Circle of Blood

潔くカッコよく生きていこう・・・

たとえ2人離ればなれになっても・・・

take my revolution 

「輪舞 - Revolution」（奥井雅美)

Let's live on bravely and heroically...

Even if the two of us will be seperated...

take my revolution

"Rondo - Revolution" (Okui Masami)

I tried to delay writing this review a couple of times: I just have so little to say about it. I really dislike writing reviews about books I feel somewhat indifferent about. With books I don't like, I can at least point out what I don't like and make comparisons with better examples with similar ideas. With great indifference comes... a great distinct lack of writing hooks. At least in my case.

Getting in the special crimes division had been rookie detective Kominato Shinsuke's wish, so there was much joy when he was appointed there as the subordinate of the veteran Umikata Fusanari. At least, that was until he learned that Umikata was an extremely lazy detective and that Kominato was mainly appointed to him to keep an eye on his boss. So he cherished his free days when he was released from babysitting Umikata, but his day at the horse races turned into a normal working day nonetheless. The man standing behind Kominato in the crowd was stabbed, falling on top of him, making him the first person to "find" the victim. When Umikata arrives at the scene, the veteran quickly recognizes the murder as the handiwork of Tsutsumi, a local gangster he knows. While not a professional assassin, Tsutsumi has committed several murders for his gang and Umikata says there's no need for the police to look for him: the orders for these kind of men are not just to kill their target, but also to confess to the murder with some fake, private motive and do the time for them so the gang won't face any trouble from this. The news that Tsutsumi himself was killed right after the first murder therefore came as a surprise to Umikata, but they quickly figure out who Tsutsumi's murderer is. But then this person is killed too... What lies behind this chain of murders in Awasaka Tsumao's Shisha no Rinbu ("Rondo of the Dead", 1985)?

This is the first of Awasaka's two novels starring the duo of police inspectors Umikata and Kominato, which now I think about it is pretty interesting, as practically all the books I've read by Awasaka up until now featured amateur detectives (EDIT: Yeah, I read this book and wrote this review long before I read Youtou S79-Gou. I shuffled a lot with this review) Well, A Tomoichirou was technically a secret agent of the Tokugawa Shogunate so something like a police officer, but his descendant A Aiichirou is a photographer, and other books featured for example magicians as detectives, or an ex-boxer-turned-financial-detective... I was kinda surprised to see a normal police detective duo as the protagonists. But once you see the banter between Umikata and Kominato, you're quickly reminded that you are indeed reading an Awasaka novel, as the comedic tone is instantly recognizable. In this novel, most of the comedy is derived from the very lazy inspector Umikata and the way he uses his subordinate Kominato. Umikata is actually a fairly competent detective when he puts his mind to it, being capable to make sharp deductions based on the smallest of hints, but he usually prefers the easy way out of things, and would rather have things sort themselves out than having to interfere himself.

We are not presented with an impossible crime or something similar this time, but an enigmatic problem that is featured in both the title of the novel, as well as revealed quite early in the narrative: there is some kind of murder relay going on, with the murderers of one case turning into the victims of the next one. This theory is proposed by Umikata very early on, and most of the novel is therefore not really spent on figuring whodunnit, or even howdunnit, but finding out why this is happening, and how they can stop it. One gripe I have with this novel is that the device of a murder relay is made clear very early on in this book, but there's little extra added to the plot from that point on. Most of the book is seeing how the relay further unfolds with the police as mere onlookers after the fact, so for a very long time, it feels you're reading about events you already knew were coming. As a mystery novel, I think the idea is that the appeal comes from guessing how this relay will eventually end, and Awasaka does play with the conclusion of this game, but on the whole, I'd say Shisha no Rinbu is a better in idea than execution. Whereas his debut novel 11 Mai no Trump was a tour-de-force in clewing, Shisha no Rinbu's clewing is pragmatic at best, as it's boring and hastily done, without properly going through the process of foreshadowing ~ pay-off.

"Simply going through the motions" is not the right way to explain it, but Shisha no Rinbu's plot feels so...bare compared to other Awasaka's novels. The initial idea of the murder relay is definitely alluring, but then it just... happens and there is little there to turn the idea into a real experience. The comedy between Umikata and Kominato is okay, but never as fun as in the A Aiichirou series. The captivating insight into special fields of interests like stage magic or toys as seen in other novels isn't here either. The expect and subtle clewing and foreshadowing that made other novels a delight is nowhere to be seen here. There's just too little in addition to the first idea, and while I wouldn't say Shisha no Rinbu is a bad novel, I have read enough Awasaka by now to know he could do much, much better than here.

And because the overall plot is fairly light, there's little I can add to what I've already said by now. Shisha no Rinbu has a great starting point with a murder relay as the focus, but it does not try to go far beyond this initial idea, resulting in a novel that feels a bit barren. The conclusion too will not come as a total surprise, and yet you feel it could've been pulled off better if we had seen more of Awasaka's A game here. So a missed chance here.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『死者の輪舞』

The Stolen Turnabout

「いや、奴はとんでもないものを盗んでいきました。あなたの心です」

『ルパン三世　カリオストロの城』

"No, he did manage to steal something very precious. Your heart."

"Lupin III - The Castle of Cagliostro"

It's been a while since I did a review of a short story collection, let alone one where I actually discuss all of the stories!

Resort towns across Japan have been hit by a nasty series of jewel thefts lately and all of the incidents all have one thing in common: the capers, some of them committed in what seems to be impossible circumstances, were all done with both genius and audacity, which has led to the police's conclusion the thefts were all committed by one and the same person. This thief is indicated with the codename S79 in the police files and a special task unit was formed to investigate, and capture S79. Just like how Lupin had his Ganimard, S79 has to watch out for inspector Tougou and his subordinate Ninomiya, who see S79 as their arch-enemy and will stop at nothing to capture the brilliant thief. Awasaka Tsumao's Youtou S79-Gou ("Phantom Thief S79", 1987) collects all twelve of the S79 short stories with impossible capers and more.

Awasaka Tsumao (1933-2009) should be a familiar name on this blog now. The mystery author and stage magician has written some of Japan's finest mystery stories, from the wonderful A Aiichirou  short stories (many of the A Aiichirou stories rank among the best impossible shorts from Japan), while I have also been enjoying his novels as of late, with 11 Mai no Trump being a true gem in the genre. Youtou S79-Gou marks a return to his short stories for me, though I have to remark that Youtou S79-Gou is a linked short story collection, like Yamada Fuutarou used to write them: while the short stories (originally published between 1979-1987) can be read apart, the best experience is gained by reading them in order, as they are actually interlinked and there are often references made to events from earlier stories or characters reappearing.

Youtou S79-Gou is also a remarkably varied short story collection. In essence, the S79 stories are 'phantom thief' stories in the spirit of the Arsène Lupin stories, with the focus lying on the mystery of how S79 manages to pull off some of these fantastic thefts, though there are also some interesting differences with what you'd usually expect from such a collection. For example, there is no one single detective character in this series. S79 always manages to escape with the loot, but the character who eventually figures out how the theft was committed is not limited to only police detectives Tougou or Ninomiya: a character who only appears in that one particular story is just as likely to solve the impossible crime. The stories aren't all (impossible) capers either: many of them are 'traditional' howdunnits, but there are some screwballs there too, and some of the impossible capers become really impossible to solve if you focus only on the impossible aspect.

The collection starts with three fairly traditional howdunnit capers. In Ruby wa Hi ("Ruby is Fire"), we first learn about the thief S79 when a ruby is stolen at a small beach at a resort, with only a few people on the beach. Inspector Tougou and Ninomiya had been watching the place all the time, so while they don't know who S79 is, they know that one of the people present on the beach must be the thief. They figure that a simple body search should solve the problem of S79, but to their surprise, nobody is possession of the ruby, so how did S79 get rid of it? While the solution is simple, it's also very cleverly clued, and there's even a good fake solution! Ikiteita Kaseki ("The Living Fossil") is the direct sequel to the previous story, as Inspector Tougou is still convinced one of the people on the beach was S79. He has invited all of them to a exhibition featuring an extremely rare seashell, hoping that he'll tempt S79 into trying to steal the shell. The seashell is kept inside a glass display, watched by guards and with an alarm that'll go off the instant somebody touches the glass. And yet, the seashell disappears from the watching eyes of the guards, the policemen and other visitors! The solution is highly original, but also highly unlikely to be succesful in real life.  Sapphire no Sora ("Sapphire Sky") has S79 help a young girl stage a fake kidnapping, as the girl doesn't like her stepmother. She only wants to see her stepmother suffer, so she asks for her sapphire as the ransom money and wants to see it fly away into the sky tied to a balloon. S79 can keep the sapphire if the thief can figure out how to retrieve the balloon. But even with policemen tracking the balloon the moment it is released from the top of a temple, S79 manages to do the impossible: the container tied to the balloon holding the sapphire only has a thank you letter from S79! This is an ingeniously plotted impossible situation, which had a great piece of misdirection, but also some minor points which make the whole trick a bit less practical than you'd think. Still a surprising good story.

