The Beast Must Die

I give my life, not for honor, but for you (Snake Eater)

"Snake Eater" (Cynthia Harrell)

For some reason bunko pockets of Kobunsha don't fit in some of my bunko pocket-sized cloth covers and it always irritates me...

It's Christmas day, when private detective Sugizaki Ren wakes up and finds a young woman sitting in the snow beneath his window. After a few questions being shot both ways, Sugizaki reluctantly lets the woman inside, who seems very evasive about her true reasons of being here, only asking for Sugizaki to take care of her and keep her out of sight for a few weeks, by hiring her as a help or something. He quickly learns people are indeed after her, as they are tailed by several men when they go out. Sugizaki is even more intrigued by the woman when he learns her name is Houjou Miya and that she is the daughter of Houjou Akio, the former director of the now-defunct Houjou Pharmaceuticals, a name Sugizaki unfortunately knows from a past incident. She has apparently run away from home, as one of the man trailing her is a private detective hired by Akio to learn his daughter's whereabouts, but Sugizaki and Miya are also trailed by two more dangerous-looking men, who Miya explains are the bodyguards of the influential politician Nakamura Kiyoshi, a personal friend of her father's: Nakamura and his sons are staying at the Houjou residence located on a cliff far away from town. Miya decides she will go home, but wants Sugizaki with her, hiring him officially as a bodyguard. Sugizaki accepts the request, and the following day the two are picked up by Nakamura's two bodyguards in a snowcoach, as it's a trip through the snowfields for over two hours back to the Houjou residence.

When they arrive at the house, Miya spots a person hanging from the ceiling of one of the upper-floor rooms: it's her cousin Makoto, who has been living here with his brother Asaji ever since their parents (Akio's sister and brother-in-law) passed away. The young man had failed his university entrance exams for many years in row now, so it appears to be a suicide, but they also find a strange card with the word "tsukioka" in the room. Sugizaki instantly realizes the people in this house aren't normal by any means: while Miya of course suggest they call the police and at least have this unusual death investigated, her father and Nakamura Kiyoshi decline, as Makoto's death might reflect badly on them. While Asaji's wailing for his young brother, Asaji's wife Saori is just calling her husband a crybaby and is openly flirting with Nakamura's second son Hiroshi, who has a very short fuse and even punches Asaji for being such a wuss. Slowly, but surely, Sugizaki feels these people here might not be human, but monsters, as how could a human be so cruel when confronted with death? Ironically, when Sugizaki later manages to have a private talk with Haruo, it is he himself who is accused of being a monster, as Haruo reveals he knows Sugizaki used to be a mercenary, literally a man who was paid to wage war and kill other people. However, the following day, another deceased is found on the premise, and this time it's obviously murder. However, the survivors soon learn the phone line's been cut, the snowcoach has been tampered with and the skis have been broken, making it practically impossible for them to contact or reach the city. While the situation turns into the classic closed circle situation, there's one thing that sets this apart from others: practically all the people in this house are beasts who'd rather kill all the others in the most cruel ways rather than be killed. Who will survive this hellish murder game in Asukabe Katsunori's 2003 novel Lamia Gyakusatsu ("Lamia Massacre")?

Asukabe Katsunori was mostly active as an author in the early 2000s, but most of his books had been out-of-print for many years, with only a few of them available digitally, so he had become mostly a somewhat obscure writer with a cult status. However, a few years ago, bookshops Shosen and Horindo started a project where they'd publish facsimile reprints out-of-print books themselves with the cooperation of the original authors/publishers. Asukabe's Datenshi Goumonkei ("Torture of the Fallen Angels" 2008) was one of the bigger titles (as the original release had reached insane prices on the used market). This release was the first Asukabe I read. Apparently, these releases have awakend the original publishers too, as they have been re-releasing Asukabe's work themselves now too: Datenshi Goumonkei got a bunko (pocket) release last year, and recently, publisher Kobunsha decided to finally give Lamia Gyakusatsu a bunko release, 22 years after the book was originally published!

Lamia Gyakusatsu is an odd book. The story opens with a prologue where we are told UMAs have actually been errr... identifie: at first, there were only signs of monstrous beasts roaming the world, like the discovery of the shedded skin of a gigantic snake of over seven meters, but eventually, people actually occasionally witnesses these beasts, like a man-bird. And then... we move to the narrative of Sugizaki and Miya and we hear a lot of talk about beastly persons, and a lot of philosophical discussions about what makes a human being... human, and what sets them apart from the beasts, but the initial set-up of the monsters roaming the world barely comes into play for most of the book, with just an occasional reference to 'oh, yeah, lately these beasts have been appearing all around the world'. While this set-up steps more into the spotlight the end of the book, it's not really an integral part of the mystery plot like most of the mysteries with a supernatural/science-fiction setting I discuss here. It's just... there. The concept does allow for some interesting discussions on man, beast and also mythological beings, but you might be disappointed at what you are getting considering what the prologue seems to set-up at first.

The way most part of the story develops in Lamia Gyakusatsu is actually very tame and tropey in comparison to the fantastical prologue, as we have a very classical closed circle situation with everyone trapped in the house in the snow, with the telephone line dead and the means of transportation (snowcoach/skis) having been tampered with. And of course, people are getting killed one by one, and most people seem to have a motive, whether it's financial motives or just sheer sadistic tendencies. To be honest, I wouldn't recommend Lamia Gyakusatsu for its mystery plot, as while it works fine enough as a whodunnit, the main features of the plot will likely give you a feeling of deja-vu: much of what is done you will have seen in other stories already, especially in terms of misdirection. The motive for the murders is in a certain way pretty original, but very simple and straightforward too, and I think your mileage might vary on how convincing you'll find this to be. I know of a character with somewhat similar motivations in a different Asukabe novel (not the culprit per se), but I had the feeling it worked better there than here.

The atmosphere of Lamia Gyakusatsu is great though. While the story itself develops in a rather predictable manner as a detective story, you feel there's something off about all this beneath the surface: it's the actors in this drama who all exude a very dangerous aura, making it feel like the tropey story could change drastically simply because everyone's so... wild. Everyone's acting instinctively beastly towards each other, with some of them openly declaring they'd be willing to kill all the others to make sure they alone will survive. Some characters have apparently crossed paths with Sugizaki when he was still a mercenary, and it's their discussions with him that reveal he has quite the chip on his shoulder. Sugizaki however does intend to do his job and protect Miya throughout this ordeal, and as a mercenary, he of course has some experience with incapitating opponents. At first, the confrontations between Sugizaki and the rest of the cast are somewhat polite, as they actually discuss things and delve into philosphical matters. But by the end, all hell's loose: The climax is bombastic, with the murders being solved while all these animalistic characters finally go at each other as their stress levels explode and they let loose.

In a way, Lamia Gyakusatsu feels a lot like a lite version of the two earlier works I read by Asukabe (though this novel actually predates Datenshi Goumonkei). While it doesn't focus on art, nor has the cool paintings Asukabe himself painted like in Junkyou Catherine Sharin ("The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine's Wheel"), we do have these conversations in this book that are filled with interesting anecdotes regarding historical/artistic interpretations of beasts and animals, and then there's the 'madness lurking beneath the surface' sense of dread throughout the novel that was so memorable in Datenshi Goumonkei, just in a much shorter novel with a story of a much smaller scale (closed circle situation in a remote house vs. an isolated village). In a way, you could thus read Lamia Gyakusatsu as an 'easy' introduction to Asukabe, though I do think the aforementioned works are better both as complete novels, as well as mysteries specifically.

