Accident by Design

Firmitas, utilitas et venustas 

"De architectura"  

 

Firmness, commidity and delight 

"On Architecture"

I wanted to say it'd be cool to have a mystery set in an Escher building, but then I remembered I already read one....

Kenchiku Shizai (2001), which also carries the English title The Builded Dead on the cover, is the 11th winner of the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award and is the "professional" debut of author Monzen Noriyuki, though he had previously self-published a different novel (interestingly enough, that book got a professional release later on). Monzen studied architecture in university, which is all too clear in his debut novel, which originally was sent in to the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award committee under the title The Building That Eats People. The book is narrated by Miyamura Tatsuya, a man in his thirties who's having a long holiday in Nagoya: after attending to a friend's wedding there, he decided to stay at his uncle and aunt's place, which is also an udon restaurant. His cousin Yuuichi is still in high school and (should be) studying for his university entrance exams, which explains why he is still up late at night. One evening, Yuuichi spots a light source moving about on one of the floors of the construction site across the street: a large new building is being erected there, but work has been paused for a few days due to the obon holiday season. His childhood friend Momose, whose father is a subcontractor for the construction site and working in their own workshop to meet a deadline, also sees the light. The two keep an eye on the building, and eventually confide to Tatsuya about the intruder. They decide to sneak inside the construction site to see what's happening. Fortunately, all the foundational work is already done, with the load-bearing walls/support pillars and the stairs finished, allowing them to move about relatively safely. They spot a shadowy figure and chase them into a meeting room on the second floor, but the figure locks the door behind them. Momose is sent to watch the windows outside, while Tatsuya and Yuuichi try to get into the room, which they eventually do by breaking through one of the non-bearing walls. However, they find nobody inside, and the windows are locked from the inside. The trio are puzzled by the disappearance of the figure, and Yuuichi and Momose stay up all night to see if they can spot the figure escaping the site, but it appears the shadow has really just disappeared into thin air.

The following day, they contact Kumote, the on-site supervisor, as he's the only one in authority whom Yuuichi knows the address of, and who hasn't gone somewhere travelling during the holiday season. They have another look in the half-finished building together, while Yuuichi explains what happened the previous night, and suggesting the figure might have hidden themselves inside the walls, but Kumote explains the process of constructing the various walls in the building and how it'd be impossible to either hide into a load-bearing wall, or how they would've instantly spotted someone in one of the non-finished non-bearing walls. The mystery is left unsolved by these men, but then the police becomes involved in a rather surprising manner. The president of the contruction company has gone missing, and the previous day, a cut-off finger had been sent to his home. His secretary is missing too, and one of her body parts was also sent to her home. This also happened to a teacher, who seems to have no connection to the president or the secretary. It also turns out a day worker with no fixed address had sneaked into the construction site on the same night as Yuuichi, Momose and Tatsuya did, hoping to stay in the half-finished building during the holiday, knowing it would be empty. However, he claims he fled the scene when he found three bodies cut up in pieces there, The police suspects those are the bodies of the people they are looking for, but where are the bodies? It seems obvious to assume they are somewhere in the building, but the workers themselves, with their expertise of actually constructing the walls/ceilings/floors seem very sceptical of the possibility of that, as most of the construction involving concrete/mortar was already finished and you'd instantly know if something was 'added' later on. However, when more murders occur at the construction site, it seems clear the building is indeed the crux of this mystery and it is Kumote, with his knowledge of building a house, who tackles this challenge.

A challenge indeed, but not for the reason you might expect at first. The book immediately makes an impression when you open it, as you'll find the volume opens with very detailed floor plans of the five-storey building around which most of the mystery revolves. And while having each floor printed on its own page isn't that uncommon (especially not in Japanese mysteries), the fact each floor is in fact printed on tracing paper is highly unusual! It is here Monzen already shows his familiarity with building design and construction, as tracing paper is used extensively in those fields and it is used here in the book like it is used 'in real life', to show exactly how each of the floors overlap, making you aware of where walls on different floors overlap or not and how corridors/rooms are different between floors. This of course seems to suggest something incredibly clever will be done with this... but I'd say 90% of the justification of this insert, is simply to be authentic, and not per se to faciliate the mystery. Which is a shame, because I was genuinely surprised by these pages when I first opened the book.

In a way, this experience with the very first pages of the book perfectly symbolizes my experience with the whole work. Throughout the book, Monzen really shows he's an expert on the topic of designing and constructing a building and you can feel his enthusiasm throughout the book as he builds the mystery, but it's also his knowledge that really limits the possibilities behind the book. A lot of the mystery revolves around what the murderer did with the three bodies seen by the homeless worker that night: Yuuichi and Momose didn't see anyone carrying three people's worth of body parts out of the building and because the police didn't manage to find the bodies in open spots in the building under construction, the most "mystery-tropey" solution would of course be that the bodies are buried in the walls, but Kumote quickly rejects that possibility by giving lectures on how buildings like these are actually constructed, and with most of the supporting concrete 'parts' of the building set and finished long ago and the non-bearing walls/floors/ceilings simply not lending themselves for hiding spots. Via Kumote, we learn Monzen has obviously given a lot of thought about whether the body-in-the-wall trick could work realistically without anyone noticing, and he gives several detailed reasons why he thinks that's unlikely.

So that leaves the question, where did the bodies in fact go? And how did the dark figure Yuuichi, Momose and Takuya chased, disappear from the locked meeting room? And later in the book, we have another murder on the roof, and all the suspects seem to have a good alibi for this murder, as the time of the crime can be estimated by the fact the murderer left their footprints on a part of the flooring that hadn't set completely yet at that time. While this book thus has as few impossible mysteries (a locked room disappearance even).... I have to admit I basically found all the solutions a bit disappointing. Ironically, this was not because Monzen didn't do his homework on the topic: in fact, it is the exact opposite. He was so thorough in sticking to actual architectural details and realism, the tricks he ends up using just come over as too... plain? While Kenchiku Shizai is definitely a honkaku mystery novel where they talk about locked room mysteries and impossible disappearances and tropes like hiding bodies in the walls, Monzen ends up with far too few options for truly surprising solutions to his own mysteries, and you end up feeling a bit... indifferent to the reveals of what really happened. I can agree his takes would work in real-life at a real construction site, but that doesn't make those solutions really exciting or anything, they just seem like more... realistic and practical versions of tricks I have seen used in more unrealistic, but infinitely more amusing manners, or at least presented with more energy and surprise. I think if you're into architecture, this book can be quite interesting, especially after seeing the more fantastical ways in which buildings are used in Japanese mystery fiction, but for me, it just felt lacking because of the reality.

That said, there are also really brilliant points that help support the mystery. The motive behind the death of one of the victims is really the kind of ideas I love to see in mystery fiction: it strangely fits the realistic angle of Monzen in this book despite also being pretty crazy. The same regarding another late murder: there is a very specific reason for the victim to be found with a knife in his back, which is also brilliantly realistic and at the same time so out-of-there. It's moments like these that really make an impression especially because they make a perversion of the rather realistic look at the construction industry and they really did help elevate my experience with the book.

 On one hand, I can really appreciate the research Monzen poured into this book, and it results in a book that is really educative about how a building is built, knowledge which of course comes in handy in a genre with a lot of quirky buildings with weird gimmicks. But on the other hand, Kenchiku Shizai's main mysteries are all resolved with rather plain solutions because of Monzen is bound by this realism. It's when he dares to go a bit beyond those limits, when the book feels the most memorable. I wouldn't call this book a complete disappointment though. I am aware there are more books with Kumote as the detective (and architecture/building construction as the theme), and I am curious to see what else Monzen can do with his knowledge, so I will probably try more of his books, so I will likely return to him in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 門前典之『建築屍材』

Diagnosis of Murder

Primum non nocere

First, do not harm

I like the style of the illustrations on this cover, though I wish it was a bit more obvious which character is supposed to be who in the book. And before I had a good look at the cover at full size, I only knew it from a small thumbnail, and I thought the art would be similar to Tezuka Osamu's art, which... isn't really the case now I see it at full size.

EDS Kinkyuu Suiri Kaiketsuin, which also has the English title EDS Emergency Detective Services on the cover, is a rather interesting anthology of mystery writers, all using the same original setting: in the near future, Japan has erected the Emergency Detective Services, which functions like the emergency department of a hospital: people with medical emergencies that require a detective are brought here. The hospital has a large of number of specialist departments, from doctors handling children and animals to specialists who 'cure' impossible crimes and other curious mysteries. The doctors at this hospital are referred to Holmeses, while their assistants are called Watsons. This book contains stories by Ishimochi Asami, Kagami Masayuki, Kuroda Kenji, Komori Kentarou, Takada Takafumi, Tsukatou Hajime, Torikai Hiu, Matsuo Yumi and Nikaidou Reito, who is likely the planner of this large project as he also wrote the preface. All the stories in this book are set on the same day (the twenty-fourth of December), and each of these writers takes on one of the many departments of the EDS. Have a look at this hospital, where for some characters it's just another day at work, while for others it's a literal matter of life of death.

