A History of Murder

Step by Step あせることなんてないのさ

「Step by Step」(Ziggy)

 

 Step by Step, no need to be impatient

"Step by Step" (Ziggy)

Personally, when it comes to titles of short story collections, I actually prefer those with an original title, rather than being named after a story featured in the collection.

Sashichi is an okappiki, a kind of private detective who is hired by a doushin, the official Edo-period police detective, to serve as the doushin's eyes and ears on the ground in the capital of Edo. The woman-loving Sashichi works in Kanda and is known all around as 'the doll Sashichi', as his handsome face resembles those of Kyoto dolls (kyouningyou). Married to an older woman, with whom he often bickers, Sashichi runs around town, solving mysterious crimes as they happen, usually assisted by his two footmen Tatsugorou and Mameroku. The crimes Sashichi encounters are set in the world of the lowest classes, from merchants, actors to simple restaurant owners, but that doesn't make his mysteries less appealing: from a serial killer who targets women who have lately become models for illustrations hagoita paddles, to a series of murders that appear to mimic a serialized story, there's more than enough to do for Sashichi in Yokomizo Seishi's short story collection Meigetsu Ichiya Kyougen - Ningyou Sashichi Torimono-chou Kessakusen ("Kyougen on A Full Moon's Night - The Doll Sashichi Torimono-chou Masterpiece Selection", 2023). 

While Yokomizo Seishi is now best known for his creation Kindaichi Kousuke, and the books starring him, Yokomizo had other long-running series before he created Kindaichi after World War II: one of them is Yuri Rintarou, but his greatest success, and the series people knew him best for, was the Sashichi series. This is a so-called torimono-chou series, a historical detective series starring a character in a role close to what a modern police detective is. Readers of Japanese fiction in translation might know Okamito Kidou's Hanshichi series, which was the pioneer in that genre. Mind you, when I say historical, I don't mean Yokomizo really minded historical accuracy very much. While the 17(!) stories found here are definitely set in the past, and often do interesting things because they're not taking place in the modern world, the language used is fairly modern, and these stories are really easy to read. 

The Sashichi stories are really short, meaning they were pretty easy to write, and Yokomizo wrote 180 of them between 1938 and 1968! For this volume, editor Suekane Yoshimi selected the 17 stories he deemed as the best ones mystery-wise, and he also penned a very informative afterword, where he goes over every single story and explains precisely why they were chosen for this book and the unique points of each of them. Usually, I discuss all stories in a short story collection in detail, but 17 are just too many, and while the selection itself is varied enough, the stories are usually very simple in set-up and besides a core plot, feature a lot of "series tropes" (Sashichi being a womanizer, him bickering with his wife etc), so it's pretty hard to say something substantial about them without basically telling the whole story.

But I think Suekuni's afterword does a fantastic job at pointing out the more interesting points of these stories. Most importantly, or at least, what I thought the most engaging, is the fact that you can recognize ideas in some of these stories that would later be developed further in some of the more famous Kindaichi Kousuke novels. Some of these tricks in the Sashichi series are a bit simple, and because of the very short length of the stories, often it feels like clues are introduced just moments before the denouement, but at the very least, they are plotted as proper mysteries and often feature just enough of unique historical elements, ranging from popular culture like kabuki to women's sumo wrestling, to keep the reader engaged. But it is really seeing how for example one of these stories utilized a trick that you'd later see developed in much more interesting form in the Kindaichi Kousuke novel Gokumontou. Mind you, I don't really mean you see "proto-versions" of the trick in these stories, like how Agatha Christie's The Second Gong became the longer Dead Man's Mirror, but it's more like you see Yokomizo tackling a trope from mystery fiction here, which you'd also would see in a Kindaichi novel later on in his career. You can thus see him grow as a mystery writer, trying ideas out here and returning to them a decade, or more, later. 

And Yokomizo does also come up with interesting situations with his historical settings. In a few cases for example, there's a killer who removes the arm or hand of a victim, but in a world where you don't have fingerprints or DNA testing, why would a killer remove such part? In a contemporary world murderers might do that to hide the identity of their victim, but why would someone do that in the Edo period? Some of the answers provides are memorable because they are based on historical facts, so that make these stories feel firmly set in this setting, while others feel like they could have been easily rewritten to have taken place in a contemporary setting. Among the 17 stories are for example the first Sashichi story Hakoita Musume ("The Girls on the Hakoita"), where three young women have been featured as models for the art on hakoita paddles die one after another, with their own paddle lying next to thier bodies. In Ikiteiru Jiraiya, a thief thought to have died returns, but this time, the "non-violent thief" has committed murders. Or did he? In the title story Kyougen on A Full Moon's Night, Sashichi visits a party, where he is asked by a mysterious woman to pass on a note to one of the other guests, but later this guest is found dead, and three different clues found on his body, point to three different suspects. Horimonoshi no Musume deals with someone trying to identify his granddaughter, whom he has not met but does know has a certain tattoo on her back, but then two women with that tattoo appear before him. As Suekuni also points however, sometimes the underlying trick/solution does feel familiar to some classical Western mystery fiction, with Yokomizo adapting similar concept to the Edo era.

Personally, I thought having 17 of these stories in one volume was a bit overkill, but overall, Meigetsu Ichiya Kyougen - Ningyou Sashichi Torimono-chou Kessakusen is a fun, and especially very readable short story collection, that gives you a good idea of the torimono-chou subgenre and whereas Okamoto Kidou's Hanshichi series felt rather Holmesian, I would say Yokomizo's plotting in this selection of stories, is definitely closer to the puzzle-type plotting like Christie. Personally I found this book especially interesting having read a lot of Kindaichi novels, because you could really tell how Yokomizo first experimented with some ideas he'd later revisit, but even without that knowledge, the stories here are entertaining, even if quite simple. On the other hand, if these are really the best of the best in terms of mystery plotting of Sashichi, I can't say I am very interested in reading the other 150+ stories.

Original Japanese title(s): 横溝正史『名月一夜狂言  人形佐七捕物帳ミステリ傑作選』:「羽子板娘」/「名月一夜狂言」/「戯作地獄」/「生きている自来也」/「出世競べ三人旅」/「鶴の千番 」/「春色眉かくし」/「彫物師の娘」/「春宵とんとんとん」/「狐の裁判」/「当り矢」/ 「風流女相撲」/ 「たぬき汁」/ 「遠眼鏡の殿様」/「呪いの畳針」/「ろくろ首の女」/「初春笑い薬」

The Poet and the Lunatics

"One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off."

"Letter from Chekhov to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev"

I like this cute cover!

Publisher Tokyo Sogensha has been offering a fantastic platform for mystery writers who haven't been published yet for decades now with the prestigious Ayukawa Tetsuya Award: the award includes a publishing contract for the winning manuscript, and writers like Ashibe Taku, Asukabe Katsunori, Aizawa Sako, Aosaki Yuugo, Amon Junichi, Ichikawa Tetsuya, Ichikawa Yuuto, Imamura Masahiro, Houjou Kie and many more have all made their professional debuts by winning this award aimed at novel-length works. In the meantime, Tokyo Sogensha has also provided a platform for short stories, which would also be rewarded with publication in their literary magazine. 2022 was the last time this award was called the Mysteries! Newcomer Award, as it is now called the Sogen Mystery Short Story Award. The last winner of the Mysteries! Newcomer Award was Mamon Kouhei, with the short story Lunatic Retriever. This short story is included in Mamon's 2024 short story collection Bokura wa Kaishuu Shinai ("No Pay-Off for Us", 2024), which provides a nice showcase of his mystery plotting skills, as well as his talent for writing characters.

The book opens with Gaitou Interview ("Street Interview"), which offers a seemingly harmless mystery: Kirito is approached by classmate Fujiwara, who needs some help, and Kirito is known for having a very keen eye for details. Fujiwara's sister was recently interviewed on the street about a few topics, like the trend of younger people not reading newspapers anymore. Her sister thought the interview went well, but after it was broadcast, people on the internet started bashing her sister for giving stupid answers, and some even just bad-mouthed her appearance. Fujiwara doesn't know what Kirito can do, but hopes he can somehow make it stop. After a careful examination of the street interview video, Kirito is however indeed able to miraculously stop the bashing. This is a unique kind of mystery, as it doesn't involve any real crime, but it is set-up in a convincing manner, even if some of the clues are introduced too close to Kirito's proposed solution to resolving this matter. It's a mystery you could imagine happen in real-life, and I really like how the story eventually wraps back to Kirito's own backstory of how he became known at school as a kind of detective.

