Doom With a View

"I stopped my horse beside the building, on the edge of a dark and quiet lake. There, I could see reflected in the water a clear picture of the dead trees, and of the house and its empty eye-like windows. I was now going to spend several weeks in this house of sadness - this house of gloom."

"The Fall of the House of Usher"

It's been years since I last discussed a critical work here...

Disclosure: I have translated Ayatsuji Yukito's Jukkakan no Satsujin/The Decagon House Murders and Abiko Takemaru's 8 no Satsujin/The 8 Mansion Murders to English. I have also translated the Shimada Souji short story The Running Dead.

Hankou Genba no Tsukurikata ("How to Make A Crime Scene", 2006) was written by Yasui Toshio, an architect with a love for the mystery genre. The book was received very well upon release, becoming a finalist for the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for critical works of that year, and it also led to collaborative works with Arisugawa Alice: Yasui actually designed the building featured in Arisugawa's Jooukoku no Shiro, and they also wrote a volume on locked room mysteries together. But anyway, back to this book. In this critical work, Yasui examines the (main) crime scenes from well-known mystery novels from the viewpoint of his profession, and that means looking at famous locations like say, the Decagon House in a very different way than most readers will. He discusses a different book in each chapter and starts examining each location (a building) based on the description in the work itself, as well as using the provided floorplans/diagrams to present a clear picture of said location. And then comes the interesting part: as he examines these buildings as an architect, he starts looking at things like whether the building would actually comply to Japanese laws, or whether it would actually be physically possible to create a building as described, or would it tumble over? For example, would a 'crooked house' with slanting floors be legal to build in the first place? Or where do all the drainage pipes and lines go in all those huge manors with dozens of guests rooms? Here we have an architect who is not worried about whether a murder trick using a house would be feasible: he is looking whether the location itself makes sense, which is a fresh way to look at the locations in the genre.

In this book, Yasui discusses the (main) locations of, among others, Ayatsuji Yukito's Jukkakan no Satsujin/The Decagon House Murders, Abiko Takemaru's 8 no Satsujin/The 8 Mansion Murders, Shimada Souji's Nanameyashiki no Hanzai/Murder in the Crooked House, Higashino Keigo's Juujiyashiki no Pierrot ("The Clown in The Cross Mansion"), Yokomizo Seishi's Honjin Satsujin Jiken/The Honjin Murders and Edogawa Rampo's Sankakukan no Kyoufu ("The Terror of Triangle Manor") (= rewritten version of Roger Scarlett's Murder Among the Angells). Do note that I have not actually read the complete book, as I skipped the chapters on books I have not read yet. While Yasui's focus is on the architectural importance of these books, in a few cases, the building itself will have certain features that are integral to the main mystery of the book (i.e. being closely tied to the solution), so I thought it would be wiser to skip those chapters for now in fear of spoilers. Those chapters are on Mori Hiroshi's Warawanai Suugakusha ("Mathematicians Don't Laugh" AKA Mathematical Goodbye), Utano Shougo's Nagai Ie no Satsujin ("The Murder in the Long House") and Shinoda Mayumi's Kuroi Megami ("The Dark Goddess"). 

Anyway, the focus is thus not actually on the mysteries of each book, and most chapters follow the same format: we see Yasui first following the descriptions of each building as described in the book, using the available floorplans if provided in said book. He'll use these descriptions of for example room layouts or how people move about in the house to estimate the sizes of each building, and give a ballpark figure for how much constructing the building in question might cost. And then comes the more interesting part: he starts looking for weird things that stand out to him as an architect. As most of the authors discussed in the book are not actually architects, they might overlook issues that real architects deal with (building codes/laws, among others) and Yasui often succeeds in pointing out little things that you are likely to overlook yourself. Often, it has no real bearing on the mystery plot of each book, but it's still funny to see someone examine a mystery novel from a completely different point of view.

In his chapter on Jukkakan no Satsujin/The Decagon House Murders for example, Yasui first uses the book's own description of the titular building to create his own diagrams based on those descriptions and the floorplans provided in the book. He estimaties the exact sizes of the building in a clever way: in the book two characters are working on a rather large jigsaw puzzle in one of the rooms (which all have the same size, as the rooms form a decagon together), so with the knowledge a room has enough space to not only hold a bed/desk/closet, but should also allow for one or two people to work on a jigsaw puzzle with pieces scattered around,  Yasui manages to make a realistic estimate of the sizes of the house. Once he's done with his model of the house, he points out that the building would be quite difficult to build, as it completely lacks support pillars for the roof at the places where a normal building would have them. Nothing that would immediately impact the story, but still an interesting thing that is pointed out. In fact, he calls it the biggest mystery of the Decagon House! He also makes an estimate of how much it'd cost to build the Decagon House (in Japan, in 2006), for those interested in building a decagonal house (funnily enough, his estimate does specify you'd need to procure your own island somehow).

Other chapters follow a similar pattern, where Yasui first faithfully follows the book's description of the house, and then the questions follow. 8 no Satsujin/The 8 Mansion Murders for example has Yasui moving the furniture in the guest rooms, as it feels very weird for him to have a bed next to the window for various reasons, like safety, while he also estimates the width of the gallery in the house, using the fact ground floor rooms require direct sunlight via the courtyard, meaning the gallery can only be so wide before it blocks sunlight. Higashino's Juujiyashiki no Pierrot ("The Clown in The Cross Mansion") is set in a house where one of its inhabitants is in a wheelchair, so a lot of attention in the relevant chapter is paid to the dimensions needed to allow for the girl to be able to move freely in the house in her wheelchair. The chapter on Honjin Satsujin Jiken/The Honjin Murders focuses on the traditional Japanese building details of the book, while the chapter on Nanameyashiki no Hanzai/Murder in the Crooked House asks some really interesting questions about the house that usually won't bother you during a read, like the question of how much it would've cost to give all those guest rooms their own bathrooms/toilets, as that means a lot of plumbing! He also points out the building has no communal toilet, meaning the person in the tower room has no toilet to use. One interesting point for people who have read the English translation of this book is that the English version apparently changed something: in the original Japanese, there's also no kitchen marked on the diagram of the house, which puzzles Yasui greatly of course. The English diagram actually marks a section in the diagram as the kitchen, even though it wasn't the kitchen in the original Japanese!

Anyway, like most critical works on mystery fiction, Hankou Genba no Tsukurikata is probably best read if you have already read all the books featured here, or if you don't care at all about spoilers. On the whole however, it is quite fun as a read, as it is quite different from the usual genre critical work. Because most people will have some knowledge about architecture (simply by living in buildings), Yasui's points usually make a lot of sense, as he writes in a very accessible manner and doesn't fret too much about construction details, instead pointing out things you and I will understand from a livability POV. 

Original Japanese title(s): 安井俊夫『犯行現場の作り方』

Dead Man's Cavern

"Ragnarok, the end of the Viking world with a terrible winter that covered the Earth in ice, when vile crimes were rampant and all humanity lost."

"Max Payne"

I wonder if at those detective fiction courses at university they actually have locked room murder lectures...

During a holiday, Narumi, the self-proclaimed great detective of the Sealed Door club, invites his fellow member Kakeru (who was recently made his debut as a mystery writer), to go on an adventure together. While Narumi hesitates to tell Kakeru exactly why, they are travelling to a small village deep in the mountains of Gifu called Kagerou Village. When they arrive, they notice a strange church-like building in the middle of the village. They chat a little with the local people there, when they hear a cry coming from the nearby cliff: one of the Jizou statues has toppled on top of her, trapping her legs. Narumi and Kakeru quickly help her, but she then tells them her friend Yasoshima Daisaku fell off the cliff down in the swamp below. There's a dangerous path along the cliff that climbs down to the swamp, so Narumi and Kakeru carefully make their way down to look for Daisaku, who fortunately is safe: he is a firefighter and has experience with this. A tremendous storm starts as they climb up the path however, and it's becoming too dangerous to walk up this way. Daisuku instructs Narumi and Kakeru to find shelter in a cave halfway up the cliff path, while he goes further up to secure a way for them. Narumi and Kakeru are just inside the cave when the ground shakes, causing a cave-in that blocks off the entrance. To their surprise, they find there were more people inside the cave, and as they talk with these people, they learn this cave runs beeneath Kagerou Village and that in recent years, it has actually been converted to a cave hotel: the "church" Narumi and Kakeru had seen above is a wedding venue, and an elevator there goes down to the main part of the cave, which is surrounded by several rooms. The hotel is a somewhat eccentric attempt to attract tourists to the region. They also learn that Daisaku is a local who is to be married soon to Tsugumi, who is one of the people in the cave, as she was being shown around.

