When Thieves Fall Out

"When Peter suddenly asked him the question he decided all at once to do the meanest and most spiteful thing he could think of. He decided to let Lucy down.”

"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"

When I went to study in Japan for a longer period for the first time, I was still relatively early in my language studies, but I ended up in a program for international students with a noticable difference in the level of Japanese proficiency of the students, some having clearly much more experience with the language than I had at that stage. One friend in particular was very advanced and was even using his time to find a job in Japan. In Japan, there is the mechanism of "periodic recruiting of new graduates": companies hiring the newly graduated around the same period of the year. Companies have a preference for newly graduated, so basically all students start doing job interviews in their third years because otherwise, it'll be too late. Often, they have to pass several rounds of tests and interviews, and if you make it all to the end, you will be offered a naitei or promise of employment for the following year, if you actually graduate in your fourth and final year at university. So students in their final year often already know at the start of the academic year in April where they'll be working next April, and they'll start together with other newly graduated. Anyway, my friend actually did try out dozens of companies, doing tests and interviews and everything, and did actually get employed in Japan during his enrollment in our language program, which was pretty amazing in my eyes: we might have been put in the same program and been doing the same classes, but at that stage I certainly wasn't proficient enough in Japanese to even pass the first test round, let alone actually be offered a job!

And of course, the recruitment sessions of big, famous companies attract the largest numbers of students, and it's usually also very difficult to make it to the next round with these companies. So the six students who made it to the final round of the recruitment process of the pioneering IT company Spiralink are absolutely thrilled to be here, and of course all of them hope to be offered a job. While students hunting for a job have usually trained for tjhe different kinds of tests and interviews they might undergo during the recruitment processes of various companies however, these six students had not expected the form of their final test: a group discussion. The six are informed they have a month to learn to work as a team, and they'll be holding a group discussion one month later. The decision on who will be hired depends on their performance at the group discussion, but it's even possible that all six of them will be hired if they all do well. As everyone had expected a direct interview with a recruiter as the final round, the six are somewhat surprised, but given the free culture of Spiralink, they see the merits of this form and they decide to have a few get-togethers to get to learn each other and to prepare for the group discussion, as the six hope that all of them will be hired by Spiralink. The six are all quite different people, some the typical moodmaker, others more suitable as the leading type, but they get along surprisingly well and they all seem convinced they can all make it through this last round together. Until shortly before the discussion, they receive a mail from Spiralink saying that due to the economical situation, they can only recruit one person this year and the new assignment is that they have to decide together in a group discussion which of the six is the best candidate. 

The sudden assignment change makes the six students now six rivals, all wanting the one job at Spiralink. On the fateful day, the six gather in a meeting room. The candidates are left alone here, free to discuss which of them should have the job, while HR is viewing observing this discussion through cameras. The six students decide to hold several voting rounds, giving everyone a fair chance to argue their own case, but early on, the find a mysterious envelope in the room. When they open the envelope, they find six other envelopes inside, one addressed to each of the six students When they open one, they are shocked to find a note that accuses one of them of being a murderer, complete with newspaper articles and photographs about an incident the student had never mentioned to the others. It's at that moment they realize: these envelopes hold dirt on all of them, and somebody must have done to this to improve their own chances at getting the job at Spiralink. Asakura Akinari's Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei ("Six Lying Students" 2021) presents a rather original mystery: which one of these six students is trying to screw over their fellow recruit candidates?

With all that talk about harmony being a virtue in Japanese culture and how the individual has to adapt to the group, there's a lot of competition going in Japanese culture, with entrance exams to get into the best high schools and universities and of course students basically fighting, through their performance at tests and interviews, for a limited number of jobs at the best companies. Having a mystery about a recruitment process is therefore perhaps not incredibily surprising or out of nowhere, but I sure hadn't read a mystery novel about this before, so Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei does win a lot of points with me for that, because it's such an integral part of Japanese culture now, but it's not used very often as a focal point in mystery fiction. With all that competition and rivalry going on around age 20 to basically secure a job that may very well influence how the rest of your remaining life will go, you can definitely imagine some people willing to act rather desperately to make sure they'll be the one with a job at the end of the day. It's a great setting that will resonate with a lot of readers that are familiar with how recruitment works in Japan, but I think that if you aren't really familiar yet with the concept. Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei will provide for an entertaining, and informative read.