Kaeru-Goroshi ("The Murder of a Frog") is about the comedy duo Frogs in the Well, consisting of Shougo and Mitsunori.  Shougo is introduced to Miki, a great fan of the duo, via a mutual friend, and the two start seeing each other more often, eventually leading to them dating officially. While the two comedians have been working hard on their act, they never had their big break, until they finally manage to win first place in a prestigious comedy contest, which results in them getting more offers for appearances on television. The two are not used to their new succes, getting drained by the constant stream of gigs and to make things worse, Shougo is suddenly rejected by Miki, who, despite still being fond of him, somehow can't stand being with him anymore. It's during this period a comedian from the same agency, who has been in the trade for a very long time without any succes, finally wins his first contest. Masuoka Hideki never had much success, but he was always super nice to his juniors at the agency, so everyone is beyond happy for him, and they all gather at the offices of the agency to celebrate his long-awaited award. They all have something to drink and after a while, people walk in and out the room to make phone calls and smoke, but when Mitsunori goes out on the balcony on the third floor, he spots a dead Masuoka on the street below, and lying next to him, is a squished frog. Considering Masuoka just won an award and had his big break that very night, it doesn't seem likely this is a suicide, and suspicion falls on all who were in the building at the moment, but because it is not clear at first when Masuoka left the room and died, it is difficult to establish who was where when, and therefore who has an alibi or not. After reading the first story, I had mistakenly assumed this book would not feature murders at all, so this was a pleasant (?) surprise. Mamon spins a very Queen-esque whodunnit tale, where you use the various physical clues sprinkled across the tale to cross out suspects off the list, and there are some clever twists hidden in this process too, but what is the most memorable about this story, is definitely the motive for the murder. While a motive is a very subjective thing (one can find a motive satisfying, while someone else not at all), I find Mamon's efforts in presenting this aspect too as a fair-play mystery, and the way he set-up the motive with foreshadowing quite memorable. Considering how the whodunnit-part clewing went and the way the motive was so thoroughly foreshadowed, I can easily imagine this same short (very short!) story be fleshed out into a full novel, and it would've worked as well.

Tsuisou no Ie ("The House of Memories") is a very short story, where a father and his two adult children visit the home of the grandfather, who recently passed away. While going through his stuff, the narrator realizes something odd's going on: he has vivid memories of visiting his grandpa's study, which had bookcases filled completely with books. He hadn't visited his grandfather at home for many years, especially not because they had a fight a few years ago, but he knows his grandfather kept on buying books and that he never ever sold his books... But where have all the books his grandfather had bought after he last visited him, have gone to, as the bookcases in the study were already completely full back then? Cute little mystery that may have a very simple solution, but it just works very well with the theme of childhood memories.

Hayami Shirou wo Oikakete ("Chasing after Hayami Shirou") is a two-party mystery, where the narrator first tells how his classmate Hayami Shirou once saved him from a false accussation at school: trash had been thrown around the pool, and because the narrator had a fight with the teacher of the swimming club at the time, he was accused of the vandal act. Hayami however very ingeniously, and swiftly proves who the real culprit was. The narrator and Hayami now go to the same high school, and Hayami's talents are once again needed, when the football (soccer) club find their storeroom ransacked, with balls and other equipment stolen. The stolen items however are found the following day, having been left somewhere on the school grounds. The way Hayami deduces who the culprit is, and why, is clever and I do like the clues are based on physical senses that usually aren't featured as strongly in written fiction, though at the same time, that is also why the story kinda falls flat for me, as we read a lot about these senses, but while your mileage may vary, I did find it hard to believe how "exactly" for example a character could recognize a lingering smell. I do like the little twist at the end of the deduction process that allowed Hayami to point at the one and only culprit, and the motive works well in this school setting too.

Lunatic Retriever is set at a college mixed dormitory, which has one 'famous' inhabitant: Yoshida Haruka won a literary award at age 20 and has been publishing books these last two years. She's also quite arrogant and doesn't mingle much with the other students living in the dorm. However, that doesn't mean her death isn't a shock. On the day a solar eclipse happens, she is found dead in a storeroom inside the dorm. The storeroom was originally a smoking area inside the common room, with two doors (one opening in, the other door opening out). Before the eclipse, people tried going to the storeroom to get something, but found both doors locked for some reason. After the eclipse, the students find it odd the doors are still closed, so they force the doors open. They not only learn the doors were "locked" because they had been taped tight with duct tape, they also find a dead Haruka lying on the floor, as well as a burning stove. The room being taped shut and the burning stove suggests Haruka committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, but on the other hand, they also are of the opinion Haruka would be the last person to commit suicide. But if it was murder, how did the murderer escape the taped storeroom? This is a very dense story, with a lot to offer: a taped locked room, Ellery Queen style deductions to determine who the murderer is, and we even have a solar eclipse... Because of the clue density, we even have room for multiple people presenting their theories, and interestingly, I think that in terms of the locked room mystery, the final solution isn't even as impressive as the earlier ones. What is really memorable about this story however, is the ending, when we are confronted with what is thematically an absurdly shocking revelation. It is a funny, meta-level observation that in a different work could have catastrophic implications, but it works in this short story setting and gives you some food for thought regarding the mystery genre, while also still functioning as a mystery story itself. The theme, in hindsight, can be found in other stories in the volume too, which wraps things up nicely.

This is the first time I read anything by Mamon Kouhei, and while I am generally more a fan of short stories, and I did enjoy the short stories found here, I have to admit they left me wanting for more, for stories that show the same type of plotting, clewing and ways in identifying whodunnit, but with more room for depth and that is also the case for the motives, there are some really originaly character motivations at display here that result in interesting mystery settings, and I'd love to see Mamon for example trying to do a longer detective novel with such themes. So I'll keep an eye out for Mamon's future output!

Original Japanese title(s): 真門浩平『ぼくらは回収しない』 「街頭インタビュー」/「カエル殺し」/「追想の家」/「速水士郎を追いかけて」/「ルナティック・レトリーバー」

The Mystery of the Yellow Room

もしも 生まれ変わっても また私に生まれたい 

この体と この色で 生き抜いてきたんだから 

「Yellow Yellow Happy」（ポケットビスケッツ）

 

If I would be born again, I want to be born as myself again

Because I have survived in this body and this color until now

"Yellow Yellow Happy" (Pocket Bisquits)

No, this book is not set in a place where rocks levitate...

It has been three years since the traumatic events at Katsuragi Teruyoshi's family home, and now the great detective and his best friends Tadokoro Shinya and Mitani Rokurou are all studying at different universities, all having an idea of their future. They still see each other often, but they have not travelled together in ages, however, exceptions are made for special occassions: Katsuragi and Tadokoro have received a letter from Asukai Hikaru, the former high school student detective whom Tadokoro looked up to when he was young. A few years ago, Katsuragi and Tadokoro met her, now in her late twenties and working as an insurance agent, at the house of  mystery author Takarada Yuuzan, where they were confronted with a horrible murder. Katsuragi and Hikaru had clashed about their views about what a detective is, so Katsuragi and Tadakoro are surprised to learn she had written them a letter. She informs them she's going to be married to Dotou Kouki, the son of Dotou Raizou, the world famous multi-disciplinary artist, especially known for his paintings, sculptures and architecture. While Kouki is "a normal guy", his sisters have inherited their father's artistic talent, with Yukie being an accomplished illustrator, Tsukiyo a sculpter and Kanon a singer. Because of Kouki and Hikaru's engagement, they're going to have a rare gathering on the last day of the year at Raizou's home the Wasteland Manor: a house with four towers Raizou himself designed, located in what is basically a small, square valley, with the house surrounded completely by four rock walls. 

Raizou turns out to be a friend of Takarada Yuuzan, who has passed away since. It was Raizou who designed the house of Yuuzan, and in exchange, Yuuzan had written a mystery novel set in Raizou's home. It is this unpublished manuscript that worries Hikaru, prompting her to contact Katsuragi and Tadokoro. It appears Hikaru's presence at Yuuzan's manor three years ago had not been a coincidence, but set-up by Yuuzan, and she fears she's being manipulated again by this unpublished manuscript of Yuuzan. She hopes Katsuragi and Tadokoro will come to the house, as her "relatives" and see if they can get their hands on the manuscript and see what is hidden within the pages. Katsuragi has no intention of meeting Asukai again, but he agrees to at least join Tadokoro and Mitani on their way to the house. The three young men meet with Hikaru and Kouki outside the house to discuss what they'll do, but then they are surprised by a heavy earthquake. While they are all unharmed, the road has collapsed and trees have fallen on the road, blocking it completely. Very conveniently, Katsuragi alone finds himself on the outside world side of the road, while the rest are now trapped on the house-side of the road. Katsuragi says he'll go to the nearby town and stay there, while Tadokoro and Mitani will go with Hikaru and Kouki as planned. 

