Where There's a Will

That's one small step for [a] man

Neil Armstrong

Last year, I reviewed the not very memorable Moord in de Ridderzaal by Theo Joekes, a novel I had picked up in the town's free library, where you can exchange novels and books for free: you can simply leave a book you'd like someone else to read behind, and readers can take a book with them for free. Moord in de Ridderzaal by the way, was swiftly returned.

A loooooong while back (this review was pushed back a lot), I was scanning titles again in the free library, when my eyes fell on a familiar name. At least, the name of the author was familiar to me: the Dutch title of the book didn't immediately ring a bell. For I have read a couple of Christianna Brand novels already, and most of them were excellent mystery stories, though the Dutch title Het geheim van de voetstappen ("The Secret of the Footsteps") didn't sound familiar to me. A look inside however told me this was the Dutch translation of Suddenly At His Residence (1947), a book I had heard about, but hadn't read yet, so the book was promptly pulled out from the shelf. Sir Richard Marsh, an eccentric elderly man, has a family gathering at his stately manor Swanswater every year in memory of his late first wife Serafita, despite being his second wife still being alive and well. Due to the unfortunate deaths of his own children during the war, only his four grandchildren attend to this gathering (three grandchildren of Serafita, one of his second wife Bella). Peta (daughter of the oldest son) is the favorite of Richard, but he doesn't really understand her modern ways. Philip (son of second son) is married with Ellen and they have a child, but he has fallen in love with Claire (daughter of third son), and wishes to divorce Ellen. Edward (grandson of Bella) is neurotic and spoiled, and is prone to 'space out', though even he himself doesn't quite know whether he's playing the role, or actually neurotic. Richard has always felt a generational gap between him and his grandchildren, but when he learns of the affair of Philip and Claire, and how everyone thinks so lightly of everything, he decides to disown the grandchildren, leaving everything to his second wife Bella (and Edward). As always on Serafita's day, he retreats to her beloved garden house to spend the night there, and this year, he decides to use his time there to alter his will. The following morning however, the old man is discovered dead in the garden house, and not only has his new will disappeared, it also seems his death was foul play. Inspector Cockrill, as an old acquaintance of the family is asked to investigate the matter, and Cockrill, and the family members soon realize that the crux of the case revolves around the one path leading to the garden house (rose bushes block any other way): fresh sand had been laid on the path after Sir Richard had retreated in the garden house, but the only footprints left on the path were of the people who discovered the body, so when had the murderer visited the man?

I kinda like this cover art by the way, it's in a style you don't often see.

Anyway, Suddenly At His Residence is most definitely A Mystery Story By Brand. Well, I haven't read that much Christianna Brand to be completely honest, but if there's one thing that all the novels I have read have in common, it's that everyone in her novels is very eager to offer false solutions, reasonable hypotheses and well-considered suspicions on everyone else. Seriously, everyone in her novels will at one point or another accuse another character of having committed the deed, and it's never just an accusation, no, it's always an accusation that's quite plausible! Suddenly At His Residence basically has two seemingly impossible situations. The murder of Sir Richard is the main problem of course, and the numerous false solutions can be roughly split in two variations:  either the murderer went to the garden house before the fresh sand was laid on the path, or after. The latter variation is of course a familiar trope in mystery fiction, often recognized as the 'footsteps in the snow' trope. If the murderer did go after the sand had been laid, how did they enter and leave without leaving footsteps? On the other hand, it can also be assumed the murderer went before the sand was laid, but here we are still confronted with several impossibilities, as the people known to have gone to the garden house at that time were for example in company of other witnesses, or seen not to carry anything with them with which they could've commited the murder.

This split in two kinds of impossibilities is quite interesting, as it really keeps the reader on their toes, as they are being "forced" to choose between one of these paths (before or after), and even then, they still have to figure out how it was exactly done. And Brand makes sure to toy around with the reader, as she'll name quite a few possibilities the reader will also consider, but yeah, it's very likely you're on the wrong track if one of the characters already voices your ideas with the same reasoning with still more than seventy pages left. There is a second death later in the book, and while that is an impossible situation though, with no footsteps left in the dust, this one is easier to guess and not directly connected to the first murder in terms of method (they are two distinctly different situations).