The following four stories are not all howdunnits, and are perhaps more surprising in seeing how more obsessed Tougou is becoming with S79, imagining the thief behind everything. In Koushinmaru Ibun ("The Curious Tale of the Koushinmaru"), Tougou and Ninomiya received tickets for a New Year's performance of a "hyper-realistic" performance of the kabuki play Sannnin Kichisa. The performance is hyper-realistic, so the actors not only speak normal dialogue instead of 'theater dialogue', they also all speak "realistically" (i.e. not loud so the audience can actually hear them), and other elements like their hairstyles and even the fights are done 'hyper-realistically'. Near the end of the play though, Tougou suddenly announces to the whole audience S79 is in the theater! The mystery lies in how Tougou figured out that S79 was connected in any way to this play, and the solution is brilliant. This story is similar to many of the A Aiichirou stories, where you'd never even suspect you're reading a mystery story until it's suddenly set loose upon you and you see how much foreshadowing there was. Kiiroi Yaguramasou ("Yellow Cornflowers") has Tougou and Ninomiya set a trap for S79 during an elementary school's sports competition, as they know a necklace the thief stole is hidden in the school garden. The way S79 manages to get away with the necklace is brilliant, and incredibly funny. In Moebius Bijutsukan ("The Moebius Museum"), two museums receive letters from S79 that some paintings will be stolen, and despite Tougou and Ninomiya making their rounds in the museum, S79 does manages to get away with the paintings. This is a very tricky story, as there are several plot-lines running simultaneously, but the way in which the thief manages to fool Tougou and Ninomiya in order to steal the painting is brilliant, yet very, very impractical, as it's unlikely nobody would've noticed (as there were other visitors in the museum). By Mizunotototori Kumi 129537 ("Water Rooster -  129537"), Tougou is really seeing S79 everywhere, as he suspects with no real reason that the thief will try to cash in on a lottery using a proxy representative. A suspicious figure does appear who wants all the money cash, but no matter how hard they look, the lottery ticket Water Rooster -  129537 seems genuine, and the man leaves with the money. The policemen tail him, but a simple, but smart trick shakes the men off. The way how S79 managed to get the lottery money is devilishly simple, yet effective, though in no way could it ever work in the modern day and age. There's a nice piece of misdirection too.

In the following three stories, S79's targets are rare pieces of art and while they are technically impossible capers, you aren't likely to solve them by focusing on the impossibilities, as the solutions require some very out-of-the-box thinking. Kurosagi no Chawan ("The Black Heron Tea Cup"), Nanpo no Yuurei ("The Ghost of Nanpo") and Himouji no Kannnonzou ("The Kannon Statue of Himou Temple") are similar in the sense that a piece of antique art manages to disappear from a place under observation. Kurosagi no Chawan is interesting as this caper happens within Ninomiya's home. The theft is a bit simple, but there's an interesting subplot running too that makes the thing more complex and entertaining. The other two stories hinge upon a similar idea actually, but you'll never recognize that in time, and the way these pieces of art managed to disappear is absolutely stunning. 

The collection ends with S79-Gou no Taiho ("The Arrest of S79") and Tougou Keishi no Hanamichi ("The Crowning Achievement of Superintendent Tougou"). In S79-Gou no Taiho, Tougou and Ninomiya travel to France, as it appears S79 has been active in Paris for some months now. S79's latest target was an art piece in the possession of the Sernine (ha!) family. While Ninomiya recognizes the Japanese woman visiting the Sernine family as their main S79 suspect, she still manages to walk off with a priceless piece of art due to a brilliant piece of misdirection. A very surprising story, as besides the theft, there's another very clever trick pulled by a different person. The S79 series ends with Tougou Keishi no Hanamichi, which isn't a mystery story per se, but it has Tougou finally figuring out who S79 really is and gives a happy ending to the story (complete with everyone from previous stories appearing again).
  
Youtou S79-Gou is a very good, at times absolutely excellent short story collection that manages to mix brilliant originality with very humorous characters. While some of the tricks are arguably repeated within this collection, Awasaka is very good at redressing these tricks into completely different ideas, with different results and new surprises. There's also a lot of variety within these stories, from normal capers to kidnappings to stories that only reveal themselves to be proper mystery stories at the very end. While I'd say the A Aiichirou shorts are still the best I've read from Awasaka, Youtou S79-Gou is certainly worth the read.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫 『妖盗S79号』：「ルビーは火」/「生きていた化石」/「サファイアの空」/「庚申丸異聞」/「黄色いヤグルマソウ」/「メビウス美術館」/「癸酉組一二九五三七番」/「黒鷺の茶碗」/ 「南畝の幽霊」/「桧毛寺の観音像」/「S79号の逮捕」/ 「東郷警視の花道」

The Haunted Showboat

The show must go on

There are many mystery stories set on means of transportations, like ships or trains, but I wonder how many there are set on a bicycle. For example, what about an impossible murder where the rider is stabbed in their back, while there was someone else sitting on the carrier in the back (who isn't the murderer of course).

Awasaka Tsumao's Kigekihikigeki ("Comedia Tragedia Magica", 1982) introduces the reader to Kaede Shichirou, disciple of a renowned magician and once a fairly succesful magician himself, but he became more interested in the bottle after his wife ran off with a man, and the last few years, he's been barely able to make a living with his performances. An old friend however manages to find a job for him that might change his life. He's to fill in as a magician for the variety show held on board of the Ukon-Gou: an old transport ship refurbished to look like a paddle steamer, which will provide various forms of entertainment like revue shows and dining as it cruises along the Japanese coast. The original magician who got the contract has disappeared, while the Ukon-Gou's maiden voyage is scheduled for tomorrow, so Shichirou is hired for a month, with an option for a longer contract. He's also appointed a new assistant, Makoto, who's a young, but enthusastic amateur magician herself. But Shichirou soon regrets taking the job. The diverse entertainers on the Ukon-Gou include not only fire eaters, clowns, tigers and dancers, but also Utako, his wife who left his side. When the clown is murdered however, Shichirou sees how the manager is doing everything to keep the murder under wraps for the sake of opening day, and he realizes that the magician he was sent to replace also died under very suspicious circumstances on the ship. And the strangest thing about both murders is that the only thing connecting the two victims is that the names of both victims were palindromes, and due to the manager's hobby, several other entertainers aboard have palindromes as names.

Kigekihikigeki has an alternative English title Palindrome Syndrome, which is an apt title, though not a palindrome (or kaibun) like the original Japanese title. In the Japanese mora/syllable alphabet, ki-ge-ki-hi-ge-ki is read the same both ways, so a palindrome. Due to certain qualities of the Japanese language, like the syllable-based alphabet, but also the fact that voiced and unvoiced consonants count as the same (for example, /ki/ and /gi/ are the same), it's fairly simply to make palindromes in Japanese, and author Awasaka has a lot of fun with this. Many characters have palindromes as names, and they become potential victims of course. What Awasaka does brilliantly is hiding some of the palindromes at first. Some names are very obviously palindromes, but other people are revealed to have palindrome names too in surprising ways, that make you hit yourself on the head because you should've seen that coming. Palindromes play an important role in the story itself, but they are also important at the meta-level: the title of the book isn't the only palindrome, as all the chapter titles are palindromes too. And yes, this would be a very challenging book to translate.

As mentioned in earlier reviews, Awasaka was not only known as a mystery author, but also as a stage magician. His debut novel 11 Mai no Trump was a masterpiece featuring amateur magicians, but this time, we're presented with a professional magician (and his assistant), as well as other performers and artists in a circus-like setting. Awasaka shows once again he knows his stuff, as he expertly uses his knowledge of stage magic to spin a tale. Some of the tricks are used for the murder plots, but other tricks are simply revealed to give the reader more insight in how stage magic and illusions work. While Kigekihikigeki is not as focused on stage magic as 11 Mai no Trump, it's still obvious from reading this that Awasaka really loves his magic. We are also given a glimpse in other performances, like fire eating. And while the characters make it feel like a "normal" circus, I have to say that the show boat setting is really unique. The fact that this troupe is performing on a ship is definitely integral part of the mystery plot, making the Ukon-Gou (also a palindrome in japanese by the way: U-Ko-N-Go-U, with the ko and go being the voiced and unvoiced version of the same mora) a very memorable setting.

I do have to say I found the overall story a bit dragging. The first half of the story is very slow, and spends a lot of time focusing on Shichirou, his past and his drinking problem. His assistant Makoto is a great foil to him as the peppy girl assistant who manages to surprise her boss with her detailed studies in magic, but still, things don't move really fast. Even after the halfway point, which introduces some more suspenseful (and comedic) plot points (somewhat reminiscent of Awasaka's A Aiichirou series), the plot feels like its moving only at eighty percent speed. This isn't helped by the rather nondescript individual murders. While the murders do make good use of either stage magic or other performances (there's for example someone burning alive on stage), the tricks behind them are fairly simple. The emphasis lies on the whodunnit plot, but even that is surprisingly uncomplicated. By the time the motive is introduced, you're basically left with only two suspects, and only one of them is really viable as a suspect. There's a pretty neat hint placed earlier in the story to allow the reader to deduce which of the two it is, but the reader is barely given time to process that themselves, so that segment too felt rather underwhelming. And while the murderer did do one thing that might seem impressive/surprising to the reader, it does feel very similar to what was done in 11 Mai no Trump (which was also about magicians/stage performances), so there was a bit of déjà vu there.

