The Stranger in the Shadows

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
"Genesis" (King James version)

I wouldn't say I lived *at the foot* of Mt. Hiei, but the place I was staying while living in Kyoto was pretty near Mt. Hiei, relatively speaking...

Perusing the magazine The Charms of Kyoto, detective Kisarazu Yuuya comes across an article on Shirakashi Munenao, a famous painter and sculptor who lives with his extended family in a bizarre manor located at the foot of Mt. Hiei in Kyoto. The article featured photographs of the interior of the home, which consists of three storeys, that are off-set, creating a kind of "ladder" effect which nothing beneath the second and third floors. One of the photographs showed a symbol in the house interior which immediately captured Kisarazu's attention, as it was connected to a case he never managed to solve: three years ago, the bodies of a man and a pregnant woman were found after a landslide. They were obviously killed, but the police didn't manage to identify the bodies, and neither could Kisarazu even after being brought onto the case. He did find a platinum ring near the scene, with the exact same symbol which he know learns is somehow related to Shirakashi Munenao, which convinces him the two deaths are somehow connected to him.

Kisarazu's not the only one interested in the Shirakashi's though, as the reader is also introduced to Anjou Norisada, who has recently been moved internally to the editorial department of The Charms of Kyoto. His mother died some years ago, but on her death bed, she confessed to Norisada she wasn't his real mother. She wasn't able to bear her own children, so she had actually kidnapped a baby at a train station, snatching him from his real mother and jumping in a train as the doors closed. While his mother had always treated him with much love and he considers her his real mother, Anjou is naturally also curious to his blood parents, and the only clues he has are his name, "Norisada" (the name his real mother shouted as the train departed) and a ring with an unusual symbol and like Kisarazu, Anjou too noticed the symbol belonged to the Shirokashi family. He confesses to Kurata, the senior editor at the magazine who wrote the article, about why he's interested in Shirokashi Munenao, and Kurata promises to help him get close to the family. Kurata became friends with Akika, the daughter-in-law of Munenao as they share an interest in classical music, so Kurata invites both Anjou to come along to a concert Akika will also be attending, creating an opportunity for Anjou to ask about the symbol. Kurata also arranges for an interview with the great artist himself at his Kyoto manor and promises to bring Anjou along so he can find out whether he's actually born a Shirakashi, but Kurata becomes sick and now it's Uyuu who's put on the interview together with Anjou, Uyuu, who survived the tragedy on Kazune Island and then got caught involved in a series of arson, has more things to worry about than this interview though, as he's contemplating marriage with Touri, his girlfriend since Natsu to Fuyu no Sonata.

Uyuu and Anjou arrive on a snowy day at the Shirokashi house, which is happily inhabitated by four generations of both the Shirokashi and Nachi family, who have a strange relationship: all four generations consists of marriages between these two families: Akiko for example married her cousin Munenobu, who is the son of Munenao: Munenao is married with his cousin Nobuko, while Munenao's twin sister Sadaka is married to Nobuko's twin brother Noriaki, and the same for the generation above them. Akiko and Munenobu also recently had their first child, who is of course the great pride of the two families. During the interview with Munenao, Uyuu learns Munenao, as do the rest of his family, consider themselves a divine family, free of the shadow of the devil. They believe light gave birth to two gods, one male and one female, whose offspring bathe in the light, but once someone has been tainted by the devil, they will forever bear the mark of the shadow: the Shirokashi and Nachi families however consider themselves the light. Despite Uyuu's focus on their job of doing an interview, Anjou manages to find more clues that indicate he was indeed born as a member of the Nachi family, and that he might be Akika's brother, but why did his birth mother never report his kidnapping to the police, and why do the Nachi and Shirokashi families pretend there never was another child? Anjou manages to confront Akika privately and suggests he might be her brother, to which Akika reacts utterly shocked. She promises she'll explain tomorrow, but she can't say anything now. Anjou grudgingly agrees, but it turns out he'll be staying longer at the house than expected, as heavy snowfall prevents Anjou and Uyuu from returning home immediately, and they are offered dinner. After dinner, Akiko goes to practice the piano, while everyone else in the house also goes around doing their own business, but later that night, when her mother goes looking for Akika, she makes a most horrid discovery: Akika's head is laid out on the piano, her body missing! The police is called, and soon Akika's body is found in the incinerator outside the house, but when the police start investigating everybody's alibi for the hour after dinner between when Akika left everyone, and her head was discovered, they realize something odd is very going on: not a single person of the nine members of the Shirakashi and Nachi households, as well as visitors Uyuu and Anjou, would have had time alone in order to decapitate Akika and move her body to the incinerator: all eleven persons in the house have enough of an alibi to prevent them from being the murderer! But how then was Akika killed in Maya Yutaka's Mokusei no Ouji (2000)? Anjou wants to know, Kisarazu is also convinced Akika's murder is connected to the mysterious deaths of three years ago and Uyuu... he is not sure he wants to know, but he tries his hand at breaking the murderer's impossible alibi after he remembers the two great detectives Mercator Ayu and Kisarazu Yuuya seem to have high hopes for him as a detective.

Mokusei no Ouji is the third book, and I believe the last book in Maya Yutaka's Uyuu cycle, a set of three books that star Uyuu, a young editor who works at a magazine and who has the worst of luck as he keeps getting involved in traumatic murder cases and while he *kinda* tries to solve them one way or another, it never goes the way he, and the reader, want to see. These books also feature appearences of Maya's two other main detective characters, namely the great detective Mercator Ayu, and the detective Kisarazu Yuuya (and his Watson Kouzuki), who both seem to think Uyuu has the potential to become a great detective himself, so they encourage him to try and solve the problems he faces himself, but somehow Uyuu never seems able to answer their expectations. The way Maya plays with tropes of the mystery genre is of course well-known by now, and both Mercator and Kisarazu play around with the notion of the "great detective" trope, and in the case of Uyuu, we have someone who we constantly follow as a protagonist, who does try to detect and who is actually encouraged to do so by two bonafide accomplished detectives, but... he always fails. That's Maya for you.