Things soon take a turn for the worse however. Tadokoro and Mitani are introduced to the rest of the family (as well as two other guests), though none of the Dotous seem very interested in them. Everyone is shocked to learn they have been cut off from the outside world, but they have enough supplies to last for about four days. And while there are occasional aftershocks, the house itself is sturdy enough to withstand the violent movements. However, the following day, patriarch Raizou is found dead in the courtyard of the house: the elderly man has been shish-kebab'd on a statue of a knight holding a sword up high and what's more: the murderer has left no footprints in the wet garden. When they go looking for Yuuzan's unpublished manuscript in Raizou's room, they find someone has taken it: is it a coincidence a manuscript about a murder case happening in this house is now missing? Meanwhile, Katsuragi has barely managed to find a room in the only inn in town, which is swarming due to the sudden earthquake and trains not running anymore. His attention is soon drawn to his roommate Ogasawara Tsuneharu, who is acting rather suspicious. Of course, Katsuragi has no way to know that Ogasawara is planning to kill the proprietor of the inn: not because he has a motive to kill her, but some hours ago, Ogasawara had agreed to do a murder exchange: when he was not able to go to Raizou's home due to the road collapse and fallen trees, a woman called out to him from the other side of the blocked road, who offered to kill Raizou for him, if he instead kills the inn proprietor for her. Can Katsuragi and Hikaru solve all the crimes happening in and outside the house in Atsukawa Tatsumi's Koudokan no Satsujin ("The Murder in the Earthy Yellow Manor" 2023)?

This is the third book in the series which now bears the name Manor Quartet, which obviously suggest this series will be four parts in total. The first book had fire and the summer as its theme, the second water and autumn and this third book revolves around earth and winter. So yes, that suggest the final book's theme will be wind (air) in the spring. A murder in a house during a typhoon? Anyway, I enjoyed the previous two books about Katsuragi, the young detective who has the ability to sense people lying to him, and while I had not read the premise of the book before, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Asukai Hikaru from the first book returned too in a prominent role, so once I got started with this book, I had gone through it really fast.

The book takes on a rather interesting structure: the first third of the book is actually an inverted mystery: we follow Ogasawara Tsuneharu as he makes his way to the Wasteland Manor to kill Raizou, whom he hates for a very personal reason, only to find the road collapsed and blocked by fallen trees. When he grumbles out loud he now can't kill Raizou now, a woman calls out to him from the other side of the road. While they can't see each other, she offers to kill Raizou instead of him, if he then kills the propriator of the local inn. The woman suggest she'll kill Raizou first and use a flare signal so Ogasawara will know she has succeeded in her task, after which he'll kill the proprietor. Ogasawara accepts the offer for a murder exchange, and arrives at the inn, but can only stay he shares a room with Katsuragi. And so Ogasawara slowly starts to plan his murder (luckily, he was already planning to kill Raizou so he has things like poison with him). But as this is an inverted detective, we of course see how Katsuragi slowly starts to suspect his roommate isn't just some innocent guest. But how did he figure it out? This part is fairly short, but I do like the clewing Atsukawa employed to allow Katsuragi to get on the trail of Ogasawara. We know Katsuragi starts to have his suspicions very early on, but the clues that allowed him to zero on his roommate are fairly clever hidden. In the aftermath, Katsuragi learns about the murder exchange, finally realizing his friends Tadokoro and Mitani may be in danger, as there's a murderer in Wasteland House. 

At this point, the book jumps back to the last day of the year, and we now follow Tadokoro, who together with Mitani visit the Wasteland House. Kouki's sisters Yukie, Tsukiyo and Kanon seem not interested in the two men, nor are the two other guests (an art broker and Kanon's manager), but Raizou himself seems interested in Tadokoro, as Raizou is aware Tadokoro and Katsuragi where involved in the incident in the house of his friend Yuuzan, and Raizou also seems more interested in Hikaru's past as a high school student detective, rather than as his future daughter-in-law. The following day however, the man is found dangling from the sword of the knight statue in the courtyard, but how could anyone have lifted the victim and stabbed him on a five-metre high sculpture? As there's no landline phone and for some reasons, their mobiles don't have any reception, all they can do is wait until the road's been restored or outside help comes via some other way, but they don't have much time, as more mysterious happenings occur, from sightings of a masked butler who can escape from a tower room with only entrance even though they were being chased by Tadokoro and someone being shot inside another tower room, even though it was locked from inside and the only window in the room looks out... on a rock wall. With Katsuragi not present, and Asukai Hikaru having sworn off ever playing detective ever again, Watson Tadokoro finds himself forced to be the Holmes himself this time...

In Gurenkan no Satsujin and Aomikan no Satsujin, the respective themes of a mountain fire, and a flooded river added a note of excitement to the mystery: like Ellery in The Siamese Twin Mystery, it wasn't just that Katsuragi and Tadokoro found them having to deal with a musterious murder committed in a house, they also had to deal with an unstoppable force of nature, a force that also had its influence on the murders. In Koudokan no Satsujin, we have one major earthquake at the very start of the book, followed by unpredictable aftershocks, but I have to admit I found the theme not as strong here as in the previous books. The initial earthquake creates the closed circle setting, and also sets up the murder exchange, but from that point on, we just have aftershocks happening now and then. They don't really serve as a constant threat, as they come and go swiftly, and it's not like you can predict them. The earthquakes are not a theme that permeate throughout the novel, only popping up now and then, so that kinda weakens the "earth" theme, even if the couple of themes they do feature in the mysteries, they are integrated cleverly.

 What you can't accuse Atsukawa of, is him skimping on the mysteries though. We have Raizou skewered on a sword in the courtyard, even though there are no footprints left in the courtyard, even though rain had softened the ground last night. We have masked butlers being chased into rooms with only one entrance and disappearing from those rooms. We have a body which appears in a room, even though everyone has an alibi for the time between the discovery of the body, and the last time people visited the room, and many more. What I do like is that a lot of these mysteries do share a common thread, used in a few ways. I have to admit I have read so many of these books by now, I found the big trick a bit easy to guess because I have seen similar ideas quite often, but the execution is well-clewed and because Atsukawa utilized the idea in various ways, it feels fairly substantial, rather than a one-trick pony. The earthquakes in return are featured now and then in the mystery, for example forcing the murderer to do something in a certain manner, or the earthquake creating an unforeseen situation for everyone. As mentioned before, the synergy between this 'force of nature' theme and the mystery isn't as prominent as I had hoped, but when it's done, it definitely presents interesting parts of the mystery.

That said, I do find the whodunnit rather disappointing. The first part is an inverted mystery, so of course who the culprit is, but Ogasawara himself never learns who his partner in crime is, so we don't know who the murderer inside the house is. However, the way Atsukawa planted the clues to point to the murderer are a bit too obvious. While from an in-universe point of view, it makes sense it takes some time for the detectives on both sides to catch up as you need information obtained from both in and outside the house to solve everything, it doesn't mean the reader isn't already in possession of that knowledge, and it makes the attempts to present false solutions feel a bit weak, as you know the big elephant in the room hasn't been addressed yet. 

Overall though, I do like how this book is set three years after the previous books, with a more mature Katsuragi Teruyoshi who has learned to deal with his trauma gained in the previous two books, and we see how that also helps Asukai Hikaru, who has her own trauma. I'm not really that interested in character development, but for those looking for that in a detective character, you can definitely find it in this series, and what I do like is how Katsuragi's character does influence his detecting style a lot: it's his experiences that leads him to act like he does now as a detective, so in that sense, I do like seeing the change in him, as it's directly reflected in the way the mystery is plotted and how Atsukawa decides to have the story solved.

Koudokan no Satsujin is overall a solid third entry. While the earth theme isn't as strongly present here as the force of nature themes in the previous two books and it is overall a bit simpler, I do like the twists Atsukawa presents here, like having an inverted mystery section, and focusing on basically three detective figures in Katsuragi, Hikaru and Tadokoro. Can't wait to see how the last volume will wrap things up!

Original Japanese title(s):阿津川辰海『黄土館の殺人』

Regarding the English translation of The Labyrinth House Murders

My translation of The Labyrinth House Murders (Yukito AYATSUJI) was released three weeks ago in the UK by Pushkin Press. I hope the people who have read it enjoyed it, and that those who still have to read it, will find it as entertaining as I did when I first read the work. As much as I love the original work however, there was one point in the original work that wasn't likely to work "as is" in an English translation, and after deliberation with the editor and Ayatsuji himself, it was decided I'd change part of the mystery slightly, in order to keep the fair play spirit of the original work intact for the English-language reader. However, I still want people to know what the real idea was Ayatsuji had planted in his book, so I decided to write a piece explaining about what was changed and why, and go over a few other translation-related points while I am at it.

As you probably can guess, I'll be discussing major spoilers for The Labyrinth House Murders in that piece, so you should only read it after reading the book.

You can find the page here, and I will be re-posting this announcement when the US version of the book will be released coming Spring.

The Time Thief

We could steal time just for one day

We can be heroes for ever and ever 

"Heroes" (David Bowie)

Gorgeous cover!

Earlier this year, I discussed Yuuki Haruo's Salome no Guillotine, a very memorable mystery set in the Taishou era, revolving around a series of murders among artists. It was only after reading the book I learned it was actually the latest entry in a series. In fact, I only realized that after I first opened the book of today's review, and saw the names of the protagonists of Salome's Guillotine on the first page... Yuuki Haruo's Tokeidorobou to Akunin ("Clock Thieves & Crooks" 2023) is the second book featuring the adventures of painter Iguchi Sakuta and his friend and former burglar Hasuno in the late Taishou era, with the handsome Hasuno with his criminal experience of course being the detective, while Iguchi functions as our Watson. Iguchi and his wife are good friends with the loner Hasuno, who after a short career in relieving people of their possessions has now become mostly an upstanding citizen, though the adventures of the two occasionally force Hasuno to make use of his unique talents again. And yes, this is the second book in the series apparently, so I'm reading these out of order and I have no idea how much about their initial meeting is explained in the first book, but in Tokeidorobou to Akunin, they form a great team. The book is technically a short story collection, but the stories do flow from one into the next, even if there's no tight overarching storyline. 