I first learned about the existence of this volume when I read The Uncollected Stories of Masayuki Kagami, which ironically included Kagami Masayuki's contribution to this volume, The Uncanny Deductions Department (which I won't discuss here, as I refer to that review for my thoughts on it). I say ironically, because obviously, his story was already collected in EDS Kinkyuu Suiri Kaiketsuin. Anyway, I wasn't aware of it at the time, but later I learned Kagami's story was just of many set at the EDS. Which also brings me to one other point I wanted to discuss before moving on to the individual departments/stories. When I read Kagami's story, I noticed how the scenes were all time-stamped, to give you a feeling of the "emergency" going in, but it actually had another function. While Kinkyuu Suiri Kaiketsuin features nine authors, writing about ten different departments, the stories are all set on the same day in the same hospital... so they decided to put all the scenes of all the stories in chronological order. So you are not reading story 1, and then story 2, and story 3, but it's scene 1 of story 1, then scene 1 of story 5, then scene 1 of story 4, etc. You are constantly jumping between stories, and while there are moments this feeling of "real-time"-ness is used for example for cameos between the stories, it's not actually necessary to read these stories like this: to be honest, they read a lot easier as seperate stories, instead of constantly being interrupted by other stories, so if you want to, you could just as well just read all the stories individually. The book's formatting and design is done really well by the way, with "tabs" on the edge of the page like it were a file folder, marking each department/story, so you can easily skip to the next part ("tab") of the story you want to read. 

Ishimochi Asami's story is set in the Inchoushitsu  ("Director's Office"), where the director of the EDS is visited by Minai Nanase, whose father used to work in the Poison Department of the EDS, until he died under mysterious circumstances last year: a John Doe who appeared to have been in a fire was brought in one night, but there were too few staff that night: the triage Watson couldn't find the right "Holmes" (specialist) to help the man, until the Holmes Minai happened to pass by and decided he'd try his hand. They failed in saving their patient, unfortunately, and later on the Holmes Minai summoned the Watson in charge to his office. Yelling and fighting followed, and when other people entered the office, they found both men dead: the Watson had been stabbed with a pair of scissors, which were being held by the dead Minai, who had apparently hit his head on the corner of a desk. It appeared Minai had stabbed the Watson, only to be pushed away himself, hitting his head on the desk fatally. The whole deal was hushed up, but now daughter Nanase has returned, demanding to know the real truth, because she can't believe her father would have killed the Watson for whatever reason. She threatens the director by showing she has planted a camera on Sayuri, the young daughter of the chief receptionist, who always at the hospital. Nanase has gifted Sayuri a Santa hat (with camera) and a bag with something that might "go off" if Nanase clicks her pen, forcing the director to give her all the infomation about the death of her father, hoping to clear his name. This is a pretty thrilling story playing out in the director's office, even though nobody in the hospital itself knows what is going there. The mystery regarding why Minai and the Watson ended up dead last year is pretty good, with subtle clues pointing to a well-hidden explanation for why the two men ended up fighting and killing each other. This story by the way also mentions a Holmes called Ukai, who hails from Ikagawa City... Author Ishimochi debuted together with Higashigawa Tokuya via publisher Kobunsha's Kappa-One program, which is why they know each other pretty well, and probably why Ishimochi decided to insert a cameo of Higashigawa's character here.

Nikaidou Reito is responsibile for two storylines, but both of them are very light. The Uketsuke ("Reception") story features more like intermezzos between the various stories, featuring cameos of characters from all the stories. The Shouni Suirika ("Children's Deductions Department") story stars six-year old Shibugaki, a guest Holmes who narrates like he's a hardboiled detective. He solves a few minor mysteries fellow children bring him, and the main mystery for him revolves around two children who have an argument about a place both of them supposedly visited, both calling the other a liar. The solution is basically just a trivia thing, so not really interesting as a puzzle.

Kuroda Kenji's Sports Suirika ("Sports Deductions Department") has a far more interesting puzzle. Banba, A father who coaches his own son, a promising swimming athlete, has a rather unique problem. His son is always losing to Hino Shouta, so Banba decided to adminster doping to Hino, in the hopes of getting him disqualified. Banba knew Hino's diet is closely monitered and that he always has to drink a certain energy drink before going in the pool, so his plan involved administering a forbidden drug in one of his drinks. Hino receives a month's supply each month, and is of course quite protective of his energy drink, but last month, Hino, Banba's son and other swimmers were all training together at a facility, and Banba found an opportunity to sneak into Hino's room, where he had stashed his newly delivered supply of his drinks. Banba had prepared a special gadget which allowed him to reseal a bottle, making it impossible for anyone to see the difference between an originally-sealed bottle, and the one he opened. And indeed, Hino broke a swimming record when the big competition came around, so everything seemed to go according to plan. Until... Banba heard no news of Hino being caught for doping. Was everyone covering up for Hino? Banba thus wants the Holmes to how Hino could've used Banba's doped drink without being caught, as he is absolutely sure Hino couldn't have known he had been doped. An interesting puzzle of the kind you don't often see in mystery fiction (a doped drink, i.e. not poison) and I also really like the way Kuroda used a hidden fact, which you can deduce based on the hints, to explain what happened to Banba's doped drink and how it was used by Hino. I'm always a fan of these kinds of stories, where you don't deduce the "main" mystery straight on, but it becomes a two-level type of mystery. 

Takada Takafumi's story is set at the Rekishi Suirika ("Historical Deductions Department"), fitting as Takada's mainly known for his Q.E.D. historical mystery novels. This story revolves around a dying message, where the victim was holding on to a page from a Japanese historical poem, which should point to one of three suspects for the murder. Like all good dying message stories, this story points at several possible interpretations of the message, all pointing to different suspects, until the Holmes comes with the correct solution, but this story does what is always risky with dying message stories: the final, correct solution fails to be really convincing as the final one, as in, it fails in convincing the reader this last solution is the actual correct interpretation and that the others are wrong. In reality, the 'wrong' possibilities feel as valid as the real one, which undermines the whole dying message.

Another disappointment for me was Torikai Hiu's Doubutsu Suirika ("The Animal Deductions Department"), where the Holmes is asked to save a dog who was poisoned, the third victim in a series of dog violence, one of them even fatal. The story is basically a missing link story (why is someone targetting these dogs?), but the solution is not really surprising or entertaining as mystery fiction, with the link feeling somewhat out of place and also over-telegraphed. This idea would perhaps have fared better if this was only the first part of a mystery, with more building on it/as part of a larger narrative. But on its own, it feels underwhelming.

Komori Kentarou's Gaikokujin Suirika ("Foreigner Deductions Department") deals with mysteries involving foreigners, with specialists from various cultures present. In this story, a Japanese man is accussed of the murder on his American wife Lucy, who was set to inherit her father's business, which would have greatly upset her father's business partner. Husband was working on the building project America Village in D City, with the husband acting as a liason for the city as he speaks English. Lucy was visiting Japan for the first time and after staying at her brother and sister-in-laws, she was given a ticket on the express train to Osaka to reunite with her husband. However, she did not arrive by the express train she was given tickets for, and the following day, she was found murdered near the hotel of the husband. The husband had since said a few things that seemed to indicate he knew more about her death than he was willing to admit, which has made him the prime suspect in the murder, even though Lucy's father's business partner, who was also in Japan, had a good motive for wanting Lucy dead, even though he has a perfect alibi for when Lucy would've arrived in Osaka. This story has both brilliant ideas, and very wrong concepts. The book presents great reasons for why the husband's a suspect, and these reasons are closely related to the mystery genre, as it involves linguistic misdirection (only in this case, it was the husband who accidentally said something that put suspicion on him), but then the trick behind the 'alibi trick' behind Lucy's death follows, which is a bit troublesome. For there's a brilliant piece of misdirection, one I truly love and which I think is incredibly well thought of, but it is immediately followed by an idea that hinges on a complete misunderstanding on the part of author Komori about how a certain thing works, and it makes the whole deal fail. For that... is not how it works. So that trick wouldn't work. Which is a shame, for the first part of the idea is really good and a good example of the mystery trick based on cultural differences.