As the text on the obi suggest, the main mystery of Mokusei no Ouji revolves around every suspect in the house having enough of an alibi for the murder of Akiko. Discounting Uyuu and Anjou, who can vouch for each other, the other nine people in the house all had their own things to tend to in the hour between Akika leaving the room, and her head being discovered. Some would be be in the presence of others for most of the time, while others would be mostly alone, but none of them have no alibi at all: everyone is seen by someone else at various points in the hour in question, and that means nobody has enough time to 1) kill Akiko in the music room, 2) decapitate her and 3) move her body (without the head) from the music room to the incinerator outside without being seen. The layout of the house is by the way pretty insane, as it lacks a real "main hallway" to all which rooms are connected, and instead you constantly need to go through one room to reach another room: this alone makes it basically impossible for the murderer to have moved the body without being seen.

The murder that is made "impossible" because everyone has an alibi is of course a familiar trope of the genre, and especially in Japan there are many authors who actually make this type of story their forte, but of course it wouldn't be Maya if he'd just do this straight. And that is why after the (first) murder, you are treated to paragraph after paragraph in which EVERYONE's movements is explained in detail. And I mean down to the minute. There are (synchronized) clocks everywhere in the Shirokashi house, which means they all know exactly where they were/what they were doing at what time. Furthermore, because there are so many rooms and small corridors between those rooms in the house, Maya decided to number them, instead of writing their names. The result is you get paragraphs like "Munenobu was in 1, so he could have taken route 2, 3 or 4 to get to the scene 5, but his father-in-law was in room 3 from 6:23 until 8:25, so Munenobu could only have taken route 3 after 6:25, while route 2 and 4 would be occupied from 6:24 and 6:33 on, meaning there'd only be the 6:25-6:33 gap for him to kill Akiko and go back via route 4, but that's too short and he does have an alibi for 6:35-6:41 on, so..." And that for all the characters in the house, and all the viable routes. It doesn't help all the family members of the Shirokashi and Nachi family have very similar names: the names of all eleven members are comprised of combinations of just eight kanji, so all the names look visually the same.

Yep, Maya isn't really expecting the reader to be mentally engaged in solving this puzzle and it is intentionally designed as a very tedious conundrum with people moving about every few minutes, making it impossible to really grasp where everyone was at what time. He takes the intricately plotted alibi puzzle, like we have seen in works like Obelists Fly High and Suizokukan no Satsujin, and takes it to its extremes, creating an insanely monstrous puzzle that would only be comprehensible in an interactive visual format (moving the characters on the floorplan along a timeline similar to games like Unheard or Lucifer Within Us), but is likely to just drive readers of the novel insane. Or mentally disengaged. Funnily enough, Maya then also presents us with a group of people who are insanely engaged with this puzzle: in A, we learned how Uyuu started visiting a group of mystery fiction fans, with Kisarazu one of the members. Uyuu has become a full member by this book, and with Uyuu having been on the scene, and Kisarazu being interested in the murder himself, all the members try and solve this impossible alibi puzzle. The outcome of this competition is pretty hilarious actually, in the context of Maya deconstructing the alibi puzzle trope, and I think everyone feeling a bit underwhelmed by the solution is exactly what Maya was trying to go for with this formadible-looking puzzle.

That said, that doesn't mean Maya doesn't do interesting things mystery-wise in this book.  There are actually very clever hints pointing to the solution of the alibi trick, and while  you might shrug at the actual practical answer to how the murderer managed to kill Akika despite having a perfect alibi, Maya uses it as a stepping stone to ask more important questions, which ultimately revolve around the matter of motive: why was Akika killed, and is it in any way connected to Anjou trying to look for his birth mother? The answer is horrifying, and while I think one important aspect of the motive is probably pretty guessable due to the way Maya has structured this novel, the grand motivation behind everything is absolutely nuts, in the good sense of the term, and I dare say it's basically impossible to guess this was going to be the reason Akika was killed. This might be a good time to also note that this book does touch upon certain plot points of A, and you'd better have read Natsu to Fuyu no Sonata and Tsubasa Aru Yami too, because this book not only spoils/very suggestively talks about the endings of these books, they are also thematically connected, with a common theme linking them and basically all of them ending in a "world-ending" catastrophe. I love the insaneness of the background behind Akika's murder in Mokusei no Ouji, and I feel it's really only Maya who could pull this off, but I think it works even better with the context of the previous books, so I really recommend you reading them in order. The book also serves as a semi-epilogue to Tsubasa Aru Yami, so in that sense, also worth a read.

Mokusei no Ouji is also the one Uyuu novel I think that is the most... balanced? As a Maya novel, it of course plays with the genre tropes in a catastrophic manner, but it's infinitely more readable than Natsu to Fuyu no Sonata, with Anjou being a character you want to root for as he's looking for his birth mother (he's a bit mean to Uyuu though) and a narrative that is pretty easy to follow, and as a mystery, it's also more engaging than A, and if you kinda skim over the alibi part of the book, you still have an interesting, though totally batshit insane motive waiting for you. But it's also a lot more enjoyable to read after reading the previous two Uyuu novels, due to the story and thematic links. But definitely worth reading if you're invested in the Uyuu cycle!

Original Japanese title(s): 麻耶雄嵩『木製の王子』

The Witch's Curse

ひとつの目で明日をみて

ひとつの目で昨日を見つめてる

「The Real Folk Blues」（山根麻衣）

 

With one eye I look at tomorrow 

With one eye I keep staring at yesterday 

 "The Real Folk Blues" (Yamane Mai)

To be really honest, I wish we'd move away again from these covers, with a close up of a face, even if the illustrations themselves are pretty...

Three years after Heathcliff Bloodbury left the family home to wander the world, he finds himself hurrying back, as his mother Charlotte, ravished by disease, is about to die. Not once in those three years had he come back to the Bloodbury Manor, better known as the House of Eternity as the first Bloodbury had the manor built next to a waterfall symbolizing the eternal tears he shed for his deceased wife. When Heath arrives home, he learns Charlotte has already passed away and this younger sister Cordelia, who was born both blind and unable to walk, has been making the arrangements for their mother's funeral instead. Heath apologizes to his beloved sister, declaring he will take his place as the new head of the Bloodburys and give their mother a worthy send-off. Several guests have already been invited to come that same day for the wake, including uncle Edward and cousin Jefferson, as well as Chesterton, a local clergyman and one of Charlotte's close friend. One face however Heath had not expected to see: Gyro is an obnoxious self-proclaimed great detective, who had been hanging around the family ever since Heath's father Theodore died three years ago. Theodore was found dead in his locked study, with a noose around his neck: the remains of a rope hanging from a beam made it clear he had hung himself and the rope had snapped. Gyro however claims it was not a suicide, despite the head butler having seen and heard the master alive in the study when he locked the doors for Theodore to let him rest: meaning nobody gotten in the study to kill Theodore, and get out again. Despite that, Gyro has been dogging the family for many years now, and he especially has suspicions about Heath, who left his home immediately after his father passed away.