For the most part, Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei will not feel like any "normal" mystery novel due to its unique setting and problem, as there's no clear crime or really a mystery going on. Somebody has collected dirt on all of them and placed the evidence/accusations in envelopes in the meeting room, but the focus of the story revolves for the most part on the human drama, on seeing people you thought you knew being exposed as being something different. I think the marketing of this book also focuses partially on it being a work of entertainment, and you can easily imagine this being adapted as a television show or film (in fact, there is already a manga and I think there's also a stage play). The questions of who did it, why and how they are going to find out are obviously not "clearly defined" mysteries like you'll see in conventional mystery stories, with people investigating alibis or how the murderer could hold of a special weapon or something like that. In fact, early parts of the story might feel a bit repetitive, as it's just accusations going back and forth ("you must have done this, you knew you'd never stand a chance!"), without any real evidence.

The merits of this book as a mystery story however come at play in the second half of the book, set some years later after the group discussion, and when all six of them have moved on in their lives. One of the six (former) students decides to look into the incident again, as new discoveries have led them to believe things weren't as they believed they were at the time and it is at this point, revelations are finally made that clearly make this a detective novel. Little comments or actions that occured during the group discussion years ago suddenly take on a completely different meaning, and there are quite some moments that are really satisfying: there's surprisingly enough quite some misdirection going on in the group discussion segment of the book, even though the story seems really straightforward at first, and one has to give it to author Asakura for hiding some really nice surprises in that scene. Innocent remarks turn out to be pretty clevered foreshadowing, and apparent contradictions are revealed to have perfectly innocent explanations. Some of these mysteries are not really for the reader themselves to solve though, I feel and ultimately, I think the way they finally arrive at the "culprit" and their motive is a bit more straightforward than I would have wanted: considering all the various lines of misdirection and foreshadowing going on in this book, I had expected a few more "stages" in the line of reasoning pointing to the culprit, but overall, I think Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei is an entertaining piece of mystery fiction that probably has more to offer to the mystery fan than you'd initially expect. And the book does really delve into the theme of periodic recruiting of new graduates, connecting all strands of its storylines to this main topic.

Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei will not immediately satisfy those looking for a tightly-plotted puzzle mystery where you have to figure out how a locked room was created or where you have to follow a clue to its logical conclusion in twenty steps, but as a work of fiction, it has a very wide appeal that goes beyond the mystery-reading audience, while actually providing quite some interesting elements for the devoted mystery reader too. There's some clever foreshadowing and clewing going on, and the setting of the recruitment interviews as a "crime scene" is quite inspired, resulting in a very suspenseful read that is likely to be remembered due to its unique angle.

Original Japanese title(s): 浅倉秋成 『人の嘘つきな大学生』

Old Habits Die Hard

"Extra, extra, read all about it!"

Huh, I am really using the anthology tag only once a year...

Disclosure: I am a member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. However, I didn't vote for the stories this year though. Or any year to be honest.... I just never read short stories published in magazines, making it impossible for me to vote in the first place...

We've made it halfway through the year 2022, so here it is: Honkaku-Ou 2022 ("The King of Honkaku 2022"). This annual summer anthology collects the best honkaku short stories published the previous year, as selected by the members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. It is basically a counterpart to the Honkaku Mystery Award, which is awarded to the best published book each year. Short stories are usually published in magazines or online, which occasionally can make them difficult to track down several months later, so that is why each year, this anthology is published, to ensure these stories can be easily found. I've been reading this collection since they started the current format in 2019, and while it's not like I love every single story each time, the anthologies do give a good idea of what's going on each year in the mystery scene of Japan. Last year's volume for example had a #StayHome themed story because of a certain pandemic, so I was curious to see whether that would still find its way into this volume one way or another. But while each year can be quite different, the last two entries featured some stories that were really strong and some even ended up on my favorite reads of the respective year, so it's always worth it to at least take a look at these books.