I guess Lamia Gyakusatsu is far closer to an entertainment-mystery novel than "a pure" mystery novel, but I did enjoy the easy read. That said, it was certainly not Asukabe's best work I have read, and as it's becoming easier and easier to find his work nowadays, I do have a feeling I will find better works among his bibliography than this one. In fact, I already have a few of his books in the to-be-read pile, including his latest new release, so expect more of Asukabe on this blog in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 飛鳥部勝則『ラミア虐殺』

Death of a Clown

"X marks the spot."
"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

This book was released with a new cover in 2024, and the art is really great! So do try to get this one if you're interested in the book.

One evening, wheelchair-bound Takemiya Kaori and her father Munehiko are talking in her room, when they hear a loud cry. Carrying his daughter out of the room, the father and daughter see how a woman runs across the cross-shaped corridor, barges through the balcony doors at one of the far ends and flings herself out from the balcony down to the cliffs below: the funeral of Kaori's mother Yoriko followed soon after. Mizuho, Kaori's cousin, is asked by her mother to go visit the Cross Mansion to learn more about the death of her aunt Yoriko. Three generations of Takemiyas live at the Cross Mansion, named so after the characteristic cross-shape of the main hallway. Takemiya Shizuka is the matriarch of the family, having lost her husband recently. Yoriko had become the CEO of Takemiya Industries, but now her husband Munehiko has taken over her position. Besides Kaori, there's also a college student Jinichi living in the house, the son of a family friend studying at a nearby university.  Also visiting are Yoriki's cousin (who also works at the company) and Shizuka's personal hairdresser and family friend. Upon arrival at the Cross Mansion, Mizuho learns that the family had recently acquired a clown doll, which for some reason had been put on a display shelf on the night Yoriko flung herself from the balcony. The first night, Mizuho wakes up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, when she notices a button lying on the floor. She figures someone must have lost it, and places it in a visible place. The following day however, the dead bodies of Munehiko and his secretary/affair partner are found in the music room, having been stabbed. Everyone's surprised, not just by the murder, but also by the fact the secretary is in the house in the first place, as she left after dinner last night and it doesn't seem likely the two would be that daring to continue their affair in the Takemiya manor. Mizuho however is very shocked when she learns a button has been found outside the house, seemingly indicating the murderer left the house and dropped the button there.... but because Mizuho knows the button had initially been dropped inside the house, on the first floor cross-shaped hallway to which all the bedrooms are connected, she realizes someone inside the house must have placed that button outside after she had found it, suggesting the double murder was an inside job.

The day of the murder, the monk Gojou Shinnosuke presents himself at the house, claiming he is looking for the clown doll: it is supposed to be cursed, having brought all of its previous owners a premature death and he needs to purify it. It turns out the clown doll had been placed inside the music room, meaning it is evidence for now, so Gojou sticks around, hoping to retrieve the doll once the investigation is over. However, what nobody in the house knows is... is that the clown doll actually has a mind of its own. While it can't move or commnicate, it has been a silent witness to everything that has been happening in this house, from the death of Yoriko to the double murder in the music room, and he knews who the murderer is in Higashino Keigo's Juujiyashiki no Pierrot ("The Clown of Cross Mansion", 1988). 

Some might remember I mentioned this book in my review of ("How to Make A Crime Scene"), where it is discussed as one of its case studies, especially in regards whether the house was designed well enough keeping in mind one of its inhabitants (Kaori) is bound to her wheelchair.

 Juujiyashiki no Pierrot is one of Higashino's earlier mystery novels, back when he was still writing more classical detectives rather than the human-drama-focused mystery novels he writes nowadays. And I guess that is clear right from the start due to its unique premise: here we have a house with a unique layout (a cross layout), and there's the matter of the clown: each chapter is bookended by a monologue of the clown doll: it is a silent and truthful witness who has seen the murders happening right in front of him, even seeing the actual murderers doing their jobs, but they can not actually communicate with the other people, so they are basically a "seperate narrative" within the story. Surprisingly, this is actually used in a clever way to make the mystery much more interesting, even though the clown actually knows what is happening and there's not much of a mystery going on in their eyes: however, certain discrepencies between what the clown has seen and what we learn via the police and Mizuho's investigation of the crimes really help flesh out the mystery, creating a few "Aha!" moments that only work because we have testimony from a detached, otherwordly witness who can't interact otherwise with the world. 

And if you're mostly familiar with Higashino's modern-day writing, it might surprise you how very much not human-drama this mystery is, and a lot of the mystery-solving is very much evidence-based: Mizuho's whole reason for suspecting the murderer is in the house, is based on a deduction based on the button and the fact she knew at what time she found it, and at what time the button was later found outside the house. There are more of these "phsyical evidence-based" deductions in this book, which combined with the curious layout of the house, as if it were a Ayatsuji novel, really make this feel very different from what you'd expect of a Higashino novel nowadays. In fact, a lot of the characters are decidedly not very engaging nor nice in this book, not in a 'but it's human' kind of way, but almost comically so. The live-in student Jinichi for example is one, who constantly hits on Kaori and keeps saying he'll be the one who'll marry her... even though Kaori never ever shows any sign of thinking that much of the young man. 

While more deaths follow, the main mystery revolve around the double murder of Munehiko and his secretary in the music room, which is located on the ground floor of the Cross Mansion: interestingly enough, the living quarters of the house are all set on the first floor of the building, while the ground floor only holds the music room and a storeroom. While some clues seem to indicate the murderer might have stabbed the two, and then fled through the backdoor, the earlier button-deduction tells Mizuho the murderer was in the house, and the clown testimony tells the reader too the murderer was one of the people in the house, but who was it? A lot of Mizuho's investigation delves into the exact times everything happened, and also the mystery of why the secretary was in the house: she most definitely left by car to go home after dinner, so for what reason did she return to the Cross Mansion? While the bulk of the book is dedicated to solving the mystery, I have to admit developments felt a bit slow at time (even though this is a very short book), and moreover, the murderer's plan really involved very risky stuff for... like some benefits I guess, but was it really worth risking that just on the off-chance things would go as they hoped it'd go? Large parts of the mystery just feel more aimed at the reader, rather than it being the safest plan for the murderer (and in fact, luck does play a large part), so that feels a bit unsatisfying. It's not bad per se, but I can't help but shrug at it because it feels complicated for the sake of being complicated, and not for the sake of accomplishing the murderer's goals in a safe and sure manner.

A murder that is focused on much later in the story is more memorable, and makes better use of its props to present a more convincing mystery, though I admit it's rather simple in design, and I am going to guess a lot of people are able to guess what's going on here very early on. Saying more would perhaps already point too much to it, but I do want to make a special mention of the very clever use of the clown doll in this part of the mystery: it's not outrageously clever taken on its own, but by using the clown prop, a propr that actually can "testify" to the reader alone about what it sees, Higashino does manage to give this part of the mystery more flair than if he had just used the concept 'as is'.