Another surprising guest is Lilyjudith Air, a young woman who claims to have been friends with Charlotte and said once she saw the announcement of Charlotte's death, she headed straight for this house from abroad. As there's a storm coming, every guest, including Gyro, is offered to stay at the house for the night, so they can all attend the ceremony tomorrow, as well as the reading of the will, which is kept safe by the head butler. The following morning however, Cordelia doesn't appear at the breakfast table, and when she doesn't answer the door, and it turns out it has been bolted on the inside too, they break the door open to find... the poor girl sitting in her wheelchair... without her head, as it's rolling on the floor in front of her. Heath nearly goes mad from seeing her sister murdered in such a cruel way, but is also perplexed by the fact this was a locked room murder: the door was locked and bolted, and while the window was open, it has bars and you can barely get anything through the window, especially not without disturbing the rose bushes beneath the window. As they are not able to inform the police because of the storm, everyone has to stay put in the house. Heath goes out looking for clues and happens to find Lilijudith deadly injured. He looks into her eyes as she passes away and... finds himself having returned to the start of the previous day. Lilijudith reveals to Heath she is a witch with a curse: the curse of rewinding her own death, and the curse of taking people with her. Every time Lilidies, the clock rewinds to put her back 24 hours back in time, complete with all her memories. The last person with whom she locked eyes before dying also retains all their memories of what happened. Lili explains she has actually been killed multiple times ever since she appeared at the House of Eternity, each time after Cordelia is found murdered. She makes a deal with Heath: he's to help her survive to learn the contents of Charlotte's will (her main objective for coming here), while they'll make use of her powers to learn who killed Cordelia and why, and use that knowledge to prevent her death. For this reason, Heath and Lili must stick together each new time loop, as Heath must be there to lock eyes with Liijudith whenever she dies, and if the occasion demands it, Lili or Heath must even be willing to start a new loop themselves  (i.e. Lili commits suicide or Heath kills her) to ensure they'll reset the loop in time and Heath will retain possession of his memories. How many time loops will it take and how often will Lili have to die in order to save the lives of both Cordelia and Lili in Minami Asov's 2024 novel Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken - Majo wa X to Shinu Koto ni Shita ("The Super Serial Murder Case at the House of Eternity - The Witch Chose To Die With X") .

Locked rooms, reliving the same days over and over again and witches? No, this is not Umineko...

But those key terms were definitely the reason why I decided to pick up this book. Time loops are an often seen concept in mystery-related games, but you don't see them used as often in books actually. Of course, it's because interactive games often do lend themselves better for stories with time loops, as you can more easily allow the player to play through several loops (or even have them go back and replay), or for example use jump systems to jump to specific parts of the story where a story will diverge from the original loop, allowing for complex time flowcharts. That has been the case since Kamaitachi no Yoru, where you don't jump in time formally within the game, but where the player is constantly going back to earlier parts of the story in order to find a way out of the closed circle murder mystery. In that sense, a novel, with a linear way of storytelling, and using solely the medium of words (prose), might be actually less well suited for time loops, as reading the same parts over and over again isn't fun, and on the other side, it is difficult to make different time loops easily understandable to the reader: a game can use nice interactive figures or flowcharts to show you how each time loop is different or the same or in which time you are, but a prose story, even if it uses diagrams, will have more difficulties with that.

In that sense, I often did have the feeling Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken would have worked better as a game, than a novel. The book shows you the "worst" loop possible, of Cordelia being killed in the locked room and Lili dying, and then things are explained to Heath (and the reader) regarding Lili's powers, the limitations to her powers and the task that awaits them. But then Lili also explains she had experienced seven loops before, all with different outcomes and people acting differently, so that suddenly adds a lot more "relevant data" to the puzzle right from the start, that might be difficult to process. A game would have been able to present this in a much more organized manner.

But we are thus dealing with the impossible murder on Cordelia, a possible murder on Lili and there's also of course the mysterious death of Theodore three years back. Which, by the way, has a really neat diagram, shown from no less than three angles. It's rare to see a locked room crime scene depicted in so much detail in a novel! It's weird by the way how easily this locked room murder, as Gyro declares it to be, is resolved rather... swiftly halfway through the book, when there's been barely any investigation into it: basicallly all you need to know to solve it, is relayed to you in the initial discussion about the apparent suicide, and it's in essence a rather basic trick, but the clues pointing to the culprit were done much better, and work thematically very well. The Cordelia murder is... actually in essence also very simple, though made much more complex due to the actions and motivations of the characters in the house. Who admittedly don't always get to do much in each loop (many characters don't do or say anything in a certain loop, so you sometimes tend to forget they were in the house...). The idea behind the trick behind Cordelia's death again is not as inspired as the way Minami sets up the clues, but then again, Minami does do a great job at tying Cordelia's death to the time loop plot device of Lili, with the two cooperating time travellers making the best of the time loops to find clues (by creating different situations each time loop) and create an outcome where Cordelia doesn't need to die.

 In fact, I do think the book is much better at using the time loops to bring an interesting mystery than using its locked room mysteries. Soon after Heath starts working together with Lili, he does start to have doubts about her: why does Lili know so much about his mother? Why is Lili's ultimate goal becoming witness to the reading of Charlotte's last will? What has Lili done in the earlier time loops she had before she started taking Heath back in time each time? It's here where Minami does the most interesting things with the plot device of rewinding death and taking people along, but also where the book at times stumbles as a mystery. Minami does really clever things with the time loops, and I think the actual reason why she picked Heath as her partner in her time loops is perhaps the most surprising and devilish mystery-related element of this whole book, and certainly a notion that makes this book worth reading. But as a mystery with supernatural themes, it's also not always 100% fair. The main rules of Lili's curses are conveyed to the reader fair and square, but then near the end you suddenly are treated to a few instances you were never told were in fact possible until that very moment! That immediately makes the book feel not as fair and clever as it could have been, despite the fact the supernatural elements that tie to the end could and should have been hinted at more thoroughly (though I suppose revealing some things early, might have put the attentive reader on the trail early too). For I do think Minami has all together a great collection of truly fantastic ideas in this book, but in order to play some of these games, a few cards are left unturned for too long. That said, I think the ultimate plan Lili is trying pull off in order to prevent both her own and Cordelia's death and get out of her predicament is conveived really well by Minami and it is what makes this book memorable.

Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken - Majo wa X to Shinu Koto ni Shita was the first time I read anything by Minami Asov, but it sure made me curious to more! As a time travelling mystery, the book does not pull off everything it tries to do perfectly, and perhaps it needed a few more pages to flesh out some of the loops more, but it does try to do really clever things with its time loop plot device. And yes, I did think the locked rooms could've been a bit more surprising (even if they are used in clever ways to synergize with other element of the plot), and I didn't think the supernatural elements were treated as fairly throughout the book, but on the whole, Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken offers a very interesting mystery novel about witches and time travelling and certainly worth a read.

Original Japanese title(s): 南海遊『永劫館超連続殺人事件 魔女はXと死ぬことにした』

Prediction: Murder

Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive

"And Then There Were None"

For some reason, after reading the prologue, I thought this book would be difficult to read in terms of writing style, but I ended up finishing it in about a day...

After continued harrassment by his boss led to a suicide attempt which fortunately was foiled by Sousaku's father, Sousaku returns to his hometown to recover. His childhood friend Jun of course tries to help Sousaku, as does the third friend of the group, Haruo. They decide to go on a trip together, and Haruo suggests going to Mukui Island, a remote island in the Seto Inland Sea. Mukui Island advertises itself as having nothing to offer and it's only inhabitated by elderly people, with all the young people having moved away from the inconveniently located island long ago. The reason they decide to go to Mukui Island is because of the psychic Uzuki Yuuko, who was immensely popular in the late nineties. Jun and the others actually once sent a photograph to Yuuko, asking whether that shadow in the background was a ghost, and they got featured in one of her books. The elderly Yuuko passed away after her visit to Mukui Island during a tour along the islands of the Seto Inland Sea, where she and a television crew would seek out paranormal activity. When she arrived on Mukui Island, she sensed an evil spirit on one of the two mountains of the island, and when she visited that mountain in the night, she suddenly collapsed. She died two years later, but she never quite recovered from whatever got to her on Mukui Island. During her lifetime, Yuuko also left several prophecies, and one of them suggest that twenty years after her death, on August the 15th, six people will die on the island where she too fell. 

Intrigued by this story and because of their own link with Yuuko, they travel to the island, arriving late afternoon on the fourteenth. While Haruo had made arrangements before, he's surprised to learn the inn owner suddenly refuses to offer them lodgings, saying the evil spirit will be coming down the mountain soon. They fortunately find another inn, where a few other outsider guests are, some of them also seemingly lured by the prophecy left by Yuuko. That night, they fall asleep, but when they notice Haruo's gone in the early morning, they go looking for him, and find him floating in the harbor. He's obviously dead and the one policeman on the island determines Haruo must have gone out in the night to buy something to drink and fallen into the water. Mainland police is informed, but due to bad weather it might take a while before they can come. One of the other guests, Kazumi, is a nurse, and she points out that despite what the policeman claims, it's clear Haruo was actually murdered before he was thrown into the sea. But as they deal with Haruo's death, they realize the other villagers on the island are being very succesful at avoiding them. Why? Are they involved in Haruo's death? Or are they afraid of the evil spirit which is said to leave the mountains this day? Or has it to do with Yuuko's prophecy six people will die today? Will the prophecy of the six deaths come true on Mukui Island, and is it the work of a human, or something supernatural? Those are the big questions in Sawamura Ichi's Yogen no Shima ("The Island of the Prophecy", 2019).

In a way, the release of this book on its own is pretty creepy. A book about a group of people visiting an isolated location, of which a prophecy has said that on that specific day, people will die? This book was actually released only a month after Imamura Masahiro's Magan no Hako no Satsujin, released in English as Death Within the Evil Eye (disclosure: I translated the book), so it's basically a complete coincidence two mystery novels about prophecies coming true were released within just a month of each other. The funny thing is Sawamura is mainly a horror writer, though this book is touted as him taking on the challenge of writing a proper (horror) mystery story, so it just so happened that on the rare occassion he decides to do focuson mystery, someone else wrote a story with a similar theme. Fortunately, they both do very different things with the theme.

As Sawamura is mainly a horror writer, I had never read anything by him, but I can say Yogen no Shima is a proper mystery novel that is honestly a lot of fun to read. Of course, a lot of mystery stories do rely on horror tropes (or at least, tropes to stir up some tension/excitement), so in a way, it's no wonder Sawamura does a good job at portraying the creepy island of Mukui, without even showing that much of the island/villagers (as the villagers mostly ignore the visitors from outside). The book does a great job at setting atmosphere, especially as it shows you small fragments of local folklore on Mukui Island that seem connected to the villagers' fear of the evil that roams on the mountain, like creepy black idols being placed around houses, supposedly meant to ward off evil. The story also puts the backstory of Yuuko in the interesting context of the boom in popularity in psychics/spirit mediums in the media in the nineties in Japan. We get references to the works of Yokomizo Seishi (the isolated village with its own customs), but also Mitsuda Shinzou and Kyougoku Natsuhiko (local folklore and rituals, and the origins of said folklore) and I was surprised to see this book addressing issues you wouldn't really see in the works of those authors (also has to do with the time period in which this book is set). I really liked some of the points it made regarding this theme, and it worked all really well in the context of this book, both as clues to the main mystery, as well as just painting a surprising background for the prophesized deaths.

As a detective novel, the focus lies not as much on the individual deaths (yes, of course more people than Haruo die), which are committed relatively straightforward, but more on how these deaths tie to a grander mystery, which connects the whole island and the eerie questions about why the villagers are so genuinely afraid of the evil said to lurk in the mountain and the mystery of whether the prophecy will come true or not. A warning here: don't look in the bibliography of this book, because it might tell you more than you want to know in advance, but I do reallly like how Sawamura wrapped up this mystery. I have seen (well, technically listened to) a mystery with a very similar solution before (and with a similar setting and also with ties to folklore...), but the way Sawamura ties this solution convincingly to the unique setting and folklore of Mukui Island, as well as the backstory of the prophecy, and the execution is a lot better than  I had initially expected it to be.