When I finally arrived at the part where the solution to Sir Richard's death is explained however, I realized I had already heard of this solution before. Mind you, I didn't realize this until after it had been revealed, and I hadn't even thought of this solution myself while I was reading the novel, so it didn't really influence my reading experience, but I believe it's one that's reasonably famous for this type of problem. The solution works well here, even if the clewing is a bit sparse, though I did have the feeling it felt a bit arbitrary due to all the false solutions preceding the final solution. That is to say, the previous false solutions were all discarded for several reasons, but never did you really feel a connection between those false solutions. They were just treated as false, but crossing them off your list didn't mean it'd get you closer to the final solution. Earlier this year, I read Mitsuda Shinzou's Mizuchi no Gotoki Shizumu Mono, which had a lot of false solutions too, but there the false solutions were all actually necessary steps, as elements from each false solution would prove to be important to mark the road to the true solution. In comparison, all the false solutions in Suddenly At His Residence felt as discrete instances, with no real consequences to the final solution. It's a completely different approach to the false solutions device, but at the end of Suddenly At His Residence, you feel like the novel could also have ended in the first few pages had Cockrill simply stumbled upon that solution first, as the other hypotheses had nothing to do with the real solution anyway.

Not that I think Suddenly At His Residence is a bad mystery novel though. Quite the contrary, it's a very amusing, and deep mystery novel that isn't afraid to be a real detective story, focusing on logical reasoning by offering so many plausible solutions to the problem, but still whipping up a surprise at the end, and a good example of how a Brand-brand mystery novel overall. And I am grateful that someone actually left a copy of the book in the free library. But the book did get me thinking about what I like about false solutions in mystery novels and what their function should be, and in that sense, I do have to say Suddenly At His Residence is, well, not disappointing perhaps, but I did make me long for a Brand where the false solution device is used in a more constructive way for her mystery plots. And to end this story: this book was returned to the free library, so someone else may also enjoy Brand!

Silky Lady

生憎の雨だけど予定通り出かけましょう

せっかくのDress upも あなたには見えてないし

「As The Dew」 （Garnet Crow）

It's raining unfortunately, but let's still go out as we planned

It's not like you had even noticed I'm all dressed up for this

"As The Dew" (Garnet Crow)

My post and introducing quotes titles are always mystery-related, but lately, it's been more like music-from-mystery-shows-and-games related...

Fancy dress shop Cristophe et Cie is not the only home to the material dreams of women, it's also a focal point in the lives of the gossip girls who work there. It is also not a very peaceful place, with propretier Bevan having too much interest in his female employees, an emotionally unstable designer Cecil (who is probably 'we-can't-really-call-him-gay-but-he-sure-is') and a battle by the women for a position in the new branch store in Deauville. But you'd think this would at the worst result in a scratched faces and pulled hair, right? But for some reason Miss Doon (one of the top candidates for the Deauvill position) ends up dead due to ingestion of oxalic acid. Was it an accident, suicide or murder? Young Inspector Charlesworth, who feels genuine, true love for almost every girl he meets is set on the case, which is much more confusing than it seems at first in Christianna Brand's Death in High Heels (1941).

I haven't read much Brand, but the two books and one movie I've seen all starred her Inspector Cockrill. Death of Jezebel also had Inspector Charlesworth making an appearance, and I was quite surprised at that at the time because I hadn't known that Charlesworth was another of Brand's series characters. Death in High Heels was both Charlesworth and Brand's own debut novel and this novel was written based on Brand's own working experience in a dress shop, which she apparently didn't like really much. One problem I had with this book was that a lot of the female characters kinda resembled each other, and while they may have felt all distinct to Brand (I think the girls were based on her co-workers), it was quite hard to keep all the girls apart, as they act so alike (still not as bad as Arisugawa Alice's Gekkou Game, which featured like seventeen students).

I mentioned in my review of Death of Jezebel that Brand's mysteries seem to feature two points: fake solutions and a crime commited under observation. These two elements are featured up to some extent in her debut novel, but nowhere was good as in her later work. Oxalic acid appears very early on stage, but even though the poison moves from one person to another several times, enough witnesses remain who all claim that none of the poison could have been stolen for use on the victim. A lot of attention is given to the observed movements of the poison, but the way it is presented to the reader is quite bad: it's hard to follow and it is difficult to visualize what Brand really meant. It could, and really should have been described and presented much better (with little diagrams or something like that). Also, character momevent is also fairly important and it would have helped my enjoyment of the book a lot if it had included a map of Cristophe et Cie, for it really helps figuring out the mystery, but it is hard to decipher the layout of the store just based on the prose. Then again, I usually think that maps can improve any mystery story.