The book opens with Kaemon-shi no Bijutsukan ("The Art Museum of Mr Kaemon"), where Iguchi has a major problem. Long ago, his father had bought an antique Dutch clock which once belonged to the Dutch royal family. When he purchased the clock, he also received a very well-made imitation of the clock, as the previous owner had been scared of theft. When Iguchi's father sold the clock to the collector Kaemon, he gave the imitation to Kaemon. The latter never noticed it, and Iguchi suspects his late father did it on purpose. The elderly Kaemon has not long to live anymore, and has recently had his country house renovated to include an art museum to display the art collection he gathered throughout the years. This would include the Dutch table clock, and Iguchi is afraid fellow art connoisseurs who will visit the museum will realize it's a fake, and that it will become public his father sold Kaemon imitation art. Iguchi and Hasuno visit Kaemon at his house, to see if they could just apologize and give him the real clock, but the attitude of the grumpy old man makes it clear there is only one solution: Iguchi and Hasuno have to break in the museum and swap the fake clock for the real one themselves. What follows is a fun adventure of Iguchi and Hasuno trying to sneak inside the museum, but while they are there, they notice something is off about the museum, but what? This is one of those mysteries where you don't really know what the mystery is until the conclusion, so I can't say too much about the mystery. But I'd definitely say it's a memorable one! The ingenious twist is definitely set-up very well with both physical and psychological clues, and I love the themes (motive) behind this story. Great opening of the book, especially with the banter between Iguchi and Hasuno.

Akunin Ikka no Misshitsu ("The Locked Room of the Family of Crooks") follows Atsuko, the maid of the Minoda family, who live in a large manor in Yokohama. Patriarch Akiyoshi lives in England with his wife, while his four children live in their parental home in Japan. None of the children, all of different mothers, really like their father, nor each other, but money is a great binding tissue, so they all live together. Oldest son Yukimasa one day receives a letter from his father telling him he is returning from England and he has also sent boxes full of furniture back to Japan. It appears his wife died, and now he's coming back, but his father wants his home in England replicated perfectly in the annex of their Japanese home, hence Akiyoshi not only sending back sofas and chairs, but even the doors. Yukimusa arranges for builders to come and construction starts based on the photographs his father sent him. One night however, as the maid Atsuko returns, she notices a figure floating in the rooms under construction, and when she peeks through the window, she sees Yukimasa's body hanging from a rope, with his legs resting on the bolted door latch (which was also imported from England). She calls the other siblings, but they can only enter the room by breaking the door down: meaning this was a locked room. At first sight, this therefore looks like a suicide, but when Iguchi and Hasuno visit the place (Iguchi's patron had sent Iguchi and Hasuno to sort out something with Yukimasa), they soon uncover not only that all of Yukimasa's siblings had a motive to kill him,, but they also find clues that indicate this was indeed a murder. But how could the murderer have left the locked room? On a purely technical level, the locked room mystery is not very original perhaps, but the way it ties to the motive is really great! It provides a fantastic reason why such a rudimentary trick was used, and the small unique elements of this locked room, like balancing the victim's feet on the latch, do transform it enough to create a good story. But it's definitely the motive, and the final implication regarding the victim, that makes this another good entry.

Yuukai to Ooyuki - Yuukai no Shou ("Abduction and Heavy Snow: Abduction") and Yuukai to Ooyuki - Ooyuki no Shou ("Abduction and Heavy Snow: Heavy Snow") is a two-part story, each focusing on a different mystery. In the first part, Hasuno asked to come disguised as a salesman to Iguchi's sister-in-law's place. When he arrives there, he learns Iguchi's niece Mineko has been abducted and a ransom note has been left in their letter-box. They ask Hasuno for advise, but the latter soon notices several odd points about the ransom note, leading to a surprising conclusion regarding why Mineko was abducted. The story then deals with the drop-off for the ransom, which is done by Iguchi's father-in-law, while Hasuno and Iguchi, in disguise, try to spot the abductors. Again, Hasuno quickly sees through the trickery of the abductors and soon the two are on their way to save Mineko. This chapter is the most adventurous of the whole book, I think, with a good deal of suspense as Hasuno slowly deduces the bigger story behind Mineko's abduction simply based on the instructions in the ransom note. The trick regarding the ransom money drop-off is fairly simple, but it's basically just a set-up to lead into the second part of the story. There we follow the story first from Mineko's point of view, as she finds herself abducted by a group of men. In the night, she's taken by one of the leaders to a hut outside and thrown on a hay bed: Mineko fears the worst and is knocked out by the man. When she wakes up however, she finds that man stabbed to death lying next to her. It is at that time her uncle arrives together with Hasuno, having found out where she was being held, but they have two problems: one is that their car broke down and even if they try to get away on foot now, they'll probably be caught by the rest of the gang in the house next door. The second problem is that the only footprints leading to the hut are those of the dead man, Mineko and Iguchi and Hasuno who arrived just now, meaning the only person who could've killed that man is Mineko. While Mineko has no recollection of killing the man, and Iguchi and Hasuno also don't believe that is the case, who then did kill the man, and how? While it might be hard to guess the details of how this was done, I think the general idea behind the locked room is probably fairly easy to guess, even if it can be a bit tricky figuring out the exact timing. The story then ends in a kind of reverse Home Alone, where Iguchi, Hasuno and Mineko try to round up the whole gang themselves, which results in some funny swashbuckling scenes.

Iguchi, like many of his fellow artists, has found a patron in the art-loving businessman Harumi. In Harumi-shi no Gaikoku Tegami ("Mr Harumi's Letter from Abroad"), Harumi asks Iguchi for some help, or to be exact, he needs the help of Iguchi's friend Hasuno. Not because Hasuno was a burglar, but because Hasuno also knows languages and Harumi needs a translator. His wife passed away some time ago, and he only now got around to sorting out her possessions, but he came across a strange letter from France, even though she did not have any friends there. Hasuno translates the letter, which is sent by the nephew of Marcel Champlain, stating he writes on behalf of his recently deceased uncle, who implored him to write a letter to Japan to express his thanks, and love to Ms Harumi. Harumi has no idea who this Marcel Champlain is, and asks Iguchi and Hasuno to figure out who he is and what his relationship was with his wife. The two dig into the history of Harumi's late wife, which is rather complex: Harumi's recently deceased wife was actually his second, and his first wife was actually her twin sister, who also passed away early, and there was another older sister too. The precise relationship between Harumi and his wife and sister-in-laws is rather complex and can make this story a bit confusing, and again, this is the type of mystery you don't really know was even present until it is explained to you, though I do like the truth Hasuno eventually uncovers, and it gives a very sad, but memorable meaning to the letter sent on Marcel's behalf.

In Mitsukawamaru no Ayashii Bansan ("The Alluring Dinner on the Mitsukawa-Maru"), Iguchi, Hasuno and fellow artist Ootsuki find themselves on the ship Mitsukawa-Maru, as representives of Harumi. The Mitsukawa-Maru recently returned from India, but ran into trouble just off the coast: while the ship itself is in no direct danger of sinking and the crew safely returned to the mainland, it will take a few days before the ship itself can be pulled free. However, the ship was carrying a unique cargo: two tigers.... which are going to be served at dinner. Hirokawa Koutarou, the owner of the ship, also runs a shady secret club where the members can enjoy strange things, which is why he had planned a dinner party with tiger meat. Due to the ship's troubles however, he has decided to hold the party on the ship itself now, with the invitees being brought especially on the Mitsukawa-Maru as it lays off the coast.  While one tiger has already been prepared, the other is bit more troublesome: the ship's troubles led to one tiger cage being broken, and now that tiger is running free in two connected rooms in the hold. Terue is Hirokawa's maid, and she's on the ship too to take care of her boss' guests, but she comes across the dead body of one of them! She reports to her boss, but when they return to the place, the body is gone, and her boss is not really believing her. Hasuno and Iguchi however have reason to believe Terue might be right, as the victim was a reporter on the trail of a serial killer, who might be one of the other guests, and they start poking around and looking for the body. This is by far the longest story of the bunch, offering a closed circle mystery with unique elements like a friggin' tiger in the hold, but I feel this story was way longer than it needed to be, and even felt a bit tiring after a while. Hasuno and Iguchi are already aware of much of the background story by the time the story starts, so the reader is always at a disadvantage, and unfortunately, this story has no floorplan even though the characters move around a lot on the ship. Eventually, Hasuno deduces who the murderer is based on the actions they took, but to be honest, the whodunnit wasn't nearly as impressive as the whydunnit. At least, the whydunnit regarding the direct motive for the second death and the implications of that death was absolutely great, and I would perhaps have preferred a story focusing solely on that.