The book sports a marketing slogan stating that the first time you read this book, it's a mystery novel, and the second time it's a horror novel and that honestly really is a great description. While you can read it safely as a straightforward mystery novel, some of the mysteries that are resolved at the end of the book really invite you to read the book a second time, as knowing a certain facts truly changes a lot of the seemingly innocent scenes in the book into something much creepier. Even knowing what is coming.... nay in fact, knowing what is coming really makes this a scary book. In that sense, Yogen no Shima is written and plotted very impressively, being both rewarding as a mystery novel and a horror novel. 

Yogen no Shima is fairly short and could easily have been just a dime a dozen horror novel, but it's a really effective mystery and horror novel, a good example of a piece of simply well executed entertainment media. I believe Sawamura might have written a few more detective stories, so I'll try to find out what the titles are exactly, for this book certainly made me curious to his other mystery output. I don't think this will end up as one of my favorite reads of the whole year, but certain points of this book I will certainly remember for years to come.

Original Japanese title(s): 澤村伊智『予言の島』

Peril at End House

 迷わずに 瞳信じて 

風のららら…

 「風のラララ」（倉木麻衣）

 

Believing in what I see without any doubts

The wind's lalala...

"The Wind's Lalala" (Kuraki Mai)

Huh, for some reason, I thought I had started on these books much more recently...

Kagami Masayuki made his debut as a mystery author in 1999 with several short stories he wrote for anthologies (collected in 2022 in The Uncollected Works of Masayuki Kagami), but it was in 2002 he published his first full-length novel Sougetsujou no Sangeki ("The Tragedy at the Twin Moon Castle"). He would keep on writing two more novels and a short story collection, all starring the Parisian magistrate Charles Bertrand and his nephew and chronicler Patrick Smith in stories strongly inspired by John Dickson Carr's Henri Bencolin series. Kagami however would pass away suddenly in 2013 in his early fifties. I read Sougetsujou no Sangeki about two years ago and found it a highly entertaining locked room mystery in the tradition of Carr and since then, I have been working my through the (short) bibliography of Kagami, though it took a bit time as the books that were published during his life are only available physically at the moment, and a few of them usually only trade owners for a price I found way too high (as in, some were usually put on offer somewhere between 50 and 100 euro, or even more). So it has been a game of patience for me, keeping an eye on offers and trying to snatch them up if they were finally offered for reasonable prices.

And that is why it took me a while to finally get my hands on Kaze Hatsuru Yakata no Satsujin ("The Murders at Wind's End House" 2006), the third and last novel written by Kagami. But now I have finally read it! The book is set after the mammoth Kangokutou ("Prison Island"), the approx. 1200 page adventure where Patrick Smith became acquainted with Mary Kaley, a historian. Their relation has been great, which is why she wants Pat to come along as emotional support when she receives word her grandmother, Ingrid Kaley, has passed away. Ingrid Kaley was the widow of Christopher Kaley, the head of Union Mining Ltd., one of the financial powerhouses in the United Kingdom. She ran the company after Christopher passed away, and succesfully too. She herself however never had children, while at one time Christopher had a mistress Ivonne, who gave birth to triplets. Infuriated by her husband's infidelity, but also recognizing how Ivonne could never support three girls all by her own, she insisted Ivonne and the girls come live at their manor in Northern Ireland. Wind's End House is located on a cliff near Giant's Causeway and got its name because all kinds of air currents somehow make their way to that cliff, making it constantly windy. Ingrid turned out to be very caring of the sisters Claudia, Regan and Margaret, while Ivonne, grateful to Ingrid, ran the household for her. However, tragedy struck when the triplets were around five. One day, the gardener saw Ivonne enter the large hedge maze in the garden. Some time later, Claudia too entered the maze, in search of her mother. When much later Ingrid realizes both Ivonne and Claudia are gone, she goes looking for them in the maze together with the gardener: on the ground, which was still wet due to earlier rain, they could make out two sets of footprints making their way to the center of the maze, where there's a small gazebo. But when Ingrid and the gardener arrive there, they find a horrible scene: Ivonne is lying dead on the ground, her throat having been slit open. Young Claudia too lies on the floor, though she turns out to have only lost her consciousness. The police never could figure out who Ivonne was killed, as there were no other footprints on the ground, and there is no other way to make it through the maze.

Many years later, and the triplets have grown into beautiful women with their own families, but they have completely gotten estranged from Ingrid, who officially adopted them after Ivonne's death, but for some reason she started treating the girls differently from before their mother's death, and that relation never improved. There is also a lot of rivalry between the three sisters, who all have one son and one daughter, though Claudia's daughter Mary is adopted, as she was the daughter of a friend who passed away. While Mary could get along with her brother William and the introverted Patricia, her other cousins Cordelia, Stephen and David were outright bullying her, which was the reason Mary left the house to study when she became an adult and never returned. The will of Ingrid however stipulates all living Kaley family members must be present, so Mary finds herself forced to return home, but she brings Patrick along, introducing him as her fiance. While William and Patricia seem nice enough to Mary and Patrick, the latter can't help notice the other three cousins are exactly as Mary had described them. The will is read immediately upon Mary's return. But while Claudia, Regan and Margaret expected Union Mining Ltd. to be split evenly among the three sisters, the will read by the solicitor is more than baffling: Union Mining Ltd. is to be split between the two families who will get married first: whoever of William, Mary, Stephen, Cordelia, David and Patricia get married together first, will inherit the company, leaving the last family with nothing. Furthermore, in case of death or no marriages within the first three months of the reading of the will, the company will pass on toa certain Peter Graven or his living offspring. While the cousins have never heard of Peter, their mothers were petrified when they heard the name dropped, though they refuse to explain who he is. The mothers quickly call their own family meetings, all with the same message: get married to one of your cousins, as soon as possible. Claudia forbids Mary to marry Patrick, stating they can't be left out of the inheritance. Meanwhile, Mary and Patrick also become worried whether Stephen and David won't force themselves on one of their cousins for a fait accompli. When Stephen insults Mary for the ump teenth time, Patrick challenges him to a boxing match, which he wins convincingly, sending Stephen wimpering that night. However, the following day, an ever bigger surprise awaits everyone: Stephen is found.... hanging from a rope... attached to the top of an old grain silo, about twenty meters high! And something has left a gigantic imprint on the ground near the silo. Almost as if... the giant Finn McCool of Giant's Causeway picked up Stephen and hung him from the silo. Or is there a devious murderer at work here who wants the inheritence for themselves? Patrick and Mary don't have much confidence in the local police solving the case, so they can only hope Pat's uncle Charles Bertrand, the famous Parisian magistrate, can come quickly...