Death in High Heels does not really feature fake solutions in the sense of carefully constructed alternative hypotheses, as much as just 'we don't have enough evidence to rule things out, so we have enough room for a myriad of possible solutions'. The plot meanders quite a bit actually and can get quite boring as little progress is made in the investigations for a long time. The plot also involves a lot of stacked coincidences, which can work to make a mystery more interesting, but here it makes a rather minimalist plot drag even more. The final answer features an okay hint, but it appears so late in the story that it feels rather artificial, as the incubation time of the hint and the revelant information is just too short.

The book has a certain Christie-esque vibe to it, by the way. From the women to the poison-centered story and even the final hint, I can't help but thinking Brand was inspired by Christie here and I wonder what Christie would have done with the same plot.

Death in High Heels is an okay detective story, but I didn't enjoy it as much as her later novels. It all feels less polished, less readable, less entertaining than later books and I definitely recommend those books over this one.

The Backstage Rage

「本番中の演出かご室。 大胆な犯行ですね」

「そうだね」

「犯人は、かなりの知能犯でしょう。一体どんなトリックを使ったんですかね」

「さすがに、この事件は難しそうだね」

「はい。二週またぐ確保ですね」

「犯人が自白した」

「？！！！ 」

『３３分探偵』

"So in a stage cage room during a performance. What an adacious murder"

"Yes"

"The murderer must be very intellegent. What kind of trick did he use?"

"This case looks difficult"

"Yes. This story will take at least two weeks for us to solve"

"Sir, the criminal just confessed!"

"?!!!"

"33 Minutes Detective"

 I did post the Tozai Mystery Best 100 last week, but I am not sure yet whether I am going to make a best-of-list, like last year. Partly also because I read quite some very good books this year for reading clubs, which makes it harder to make a list. But I might figure out something for that. Like a Japanese/Non-Japanese list or something like that. Still a week to go in this year, so we'll see.

Under normal circumstances, it is quite hard (or at least expensive) to get your hands on a copy of Christianna Brand's Death of Jezebel. When you're in a Mystery Club, you can just casually mention you want to read to the book, only to find out the following day that someone has been nice enough to bring his copy for you to read. Rare books, smare books! Anyway, a nice young lad called Johnny Wise finds his girl Perpetua in the arms of another man, "thanks" to the rather cruel Isabel Drew and commits suicide. Seven years later and Perpetua, the man Johnny found her with and Isabel (whom people also call Jezebel) all receive threatening letters. It also happens that all these players are to participate in a pageant, with Isabel playing the Queen in a tower, surrounding by her knights on horseback. And what happened at the pageant was that Isabel fell down the tower (after being killed), surrouding by her knights on horseback. And nobody in the public saw the murderer enter or leave the tower on stage!

I first have to say that the Johnny's suicide was kinda... fast. I mean, it happens in the first few pages of the book to set-up the story, but the jump between finding out his lover's infidelity and his suicide was quite abrupt. I get that finding your girlfriend in the arms of another man is less than pleasant, but to skip all the (psychological) steps leading up to suicide...

But having addressed that point, I can join the praising parade for Death of Jezebel. I wonder whether reviewing this book is some sort of ritual a mystery blog has to undergo before it is recognized as one. Anyway, first up, the murder! Who doesn't love an impossible murder, commited in front of many witnesses, on stage?! In a sense, all mysteries are a kind of theater, a play that unfolds in front of the reader's eyes and thus such murder stories are closer to meta-fiction than most people would initially think. And I love meta-fiction, so no objections from me.

I  won't say I'm a Brand expert, seeing as I've only read Tour de Force and seen the Green for Danger movie, but I am going to suppose that having multiple (fake) solutions and insane complex logical plotting is a characteristic of Brand. Which again is something I love, so more bonus points. The trick behind Jezebel's murder is complex and certainly impressive enough to hold the structure for a whole book (which isn't always the case for mystery novels). The trick also has a distinct, headless flavor to it you don't see that often in Golden Age mysteries, but something I certainly can appreciate walking round the bloody fields full of decapitated corpses and loose limbs that make Japanese detective novels (ok, it's not that bad. Only relatively).