Nemuranai Keiji to Inu ("The Detectives and Dogs That Don't Sleep") by Michio Shuusuke and Island Kitchen by Ashizawa You are the stories by the two novelists I had never read before, and to be really honest, these were also the two stories in this volume I liked least. I can easily explain why though, as both stories feature a somewhat vaguely defined problem/case, so it takes a long time for the story to get to a point where you really feel you are reading a mystery story, rather than something else. Both do start out with a seemingly "straightforward" case though. Nemuranai Keiji to Inu for example has a police detective hiring a... pet detective to find a missing dog. The dog's owners were murdered in their home, and their dog went missing on the same night, so it is assumed the dog is involved in one way or another with the case. The pet detective in question is Ezoe Masami, a pet detective who has an incredibly good track record, but the narrator, a female police detective knows Ezoe isn't always honest to his clients, occasionally finding pets early and keeping them hidden so they'll hire him for a longer period. She hires Ezoe to find the missing dog behind her superior's back and thus the two go looking for the dog together. What follows is a story that works pretty good as a character study, where parallels are drawn between the two detectives and dogs, but the reveal about how the dog is ultimately connected to the murder feels a bit... underwhelming, because most of the page count seems to be more focused on the characterization than the puzzle. Which is a matter of personal taste of course, but I feel like even with the same puzzle elements, this story could have been a tricker, and more amusing detective story had the emphasis on the themes been shifted a bit. The same holds for Island Kitchen, which starts with a retired police detective visiting a real estate agent, hoping to find a home with a garden for him and his wife. He spots an apartment building among the listings where he once investigated a deadly fall and he starts reminiscing. The case involved a woman living in the building falling to her death, but it was unclear whether it was an accident, suicide or murder. The woman had been stalked by someone for a long time, but the police hadn't done anything to help her, so suicide due to despair, or murder both seemed quite possible. As the former detective thinks back to the case, he realizes not everything was as it was, and personally, I think the *idea of the twist* is pretty good. But the "set-up" to the twist is so long and involves so many elements that ultimately aren't relevant to the twist specifically, it kind falls flat for me, because now it's almost like you're reading two seperate stories that are only linked in a very, very minor manner. I really do like the twist itself though, so I kinda wish it had a different story as the set-up.

Ooyama Seiichirou's work is always a joy to read, and he mostly writes short stories, so he fits here really well. Karamazov no Doku ("The Poison of the Karamazovs") is of course a story inspired by The Brothers Karamazov and is part of a series about Kayou Daisuke, an actor specializing in villain roles, but who is actually a gifted armchair detective. This time he is consulted by the elderly Yamazono Marue, who in her younger years as a housekeeper for an agency. She recounts the time she was involved in a murder case. At the time, she had been assigned by her agency to work at the house of the wealthy Karamura Tatsuo. On her first day, she met with the man, and his three sons, and they soon reminded her of The Brothers Karamov and the characters of Fyodor and his sons Dmitri, Ivan and Alexei. She has only just arrived when she is asked to pour in tea for everyone, and she quickly returns from the kitchen with the refreshments. But the moment Tatsuo has his drink, he starts coughing and gagging. An ambulance is called, but it is too late, and the man ends up dead. The police learn he was poisoned, but can't figure out how: the young maid had never met the man before and had just arrived on her first day here, while her three sons each had a motive to kill the man for his money, but couldn't have tampered with the drinks the maid had prepared. It's a very short story, so I think the actual explanation of how this seemingly impossible poisoning was done will not be incredibly surprising, but I do like the initial one or two clues that put the reader on the trail. I think that even when the actual "how" of an impossibility in Ooyama's work is simple at the core, he always does a good job at actually laying out a trail of clues for the reader to follow in order to arrive at that how logically (instead of just guessing), so in that sense, his stories never disappoint.