If there's one theme in Kagami's work, it's John Dickson Carr: he has written many straight pastiches of Carr's work (most of them found in The Uncollected Works of Masayuki Kagami), but his Charles Bertrand series too is obviously modelled after the Henri Bencolin series, with the detectives in both series sharing the background story of being French spymasters turned magistrates and having an American narrator. The first book, Sougetsujou no Sangeki, was specifically inspired by Castle Skull, and there are probably many Carr references to notice if you are more of a Carr reader than I am. That is why to my surprise, Kaze Hatsuru Yakata no Satsujin, despite its very British setting of Giant's Causeway, is modelled strongly after Yokomizo Seishi's Inugamike no Ichizoku. We have the family patriarch passing away, leaving three rivalling sisters and their families. We have the reading of the will, where the patriarch says the family business will be left to whoever first gets to marry (in this case, a marriage between cousins). There's the "extra" clause in the will, that stipulates the fortune will got an unfamiliar name or their offspring in case any of the primary candidates will die. And of course, like in Inugamike no Ichizoku, this will and all its crazy conditions sets off a series of horrible deaths, which formally start when Stephen is killed, but might already be announced early, as Mary got a threat letter telling her not to return to Wind's End, and when Patricia picked up Mary and Pat from the station, their car was sabotaged too!

But while the structure of the book follows Inugamike no Ichizoku, the crimes that occur at Wind's End, a large manor with a giant hedge maze in its garden, as well as an old mostly unused silo, are definitely still Kagami's bread and butter of Carr-ish impossible crimes. We have a murder at the center of a hedge maze in the past, where the murderer apparently entered and left the maze without being seen and without leaving any footprints in the soft ground. This is repeated in the present, when Patrick goes meet someone in the maze, but right in front of his eyes, this person shrieks and is found killed with a knife, even though Patrick saw nobody near the victim, and the only footprints leading to the center of the maze belong to the victim, and himself. We also have the death of Stephen, who apparently was hung from the very top of the silo, fifteen, twenty meters up high by the giant Finn McCool and later in the book, there's a death in a bathroom, but no murderer could've approached the third floor bathroom, because a witness had been cleaning out the storeroom and an old sofa had been blocking the corridor. That said, most of the impossible crimes in this book aren't that amazing on their own: the present-day maze murder is comprised out of cliched tricks, the bathroom murder is basically solved the instant a certain piece of evidence is found and the past maze murder is both somewhat unbelievable, and not properly clewed. That leaves the silo murder, which is indeed a rather alluring one: how could anyone hang Stephen from the top of the silo, given... Stephen is an adult male, and the silo is nearly twenty meters high. The giant imprint on the ground next to the silo, resembling a giant feet, seems to suggest the giant neighbor Finn McCool from Giant's Causeway came to pay a visit, but... that is of course not the case. I think most of the readers will have some idea of how it was done, considering it's just such a unique setting which limits the possibilities a lot, though I think Kagami did a good thing at setting up the clewing for this solution, and it is not just the best of all the impossible situations in this book, but simply a very entertaining idea on its own too.

I do think the book is actually both at its best and worst when it comes to playing around with the character relations and their motivations. Like Inugamike no Ichizoku, a lot of the mystery is created because we have a lot of characters with their own agendas, and their actions complicate the matter a lot. I think more than in previous books, Kagami managed to use his large cast of characters to make the mystery more complex. In some cases, this works out really well for this book, but in other cases, you really wonder why some characters did the things they did. One character does something that, okay, I can somewhat understand what you did that before the first death, but why not explain yourself once you see people are dying? The three sisters do things that serve as important events that inform the actions of other characters, but... why would you do that? Right that other event happened? For some reason, the husbands of the three sisters also barely say or do anything in the book, even though they are supposed to be there too as their children are getting murdered and their wives are going crazy from grief... So at times, Kagami succeeds in making the mystery more complex and alluring by playing these characters off each other, but at other times you really don't see why some characters do what they did, even though it has important implications to the plot. I wonder if Kagami had lived to write more books, he would have managed to develop the way in which to use characters to contribute to the mystery, and create more synergy between the characters and his impossible situations.

There were a few other smaller points that did bug me though. Like... did we just gloss over a pretty major crime at the end? And why can't Kagami properly write out English(-sounding) names? I was so convinced that thing with the initials was a hint, but that was just Kagami making a language mistake... Oh, re-reading my own review of the first book, I have to repeat again that despite Kagami writing in the shin honkaku tradition, he really tries to stay very loyal to his mission of writing stories extremely close to what Carr wrote in the 1930, taking the challenge of doing a Golden Age mystery novel on those terms alone, so no narrative trickery, no fantasy or sci-fi background, no focus on comedy, no Late Queen Problems or meta-discussions on the state of honkaku mystery fiction.So despite the book being very much like Inugamike no Ichizoku, you don't hear any snarky remarks about that.

But when Kaze Hatsuru Yakata no Satsujin works, I think it works really well, and overall, I did enjoy the book a lot. After the very grand Kangokutou, I appreciated the somewhat smaller scale of this story (similar to the first book, though a bit longer), and as a Carr and Yokomizo-inspired impossible murder story, it is constructed in a very confident manner, as you'd expect from an author who specialized in writing in the tradition of Carr. I do think that ultimately, I liked the first book the best, with probably the most memorable locked room murder in all of Kagami's writings and while it's the shortest book too, I think it makes the best use of its page length. All three books are worth reading though, especially for Carr fans.

Original Japanese title(s): 加賀美雅之『風果つる館の殺人』

The Confused Victim

"Spoilers."

"Doctor Who"

Hmm, I bought this book over a year ago now I think about it, so it had been waiting for quite some time. Breezed through it within one evening though.

Nakajima Kawatarou was an influential critic of mystery fiction active in the second half of the twentieth century. He has not only won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1966 for his work, but he would later even serve as the president of Mystery Writers of Japan, Inc. While one would be tempted to assume that a literary critic's work would only be aimed at adults and be very, very serious, you'd be wrong in this case. At least, half. Nakajima's 1971 book Suiri Shousetsu no Yomikata ("How To Read Detective Novels") was published via Poplar and therefore aimed at a juvenile audience, introducing young readers to the magic of detective fiction. At the same time, Nakajima was very serious about this: the tone is definitely not childish, and he sets out to really educate the readers by introducing them to a literary history of the genre and introducing both Japanese and foreign writers and their best work, and discussing what makes them worthwhile. 