My second not-sure-whether-this-is-a-Brand-characteristic is the observed murder setting: Tour de Force, Green for Danger and Death of Jezebel all feature impossible crimes, where the crime scene is under (almost) constant observation by multiple witnesses. These crime scenes are under natural observation (it is normal to overlook a beach, just like that doctors and nurses do have to look around in an operation room), with people all doing their own thing (walking around the beach; doing their own tasks in the operation room, the actors in a play), which gives the murderer leeway to execute his trick. The interesting thing is that Brand handles the same situation in very different ways, with different kind of tricks and solutions to the problem. So even if you recognize the setting, you probably won't see what Brand has up her sleeve this time. Which , making her murders all the more puzzling and fun to read. Or watch.

And one final point to make this post absurdly Brand-centric even though I hardly read her work: Death of Jezebel features both inspector Cockrill (of Tour de Force and Green of Danger) and Charlesworth (whom I know absolutely nothing about). Wait, sorry, I don't even have a point to make about this. It's just a fact I wanted to mention.

This is one of those novels that you really want to recommend to other people, only to remember at the last moment that the book is quite rare. And not everybody knows a guy who has a copy of the book available to borrow. Still, it might be a more realistic recommendation to most people, compared to recommending Japanese novels nobody can read. The things money can buy!

"En route, ladies and gentlemen for - Murder."

"...he thought in despair: 'She's one of Them!' For Inspector Cockrill was setting out upon a Conducted Tour of Italy and ever since, his money being paid and withdrawal now impossible, he had received the assurance of the travel agency that he would find delightful friends among his fellow tourists, he had been contemplating their coming association with ever-increasing gloom. 'She and all the rest,' he thought. 'They're Them.'"

"Tour de Force"

Three months in Kyoto have convinced me that people like to stand in line for restaurants a lot more than people in Fukuoka. And as someone more accustomed to Fukuoka-rituals than the ones in Kyoto, I still have an aversion to standing in lines for food. But still, those long lines do suggest that the food is good. So our plan was to simply be the first in the line, cutting the waiting time. So we picked a soba restaurant that always has a long line waiting in front for it and arrived  a bit before opening time. We got in safely, had a nice dinner, went out. And then we discovered that there were actually always two lines here; a modest one for 'our' soba restaurant, but most people were actually standing in line for the ramen restaurant next door. Next time, Gadget!

What this has to do with the Christianna Brand's Tour de Force? Nothing at all. Really. I've been relatively good lately, but some people might remember that usually the introductions to my posts are not related to the main topic.

So yes, we continue our streak of English fiction on this blog. But a bit differently this time. Luckily. I read Croft's Mystery on Southampton Water in Japanese (even though I could have easily read it in English), and the same holds for The Misadventures of Ellery Queen, though it has to be mentioned that there is no English equivalent for that release. But Christianna Brand's Tour de Force, I actually read in English. How rare! I really think that I'm the only one who reads the English books in the Mystery Club room. Anyway, my first encounter with Brand and Inspector Cockrill was through the excellent movie Green for Danger and I had seen the title Tour de Force mentioned earlier as a good Brand, so I opened the book with quite some expectations. And then I sneezed, closed the book again and washed my fingers. And the book. Clearly, the book had certainly not been cleaned of dust for many, many years.

Having booked a tour to Italy for his holiday, Inspector Cockrill is forced to spend his days with his fellow travelers. Which consists of a widely varied group, including a fashion designer, a writer, a piano player who lost his arm, accompanied by his wife and many others. The group enjoys and suffers in the ways you would expect from such a tour; great sights to see, but also problems with bad hotels and bad meals being served. And then, the tour arrived at the island of San Juan el Pirate, where Vanda Lane, one of the members of the group, is murdered in her hotel room. Most of the members of the tour being away on an excersion luckily narrows down the circle of suspects, but it just happens that all the suspects were on the beach during the time the murder was commited and they were all within eyesight of Cockrill!

As I only saw the movie version of Green for Danger, Tour de Force was the first time I made contact with Brand's prose, but I have to admit that I had troubles going throug the book. There is a certain witticism to Brand's writing I really like and there are quite some quote-worthy passages in the book, but there is just something to her writing that really made it hard to read for me. Maybe because there were few dialogues / direct lines spoken by characters? Not sure, but it made an excellent story a bit hard to really enjoy. It makes me a bit weary of starting with Death of Jezebel, which I know is regarded as Brand's masterpiece. I can easily get my hands on a Japanese copy, but just the thought of reading Brand's prose again, but in Japanese.... *shudder*

The prose was a shame though, because Tour de Force is really fun. The busman's holiday (and island) setting reminded me of Christie's Evil Under the Sun, which is never a bad thing with me. The varied types of members is something you'd expect only to see in... the Orient Express. Like I said, there are some funny passages and observations in the text that described a really plausible tour with all its problems.