Tsukatou Hajime's Fukanou Suirika ("Impossible Deductions Department") starts when two men are brought in: one is unconscious, the other has been strangled to death and in such a strong manner hand marks can still be seen around the throat of the victim. It turns out both men were found in the same storehouse, which was locked from the inside and the only key was also found inside. This seems to point to the unconscious man (Rokujou Eiichi) as the strangler of the other man. The Rokujous are a fashion mongul led by Eiichi's father, and the victim was a freelance writer who was visiting the Rokujous to interview them on the upcoming fashion show. Both Eiichi and the victim had vanished from the sights of the other people in the house after a fight, until they were found in the locked storehouse, one of them dead. Eiichi's brother however doesn't believe his brother killed the man, despite the fact the only key was found inside the locked storehouse and the victim clearly having been strangled by hand only shortly before he was discovered in the locked storehouse. This is a mechanical locked room as we have come to expect from Tsukatou, though I wouldn't consider it one of his best. While he sketches an interesting problem with a locked room murder trick that involves strangling, the solution to the locked room is rather simplistic, and you'd wonder whether it'd really fool the police for long as it seems a bit unbelievable it would work the way it is described here. So not one of my favorite Tsukatou tales.

Matsuo Yumi's Joseika ("Women's Deductions Department") has one of the more interesting stories in the tale: Migishi, the Holmes of this department, is visited by a pregnant woman who comes with a strange tale. Last week, the client, who will soon give birth to her first baby, was on her way to the Q University Hospital when she noticed a new gynecology clinic had opened nearby. As the place was less crowded than Q University Hospital, she decided to have her check-up there, and she was quite pleased with how things went, so today (two weeks later), she visited again, only to find the place was closed and everything had been removed, and there wasn't even a notice or anything explaining why it had closed. It is odd a clinic would close so suddenly, so Migishi takes the case, planning to call some acquintances in the medical world to see if they heard about anything about this, but to her surprise another client arrives directly after the first left, with the exact same story. What happened to this gynecology clinic to have it disappear so suddenly? While this is a variation on a well-known type of mystery story, I think Matsuo did a great job at spinning this into her own original version and at the same time, working this into the EDS theme of the Emergency Detective Services being a hospital too. To be honest, a lot of the other stories do extremely little with the hospital theme, so this one really stands out, which is surprising to me, as this was the one author I hadn't read yet before! I guess it helps Matsuo is best known for her Balloon Town series, about a town where only pregnant women live...

EDS Kinkyuu Suiri Kaiketsuin is a book that has a cool premise and few cool ideas, but it is definitely not a work where the total is greater than the sum of things. Not all writers truly make use of the unique EDS setting besides scenes of people being brought into the hospital, and while the intermezzos do their best to glue the stories together, as well as the device of having all the scenes of all stories printed chronologically, it often doesn't really feel like one coherent work of fiction. Having more of a running thread between all of them would have helped, or using a smaller cast and having Holmeses appear more prominently in each other's stories. Some of the stories are good mystery stories on their own, and others simply don't know what to do with the (relatively) little amount of pages each story gets alloted to them. So not a must-read as a whole, though some of the stories are worth a read.

Original Japanese title(s): 石持浅海、加賀美雅之、黒田研二、小森健太郎、高田崇史、柄刀一、鳥飼否宇、 二階堂黎人、松尾由美『EDS 緊急推理解決院』

Seven Dead

"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled."

"Eleonora" 

Eight locked room murders in the last review of the eighth month of the year!

It was Mitsumura Shitsuri who was the defendant in the trial in Japan that created the Golden Age of Locked Room Murders in Japan: she was accused of committing a murder, but the police were not able to figure out how the murderer could've committed and then left the crime scene, as it was found locked from the inside. Shitsuri was succesfully defended with the argument that an unsolved locked room mystery was as strong as any alibi: the prosecution being incapable of proving how anyone could've committed the murder and escape a locked room in essence meant every single person on the planet had an alibi. If it was impossible for anyone, why would it be possible for specifically the defendant? This created a rage among would-be murderers to commit their crimes in locked rooms, for that seemed like a perfect defense. This was the perfect breeding ground for locked room murder specialists, both within the police and among private detectives, but also among criminals, where locked room murder consultants became a lucrative business.

Shitsuri's classmate Kasumi this finds himself dragged to the mountains by his childhood friend Yuzuki, as she's looking for New Nessie in the Tama River. the two end up lost in the mountains a little time before dusk, but are fortunately found by Monokaki Camembert ("his mother was a foreigner"), who lives in the nearby Village of Eight Boxes. Because there is no other place nearby where the two can stay, Camembert suggests they come with him to the village and stay in the inn there. To the great surprise of both Kasumi and Yuzuki, they vind the Village of Eight Boxes is actually located inside a gigantic cave, that can only be accessed via a long tunnel, which is guarded during the day and of which the gate is closed during the night. The villages is called like this, because the houses in this village are built like smooth lacquer boxes (you don't need pointy roofs with a drainage system inside a cave where it never rains!). It takes some time for Kasumi to realize Monokaki Camembert is in fact one of the members of the Monokaki Clan: a family of locked room murder mystery authors, Father Fuichirou was the foremost writer of locked room mysteries in Japan, but he recently passed away, leaving a huge fortune to his nine children, who have followed in their father's footsteps, or are trying to. Each of his children specialize in a different kind of locked room mystery novel, like medical locked room mysteries, historical ones, or even hardboiled ones. The family all live here in the village, though their manor is physically seperated from the rest of the village via a chasm in the cave. Kasumi also learns a local festival is going to start that very evening, and it last for about a week, and during that time, it is not allowed for anyone to leave the village, or else an evil spirit will kill them.

When the festival starts however, one of the Monokaki daughters is seen to be killed by a masked figure, but they quickly disappear with the corpse. However, after Camembert and Kasumi have gone to the Monokaki manor to inform the rest of the family about the murder, the bridge that crosses the chasm in the village is blown up, leaving the people in the manor trapped on their side of the cave. Meanwhile, the other villagers decide it might be better to call the police, but they find the lines have been cut, and when one brave villager, despite the local belief telling him not to, tries to venture beyond the tunnel in order to fetch the police, a gate suddenly closes off the tunnel, and the villager suddenly bursts out in flames, even though nobody was near him. Yuzuki, who is still in the village, discovers the body of the disappearing Monokaki daughter in one of the houses, but to the surprise of both her and the local constable, the house is locked from the inside. And as they scramble about, they stumble upon more dead bodies of members of the Monokaki family inside locked rooms. Fortunately, Yuzuki runs into two women in the village who can solve these crimes: not only is the author Oujou Teika, Japan's young queen of the locked room mystery, staying at the same inn as Yuzuki, it turns out Shitsuri too is working here as a part-time help. Can they solve the many locked room murders occuring the Village of Eight Boxes both on this side of the cave, as well as inside the Monokaki Manor in Kamosaki Danro's Misshitsu Henai Jidaino Satsujin - Tozasareta Mura to Yattsu no Trick (2024), which also bears the English title The Murder in the Fetishistic Age of Locked Rooms: The Closed Village and the Eight Tricks.

This is the third book in Kamosaki's series on the Golden Age of Locked Rooms and The Age of Frenzy of Locked Rooms and by now, the titles have become more and more ridiculous, but I guess that is also the point, which is also exemplified by the fact we are now in the fetishistic age of locked rooms, where the locked room mystery almost takes on a perverted form. For in a way, that is exactly what this book does. The first book featured six main locked room murder mysteries (or otherwise impossible situations), the second had seven of them, and now this third entry has no less than eight of them! And while this was already a problem with the second book, the fact Kamosaki wants to cover so many locked room murder situations in a limited amount of pages, means that on the whole, these books are more about quantitty than quality. That is not to say the ideas behind the locked rooms are bad on their own per se, but there is basically not set-up each time: they stumble upon a murder scene, Kamosaki has just enough space to actually describe how the scene looks like, and perhaps one character might suggest a wrong solution, but then we have Shitsuri who has one look at the crime scene and she can suddenly solve the whole thing, even if the trick is insanely complex and involving multiple steps. There is no real feeling of catharsis when she solves the mysteries, because not enough time is used to actually make it feel like a proper mystery, nor do you feel satisfied by the "logical pay-off" of the solution, because the solution is suddenly sprung upon the reader. So while sometimes the idea behind the locked room mystery can be cool and memorable on its own, it's the execution that lacks, because every murder feels like a descrete point with next to no connection to the other murders.

To be honest, it started out really promising, as the first two murders are the ones that are actually thematically connected, with an interesting conundrum arising when the solutions to these rooms are first suggested. The problem that comes up because of how they are solved is interesting and creates a very fun logical brainteaser. The false solutions proposed here are also far more interesting than the ones we see later, if we see them at all, and it feels like Kamosaki focused a lot of attention to these murders. I think these were among my favorites too in the book, as the synergy shown during this part of the book is what really shows what I think this series should do: have it be meaningful there are so many locked room murders in a closed circle situation, instead of just throwing a bunch of them on a pile. Two others I also liked a lot: one involving the victim having been hanged in a building, but the security system shows nobody entered the building the last 24 hours, neither the victim nor any murderer! The trick might become a bit obvious if I explain a specific point regarding how they found the victim, but the trick itself is original. Another one is one of the most horrifying locked room murder tricks I've ever come across in mystery fiction, and involves the victim having been decapitated in a room while their body had been tied to a table in the room: the mechanics behind how the murderer pulled this trick off are just too terrible to even to think about, and devilishl clever.