Kigekihikigeki was in a way very similar to the other Awasaka novels I read the last few months, focusing on one theme or topic (in this case, palindromes) and running with in surprising ways.  And it's something Awasaka is good at, at mixing comedy, mystery and a unique topic he obviously adores. But in comparison with Awasaka's debut novel 11 Mai no Trump, which featured a similar magicians/performers setting, Kigekihikigeki feels less refined, with simpler murders and a less impressive structure leading to the identity of the murderer. I love the setting of the show boat, but as a mystery novel, Kigekihikigeki is just a decent work, compared to the masterpiece that is 11 Mai no Trump.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『喜劇悲奇劇』

Foul Play in Funland

やさしい音色に

まばゆい光

心ん中に秘められた

愛しい人は目の前で笑う

確かなmarionette fantasia

「Marionette Fantasia」（Garnet Crow)

A gentle sound

And a blinding light

And hiding within the depths of my heart

A loved one is smiling in front of me

Truly a marionette fantasia

"Marionette Fantasia" (Garnet Crow)

I find dolls, or human-like puppets, incredibly creepy, to be honest. Just like clowns. There's probably a perfectly sound psychological reason for that, something to do with deformed human characteristics or something like that, but all I know is I think they really really creepy.

After giving up on a career in boxing, young Katsu Toshio is forced to find another way to earn his living, and he decides to answer to a job advertisement of the Udai Economic Research Group. He is surprised to learn that the Udai Economic Research Group is in fact an one-woman detective agency, specialized in performing financial background checks on businesses. Udai Maiko hires Toshio on the spot, and drags him along to help with a little private side-job she was offered by a previous client. Mawari Tomohiro, production chief of his family's toy firm, wants Maiko to tail his wife for a day and Maiko and Toshio do find evidence of her infidelity. The duo shadow both husband and wife at the end of the day, hoping to get a chance to speak with the husband, but they all get caught up in a freak car accident, in which Tomohiro dies. Toshio manages to save the wife Masao, but tragedy seldom travels alone, and it's only a few days after Tomohiro's accident when their two-year old child also dies because of an accident. While at first this seems just like a very unfortunate series of events, a visit to the Screw Mansion inhabitated by the main Miwari family (Tomohiro's uncle and cousins) also ends with a death in the family, and one that is surely not accidental. What is lurking behind all these deaths in Awasaka Tsumao's Midare Karakuri ("A Clockwork Gone Wrong, 1977)?

Awasaka Tsumao (1933-2009) was one of the best known Japanese mystery writers in his lifetime. He was also a gifted stage magician, and he used his knowledge of both stage magic, and the art of misdirection to create fantastic mystery stories, like the Father Brown-esque impossible gems in the A Aiichirou series, or stories that were about all about magicians like 11 Mai no Trump. Midare Karakuri might not be about stage magic, but the work (his second novel) is considered to be one of Awasaka's best novels. It also carries the English title Dancing Gimmicks.

In my review of 11 Mai no Trump, I praised how the story incorporated stage illusions in the mystery plot: Awasaka was obviously very knowledgeable on the topic, but he made it accessible to the reader, and mixed the theme in a meaningful matter with the core detective plot. Midare Karakuri too focuses completely on one single topic: karakuri toys, or toys with "gimmicks" or "gadgets". The mysterious deaths of the members of the Mawari family, and the history behind their toy firm, is richly decorated with a lot of talk about toys, especially toys with some kind of mechanism inside of them. Mechanized toys have a long history in Japan: the Edo period for example was a flourishing time for karakuri puppets, highly sophisticated automatons which could serve tea or play an instrument. "Modern" toys for children are actually simply an evolution of those toys which were once meant for adults. Several characters hold fairly detailed "lectures" on the topic of pre-modern karakuri puppets, which can be very interesting and educating, but I can't deny that these segments also feel like huge info-dumps, which take you out of the story. Lecturing was also present in 11 Mai no Trump up to a point, but it never felt so outright back-to-school like in Midare Karakuri. The story also features other forms of "gimmick entertainment", like a gigantic garden maze inspired by Hampton Court Maze, and muses a bit on the topic of mazes and labyrinths too.

The mystery plot starts off very slow and especially the first half felt very directionless. Some deaths do occur in that first half, but they are not considered murder per se in the narrative, so most of the story up to that point is about Maiko and Toshio just poking around, talking a lot about toys. The characters are interesting, and I think Maiko as an overweight ex-policewoman running a shady detective agency was a great character (I even think this is the first time I've seen a strong female main character in Awasaka's stories). But still, the story takes a long time to arrive at the point of an actual investigation into a murder, and into a more pro-active stance towards detecting. In a way, Midare Karakuri reads more like a light detective series, with a male/female duo as the protagonists (and a minor, and somewhat melodramatic romance subplot between Toshio and one of the suspects) for most of the book. Preferences differ, but compared to the grand box of magic tricks that was 11 Mai no Trump, Midare Karakuri feels a bit "light" and less impressive on the whole. The comedic tone is strangely enough not as pronounced as in Awasaka's other works. There's still some comedic chattering going on at times between Maiko and Toshio, but it never reaches full total chaos like in 11 Mai no Trump or the slapstick-esque situations of the A Aiichirou series.

Most of the individual deaths in Midare Karakuri aren't that impressive on their own, but they do string together into a fairly entertaining mystery tale. I think the murderer is rather easy to guess, especially as pretty much everyone is dead near the end of the story, but the whole set-up works great with the theme of the book. There's a minor, simple dying message around halfway in the story, but I think one late murder is very impressive as an impossible poisoning trick: all the capsules in the victim's bottle of medicine had been swapped for poisonous ones, which means the pills could only've been swapped on the day the victim took the pills, but they couldn't have been swapped then, as he was on his guard the whole day because of the other deaths. The solution is ingeniously simple and brilliant, and this part is probably the best part of the mystery plot. It's truly a trick that a magician would think of, I think.

So I'd rank Midare Karakuri, as Awasaka's second novel, not as high as his first novel, but it's still a good, entertaining mystery novel. It can feel a bit slow early on, with a few longwinded lectures on karakuri puppets and a somewhat meandering plot, but the overall mystery plot is solid, even if a bit simple, and the impossible poisoning deserving a special mention as an ingenous piece of misdirection.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『乱れからくり』

The Vanishing Magician

月夜の悪戯の魔法　君は月影に囚われ

新月　闇に潜むように　君の輪郭が見えない

「月夜の悪戯の魔法」（Breakerz）

 

Mischievous magic on this moonlit night / You are captive of the moon's shadow

You can't be seen / As if you're hiding in the darkness of a new moon

"Mischievous magic on this moonlit night" (Breakerz)

Stage magic and the mystery genre have a lot in common of course. Both revolve around fooling the onlooker. It's all about misdirection, about making people think something has happened (something impossible at times even), even though the truth is something completely different. The key difference between the two is of course how it ends: stage magic is all about keeping up the illusion, while a mystery story cannot be complete without revealing how the illusion was created. But as there are close ties between the two, it's no surprise that there are many mystery stories that are about stage magic, from murders committed during a show to stories with impossible murders where every suspect is a magician.

Awasaka Tsumao (1933-2009) is usually mentioned on this blog because he was a very brilliant author of short stories featuring impossible situations and other baffling crimes. His A Aiichirou series for example feature some of Japan's best short stories, and one read of them is enough to understand why Awasaka was also sometimes refered to as the "Japanese Chesterton", as their wonderfully imaginative, yet ultimately simple set-ups remind very much of Father Brown's adventures. But Awasaka was also known as a stage illusionist, and his love for stage magic can also be seen in his mystery work. His Magician Detective Soga Kajou series for example featured, as the title suggest, a magician who also detected, and many of the stories revolved around magic tricks.

It should therefore not be a surprise when I tell you that Awasaka's very first novel published, 11 Mai no Trump ("The Eleven Cards", 1976), featured magicians extensively. It's been exactly twenty years since the Majiki Community Center opened, and three local clubs are to perform in the venue to celebrate the Center's role in the community. The program opens with a magic show by the Majiki Club, followed by a children's ballet performance and finally a puppet theater show. Little goes exactly as planned with the magic show of the Majiki Club. This was to be expected perhaps, as stage experience was something very few of the amateur magicians in the club had, but still, dying pigeons and children ruining tricks were obviously not something any of the magicians had expected. But even with everything going on both onstage and backstage (they also have to do all the spotlights/music/etcetera themselves), the Majiki Club manages to get to the end of the show mainly unscathed. Or did they? The fact that one of their female members, Shimako, didn't appear for the finale performance of the whole club was odd, but they figured something very urgent had come up.  It was the police however, accompanied by another of the Majiki Club members who usually works as a police doctor, who brought the bad news: Shimako had been murdered during the magic show in her own apartment room. And the strange thing is: her body was surrounded by several broken objects, including a broken phone, a dead bird, a perfume bottle... Everybody in the club is shocked, as they realized all these 'broken' objects, including Shimako herself, were the main props in The Eleven Cards, a short story collection written by the head of the Majiki Club, about eleven unique magic tricks invented by the club members.