But that was not all, as the puzzle plot is quite interesting too. Brand comes up with a whole series of possible solutions and plausible scenarios that explain who could have killed Vanda Lane and the presentation of these 'solutions' is actually quite natural seen in the context of the story developments (as opposed as the sometimes rather forceful presentation of a false solution in a Queen story). At any rate, these solutions do make you doubt what is real and what's not, which makes Tour de Force the more interesting.

And the final solution is really memorable, as the lead-up to it is done very well. It's a bit of a shame I've seen a very similar plot in the final episode of a TV series I like (which I won't specify anymore in fear of spoiling anything for anyone), where it was also done a bit better I think, but still, Tour de Force is worth a recommendation if you wanna read a very compentently constructed murder mystery.

All in all a good mystery which is certainly recommendable to anyone who enjoys a great puzzler. Unless you don't like Brand's prose.

「殺しの際は帽子をお忘れなく」

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

- That depends a good deal on where you want to get to

I don't much care where.

- Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.

…so long as I get somewhere.

- Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Those who can read Japanese (or those who are adept at using translation websites), might have seen it in the comments already. Or you might have deduced it from the fact I kept mentioning I don't have any unread books left, yet didn't went out to purchase them. Anyway, I will be leaving late next week for Japan to study there for a year. Yes, again. In fact, this blog started in 2009 just as a personal blog to keep the home front up to date when I went to study in Tokyo and Fukuoka, but somewhere along the way it transformed into the.... thing that it is now. So the reason I didn't buy new (Japanese) books was because it would be cheaper to buy them there.

I have to admit though that I am not sure what I will do with this blog. I will keep updating with reviews and stuff (I think), but experience has taught me that my post-amount will drop (significantly!), because life tends to get a bit busier as an international student (which is why I made sure that I at least have more posts this year than in 2010!). The other thing is that I am not sure whether I will post non-detective/personal posts here. At one hand, this blog did start out as such, so I might just return to the origins. On the other hand, it might not be very interesting if you're mainly here to read about (Japanese) detectives (I guess that most people only know about the reviews) and you're suddenly reading about ramen. There is a big chance I will write about food.

Anyway, I will keep posting about detective fiction, just not as regularly as now I think.

And now that we have gone over that: short shorts! Where I write short pieces about detective fiction because I couldn't come up with longer texts. Today's victims: the 1946 movie Green for Danger, the 2011 movie Joseon Myungtamjung : Gakshituku Ggotui Bimil and once again an audio drama of Houkago wa Mystery to tomo ni!

Green For Danger (1946) is based on Christianna Brand's novel of the same name and widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best movie based on a Golden Age detective novel. And I have little to add to that. I haven't read the original book, but this is really a neat movie that oh, I don't know, deserves a Criterion Collection release. Oh, wait, that exists already? Great, great! Anyway, the story is set in England, 1944. The country is suffering under the V-1 bomber attacks and the people at Heron's Park Emergency Hospital, a rural war hospital, have quite busy days taking care of their patients. One day, their local postman is brought in having been injured by a flying bomb and has to undergo surgery. The postman never survived the operation, because he died on the operating table before the operation could actually start. Later, one of nurses claims that this was not just an accident or natural death, but she gets killed off before she is able to say more about it. Inspector Cockrill is brought in to investigate the case.

Like I said, I am not familiar with the original novel, but this movie really brought a nice puzzler, combined with captivating characters and especially the setting of the hospital is very memorable. Furthermore, Alastair Sim as the inspector Cockrill is just a delight to look at and he alone is enough of a reason to recommend this movie (though it is a great movie overall). The mystery behind the postman's death is somewhat easy to solve though, but this is just a splendid production.

It reminds me a lot of Team Batista no Eikou ("The Glory of Team Batista"), a popular Japanese mystery novel that has been turned into a movie and TV show amongst others. The main mystery there is also a series of death on the operating table of the elite Team Batista, experts in a very complex procedure. They pride themselves on a perfect record, but then more and more patiens of them die on the operating table, leading to the suspicion that one of doctors might be sabotaging the operations. It relies quite a bit on medial knowledge, but the movie is pretty awesome, starring Abe Hiroshi as the official in charge of investigating whether the deaths were accidents or deaths. Abe's usually stoic, yet at times very playful (almost mean), detective also reminds of Sim's inspector Cockrill.