Overall, Juujiyashiki no Pierrot is fairly light reading, so it's not a book I would go out of my way of recommending because it's not really making a huge impression, even if it's pretty decent. It is very, very different from what you'd expect of Higashino Keigo now though (especially considering what part of his output is available in English), so if you're interested in his earlier works, that are much closer to formal orthodox mystery fiction, this book is a fairly good example, similar to Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken ("The Masquerade Mountain Villa Murder Case") and the Great Detective Tenkaichi series.

Original Japanese title(s): 東野圭吾『十字屋敷のピエロ』

Panic on Gull Island

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suddenly craving fried chicken...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Border-Line Case

"Space, the final frontier."

"Star Trek"

This has nothing to do with the book of this post, but: Mu is one of my favorite characters from Saint Seiya, and I love his attacks Starlight Extinction and Stardust Revolution.

Hase Homare is a tour attendent on a special monitoring trip for the first low-cost space carrier: a group of guests have been selected to come along to spaceship "Hope!!", which will bring them to the space station hotel Stardust, where they'll enjoy a few nights before heading back to Earth. The service will start officially soon, so this special trip is one last check to see if everything will go as planned. There are just a handful of guests coming along, most of them who have paid a lot of money to be able to see Earth from space (and one student who just happened to win a contest), so there are only two staff members on Hope!!: Homare and the captain Itou, a former astronaut, who after a period of seeing the bottle too often, has gotten his life on control again, eager to prove himself to his family and the rest of the world. The trip to Stardust goes perfectly, with all the guests arriving safely at the hotel, where they are greeted by the hotel staff who had arrived earlier. The hotel resembles a cone with a halo around it: the main cone building, with the dock, storerooms and all the equipment and machines, has mainly zero or low gravity, so people are advised to use the special belts they have to anchor themselves, though there's is gravity in the halo part of the building, which is where the guests rooms and lobbies are. While Homare goes off to write up a report on the trip for headquarters, Itou starts carrying out rations they brought on their ship to the storerooms, but when Itou doesn't return, Homare goes looking for the captain, only to find Itou dead in one of the storerooms. However, the scene is bizarre: it looks like Itou hanged himself with a belt... only you generally can't hang yourself if there's no gravity. Staff members all have special smartwatches that monitor their movements, and it appears nobody of the staff came even close to the storeroom around the death of Itou, so that seems to clear them, so does that mean one of the hotel guests is the murderer? Or was it suicide. The management back on Earth however order Homare to continue as planned, as too much is at stake on this first test trip. When a second death happens however, the hotel staff members use escape pods to return to Earth, citing their legal work conditions (only allowed x hours in space), leaving Homare and the guests alone in the hotel. Homare can operate "Hope!!" all by himself up to a degree, but the guests all seem reluctant to return to Earth now, as they have just arrived, so it's decided they stay in Stardust as initially planned, but then more deaths occur while trapped up in space in Momono Zappa's Hoshikuzu no Satsujin (2023), or as the book also says on the cover: Stardust Murder.

Momono Zappa is a game scenario writer who made their debut as a novelist in 2021 with Rouko Zanmu ("Dreams Are All That Remain To The Tiger Who Has Grown Old"), a cool mystery novel that utilized a wuxia fiction background. Hoshikuzu no Satsujin similarly has a mystery set in a rather unique location: a space station. At the same time, we're not talking about the super far future: the world portrayed in this book is certainly quite close, with low-cost space carriers probably appearing soon, and the setting is far closer to our current society than say the mobile suits in Gundam Wearwolf, also a mystery set in space. So for a great part, a lot of the setting of Hoshikuzu no Satsujin will be almost the same as ours, with people needing Wi-Fi to do livestreams for back on Earth. In fact, Momono does a great job at portraying the practical difficulties of operating such a space station, occasionally touching upon the technical and scientific details about how things are working at Stardust. At one point, the space station also loses its contact with Earth, leaving Homare unable to call back to headquarters and inform them about the subsequent deaths after Itou's death, and the idea of just... being stuck in space without a way to call for help is just horrible. Of course, they have escape pods they could use, but Homare does emphasize that the escape pods just shoots them towards Earth to the ocean, so it could take days before the pods are actually retrieved and they're saved, so it's a last resort. So there's a lot of mileage to be taken from the concept of a closed circle situation... in space.

Like in Rouko Zanmu, Momono does like focusing on their characters and what drives them: each of the guests, but also the staff members have their own specific reasons for wanting to come to space, and it's what also informs their actions while being confronted with their predicament. Like a lot of these And Then There Were None-esque stories, you'll be looking out for motives in each character's backstory for wanting to commit murders while being in a closed circle situation (and in space, no less!), and the interplay between the various backstories does allow for a bit of going back and forth between suspects, though I'll be honest and say that motive-looking is seldom my favorite part of a mystery story. Those who want a more introspective mystery however, might find something they'll like here, as of course, the dream of going into space is one that has mesmerized people since ancient times, and you can easily imagine how everyone holds very different thoughts about what space could mean to them.

As for the mystery, a lot of the immediate riddles Homare and the rest of the guests are confronted with, are about howdunnits: whether it was a suicide or murder, how could Itou have been hanged, if there's no gravity to do the hanging? Another guest is nearly suffocated in his room, even though they locked the door before going to sleep (i.e.a locked room), and more such curious incidents happen. The tricks behind these occurings are... perhaps not surprisingly if you think about it, but I have to admit I was surprised how technical some of these tricks were. In a way, Momono does hint at these tricks, but the jump from being presented clue A and me deducing that could result in trick X was way too far for me, so I personally didn't always feel as impressed with the trick as I could've been: perhaps a more science-minded reader will love what Momono does here, as the tricks utilized by the culprit does make good use of the space station setting. I wouldn't say this is hard science by the way, just some things aren't as intuitive to my feeble humanities mind as for the author.

There's a direct sequel to this book by the way, Rousoku was Moeteiru ka (Is the Candle Burning?), which focuses on one of the guests of the hotel after returning to Earth. I have no idea whether the semi-scifi setting of this book is continued in the second book, so in that sense, that is kinda what interests me.

Anyway, Hoshikuzu no Satsujin uses a unique setting, but without going overboard or alienating readers with the lite scifi setting. While mystery-wise, I felt some of the tricks were a bit too technical for me to feel intuitively clever, as a book about people being trapped in a space station under deadly circumstances, I found the book quite captivating, and I blazed through it in no time, because I wanted to know how it'd end. I will probably pick up the sequel in the future too, so expect a review of that book too. 

Original Japanese title(s): 桃野雑派『星くずの殺人』

Nightfright

She said, 'Some of the people I call on seem to curl up their toes and pass out just from having one look at me.' She laughed about it and said it was a coincidence.
"The Pale Horse"

Today: a book that is mystery-wise not particularly memorable, but still a book I enjoyed a lot.

