On the Trail of Trouble

気づけば懐かしい川原に来てみたり

「忘れ咲き」（Garnet Crow）

 

By the time I noticed it, I found myself again at that nostalgic riverside

"Wasurezaki" (Garnet Crow)

I still remember the first time I went to Nakasu... which in hindsight was weird. I had just arrived in Fukuoka, and a classmate I had only met one time before invited me that evening to go out for some noodles with some Japanese man he had met somewhere, so he drove us to Nakasu. Now I think about it, and realize I never was told how that classmate got to know random Japanese man and why we ever stepped in his car. 

Chaya Jirou is a well-known travel writer with several succesful books on his resume, but he also has a reputation as an amateur detective who tends to stick his nose into cases at his travel destinations. Sometimes however, cases find him. One morning, one of his assistants arrives late at the office, bringing with her the young woman Fukami, who is dealing with a rather odd problem at the moment. The woman in her mid-twenties tells Chaya how about one year ago, she started a relation with an elderly man. Itoshima Suehiko had moved to Tokyo from the west, but never talked much about his past to Fukami, but he was always incredibly kind and thoughtful. Two weeks ago however, he had to go to the hospital due to a stroke. She had been caring for him these last few days, keeping an eye on his apartment and bringing fresh clothes to the hospital, but five days ago, he disappeared from the hospital. It doesn't appear like Itoshima just disappeared because he couldn't pay the bill, so what had prompted him to disappear, or was there some third party responsible for his disappearance? Chaya suspects that it's something from Itoshima's past that caused his disappearance, be it voluntary or forced upon him, and he learns that Itoshima moved several times over the course of just a few years, starting in Fukuoka and slowly moving towards Tokyo. It appears Itoshima originally lived in Fukuoka, so Chaya decides to travel there, which is convenient as he also needs to write a new column on famous rivers, and the Naka River and the Nakasu entertainment district on the bank between Naka and Hakata River are perfect material for his series. When he arrives in Fukuoka, Chaya discovers that Itoshima used to be a police officer and it just so happens a police officer was killed in Nakasu... Can Chaya find Itoshima and learn what caused his disappearance in Azusa Rintarou's Hakata Nakagawa Satsujin Jiken ("The Hakata - Naka River Murder Case" 2019)?

I always try to read at least one mystery book set in the city of Fukuoka (Hakata) every year, but this year, I even managed to do two! A few months ago, I reviewed Yoshino Izumi's Tenohira Astral, but I also happened to stumble upon Hakata Nakagawa Satsujin Jiken around the same time. I had never read anything by Azusa before, and never even heard of the Chaya Jirou series, though it's fairly lengthy and even had a television drama adaptation. The character himself sounds familiar though, as he follows the pattern we know from Uchida Yasuo's Asami Mitsuhiko series: both series about travel writers who solve crimes at various tourist destinations as amateur detectives. In fact, I already read an Asami Mitsuhiko novel once set in Fukuoka. I'll be honest and admit my expectations were not very high when I first started this novel: I occasionally read these type of travel mysteries by other prolific travel mystery writers like Nishimura Kyoutarou, Uchida Yasuo and Yamamura Misa, and they are often more about enjoying the trip and seeing all kinds of tourist destinations, and the core mystery plots often tend to be rather simple, and seldom manage to really make a lasting impression. Great if you just want to read about murders set all kinds of famous places, but after a while the plots kinda tend to blend in your mind.

Hakata Nakagawa Satsujin Jiken at least didn't betray my expectations. It's basically exactly what I thought it would be. Once Chaya makes his way to Fukuoka, he starts asking questions about Itoshima's past life in Fukuoka. Some people clam up, some people tell him what they know and point to other people who might know more, Chaya digs even deeper in Itoshima's life, etc. The plot is completely focused on the investigation of Chaya, which is occasionally hindered by the local police who don't want a Tokyo writer poking around in the running investigation of the murdered police officer and in the past of former police officer Itoshima. There's no real puzzle element, you're honestly just in for the journey, which barely has any surprising twists waiting. You can practially guess for each story element what its significance is the moment it is mentioned.

And the plot relies on coincidence too. Most of Chaya's investigation is focused on past events (the past of Itoshima and why he moved out to Tokyo), which can be okay segments if you like to see how points and lines slowly come together, but the real-time occurences (like the murder on the police officer in Fukuoka) do need a bit of help of Lady Luck: some events only happen to be occuring almost simultaneously because of coincidence, not because there's an actual cause-and-effect relation, and Chaya never would even have arrived at the trail of most of the plot if coincidence hadn't caused these events to occur so close to each other. I mean, just a difference of a week or two would have made Chaya's investigation less focused already, so it does make the whole novel feel rather contrived.

But then again, I only read the book because I wanted to read a mystery novel set in Fukuoka, and in that regard, it didn't disappoint. The story is mostly set around Nakasu, the iconic entertainment district of Fukuoka, but Chaya's investigation also brings him closer to the residential areas near Hakata Station. There's of course some discourse on Fukuoka and Nakasu too like you usually see in travel mysteries, so this book does what you'd expect it to do. Nakasu is also a major setting in Nishimura Ken's Hakata Detective File series by the way, and while it's not solely focused on puzzle plot stories, I'd say that series is definitely more rewarding if you're looking for Nakasu-based mystery stories.

So yeah, not a very enthusiastic review about Hakata Nakagawa Satsujin Jiken, but I don't feel too disappointed because the book basically met my expectations: it's a slow detective story that focuses on the investigation of Chaya in a person's past and on the setting of Fukuoka, but as a mystery story it doesn't do one thing that will make it stand out in a crowd. And the crowd is really, really large. So only recommended if you, like me, want to read mystery stories set in Fukuoka.The book's merits are definitely just that it does exactly what you may expect from a travel mystery novel, never going below the line of expectations, but never rising above it either.

Original Japanese title(s): 梓林太郎『博多 那珂川殺人事件』