And he does this by ruthlessly spoiling a ton of mystery novels.

I first learned about this book when Ashibe Taku took me out second-hand book hunting in Japan, and we came across this book: he told me he had read this book when he was young, and that it was especially memorable because it so relentlessly and unbashfully spoiled the tricks of many mystery masterpieces. Yet he seemed to talk about the book in a fond manner. The idea of a "For Dummies" book on mystery fiction aimed at the younger audience in the seventies appealed to me too, as I figured it'd be interesting to hear how mystery fiction would be presented to the readers at the time, and what the 'hot picks' would be during that period, so I decided to pick the book up.

The book opens with an introduction to detective fiction, and the focus here lies very clearly on honkaku (orthodox) puzzle plot mysteries: Kawajima opens with a complete analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, breaking the story down to how it presents the mystery, how the clues are provided (or not) to the reader, how misdirection works etc. With that, Nakajima hopes to have demonstrated to the reader what a puzzle consists of, and the way it is solved, fun and he proceeds to explain how logic is an important factor in telling mystery stories. The chapter is then devoted to explaining different sub-genres to the mystery ficton (so not just honkaku) and ends with a long overview of the development of the genre both in and outside Japan, focusing on milestone publications/authors. What surprised me most that even in this introductionary part, Kawajima doesn't pull punches and will gladly spoil the tricks of major mystery stories to explain himself: sometimes he'll mention a title before he goes into his surprisingly detailed explanations of the tricks, but more often than not, he'll just start explaining a trick without telling you the title. I can imagine children reading this and on one hand getting impressed by all the tricks introduced... and then being hugely disappointed each time they actually read one of those original works, and realizing Nakajima spoiled them on that trick ages ago. 

Considering this was published in the early seventies, and the fact Nakajima clearly favors trick-based mystery fiction (puzzle plot mysteries), it shouldn't be too surprising to learn he seems much more impressed by the output in English than the output of his own home country. While there are of course many works he does like from Japan, a majority of the praise goes to the non-Japanese authors introduced in this book and in the second part of the book, where he briefly discusses several of the major detective characters in the genre, almost all are of foreign origin (he does mention a few of the Japanese creations in the previous section by the way). The fourth and final part by the way contains various best-of lists by both Nakajima and Edogawa Rampo, which also seem to favor the non-Japanese works, save for the specific "Japanese mysteries" lists of course.

The third part of the book is the most interesting and fun to read, but also the worst when it comes to spoilers. As I mentioned, Nakajima really focuses on tricks in mystery fiction, and this third part is a whole taxonomy of tricks in mystery fiction like Edogawa Rampo's famous Categorization of Tricks essay. As an introductionary book to detective fiction, this is a rather curious inclusion, to be honest. You have just managed to paint a picture of what detective fiction is, what makes it tick and presented an overview of the best known authors and their works... and then you start spoiling those works! And I do mean spoiling them. This isn't just "Category: Locked Room. Type 1: The Killer Wasn't In the Room At the Time of the Crime. A: A mechanical trick", no, Kawajima will go out of his way to give very specific examples of such tricks, spoiling the precise setup of the story in question and how this trick is then utilizes specifically. And no, Kawajima doesn't do spoiler warnings or anything, and as mentioned above, sometimes he'll mention the title of the story when he does this, and sometimes he won't, but he'll still spoil the trick in full details. Though I guess some can be guessed even if you haven't read the book in question, like when he starts explaining the trick behind a story that is set in a house in Goblin Woods... Fortunately I recognized most of the stories discussed here, but it's honestly pretty stunning to see Kawajima spoiling so many stories without any remorse, and all that in a weird attempt to get young readers attracted to puzzle plot mysteries! He does go over a good amount of trick categories here, and he does actually discuss good examples, but... I still don't think this should be anywhere near a For Dummies book!

There are some really nice retro illustrations by Iwai Taizou in this book by the way, some of them also accompanying the trick taxonomy part. I'll refrain from using those in this post, but here's Father Brown with a creepy smile instead!

Anyway, I knew Suiri Shousetsu no Yomikata wouldn't be like a super informative critical work of the genre when I got started on it, but supposing you're not really afraid of spoilers, this would be a fairly interesting book to get you started on detective fiction as a young reader, especially as it really focuses on puzzle plot fiction and does give you concrete examples of how clewing works, as well as tricks in mystery fiction and how they can be used to create surprise and a sense of catharsis when the truth is revealed. Only... Nakajima at the same time robs readers of that feeling by spoiling all those famous works indiscriminately. So yeah, I also very well understand why readers would be upset! This book is more a funny anecdote perhaps than a must-read, but I quite enjoyed it. Though it really helps I knew most of the examples anyway, so if you're a young reader in 1971 interested in detective fiction: please avoid this book.

Original Japanese title(s): 中島河太郎『推理小説の読み方』

The Big Four

"From the ashes of this world I will build a better one. Go forth, my horsemen and let chaos cleanse the world."

"X-Men The Animated Series"

Hmm, funny how a lot of the reviews posted this winter are set in the summer...

After a murder case that involved her own friends, Nadia Maugars, daughter of Inspector Maugars, still doesn't know quite how to move on, especially as in contrast, Yabuki Kakeru, a Japanese student who studies philosophy in Paris who tutors her in Japanese, seems eerily cold and untouched by the incident. Kakeru is in fact far more interested in Nadia's friendship with Giselle Rochefort, daughter of August Rochefort, one of the major names in the financial world of southern France. Giselle is studying history under the tutelage of Charles Sylvain: Kakeru wants to view certain documents involving the Cathars, which Charles can provide him. Kakeru and Nadia learn Giselle will be staying at her father's holiday home in the south of France this insanely hot summer, as her father is trying to get a nuclear power plant in that region. Charles will also be there due to an excavation where they expect to find objects related to the Cathars, and others are also expected to be there, like Giselle's boyfriend Julian, a nuclear researcher connected to the Rochefort nuclear plant, and his sister Simone, a teacher and activist. Kakeru and Nadia also travel to the same village, as Jean-Paul Barbes, a subordinate of Nadia's father, hails from there. Everyone is hanging around the holiday home of the Rocheforts, when a loud crash surprises everyone. They gather in front of the second floor room where the noise came from, which they find locked from the inside. Kakeru enters the room via the garden and outside balcony, and inside they find the murdered body of Fest, a visiting antiquarian. For some reason, Fest was knocked out on the head and then an arrow was stabbed in his chest, with the bow and arrow being part of the room's decoration. When Kakeru finds Fest had first been knocked out with an object with one of the biblical Johns on it, and he also later learns a white horse belonging to the Rocheforts was killed too at the same time, he realizes what is going on: this murder was styled after the Book of Revelation: the segment regarding the first horseman of the Apocalypse says: "A white horse appears, whose crowned rider has a bow with which to conquer." But that begs the question: does this mean three other people will be murdered too, and why commit a murder like this? Meanwhile, Kakeru has more things to think of, as an attempt on his life has been made due to his interference in the previous incident. Can he solve all of these problems in Kasai Kiyoshi's Summer Apocalypse (1981)?