Let me start with this: this is an incredible first novel. True, Awasaka had already debuted as a mystery writer one year earlier with his short story DL2 Gouki Jiken, but a short story is obviously not the same as a full-length novel, and yet Awasaka manages to present something unbelievably polished. Is it a perfect novel? Well, to be honest, I thought sometimes the narrative could be a bit too talkative, especially on some of the more technical, or historical aspects of stage magic. But with 'too talkative' I mean like two or three pages longer than I had hoped, rather than being a bore to read. On the whole, this is a very complete novel, that already rouses your interests with the table of contents.

For 11 Mai no Trump is divided in three distinct acts, of which the second is the most interesting. But we start with the first of course, which details the happenings both on and backstage during the Majiki Club's performance at the Community Center. This is a mostly comedic piece, where we see how each of the performing members prepares for their act and how things go in front of the audience. The tricks seldom go as planned however, and there is a lot of chaos backstage too, so it kinda reads like Mitani Kouki story, with all the comedy going on. As we read on, we learn more about the members of the club, but we also get a lot of insight in the world of stage magic, as the tricks performed are all discussed in detail, and it's here where Awasaka shows his knowledge of stage magic, as he manages to both pose the illusion, and explain the tricks behind them, in a captivating way. People who like stage magic should really enjoy this part, as Awasaka is great at conveying interesting information while also advancing the story. This part ends with the death of Shimako and the realization her death is somehow connected to the novel The Eleven Cards.

The second part of the book is The Eleven Cards, which is presented as a story-within-a-story. The premise of The Eleven Cards is that magicians often come up with new illusions and tricks, that are sadly enough very hard to perform, as they rely on very specific situations, making them unusable for a proper show. The members of the Majiki Club all had a trick like that up their sleeve, so the president of the Majiki Club decided to write a novel introducing those eleven acts, starring the members of the club. What follows are basically eleven very short mystery stories, where one magician performs an utterly baffling illusion, while the other members try to figure out how the trick was done. From a telegram that tells the future to a bird which can see through paper and a telephone which can guess what card a person chooses: the magic tricks shown off in these short stories are all very inventive, and the solutions to them are great. Each of these tricks could've easily supported a longer short story with ease, and they really show off what an imaginative magician Awasaka must've been. In fact, I think that, if they had been in possession of the ideas presented in The Eleven Cards, most people would've just used those to write a short story collection and called it a day, rather than using those ideas just as a story-within-a-story device. The eleven stories are all written as experienced by the writer himself (the president of the club), and we learn more about the interactions and relations between the Majiki Club members as we read this story-within-a-story.

The final part of 11 Mai no Trump has the members of the Majiki Club attending a stage magic conference some time after Shimako's death and the events there eventually lead to the discovery of who killed Shimako. It is here where Awasaka's novel really shines, as he reveals how carefully constructed his tale was. Clueing (or clewing) is an art, and Awasaka shows in his debut novel that he is Master Clewer already. The way he has sprinkled clues here and there across the novel, from the magic show at the Community Center to the eleven short stories in The Eleven Cards is brilliant, something only the best of the best could've done. The moment everything comes together is an eye-opener: innocent-looking lines and events suddenly take on a completely different form. The conclusion of this novel is basically split into a whodunnit and a howdunnit/alibi deconstruction story, and it's especially the whodunnit part that is memorable. The howdunnit too is very impressive though, as it makes very good use of the stage magic background, but without feeling 'unfair' to the reader. As you read the conclusion, you realize that Awasaka has been very attentive to the reader, always explaining in detail how all the stage magic works, and his insights in the topic as presented throughout the book are more than enough for the reader to figure out how the murder was committed.

What really surprises me is that this book is all about stage magic and the amateur performers of stage magic, but it never feels too alienating for someone who knows very little about it. It does not feel like a book for lovers of stage magic per se. Awasaka is clearly not just writing for his own people: he wants to show people why he loves stage magic and because of that, 11 Mai no Trump, remains open to all readers from the very first page to the last, never indulging too much in inside comedy or overly detailed descriptions of knowledge only experts could appreciate.

The three-act set-up, with a story-within-a-story device, is something I had not expected from Awasaka actually. I never saw him much as a bibliomystery writer, but playing with the conventions of books is of course exactly what bibliomystery writers like Ashibe Taku do. The idea of naming the story-within-a-story after the actual title of the book is an alluring one, and the three acts do all feel quite different from each other. Awasaka might have perhaps decided on this structure because he was more familiar with writing short stories, but he definitely made good use of it, and when you reach the end, you do feel like you read one complete story, rather than loose parts thrown together.

And as I read this book, I felt I could now draw lines and connect several loose points in my own Detective World thanks to 11 Mai no Trump. Because I am quite sure that things like Detective Conan: The Fourteenth Target and the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney series were heavily inspired by 11 Mai no Trump (Ace Attorney creator Takumi is a self-professed fan of Awasaka so no surprises there, I guess).

So yeah, 11 Mai no Trump, great stuff here. It's an ode to (amateur) stage magic, but also an ingeniously plotted mystery novel (with a short-story-collection-within-the-story) that manages to impress throughout. As a showcase of how to properly clue a mystery novel, 11 Mai no Trump is mus-read material, and the fact that this was Awasawa's first novel makes that even more amazing. Certainly one to remember.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『11枚のとらんぷ』

Cloudy Memory

上空舞うもの達とOver Drive

 どこまでも青い世界にいたい

「Over Drive」（Garnet Crow)

Together with those that dance in the sky high in Over Drive

I want to be in a world that is blue everywhere

"Over Drive" (Garnet Crow)

You know, I’ve been wanting to read this book for years, ever since I finished the main series, but for some reason it never found its way to my shopping cart until now.

A Aiichirou series
A Aiichirou no Roubai ("The Discombobulation of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Annoyance)
A Aiichirou no Tentou ("The Fall of A Aiichirou" AKA A Is For Accident)
A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Abandon")  

Spin-off
A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou ("The Alarm Of A Tomoichirou" AKA A Is For Alarm")

Samurai are often seen as a warrior class in popular media, but the Tokugawa Shogunate ushered in an era of (relative) peace in the country when it took control of Japan and secluded the islands from the outside world early seventeenth century. So what do warriors do when there’s peace and there’s no need for battle? Samurai basically became public servants, and were granted all kinds of comfortable government jobs with easy income. And there were a lot of rather curious jobs made up for these samurai. But no matter the task, the same basic rule applied to all jobs: the closer the job got you to the shogun (physically), the better the job. One of the more senseless jobs is the Cloud Watch, which consists of watching the clouds all day and making predictions about the weather (it doesn’t even matter if they seldom come true). However, only a very small number know that the small team of the Cloud Watch, led by the head A Tomoichirou, is in fact secret task force under the direct control of the Shogun. Whenever there is a mission too delicate for the police to handle, it’s up to A Tomoichirou and his subordinates to earn their salary in Awasawa Tsumao’s A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou (“The Alarm of A Tomochirou”, 1997).

Long ago, I reviewed Awasaka Tsumao’s three A Aiichirou books, which was a wonderful short story collection, with several tales that rank among the best of Japan’s impossible crime short stories. The titular A Aiichirou was a travelling freelance photographer, who had a knack for inadvertently getting involved with all kinds of mysterious incidents. But his unique way at looking at events always allowed him to make sense out of chaos. A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou is a spin-off, starring Aiichirou’s ancestor in the restless final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate (mid-nineteenth century), who is revealed to also be a person who is good at solving mysteries. There are some other nods to the original series: Tomoichirou’s subordinates of the Cloud Watch are for example all ancestors of certain persons Aiichirou meets in the main series, but you certainly don’t need any prior knowledge to start with A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou, as the references are kept at a minimum.

In fact, A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou is also very different in tone compared to main A Aiichirou series. The main series was obviously based on G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, with curious incidents (not always criminal) which are solved by unique, intuitive insight by the detective character, often by comparing, and finding parallels in two ostensibly completely different situations. There was barely an ongoing story (maybe two stories out of twenty-four that delve a bit deeper in Aiichirou’s past), and no main cast, with Aiichirou’s travels bringing him to new locales and new people all the time. The seven stories collected in A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou however do feature a recurring main cast with the people of the Cloud Watch, even if the titular A Tomochirou’s not always at the focus of the story. Passage of time is also an important factor in these stories: about one year passes between each story (we are told the Cloud Watch does perform other missions in the meantime), and the changing political background (the final days of Tokugawa Shogunate as the pressure of both national and international forces builds) is something you definitely need to keep in mind as you read these stories. Of pre-modern Japanese history, the Tokugawa/Edo period, especially its final days (Bakumatsu), is the one I am most familiar with, but knowledge of the political background as well as about how the Shogunate is organized is definitely something that will make reading this book a lot easier for you, as it likes to throw historical terms at you.

I started with this book expecting “A Aiichirou in the Bakumatsu period”, but the adventures ancestor Tomoichirou has are actually very different from the ones Aiichirou has. Like I mentioned above, Aiichirou’s stories include some of the best Japanese impossible crime short stories, and like the Father Brown stories, they have a distinct comedic tone that accompany almost fable/fairy-tale like settings and situations.  The stories in A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou however place less a focus on the mystery element, and are written more like regular historical novels (jidai shousetsu) and toriminochou (pre-modern detective stories featuring Edo police forces, like The Curious Casebook of Hanshichi). These stories are more like the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, with an emphasis on the dynamics of a tale, sometimes sprinkled with a bit of action (sometimes with swords) and political intrigue. The stories can also be a bit more graphic than the Aiichirou stories.