The group makes their way back to the main "lobby cave" to take the elevator back up, but when the elevator doors open, they find the nearly deceased Nanako, a local high school student: she's been shot in the cage. When she's asked who did this to her, Nanako points her finger at... Kakeru before she dies. While Narumi can quickly prove it couldn't have been Kakeru who shot her considering they just arrived there, the local people are still a bit suspicious about these two outsiders. They learn the elevator doesn't work anymore and for some reason, there's also no answer when they try the intercom connecting to the wedding venue above, even though there should be people there, and Daisaku should also know they're there. While afraid the murderer might have attacked the people above too, the people below in the cave can only wait, so they stay in the hotel rooms for the night, with Narumi warning everyone to keep their doors locked in case the murderer is still down in the cave, but his warning is not enough to prevent another murder the next morning. When one guest doesn't respond to calls from outside, Narumi and Kakeru try to open the steel door, but are only able to bend it slightly to create a gap, but the gap is enough for them to see the inhabitant is lying dead on the floor. But she has also written something in blood on the floor that seems to point to Kakeru again! Who is the murderer in the cave, and can Kakeru prove this time he really isn't the murderer in Kirisha Takumi's Ragnarok Dou - Akazu no Tobira Kenkyuukai Kagerou Numa he ("The Cave of Ragnarok: The Sealed Door Goes to Kagerou Swamp", 2000)?

Ragnarok Dou is the third entry in Takumi Kirisha's Sealed Door series, about the colorful members of a college club specializing in opening sealed doors. Last year, I read the first book in this series, Doppelgänger-kyuu - Akazu no Tobira Kenkyuukai Ryuuhyoukan he ("The Doppelgänger Palace - The Sealed Door Club Goes to the Ryuuhou House", 1999), which was also Kirisha's debut work. You might wonder why I skipped the second book and went straight for the third book in the series. Well, like with Summer Apocalypse a few weeks ago, I didn't actually choose this book because it was a book in this series. I was looking for books with dying messages as the theme, so when I learned this book had a dying message lecture, it found a place in the to-be-read pile, despite it meaning I would be reading a series out of order. Again. As always.

So yeah, the theme of the book is dying messages and it might be surprising to learn Narumi, the self-proclaimed great detective, comes up with a dying message lecture fairly early on in the book. While he namedrops Doctor Fell, Nikaido Ranko, Mercator Ayu and Sorachi Masaya as eminent predecessors when it comes to presenting a lecture on a specific trope in mystery fiction (locked rooms, no footprints in the snow, motives for creating locked rooms and alibis, respectively), I do have to say I find Narumi's alibi lecture really original. While I have seen dying message lectures before (disclosure: I translated Arisugawa Alice's The Moai Island Puzzle), the one in this book is quite original in that because it is about a message: being there's a sender and receiver, this lecture actually consists of two seperate sections (chapters). In the first Narumi presents a categorization of the type of dying messages a victim may leave behind to denounce the murderer (writing, oral, etc.), so the medium of the message, while in the second part, the lecture goes in detail about why said message might be misinterpreted/not understood (so the signife of the message). But what I liked especially about this lecture, is that it is in fact not just a fourth wall-breaking moment, or just two chapters where Kirisha shows he has done his homework and to provide the reader with context to understand how his twist on the dying message in this book will work. While I can't give details because it spoils one of the cleverest elements of this book, Narumi actually has a fantastic reason to actually be holding a lecture about dying messages, and it's precisely because he does this, they're in the end able to solve the case. Narumi might be a self-proclaimed detective, but.... he's actually truly a very clever detective, who in every other series would have been the protagonist. Narumi's just not lucky here, as the club president Godou is just a little bit smarter than Narumi (though less active). At any rate, I have seldom seen a lecture in a mystery story used in such a clever way in-universe, and that alone makes this worth a read, I think.

As the proper cave entrance is blocked and the elevator broken, the people in the cave hotel find themselves in a closed circle situation, but an odd one, as at first, there's no reason to believe the murderer is still in the cave, and it in fact seems more likely the murderer is on the surface, having shot Nanako and then sending the elevator down. The pistol used to kill Nanako is believed to be the one that should have been enshrined in the shrine in the cave: it used to belong to a World War II pilot who crashed in the swamp. But if the murderer did go up, how come a second murder occured in one of the hotel rooms? The door was locked from the inside, and because it's a steel door with a very sturdy, submarine-esque turn-dial lock, Narumi and Kakeru can't even force the door open with a steel bar, only able to open a minor gap through which they could confirm the victim died. As the story progresses, more people are of course killed in the cave. Meanwhile, everyone is also worried about the people above, for Daisaku and other people should know people are trapped in the cave hotel (especially Daisaku, as his soon-to-be-wife Tsugumi is one of the people there!) and Daisaku's a firefighter who told Narumi and Kakeru he'd inform the rescue unit, but why is nobody coming to their rescue? This leads to a lot of speculation on Narumi's part, and it's here where the book kinda repeats some of the... I wouldn't call them faults per se, but it's definitely something that stood out when I read the first book.

For like the first book, this book does feature a large cast of characters like many closed circle murder mysteries... but the narrative is mainly focused on the recurring characters, in this case Narumi and Kakeru, and later other club members after everyone is rescued and they go over the case again to try and solve it. Most of the book revolves mainly around discussions between just the recurring cast as they go over theories and discuss what they could do next, and the side characters that only appear in this book barely get anything to say before they die. The worst example of this is Nanako, who appears as a dead person right away, and we hear some characters lament her death, but we don't actually hear about how they know Nanako, who she is, and why she was in the elevator or anything. She's just there, dead. Only much later you hear a throwaway line about how one character knew Nanako exactly. This happens with other parts of the story too, where you don't really understand what their role is and how character X knows character Y, because the story is focused on Narumi and Kakeru chatting among themselves, instead of with others. It does allow the story to focus on a lot of the detective plot, as Kakeru and Narumi obviously talk about the ongoing case, but some of the puzzle pieces remain vague because you don't hear the other characters speak up too often. And while I do think the members of the Sealed Door club are fun and their banter does mean we get intelligent, genre-savvy discussions regarding the mystery, like the first book, you do feel some of the other characters should have given more speaking lines to flesh out the mystery more.

As for the mystery itself.... it's really dense! You have multiple dying messages (in the broad sense of the meaning, so writing, gestures, in-actions etc.), a locked room murder, long deduction chains about how the murderer must have been moving both on the surface and in the cave, and while I do think sometimes feel a bit chaotic, ultimately, I think it worked out pretty well. The solution to the locked room isn't that interesting to be honest, and the closed circle situation is resolved in a rather easy manner, but the deductions regarding the dying messages and the reasoning chains that point to the murderer are more memorable, and they work really well in conjuction with the aforementioned dying message lecture. Parts of the backstory of the shrine in the cave, which ties directly to the motive, are interesting ideas, though it's debatable about how "fair" it was presented and at times, this backstory goes pretty weird ways: I wouldn't have found the revelations here in any way weird had this been for example a Nikaidou Reito novel, but this being my second book in the series, I hadn't quite expected Kirisha to tell us this kind of backstory. This is an element I think could have been worked out in more detail to feel both more shocking, but also less... coming out of nowhere. 

The book also provides some more insight into the history of the Sealed Door club and why club president Godou started the club, which likely will tie to the final, fourth book in the series, I assume. These books are easy and fun enough to read, so I will eventually get there, not sure whether I will read the second book first, or the last one though.

Ragnarok Dou - Akazu no Tobira Kenkyuukai Kagerou Numa he is a fun mystery novel that does some original things via its dying message lecture, and for that alone, I think this is worth a read. Like the first book, it's a story that focuses a lot on the recurring characters and often has a comedic tone to it, so like many character-focused mysteries, it's pretty easy to get into, and while because of that focus, I do feel the mystery isn't presented as strongly as it could be, overall, I do always end up enjoying these books. Solid entry, and I'll be sure to read the other two books in the series too.

Original Japanese title(s): 霧舎巧『ラグナロク洞 《あかずの扉》研究会影郎沼へ』

The Problem of Cell 13

“WORDS IN THE HEART CANNOT BE TAKEN.” 

"Feet of Clay"

To be honest, when I first heard about the story, I was hoping the book would be about a real Golem...

Mitsuki Usami is an academic researcher in natural history connected to a multi-disciplinary research facility in the United States. He has the tendency to get involved in odd crimes both real and fictional: while occasionally, he ends up solving cases via his work as a researcher, with his co-workers and even the police aware of his skill in problem solving, Usami also has the habit (?) of just finding himself in completely different world or realize his mind is now inhabiting the body of someone else. That doesn't seem to surprise him that much however, and wherever and whenever he faces an intellectual problem, he can't rest until he has managed to find a solution. In Tsukatou Hajime's 2005 short story collection Golem no Ori ("The Cage of the Golem"), Usami finds himself solving a murder in a world where the creations of M.C. Escher are real, a prisoner escaping a sealed prison in which he had been imprisoned for decades and the riddle of a man escaping a mysterious sun cult among others.