The others vary a lot in quality. The combustion murder of the villager for example involves the most crudest of clues, and the "okay, this is silly, but not the good kind of silly" trick has your eyes rolling. There are more murder situations later in the book that are also incredbily silly in concept, but at least those are so silly they become good, even if the execution can be faulted. Others feel more like showpieces of random scientific trivia, while one also feels like a Professor Layton puzzle more than anything. The last 'big' mystery that is solved involves some Queenian logic, which I can always appreciate and something I also noticed in the second volume, but on the whole, Kamosaki is definitely someone who ultimately just wants to show off a lot of locked room murders, that are created via mechanical tricks. He however often does the bare minimum of actually making them relevant to the story or each other. Characters may or may not have a single line of dialogue before they are killed, there's no build in tension because every event feels so seperate from each other and once you're done with the book, you'll have forgotten half of the locked rooms already, because they were handled in such a brief and uninvolved manner.

But again, that is what makes this books a little bit fetishistic, as the title itself also says: the book only exists to flaunder with all the locked room murder situations Kamosaki could come up with, and some of them are really creative on a basic, fundamental level. As you can guess, this also comes back to the motive behind the murders on all these locked room murder mystery authors, and that part I really liked, Interestingly, it reminded me of a certain novel by Kitayama Takekuni, who is also an author who specializes in mechanically constructed locked room murder mysteries, so it's funny how Kamosaki also arrives at a similar "conclusion" regarding locked room murder fiction.

Misshitsu Henai Jidaino Satsujin - Tozasareta Mura to Yattsu no Trick is, unsurprisingly, more of the same after the previous two books. More locked room murders, but beyond that, it's not really that different from them, and while I can recommend this book too to lovers of locked room mysteries, because some of the murders here are really worth reading (no matter how silly they can be at times), but like with the previous books, you do have to admit Kamosaki is mainly about showcasing all these ideas, and they do feel lacking in the way they form a cohesive narrative, and how they are actually presented as "mystery" fiction with clues and a process of logic leading to the solution.

Original Japanese title(s): 鴨崎暖炉『密室偏愛時代の殺人 閉ざされた村と八つのトリック』

Battle of the Humungonauts

"Way I see it, the beast can only be a completely-new and as-yet-undiscovered monster, and as the beast discoverer, I have decided to call it a "humungonaut" from the Latin term for "big and hairy space traveller."

"Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated"

Yep, this cover rocks!

The first kaiju attacked Japan in the fifties, and since then, the world has been regularly been under siege by a variety of these gigantic monstrous beasts. Nobody knows where they come from, but they can appear very suddenly from the sky, ground or the sea and attack people and the cities they live in indiscriminately. As it's been many decades since First Impact, humans however have adapted to this new reality. Japan, being the first country to have to deal with kaiju, has been a forerunner when it comes to developing defence systems against kaiju, and most countries have now adopted their three-tier defense system: the first line of defense are the Active Detection Units, which are actively searching for indications a kaiju may appear, wherever it may come from. They for example monitor movements out in the ocean, but also investigate local rumors about strange happenings, for that too may be an omen a kaiju will soon appear. Once the appearance of a kaiju has been confirmed, responsibility is passed over to the Planning Units: they identify a kaiju, and if applicable, pull up all the data from past encounters to determine their weak points and the best way to fight them, and they calculate the route and when they will arrive on Japanese soil. Once a kaiju hits land, control is passed over to the Eradication Units, who by then should be standing by at the estimated landing point with the necessary artillery to fend off the kaiju attack. It's this system that has allowed Japan to fight off kaiju succesfully, and by now, people have actually become accustomed to kaiju attacks, and the government is even aiming for a 0 deaths by kaiju quotum.

Iwato Satomi is a Chief Planner: whereas there are Planning Units all across Japan, ready to react to a kaiju appearing nearby, Chief Planners are not tied to any specific unit, and are flown all across Japan to take charge of such units when necessary, assisted by local planners who have more knowledge about the specific region and politics. While it may seem a gigantic monster attacking a city might make any other issue trivial, it turns out people will remain people, and even when a kaiju is approaching, people will still commit murder. During one operation, in which a whole evacuated city was demolished by a kaiju, the corpse of a man is found. However, it turns out the man was killed by a human, not a kaiju. Iwato is visited by Inspector Funamura Shuuji of the Special Investigation Unit, who deals with these kaiju-related crimes, and the two work together to figure out who committed a murder during a kaiju attack in Ookura Takahiro's short story collection Kaijuu Satsujin Sousa: Senmetsu Tokku no Seijaku ("The Kaiju Murder Investigations: Silence in the Special Eradication Zone", 2023).

Ookura Takahiro is an author of mainly mystery, both on paper as well as for the small and silver screen: he for example often writes screenplays for the Detective Conan anime. He however also has an interest in tokusatsu and kaiju productions: he has written novelizations of Godzilla productions, as well as screenplays for Ultraman Max, and one of his best-known Detective Conan anime original stories indeed involved a kaiju. So it was only a matter of time before he would write a detective story featuring kaiju, right?

And you can definitely feel his love for the genre right from the start, for I'd argue it's the world building in the four stories collected in this collection that is the most memorable aspect: Ookura has built a very believable world where people have gotten used to dealing with kaiju. The defense organization comes across as very realistic as Ookura has thought out a lot of the details of how each units works, their responsibilities and even the political tensions between them, and we see glimpses of how national politics and other industries have changed, or are at least influenced by kaiju. You could easily imagine these scenes in full-on kaiju media, and it's here where the book really shines best.

The notion of having mystery stories set in a world where kaiju exist and regularly attack the country is of course really exciting, and really entices the imagination: imagine someone using a kaiju as a murder weapon! A kaiju used for a locked room murder trick! As a motive! It is why I do have to say that overall, I was a bit disappointed to learn Ookura mostly uses the kaiju, and the kaiju attacks as a backdrop for the murders. Take for example the title story Senmetsu Tokku no Seijaku: Iwato is dealing with a kaiju with acute hearing which reacts to unnatural noises, so the Planning Unit orders a silent eradication zone: they try to lure the kaiju to a place where the Eradication Unit can deal with it with an aircraft, while everything else in the area is "shut down". However, on its way to the slaughterhouse, the kaiju seems to react to a noise: it turns out a pistol had been shot, and eventually, they find a man who was shot in the vicinity of the kaiju. And yeah, it's interesting it was the kaiju which brought them on the trail of the victim, and ultimately, we do learn the victim was here for a reason tied to the kaiju, but the kaiju itself isn't really connected to the murder beyond this. The mystery itself revolves around the victim and his reasons for being where he was, making the kaiju feel like just a plot device to introduce the victim and who is then pushed to the background. Even though you'd want the kaiju to be the main dish!

The opening story, Fuusha wa Tomaranakatta ("The Wind Turbines Didn't Stop"), was more interesting in that regard: Iwato is dealing with a kaiju that had appeared in the past, and based on its behavior then, surmises it reacts to the sounds of wind mills. The kaiju is heading for a spot where the Eradication Unit can easily deal with it, but nearby is a city with wind turbines, so Iwato uses her connections to order the city council to have all wind turbines stopped. To her great surprise, one section doesn't stop its turbines, and as they fear, the kaiju heads for that spot and destroys it. While the Eradication Unit manages to defeat the beast, one victim is found among the debris. However, it turns out he was murdered by a human, and not simply crushed by the kaiju. Here we have a much more interesting investigation, as the victim turns out to be Tozuka, who was an important man in an electric company which was pretty aggressive in buying out land from the local populace, and he's been personally sued for that. But why was he still in the city even though an evacuation order had been issued and why didn't the wind turbines stop? Here we have a much more intricately designed mystery, and while a lot of the story does revolve around shady politics and a 'bigger-than-life conspiracy', the core whodunnit part of the mystery is properly clued, and at least the kaiju is more integrated into the mystery.

The third story, Koujinko Satsujin Jiken ("The Lake Koujin Murders"), on the other hand is basically nearly pulp. Iwato is sent to investigate the disappearence of several persons around Lake Koujin: this is usually the sign of a land-based kaiju eating people, and a Chief of an Active Detection unit had actually gone there to check up on these signs, but he too disappeared. The frustrating aspect however is that land-based kaiju are believed to not exist in Japan anymore, making it political unwise for the higher-ups to send a whole unit to investigate it. So now Iwato is "privately" visiting Lake Koujin, where she's staying at a small inn where a few other visitors are staying, but one of them was actually a contact for the disappearing Active Detection unit chief, so Iwato tries to learn more about his disappearance from him. But that night, a loud noise wakes up everyone... except for her contact, and when they check up on him in his room, he's found murdered. But which of the other guests killed him? This story I didn't like that much, as here the kaiju is only made relevant very late in the story. The murder itself has an interesting clue: on its own it's a bit obvious, but the deduction leading up to the realization that was a clue made it mentally more challenging. 