The students Mari and Sonoko are driving through a typhoon, on their way to the second house of Minori Kazunori, professor in American literature at their M University. Sonoko has had her eye on the handsome and very rich professor since forever, and the fact he's married, means nothing to her: she plans to have an affair with him, and have him divorce his wife eventually. He's been evading Sonoko's approaches for so long, Mari is rather surprised when this morning, Sonoko calls Mari out of bed with urgent news: apparently, the professor has finally given in to his urges. Professor "Kazu" owns a second house on a mountain on A Plains, near Sonoko's home town, and when she called Kazu this morning, she was told his wife would leave the house for a week later today, and Sonoko could come and stay there. Sonoko has no car of her own, so now she's on the phone to beg for a lift from Mari, who very reluctantly agrees to accompany Sonoko. But not for the reason you'd think: it turns out Mari is having an affair with Kazu for some time now, so why has Kazu now chosen for Sonoko!? Mari agrees to go along with Sonoko (to spring a surprise on Kazu) and together, they hop in Mari's car. When they arrive at the house however, they are surprised by the person answering the door: the young man they don't know seems as surprised as them. He explains he's a student of M University too, and that he was hired to watch the house for a week: he was picked up by the professor's wife earlier today and she drove off again, though she didn't explain where she was going, where the professor was and when she'd be back exactly. Sonoko is baffled, because this wasn't how things were to go: she was going to have her special night with Kazu! But as they are wondering what's going on, more people arrive at the house: first a police detective arrives at the scene, who explains he visited the hotel at the top of the mountain in relation to a case, but on his way back to town, he found the road further down the mountain collapsed due to the typhoon, so now he's stuck. He borrows the phone to call his boss and asks for permission to stay at the hotel back up the mountain, but then a family of three (a couple and the elderly father of the wife) arrive at the house too, who tell them the road further up the mountain, to the hotel has collapsed too. When later the hotel shuttle bus driver arrives at the house too, the party is complete: everyone is stuck in this house until the road's been restored. They divide the rooms among each other (Mari of course sleeps with Sonoko) and after dinner, some of them retreat to their rooms, while others hang out in the living room watching television. However, a very unfortunate chain of incidents leads to.... Mari killing six people one after another in the house. While it was certainly not intended, everyone besides Sonoko ends up killed by Mari (and some in rather gruesome manners). Mari is naturally in complete shock and returns to their room to wake up Sonoko, but it is then Mari discovers... Sonoko has also been murdered! A heavy vase was dropped on her head, and for some reason, her hair had been cut short. While a broken window seems to indicate the murderer came from outside, the fact they're completely shut-off from the outside world, quickly points Mari to one conclusion: one of the six people Mari just killed, must have killed Sonoko earlier! This quickly leads to Mari's one plan for salvation: Mari will make it seem the killer of Sonoko killed Sonoko and the rest, and set things up so it'll appear like then the killer was killed by Mari in self-defence. But in order to do that, Mari must figure out who killed Sonoko in Nishizawa Yasuhiko's Satsui no Tsudou Yoru ("The Night Murderous Intent Gathered", 1996).

I don't always remember where I first learned about a book, but I certainly remember where I first heard about this book: I read this book in August 2024, and a few weeks earlier, the book had been trending on Japanese social media, despite it being a rather old book. The reason is simple: the blurb was just so silly: how does Mari accidentally kill no less than six people!? For that is the honest truth: while Mari in some cases did act in self-defence, most killings were really just... unintended outcomes of sudden movements. The book is actually really funny, even though it is not written in an overt "comedic" manner: the way everything happens is just silly. From Mari "accidentally" doing a multi-kill combo to Sonoko just openly trying to seduce a professor to it turning out that professor is actually having an affair with Mari and Mari constantly bad-mouthing Sonoko both in front of her and behind her back... the characters are over-the-top, and act very comedic, even though the book's tone seems more serious.

The "intention" to be serious can also be seen in a secondary storyline, which follows the police detective Mimoro Katsuya (a co-worker of the police detective who ends up at the house): he's been working on the case of a killer with necrophilic tendencies who's been killing attractive women. During his investigation, he interviewed Kose Tomoe, and the woman has been on his mind since then. After some drinking in the earliest hours of the morning (on the same day as the main plot), he ends up in front of her apartment building and makes his way to her room; an impulse he knows is wrong, but he can't help it. He finds her door not locked and sneaks inside, only to see Kose having sex with a man... but then the man strangles her to death. Mimoro doesn't know what to do: while he wants to help her, he also knows that there's no way he can explain how he came here, sneaking like a stalker into the apartment of a woman he only interviewed once. He flees and several hours later, he's called by his boss who informs him of the murder, but to his great surprise, there's another dead woman lying in the apartment now, and the scene is set to make it appear like that woman killed Tomoe and then committed suicide. Mimoro is the only one who knows that isn't the truth, but can't of course explain he was actually witness to the murder. He tries to find out who the man was who killed Tomoe, which brings him on a curious trail that leads him to a house on the mountains in A Plain....

So the second storyline involves a serial killer of women, and we hear about some other odd cases that have been going on in the region, like a killer of children. In general, these chapters are a bit shorter, and feature a very flawed narrator: Mimoro clearly has stalkery tendencies and is even jealous of the man who killed Tomoe, as he felt somehow disgusted and disillusioned with Tomoe when he saw her having sex with another man. Despite that, he's still trying to do his job and find the killer, and part of the mystery of course revolves around finding out how this plotline relates to the story set at the mountain villa of professor "Kazu".

As you can guess, Satsui no Tsudou Yoru reads more like a thriller than a pure puzzler, though Mari does show off some not particularly memorable, but at the very least, still "logic-based" deductions regarding who could've killed Sonoko (with Mari's own killing spree functioning as an important event to determine where everybody was at a certain time). Ultimately though, this is not a fair-play whodunnit, and a lot of the mystery revolves just around seeing how we learn how several strands of plotlines turn out to be connected by... sheer coincidence. Coincidence is a strange thing in mystery fiction (ha! See this review for example), but as this book is just a thriller, I didn't mind the humongous pile of coincidences at work here: the result is just something so silly, it becomes good. I do like the ultimate manner in which the two plotlines of Mari in the house and the investigation of Mimoro connect, as that was the one thing I really didn't see coming, and there were other interesting hidden parts of the mystery that made an impression on me as they were revealed, and while I doubt many readers would actually have been capable of deducing those parts based on the clues, I can't help but admit Satsui no Tsudou Yoru was just hugely entertaining in its... unreserved manner to present such a ridiculous story, with a straight face.

It's funny though... Nishizawa Yasuhiko is best known for his mysteries with a supernatural setting, from people stuck in timeloops to supernatural abilities to push people to think. This is the first time I read a book by him that does not feature a supernatural/sci-fi element and in a way, it ends up the least realistic one because it's so deliciously silly.

Satsui no Tsudou Yoru is no masterpiece or a must-read by any means, but I did enjoy it immensely because of how ludicrous it could be. The concept of Mari just accidentally doing a multi-combo kill spree is funny on its own, and the thriller Nishizawa writes around that is entertaining enough to keep you hooked for the short, but sweet experience.