While the last three years or so, I have started reading Tsukatou's work fairly regularly, this is the first time I read anything in this specific series, though I had been wanting to read this for a long time. In a mook on locked room mysteries edited by Arisugawa Alice, a group of mystery authors was asked to vote for their favorite locked room mysteries, and the title story Golem no Ori was ranked in the top 20. When I learned about the short story however, the book was already out of print, but fortunately, Tsukatou's older works have been given a digital re-release the last two years, so I finally was able to have a look at the title story. 

The book however opens with Escher no Sekai ("The World of Escher"). During a break, Usami has a look at the art exhibition held at the research facility,  an event to invite people from the neighborhood to have a look inside the facility. The art exhibition shows the art of Harold Mueller, who was known as a successor to M.C. Escher, making all kinds of trick art pieces. His most famous work is a painting with a very unique backstory: the work was created after his wife and daughter were murdered, and according to Mueller, this painting shows who the murderer is. However, the painting contains multiple persons, depending on you look at the painting, including Harold's old housekeeper, himself and his art dealer. While contemplating about this painting, Usami dozes off and finds himself awakening in a world where the works of M.C. Escher are actually possible, like the waterfall where the water drops down and somehow ends up at the top of the waterfall again in an eternal loop. For the people in that world, the "impossibility" of these buildings seems natural, but they talk about a person who like Usami came from a different world with other rules, and that he eventually managed to return. Usami looks for the villager who might have talked with that man and know how he returned, but before Usami can find the villager, the villager is found dead. But who could've murdered him?

This is a weird story, with two very different parts that are only partially connected via M.C. Escher storywise. The murder in the world of M.C. Escher is obviously a fantasy-like story, but this story is more of an interesting idea, than one that is really worked out well. While I imagine it has to do with rights, the book is devoid of illustrations, so if you're not familiar with the M.C. Escher illustrations mentioned in this story, you have to imagine them based on the descriptions in the story, which probably doesn't really convey the essence of these works. Obviously, the fact that in this world, the M.C. Escher buildings can actually exist and function ends up connected to the murder, and while I think the essential idea is funny, it's also not really anything more than a funny notion, and the lack of visuals really hurt the story. The part regarding Mueller's painting is a bit more interesting, and is at least thematically cleverly connected to the M.C. Escher story (though story-wise, not at all), but the complete true meaning of the painting is impossible to guess simply based on the hints.

In the second story Schrödinger DOOR, Usami and his co-worker Hartman are called by the "colonel" (who runs the research facility) for an emergency at the research facility: the Moren twins, two researchers, are involved in a crazy situation which has already taken the life of one of the brothers. In a laboratory, one of the twins is found murdered, while the other has been put inside a special capsule nside a locked lab, but he doesn't react to anything. In a document signed by Karlie Moren, he confesses to being the PRA bomber, a serial bomber who had been active for several years. He states he has committed suicide, and that his brother Gerald is inside the lab. Last year, both brothers were suspects in a murder case commonly referred to as The Chinese Scissor Mystery, and Karlie now states that one of the brothers was indeed guilty and that he has now punished that murderer: if Karlie was the murderer, he's lying dead on the floor, and Gerald is knocked out, but alive in the locked lab, but if Gerald was the murderer, he's dead too. The authorities are challenged to put in a password, a keyphrase to show they understand what actually happened last year, to open the lab: if they're right, the door opens and they can check whether Gerald is alive, while otherwise, everything will be blown up with explosives. 

This is a a very chaotic story, with the story about the PRA bomber and the Moren brothers being in a Schrödinger's cat-inspired situation where you don't know whether Gerald is alive or not, and then "The Chinese Scissor Mystery" part set in the past, where both brothers were a suspect. To be honest, I didn't really like this story: "The Chinese Scissor Mystery" is an okay mystery story, but not remarkable mystery story on its own that relies a lot on Queenian deductions regarding certain used objects, like a set of scissors, and sets of footprints that seemingly make it impossible for either Karlie or Gerald to have murderered their neighbor, while they were having a masquerade at home, but like Tsukatou sometimes tend to do, the story is told in a way where you get fragments of information in in media res scenes, meaning you miss a lot of context which makes everything seem confusing at first, only to explain things a few pages later, only to do the exact same thing again the next scene, constantly jerking around with the pace. The Schrödinger's cat-inspired part also is interesting on its own, but misses real synergy with the Chinese scissor mystery part, and isn't really a "deduce it yourself" type of mystery, so this story just didn't work for me.

Mienai Otoko - Usami-shiki ("The Invisible Man, Usami-style") is a very short story where Usami is challenged to solve a mystery written by a co-worker. In the story, Helen, a career woman, is haunted by a voice of someone accusing of a murder she most definitely did commit to climb up the ladder. But while she keeps hearing the voice, she can never find out who is saying it, leading her to believe it is really a ghost. This is a very simple story, and the whole thing is very similar to a short story by a prolific American locked room mystery specialist whom I am sure Tsukatou has read, so it's hard to feel really enthusiastic about this one.

After three medicore stories, I was glad to learn Golem no Ori ("The Cage of the Golem") was indeed a lot more interesting, though again, I am not that big a fan of the double story structure of these stories. The plotline of a handyman falling off the roof of the research facility and calling for help, and his rescuers not being able to find him despite going to the exact spot the handyman says he is at, is not very interesting. However, at the same time, Usami has another of his weird experiences where his mind ends up in the body of a prison warden in 17h century England. "He" has been newly appointed to this prison, where there is one special inmate: a man only known as the Golem, a man so feared his name and records have been completely obscured and who has been kept for decades in a specially built cell from which there is no escape, as the door has been completely sealed, shuttered and barricaded. The door of this special cell has never been opened in the decades since the Golem has been kept: there's only a special small opening just large enough for a tray of food and water to slide through, and this opening is always kept shut from the outside until the food is brought. While he has been in the prison for decades, the arrival of the new warden seems to have changed something, as the Golem starts hinting at an imminent escape, which scares another inmate in the prison, who had a personal fued with the Golem. The warden can't believe the Golem can escape: the Golem is put in a room with thick stone walls, the door can't even be opened as it's completely barricaded and has been like that ever since the room was finished and you can barely get an arm outside the window. But on the night the Golem announced, the Golem does indeed appear to manage to escape his prison, and even kill the other inmate on his way out. How did the Golem manage to do this? This part of the story is probably the best of the whole book, and I do quite like this mystery, even if I have already seen a variation of the same solution before. It goes over the many seemingly possible situations there are for escaping a locked cell like in The Problem of Cell 13, but these possibilites are of course discarded. The solution however is clever as it plays with your expectations of why the Golem escaped his cell now, leading to a surprising way to escape the cell that seems so utterly impenetrable.

The final story bears the title Taiyouden no Isis (Golem no Ori Gendaiban) ("Isis of the Sun Temple - A Modern Cage of the Golem), the rescued handyman from the previous story tells Usami about a mysterious case at the headquarters of a sun-worshipping cult, where he worked once. A former follower of the cult had been detained inside a room at headquarters so he could "repent". This cell was made especially to punish the followers, so the windows were all frosted, allowing no direct sun inside the room. While the man was being held captive, the head of the cult, Ra, was worshipping the sun with his trusted assistants in the deepest parts of the headquarters. But the man somehow managed to not only escape his cell, which was being observed by a guard in the room outside, the man even managed to escape headquarters unseen! Even if the man managed to get out of his cell somehow, he'd only be able to go two ways from that point: one leading to the main entrance where plenty of other followers are, or one leading into the sun worshipping room where Ra and his assistants were, but none of them have any reason to have let the man go, so how did he escape both his cell and the sun cult's headquarters? The first part of this problem indeed offers an interesting twist on the idea of used in the original Golem no Ori, but in terms of feasibility, it seems very unlikely it would ever work: the story even says it was a gamble whether this would work, but simply addressing this problem doesn't mean it suddenly becomes more feasible, and while I like the idea on its own, it just seems like it needed something more to make the trick more... useable. The way the man escaped the building itself though is brilliant, and I really like the thematic implications of this trick. 