Kumomiban Haimei (“Appointment of the Cloud Watch”) details how several men proved their tremendous courage and/or wit during the Great Ansei Earthquake of 1855, saving the shogun from more than one disaster. For their services rendered, the men were all appointed to the Cloud Watch under leadership of A Tomoichirou to serve as the shogun’s personal covert task force. As a ‘How The Team Got Together” type of story, it’s okay, though as a mystery story it feels lacking. Historical knowledge about a rather specific detail is needed to truly appreciate what Awasaka tried to do here. It appears that in the original serialized version, this story actually featured some illustrations that helped visualize what was going on. I do think it’s a neat idea actually, but it doesn’t really work in modern times, as the knowledge needed for this trick to really shine isn’t common sense to modern man. Had this story been written in 1855, when common sense entailed a different set of knowledge, yes, it would’ve been a much better story then, but now it falls a bit flat because it hinges on a small note in the history books.

A Tomoichirou and Moko Mouzou, a master of the ninja arts, are on an undercover mission in Fudaraku Oujou (“Departure for Potalaka”) to investigate rumors of a daimyou killing more than thirty of his people in his castle in a rage. During their investigation, the two learn of a strange ceremony which has been becoming popular in the region. A recently arrived monk apparently has the power to send people directly to Potalaka, residence of Kannon, the Boddhisattva of Mercy. People don’t have to spend a lifetime building karma, but can be sent to paradise immediately, leaving only a peaceful corpse behind. Tomoichirou and Mouzou suspect murder of course, but it appears the ‘victim’ is always left alive in a closed-off hollow, with their relatives and the monk keeping vigil all night. Yet the victim is always ‘gone’ the following morning, leaving nothing but a peaceful expression on their face. This story is basically an impossible crime story, and while the solution to how people are sent do paradise is nothing shocking, I have to say the way the clues are structured, and how everything in the end ties up together is brilliant. I think this is the best story of the collection, as it manages to combine the ‘gritty realism’ of the historical crime story with the plotting of a mystery novel splendidly.

Clocks were popular novelty items in the Tokugawa Period and led to very unique Japanese clocks, but the Earthquake Clock in Jishindokei (“The Earthquake Clock”) went beyond normal clocks. This gift to the shogun was not only able to tell the time, but also to predict earthquakes, with ‘features’ like human hair and skin to measure delicate changes in temperature and a big base to prevent the clock from tumbling over during a quake. Juutarou of the Cloud Watch however was not occupied with this new toy of the shogun, as he was busy investigating the double suicide of a prostitute he frequented. He suspects something is wrong, but he couldn’t have expected his adventure would have anything to do with the shogun’s clock. Or could he? The reader sure could, as the two parts are initially so disconnected, anyone could guess they’d come together one way or another. This is a story more focused on the adventure rather than the mystery, though it features a Sherlock Holmes-esque deduction at the start of the story which gets inverted twice in an interesting way. What I don’t like is that the main idea of this story is basically recycled for Bara Inrou (“The Disconnecting Seal Case”) a story later in this volume about the Shogun’s request for a photograph of himself and some lectures on Rangaku (Dutch studies) and the science behind photography, but which ends in the exact same way as Jishindokei.

The Cloud Watch is tasked with locating the shogun’s long-lost son in Onnagata no Mune (“The Chest Of The Female Role Actor”). When the shogun was young, he once had a relation with one of the women in the Inner Palace (the inner section of the palace housing all the women of the Shogun), and he only learned after the woman had left the Inner Palace that she had in fact been pregnant. It’s been many years since then, but as his health is failing and forces around him gather to seize power, he decides it’s time to locate his one heir. This is a mediocre story at best: the search for the lost heir is rather boring, and it’s only pure coincidence that leads the Cloud Watch to the heir in the end. Some deception is going on that sorta reminds of Father Brown, but the execution is so minimal, it is hardly worth mentioning.

Satsuma no Nisou (“The Nuns of Satsuma”) is the darkest story of the collection, as it revolves around the serial killings of young girls. The Cloud Watch is ordered to investigate the disappearance of the younger sister of one of the women in the Inner Palace, and they find out she was killed the day she disappeared; her stomach cut open and organs removed. Some days later, another girls is washed up from the river. The connections between the two cases: young girls being cut open, and witnesses seeing nuns hanging around the girls just before they’re gone. While this story develops mostly as a grim serial murder story, with the Cloud Watch fighting against time to stop the murderers from taking more victims, the whydunnit plot is actually very clever: the ‘missing link’ that explains why this is all happening is hidden ingeniously, and the way these events eventually connect to an important event in Japanese history was both surprising and satisfying. One of the better stories in the collection.

The final story, Oooku no Sharekoube (“The Skull Of The Inner Palace”), is set in the Inner Palace. Normally, the Shogun is the only male allowed in these women’s quarters, but Tomoichirou and Juutarou, dressed as women, manage to sneak inside as they are tasked to investigate rumors of a ghostly appearance in the Inner Palace, as unrest inside the Inner Palace seldom is a good sign for events outside the Inner Palace. The truth behind the ghost is… okay, I guess. There is some good hinting going on, even if a bit little, but I thought the story dragged a little, and after hearing about the Inner Palace in previous stories, I thought the depiction of it in this story was a bit… underwhelming. Compare to the scary battlefield that was the harem in Yamada Fuutarou’s Youi Kinpeibai.

A Tomoichirou no Kyoukou is on the whole an okay story collection, though one certainly shouldn’t expect it to be very much like Aiichirou’s adventures. This is first of all a historical detective story, which also happens to feature to a degree an element of the more puzzle-oriented plot from the main series. The first half is definitely stronger than the second half on the whole though. People who liked The Curious Casebook of Hanshichi should definitely enjoy this book.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『亜智一郎の恐慌』: 「雲見番拝命」 / 「補陀楽往生」 / 「地震時計」 / 「女方の胸」 / 「ばら印籠」 / 「薩摩の尼僧」 / 「大奥の曝頭」

His Alias Is

"One shall stand, one shall fall"

"Transformers: The Movie"

And that's another series wrapped up! I just realized that I've read very few mystery series completely, but that's also because I read many contemporary writers. Who knows when those series will stop?

A Aiichirou series
A Aiichirou no Roubai ("The Discombobulation of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Annoyance)
A Aiichirou no Tentou ("The Fall of A Aiichirou" AKA A Is For Accident)
A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Abandon")

A few weeks ago, I reviewed the last volume in Awasaka Tsumao's wonderful three volume A Aiichirou series. And today, I review the second volume of the series because who cares about chronological order? A Aiichirou no Tentou ("The Fall of A Aiichirou") collects eight short stories starring A Aiichirou, a handsome, but somewhat clumsy photographer who specializes in wildlife photographs. A often accompanies academic expeditions as the resident photographer, but he has a knack for getting into trouble, or just noticing little things that lead into bigger problems. But beneath his stuttering and cowardly demeanor, hides a frightfully keen mind that can solve the most baffling of mysteries.

As I've remarked in the reviews of the other volumes, the A Aichirou series is heavily inspired by the Father Brown series and the 24 stories can roughly be divided in two categories: the impossible crime stories, and what I like to call the what the hell sories. The first speaks for itself, but what I mean with the second term is a story where it's not immediately clear there is a mystery,  or even in the case it's clear there is some kind of mystery, it's very unclear what it means. In the case of the A Aiichirou stories, these mysteries are usually solved by an uncanny intuition.

The opening story, Wara no Neko ("The Straw Cat"), features a somewhat clearly defined mystery, though the significance and the implications of that mystery sure stay vague until Aiichirou explains all. At an exhibition of the late Kayuya Toukyo, a painter in the Realist school, A Aiichirou discovers that many of his pictures contain strange 'mistakes'. A girl with six fingers, a door in the background that can't possible be used. The story unfolds as a missing link story and the truth hidden behind these mistakes is quite surprising, a bit too surprising maybe. While I admit the story does feature some hints that point to the solution, so much of it depends on 'interpretation' and 'intuition', I find it hard to say it's completely fair. The same holds for Nejirareta Boushi ("The Crooked Hat"), where Aiichirou and an associate try to locate the owner of a top hat: tracing the hat's shop and the store written on a receipt hidden inside the hat results in strange, conflicting stories and once again the missing link between these events is what leads to the truth. Which is so farfetched and impossible to deduce, that this was definitely the weakest story of the volume. Followed by Arasou Yon Kyotou ("The Competing Big Four"), in which the granddaughter of a recently retired politician is suspicious of her grandfather's recent activities. He has been spending a lot of time with some of his old friends, and she found newspaper cuttings, coins and other strange objects in the room they usually stay. The granddaughter wants to know what they are doing there and while the story features some great red herrings and a fairly amusing solution, the jump between the missing link and the solution seems a bit too big and I'd prefer some more hints to exclude other solutions a bit more convincingly.