It's been while since I last read something by Morikawa Tomoki... Wa-wait! It's been 8 years!? The last one I read was back in 2014?? Anyway, Whodunnit Reception is a pretty interesting story that is foremost a puzzle. The story starts when Masatsugu and his classmate friend Yumiko sneak into the room of Masatsugu's brother Masakazu, a young mystery writer. Masatsugu is just looking for some files he knows are in the room that'll come in handy for a school project, but Yumiko accidentally knocks over some coffee over some hand-written documents, which turn out to be a finished, but unpublished manuscript, being the solution to a mystery story that's being serialized right now! Masatsugu knows his brother doesn't use computers and hardly keeps any copies, so he realizes in how much trouble they are right away as the coffee has erased a lot of the text. Masatsugu and Yumiko eventually manage to reconstruct most of the documents, but there are still spots that were tainted too much by the coffee, making it impossible to see what was originally written there, and it turns out they are the most important part of the story, where the detective explains how they figured it out and who the culprit is. Yumiko, a budding writer herself, however comes up with a plan: they are going to guess what is supposed to go in the blank spots based on the context of the surrounding passages, reconstrucing the solution of the story! A very interesting story, as it turns the solution of a mystery story into a mystery! There are 17 blank spots, and the reader, Masatsugu and Yumiko have to deduce what goes in each blank spot based on the surrounding context of the detective's explanation of the case (they do not have the first part of the story). It's very puzzle-like: you first fill in the spots that are very obvious based on the context, and that allows you to fill in other spots too because of the implications of the previously filled in spots etc. The story surprisingly has a few twists too while you fill in these blank spots, and it's pretty fun to read, but it does very "puzzle-like" because you are really filling blank spots, and some readers might find it a bit too "artificial." I myself enjoyed the whole concept though of a solution part of a mystery story being a mystery itself and have you deduce the solution of a mystery story of which you don't even know the first part!

Houjou Kie has been a personal favorite since she made her debut of course and I loved her short story Amulet Hotel last year, so I was really looking forward to her short story Kage wo Kuu Mono ("Shadow Eater"). And of course, this story features supernatural elements: the narrator is out camping deep in the woods with a friend and his dog. The narrator wakes up in the middle of night and happens to spot a Shadow Fish, a kind of yokai (supernatural being) that feeds on the shadows of living beings. The Shadow Fish can only move in shadows, jumping from one shadow to another, and it preys on the shadows of living beings. Once they have jumped into the shadow of their victim, they remain in their shadow (even if the person/animal wakes up) and feeds on the shadow until the shadow is gone, which kills the person/animal in question. The narrator sees how the Shadow Fish jumps out to the shadow of a dead fox and in the direction of his two sleeping companions and by the time he has waken both of them, he realizes it's too late: the Shadow Fish is in the shadow of either his dog or his friend, but they can't tell which of them. They happen to have a very powerful drug that can kill the Shadow Fish, but they have only one tablet, and the drug is so powerful it will kill a person/animal if they take it without a Shadow Fish being their shadow. With little time left until the Shadow Fish is done feeding on its prey, the narrator and his friend have to quickly deduce where the Shadow Fish is, based on the shadows at the time the Fish was spotted. Houjou once again brings a new kind of mystery story by using supernatural elements: this is almost like a "whodunnit", only you are looking for the "culprit" hiding inside a different person. You can also tell Houjou is a gamer (like with her third book), as there are (segments in) games where you have to move from shadow to shadow as a gameplay mechanic and this story of course feels very similar to that. While there is an emphasis on deducing where the Shadow Fish went based on "rules" (the Shadow Fish can only jump a certain distance, it will always go for the nearest sleeping target etc.), the way the story is also very focused on visuals do form an obstacle for this story, I think. A lot of the story hinges on how far each shadow of everything in their camp reached at the time the narrator spotted the Shadow Fish, and while this story has diagrams, you do have to consider multiple "moments" of where each shadow was, so I think this story, ironically, would have worked better as a game, allowing you quickly "scroll" between the various moments. It's a good mystery story though that as always shows detective stories don't need to be realistic to present interesting mysteries.