Overall though, I wasn't that big a fan of Golem no Ori as a short story collection. Most of the stories follow this two-plot structure, with one "outer shell" story and a narrative-within-a-narrative with Usami somehow being placed into this narrative-within-a-narrative (often with a fantasy twist), but I often felt the synergy between the two plotlines was not as strong as they could've been, and because of that, the stories just felt a bit chaotic, as if they were two stories mashed together for... reasons I simply don't get. The book also starts a bit weak, with the last two stories being the clear outliers and having the most memorable mystery plots, but even then, I don't think the "outer shell" stories really add that much to the plot, so it's difficult for me to feel truly positive about the book. I'd recommend reading the last two stories if you happen to have the opportunity, but don't expect anything as good in the earlier stories.

Original Japanese title(s):柄刀一『ゴーレムの檻』:「エッシャー世界」/「シュレディンガーDOOR」/「見えない人、宇佐見風」/「ゴーレムの檻」/「太陽殿のイシス（ゴーレムの檻 現代版）」

Bathtub Murder

Undinus sich winden

『黒死館殺人事件』

 

 Undinus sich winden

"The Black Death Mansion Murder Case"

The Tattoo Murder Case is probably one of the earliest Japanese mystery novels I ever read, so kinda funny how I only got around to reading its sequel now...

Matsushita Kenzou receives from his old schoolmate Urabe Kouichi, who hopes Matsushita and their mutual friend Kamizu Kyousuke, the famous detective, will come and save his family. When they were attending school together, Kouichi had shown signs of having vague precognitive powers, which is something which appears to run in his family: his great-uncle is in fact Urabe Shunzai: Shunzai had exhibited great precognitive powers at a younger age and presented himself as someone who was chosen by heaven. He became the head of his own "new religion", the Crimson Spirit, which started out as a minor cult in their home village in the rural plains of Musashino, but which rapidly attracted more followers, some of them even with great political influence. At one time, the Crimson Spirit had its headquarters in a splendid mansion in the capital and Shunzai would even be consulted during the war, but his predictions then missed the mark, and after the war, the cult shrunk as quickly as it had once grown: at the moment, it's basically just Shunzai and his next of kin, being his three granddaughters Sumiko, Retsuko and Tokiko, as well as Kouji. Because Matsushita knows Kouichi has been right about his feelings in the past, he travels to the village, though he isn't able to get hold of the travelling Kamizu. As he arrives in the village, Matsushita runs into a strange man who, when hears Matsushita is going to visit the Urabes, is told a prophecy: that night one of the girls will die floating in water. Matsushita has barely arrived at the house and told Kouji about this prophecy, when suddenly Tokiko ends up poisoned, though she fortunately survives the attempt on her life. It turns out the strange man is called Rokurou, who is a faraway relative of the Urabes and once a high-ranking member of the Crimson Spirit. He has however denounced Shunzai as being "real" and has started his own cult now. Matsushita is of course offered to a bed for the night, but that evening, as everyone takes turn to take a bath, a noise attracts everyone to the bathroom, where Sumiko is taking a bath. They find the door locked, so break it open, only to find Sumiko dead in the tub: she has been stabbed in the chest with a dagger. However, the window was locked from the inside, and there had been someone standing outside the bathroom to guard her. When later, a sheet of paper is found where Rokurou has written more of his prophecies, which indicate Shunzai and his three granddaughters will die in different manners. Are their deaths inevitable and fixed by heaven, or is it the act of a murderous human being? That is to be determined by Kamizu Kyousuke in Takagi Akimitsu's Jubaku no Ie ("The Spellbound House", 1949-1950).

Jubaku no Ie is the second novel featuring Takagi Akimitsu's fictional detective Kamizu Kyousuke, who debuted in Shisei Satsujin Jiken ("The Tattoo Murder Case"), which had ended serialization the previous year. While Takagi seemed quite enthusastic when he started serializing this story, it appears reception at the time wasn't that good: letters came from readers who bashed it, and eventually Takagi even gave up some of his payment for the story to set up a contest, with a money reward for the person who could guess who the murderer was. The book features two Challenges to the Readers by the way, one being a relatively conventional one, but then a chapter later, he adds in another where he basically says "You can't be serious, you still don't get it!??", which might be the time when they did the contest, I suppose? And oddly enough, Takagi really likes to spoil Van Dine (as in: actually stating the name of the murderer of The Greene Family Murders): he does so in the Challenge to the Reader, but he also spoiled Van Dine in Noumen Satsujin Jiken. Oh, and in the story itself, he basically spoils The Murder of Roger Ackryoyd while talking about something else. Forewarned is forearmed.

As the scond novel in the series, Jubaku no Ie is one of the better known entries in the series, and has actually also (relatively) recently been adapted for the stage. So I had been looking forward to reading this book. Atmosphere-wise, Jubaku no Ie is pretty good: the backstory of the Crimson Spirit cult and how Shunzai abused his authority to get women and money from first villagers, and then the whole country until his empire crumbled is interesting, and provides a great set-up where the whole Urabe clan is more-or-less hated by everyone who once was involved, like everyone in the village who donated money to Shunzai until they realized he must be a fraud. Meanwhile, the three granddaughters were brought up by their grandfather and at least Sumiko and Retsuko are still devoted believers of their grandfather, being one of the few practicing followers left. The prophecy left by Rokurou, who started his own rival cult and is clearly 'winning' in terms of gaining power, predicts the whole bloodline of Shunzai will fall, with each of the four remaining persons dying via one of the four elements of air, water, fire and earth. With Sumiko dying as the first one in a locked (bath)room, you'd think this might be a very cool mystery novel, as at the very least, the atmosphere is great and I see opinions online that, very understandably, compare it to the dark atmosphere found in Yokomizo Seishi's Kindaichi Kousuke novels.

As a mystery novel, and one with two Challenges to the Reader no less, Jubaku no Ie is probably not as impressive as Takagi probably had hoped it to be. When you add a Challenge to the Reader, you of course expect not a conventional matter "whodunnit", as in, the book shouldn't just expect the reader to instinctively guess who the murderer is, but there should be a proper trail of clues pointing specifically at one person, while also proving other people didn't do it. After the first murder on Sumiko, Kamizu arrives late at the scene (together with the police), but he is not able to prevent more murders from happening. Most of the subsequent murders seem able to have been committed by any person though, and while there is another locked room murder later in the story, it is resolved fairly quickly mid-way (and has a rather straighforward solution), the main problem is the first bathroom murder, which is also the one thing Takagi focuses on in his Challenge to the Reader, setting specific parameters about this murder to ensure to the reader he's playing a fair game here. The problem here is basically two-fold: one is that Takagi in an attempt to be clever, actually basically tells a falsehood in this Challenge to the Reader, rendering the whole Challenge moot and even more problematic... he skims over crucial parts of how he says the locked room murder in the bathroom occured. Like, going solely by what is said in the text, you still don't know how it happened, as Takagi basically skips over the part that actually explains how the murder had been committed without leaving any clues as to how the murderer entered. While there are interesting parts about this locked room murder, because it is set in a Japanese-style bathroom with its own characteristics, I feel the mystery of Jubaku no Ie falls apart, as the whole Challenge is based on the bathroom murder, but then it skims over parts of the solution (the parts that would actually be an obstacle in terms of execution). In fact, parts of this solution go straight against reasons the book itself raised earlier, but which for some reason are not addressed again when the actual solution faces the exact same obstacles.

Funny how this second Kamizu Kyousuke novel also revolves around a bathroom murder by the way...

But no, overall Jubaku no Ie didn't manage to leave a good impression on me on the whole. While it certainly earns high marks in terms of atmosphere, with the cult background and a creepy poem foretelling four murders, the main locked room murder skims over its own solution, despite it being the focal point of the book's Challenge to the Reader. I think what ultimately Takagi was going for with this locked room murder could be interesting, but the execution here is sloppy, and just doesn't work.

Original Japanese title(s): 高木彬光『呪縛の家』

Finessing the King

"I have billions of eyes, yet I live in darkness. I have millions of ears, yet only four lobes. I have no muscle, yet I rule two hemispheres. What am I?"

"Batman: The Animated Series"

Rather than reading in a chair, I prefer reading lying in bed!

Anata mo Meitantei, or as the book also says in English on the inside: What A Great Detective You Are, is a short story collection originally published in 2022, which was re-released as a pocket in 2025. The book collects six stories by as many authors. The stories were originally published in the magazine Mysteries!, all being pure whodunnits/guess the criminal stories, meaning they are divided in two parts: the first part being the "problem", where the main mystery (usually a murder) is presented along with all the relevant characters and clues and which ends with a formal Challenge to the Reader. Originally, readers would then have some time to write in their answers, with money prizes awaiting the correct guessers. The second part would be published in the following issue, and of course consisted of the solution, where it is logically proven which of the character did it. While some readers might find these stories too artificial and puzzle-like, I absolutely love them: it's no surprise Suiri no Jikan Desu, a book with a similar set-up, was one of my favorite reads last year. Anyway, I was already familiar with all the writers in Anata mo Meitantei, and seeing them on the cover made me quite certain there'd be delights of detection here, so let's see what we have here.