Original Japanese title(s): 西澤保彦『殺意が集う夜』

The Sound of Murder

「『ミステリ』では人が死ぬ。人が死なない『ミステリ』もあるが、ほとんどは人が奇妙な死に方をしている。串刺しされたり、バラバラにされたり・・・それは忌むべき物語だ。だがどうして昔の人たちは、『ミステリ』を書き、『ミステリ』を読んだのだろう。どうしてそれを喜んで受け入れたのだろう。人が殺されると嬉しいから『ミステリ』を読むのではないのか？もっとたくさん、人が死ねば、君たちは喜ぶのではないのか？」

 『オルゴーリェンヌ』

 

 "People die in mystery stories. There are mystery stories where nobody dies, but in most of them, people die in curious ways, like being impaled or cut in pieces... these are stories we should abhor. So why did the people of yore write mystery stories and read them? How could they embrace them with such joy? Does it mean they read mysteries, because they become happy when someone is killed? Don't you find it more joyous when even more people are killed?"

"Orgellienne"

I'm never sure what to think of when they change the cover of a book when they release the paperback pocket version, but still keep the same general style/idea of the trade paperback version. Why change it in the first place then...?

A long time has passed since books were banned from the world: books were seen as the source of evil, planting ideas in the minds of people and thus needed to be eradicated from the world. Mystery novels in particular were seen as a shameful past: how could people find pleasure in stories about killing others? However, before all the books were burned, some great mystery fans did everything to make sure future generations could still enjoy mystery fiction: they decided to store all mystery fiction as pure data. These people hid specialized data sets, like a set on "locked room mysteries" with the relevant books and secondary literary in so-called "Gadgets": jewels that hold the data sets and which are imbedded in other items, like a scarf. Chris has inherited such a Gadget, holding the set on The Narrator in mystery fiction, and since then, he has become interested in the forgotten art of mystery fiction, and he hopes to become a mystery writer himself. For that, he needs to find more Gadgets, and that is why he is travelling the world. However, that is a dangerous trip, as Censors are desperately hunting after any remaining books in the world: whenever they locate a book, it's not only the book that gets burned down, but the whole place it was found, just to be sure there are no other books there. The Boy Censors are particularly feared throughout the world: they have been trained since their childhood to look specifically for Gadgets and are relentless in their hunts. However, during a previous adventure, Chris became somewhat friendly with the young censor Eno, who let Chris go despite knowing he was carrying a Gadget.

During his travels, Chris learns an old friend, Kirie, has been looking for him, and he receives a message telling him to go to the place they first met. Chris carefully makes his way towards the harbor town, but on his way there, he runs into the mute girl Yuyu, who is being chased by censors. The two are detected and chased throughout the city, but are surprisingly saved by Eno, who picks the two up in his car. Eno drives to the harbor town, where they find Kirie at a small clinic, as he's very ill and has not long to live anymore. Eno explains Yuyu is being suspected of being in the possession of a Gadget. Yuyu is a housemaid who lives in Carillon House, a house located on one of the "new islands" that have emerged ever since the sea levels have been rising (i.e. it is a part of a city that has become mostly submerged, making it into an island). The censors got anonymous information a Gadget was hidden at the house, and the boy censor Karte and his lieutenant Eve are now at the house looking for it, but last night, Yuyu disappeared, which of course made her the prime suspect of having taken the Gadget away. It turns out that very rarely, once every few months, a cramped path appears between the island and the mainland at low tide, and last night happened to be such a time, which is why Yuyu managed to escape without a boat. Yuyu manages to explain that her master sent her away from the island, but she was not given a Gadget with her. Eno is torn between wanting to let Chris go, and his devotion to his work, and eventually, they decide to go to the island together: they can prove Yuyu's innocence by finding the Gadget in the Carillon House, which should resolve everything. 

The Carillon House is owned by Crowley, a wealthy man who loves music boxes above everything. He has allowed several people to live with him, paying for their food and life expenses, who create music boxes for him and the whole house is full of them. When Chris, Eno and Yuyu arrive at the house, tey find Karte and Eve are rather off-hands with their search for the lost Gadget, claiming it will find their way to them. While Chris and Eno start searching for the Gadget however, they stumble upon a horrible sight: one of the disciples of Crowley is discovered impaled on a steel beam at the light house. But how would one lift an adult body several meters up in the sky and drive their torso through a beam projecting towards the sea? As the search for the Gadget intensifies, more people end up dead, like someone found in the ruins of a toppled building and someone found killed in a tower room which was locked from the inside... Is someone using the knowledge of mystery fiction from the Gadget to commit all these murders in Kitayama Takekuni's Orgellienne (2014), or as the inner work also says: The Girl Who Became a Music Box.

Orgellienne is the second entry in Kitayama's Boy Censor series, and.... no, I haven't read the first one. Yep, I seldom read things in order. I am not sure how much this book spoils about the first, but the book explains the basic premises of the Gadgets and the Censors are the start of the story, and that's the most important thing to know, so it's not difficult to get into this world even if like me, you decide to start with the second book.

Besides Kitayama's Danganronpa Kirigiri series and a few short stories, all the books I have read by Kitayama are either formally, or informally part of his Castle series, which has a distinct, almost fantasy-like atmosphere. While the degree in which differs per book, some of them really don't take place in our world, but a more fantastical world and that's also in Orgellienne: while concepts like book burning and censors isn't fantasy per se, the way people think about books, Gadgets and the way Gadgets work as data sets that can only be activated by special means do make it sound like books are magic in this world. There's also a fairy tale-esque backstory to this book: the prologue tells about a young boy who is taken in by a master music box maker, becoming his youngest disciple and him falling in love with the master's blind daughter, and the ending is tragic, but very fantasy-like.This backstory that of course somehow connects to the current murders at the Carillon House, somehow. Chris' interactions with the mute girl Yuyu also have a dream-like element, as Yuyu shows him the ruins on the island, which is when the post-apocalyptic atmosphere of the series is felt the most, perhaps. The idea of an urban island, a part of a town + forest which has become an island due to the rising water, is pretty cool, as you have complete buildings (that have become ruins) on the otherwise almost empty island. And... for some reason I know had to think of Arkham City from the same-titled Batman game.

As Chris tries to learn more about the house and its inhabitants, he finds them all being rather secretive and before he knows it, people get killed in seemingly impossible manners. Which is of course Kitayama's bread and butter: impossible situations that are quite grand  and almost ridiculous, in this case best exemplified by the stabbed man hanging over a sea cliff, and later someone being murdered in a tower room full of music boxes. To be honest, the actual solutions to these impossible crimes are not the kind of absolute insanity I've come to expect from Kitayama: while they do rely on physical tricks as always, the solutions miss just the right amount of crazy I usually like about Kitayama's work (they are still pretty much of the string & needle variety though) and in that sense, this book was a bit disappointing.I think I liked the impossible death in a building that toppled over the best: the building was lying completely on its side, and the victim seemingly either fell down themselves, or was pushed down through the broken windows of one of the higher floors (which because it was lying on its side, basically became a huge pit). The trick behind the fall is pretty simple, but well hidden with the clues and a good example of Kitayama's focus on physical tricks.

