive logic behind the plot are something seldom, if ever seen in a detective drama, but Anraku Isu Tantei On Air also shows why this is probably wouldn't work for most viewers. Definitely one for the more dedicated mystery fans.

Original Japanese title(s): 『安楽椅子探偵 On Air』