The book opens with Ichikawa Yuuto's Akaenpitsu wa Iranai ("The Red Pencil Is Never Needed"), which is a part of his Maria & Ren series, though you don't need any prior knowledge, as this is actually a prequel story. It focuses on Ren's| teenager days, and is set in the early seventies, more than a decade before the main series starts with The Jellyfish Never Freezes. The story is set in the country of J(apan) and is (mostly) narratored from the POV of Kouno Matsuri, who, like Ren, is a member in their school's newspaper club. One day, Ren joins Matsuri on her way home, where he meets Matsuri's father Kouno Tadaharu, a famous photographer, though infamously a difficult man. He however seems to find Ren an interesting young man, as he invites him to stay for dinner, though Tadaharu himself seems more focused on his own work. Ren is given a tour of the house, which includes a work cabin in the garden with an electronic lock. Matsuri's aunt and uncle also arrive at the house, much to Matsuri's chagrin, as her aunt always bosses everyone around. Even though Ren's never met these people, even he can tell there's a lot of tension going between Matsuri, her mother and her aunt and uncle, so he sticks around and eventually it becomes so late he's offered a bed for that evening. In the middle of the night however, Matsuri is awakened by a knock on his door: Ren has noticed something very odd outside, two sets of footprints going to the cabin, but only one returning. Only Tadaharu's not found in the house, so they enter the cabin... to find Tadaharu killed. But which of the people in the house did it?

On the whole a very solid puzzle, though with some elements I personally don't really like in pure whodunnit puzzles. The atmosphere is great, with the reader feeling something will happen as all the actors gather in the Kouno house, and I think a lot of readers might find it pretty challenging to figure out even half of the lines of deduction needed to arrive at the truth. While the story isn't that long, Ichikawa actually manages to put (relatively) a lot of twists in this tale, all with proper clues and foreshadowing, and while some of the element used to 'cross out' suspects might feel a bit familiar, I think it's generally a good example of this type of story. I also like how Ichikawa used his main series for this story (this tale is also included in the first short story collection of the Maria & Ren series, The Boneyard Never Speaks), but I do have to say it doesn't feel very strongly connected to the main series besides for the appearance of Ren: it misses the light sci-fi elements of the main series, as well as the dual narrative all the novels have.

Yonezawa Honobu also wrote his story as part of one of his series: namely the Shoushimin series (recently adapated as a television anime series).  Berlin Agepan no Nazo ("The Berliner Pfannkuchen Mystery") is interesting, as the reader is technically not looking for a culprit, but for a victim! Kobato is once again roped into 'trouble' despite aspiring to be 'Petite Bourgeoisie' minding his own business. His friend Kengo is a member of the newspaper club, where they were planning on doing an article on Berliner Pfannkuchen: a German doughnut with a jam filling. A local bakery has started selling them, which gave one of the newspaper club members an idea: they were going to recreate the end-of-year tradition with Berliner Pfannkuchen: basically Russian roulette by having one of the doughnuts filled with mustard. Four people were going to play the game, with one other member having picked up the Berliner Pfannkuchen at the bakery and then swinging by the Cooking Club to have one of them filled with mustard. However, the time of destiny apparently never came: all four members ate one of the four doughnuts, but they all claim to not have eaten the one with mustard. This of course doesn't make for a fun newspaper article, and some people are starting to suspect the "victim" is trying to make this article a failure on purpose, so Kengo hopes Kobato can figure out who lost the Berliner Roulette.

I absolutely love the innocent premise of this story and how it switches things around to have you figure out who the victim was. That said, I think that as a pure puzzle, this one was set-up far too easy, and I'd argue it's far more likely the reader will solve this story more based on feeling and instinct, than based on the clues per se. In fact, a lot of the necessary information doesn't even feel like they are obtained via logical conclusions, but simply via asking questions to certain characters, who then gladly give up that information, so as a puzzle, I do think this story is by far the weakest of the collection, even though as a story, it's very enjoyable.

The third story is by Higashigawa Tokuya, and I actually already discussed back in 2020, as his Alibi no Aru Yougishatachi ("Suspects With Alibis") had been featured in the anthology Honkaku-Ou 2020, so I'd like to refer to that post if you want learn more about it. Its inclusion in Honkaku-Ou 2020 was actually how I first learned about the project that would eventually culminate in the publication of Anata mo Meitantei.

The fourth story Momiji no Nishiki ("Breathtaking Red Leaves") by Maya Yutaka is also a series story, and while I think readers familiar with Maya's best-known series will soon recognize certain characters, the 'formal reveal' of their identities comes late, so I'll refrain from specificying what series this is. The main focus is on a group of students who have travelled to a traditional inn with a hot spring in the mountains to celebrate their graduation. They also have some interest in a local deity called Chuuruu, which has two small shrines dedicated to it on two points on the mountain: one near the base of the mountain, and one at the top, with them being connected via narrow (inaccssible) cracks and cavities in the mountain. At the top of the mountain is also a sightseeing deck. The students all enjoy their time at the inn, relaxing in the hot springs and playing games with each other and observing the other guests. Among the other two guests are two men, who at the end of the story discover a dead body lying on a cliff below the sightseeing deck on the top of the mountain. It is clear the victim was killed, but by whom?

Definitely of the best stories in the book, one that best shows off how cool these puzzles can be. The way Maya just throws the Challenge at the reader with the discovery of the corpse is fantastic, as all the information you needed is actually already collected before the murder even happens. You don't even learn who the victim is when you're challenged: you are expected to deduce the identity of the victim yourself too, and yes, Maya actually did leave enough hints and clues in all the events leading up to the discovery of the victim to allow you to guess who the victim actually is. And that's just the first half of the problem, because then you still need to deduce who the murderer is, and still based on the information presented to you up until the discovery of the victim, so you have no data available from investigation/interrogation etc. regarding alibis. This is really a very well-constructed puzzle, and a great example of the logic-based mystery story.

Also funny: all the characters are named after stations on the JR Kashii line in Fukuoka, which was near where I lived in Fukuoka! I instantly recognized those names together!

In Norizuki Rintarou's Shinritekikashi Ari ("Stigmatized Property"), Rintarou (the fictional writer) is asked by his freelance writer 'friend' Iida Saizou to look into the mysterious death of a colleague: Matsuoka Shoukichi was a freelance writer on matters of finance and gambling, but recently started having a hit with a series of articles on his new apartment: he was renting an old place where the previous two inhabitants had died: one had died all alone in the apartment from natural causes, while the other had committed suicide. Now he believed the place was haunted, and his articles on his home attracted quite some attention. But Matsuoka himself then was found dead in his apartment too, having hung himself by the neck. There were people who might have wanted Matsuoka dead, as he seemed to dabble in blackmail too, but Matsuoka kept his new address very secret, so how could any of the suspects have killed him?

Very decent story, and I like it a lot for having an much more "open" set-up than most of the other stories, which featured closed-off settings. The latter format of course feels more fair as a way to limit the number of suspects, and the way it is done in this story might not be completely convincing (i.e. we know the victim approached a certain number of people, who seem to be the suspects), but Norizuki does actually make proper use of this more open set-up to write a whodunnit that genuinely utilizes its urban setting. We have a private camera of a nosy neighbor that catches the times people went in and out the apartment/crime scene and the location itself is used in a clever way to determine who the murderer is. I wouldn't have wanted all the stories in this volume to use this open set-up, but it works here exactly because the other stories are more limited in their settings.

Shirai Tomoyuki's Shiri no Aoi Shitai ("The Blue-Bottomed Body") is about a detective who is looking into the indie horror film Fufa and Kuha: rumors have it footage of an actual murder that occured during its filming had been used in the film. The detective manages to track down one of the few remaining copies of the film and someone who was involved in the whole ordeal, and he is told the story of how a few years ago a group of students in the university film club were helping out Sadoshima Souhei, a graduated former member who was directing his first indie horror film: Fufa and Kuha. The group were staying at a boarding house owned by the father of one of the members, located in the woods of a mountain, the perfect place to film a slasher. Shiori, the actress of the heroine, was contracted seperately, though from the way she spoke openly about very much wanting to fuck, and the way she was flirting with all the other men in the crew, she was hired by Sadoshima for other skills than her acting. However, one of the members then realized she was the same woman who caused the suicide of a former club member by seducing him and then fake a pregnancy to push for money. The following day, the actor playing the villain role hears some moaning coming from the van. He peeks inside through the half-open window, only to see Shiori being strangled by someone. He rushes back into the building to get the car keys and help, but by the time they return to the van, Shiori has been murdered. And she's lying completely naked in the van. It is at this point our detective claims he can point out who the murderer is, and the reader should be able to do that too!