A personal favorite was Suzuko no Yosooi ("Dressing like Suzuko"). Kamo Suzuko, affectionately called Rinko, was a slightly under-the-radar idol singer, whose popularity soared after her tragic demise in an airplane crash. One year later, her agency holds a Rinko look-a-like contest, with the winner earning the role of Rinko in a film. Aiichirou happens to be in the theater where the contest is held, but he discovers that between all the auditions, something is going on. This is a great whatthehell story, as there really is no visible mystery at all, until A Aiichirou suddenly pulls your attention to the many, but very small points that bothered him. As you go "Now you mention that...", you suddenly realize that there really was something hidden in the story and the solution is quite memorable, especially the circumstances that led to it all.

Igai na Igai ("The Unexpected Corpse") is a relatively straightforward mystery in comparison to the previous stories: a murdered corpse is found on a mountain where Aiichirou and a researcher have been taking photographs of rare fish. The strange thing about the body: not only was it set on fire, it was also boiled. The story links to a local nursery rhyme, giving the whole story a Yokomizo Seishi-vibe. A story that does pretty much everything good. The hinting in particular is fantastic and it's amazing how much is crammed in the limited page count.

And like all A Aiichirou volumes, A Aiichirou no Tentou also features some neat impossible crime stories. Sugake no Soushitsu ("The Disappearance of the House of Suga") features the classic trope of disappearing buildings. Because of a landslide, A Aiichirou and two fellow travelers decide to walk the way to the next town instead of waiting for the rails to be cleared of debris. The trio get lost in the mountains though, but manage to find shelter in the house of the last of the Sugas, of whom legends say their family house has disappeared multiple times in the past. Before the trio go to bed, they see there is a house in the distance from their window, but when they wake up the next day, they discover it has disappeared completely! I had never seen this solution to the problem of the disappearing building before and I quite like it as it actually makes absolutely sense and seems quite plausible. Saburuchou Rojou ("On the Roads of Saburouchou") too is great: a taxi driver wants to pick up his last ride when his prospective client cries out for a good reason: there's a dead body in the backseat! And as if that wasn't strange enough, the taxi driver swears that the body is that of the customer he had just dropped off somewhere else! A solidly written story and the trick reveals the magician within Awasaka Tsumao: he was actually an amateur magician and even wrote another series about a magician-detective. The final story, Byounin ni Hamono ("A Sharp Instrument for the Ill"), also deserves special mention. A patient on the garden-roof of a hospital accidently walks into another patient and falls down. But by the time A Aiichirou, the nurse and other patients have run to the poor man, he has been stabbed in his stomach. Yet everyone swears the victim and his tumbling partner weren't holding knives, nor that any knives were lying on the ground. A very satisfying impossible crime story, also because of the hints Awasaka has spread across the text.

In fact, I noticed I had not once written more extensively about the type of hints Awasaka Tsumao used in previous reviews, so to talk a little about it now: The A Aiichirou stories seldom feature material evidence or hints, but instead feature thematic hints. Awasaka often mirrors certain aspects of the crime / mystery in other segments of the story, that function as hints to the final solution. He usually manages to distort the mirror image enough so it's not immediately clear it's actually the same as the circumstances of the mystery, but it does suit the intuitive mode of detection many of his stories have: if you happen to 'feel' correctly that mirror image A is in fact the same as the main mystery, it's usually fairly simple to deduce the correct solution. It's similar to Miss Marple's and Father Brown's comparisons, and they work brilliantly for these stories. It also helps that the A Aiichirou stories are written in a fairly comical way. Like Higashigawa Tokuya, Awasaka Tsumao hides these mirror images and hints within comical situations that don't appear to be related to the mystery at first sight, only to turn out to be of crucial importance.

A Aiichirou no Tentou is, like all in the series, a great mystery short story collection.. If I had to rank the three collections, I would say that the first is the best, then A Aiichirou no Tentou and then the last, but it is not like one volume is much better or worse than another. I'd say that especially those who like the Father Brown series should take a look at the A Aiichirou series. There is a spin-off volume featuring A Aiichirou's forefather by the way, so I might read that book too one day.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『亜愛一郎の転倒』: 「藁の猫」 / 「砂蛾家の消失」 / 「珠洲子の装い」 / 「意外な遺骸」 / 「ねじられた帽子」 / 「争う四巨頭」 / 「三郎町路上」 / 「病人に刃物」

The Quick One

あぁ、あぁ、ひゅるる陽は墜ちて

まだ愛があるみたいじゃない

 「As the Dew」 (Garnet Crow)

Aa, aa, cries the wind and the sun sets

But it seems there is still some love left between us

"As the Dew" (Garnet Crow)

And as I read another mystery series out of order, I wonder how many people actually try to read novels in order? For example in storyline chronology, or in order of publication? I usually just read whatever I managed to get my hands on, and if I got the luxary of choice, whatever seems more interesting, with little regard for order...

A Aiichirou series
A Aiichirou no Roubai ("The Discombobulation of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Annoyance)
A Aiichirou no Tentou ("The Fall of A Aiichirou" AKA A Is For Accident)
A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Abandon")

I was very enthusiastic about Awasaka Tsumao's A Aiichirou no Roubai one year ago, a short story collection with a touch of Father Brown. It had some fantastic impossible crimes and still remains one of my favorite short story collections ever. The complete A Aiichirou series consists of three collections (and one spin-off volume), and you'd think I would read the second volume after the first, but that would make too much sense. So today, A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou", AKA A For Abandon), which collects the final adventures of A Aiichirou, a handsome, but somewhat clumsy photographer. When faced with murders or other baffling situations, Aiichirou occasionally seems to be muttering complete nonsense, but that nonsense always turns out to be the one and only, plain, sober truth amongst the chaos brought forth by crime.

I praised the first volume for its impossible crime stories, but the A Aiichirou series has more than just that. The same holds for this final volume. The collection for example opens with Akashima Sajou ("On the Sands of Akashima"), which takes place on an island owned by a sect-like organization. Nudity makes one free of the worries of modern society, the organization proclaims, so everyone has to be nude on this island. Of course, nudity itself isn't a crime, so the mystery only starts when a gangster suddenly arrives on the island to kidnap one of the guests. An observation by A Aiichirou however poses a completely different look at the happenings on the island. Iibachiyama Sanpuku ("On Mount Iibachi") similarly has A Aiichirou show that a tragic car crash on a mountain was not just a simple accident. Both stories have situations that may be criminal / out of the ordinary (kidnap / crash) at isolated places (on an island / in the mountains), but aren't what they seem. Both these stories are constructed very neatly, with the necessary information available and never too farfetched (I thought the first A Aiichirou story, The Flight DL2 Incident, was less convincing, even though it follows the same basic idea).

Haita no Omoide ("Memories of Toothache") and Aka no Sanka ("A Song In Praise of Red") are the (initially) non-criminal variants of the pattern above. Haita no Omoide is almost hilarious, as it follows three men, one of which A Aiichirou, going up and down the dental department of a hospital. The descriptions are funny and keep the reader interested even though there's no crime happening, but a shocking truth is revealed at the end of the dentist's trip. Maybe not as convincing as the two stories mentioned above, but I enjoyed this story enormously. Aka no Sanka is very similar, where a interview with the parents of a succesful artist is at first sight very normal, but A discovers a hidden truth about the artist. Not as interesting as Haita no Omoide, I thought.

A while back, I noticed a discussion on Twitter about how to define a certain type of story. The whodunnit, howdunnit and whydunnit seem obvious terms, but how to describe a mystery story where only at the end, it is revealed it was a mystery story (i.e. the stories mentioned above). My thoughtful contribution to the discussion was whatthehell by the way. They can be fun, but the core story must have its own interesting points, because there is no mystery (at first sight) to keep the reader hooked and the story must make sense in hindsight, which might not be easy.

But A Aiichirou no Toubou isn't just whatthehell stories, there are also some impossible crimes. Kyuutai no Rakuen ("A Spherical Paradise") is a relatively well-known story about a rich, but slightly jumpy man: he is busy constructing the ultimate shelter, consisting of a small metal sphere, placed inside a fire/earthquake/flood/rapture-proof cave which will keep him safe. The sphere has already been made and on the construction site, even though the cave hasn't been finished yet, but one day the man climbed inside the sphere and locked himself inside. After a while or so, his family members and the construction crew become worried because there can't be much air left inside, and decide to cut the sphere open together with the police, only to find the man has been murdered. Great situation, though I have seen the trick performed in other stories already, which kinda takes away the impact of the story. Well done for a short story though.

Kaji Sakaya ("A Liquor Shop Owner and Fire") follows a man who had always dreamed of becoming a firefighter, and Aiichirou, who would rather stay away from a fire. The two however end up helping at a fire. The murdered body of the woman who lived in the house is discovered and Aiichirou
 and his companion's suspicion fall upon the man they saw inside the house moments after the fire broke out. There is just one problem: the two are also quite sure they didn't see the man come out of the house, and no one else, not even a dead body, was discovered in the house. A rather classic solution, but storytelling makes this one of the better stories in the volume.

Soutou no Tako ("A Two-Headed Octopus") is unlike the previous two a fairly straightforward mystery. A diver is shot just as he prepared to go under water from a boat, and the smoking gun is found on the ground of the base camp on shore.The story has some interesting elements like a search for a Nessie-esque mythical beast in a lake, but the main trick is rather easy to guess, and I kinda feel like the trick wasn't possible to pull off anyway. In that sense, sorta an impossible crime. 