From England to Korea. I finally got a chance to 2011's Joseon Myungtamjung : Gakshituku Ggotui Bimil ("Joseon Great Detective: Secret of the Wolfsbane Flower"), which has the international title of Detective K: Secret of the Virtuous Widow. The movie is based on a novel by Kim Tak-Hwan and is set in 1782, 16 years after king Jeongjo took the throne. A series of murders on magistrates and other officials, combined with rumors of large-scale embezzling force the king to appoint a secret agent to investigate the case. The unnamed detective (though apparently called "detective K" outside of South-Korea) starts off his investigation rather roughly (resulting in being accused of murder himself and leading to assault on soldiers and such) and the king is forced to 'punish' his detective by sending him off on another, less important investigation (which luckily is strongly related with the serial murders). Helped by a dog thief, the detective start to uncover an intrige of unbelievable scale. And he finds a lot of hidden Christians. Hmmm.

This movie was pretty fun to look at, but it really needed polishing. The overall plot seems too complex at times, but not for the right reasons. Some scenes show some interesting detective work by the protagonist, or Conan-esque emergency escape plans, but it never feels like one coherent story. The plot seem little more than a easy way to glue the scenes to each other, instead of the plot dictating the way the movie progresses. The plot also gets unneccesary complex at the end with plot-twists and reveals that add little to the story, but for the fact that they are so totally surprising and unexpected. Oh, and they could have made the subplot of the Christians suffering under the Confucian rule a bit less... obvious. Yes, I know that a large part of the South-Korean population is Christian, but this was waaaaay too obvious a religous agenda.

Overall, this movie seems highly influenced by Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies, providing a lot of comedy and action, but it is just less polished. Like those Holmes movies, it is possible to set your mind at cruise control and enjoy the scenery. A special mention for Kim Myung-min, who plays a wonderful unnamed protagonist though. At times sharp and brave, but mostly a coward: which means he is similar to Houshin Engi's Taikoubou. Which is never a bad thing (seriously, any protagonist who loudly proclaims that 'I need to find more friends. To have them do the fighting for me', is genius). The international title of this movie by the way seems highly influenced by Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

And finally, once again Higashigawa Tokuya's Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni. First of all, a drama series based on the book (and I suspect some of the uncollected stories) will start late next month! Yeah! And secondly, I finally listened to Momogre's audio adaptation of Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni. Yes, I have already reviewed NHK's adaption of the book, but I was also interested in hearing how Momogre did their version, as their adaptations of Swiss Dokei no Nazo, 46 Banme no Misshitsu and ABC Satsujin Jiken were fun. And I am just a big fan of protagonist Kirigamine Ryou, the vice-president of Koigakubo Academy's detective club (who never seems to be able to solve a case herself).

Momogre's version is based on the first two stories, Kirigamine Ryou no Kutsujoku ("Kirigamine Ryou's Humiliation") and Kirigamine Ryou no Gyakushuu ("Kirigamine Ryou's Counterattack") (translation available for the latter). For a review on the stories themselves, I refer to the NHK version review, as the stories are identical and even the scripts are very similar (even though Momogre's version of Kirigamine Ryou no Kutsujoku is a bit unfair because of something important is mentioned at a later moment). So if they are so similar, why discuss Momogre version? Well, I wanted to convey the feeling of surprise when I, halfway through the drama, finally noticed that this was a Men Only version, i.e. there were no female voice actresses here. Ad yes, Ryou is a girl, but she has a speech pattern similar to a boy anyway, so I wasn't really bothered by the voice. It gets a bit distracting when women who talk like... women are voiced by a man. Momogre's Ryou was also quite different from NHK's Ryou: the latter was an energetic, almost hyperactive girl who wanted to be a detective. Momogre's Ryou.... was a man trying to speak like a girl, resulting in a nagging voice who never seemed as powerful as NHK's Ryou. Which is a big part of Ryou's charm. So in short, NHK's version is superior. In all aspects.

So, I think that this will be the last post of this month and next month... might bring food. Or detective fiction. Maybe detective fiction and food.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉 (原)　『放課後はミステリのあとで』
Original Korean title(s): 조선명탐정 : 각시투구꽃의 비밀