Was this the shortest story? Anyway, it's interesting how Shirai uses some sexual elements in the solution's line of deduction: I think the first time he uses it, it's a bit tacky and not really convincing, but the way it's used later on is a lot better. The story reminds a bit of Hayasaka Yabusaka's work (the Raichi series) due to its use of sex in a mystery story, though I think at least in this example, Hayakawa generally does it better. I also found the murderer's plan rather risky: while I understand the underlying goal they wanted to achieve by doing all that, it seems like this was a rather dangerous plan (for themselves) to go for, with more a chance of failing at the first step of the plan than everything going as hoped...

On the whole, Anata mo Meitantei/What A Great Detective You Are is a really impressive short story collection, that shows off how fun the formal whodunnit/guess-the-culprit puzzle can be. We have a really talented group of writers in this book, and I loved they all wrote their stories as parts of their wel-known series (if applicable). I'd love to see another iteration of this!

Original Japanese title(s): 『あなたも名探偵』: 市川憂人「赤鉛筆は要らない」/ 米澤穂信「伯林あげぱんの謎」/ 東川篤哉「アリバイのある容疑者たち」/ 麻耶雄嵩「紅葉の錦」/ 法月綸太郎「心理的瑕疵あり」/ 白井智之「尻の青い死体」

Write, She Murdered

「これですべてが変わる……この俺の運命……カカロットの運命……そして……キサマの運命も!!」 

『ドラゴンボールZ たったひとりの最終決戦〜フリーザに挑んだZ戦士 孫悟空の父〜』

"Now everything changes. (...) As well as your fate. This is where it ends!

"Dragon Ball Z:  A Final, Solitary Battle: The Father of Z-Warrior Son Goku, Who Challenged Freeza"

Now I think of it, I haven't reviewed that many collaborative works here. This one is a bit different of course, considering the two didn't really work together...

A pushy person in need of money manages to sell off some documents to a mystery writer, but it turns out these documents actually contains a rather interesting, and mysterious account of a murder and the writer decides to have the manuscript published. The documents consist of a series of long letters, be written by a Sobue Shinichi, a journalist, writing to a friend, who may be the person who ended selling the manuscript. Sobue tells about the horrendous murder on Anezaki Saeko, a beautiful widow who one day was found murdered on the second floor of the storehouse in the garden. However, not only was she found completely naked for some reason, the storehouse itself was found locked from the inside. Anezaki and Sobue were both members of a club headed by Kumauchi where they dabble in spiritualism. The testimony of a legless vagrant (who couldn't have come up the second floor himself) tells the police two people approached the house during the time of the murder, a gentleman and a woman in an old-fashioned kimono, but the police can't find out who these people are. At the club, Professor Kurokawa, the strongest believer in spiritualism, wants to hold a seance to look into the matter: he takes care of a blind girl with spiritual powers and who can act as a medium. During the seance however, the girl (while possessed) not only declares the murderer is among them, but also that the beautiful woman in front of her will also die, and there's only one person in the club who answers to this description...

Thus goes the story Akuryou ("Evil Spirits") by Edogawa Rampo, a story that was never finished. The story originally started serialization late 1933, long after it had been originally announced and hit by delays. Rampo even skipped serialization twice during this time, and ultimately, Akuryou was cancelled after only three installments, with Rampo citing "various reasons" led to him giving up, including the fact he had started writing the story before the plot had been properly developed yet. In 2024, Ashibe Taku finally gave Akuryou a proper conclusion: his Rampo Satsujin Jiken - Akuryou Futatabi ("The Rampo Murder Case - Return of Evil Spirits", 2024) is a collaborative work with the late Rampo, containing not only the original three installments of Akuryou, but also including an original ending by Ashibe, clewed together by him based on the three existing installments. And not only that, Ashibe even offers an explanation to why Rampo gave up on the project in the first place... 

Rampo Satsujin Jiken - Akuryou Futatabi  is in many ways a very special book. It basically tells two stories on two layers: it has the original unfinished Akuryou manuscript by Edogawa Rampo, which of course tells a story on two levels: the story of the detective writer who bought the manuscript, and the story within those letters (the Anezaki murder). Ashibe too finishes these two stories on both levels, and even adds an extra layer to the story that explains why Rampo ended up cancelling this serialization. The result is a story that jumps back and forth a few times, and which can be confusing at first, but things do come together in the end.

What caught my attention at once was the physical element of the book by the way. Publisher Kadokawa uses very different fonts to differentiate the various elements of the story, so you can instantly see whether you are reading the original serialized Akuryou pages, or the new original pages by Ashibe. The font used in the Akuryou parts do really look like the font used in older early Showa publications (and even look slightly smudged like you're really reading an old book), and it really helps sell the vibe of reading an old, genuine Rampo story.

Anyway, it is very hard to judge this book on its merits as a mystery story. Fact remains that Edogawa Rampo abandoned the story mid-way and left no notes as to indicate how the story was supposed to end, so all Ashibe could do was use whatever was already there: he had to play detective himself, find the clues Rampo left and find out the solution himself! Of course, Ashibe had more creative freedom than a real detective: it wasn't as if he had to build the solution solely on the elements featured in the first three installments, as he was able to freely add segments retroactively, but still, Ashibe of course tried to keep the "original" Akuryou intact as much as possible, and have his solution stick as close as possible to the original Rampo manuscript. That is what makes this a difficult story to judge, because Ashibe's hands were tied. 

Some parts of the mystery, like the locked room murder of Anezaki Saeko, were already quite fleshed out in the original script, and Ashibe is able to put forward a solution that seems well grounded in Rampo's work, but other parts of the original mystery must have been more troublesome to Ashibe, like the mystery of a curious drawing on a note found inside the locked room: attributing a meaning to that sketch in a way that ties it to the murder must have been an insanely strange challenge and while I do think Ashibe did a good job at providing an answer to it, the original idea of the drawing itself was never really that interesting to me as it always seemed to me the answer would feel a bit forced, or at least trivia-reliant, and Ashibe's answer doesn't stray far from that expectation. In a way, that's of course impressive: it definitely feels like Rampo...  I know from experience that some of Rampo's serialized longer works often feel like he didn't plan that much in advance, and often his set-ups for mysterious events were much better than the solutions he'd later provide. In a way, I feel Ashibe's conclusion to the story has elements of this too, but at the same time, I can't really blame him considering it was Rampo who set everything up, and Ashibe simply had to guess what the solution could be. And style-wise, I can't deny Ashibe managed to nail Rampo's work. He clearly studied Rampo's writing, so the additions don't feel out of place, and you could imagine this being the genuine ending to Akuryou. And in that sense, I do think Rampo Satsujin Jiken is an impressive work, more so than in the sense of it being a mystery story on its own.

Interestingly, it appears that even if this book were to win an award, the credits would likely go more towards Rampo than Ashibe. While the two authors share the credits on the cover, the bulk of the book consists of the original Akuryou manuscript, so that apparently has influence on who would be the main recipient of a hypothetical award, even if I do think the book's interesting exactly because of the transformation by a second author.

So Rampo Satsujin Jiken - Akuryou Futatabi is not per se a book I would recommend to a mystery fan, because as an standalone mystery novel, it is really mostly a 1930s Rampo serialized novel with all the haphazard planning and somewhat disappointing payoff to the set-up. However, with the surrounding context of Ashibe coming with an original conclusion based on the unfinished story, him emulating the style and offering an explanation why Akuryou was never finished, you get a story that is infinitely more interesting than Akuryou on its own. So recommended to Rampo fans, and people who want to see Ashibe live out his fanboy dream and finishing one of Rampo's work.

Original Japanese title(s): 江戸川乱歩、芦辺拓『『乱歩殺人事件―「悪霊」ふたたび』

Mine Your Own Business

"Moria. You fear to go into those mines. The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dûm. Shadow and flame."

"The Fellowship of the Ring"

It's not actually set in the city of Fukuoka, but it is set in the Chikuhou region within the prefecture and plenty of characters use the local dialect, so I count it as my "I try to read at least one story set in Fukuoka once a year" story for this year!