Houseki Dorobou to Okidokei ("A Jewel Thief and the Table Clock") brings up back to the Dutch table clock from the first story. Iguchi receives a letter from the (son of the) previous owner of the clock, who hopes to buy back the clock. Iguchi has two major problems: due to the conclusion of the first story, Iguchi is still in possession of the clock, even though it belongs to Kaemon and two: the clock was stolen. He had kept it wrapped up in a cloth in the bedroom, but for some reason someone stole the clock, and just the clock, with nothing else in the bedroom being disturbed. This was also only one theft in a series of thefts among friends of his wife: several rubies have been stolen, but all under nearly impossible circumstances: for example, one friend had a bracelet with a ruby embedded in it, and hidden it within an orange cloth, put in a box with many other wrapped up cloths, but the thief managed to steal only the one with the bracelet in it, without opening the other cloths. In another theft, the thief stole a ruby which had been put on a dress, but there had been four identical dresses, with the other three having very well made imitations, so how could the thief so quickly found the real ruby, not even having to touch the other three dresses? While the tricks behind each of these cases is fairly simple, I do like how some of them are connected, leading to some nice synergy moments: the explanation for the ruby on the dress theft for example is pretty clever on its own, but it also gives a great explanation for how the thief managed to find the antique clock in Iguchi's home. While I don't really think this is a very memorable story (I think I had expected it to connect a bit more strongly to the previous stories), it's an okay one, and it also leads directly into the events of Salome's Guillotine.

Overall though, I did really enjoy Tokeidorobou to Akunin. I think Yuuki Haruo especially excels in coming up with cool motives that not only are memorable, but they also often naturally lead to the core mysteries of howdunnit or whodunnit. I already noticed that in Salome's Guillotine, but as a short story collection, you of course see more instances of that here. The banter between Hasuno and Iguchi is also fun, and while some of the stories can become a bit darker, there is usually a slight comedic tone to them (the two stories told from the maid's POV for example have some funny moments where they lament having to work for their employers). So another recommended read! I should probably read the first book too...

Original Japanese title(s): 夕木春央『時計泥棒と悪人』: 「加右衛門氏の美術館」/「悪人一家の密室」/「誘拐と大雪　誘拐の章」/「誘拐と大雪　大雪の章」/「晴海氏の外国手紙」/「光川丸の妖しい晩餐」/「宝石泥棒と置時計」

The Labyrinth Seduction

"There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one."

"Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings"

I wasn't aware the full title of this book was so long until I started writing this review...

Shizuku is a detective. At least, she plays one, in the virtual reality MMORPG Alfheim Online. As "Spica", she has her own detective agency, with even her very own Watson (her childhood friend, and narrator Endou). In reality, she has never ever taken a case, and the two just hang out in the office every day after school, but don't say that out loud in front of Spica. One day, the narrator finds a mysterious object in his inventory: he has no memories of ever picking up such an item, so how could it have been added to his inventory? When the two take a look at the diary, they realize they have in their possession an impossible object. For this diary purports to be written by a player of the VR MMORPG Sword Art Online, and written within SAO. Which is impossible: Sword Art Online was the infamous brainchild of Kayaba Akihiko, who made a revolutionary virtual game system with a helmet that stimulates all 5 senses, but when the game launched, the players found themselves trapped inside Sword Art Online by Kayaba. Players were unable to log out and they were told that if they died in-game, the helmet would also kill them in real-life, which would also happen if someone tried to forcibly log them out by messing with the hardware. In the end, players did manage to beat the game and escape, but many of the players had suffered deaths in the meantime. After the game was beaten, most of the data of Sword Art Online and all the records of what happened within the world was deleted however. The in-game world was completely lost, though the very basics of the system survived, allowing the creation of the (safer) Alfheim Online as a spiritual successor. So how could Spica and the narrator now have a diary that was written by one of the players in Sword Art Online during that period, and how did it appear in Alfheim Online?

The diary itself is written by a player called Jason, who is the leader of a party called the Argonauts. While they are fairly powerful, they are not strong enough to be leading the attempt to clear all 100 floors of Sword Art Online. The Argonauts however do fulfill an important role. Because the frontline parties try to clear each floor as quickly as possible, they are not able to explore each floor completely. Parties like the Argonauts are active a few floors behind the frontline parties and help explore every corner of each floor, because they might find hidden equipment, items or hints that may help the frontline parties. It is during one of these exploration missions Jason, and his comrades Orpheus, Hercules, Asklepios, Atalanta and Caenis find themselves transported in an underground labyrinth. While they explore the place, they are suddenly attacked by a menacing Blind Minotaur. While the party display fantastic teamwork, they soon realize that the Blind Minotaur is faaaaar more powerful than they are, and they are hardly able to chip off even a little of his hit points. As a hopeless battle, all they can do is flee, and then soon learn that they are safe if they manage to stay inside one of the few rooms in the labyrinth and keep the door closed, as the Minotaur is not able to get inside "uninvited." The Argonauts try to find a way out, but run into a different party who just made it here: the Legendary Heroes consist of Arthur, Evelyn, Rocky, Azrael, Mark and Omega, but unlike the Argonauts, it's clear this party isn't really a team, and their whole strategy revolves around Arthur alone. The two parties don't really trust each other, and decide to try to find a way out on their own, while avoiding the Blind Minotaur, who seems to have a set pattern of appearing from an underground lair once in a while and then return again. However, the Argonauts are later contacted by the Legendary Heroes with shocking news: it appears Arthur had gone out into the labyrinth on his own during the night, and was killed by the Blind Minotaur (something his party members can see "on screen" happen, as you can always check a party member's hit points and status). There are however suspicious points to Arthur's death, as why did he sneak out in the night and why would he try to take on the Minotaur alone? The two parties agree to find a way out together, and they suspect this dungeon isn't about beating the Blind Minotaur, but finding some kind of secret that solves the dungeon, but while they are trying, more and more people are killed, and they soon start to realize some of these deaths weren't commited by the Minotaur, but one of their own. But why?

As long as it's a mystery, I'm interested, so I occasionally consume mystery media based on IPs I don't even know or have ever seen/read. In the past I have for example discussed the Fate/Grand Order mystery novels by Van Madoy, even though I don't play the game and have still not ever played any of the Fate games or seen any of the anime series. I also originally had no interest in watching Oppenheimer, until someone told me you could totally watch it as a mystery film, and... he was right. So when I learned Konno Tenryuu had written a mystery novel for Sword Art Online, the franchise based on the light novels by Kawahara Reki. I was immediately interested, even though I have not seen or read the series. Yes, I know it's really popular, but I'm from the generation where "an isekai series of a boy having to clear floors to beat a RPG-like world" equals Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru. Anyway, I have read a few of Konno's books too, many of them dealing with fantasy elements, and I like his work, so I knew I wanted to read Sword Art Online Alternative: Mystery Labyrinth - Meikyuukan no Satsujin (2023), or as the cover also says: Murder in the Labyrinth Pavillion.

I can at least say that even with zero prior knowledge of the Sword Art Online franchise, this was pretty accessible. It is, as far as I know, not directly connected to any events from the series, and is mostly a standalone story, though it is set after the original Sword Art Online was beaten, so the first series/book. The mystery plays at two levels, the series of murders that occur in the Labyrinth Pavillion dungeon and the parties' attempts at finding an exit out of the maze, and a meta-mystery where Spica and the narrator try to figure out how this diary could've made it out of Sword Art Online, a world that has been destroyed, and into Alfheim Online.

The murders in the Labyrinth Pavillion are of course the meat of the mystery and I found it highly entertaining. Konno does a great job at actually incorporating the game-element of Sword Art Online to create highly original mysteries, that are truly only possible in such a setting. For example, we have characters witnessing a murder and learning the exact time of a death not because they seeing the death with their own eyes, but because they can see their party member's HP bar dropping in the party member status screen: where else could you ever see such a way to establish a time of death and alibis for the suspects!? Other cool things are how there are no corpses in the world of Sword Art Online, with the player's body simply disappearing from the game world if they are killed, though they do leave whatever they have equiped at the time, again opening up possibilities for shenanigans as the murderer doesn't have to deal with hiding bodies. As a closed circle setting, the Labyrinth Pavillion is also interesting, as the rules of the game make it a place you can't easily get in or out to, making it a very convincing confined location. Add in the rules of how many people can stay in a room and how you have to invite people inside, and the characteristics of the Blind Minotaur (the players slowly learn its attack and reaction patterns through their various encounters, which again tells them how the Minotaur could've been used to faciliate the murders) and you end up with a novel that is just fun to read because you're constantly confronted with new ways to present a mystery due to the unique setting. Clever things are done here, and the fact the Blind Minotaur (a force of nature/a game enemy) is used as a "murder weapon" is of course also really interesting. The motive for the murders is also rather unique to this series: while I don't think it's completely convincing, I do think Konno did a great job at really making this a motive that works in Sword Art Online. The one thing that didn't really work for me was solution to beating the Labyrinth Pavillion: that part of the mystery is just too farfetched, and nobody would be ever able to solve such a puzzle...