Mystery-wise, I found Orgellienne more interesting in the way it explored multiple/false solutions: Kitayama has the various characters fire various theories and solutions at each other, resulting in a rather exciting story, as everyone has very different reasons for wanting to wrap up the case quickly, but they all come up with reasonably convincing theories and it keeps the reader guessing whether they themselves are on the right track or not. Interestingly, Karte isn't really used as a straight rival detective in this book: while he's younger than Eno, he knows Eno's gone a bit soft as a censor, and Karte definitely works more ruthlessly, but at the same time, he's also content at allowing things to develop on their own and see where it gets him, and he doesn't feel as much as a rival, rather than someone who may have conflicting goals, but can end up on either side depending on his mood and how he wishes to accomplish his goals in the end.

Orgellienne is not exactly the book I'd immediately think of when I think of Kitayama's work: while it does feature Kitayama's trademark locked room murders and physical trickery behind them, the actual tricks themselves are relatively tame, in comparison to his other work. The fantasy-like world he depicts here is perhaps the best I've seen in his work though, with a young boy in look for detective fiction, because it's been banished from this world, and a mysterious house full of music boxes with a romantic, but tragic background story. The series is only two volumes long at the moment, so it's likely I'll read the first one too in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 北山猛邦『オルゴーリェンヌ』

The Man in the Mirror

"Mirror, mirror on the wall..."

"Snow White"

For a change not writing a review of this series months (years) after reading it...

The Mirror House located in the outskirts of Kamakura belongs to Kurozawa Matsutarou, a wealthy man who has many mistresses. The manor was once the home of the twins Kirika and Sumika and their mother, who was Matsutarou's mistress, but after her death, the house was extended with an identical annex, like a mirror and no less than 48 mirrors of varying sizes were installed in both buildings, giving the building its name. When the twins were still young however, Kirika wanted to end her own life and since then, Sumika has learned to live without her sister, especially as Matsutarou kept telling her to forget about Kirika and live her own life. Matsutarou is not a loving father by any means however, and his interest in his daughters is purely political. While he lets his daughters live with their mothers while young, he has them all moved to the Mirror House when they reach a certain age, as he wishes to marry them off in political marriages, and their stay in the Mirror House is merely temporary until Matsutarou has found the perfect partner for them, regardless of their own life wishes. This has already led to tragedy one time, as last year, one of his daughters chose death rather than being forced such a life. At the moment, Sumika is joined by four of her half-sisters: Mahiru, Kurara, Sachiko and Ruri, as well as five servants. One of them is Shizuka, the half-Russian Mary Poppins-esque personal maid to Sumika who occasionally has a foul (Russian) mouth. Matsutarou only visits his daughters once a year to check up on them and to announce their upcoming marriages, but this year, his visit coincides with a heavy storm, which means three of the usual servants are stuck in town, leaving only Matsutarou, his daughters and two servants in the house. At dinner however, lightning strikes, illuminating one of the mirrors he has given to each of his daughters, and invisible lettering written on one of the mirrors is reflected on the wall, saying "Death". This angers Matsutarou and he retreats for the night, but that night, he is found murdered in one of the mirror rooms, being stabbed in the back, but for some reason he was lying on the floor with his feet towards a mirror and his arms thrown in front of him, almost as if he was trying to flee from a murderer inside the mirror.... With no means to notify the police, can the people in the manor be truly certain no more murders will occur in Tsukihara Wataru's Kagamiyakata no Satsujin ("The Murders in the Mirror House" 2020)?

Spoilers: more people die.

Kagamiyakata no Satsujin is the fourth entry in this series starring the pro-active maid Shizuka who each time works at a different place as a personal maid for young girls. The books sometimes namedrop the places/families she worked for earlier, but the books can all be read indepedently and in any order. They are all fairly formulaistic too: each book is set in the Meiji period, and set inside an isolated house with serial murders happening, and Shizuka's always there to eventually solve the case, but what makes this series memorable, despite some hick-ups, is how Shizuka is used: each time she's confronted with a killer, she not only detects, but tries to find ways to proactively stop the killer by interfering with their patterns and that leads to interesting twist on familiar tropes in mystery, for example when in an earlier novel, Shizuka notices the murders are modelled after a set of paintings, so she proposes to just destroy all the paintings to upset the killer's plans. It's these interactions with mystery tropes that make these books fun to read.

In theory, this book has interesting elements: there's a house with two mirrored sections, there are 48 different mirrors spread across the house, the first victim is seemingly killed by his own mirror image in a mirror and threatening messages are written on mirrors to announce the coming deaths. A lot of it is tropey, but that is the whole focus of this series so it never feels too reliant on tropes. However, of the four novels I have read until now, I do think this entry was by far the weakest.

The main trope of this book is the "murder announcement": the killer writes messages alluding to deaths on mirrors before committing the murders and sure, that's a trope, but... Shizuka doesn't really manage to do something really original with this, she doesn't come up with some outrageous plan to turn this "habit" around and have it backfire on the killer, or propose anything unexpected to counter this. Because of this lack of interplay with the trope at hand, Shizuka feels far more passive than in the other books. Because these books tend to be very short and rather light, Shizuka's actions usually felt as one of the major parts of the mystery, and having this aspect of the tale weakened hurts the overall experience a lot. "Announcing a murder" is just less exciting than a murderer who decapitates people, or tropes like locked rooms or mitate... While a large part of the story does ultimately revolve around the question why the murderer would chose to utilize this device of announcing their murders, the answer arrived it isn't that exciting, and gives us a rather mundane explanation you might have seen mentioned in other novels that don't even explicitly try to play with tropes.

This pattern also carries over to the whole theme of mirrors in this book. Like, cool, we have a building that is mirrored with an annex, and they feature over 40 mirrors installed here and there... but we never get a floorplan of the building, so the whole concept feels criminally underdeveloped! I wanted to see cool clever things with mirrors which become clear once you start drawing lines in the floorplans, not just vague descriptions of where mirrors are placed! The way the mirrors are used for the murders in this book is far from surprising, and also not really well-hinted, so it feels underwhelming. There is a neat twist regarding the theme of mirrors halfway through the book, but the implications it has for the murders feel a bit forced, and ultimately, I feel this is the book in this series that would've benefitted of more page real estate: the book has many ideas that could've been worked out in more detail, but this particular label releases light novels of a certain length (relatively short) and thus the reveal feels not as satisfying as it could've been, as I think more pages to set-up the twist more with more foreshadowing would have made it a bit more impressive.

Kagamiyakata no Satsujin is thus my least favorite of the Shizuka novels until now. It doesn't help the major trope it focuses on doesn't allow for that much original plays, but the murders themselves are also a bit disappointing, with some underdeveloped tricks and while there's one big twist halfway I do like as a concept, that too should have been given more build-up space for maximum effect. At the moment, there's one more volume, so I'll probably read that one too, but I might wait a bit, because this one was quite disappointing.

Original Japanese title(s): 月原渉『鏡館の殺人』

The World's End

"We cannot conceive of a life other than this one - of a life after death. We can visualize only a continuation of what we know. We have no real belief in a God."
"Death Comes as the End"

It's just a feeling, but I have a suspicion a majority of posts on snow-themed mystery stories on this blog are actually published in the warmer half of the year...