The final story of the volume, and the final story of the series is titled A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou") puts the cameraman in the center of the story. A mysterious person has been following A Aiichirou since the first stories, and A's pursuer has finally caught up on him. A Aiichirou and a travelling companion check into a small inn on a snowy day. The two enter their rooms, located in an annex building out in the garden. A's pursuer however knows Aiichirou is inside and closes in on the target... only to found out Aiichirou and his travel companion have escaped from the annex building. But even more baffling is the fact the duo managed to accomplish their flight without leaving footprints in the snow surrounding the building! A Aiichirou no Toubou is a very amusing ending, which puts A Aiichirou in the shoes of the 'criminal' for a change and it is a pretty decent impossible escape story too. What's more, it forms an actual ending to the series, as some minor threads of plot that had been shattered over a variety of stories finally come together and the mystery surrounding the strange A Aiichirou is unveiled.

Overall a good short story collection with a nice variety of mystery. Not as impressive as the first volume in the series, but definitely worth a read. In general, the A Aiichirou series does really belong among the best of Japanese detective fiction in short form. Oh, and don't worry, a review of the second volume will also appear. Some day.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『亜愛一郎の逃亡』: 「赤島砂上」 / 「球体の楽園」 / 「歯痛の思い出」 / 「双頭の蛸」 / 「飯鉢山山腹」 / 「赤の賛歌」 / 「火事酒屋」 / 「亜愛一郎の逃亡」

「DL6号事件を忘れるな」

"One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place”

"The Sins of Prince Saradine"

Of course, even though I have all my books now, the problem just shifted from 'no books to write about' to 'I read books, but for one reason or another I never actually write the reviews'. I've only just started reading and I already have a backlog of reviews to write...

A Aiichirou series
A Aiichirou no Roubai ("The Discombobulation of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Annoyance)
A Aiichirou no Tentou ("The Fall of A Aiichirou" AKA A Is For Accident)
A Aiichirou no Toubou ("The Flight of A Aiichirou" AKA A For Abandon") 

Awasaka Tsumao's A Aiichirou no Roubai ("The Discombobulation of A Aiichirou"; alternate English title by publisher Tokyo Sogen: A For Annoyance) is a short story collection I had been planning to read for a long time now. It is the first short story collection to rank in the Tozai Mystery Best 100 list, and several stories collected have been named as serious candidates for the title of best Japanese impossible crime story, so that partly explains why I wanted to read the book. Partly I say, because another reason was because Takumi Shuu, of the Gyakuten Saiban game series, named Awasaka Tsumao and the A Aiichirou series as a major influence on his works, which was something I couldn't just ignore.

I have reviewed Awasaka's short story collection Kijutsu Tantei Soga Kajou Zenshuu- Hi no Maki in the past already; longtime readers might remember me mentioning that Awasaka was a stage magician: stage magician + detective fiction is usually enough to gather the attention of readers of the genre. I was mildly positive about the collection, so I started with a modest amount of expectations in A Aiichirou no Roubai. What I got, was a classic! No wonder so many people stated this as one of the best collections in Japan. A Aiichirou no Roubai is sometimes compared to the Father Brown stories; this is naturally partly because of the titles of the books (mirroring titles like The Innocence of Father Brown etcetera) and the intuitive mode of reasoning of Aiichirou, but the sheer ingenuity found in the relatively short stories is also reminiscent of the Chesterton's classic. 

A Aiichirou is young, handsome photogrpaher who has the habit of arriving at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or being the right man at the wrong place at the wrong time. He seems to come across murder quite often (and because of his somewhat strange nature, the police usually suspects him from at least a little bit of foul play), but he always manages to clear his own name by pointing out the real murderer, usually by making enigmatic statements in the spirit of Father Brown. Oh, and because any post on A Aiichirou should mention this: the series detective was given the even in Japanese quite rare name of A Aiichirou by Awasaka, because this name would end up to be the first entry if a lexicon on (fictional) detectives would be published.

The stories in the collection can be divided in roughly three kind of stories. Awasaka's debut short story, DL2 Gouki Jiken ("The Flight DL2 Incident"), is a good example of the first kind, which mainly serves to showcase A Aiichirou's intuitive reasoning. Here Aiichirou is witness to a man who seems to stumble on a staircase on purpose, which might seem strange, but nothing more than that, right? So imagine the surprise bystanders, as well as the reader, experience when Aiichirou correctly foretells an attack on the man's driver based on the fact his master faked a fall! The solution might be a bit hard to deduce a priori to the solution, but the hinting and plotting is really solid actually. The same holds for Magatta Heya ("The Crooked Room") and Kuroi Kiri ("The Black Fog"), which both feature enigmatic, yet not criminal situations per se, but Aiichirou shows that there is much more than meets the eye. Because of the intuitive reasoning, it might be hard to deduce the solutions completely beforehand (especially Kuroi Kiri goes a bit far), but the stories work and the reader won't be disappointed.

The second set of stories focuses on impossible crimes. A man seemingly commits suicide in a hot air balloon in Migiudeyama Kuujou ("Above the Skies of Mount Migiude"), but A Aiichirou shows it was murder, even though the victim was alone up there in the sky. Definitely the highlight of the collection. A very good second is Shoujou no Ougon Kamen ("The Golden Mask on Top of her Hands"), where a man dressed in a cape and golden mask is standing on top of the hands of a giant statue, throwing pamphlets to the people below on the streets. Unlike Edogawa Rampo's Golden Mask however, this Golden Mask is less of a superman, as he is shot down quite easily, with his body falling on the streets below. The only person who could have shot him is a man in a hotelroom right across the statue, but the only weapon in his possession is so crooked, it was impossible for him to have hit the target across the distance. Really good story, once again made more impressive because of the brevity of the tale. G-Senjou no Itachi ("Weasle on the G-Line") features a taxi-driver who claims to have been attacked by a robber, but when the police find the cab, they discover the dead robber in the car, and only the taxi driver's footsteps in the snow. A simple story, mostly a variant of a famous trope and the intuition needed to pick up the main hint is something I for one don't have. And finally Horobo no Kami ("The God of Horobo"), which is often seen as one of the better impossible crime stories in Japan. On a trip to recover the dead bodies of his fellow soldiers who had died when they had stranded on the island of Horobo during World War II, an old veteran tells (the unnamed) Aiichirou the strange experience he had seen there: the head of the local tribe had been seen entering a small shrine holding the effigy of the local god, the God of Horobo, to mourn the death of his wife, whose body was placed there. The tribesmen had all stood watch over the shrine, but the next day, after hearing a cry, they discover the head shot to death, by a gun held in the dead wife's hands, with everybody swearing nobody had entered or left the shrine! The solution is admittedly quite ingenious, but it is close, though definitely not across, the border between a fair and unfair mystery. One should really read it though, if only just to remind you that such a trick also exists.

The third pattern found in A Aiichirou no Roubai is Horidasareta Douwa ("A Dug Up Fairy Tale"), which features a coded message. I was the least impressed by this story: the code itself is really ingenious and one of the best I've seen in Japanese stories thus far, but the story surrounding it is unneccesary long (the longest in the collection) and not very interesting to begin with. It feels a bit out of place and I can't help myself but asking the question whether Awasaka couldn't have done something else with the solid code.

All in all a solid collection. The standard is quite high, and there are some real classics to be found too. Despite my love for the short story format, I haven't been able to find that many Japanese collections I would call a must read, but A Aiichirou no Roubai (as well as the early Norizuki Rintarou ones) are definitely the ones you'd want to read.

Original Japanese title(s):　泡坂妻夫 『亜愛一郎の狼狽』 「ＤＬ２号機事件」 / 「右腕山上空」 / 「曲がった部屋」 / 「掌上の黄金仮面」 / 「Ｇ線上の鼬」 / 「掘出された童話」 / 「ホロボの神」 / 「黒い霧」

Now You See Him...

「全国の手品マニアの皆さん、マジックを見せるときは観客を選ばなくてはいけません。次の人々の前では決してやらないように。動物、子供、マジシャン。まず、動物は何が不思議なのか分かってくれません。子供はタネを見せろと必ず駄々をこねます。そして、マジシャンの前でマジックを見せるという事は、私の前で人を殺すのと同じくらい危険な事です…。ご注意を」

『古畑任三郎: 魔術師の選択』

"Magic maniacs all across the country, it is important to choose your public when you show your stage magic. Be careful not to show it in front of the following: animals, children and magicians. Firstly, animals don't understand what is so mysterious. Children always whine about explaining the trick. And showing stage magic in front of another magician, is as dangerous as killing someone before my eyes.... Please beware."

"Furuhata Ninzaburou: The Magician's Choice"

I like short stories collections. I seldom read them in order, instead selecting my stories based on the time I want to read, what seems interesting etc. But man, do I hate writing reviews for short story collections. It's hard to keep a proper line in my story / argument, making these reviews feel incredibly chaotic. And of course, they tend to get rather lenghty. Maybe I should really revise how I do these reviews. Or at least become a better writer (and no, once again I don't really proofread what I write on my blog, so I fear for quite some typos and sentences abandonded halfway).