Meanwhile, the meta-mystery at the Alfheim Online level is probably easier to guess, as Spica seems to know what the trick is from a very early stage and gives out hints. The answer might seem a bit predictable once you reach about the middle of the book, but overall, I think it provides a nice side-story to Sword Art Online, being completely seperate of the main story, but still firmly set within that world. It probably helps the book was based on an idea by series creator Kawahara, and also supervised by him!

So even without ever having seen any Sword Art Online, I can safely say Sword Art Online Alternative: Mystery Labyrinth - Meikyuukan no Satsujin is a fun mystery novel, that makes great use of its VR MMORPG setting to present a mystery with elements you won't find in other mystery novels. It is a book that fully utilizes the fact it is based on an existing IP, building on the story and rules of the franchise, yet at the same time is not at all dependent on the main story. It's really impressive what Konno managed to do here in that sense.

Original Japanese title(s): 川原礫（草案・監修）、 紺野天龍『ソードアート・オンライン オルタナティブ ミステリ・ラビリンス 迷宮館の殺人』

Murder, Country Style

"Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood"
"The Masque of Red Death"

I knew this book only from the listings on webshops with just a small picture of the cover; I only realized those were wisterias on the cover when I actually got the physical book and saw the cover at a better resolution...

Kazuichi was the heir of the Sekimori clan, one of the two prominent families in the isolated village of Umesato in Tochigi Prefecture, but he left the village for Tokyo, having had enough of the struggle for power between the Sekimori and the Hasumi clans. The Sekimoris run a succesful plum business, a driving force for the local economy, which has earned the Sekimoris the name "The Plum Clan" in the family. The Hasumis are known as the "Wisteria Clan" due to their splendid wisteria garden and have lately been gaining political and econimcal influence by opening a waste processing plant. Kazuichi's wish of becoming independent in Tokyo didn't work out well, as business didn't go well, but he did find the love of his life: Ayako, a single mother, with whom he was going to have a child. In order to care for Ayako, her daughter Mana and the upcoming second child, Kazuichi decides to return home and to work in the family business, but as he had feared, his grandmother, mother and uncle, as well as far relatives and other people with close ties to the Sekimoris try to push him to become the Sekimori patriarch and have him run for mayor in the upcoming election. After one of these family meetings in the annex, Kazuchi stays in the room to clean up, while everybody leaves the room. Just as they are all out in the hallway and the last one shuts the door behind him, they hear a loud bang. They all run up to the door, but when they look inside the room, they find Kazuichi has been shot, with the pistol lying near him. However, because the windows were all shut and the shot rang very soon after everyone had left the room, with most people still in sight of others, Kazuchi's death is considered a suicide.

Ayako had not yet married Kazuichi, but as she is carrying their baby, she is, somewhat begrudgingly, allowed to stay at the Sekimori family as the mother of the future heir of the family. However, her stay in Umesato Village is a very dangerous one: an old legend tells about the curse of Aya, a villager who was wronged and who since has cursed the village. Because of that, the name "Aya" and variations of it are a taboo in the village, and many villagers even blame Ayako for the death of Kazuichi, believing her to be an omen of ill fortune. Some time passes, with Ayako simply trying to live her life in the village, but things start to develop when Sakoshima Hiraku, a photographer and old friend of Kazuichi, visits the village: he had been travelling and had only recently learned of his friend's death. When he learns about the mysterious circumstances surrounding Kazuichi's death, he starts poking around, and he learns some months ago, a monk of the local temple had died too, in what appeared to be simple accident of slipping in a hot spring and hitting his head. Some people blame Ayako for this death too, but Sakoshima starts to suspect something is going on in the village, and his suspicions are confirmed when another death occurs in another of the hot springs managed by the Sekimoris. While the villagers are becoming more and more convinced this is the result of Aya's curse and Ayako's presence in the village, Sakoshima is sure there's a rational and humanly evil explanation for the mysterious deaths in the village and he's determined to find out who is behind Kazuichi's death in Nikaidou Reito and Uzumi Miyuki's 2022 novel Jubaku Densetsu Satsujin Jiken ("The Murder Case of the Legendary Curse").

While I have read a lot by Nikaidou Reito, I think this is the first time I read one of his collaborative efforts, though I do know he has quite a few of those. Uzumi Miyuki is an author I was not familiar with at all, though it appears she made it through the first judging round of the 18th Ayukawa Tetsuya Award with a manuscript with a title that also features the name "Aya" in it, and now I am wondering if that manuscript served as a base for this book. My attention was mainly drawn to this book when it first released, because it was the first substantial new release by Nikaidou in years, timed with the 30th anniversary since he first debuted, but I honestly had no idea what it was going to be about or how the collaborative work was done on this book, and sadly enough, the book does not feature an afterword that goes into detail.

Of all of Nikaidou's work, I love his Ranko series best, and specifically, the earlier Ranko novels, up until Jinroujou no Kyoufu, as the books take on a different tone afterwards. With a summary about a locked room murder, an isolated village and a legendary curse, I had hoped Jubaku Densetsu Satsujin Jiken would be a book close to the Ranko novels in spirit. Perhaps not surprisingly however, the most direct inspiration of this book is probably Yokomizo Seishi's work, and especially the Kindaichi Kousuke novels. Isolated village in the middle of nowhere, rivaling families with fueds going back centuries, a local, bloody legend which is believed by the villagers and will cause them to act on their fears and a free-minded, disarming detective who happens to visit the village. A lot in this book feels very familiar, and that's not a bad thing per se, as if you're looking for a book with such an atmosphere, you'll definitely be pleased with Jubaku Densetsu Satsujin Jiken. At the same time, and I have to admit I was surprised by this knowing Nikaidou's work, the book is decidedly less gruesome and horrific than you'd expect of such a story. Considering the graphic imagery shown in a lot of Nikaidou's work, I assume this is Uzumi's writing shining through strongest, with somewhat distached depictions of the various deaths in the story, and a narrative that is mostly told through Ayako's point of view, offering a lot of insight in her thoughts on not just the events, but her own situation too and her somewhat fragile relationship with her in-laws. It's a lot more "internally" focused than I would have expected of a book bearing Nikaidou's name as one of the authors, which is a reason why I was a bit disappointed, as it was exactly his style I was actually hoping to find in this book, even if that's not really the fault of this work.

The book opens with a very nice map of Umesato Village, with the two manors of the Plum and Wisteria Clans, as well as two waterfalls with accompanying hot springs, the "Aya Lake" where the legendary Aya died and more rather detailed diagrams depicting the various crime scenes.... but for some reason, it feels like this was a bit overkill for a story, that ultimately isn't so complex you actually need such detailed diagrams. So funnily enough, the effort put into those diagrams made me assume the plot would be much more complex than it actually turned out to be. The various mysteries that make up the plot of the book, often feel a bit too disjointed from each other, with no real sense of interrelated set-up and pay-off, with one event naturally resulting in another. One "accident" Sakoshima quickly deduces to be a murder for example, is basically resolved the moment we first hear about it, with no build-up at all. Meanwhile, the death of Kazuchi is introduced in great detail in the first chapter of the book, but is then mainly left untouched until the very end of the book, even though most of the information needed to solve the mystery already being introduced in the first part, but then not addressed until the denouement, again making things feel detached. Because of that, each single mystery remains fairly simple, as they too often feel like discrete events, despite it all happening in the same village in a short period of time. While the book tries to tie these events through the legend of Aya and a local song (yes, we have a mitate/resembling or themed murder case here), for some reason it didn't quite work for me. Perhaps because the song is introduced relatively late, perhaps because we ultimately dwell on each crime scene so shortly they don't make enough an impression, but overall, the book feels too much like a few fairly simple murders strung one after another. The solutions to the  locked room murders miss the grandeur we see in the earlier Ranko novels, while as a whodunnit, the book has some good ideas, but also has trouble presenting it in a satisfying manner, as the hinting to certain elements of the murderer feels lacking. The book is on the longer side, but because the narrative doesn't always feel as connected, and in fact sometimes has to rely on a few coincidences to tie things together, the feeling of catharsis when everything is explained also feels a bit lacking. Oh well, I did like the trick and clewing to the second hot spring death though, as well as one certain linguistics-based clue that seemed to invoke the Yokomizo spirit.

Overall though, I do think the atmosphere of the book is good, even though it didn't go as far as I had hoped for. In fact, I can easily imagine a book based on the exact same plot structure, addressing the same story beats, but going deeper into the curse and the horror behind it, and it'd probably be much more to my liking as a mystery novel. It's probably not the book Uzumi wanted to write, but the book I did want to read based on Nikaidou's name, to be very honest.

While it's not really Jubaku Densetsu Satsujin Jiken's fault, I have to say I was a bit disappointed with it. With Nikaidou's name on it, and the fact it was timed with his 30th anniversary as a professional writer, I had hoped it would be a book that'd harken back to his earliest novels in terms of style and plotting, but in a way, this book was intentionally written as a more lite-version of those themes. While it does capture the Yokomizo Seishi-vibe really well and there are, mystery-wise, also interesting clues, it was simply not the book I was looking for, though I do think it's an enjoyable mystery on its own if approached with the right expectations, as it does feel like the classic Japanese mystery novel it is obviously emulating.