As I announced in my review of The Werewolf Murder Case in volumes 14~16 of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Kindaichi, Age 37"), the plan was to wait until a full story was released before I'd do another review of this series within the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo franchise, where we follow a now middle-aged Kindaichi Hajime as he gets involved in murder cases despite not wanting to solve mysteries anymore. But then it was announced this series would wrap up last year. So I figured, as stories in this series usually carrying over across multiple volumes, I might as well just wait until the last volume is released to do a review of the remaining volumes. So volume 18 of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo was released earlier this year... and I completely forgot to get the volume. So that explains why this review is coming now so late after its release. Anyway, volume 16 first starts with the very last chapter of The Werewolf Murder Case, where we learn about the motive for the murders in that case (yes, it's revenge, it's always revenge), but then it's back to business as Hajime's assigned to a new project for his event-organizing company: Hijiri Island, a mountainous island in Hokkaido wants to drive its economic activity by profiling itself as the perfect resort for backcountry/off-piste skiing. Hajime and his subordinate Marin are to check out the place and will be staying in a lodge high up in the mountains, a place only reachable via helicopter. They will be joined not only by someone from the municipality, but also by the backcountry ski team of the skiing club of the Imperial Women's University, a prestigious club whose members often appear in the World Cups. The team always trains here, so they know the grounds well, so Hajime and Marin will be questioning the young women about the mountains in order to develop the place as a resort. Everyone is to stay in a newly built lodge, but the evening they arrive, they find someone has tampered with the heating, and it's slowly starting to become freezing cold inside. 

Fortunately, the old lodge is 500 meters away from the new lodge, and everything should still work there, so they decide to move to the old lodge: the men go first to make sure heating there does work and to carry the kerosene, while the women will follow later with the food supplies. The men have just arrived at the old lodge and starting to prepare for their stay here, when the women in the new lodge use a walkie talkie to contact the men: one of the skiers has gone missing, and there's blood in the hallway. Two of them return to the new lodge, while Hajime and the municipal official stay in the new lodge, but then they discover the body of the missing skier: her head has been cut off, and placed on her lap! When everyone has moved to the new lodge, they learn that their radio is not working and the skis have gone missing, making it impossible to contact with the outside world nor to go down the mountains themselves. By discussing the case, they discover that while nobody has an actual alibi for the murder, as they don't know what time exactly the victim was killed, everyone does have a soft alibi: nobody could've carried the body from the new lodge to the old lodge unseen: the round-trip would've taken quite some time, but nobody was gone for long times/went unseen between the time the victim was last seen alive and the time the body was found. Soon one of the women suggests it's the headless skier: two years ago, a team of skiers got stuck on the mountains when the weather suddenly changed for the worse. Stuck in the cold and with no way to call for help, the team's leader volunteered to ski down the mountain alone to get help. However, after she left, a rescue helicopter found the remaining team members, but the leader never made it off the mountain alive. Only her cut-off head was later discovered: someone had strung piano wire between trees, so when the leader was hurrying down the mountain to get help...  Some say a headless skier is now haunting the mountains, but is this ghost also responsible for the murder, or is this the work of a living and breathing human?

You know, The Headless Skier Murder Case, which spans volumes 16 and 17, has a funny setting. Closed circle settings in this series are often either on an island or somewhere in the mountains... so why not set the story on a mountain, on an island, writer Amagi must've thought. But if this fusion of ideas sounds like he was trying to cook something grand, I'll have to disappoint you, as The Headless Skier Murder Case is a surprisingly simple case, basically revolving around one single trick. The mystery revolves around the fact nobody is ever gone long enough to allow them to carry a dead body and their head to the other lodge and return, which thus gives them all an alibi. This mystery is repeated later, as another dead body is found, this time at the new lodge while everyone was staying in the old lodge. The problem is that it is really just this mystery that drives this story, and the solution is not only a concept we have definitely seen previously in this series, in those stories we ususally get more than just this one idea, so there they can at least benefit from being presented as more difficult puzzles as they are interwoven with other ideas. Here, the problem is presented so bluntly it's nearly impossible to not guess what's going on. The big surprise is actually when the murderer is revealed and they start explaining their motive (yes, it's revenge, it's always revenge), as we learn how this person had been directed by a certain character to commit these murders: while the identity of this person won't be revealed until the next story, I *kinda* suspected who it was, though I thought it would be cheap, and then it turned out it was really that person and now I have no idea how this is going to develop in future series. 

The final volume of this series, The Sealed Space in the Sky Murder Case, starts with Hajime confronting his old nemesis The Puppeteer from Hell, a "crime consultant"-esque character who helps people bent on revenge by supplying them with perfect crime plans. While the Puppeteer has been in prison all this while, Hajime knows the Puppeteer has disciples: they call themselves the Olympian Gods, with the Puppeteer as Zeus the omni-god and Hajime has already encountered and captured a few of them. But after a conversation with the Puppeteer and a hint from his cousin Fumi, Hajime realizes one of the Olympian Gods, Hephaestus, is actually a person near him: he deduces Hephaestus is someone at his work, and that Hephaestus, with the help of another inside person at the company, has been keeping tabs on Hajime, which is why all these murder cases have been happening to Hajime each time he's gone on a business trip. Hajime has a pretty good idea of who Hephaestus's accomplice in the company must be, but the moment he decided to keep tabs on her, she ends up dead: ostensibly via suicide by throwing herself off the rooftop of the company building. She had borrowed the key to the rooftop to water the plants there, and as the key was found in her pocket, the rooftop door was indeed closed/locked and the guard kept the spare key safe, it looks like a genuine suicide, but Hajime knows better: Hephaestus must have killed their accomplice to silence her, and used a "sealed space in the sky" murder trick to challenge Hajime himself. But how could Hephaestus left the rooftop after the murder, as the door to the rooftop was locked (with the victim down below in possession of the key) and no way to reach the surrounding buildings? Hajime knows this is his chance to nab Hephaestus, and narrows the pool of suspects to a handful, but the list includes not only his direct superior, but even his faithful subordinate Marin...

For a story that is mostly about very quickly wrapping things up and features a very simple trick for its main mystery, I have to admit I liked it better than I had initially expected. A lot of the initial chapters is about trying to bring back the whole story about the Olympians back to the foreground again, as it's not been a priority plot element throughout, usually only being mentioned at the end of a case if the murderer happened to be one of the Gods and forgotten again, but here we get a crash-course on the related previous events and a rather cool deduction by Hajime about who he thinks Hephaestus' accomplice is and why. This is the type of hinting and plotting you very often see in Conan, using its serialized format to plant clues within various stories, across a longer period of time, but Kindaichi basically never uses this, with far more compartmentalized storytelling (and very loosely connected stories), so it's cool to see it utilized here. The 'Sealed Space in the Sky" mystery is relatively simple, with rudimentary visual clues and like the previous story in essence a one-trick-pony, but I do like that the focus in fact does not even lie on the howdunnit, but the whodunnit, as we see Hajime then utilize the howdunnit to cross off the suspects of the list, using Queenian logic to identify Hephaestus. This series more often uses a straightforward way to identify the killer (X making certain utterances/doing certain things/in possession of certain things), so seeing a Queenian chain, even if very short, is pretty cool.  The identity of Hephaestus is perhaps not as interesting as the direct aftermath, as the gameboard is reset to lead into the next series. We do get a brief explanation why Hajime swore off solving mysteries long ago, but we don't get the details, but then it's basically off to the next series. And very literally too, as this volume also included the first chapter of the new series: Kindaichi Papa no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Dad Kindaichi"), in which Hajime has been a father for a few years while running his own detective agency.  Hajime's new client instructs him to go a certain place on a certain date, and because Hajime is a very responsible father and definitely knows what's going to happen whenever he goes to a remote place, he decides to take his son with him and the two find themselves arriving at an old decrepit hotel that's absolutely safe and where no murders will happen...