When Motoroi Hayata first arrived at the prestigious Kenkoku University in Manchukuo, he believed in its ideals of ethnic harmony and a greater East-Asian power sphere, but his time there left him disillusioned, as he soon realizes there was no harmony here: Japanese students and teachers were treated as being superior, while the people from other locations like the Korean peninsula were treated as second-rate, only there to serve the Japanese. This hypocrisy of the Japanese empire's goals became painfully clear to Hayata. After the war, he found a steady job in Osaka, but one day, he just gives up and decides to just quit his job and take the train south (because the north is cold). He has no destination in mind, but decides to get off the train at Ketsune in the Chikuhou region in Fukuoka, as the view reminds him of his time in Manchukuo. He's barely out on the station, when he is approached by a man who wants to recruit Hayata as a miner. Hayata is almost forced inside a truck ready to go, but is saved by a man pretending to know Hayata. His savior introduces himself as Aizato Minoru, who explains that during the war, he had been a recruiter for a mining company himself in the Korean peninsula: while ostensibly, they only recruited volunteers, he has to admit they basically forced people to come with them to work in the mines in Fukuoka, as coal was a necessary resource for the war. The memory of the young Korean Jeong Nam-seon in particular remains a troublesome one for Aizato: the two men had a special bond, as both reminded the other of their own older brothers. Despite Aizato's attempt to get him off, Nam-seon too was forced to sign up to work for the mining company and he ended up at the worst possible mine, where Koreans were basically treated as slaves as they mined for coal, and Nam-seon would eventually find his demise during an air raid. After the war, Aizato stopped his job as a recruiter and became a coal miner himself at the Nenne Mines at Mount Yako, as a way to make amends for his past. Which is why he also tried to save Hayata from being recruited, but Hayata feels he wants to make up for his past too, and he asks Aizato to help him get employed at Nenne Mines too.

At the Nenne Mines, Hayata soon learns life as a miner s is still very harsh, even if it's better than during the war. While the miners aren't treated as full slaves now, the long shifts in the darkness are far from light work, especially as all mining companies try to maximize profits and of course, safety often ends up the first victim, meaning the risk of cave-ins and other crises always remain very present. Hayata ends up living together with Aizato in the singles dormitory, and soon learns Aizato is kind of a loner within the community, which Hayata suspects might have to do with Aizato's past as a recruiter. Hayata is a bit more social, and through his talks with his co-workers, he learns about the superstitions miners have. He hears ghost stories about mysterious women appearing in the deepest of the mine tunnels who offer to help lonely miners, but it seldom ends well for them. Foxes are worshipped as the deities of Mount Yako, with the white fox being worshipped as a symbol of prosper and great harvest (coal output), while the black fox is feared as a symbol of bad harvest, and it is said that people who die in the mine tunnels, are turned into a black fox themselves. One morning, as they are working the early shift, one man cries out: a cave-in! Veterans soon recognize the characteristic sound of the ceiling sinking in, and everyone tries to find their way out, when another disaster strikes: gas! The miners barely make it out in time, with some of them being carried out because they already inhaled too much gas. When the supervisors check their lists, they however learn one man didn't make it out: Aizato Minoru. It turns out his mining buddy of today didn't wait for Aizato as he fled their tunnel, a deed many consider absolutely unforgivable as even if you don't like your co-workers really, miners never leave each other behind. Which is why the miners also become infuriated when the mining company seems very reluctant to send their rescue unit down the mines to save Aizato, citing the risk on more cave-ins and the gas, and they will only attempt it after doing a daily canary test (sending canaries down the mines to see if they survive the gas). While the miners try to convince the company to send their rescue unit sooner, Hayata is approached by the girl who works in the canteen, as children saw something odd at this time: a man wearing a black fox mask entered the room of Kido, a former miner of Korean descent who works as a handyman around the mining village. The black fox is feared by everyone here, so Hayata agrees to have a look in Kido's room, as Kido's living in the room next to Aizato and his. When he enters Kido's room however, he finds Kido's body hanging from a shimewana, a sacred rope usually found at shrines. At first, it looks like suicide, but where did the man with the black fox mask go? The children have actually kept an eye on the front door ever since the figure entered the room, and the windows in the back can't actually be opened due to the bad building quality of the dormitory, so the figure couldn't have escaped unseen! When then more people in the dormitory end up dead in a similar way, hanging from shimewana in locked rooms, people start to fear it's Aizato's spirit, turned into a black fox and looking for more people to join him in the depths of the mines, but Hayata isn't quite convinced as he decides to investigate these murders in Mitsuda Shinzou's 2016 novel Kokumen no Kitsune ("The Black-Faced Kitsune").

As a big fan of Mitsuda's Toujou Genya series, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed when I read Ikan, his first novel: whereas I feel the Genya series hit a great balance between horror and a genuine well-plotted detective, Ikan was clearly more horror. Of course, I know Mitsuda also writes conventional horror, but I am not really interested in that. However, in my search for stories that in spirit are closer to the Genya series, I soon found about Kokumen no Kitsune. When Mitsuda first started doing his research for this novel, it was actually with the intention of writing a Genya novel set around a coal mine, but as Mitsuda read more and more about it, he felt the theme didn't really fitted the Genya series, and he decided to make it its own standalone novel. Still, this book is far closer to the Genya series than Ikan was, though it is also definitely not just a Genya novel with different characters, and it certainly works best as its own thing.

For one of the greatests feats of this novel is definitely the depiction of the harsh, gritty life of miners in Japan both during and after World War II. The story takes a long time for the set-up of the murders, and the mystery doesn't really get started until halfway the novel, but the lead-up time is used excellently to introduce the reader to the horrifying life as a miner. This is a horror novel, but a lot of the horror is actually based on reality: we hear about Aizato's past where he was a miner recruiter during the war, and the stories we hear about how they basically kidnapped people to work in the mines as de-facto slaves is just terrifying. This is also put in an international context, as we learn how as the war continued and resources became scarce, the Japanese empire eventually decided to "recruit" Koreans from their colonies to work in the coal mines of nearby Kyushu. Promises of high pay and just a one or two year contract after which they were free to go, were of course quickly broken, and while the Japanese miners were treated slightly more favorably, it was clear that miners were just a replacable resource to the companies running the mines, with safety never winning from coal output in terms of priorities. While things improved after the war, you still have ruthless recruiters who try to force lonely people in signing contracts, and even now, safety is not a priority for many of the mining companies, like at the Nenne Mines, which doesn't even have its own rescue unit, but has to wait for one to be sent from the main company in case anything happens (and of course, by the time such a unit arrives, hours if not days will have passed).

And we're just talking about the "outside" working circumstances here, but crawling into pitch-dark tunnels with just a light on your helmet and having to choose between wearing clothes to protect your body from the stones or wearing nothing because it's insanely hot inside the tunnels, carrying buckets full of coals to carts which need to moved out too and of course the danger of cave-ins and gas are all things that don't really make the life of a miner fun. In the first half of the book we hear also a lot about the superstitions of miners, like them at least trying to appease the fox spirits of Mount Yako, or stories about ghosts appearing in the depths of the tunnels when people work alone or about people who die and are left in the tunnels become spirits who roam the surface to take others along. Great stuff here, that really set a spooky atmosphere.

In the second half, after the cave-in and Aizato being left behind in the gas-filled mines, the mystery really starts with the apparent suicide of Kido in his room. Children saw a man wearing a black fox mask enter the room, but didn't see him leave through the front door, even though they were watching it until Hayata arrived at the scene. The back window was not locked, but the whole building was built rather shoddily, and like with parts of Aizato/Hayato's room, the window's simply completely stuck in the frame. At first, Kido's death is treated as a suicide, even if using a shimewana to hang yourself is a bit weird, but the following day, another neighbor of Hayata's found dead in his own room, and this time it's a real locked room, with the door and windows all locked and bolted.  The days after, even more people in the dorm die under the same circumstances, which soon fuel rumors of Aizato's spirit having escaped the mines to kill these people, but Hayata is of course quite convinced a real person killed these men somehow and tries to investigate these deaths, but the managers of the mining company seem very intent on handling these deaths as suicides, as a murder investigation would of course put a halt on mining activities for some time.

I do have to say that as a locked room mystery, Kokumen no Kitsune isn't as intricately plotted as the bangers we see in the Genya series. I think the first one, with the figure seen to enter Kido's room but not leave, is the best in the sense it fits the unique setting of a small miner's community the best by far. Subsequent locked rooms were less interesting I think: whereas in the Genya novels Mitsuda presents insanely densily plotted mysteries with all kinds of clues eventually coming together to point at the solution and often show synergy between the multiple impossible situations, that is not really the case here. The solutions to the individual locked rooms come rather suddenly, with Hayata just realizing how they were done even though he didn't really investigate the crime scenes and there wasn't really a particular reason why he couldn't have realized it earlier (there was no specific impulse that made the deduction only possible later). Synergy between the various locked rooms is also nearly nihil, meaning that solving one case doesn't necessarily lead to an epiphany regarding a different one, which is something I really liked about the Genya plots. That said, setting the individual locked rooms aside, I did really like Kokumen no Kitsune on the whole, as the way the plot is set in motion and how characters behave and by extent, make this murder mystery possible, is firmly set in the realistic post-war world of miners as portrayed by Mitsuda, and the way he also ties it to miner's superstitions is really good. There's not much delving into folklore and the meaning behind customs/traditions like in the Genya stories here, so you get a lot of spooky stories without an "explanation" to them, but that really helps sell the setting of the mines, a place not even the people who work in the deepest parts of the mountains, truly comprehend.