You may have noticed I haven't written much about Inspector Funamura by the way: he appears and disappears throughout the story, and is presented as a rather mysterious police detective who often already knows that is going on and is very practical in his dealings with crime, but also needs Iwato's expertise at times, so while he seldom gives away all his cards, he does help Iwato figure out things for herself. He's also the man of action in this series, which again make these stories feel more grounded in tokusatsu tradition than the mystery genre.

The bunko/pocket version of this book includes a prequel short story, Kaiju Chaser, which depicts a younger Iwato as she tries to identify a certain kaiju, but this is more an action story than a mystery one and it's really short too.

So I'm a bit torn on Kaijuu Satsujin Sousa: Senmetsu Tokku no Seijaku. It's clearly written by someone who loves the kaiju and tokusatsu genres, and it can be immensely amusing when read as such a book, and the mystery plots are also decent enough most of the time, but I still can't help but think Ookura could have incorporated the kaiju more closely to the mystery plots, using them more as active tools rather than as backdrops around which these murders take place. A second volume has been released too, so I hope the kaiju are more involved with the murders there.

Original Japanese title(s): 大倉崇裕『怪獣殺人捜査 殲滅特区の静寂』:「風車は止まらなかった」/「殲滅特区の静寂」/「工神湖殺人事件」/「怪獣チェーサー」

Panic on Gull Island

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

            Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
"The Raven"

Suddenly craving fried chicken...

Iwaido Yasumi is a student at Teiou University who hopes to impress his lecturer Uehara Kanon, a beautiful, cool-headed woman who teaches his cultural anthropology class. He ends up writing a paper that is actually quite impressive, so much so she summons him to her office. Not because she's become romantically interested in him, but to make sure he didn't plagiarize his essay. While Yasumi tries more than once to woe Kanon, she brushes his advances and informs him that Professor Kirimura Satoru, the most influential professor at their faculty, has also read his thesis and has ordered Yasumi to be added to an upcoming fieldwork trip. Kirimura will lead a team, including Kanon and Yasumi, to Torikui Island, a solitary island that is technically part of Japan, but which has been deemed "off-limits" for decades. Centuries ago, it was used as an island to send sentenced criminals to, even though there were indigenous inhabitants too, and with time, a unique culture developed, seperating the island in two distinct clans, one of the indigenous people and one of the descendents of the sentenced criminals. The main staple food on the island is surprisingly not fish, but birds of prey, and the two clans are named after their preferred food: the Eagle clan and the Raven clan. Because sentenced criminals were usually branded by having a part of their body mutilated, the people on the island also developed a unique sense of "beauty": when an islander becomes an adult, a part of their body is amputated to mark them as as a full adult person: the Eagle clan people mutilate their face (eyes or ears removed), while the Raven have limbs removed. Long ago, a person rumored to be related to a very important and esteemed bloodline was banished to the island and this Man in the Iron Mask-esque figure became feared and respected as a living god on the island named the Bird Demon. Because of their bloodline, the Japanese authorities also occasionally sent supplies to the island to ensure the people there could live, despite it being completely cut off from the rest of Japan and it was forbidden for people from the mainland to go to Torikui Island, or vice-versa. Some decades ago, Takaoka Jinichi, professor at Teiou University, stayed for months at the island to do research on the local culture, and it is the only source of information on the island.

Kirimura Satoru, who studied under Takaoka, also visited the island in the past, but now returns for a new research trip, because recently, Inou Nao, the young daughter of the island's only doctor, escaped the island in search for help. Inou Kaoruko hails from the mainland, but was stationed at the island to serve as the only medical expert. Nao was raised on the island, but has now violated the island rules to look for help: she claims that the last few years, the peace on the island has been visibly crumbling apart: there are only about thirty people left on the island, with few children, and both the Eagle and Raven clans are on the way to extinction. This has caused a very strong rift between the two clans, and it could go wrong anytime. While usually, the Japanese authorities does not allow for visits to Torikui Island, Kanon reveals to Yasumi there's a hidden agenda to their research: the government wants to use Torikui Island as an experiment to see how people will act in a declining society that is on the verge of falling apart. 

To Yasumi's big disappointment, he learns on the day they are travelling to the island that Kanon isn't allowed to go, because Kirimura Satoru deems her an academic rival and doesn't want her around. Other people in the team however include Kirimura's half-sister (an academic too), a researcher attached to the university and two government "observers". Nao is also brought along, though in disguise, because she violated the local rules. When they arrive at the island by yacht, they are "welcomed" by the Eagle clan, though some of them seem to blame Kirimura for the fall of the island, as everything started to slowly crumble after his visit many years ago. They learn the Bird Demon has disappeared from the island, and because this figure of authority is gone, the rivalry between the Eagle and Raven clans has only worsened. In fact, the two clans are so against each other the houses on the island are in fact built to alternate between a house of the Eagle and Raven clan, so they can all keep an eye on each other like a panopticon. The fieldwork team settles for the night, but Kirimura goes out for a stroll, while Yasumi calls Kanon to report on the on-goings on the island. When Yasumi remembers he left his phone charger in the boat, he returns to the beach to the yacht, but he finds Nao stabbed to dead on the beach. But for some reason, only Nao's own footprints are found in the sand, and there are no signs of footprints left by her killer. At that same moment, he receives a message from Kirimura Misaki, who summons the rest of the team to her, because she found her own brother murdered. These two deaths however are just the starting sign for a full breakdown of Torikui Island in Mori Akimaro's Setsudantou no Satsuriku Riron (2024), or as the cover also says: The Genocide Theories in the Mutilation Island.

This was definitely a book I picked because of the crazy premise and alluring title: an island where people willing mutilate themselves because they think it's beautiful? A closed circle mystery set inn isolated and small society doomed to fail and end in genocide? I had never read anything by Mori Akimaro before, but this description really sounded alluring to me, especially with its focus on anthropology.

Once I got started reading however, it did take me a lot of time to get used to the protagonist, and even at the end, I never learned to like him. He's constantly trying to be witty and hitting on Kanon, his lecturer, and after a while it really got old. There's some mystery revolving around how he wrote his essay even though he himself even admits he doesn't quite understand how he could've written such an impressive work, but that is hardly fairly clewed: while it has huge implications for him, it's not really that well integrated with the main mystery of the murders that occur on the island, and it felt like two completely different ideas that don't work together. But add to that the fact he's really obnoxious every time he talks to Kanon (he's constantly keeping her up-to-date on what has happened on the island), and it's really a shame he's the character we're constantly following in this narrative...

Once we arrive on the island however, we do get the highlight of the book: Torikui Island, its inhabitants and the unique culture they have. Mori does a great job at setting the scene and explaining how the people on the island developed their own cultures, based on their food culture (eating predatory birds, as you obviously can't have cattle on a small island like that) and the fact most of them are descended in some way from mutilated criminals, giving them a warped sense of beauty: all the adults miss a body part, and the children aren't seen as full humans because they still have all their body parts. The rivalry between the clans creates the unique situation where the houses are laid out like a panopticon around the main square, and so you instantly get a kind of impossible crime set-up, because everyone is watching each other. That is how the book also initially sets things up, as while Kirimura Satoru and Nao end up dead, the islanders are quite sure none of them are the murderer, and are more suspicious of the fieldwork team members. We also have the wildcard Kaoruko, the mother of Nao, who does live on the island, but has never been fully accepted by either clan. While we initially are 'treated' to the double murder of Kirimura and Nao, we soon see the native inhabitants be killed too in all kinds of manners: while these situations are seldom 'impossible' or pure mysteries on their own (i.e. killed in a way anyone could've done it), that doesn't make their deaths less interesting: the slow downfall of the island society is truly a sight to behold, and at the same time, Mori manages to use the very unique island culture to create a few very ingenous and crafty situations that could only occur here. The use of anthropology to create tricks in mystery is something I very much like (see for example the use of religious concepts to create mysteries in the Toujou Genya series), and The Genocide Theories in the Mutilation Island very much succeeds in that aspect: a lot happens in this book, and surprisingly enough, those happenings could really only happen here, because this is such a weird place, and some of the mysteries the reader will be treated to, are extremely memorable cause of that. And when Yasumi isn't trying to interrupt the discussions by hitting on Kanon, there are actually quite interesting musings on anthropological topics that pertain to this novel, from the consumption of birds to views on beauty etc.