Anyway, that wraps up Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo. I have to admit, the initial shock factor of seeing a suddenly aged Hajime quickly waned after the realization that storywise, these cases weren't that different from the usual affairs save for a few rare exceptions like stories with a more urban setting. Some ideas never really come to full fruition I think, but as a limited series, it at least had more direction than the 20th Anniversary series or 30th Anniversary series. The last story at least does a lot to make it feel more like a series on its own, so that helps, though I can't feel super excited about the deal of the Olympian Gods basically halting midway, and I'm still not sure what to think about that one character turning out to be one of the Gods too... I guess I'll have to keep on reading the new series to see if Amagi decides to actually end some of these plotlines anytime soon (I mean, I know Conan is long, but at least it has arcs that actually start and end).

Original Japanese title(s): 天樹征丸（原）、さとうふみや（画）『金田一37歳の事件簿』第16~18巻

L'Île aux trente cercueils

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream.

 

 So blended bank and shadow there, 

 that each seemed pendulous in air — 

 

so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began. 

 "The Island of the Fay" 

 

You know, that would be an interesting setting for a mystery story, an island where they have these GIGANTIC crosses and some kind of impossible crime happens, like a body appears right on top of the highest cross...

Mephisto is a long-running magazine of publisher Kodansha focusing on mystery and other entertainment genre fiction, featuring columns on literature, but more importantly serializations of for example Ayatsuji Yukito's House novels. While it used to be distributed "normally" as a magazine, its current incarnation is only available if you are a member of the Mephisto Readers Club, with the seasonal release of Mephisto being one of the perks that come with a subscription. Currently the magazine is for example running running the serialization of Ayatsuji Yukito's Futagokan no Satsujin/The Twin House Murders while the last two years, it had Arisugawa Alice's Nihon Ougi no Nazo ("The Japanese Fan Mystery"), which got a book release in 2024. But the subscription also includes other content, including a series of flash fiction by various mystery authors who have to work with the same opening or ending line, and also regularly updated mini-columns on mystery fiction on various topics. Mystery Island was originally a series of short, one-page columns running in the first half of 2024 penned by six critics, who all discussed eleven mystery stories set on... an island. The closed circle setting of an island, where nobody can go to or escape from and you have a limited pool of suspects, is of course a very popular one in mystery fiction ever since And Then There Were None and there are quite a few worth recommending to others, but even I hadn't expected you could discuss 66 different stories. Later the same year, publisher Kodansha published all these columns as one book (with a great cover!), also titled Mystery Island.

The six critics are Aoto Shino, Ooya Hiroko, Katayama Daichi, Sengai Akiyuki, Masamune Q and Miyake Kaho, who each take on eleven mysteries set on an island. They obviously did have some discussion about how to divide the works, as they all will discuss a few of the really famous ones, like And Then There Were None, Jukkakan no Satsujin/The Decagon House Murders, Gokumontou/Gokumon Island and Evil Under Sun, but each of them will also tackle some minor titles you likely had never heard about or wouldn't have expected to be discussed specifically. There is a good selection of both older titles and new ones, with some titles so recent they basically released the same year as when the columns were originally running, like Yuuki Haruo's Jikkai ("The Ten Commandments"). There's also quite some variety in the works discussed, from classic puzzle plot mysteries like the titles mentioned above, but also horror-mysteries like Sawamura Ichi's excellent Yogen no Shima ("The Island of the Prophecy") and weird fantasy-hybrids like Shimada Soji's Alcatraz Gensou ("Alcatraz Fantasy").

The Mystery Island columns however are very short, as they were originally published via LINE (a Japanese social chat platform) and it's best not to look as Mystery Island as a reference book, but rather as a coffee table book, the type of book you just pick up to peruse for a few minutes to read a short column and which you'll lay down and only return to after a while. The tone of each of column is pretty casual, usually containing personal anecdotes of how the critic came into contact with the story in the first place. Each column is basically just a page long, so there isn't much space to discuss any work in detail: they mostly get away with giving a brief outline of the work in place, and add a paragraph on its merits as a mystery story/mystery story set on an island. So for those who want to really know why a specific story is interesting as an island mystery, the columns might feel a bit too short, as they can never really delve deep into the themes and specific characteristics of the work in question, but for those who simply want simple pointers to decide what to read next, Mystery Island is quite effective as they really don't discuss enough to even remotely spoil anything. Because the six authors together do manage to introduce a great number, and a great variety of works, it's likely any reader will find a work they hadn't known about that sounds interesting. At least, I know I have a few new titles on my 'someday, I will read this' list I had not ever considered before. That said, the definition of 'mystery fiction' is quite broad, and seeing a title like Battle Royale here does feel a bit like cheating, but oh well, it's 66 titles, they're allowed to use a (very) broad definition.

Originally, these columns were posted on the subscribers-only Mephisto Reader's Club LINE account, and each column would be followed by a short poll on something kinda connected to the book in question: the one on Gokumontou for example asks if you were the killer, which of the four modern-day actors of Kindaichi Kousuke would you like to have as your opponent. The book release includes the outcome of each of these polls and also contains a write-up of the editors' meeting with the six critics, where they decided how to divide the work, which gives the reader a bit more insight into the selection process.

Oh, and moving away from the contents of this book, and discussing this book as... a book: besides the great cover, it also features some really cool character art by Kikuni Masahiko for all the six critics, in the same style as the silhouette characters of the authors featured in the shin honkaku anniversary anthology 7-nin no Meitantei ("The Seven Great Detectives"). The physical release also has a rather unique slipcase: the slipase is actually open on two sides (instead of one), so normally a book you'd place inside could slip out from the other side... but because this is Japan, the book of course also features an obi (a thin paper wrapper), and it's the obi that keeps the book in place. Really odd design I have never seen before.

 Mystery Island is a rather interesting release now I think about it. It was originally written for subscribers to the Mephisto Readers Club, so in a way, for an audience that is probably more interested and knowledgeable about mystery fiction than the average reader, but as a book, Mystery Island works better as a casual coffee book table than a "reference book for die-hard mystery fans". It's easy to pick up, read a column or two and lay down again, and while none of the columns really go deep enough to really become informative or provide you with some eye-opening revelation, they do a good enough job to point you to the existence of some stories you may not have considered otherwise, or help you decide what famous mystery set on an island you should tackle next, if you hadn't read that one masterpiece before. I wonder if a project like this could be translated/released in English too to casually introduce both the well-known, as well as the lesser known island mysteries from Japan to an English-reading audience, considering its more casual tone.

Original Japanese title(s): 青戸しの, 大矢博子, 佳多山大地, 千街晶之, 政宗九, 三宅香帆『ミステリーアイランド』