Asakura Akinari's Ito no Hito wo Sagashite ("Looking for the Person of My Thread") is tied as my favorite in this volume with Kage wo Kuu Mono and is in a way the polar opposite, as it pertains to a very "realistic" occassion: a goukon or group blind date. The narrator, Kawase, is an unremarkable university student who never had a girlfriend, which is why he didn't really believe his friend Yoshimi told him his girlfriend knew a girl who was interested in Kawase. The girl is rather shy however and doesn't dare to approach Kawase without "any cause", so the idea is having both of them appear at the same group date, with five men and five women. That would give the girl an opportunity to strike up a conversation with Kawase and see how things'll go from there. Kawase has never been in a group blind date before, so when Kawase first arrives at the restaurant, he's quite nervous, but the first girl to arrive immediatey says she knows Kawase from classes, so the plan to find the person on the other end of the red thread of fate seems to work... until the second girl also says she knows Kawase. And the third, fourth and fifth too! Kawase remembers he was never told what the other girl's name was or how she looked like, and now all five girls seem somewhat interested in him (to the chagrin of the other four men). At first, Kawase thinks that it shouldn't really mattter with what girl he ends up with: his friends may have  intended him to meet a certain girl and arranged for both them to attend this group date, but they can hardly critizie him if he happened to get along better with someone else, right? But then he receives information that tell him he has to be very, very careful, as there's "something dangerous" about each of the other girls: one of them for example is actually a married woman cheating on her husband, while another girl is the daughter of a boss of a crime syndicate, and another is an underground idol with very fanatic fans who are willing to kill if they learn their idol is dating someone... So can Kawase deduce which of the five girls in front of him is the girl he was supposed to meet? Okay, so the setting of this story is a bit silly, as apparently people around Kawase do recognize some of the women in their group date and know they are "dangerous" one way or another, but at the same time they don't actually know which woman they are or don't tell Kawase. The way the puzzle is constructed feels a bit forced, but you know, I can live with it, because this is just a fun story. It has a distinct, comedic tone where Kawase keeps falling in love with basically every girl all over again every time he thinks they are "safe". At the same time, this is a well constructed detective story, where you have to use the few hints Kawase did learn about each girl and try to deduce the identify of each girl. Some of the hints are a bit too obvious I think, or in some instances the "time" between a certain clue and the revelation which girl is who is a bit too short, giving you too little time to think for yourself. But overall, this is a very memorable story, because it is basically a "whodunnit" only now you're just trying to figure out which girl Kawase is supposed to be dating. So as mentioned earlier, this story is strangely enough very different, and similar to Kage wo Kuu Mono, as both are original takes on a "whodunnit" concept, but in very different manners.

Like the 2021 edition, Honkaku-Ou 2022 is a pretty solid anthology, with a few really strong puzzle plot stories. Personal favorites are the entries by Houjou Kie, Asakura Akinari and Morikawa Tomiki, but none of the six stories are truly bad, and while these volumes usually only have five, six stories, they tend to be fairly consistent in quality exactly because they have been selected by a whole group, rather than just one single editor. This is the fourth volume in this format, but I have really grown to appreciate reading this anthology once a year, just to see what is going on in the short story format. Hopefully we'll have a solid volume next year too!

Original Japanese title(s): 『本格王2022』: 道尾秀介「眠らない刑事と犬」/ 大山誠一郎「カラマーゾフの毒」/ 芦沢央「アイランドキッチン」 / 方丈貴恵「影を喰うもの」 / 浅倉秋成「糸の人を探して」 / 森川智喜「フーダニット・リセプション」