But there is a caveat. A pretty big one too. Don't be reading this for the impossible crimes. There are a few impossible situations, from the no-footprints-in-the-sand situation at the beginning, to Kirimura also being killed in a place that was basically observed, but the solution to these mysteries is really outrageous. I guess you could say it was hinted at, but not in a sane manner, and nothing about the story leading up to the reveal seemed to even suggest this would be such an insane mystery novel, so to me, it really felt like it came out of nowhere. I loved the way Torikui Island was developed as a very strange, yet weirdly convincing place, but Mori certainly didn't manage to pull the same thing off in regards to his impossible crimes in this novel. In a way, this could be seen as a 'so-silly-it's-brilliant' type of explanation, but I find the juxtaposition with the more serious depiction of the island's culture from an anthropological POV not smooth, though your mileage may vary there.

So in the end, I do think Setsudantou no Satsuriku Riron is a really cool mystery novel, with an absolutely banger of a setting which is used in clever ways for some of the mysteries, but I wouldn't be reading this solely for the impossible crimes, and you do need to be aware it's a bit weird when it comes to the solution, despite the rather heavy themes of the events on the island. Still, a very memorable novel which I am likely not going to forget soon.

Original Japanese title(s):  森晶麿『切断島の殺戮理論』

Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Oh, it all started with the silly phrase 'No smoke without fire.' People have been saying that ad nauseam.

"The Moving Finger"

As a non-smoker, I had not even ever heard of cigarillos before...

Mori Asako works as a freelance tourist guide in the ancient capital of Kyoto and the last two days, she's been the exclusive guide to J.P Bernas, a wealthy Filipino who runs a cigarillo farm. Bernas came to Japan to talk business, as he hopes to extend the export of cigarillos from the Philippines to Japan, though that is difficult due to import quota on tobacco products, and the fact most of that quota is used for American tobacco. But as a lover of Japan, the trip isn't all business, so he has privately hired Asako so he can get a good look around Kyoto. After visiting Kiyomizu-dera Temple, he asks Asako he forgot to buy an English pamphlet as a souvenir, so he asks whether she could return and buy it for him. Aasako leaves her client for a minute, but when she returns, she finds the street is brimming with people, and an ambulance and the police: Bernas lies dead on the street, having been stabbed in the back with a knife! Asako is of course taken in for questioning, though she can't tell Inspector Kariya much about Bernas' businesses. However, Kariya does reveal to Asako that Bernas was holding tight to a 10 yen coin when he was found dead, and he wonders whether that has any significance, though Asako assures Kariya Bernas knew the worth of a 10 yen coin (not much), so it's not likely he was being robbed and he refused to give up that coin. When Asako returns home and discusses the murder her husband Ichirou, who is an investigative reporter, they really that Asako had visited Byoudou-in Temple with Bernas the day before, and that temple is featured on the 10 yen coin. Asako recalls Bernas had been acting a bit weird at the temple, after seeing something, or someone. Meanwhile, Inspector Kariya dives into Bernas' business partners at Tainan Bussan Ltd., where he learns that Bernas' son died last year in an accident with a Cessna: the son had been travelling with the Manilla manager of Tainan Bussan Ltd. to have a look at the tobacco fields of Bernas, when the plane crashed. Kariya suspects Bernas' death might have to do with his son's death, and perhaps some internal political struggle regarding wanting to import more cigarillos, but he can't seem to connect the dots together. Ichirou and Asako also start their own investigation, with Ichirou hoping to get a scoop, but the Moris soon learn there's a larger conspiracy hiding behind everything, and they are starting to attract attention to themselves in Yamamura Misa's Cigarillo no Wana ("The Cigarillo Trap", 1977).

It's not like I read Yamamura Misa's work often, but I have to say I was a bit confused when I started this book and learned the protagonist was called Asako, because that was also the name of the protagonist of the Yamamura novel I read last time, last year... Ichirou is also a name you see often in her works I think.

Yamamura Misa is a name you'll hear about sooner or later once you start reading up on Japanese mystery fiction, because she was extremely prolific and at a time, very often featured on television and video games due to various adaptations of her work, or new stories based on her work. Her main themes were women protagonists and the ancient capital Kyoto (and Japanese culture), which of course provided an entertaining for adaptations on television, and it made her name synonymous for the two-hour suspense drama television special set in Kyoto or perhaps some other touristic destination featuring a dramatic finale with the detective confronting the murderer at a cliffside looking down at the sea. I very occasoinally try out her work, but in general, the mystery plots are very light, though some books like Hana no Hitsugi, were more like the reasonably solid puzzle-focused books I generally read. 

My attention was drawn to this particular book, Cigarillo no Wana, because I saw it mentioned in a list with taped locked room murders: locked room situations where all the exits/entrances have been sealed with tape from the inside. Note that it didn't say whether it was good or bad or original or anything, just that it featured one, but that was enough to make me interested in the book, as taped locked room mysteries are not that common. I didn't read this particular version of the book by the way, but I like this cover better...

Cigarillo no Wana is certainly a typical Yamamura Misa work, with the focus on Asako, a fairly strong female protagonist who is actually married to a horrible husband who barely cares about her and is only thinking about his scoop, and then there's of course Kyoto as the setting, with various famous touristic destinations in the ancient capital playing an important role in the story. If you want to escape into fantasy and become a tourist in the pages of a book, Yamamura basically always has you covered when it comes to Kyoto. Inspector Kariya was originally a secondary character in Yamamura's work, but he kept on making appearances in several of her series (with women protagonists), and eventually became a leading protagonist himself too (even has his own live-action drama series!), and you could argue he shares the spotlight with Asako here.

The first few murders (yes, there are multiple murders) in the book are fairly simple in terms of practicality, with people just stabbed to death and things like that. The first half of the mystery is split in two interconnecting narratives, with Asako and her husband trying to investigate the case from their side (in order to get Ichirou his scoop), and Inspector Kariya (a recurring character in Yamamura's work) doing an official investigation. Because both sides have access to different information and means, they tackle the case from different angles, but slowly do come closer. Because Kariya suspects strongly Asako and her husband are intentionally not telling him the whole story, he starts to suspect them too, and that creates a rather fun read, with the two sides in reality working on the same case, but for different purposes which frames them as rivals. On both sides a lot of guesswork is done, but it results in both sides uncovering there's a rather big, political plot lurking behind Bernas' death, and it reaches surprisingly high in society. I remember that was also the case in Egypt Joou no Hitsugi ("The Tomb of the Egyptian Queen"), the Yamamura I read last year, and it reminds me of Matsumoto Seichou's work, who very much championed the mystery story about political intriges leading to murder among the common man. There's a distinct social school vibe going on her, though Yamamura does lean a bit more on the "classic" mystery tropes than Matsumoto would.

So a lot of the mystery revolves around figuring out why Bernas was killed, and that gets revealed bit by bit as the two sides start digging. It's a complex web of political intrigue, which I found entertaining enough, but it's not really the type of mystery I usually read or enjoy, so I do find it hard to describe this as a book I'd recommend. Nearer to the end, we have the taped locked room murder that first led me to reading this book: a man is found dead in his car parked near a cliff (it's always a dramatic cliff in these stories!), with the exhaust hooked up back inside the car with a hose, making it appear like a carbon monoxide suicide. The doors and windows have been taped tight from the inside and there's of course only the victim inside the car, meaning he must have done this himself, right? Of course not, because it was murder (it's always murder), but I have to say the trick was rather disappointing, as it's the same as the trick of a famous instance of the taped locked room murder: as I mentioned before, there aren't that many of them, so it stands out even more when you utilize the same trick. I do like what Yamamura did to ensure the trick would work within this specific story in terms of practicality, as in, I can imagine it working here, with the way she placed her props and set the scene. But still, I wouldn't be recommending this book per se if you're specifically looking for taped locked rooms, because you're likely already familiar with the better known instance.

Cigarillo no Wana isn't in any way much worse, or much better than the other Yamamura Misa works I have read until now. It's exactly the type of story you'd expect to be written for a two hour television mystery special you'd come across while zapping: nice shots of Kyoto, an inoffensive tale that is relatively easy to follow with a few twists and turns and by the time the special has ended, you'll already have forgotten most of the story. Not the Yamamura I'd recommend, but also not one I'd tell to stay away from.

Original Japanese title(s): 山村美紗『葉煙草（シガリロ）の罠』

Death on the Way

"I suggest you murdered your father for his seat reservation."

 - "I may have had the motive, inspector, but I could not have done it, for I have only just arrived from Gillingham on the 8:13 and here's my restaurant car ticket to prove it."

"Monty Python's Flying Circus"

Never been on a night train before, so I'd like to try it one day... night...