So overall, I did enjoy Kokumen no Kitsune a lot. As for the mystery plot, it doesn't reach the highest heights of the Genya series at all, but it still managed to scratch that itch of mine for well-plotted horror-mystery with an emphasis on local folklore/ghost stories, and in this book, we also get a very fascinating look in the lives of coal miners in post-war Japan, and that part is absolutely the highlight. The mining community and their circumstances are also put to good use for the mystery plot, providing a unique location that you simply won't find in other stories. 

Original Japanese title(s): 三津田信三『黒面の狐』

Fire, Burn!

"You call it hope—that fire of fire!"

"Tamerline"

When I read this... it was not a hot summer day, but a surprisingly cool one, and by the time this review is posted, it's probably a cold winter day...

Agni no Atsui Natsu ("Agni's Hot Summer") sounds like an adult video title, but it's actually the first novel starring the young photographer and amateur detective Minami Mikikaze, whom first made his debut as a character in a short story collection by Tsukatou Hajime. The story is told from the point of view of Seiji, a young man who is the second son of Kyoujirou, a famous fossil fuel scientist who is involved with several companies in the fuel and energy industry. Kyoujirou was married to Erika, mother of the brothers Kouji and Seiji, but she was murdered six years ago, and her murderer was never caught. They still hold a small service every year to commemorate Erika and after that, a small circle of family and friends gather at private resort that used to belong to Erika's grandmother: it's a huge park with a lot of green and even a hiking path, with several cottages and two communal buildings spread across the property. The whole resort is of course fenced off completely and the private park has been used by Kyoujirou as both a second home, as well as a more relaxed location to entertain guests and discuss business. While most of the people are already there on the day of the service, like of course Kouji and Seiji, but also their aunt (Erika's sister) and uncle, Kyoujirou himself had to bring some of his foreign guests back to the airport after the service, and he and his secretary stayed at the hotel that evening to return the day after. Upon his return to the resort, he has a business meeting with Kouji and one of his advisors, after which he goes jogging with Kouji and then they split up, with Kyoujirou retreating to his own room in the large main building. A perfectly normal, hot summer day.

Kouji and Seiji are relaxing on the terrace of Kouji's cottage, when they suddenly hear a loud crack, and when they look up and notice black smoke rising from the main building. They remember their father is still inside so run up to his room, as do the two other guests at the resort. The source of all the smoke is in Kyoujirou's private rooms, but they can't open the door, as a wild fire is raging inside. They quickly scan the other rooms in the main building, but can't find any trace of Kyoujirou, so it is feared he's indeed in his own room. When the firefighters have finally extinguished the fire, the room is completely lost: even the flooring has fallen through. And everyone's greatest fear is confirmed: Kyoujirou died in his room. But not the way they expected: Kyoujirou had been stabbed with a knife! It appears his murderer killed the man and then set fire to the room. The firefighters also find a memento of Erika, which had been placed at the small shrine in the other communal building just after Kyoujirou arrived at the resort that morning: Kyoujirou had been in the presence of other people since that moment, who can swear he didn't bring the memento to his room himself, meaning it must have been the murderer who placed it at the crime and arson scene for some reason. The fire was also surprisingly intense, being much hotter than a normal fire and even completely burning Kyoujirou's body, making his face completely unrecognisable, and it is suspected some kind of chemical was used to start the fire: in other case an unusual thing to do, but as the people here were all involved with Kyoujirou's fuel company... As there were only four people at the resort at the time of the arson, it seems clear one of them must be the murderer, but police investigation soon shows this seems impossible: witnesses not only the main entrance of the main building under observation basically the whole time after Kyoujirou entered, they also had eyes on each other most of the time, as they were all standing in front of their own cottages. Meanwhile, Seiji's aunt and uncle return to the resort to bring a surprising guest: Minami Mikikaze is a photographer who was supposed to make pictures of Kyoujirou for an upcoming event, but the young man seems rather interested in this murder case and soon asks some very clever questions...

It's interesting how Agni no Atsui Natsu is the first novel with Mikikaze, as it's actually really short. Most of the stories I read with Mikikaze, are relatively long: the phenomenal Misshitsu Kingdom (Kingdom of the Locked Room, 2007) is one of the longest locked room mysteries, but that is an outlier, of course. Still, in more recent years, Mikikaze has been starring in a sub-series with stories inspired by the first few Ellery Queen novels: some of the "short" stories (more like novellas) in these short story collections are much longer than Agni no Atsui Natsu, a standalone release, itself!

Because of its relatively limited length, Tsukatou has to move pretty quickly, and the first half of the book might feel very artificial: it's clear he's just setting up all the pieces of his mystery, moving characters around to get them into position and to give you all the necessary clues. As often in the Mikikaze series, his writing style is one the reader really needs some adjusting too: while the language Tsukatou uses is not complex at all, his narration style can make his stories somewhat hard to read, as he often likes to start a scene kind of in media res, with characters talking about information you had never heard about, and then it jumps back again to introduce said information, but it's not like the in media res beginning adds anything mystery-wise: there's no payoff, just a short moment of confusion. He might as well have presented all the information in chronological order from the beginning, as he always just explains everything properly a few pages later. He does this a few times every chapter, so it makes his stories far harder to reader than they should be. It's somewhat reassuring to know he did this from the beginning, and it wasn't something he developed recently... Anyway, the first half can be a bit boring as you'll hear about how character A wasn't watching the main building for two minutes, while character B saw character A for three minutes etc., but do pay attention, because Tsukatou manages to cram a lot of clues and foreshadowing in this segment, which do pay off in the second half.

Agni no Atsui Natsu is not formally an impossible crime, but it is practically one: there was only a very limited window of opportunity (two minutes) for the murderer to get in and out the main building where the victim was without being seen by any witnesses, in which they then would have needed to kill an adult man and somehow set fire to the room. While such impossible crimes usually focus more howdunnit, Tsukatou clearly enjoys the Ellery Queen-mode of culprit-focused deductions more, something we also saw in Misshitsu Kingdom and of course the Nationalities books, but I was surprised to see it being his preferred mode in this first Mikikaze novel too. Tsukatou does a great job exploring how each of the suspects could perhaps have committed the seemingly impossible crime, which involves the murderer retrieving Erika's memento, go in the main building unseen, commit the murder, set fire to the room and escape the main building again: it is here you might be surprised to learn how so much of the (slow) first half ends up being used as a clue upon which to build chains of reasoning, and of course, those densely laid-out clues are also used to disprove many of these otherwise convincing sounding theories. I honestly fell for some of the false theories, thinking I had an idea of what happened, only to be proven in a completely fair and logical way how that wouldn't work.

As more and more theories are crossed out, few possibilities remain of course, and ultimately we arrive at a solution that might not be super surprising, but I really liked the logical route to that revelation. To be honest, the actual howdunnit behind the murder on Kyoujirou seems a bit doubtful in terms of actual feasibility, but in the end, that's a relatively minor part of the novel, as the focus lies more on the logical process of determining who of the suspects could've committed the crime in that way, and considering this is actually a very short novel, I find the result quite impressive: I've read much longer novels that don't have even half the number of properly clewed, but false theories or feature so many "traps" for the reader. The way the current murder ties back to the murder on Erika six years ago also has some clever features: while it is mostly an "epilogue" thing and you aren't really expected to solve that murder based on the clues provided, there's a really cool element to it that honestly could've been explored more, and it would have made this novel a bit longer/give it more volume. As it is now, it's definitely a puzzler-type of story and little beyond that, but delving more into the past murder would've given us more context to why certain characters acted certain ways.

So Agni no Atsui Natsu is a very short, and very focused mystery novel that doesn't try to be anything more than an Ellery Queen-type of whodunnit puzzler, but considering the page length, it's quite impressive how much Tsukatou managed to stuff in the plot. Is it perfect? No, it definitely has holes and parts that could've been fleshed out more to make it a more convincing novel, but as someone who loves these kinds of deduction-chain-based mysteries, I'd say Agni no Atsui Natsu is worth a read, especially as an example to see how you can have a(n) (quasi) impossible crime, and not focus on the howdunnit. Tsukatou does this better in Misshitsu Kingdom of course, and that is a must-read I think, but that book is also six times longer...

Original Japanese title(s): 柄刀一『火の神（アグニ）の熱い夏』