The first novel by mystery author, critic and philosopher Kasai featuring Yabuki Kakeru I read was back in 2015, but after reading Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu ("A Locked Room for Philosophers", 1992), it took me about ten years to return to that series with Oedipus Shoukougun ("Oedipus Syndrome", 2002), which I read last year. Perhaps it's therefore surprising I'm reading another entry in this series so soon, but what shouldn't surprise frequent readers is that I once again read the series completely out of order. After reading the fourth and then the fifth novel, I decided to go back to the second novel: Summer Apocalypse. To be completely honest, the Yabuki Kakeru is really not the best series to read out of order: Kasai really likes to start each new book with a recap of the events of the previous book and he doesn't mind spoiling major events, including the identity of the murderers, in these prologues. That holds even for this second book, which freely spoils the identity of the murderer of the first book (Bye Bye Angel), which I haven't read yet. The prologue also builds directly on the ending of the previous book, with shocking incidents happening to Nadia and Kakeru due to what happened in Bye Bye Angel. This storyline is also of importance later in the book, as Kakeru remains invested in the aftermath of what happened in the first book throughout his investigations in this second book. Why did I start with this book then, you might ask. Well, I wasn't really planning to read "a Yabuki Kakeru" novel when this book found its way on my reading pile to be honest. I had in fact been looking for mystery fiction themed after the Book of Revelation and the Apocalypse, and this book was one that was mentioned a lot in Japanese sources (in the past, I also reviewed the manga Father Sakura which had a story involving the Apocalypse too).

My previous experience with this series already taught me Kasai likes to write long novels, and that likes to use them as vehicles to talk about philosophy, history and other topics that might interest him, and to be honest, I have often felt he went too far with that for my taste, having to wade through pages of characters discussing philosophy while they're in imminent danger of being murdered. Fortunately for me (your mileage may vary), this book is a bit shorter than the previous two novels I read, and therefore it stays a bit more focused on the core mystery plot, though there's still plenty of talk about Catharism and the characters' stances regarding art, nuclear plants and more of that. Ironically, the one thing I did hope he'd write more extensively about, that being the Book of Revelation and the meaning of the Apocalypse, is surprisingly less of an important theme, and while they of course do discuss the topic over the course, I do have to say I was a bit disappointed it never went as deep as I hoped it'd go: I'd loved to have read more about the historical background or for example interpretations of the Book of Revelation.

Nonetheless, a mystery novel about a series of murders modelled after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is of course an exciting idea: each time a murder is commited, a victim is killed with an object invoking the respective horseman, and you might want to avoid this book if you love horses, because yep, horses are also murdered each time. Many of the murders have slightly impossible aspects to them too, at least, if you assume the murderer is someone in the main cast of characters, as each time, all or at least most of them seem to have fairly good alibis for the murders. For the first murder for example, most characters arrive in front of the room very soon after they hear the noise made by the murderer, making it unlikely any of them had been inside the room seconds ago: with the door locked from inside, the murderer would have needed to take the long way around via the balcony and the garden to get back inside. To be honest, I was not a big fan of the solution to this quasi locked room: the solution is one of the type that can work in some situations, but here I think the hinting to the existence of such a thing seemed a bit too weak, though I do like how it tied to the horseman imagery. In fact, I think the manner in which Kasai integrated the Horseman themes into the mystery is the most interesting part: they fit very well with the motive of the mastermind behind these murders and the props indicated in each of the verses are used in interesting manners to faciliate said murders. Obviously, 'dressing up' each murder to correspond with the Horseman verses is partially done to act as misdirection, and I think that is executed really well here, but Kasai does go beyond just using it as misdirection, giving a proper thematical (character driven) reason to have these murders indicate the end of times.

What I also liked about Summer Apocalypse is that Kasai has more surprises beyond the allusions to the Apocalypse: the way the murders are ultimately explained is done in a rather surprising way, and while at first you might be wondering why it is done in this particular way, it all does come together in the end, and mystery-wise, I think this was an interesting approach by Kasai. I can't talk too much about this unfortunately, but it's a theme I generally do like in mystery novels, and while you see it relatively often nowadays, it would have been far less common in 1981, and in that sense, Summer Apocalypse still feels very modern despite it predating shin honkaku novels.

While Summer Apocalypse didn't go as deep in the topic of the Apocalypse and the Four Horsemen as I had initially hoped, I still think this is a fine example of a mitate (themed) murder mystery: murders committed in a way to allude to the Book of Revelation is just a really exciting theme, and Kasai manages to use the theme in a very clever way that is also deeply connected to what moves the characters in this novel. While I wasn't a fan of all the individual murders, the Apocalypse glue did make this a fun mystery to read, and in terms of the mystery plot, page count and Kasai talking about philosophy and other topics, this was definitely the one book that managed to feel like it balanced these elements the best, at least, it fitted my own personal preference much better than for example Oedipus Shoukougun, which felt much slower and meandering. At this point, it is likely I will also read Bye Bye Angel one day, but beyond that, I feel like I'm not really reading these books because I am invested in the story and characters of this series, and I'll probably just return to it if one of the books happen to be about a theme I want to read about, rather than me wanting to read a Yabuki Kakeru novel.

Original Japanese title(s): 笠井潔『サマー・アポカリプス』

Doom With a View

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

"The Fall of the House of Usher"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dead Man's Cavern

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

"Max Payne"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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