Former prosecutor-turned-private-detective Namba Kiichirou is requested by the lawyer Sakurai to re-investigate the mysterious double murder on the Funatomi couple, as his client, Takizawa, is the main suspect and will be tried soon. The wealthy Funatomi Ryuutarou and his wife Yumiko had been staying in The White Waves Inn in Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture, but one morning, Yumiko was found horribly murdered in their room, while Ryuutarou's body was completely missing, though enough blood was left in the room to suggest he wasn't among the living anymore. Suspicion soon fell on Takizawa, a young man who had until recently been the fiancee of Ryuutarou and Yumiko's daughter Yukiko, but recently, the parents saw more in Susa Hideharu, who was a close friend of Takizawa, but the latter probably changed his mind after introducing Susa to Yukiko and his own engagement to her was cancelled. The police soon set their eyes on Takizawa, because it was more than clear he had made his way to Shirahama that night: he left his work in Osaka early, claiming Ryuutarou had called him to discuss his engagement with Yukiko again and he was seen by taxi drivers going to the train station, and also arriving at Shirahama. Apparently, Takizawa had then met Ryuutarou, but the latter claimed he never called Takizawa, and he was extremely irritated by Takizawa's appearance, which in turn angered Takizawa, who felt embarrassed and insulted, and he stormed off into the arms of Bacchus. So when Takizawa was arrested, he claimed he had been so drunk he had no memory of the previous night, but that wasn't going to satsify the police of course, and now his trial is imminent. 

Namba agrees to look into the case one final time, and the lawyer Sakurai recommends Susa as Namba's assistant, though the former isn't too keen on having a related party helping him, so he only occasionally uses Susa as a soundboard while investigating the possibility someone might have manipulated Takizawa's movements that evening for some reason. But each time Namba thinks he has an idea who the murderer might be, a new death occurs, changing his views on the case, and as things develop more, Funatomike no Sangeki ("The Tragedy of the Funatomis", 1936) seems to head straight towards an unsolvable state, until the international detective Akagaki Takio appears in front of him...

Funatomike no Sangeki ("The Tragedy of the Funatomis") is one of the most important mystery novels in Japanese mystery history, as it is commonly seen as the very first Japanese mystery novel involving a railway schedule-based alibi trick. The author is Fujita Yuuzou (1909-1975), though he used the pen name Aoi Yuu, and it should be noted some sources say his given pen name was read Takeshi, so you'll see both Aoi Yuu and Aoi Takeshi when they bother to write out his name in hiranaga or romaji. Aoi was an engineer for a power company by profession, but was also a big fan of mystery fiction, and debuted in 1934 with a short story published in the magazine Profile. The following year, he decided to write his first full-length novel to compete in a competition for unpublished novel manuscripts. It was Edogawa Rampo who was a huge fan of the story which was originally titled Satsujinma ("The Murderer"), but retitled as Funatomike no Sangeki when it was published in 1936. And as I mentioned earlier, it is commonly seen as the first Japanese novel that involved an alibi trick based on railway tables in the spirit of Freeman Wills Crofts. Post-war authors like Matsumoto Seichou and of course Ayukawa Tetsuya were greatly inspired by Aoi's work.

As a first novel, and one in the context of 1930s Japanese mystery fiction, I'd this book is insanely ambitious, and while I don't think Aoi manages to pull off everything perfectly, it's genuinely impressive how Aoi does a lot of things authors like Ayukawa and Matsumoto would also do, only two, three decades earlier. The one thing I have to say first, is that Funatomike no Sangeki is packed. A lot happens, and Aoi really does his best to keep the reader entertained by having many story developments and twists and turns, and also revealing parts of the mystery little by little. Unlike Rampo's 1930s output, Aoi is obviously going for Croftian realism, and he meticulously explains how Namba is conducting his investigation, but a great advantage of that style is that you are constantly making progess in terms of unrafeling the mystery: like the Croftian police procedural, Namba keeps making small steps, solving parts of the mystery that allow him to move forward to find new clues that again allow him to make other discoveries. The scale of the story is huge, as we move from the western part of the main island of Japan to the central parts and visit many cities and towns, as take as many train lines on our way there. Namba is actively trying to locate the 'invisible' murderer is and it often feels like he's close on their trail, so there's always a feeling of tension, as for all we know Namba could only be a few steps behind the murderer.

At the same time... Aoi writes in a rather dry and slow manner, and I have to admit, while I think the overall plot was interesting, his writing did tire me a lot, and I felt the book could have been told in a much more entertaining manner (oh, how I wish Rampo wrote this based on Aoi's plot). Of course, I understand he was going for the Crofts style, but you do really need to be in the right mindset to be reading this, because while it's perfectly readable, sometimes you do wonder why the story is told in such a dry, and yet at times roundabout manner...

Aoi's talents as a mystery writer are clearly visible in this work though. While a lot of the ideas showcases in this book will feel outdated and too tropey for the modern reader, some ideas I genuinely find surprising to find in a 1935 Japanese mystery novel. And then there's of course the railway schedule-based alibi trick, apparently the first original Japanese one and one which would thus influence writers like Matsumoto Seichou, Ayukawa Tetsuya and Nishimura Kyoutarou. It's a bit sad how nowadays we can just use map and navigation maps to find all kinds of combinations of public transport modes to find the fastest way to get from A to B, because it takes a lot away from the surprise in these kinds of books. Here too some of the "the killer used this other route that was actually also available!" surprises feel a bit underwhelming partially because you can't shake the feeling it's a bit weird nobody thought of that earlier, but also because of Aoi's writing style,where he throws these reveals at you without much build-up ("Namba looked at the map and suddenly realized there was another route"), so you don't get the sensation of satisfaction when the solution is revealed. Still, Aoi uses the alibi tricks in a clever manner/for a clever purpose, so on the whole, I think the book works.

Though I don't really get Aoi undermining Namba right from the beginning, because we have Namba in the list of characters, but then at the end we see the name of another detective in the list, and he's introduced as an internationally renowned master detective... The cast of characters is also rather limited despite the book's length, so it might be a bit easy to guess who the murderer is because not many people on the list are still alive at the end of the story... The book also makes reference to a certain 1922 mystery novel that is utilized in an interesting way in this story, though it's a bit of a borderline case whether mentioning the title out loud will spoil part of Funatomike no Sangeki's mystery, so I'll refrain from doing so now...

So while I do think some of Funatomike no Sangeki might feel a bit outdated now, both in writing and the mystery tropes it uses, it is a surprisingly ambitious first novel by Aoi Yuu and as it is commonly recognized as the first in a looooooong tradition of Japanese railway-based alibi-deconstruction mystery stories, I'd say it's worth reading it if you happen to come across it.

Original Japanese title(s): 蒼井雄『船富家の惨劇』

The Shadow of the Goat

"Cry havoc and let slip the goats of war."

"Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse" 

Houjou Kie has been a personal favorite of mine ever since she made her debut. While she initially focused on novel-length stories, she has lately also been releasing short stories serialized in magazines, which are then later collected in one volume. Next week will see the release of the sequel to the amazing Amulet Hotel, but today, I want to take a brief look at two new series by Houjou. At least, one of them is confirmed as a series, the other might be developed into a new series!

Maison Initier no Kai ("The Mystery of Maison Initier") is a 2025 short story published in All Yomimono and starts with a freelance writer on the occult going inside an apartment building in Hachiouji as he films himself. There are rumors that the elevator in this building connects to different worlds. While there are many of such rumors, with elevators often going down to the underworld, this rumor is connected to a more specific story: twelve years ago, a murder was committed in the hallway of the top, seventh floor. Rumor has it that if you push in a certain combination in the elevator, you'll be brought to that scene fifteen years ago. Our writer pushes the buttons accordingly and when he arrives at the seventh floor... he finds a dead body lying in the hallway, killed in the exact same way as the victim fifteen years ago, stabbed with a kitchen knife.

Superintendent Hachijou Miku is the crime scene investigator in charge of the case, though she immediately regrets this when she learns who discovered the body: for Ikoma Soramichi is only a freelance writer on the occult in his spare time, as he is a real police superintendent himself too. Only with a love for the occult. However, even he realizes he didn't go back in time, and that the body he found is in fact "fresh". The parallels to the murder 15 years ago however are clear: 15 years ago, the owner of the building had been stabbed with a kitchen knife on the seventh floor, and a priceless jewel was stolen. The new victim however has a note planted on his body, saying "Pay for your sins with your life", once again suggesting a strong connection between the two cases. While Miku is investigating the case however, Ikoma is intent on finding proof the occult is involved one way or another...