Original Japanese title(s):羽純未雪, 二階堂黎人『呪縛伝説殺人事件』

Six Were Present

Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five

"And Then There Were None"

Today: an English review of a French novel translated to German. 

On a May day, the people on the streets are surprised by screams coming from above. A woman stands near the window of a flat above, yelling for help. The people below recognize her as Simone Vigneray, standing near the kitchen and it's clear some assaillant has barged into the Vigneray's flat. The Vigneray couple is in danger, and people run up to the flat, but find it locked. They call for the concierge to open it, while they hear shots and other sounds going on on the other side of the door, but when they finally manage to open the door and enter the flat, they find Marcel Vigneray lying dead on the floor, Simone nearly dead in the kitchen... but no sign of the murderer. The kitchen window was still watched by others, and while there's a back door leading to a staircase for the servants, that door is locked from the inside. Private detective André Brunel (and his friend the narrator) is on the case, as well as Roland Charasse, Marcel's cousin and a famous criminal lawyer. But it doesn't take long for more impossible crimes to follow: not only did the unseen assailant managed to escape the locked Vigneray apartment, not long after, the maid is also found murdered in her own room in the servants quarter of the flat block, but the police checked her room earlier, found it empty and posted an officer in the hallway, and yet the second time they visited the room, they found her dead on the floor! The investigators desperately try to stop the invisible killer from striking more, but they will strike six times in Pierre Boileau's 1939 novel Six crimes sans assassin ("Six Crimes Without a Killer"). And because I forgot most of the French I learned at school, I read the German edition Sechsmal Tödlich ("Deadly Six Times") translated by Ernst Sander.

I have to admit I am nearly ignorant when it comes to French mystery fiction. Some months back I read comic adaptations of the work of Stanislas-André Steeman, who is Belgian but wrote in French, but beyond that, it's basically just Lupin... The name Pierre Boileau is one I had seen often however, and connected to that were of course references to Six crimes sans assassin, which I'd guess is his most famous work when it comes to fair-play mystery fiction? The premise of six impossible crimes sounds interesting at least, so when I heard there was a German translation (which I can read infinitely quicker than French), I immediately got on the case.

To begin with the conclusion right away however, I don't think that the book is really a must read if you're only interested in the book as an impossible crime story, especially in 2024. While yes, the book is full of impossible crimes (locked room murders), with a rather surprising amount considering the short page count, it can't be denied that basically all the tricks in this book are very outdated for a modern reader. The tricks we see here for the locked rooms, are basically the "base form" of familiar locked room murders, and you will not only likely have seen many, many variants on these ideas, you're also likely to have seen more original and captivating iterations of what is done here. I can't even imagine that in 1939, the locked room mysteries in Six crimes sans assassin were genuinely shocking or original, and while some authors can weave a more complex web out of basic tricks by having various situations interact in surprising ways or for example using clue synergy to intertwine basic tricks into a stronger whole, Boileau doesn't really manage to accomplish that in this novel, with most of the situations feeling like distinct, discrete events: which is also a reason why the book feels very simple, as it's jsut event after event after event. I have seen the novel be praised for how fair the book is, but while the book is fair, I do have trouble seeing the 'fairness' of this book being in any way outstanding. It is fair in the way I normally expect a puzzle plot/honkaku mystery novel to be, as in, that is the bare minimum I expect of such a novel. There are no clues that are particular clever or audacious, so on the whole, the book just feels... it's there. 

(And while some murders André Brunel really couldn't do anything about, there are also some murders that really makes you question how effective Brunel is as a detective, or at least, if he was more interested in protecting a possible witness, he probably should take different actions because some deaths were totally avoidable)

What the book can be lauded for, is the amazing pace the story moves at. One page in, and we hear Simone Vigneray scream for help, and from that point on, the story keeps on moving and moving. There's nearly no rest, and Boileau keeps pushing his characters to the next murder, but again, this also prevents each crime scene from really developing, as everything is "what you see is what you get" and more often than not, you can already make a very, very close intuitive guess about what happened even before the scene is over, precisely because everything is dressed so simply, But on the other hand, you really are never bored, and the murderer gets rather busy as they have a lot to do before the end of the book! There's also some melodrama, which despite my very, very limited contact with French mystery fiction I'm going to call a trope of the genre because it does remind me a lot of the melodrama in the Lupin novels, but it never interferes with the story of detection, and in some ways, it does tie back nicely to the mystery plot, though the melodrama does seem to also push the murderer in some ways that seem a bit dramatic at certain points in time (like, the third and fourth crimes seem... rather excessive at that point in time still...).

So I wasn't really a fan of Six crimes sans assassin, which is a shame as you do hear a lot about it when it comes to classic French mystery fiction. Some more work of Boileau is available in German and it certainly reads easily away, so I might try another of them in the future. In the meantime, let's just pretend Poirot is French mystery fiction!

Physician, Murder Thyself

'The golden axiom of Chomel, that it is only the second law of therapeutics to do good, its first law being this—not to do harm—is gradually finding its way into the medical mind, preventing an incalculable amount of positive ill.’ So remarks Dr. Bartlett in a work (...)

"Physician and Patient"

I do think these realistic covers for the Matsumoto Seichou pockets look really good...

Sumida Tomokichi is attending a medical conference for internists in Nagoya, but once it's over, he informs the organizer he won't be staying that night at the reserved inn with the rest of the attendees for the after-party, as he's going to meet an acquaintance in the city of Nagoya. The next day however, he is found dead in a hotel room when he fails to check out on time. The man is found murdered in a rather gruesome manner: his wrist had been slit open and then his arm was put in a sink with running water, quickly draining him of his blood. The police try to find out who he was going to meet that night, and while his co-workers and wife don't think he was the type to have an affair, the police do think he might have been seeing a woman at the hotel, especially as they find out that before arriving at the hotel, he visited a cafe where he received a call from a woman. Nagoya police inspector Ootsuka hopes to find a trail for any motive and also looks into Sumida's connections to a haiku club, where he was a major member, being the one to select amateur haiku entries to publish in their self-published poetry magazine. The investigation soon hits a halt as no viable clues can be found, until some time later, a murder occurs behind Jindaiji Temple in Tokyo, where a surgeon is cruelly stabbed, and then intentionally let free by his attacker, knowing he'd bleed to death trying to find help at the nearby residences. The two cases are connected once the Tokyo police find a receipt on the victim for a souvenir from Nagoya dated the last day of the medical conference Sumida also attended. Inspector Suda of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police who had been asssiting the Nagoya police while investigating Sumida, of course starts investigating this Tokyo murder too. Why were these two medical men killed in such a cruel manner in Matsumoto Seichou's Soushitsu no Girei ("Rituals of Loss", 1969)?

Soushitsu no Girei was originally serialized in 1969 and published as a standalone book in 1972, and while this is not a major work by Matsumoto like Ten to Sen (Points and Lines) or Suna no Utsuwa ("Vessel of Sand", also known as Inspector Imanishi Investigates"), the book has been adapted for the small screen no less than three times, with the last one even dating as recent as 2016. Matsumoto Seichou is of course best known as the main figure of the shakai-ha (social school) movement, a post-war school of Japanese mystery fiction that places emphasis on the social backgrounds of crimes, which is usually often juxtaposed against honkaku orthodox puzzle plot mysteries. The best known Matsumoto stories has him zoom in on the people getting involved with the crimes in his books, not rarely victims of company politics who find themselves, often due to circumstances beyond their control, forced to commit some kind of crime. I am not a big fan of shakai-ha mystery in general (there are always exceptions), and I therefore don't read Matsumoto's work very often, but there are works I like very much (Ten to Sen and sequel Jikan no Shuuzoku are police procedural puzzlers like Crofts' work).  

Soushitsu no Girei was a book I honestly didn't know anything about. It certainly doesn't have the reputation of Ten to Sen as a puzzler, so why did I pick this book? Well, actually, the reason is very simple. I was just looking for a mystery novel with the case set near Jindaiji Temple and happened to come across this one. I quite often just look for mystery books with a specific location, or plot device, or something like that, so I just happened to find out about this book and it was on sale.

Having read the book now however, I wouldn't say this is a must-read by Matsumoto by any means. It's a very slow police procedural, where we follow Ootsuka and Suda in their investigations into possible motives and suspects for the murder, but I can't say the plot really impressed. The first part is very slow, with the police trying to learn how Sumida ended up in the hotel in the first place, but a lot of it turns out, in retrospect, to be just padding by the author, as there's no real explanation why Sumida used such a roundabout route to end up in that hotel: that part only exists to allow for a longer investigative segment. This happens more often, with parts that feel like they are only there to pad out the story, but which don't feel natural because while they temporarily offer "a mystery" to the reader ("Why did X go to this place first before going to the next?" etc.) the answer often barely changes anything about what we already know about the case, and in some situations, the answer still leaves you wondering why they did that, because no adequate explanation is given for what compelled X to do this or that, just an explanation they did it.