All well, the next review should be about a novel. Of sorts. And an American novel too. That should be easy.

It took me actually quite a long time to finish Awasaka Tsumao's Kijutsu Tantei Soga Kajou Zenshuu- Hi no Maki ("Magician Detective Soga Kajou Complete Collection - The Book of Secrets"). Which was strange, because I should have been more enthousiastic about it. Well, yes the cover design is hideous, but the rest of the book's curriculum vitae was excellent! For example, Awasaka won (post-humously) first place in both the Kono Mystery ga Sugoi and Honkaku Mystery Best 10 rankings in 2009 with the complete Soga Kajou canon (consisting of Hi no Maki ("The Book of Secrets") and Gi no Maki ("The Book of Plays"). It won prestigeous titles. It's about stage magic. It's a short story collection. I should have loved this book immediately.

Well, I probably lost some of my enthousiasm when I discovered that this story collection wasn't like Jonathan Creek and not focused on a magician solving mostly impossible crimes. Which was kinda disappointing But the real killer was the first story in this collection, which is really not representative for the rest of the collection. But finally I picked the book again earlier this week (after 10 (!) months) and happily found out that the most of the stories here actually entertaining.

While best known as a writer of detective novels, Awasaka was also a great lover of stage magic and has actually won prizes in the past for his performances. His love for magic comes to life in the Soga Kajou series. The titular Soga Kajou was once known as the best magician in Japan, but retired from the business when she married. But she never really left the whole magic scene and she is still a welcome attending guest at various magic shows and lectures on magic. Because of her expertise on various kinds of stage magic, she is occasionally asked for assistance by the police with baffling cases, because who is better suited to explain mysterious events than someone who was known for creating mysterious events? And yes, in some way Soga acts as avatar for author Awasaka in the stories, as he writes very warmly about all kinds of magic, from rope magic to cups and balls magic and often manages to come up with interesting detective stories related to all kinds of fields within stage magic. No, Soga is not running around solving intricate locked room mysteries or other impossible crimes (well, not that often at any rate), but her knowledge of magic, the pleasant style in which in the stories are written and simply the love you feel Awasaka has for magic make these stories here worth a read.

Except for the first one. In Kuuchuu Asagao ("The Floating Morning Glory"), Soga comes across a very interesting flower arrangement at a flower arranging contest: a morning glory without a stem, floating over its flowerpot. Soga tries to purchase the wonderfully mysterious arrangement, but is told that it is not for sale. The rest of the story tells us how the background of the floating morning glory and why the flower is not for sale, but as a mystery this is a very weak story. There is no sense of mystery at all, as Awakasa doesn't even seem to place much attention to the 'mystery' of the floating flower, devoting much more attention to a background story that is only weakly linked to the flower. And to finish it off, the trick behind the floating flower is not particularly shocking. It's thus a weak mystery story, but also a very bad introduction story for this collection.

Hanabi and Juusei ("Fireworks and the Sound of a Gun") is a lot better and a favorite with a lot of readers, it seems. Soga is asked for assistance by police inspector Takenashi with the murder case of a blackmailer. The man was shot in his own room during a fireworks festival near his mansion and while the police has a suspect, he has a seemingly perfect alibi and no motive at all. Soga shows how misdirection is something not only used on stage, but also by criminals. Certainly a very entertaining story, but one important plot-point seems to be taken for granted by everyone, which it certainly is not. Basically the whole point of the story hinges on this plot-point and the extent to which the reader is able to suspend his disbelief on this point determines to what extent he'll be able to enjoy the story.

Kieta Juudan ("The Disappearing Bullet") is the first of a series of 'magic shows gone wrong' stories collected here. The shooting trick was supposed to be rather harmless: the magician was to shoot at his own wife, breaking the glass frame she was holding in front of her, but of course not hit her. Because bullets have the tendency to kill people when they enter a human body around the heart. But yes, that is of course precisely what happened. The magician is naturally stricken by grief for killing his own wife during a show, but was this just an accident or did someone tamper with the gun, bullet or something else? Soga's solution is a good one, though it depends on whether the reader is also able to solve how the trick originally was supposed to go, but the hint pointing at the true criminal was really good.

The fourth story, Birthday Rope, is one of the best stories in the collections. While it is about a seemingly more boring field of stage magic, namely rope magic, this story's structure, hinting and pacing is really good. The mystery revolves around a woman found strangled in her hotel room. Or to be more precise, the mystery revolves around the fact that the murderer apparently took the time and effort to cut away a knot from the rope he strangled the victim with when he left the room. Why would anyone take away a knot? Soga's solution is simple, elegant and Awasaka's simple, yet effective story structuring really shines here. Add in some wonderful information on rope magic and knot communication in Japan (like the Aztecs and Mayas did) and we have a great short story on stage magic.

Zig Zag is sadly not as accomplished a story like Birthday Rope. While the problem is certainly interesting, with parts of a murdered woman found in the contraption used for the Zig Zag illusion which was stored backstage, the story suffers from overdependence on coincidences. It feels unsolvable for the reader, the motive is hard to believe and simply offers the reader little to really enjoy.

Cup to Tama ("Cups and Balls") is very similar to Detective Conan's Mystery Writer Disappearance Case (volume 19), or more precisely said, the other way around. Both stories are about a hidden message hidden in a seemingly innocent manuscript. This time the code is hidden in an article about cups and balls magic, but solving that code is just the beginning of the story. While the codes are pretty fun, elegant in their simplicity like many of the Conan codes, the story is running at a very fast pace and the reader has practically no time to solve the codes themselves, as new codes keep popping up. The story on cups and balls however is very interesting and shows a lot of Awasaja's love for that old trick.

Bill Tube is interesting as it feels very different from the other stories. Soga is sorta undercover in a snow resort: she has promised to give a small group private lectures on magic during the night, while her students teach her how to ski during the day. One night, a snow storm prevents Soga, her students and another group staying in the same ski pension from going out, and as the pension owner found out Soga's identity, he asks her to perform for everybody in the pension. She agrees and shows the classic trick of the disappearing money bill. She also signs a few signatures and all is well. Until the following day, when the guests discover that pretty much everything Soga had touched last night has disappeared. Is someone trying to erase every trace of Soga in the pension? A somewhat The Mad Tea Party-esque (Ellery Queen) story, with a lot of misdirection going on, but certainly a good one and while the final explanation also requires a bit of fantasy at times, this is a good mystery.

In Juuwa no Hato ("The Ten Doves"), Soga lends ten of her trained white doves to a marketing company filming a commerical. After the shooting however, the birds are stolen. Even more strange is that Soga's doves are found in the dove cages of a fellow magician performing not far away from where the doves were stolen. Who switched the doves and why? A two-layered story, of which the first layer is definitely stronger than the second layer. Which is hinted at... sorta... but Galileo-esque expertise was certainly required to deduce that much.

I am not sure what to think about Tsurugi no Mai ("Sword Dance"). A magician is found dead the evening after a show, stabbed to death by one of the stage-swords he himself used during the show. As he had three swords and only one was left at the crime scene, it is thought that more victims might fall. Soga, who was in the public during that last show of the magician, quickly solves the case, but the story leaves some ambigeous feelings. At one hand, it once again hinges on a couple of coincidences that require quite a bit of suspension of disbelief (even for this genre!) and the hinting is also a bit questionable. On the other hand, I love the theme and the motive for the crime, which really shows how much Awasaka thought about magic.

The show to be performed in Kyozou Jitsuzou ("Virtual Image / Real Image") was grand. Making use of a film shown on a screen and perfect timing, the magician was to tell a story in which it would seem that he was able to walk in and out of the virtual world depicted on the screen on will.The story was supposed to end with him being killed by a girl on stage, after which the girl was to return to the virtual world, and that's indeed how it ended. Except that the killing was real this time. The murderer was seen by the whole public to have fled into the screen and it seems like she has actually disappeared from reality. How did she disappear? I am not perfectly sure whether Awasaka was fair in this story, and neither was he, because the final pages of this story feel very much like a too eager explanation of how perfectly fair he was. Awasaka doth protest too much, methinks. The atmosphere is perfect though.

The final story is one of the weaker stories unfortunately. Shinju Fujin ("Madame Pearl") was the nickname for the bearer of the Pearl of Venus ring and it was the Pearl of Venus the magician Jag Konumata used for his magic trick, having chosen Madam Pearl out the public to be his temporary assistent. But luck has it that a gull snatches it from his hand during the show, leaving behind a flabbergasted Konumata. How's he going to get the ring back? What is he to do? Soga tries her own hand at retrieving the ring, but discovers a strange plot surrounding the ring. A rather weak story that is disappointing as a mystery and also has weak ties to magic.

While the quality of the stories is not really even, most of the stories are interesting also because of Awasaka's inclusion of all kinds of magic-related trivia in the stories. When he shines, he's really good, which certainly makes me interested in the second part of the Soga Kajou series.

泡坂妻夫　『奇術探偵曾我佳城全集　秘の巻』: 「空中朝顔」 / 「花火と銃声」 / 「消える銃弾」 / 「バースディロープ」 / 「ジグザグ」 / 「カップと玉」 / 「ビルチューブ」 / 「十羽の鳩」 / 「剣の舞」 / 「虚像実像」 / 「真珠夫人」