Whereas Houjou specializes in writing mystery stories with special settings (time travel, vr-worlds, a hotel for criminals, ghosts), she this time opted for a realistic setting: while Ikoma hopes there are ghosts and other occult occurences, as if this first story we don't really have any reason to believe they exist. In fact, Houjou mentions having to rely on her editor for knowledge on real police investigations/organization structure, as they usually don't really play a significant role in her other stories. The story is fairly simple in design, with the mystery revolving around why the two murders resemble each other. I don't think the story showcases Houjou's strenghts (densily plotted mysteries) very good, as the story is relatively short and the riddle of the two murders, and the clues leading to the revelation, feel not as meticulously plotted as her other stories. That said, the story is highly readable, and I think this story is probably more appealing to "non-hardcore" mystery fans than some of her other stories.The banter between "science is everything" Miku and "I wish there were ghosts" Ikoma is fun... because it's actually Ikoma who solves the case! In stories with these "science vs occult" setups, it's usually the science person who prevails, but this time we find it's Ikoma, in his quest to find real supernatural phenomena, who quickly sees through the human deception. I think the actual truth behind the case is pretty interesting though, and I'm curious to see how this series will develop further.

Houjou also recently wrote a piece of mystery flash fiction for the anthology GOAT, which has a very cute goat on the cover (even though the title actually refers to the acronym "greatest of all time"). She wrote this for a special on travel, and she was offered a stay at the Book Hotel Kyoto Kujo for inspiration, so unsurprisingly, her Rakugaki ("Scribbles" 2025) is actually set in that hotel.  The story is about five pages long, so I can't really write too much about it: a woman staying at the hotel finds someone has scribbled on her book while she was gone for a moment, and a... book sprite? helps her figure out who did it. Very short, kinda cute... and apparently, Houjou's editor liked it so much they are now developing it into a full series, with this story either being the proper "first entry" of the series, or it'll just be the prototype and be developed into a new story. I'm always into bibliophilic mysteries, so I'm looking forward to whatever may come!

This were pretty brief write-ups on these stories, so perhaps they feel a bit lacking in information on the stories, but... consider them more like previews, as we'll likely see more of these two series in the future. Next week is Amulet Wonderland, which I'm really looking forward to, so I'll try to read that and start on my review as soon as possible!

Original Japanese title(s): 方丈貴恵「メゾン・イニシェの怪」/「落書き」

Out of the Past

"That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them.”

"The Hound of the Baskervilles"

While I like reading short story collections, I generally don't really like writing the reviews, because they take up much more time. For some reason I read four short story collections in a row, with today's book being one of those four, though I switched the order in which I wrote these posts.

Chou to Shite Shisu ("He Died A Butterfly", 2022) is a historical short story collection by Hanyuu Asuka, starring as its main detective Taira no Yorimori, half-brother of Taira no Kiyomori, who established the samurai-dominated administrative government in Japan. While Yorimori had military success in his career at one time, the centralization of power to Kiyomori's own men soon meant Yorimori was sidelined, finding his career hitting a stop and now living a peaceful life in Kyoto as the Lord of the Lake. Because Yorimori's sharp mind is not being used on the battlefield anymore, he intends to use his analytical skills to resolve incidents taking place in the place, as hoping to regain the favor of his half-brother. This collection holds five adventures for Yorimori, set in different parts of his life as he tries to climb back up the career ladder in a highly volitile military environment in the Heian period.

Hanyuu Asuka won the 2018 Mysteries! Newcomer Award with the short story Kabane Sanemori ("The Corpse Sanemori") included in this book, but even though this award of publisher Tokyo Sogensha is meant for unpublished authors, they were not really one: Hanyuu had been active since 2010 as a writer of children's fiction under the name Saitou Asuka, but after winning and publishing enough stories with Yoritomo to collect in a volume, they changed their name to Hanyuu Asuka, perhaps also to differentiate between the actress and former Nogizaka46 member with the same name. Before winning in 2018, Hanyuu had also made it to the final judging round of the Mysteries! Newcomer Award in the previous year with Kaburo-Goroshi ("Murder of a Kaburo"), which serves as the opening story of this collection. The citizens of Kyoto have been complaining about the kaburo Kiyomori has set loose on town: these boys with a page cut serve as his spies in the city, reporting all the on-goings to him. When one of these kaburo is found murdered near a temple, the people in the neighborhood are afraid they'll be blamed for the death of one of Kiyomori's men, so they send someone to warn Yorimori: they hope the Lord of the Lake will solve this case for them, as they know Yorimori is waiting for any chance to do self-promotion to his half-brother. Yorimori swiftly examines the scene, and soon finds out the murder on the kaburo might be hiding something bigger. This story introduces the format all stories in this collection follow, with a rather lengthy introduction that provides the historical context, followed by a rather short mystery and Yorimori swiftly solving it, and then ending with a historical contextualization of the case. This story has Yorimori solving the murder on the kaburo surprisingly easily, with the major clue being simple, but quite fair, but I have to admit I found the process a bit too short. But I do really like the historical contextualization of the case, and that is in general where these stories shine: Hanyuu is excellent at presenting history and using tidbits like the kaburo to create mysteries that only could have happened in that time period, in that specific cultural/political environment. So the act of the murder of the kaburo wasn't very memorable on its own, but the way it builds on actual history to provide unique motives and other parts of the mystery, is great.

Aoi-no-mae Araware ("Pitiful Aoi-no-Mae") has Yorimori investigate the death of Aoi-no-mae, a former servant who had been loved by the emperor Takakura, but died a mysterious death. When Takakura learns about a certain poison, he realizes the symptoms resembles the one Aoi-no-mae showed before she died. He asks Yorimori to investigate her death, as he has no idea how Aoi-no-mae could have been poisoned, as they ate and drank together. This impossible poisoning case is a bit simple to solve, as not only does it revolve around something you'll often see in poisoning stories, it basically only works due to the (lack of) knowledge back in the Heian period, while you'd be far more likely to think of it in this day and age. So while it works as a historical work, and very well as that, as a detective story read now, it might lack a real surprise.

In Kabane Sanemori ("The Corpse Sanemori"), Yorimori is asked to identify the body of general Saitou Sanemori, a warrior who fought in the Gempei War and died on the battlefield at age 73. During their retreat, his men had buried his body in a make-shift grave as they weren't able to bring his body along during their retreat, but when they later returned to retrieve the body, more bodies had been buried at the same place. Now Yorimori has to identify Sanemori's body out of five candidates. I was not too big a fan of this one, as it felt a bit too... clinical? Like, a clue being Sanemori's age, so an obviously younger looking corpse being ruled out and things like that. While one clue is good, because it is rooted in actual history and Saitou Sanemori's character, I felt the mystery was less important than the surrounding historical story. While these stories generally manage to get the right balance between history lesson and mystery, I felt this one was the one where the mystery felt a bit tacked on, even though the problem itself (the difficulty in identifying a specific person on the battlefield) is one I like, like the one in Kokuroujou (AKA The Samurai and the Prisoner).

The fourth story is Tomurai Senju ("Thousand-Armed Mourning"), which I have already discussed when it was featured in the anthology Honkaku-Ou 2021, so I will be skipping it here. Please refer to that post to hear about that (pretty good!) story.

Rokudai Hiwa ("The Secret of the Sixth") is set much later in Yorimori's life, after the Taira are basically defeated by the Minamoto clan. The Minamotos are hunting for the grandson of Taira no Kiyomori, Taira no Takakiyo, who is also known as the Sixth as he was the sixth generation since Taira no Masamori, who facilated the rise of power of his clan. The hunt leads to Yorimori's manor: Yorimori is leading a retreated life now, having converted himself to being a monk and having cut ties with the Taira. However, the Minamotos suspect Yorimori has hiding the grandson of his half-brother, by having Takakiyo pose as one of his own sons. Yorimori of course denies the accusation, but how can he prove that? In essence, the problem is one that is similar to the aforementioned problem with Sanemori: in an era with no real identity records or photographs, how do you prove a person is actually that person, and not someone else? While I am not a big fan of the main proof provided by Yorimori to show he's not hiding Takakiyo, I do like the minor tricks he plays on the Minamoto hunters to put them on the wrong trail. 

Chou to Shite Shisu dives deep into actual real history and each story starts with basically a history lesson (and you'll be looking up a lot depending on how much (little) you know about this era), so while some might love this book for that, others might find it a bit tiring. While the core plots can be a bit simple at time, Hanyuu does a great job at linking these cases into actual historical context, and you're almost inclined to be believe it really happened like this, because it all fits so nicely. Yorimori is also an interesting detective, someone who is really trying to prove himself, not because he is a believer in truth or justice, but because of the political background, and seeing him trying to manouver himself into certain social positions in a volatile and often outright hostile environment is interesting, especially as we know he ultimately never really managed to arrive at where he wanted to be. Hanyuu has written a scond volume in this series, a full-length novel, and I will probably read that one in the future too!

Original Japanese title(s): 羽生飛鳥『蝶として死す』: 「禿髪殺し」/「葵前哀れ」/「屍実盛」/「弔千手」/「六代秘話」