This becomes apparent when you start thinking about the actual way the investigation developed in this book. Coincidence plays a big role in this book, but not in an interesting meta way like in Yamaguchi's Kiguu! Here we have both the culprit and the police learning things by complete coincidence, like a police detective who happens to run out of cigarettes, walks into the store nearest by and there happens to be a person holding very vital testimony concerning the case. Or the culprit learning certain facts incredbibly convenient to know to commit the murder in that particular way, but again, the only they could learned that information is through luck. So much of the developments in the investigation feel artificial, which is weird because it should be down-to-earth police procedural with a focus on realism, following Matsumoto's own style, but much of what happens in Soushitsu no Girei feels very forced Why did the police for example need to examine the haiku group in such detail at that point of the story for example? Only because it'd become relevant again later on.

Not to say there's nothing to like about this book. I do like the broad strokes of the story: trying to tie the two murders in Nagoya and Jindaiji, the possible motives behind the individual murders and one that connects the two, the creepy way in which the murders are committed, some of the actions taken by the culprit to evade suspicion, the idea behind the parts concerning a mysterious woman with red hair, and the actual motive and the way it ties back to the title are all elements and concepts I do like, only the way the investigation is built up and tries to guide the reader from the initial murder all the way to the discovery of who it was and how and why has quite the few speed bumps that makes you hit your head more often than you'd want. Now it makes me curious to the adaptations, to see if they changed the flow of the investigation a bit while keeping the basic building blocks.

Soushitsu no Girei is thus not a must-read by Matsumoto. Not that I was expecting it to be one, but while it had a few points I did find interesting, I think the overall book is not remarkable enough to really warrant a recommendation, especially not if you're mostly reading this blog because you want to hear more about puzzle-plot focused mystery fiction. Oh well, I guess I was just reading this book only because it was set at Jindaiji, and at the very least, the book did exactly that!

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張『喪失の儀礼』

The Case of the Seven Bells

"Blue flowers are fatal to you - remember that."

"The Blue Geranium"

This is one cover that probably looks a lot better in full-size printed on actual paper than as a small thumbnail on your screen...

The Demon God has been defeated and sealed away, but can not be killed. The Demon God will inevitably rise again, but the Goddess of Fate watches over the world, and when the Demon God starts to wake again, six heroes will awaken in the world, destined to seal the Demon God again. Each generation, warriors hoping to become a destined hero undergo a ceremony to present themselves as a candidate, and when the time comes, six of these people will receive the mark of the hero somewhere on their body in the shape of a flower's petal. Because nobody knows exactly when this happens, the six heroes who are awakened might all be in different corners of the world when their call for duty comes, so it is a rule for the Six Heroes of the Flower to make their way to a designated spot near the seal of the Demon God within a month, where they will gather and then set out to fight the evil again, while monsters and other minions of the Demon God will of course attempt to fight the heroes off. Adlet, a cocky young man who boasts to be the strongest man in the world and has absolute confidence he will be chosen as a hero, really turns out to be a hero when a flower mark appears on his body. There is the small problem of him being in prison now, but Nashetania, the princess of Piena and the Saint of Blades, which grants her the power to conjure swords out of nowhere, releases Adlet out of the Piena prison as she reveals she too is a hero. The two travel to the rendez-vous point, fighting against demons together as they make their way there. They end up with a motley crew, from the assassin Hans to Mora, head of all Saints and Goldof, a personal knight to Nashetania. But there's also Fremy, someone who until recently had actually been killing off potential heroes, but is now chosen as one of them. But when the heroes arrive at the temple where they are supposed to gather, a trap is set by the evil legions bent on holding them off until the Demon God revives again: a magical mist field that had been set standby around this temple has been activated. The mist messes with the sense of direction of everyone inside it, making it impossible for them to actually walk out of the covered area. It was originally intended to trap demons there, so the heroes could head towards the Demon God, but now this trap has been used to trap the heroes themselves in the mist field, making it impossible for them to wander far away from the temple. But what is even more distressing is the realization, there are not six heroes here, but seven! There have always been only six heroes, so they soon realize one of them must be a fake sent by the demons, and that this fake must have used the trap to capture all heroes, but which of them is the fake? They all carry the mark of the hero, but unless they quickly find out who the imposter is and force them them to lift the mist field, the Demon God will rise and take over the world. The six heroes can fight, but can they also think  their way out of this obstable in Yamagata Ishio's Rokka no Yuusha ("Heroes of the Six Flowers" 2011), also known as Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers? 

Rokka no Yuusha is a light novel series by Yamagata Ishio and featuring illustrations by Miyagi, with the main series being 6 volumes long running from 2011 until 2015, and was followed up by one additional extra volume one year later. There has been a manga and anime adaptation, and the books have also been released in the United States, so imagine quite some people are actually already aware of this series one way or another. I had known about the series for some while, but it took me quite some time to finally get started on it. I have read a few other mystery novels set in a fantasy setting, like Satsuryuu Jiken - A Case of Dragonslayer, Isekai no Meitantei, RPG School and Seijo Victoria no Kousatsu, but I always interested in seeing more, and Rokka no Yuusha in particular is so widely available, I knew I had to get started on it sooner or later.

As one would expect, the book starts out focusing more on the fantasy elements, first presenting the story of the Demon God reviving, the legend of the six heroes awakening, and then telling the story of Adlet, the young, over-confident protagonist who never even doubts he will be chosen as a hero, and who only dreams of becoming one and fighting the Demon God with his comrades. The first half is very, very focused on the "gathering of the heroes" part, and if you're here just for the mystery, you'll have to be patient, as this part is pretty stereotypical, with heroes slowly gathering and meeting each other, some of the heroes being typical hero-like characters and others who might not seem fit to be a Hero of the Flower initially. It's only in the second half the book really starts to focus on the mystery, when the heroes have arrived at the temple from which the magic mist field can be started. Someone starts the field while the heroes are still there, even though it was supposed to be activated after the heroes had left the area, so now they are all trapped, and they realize that seven heroes have gathered at the temple instead of six, meaning one of them has to be an imposter, likely someone sent by the demons to stop the heroes from reaching the Demon God.

Some of the heroes already know each other, others have more shady backgrounds, and even someone being well-known is no guarantee they are indeed a hero chosen by fate, so the deductions actually do end up being based on very "normal" evidence like testimonies and witness accounts, but even so, even after the plot shifts to the mystery, it does take some time for the story to focus on that. Partially because the book also presents a lot of combat: when in a "normal" detective story people start accusing each other of being the culprit, you might see some fighting, but obviously, fighting in a fantasy setting, with people being able to wield magic or are obviously superhumanly powered, is a tad different. At some point, Adlet ends up being suspected as the imposter, and as everyone thinks killing him is the way to lift the mist field, he has to fight off and flee from his fellow heroes as he tries to figure out who then is the real imposter. Lots of action here, and if you have ever read a shounen battle manga, you probably know what to expect from these fights, and how they are also used to help flesh out and delve deeper into the characters.

When it comes down to the mystery, it was... well, I have to admit, because the book ultimately did not focus very strongly on the mystery of who activated the mist field due to the many fights, and it seemed more intent on just dwelling on the "there's a seventh hero!" surprise mystery, I was getting a bit worried, but there are certainly parts regarding the mystery that are actually cleverly set in the world of Rokka no Yuusha (a fantasy world) and could only work there. Adlet 's main concern is that he arrived at the temple first which was locked from the inside, but saw nobody in the temple activate the mist field (making him the main suspect as the self-proclaimed first on the scene) and some parts of the trick behind how the imposter managed to activate the field even though the room was sealed are both foreshadowed and hidden well. I think some more focus on for example the working of magic and other world-specific "rules" would have helped faciliate the trick a bit better, but it was certainly better than I had started to fear. The motive behind the deed is a lot less memorable, it kinda comes out of nowhere, and because Rokka no Yuusha is a series, the problem is barely resolved in this first book: yes, they identify the culprit, but they have not gotten one step closer to fighting the Demon God, and the book actually ends on a cliffhanger by throwing another surprise at the reader at the very end, so as a standalone book, it offers an okay mystery, that is however just a small part of the whole story. And depending on how invested you are in the main story, the mystery is not 'big' enough to really keep you entertained all the time.

And that's the point I am now at. The first volume of Rokka no Yuusha, which corresponds with the contents of the anime series, has an okay mystery in it, but it's at least equal parts fantasy action and it's also just a minor part of a bigger story that is not even close to being resolved in the first volume. I don't think I am invested enough in the story to want to read the rest too, at least not now, and I also have no idea what kind of mysteries the next novels will throw at you (the cliffhanger kinda has me worried to be honest, though I can only hope it's not really to going to do that in the second volume). It's worth a look at if you want to read a fantasy mystery novel, but be aware the mystery element is fairly light and that it is just the prologue to a larger story.

Original Japanese title(s): 山形石雄『六花の勇者』