Last Song

Time after time
君と出逢った奇跡

「Time after time～花舞う街で～」（倉木麻衣）

 

Time after time

The miracle of having met you

"Time after Time ~In The City of Dancing Flowers~" (Kuraki Mai) 

2018's Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar, the seminal study which explored the history of mystery manga, points to the trio of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, Detective Conan and Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou in the early-to-mid nineties as the watershed moment that really popularized the genre. These series are serialized in magazines with boys as their primary audience (though the magazines are also widely read by girls and I think especially Conan has more female fans than male). People therefore might have a tendency to associate mystery manga with a male audience, but Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar also clearly shows how mystery manga first flourished in magazines aimed at girls. The seventies and eighties were the formative period for originally written mystery manga with puzzle plots (not adaptations) and its champions were mostly women too. I have been exploring this formative period the last year with for example Takashina Ryouko's Murder series, the mystery tales sometimes featured in Maya Mineo's Patalliro! and Yamada Mineko's Alice series.

It came as a shock to everyone when it was made public in May this year that manga artist Noma Miyuki had passed away at the young age of 59 earlier that month. Noma was probably the greatest veteran of mystery manga: her long-selling Puzzle Game ☆ High School started in 1983 and was still running in 2020 until her sudden demise, meaning the series had been running for over 35 years! It pre-dates the three watershed series by a decade, and while Puzzle Game ☆ High School may not have been the commercial succes like Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and Detective Conan with countless of adaptations, videogames, merchandise tie-ups etc., it has remained a reliable cornerstone of the puzzle plot genre since it started with a loyal fanbase. It's no wonder so many mystery authors (not just of manga) responded to her sudden death, because she's been in the industry for so long and considered one of the giants because of Puzzle Game ☆ High School.

Earlier this year, I posted a short article on the first two volumes of Puzzle Game ☆ High School. At that time, I of course never could've guessed that Noma would pass away a few months later, but I had been reading the series on and off, and in the last few months, I've finally finished the complete original 34-volume series which ran between 1983-2001 (I read the bunko release, which is 18 volumes long) and I think it's about time I'd pick a few of the highlights from this lengthy series which I've grown to like a lot. But first a short introduction. As the title suggest, the series starts with a high school setting: Hazuru High School is a school with numerous school clubs and circle with an extremely high degree of autonomy and these clubs are exclusively governed by the student council: not even the school administration can interfere with these afterschool activities. Second-years Kazuki and Daichi are two childhood sweethearts who start their own new club: the new Mystery Club is also joined by Kazuki's best friend Mimei, a girl who can find out anything about everyone at school, and the shy first-year student Takuma, who also dabbles in stage magic. The Mystery Club's goal is to solve mysteries, of which there are plenty at school. From poisoned Valentine chocolates to blackmail attempts on clubs to vandals who paint the water in the pool red: Hazuru High School's unique club environment is also a breeding ground for countless of mysteries.

What makes Puzzle Game ☆ High School so unique however is that while it starts out as a high school mystery series, soon several sub-series are introduced that are set in different periods in the lives of Kazuki and Daichi. These chapters are published not in chronological order, but the series jumps back and forth time. The Puzzle Game ☆ Jr High School chapters for example are of course set during junior high before Kazuki and Daichi were officially dating, but there's also Puzzle Game ☆ Pre-Stage, which is set after Kazuki and Daichi are graduated from high school: Daichi is in college, but Kazuki is doing all kinds of part-time jobs to obtain various qualifications and diplomas for their joint dream. Puzzle Game ☆ The Professionals actually makes up the bulk of this series with thirty chapters: by this time Daichi and Kazuki are in their mid-twenties and have opened their own detective agency. These chapters tend to be the most interesting plot-wise, and often start with Takuma, who is now a journalist, hiring Daichi and Kazuki to help him in some investigation. It's in these stories where you understand why Kazuki was doing all those part-time jobs in the Pre-Stage chapters as Kazuki is always going undercover and I'd say that in terms of tone, The Professionals chapters are the most like the stories in Conan or Kindaichi Shounen. But there's more: at one point the  Puzzle Game ☆ Next Generation chapters start, which focus on Hinako, the ten-year old daughter of Daichi and Kazuki! Hinako is a child-model who not only has inherited her looks from her parents, but also their sharp brains and she tends to get involved with crimes in the model and entertainment industry.

This focus on the chronology is what really sets this series apart from series like Conan and Kindaichi Shounen. Sure, Hajime might be 37 now instead of 17, but that's one single jump in time: Puzzle Game ☆ High School however is built around the notion that we see all these protagonists in various stages in their lives and the various sub-series all have a different theme and tone that fit the ages of the characters: the classic High School chapters for example seldom feature murders and focus solely on the students of Hazuru High School (you hardly see any teachers or adults around, as most of the 'crimes' are kept inside the school), while the Pre-Stage chapters make use of the idea that Kazuki is doing all these part-time jobs to introduce a diversity in settings. I only named the main sub-series above, but there are eleven titled sub-series, and they all feel distinctly different, even if they all feature the same protagonists. The three Puzzle Game - Maternity chapters for example all focus on mysteries revolving around pregnancies, while Puzzle Game ☆ Hong Kong Connection is like full-blown HK crime thriller. But as I said, these chapters are not published in chronological order, so for example the reader had already seen Hinako appear several times as a ten-year old detective before the Maternity chapters were published, and it's fairly common to see a few The Professionals chapters followed by a Jr. High chapter. The story The Goddess of Fortune makes interesting use of this plot-device by the way: the first chapter of this two-parter is about a money theft at Hazuru High School. While the school is sealed off immediately, the student council can't find the money even though it's a pretty large sum (meaning the bills are bulky). Kazuki and Daichi of course figure out the hiding spot for the money, which is actually quite clever. They identitfy the thief, but they can't figure out why that person out of everyone would ever want to steal the money The second part of The Goddess of Fortune is set six years later, when Kazuki and Daichi have established their own detective agency. The thief is finally released from prison, but now they finally learn why the thief committed the crime. This second part is not as surprising plot-wise, but it's a nice story that transcends time (and sub-series). The mini-series Tea for Two also spans across time: three tea-themed stories, one for every year in high school. The first one is the best: Daichi is living on his own now his parents have to move to the US for work, and he becomes a customer of a nearby cafe specialized in tea. Daichi and Kazuki learn that the wife of the owner died in a car accident nearby some years ago and Kazuki remembers she did saw that two bouquets and some drinks had been placed at the accident site out of respect. But when Kazuki visits the place again, she notices how one bouquet has been removed, but why, and why only one bouquet? The solution is perhaps a bit easy to guess, but it's a nice short mystery you of the type you aren't likely to come across in other mystery manga soon.

In general, the stories in Puzzle Game ☆ High School are fairly easy to solve for yourself, also because Noma is playing the game very fairly and offering fair-play puzzle plots. She definitely set the template for successors like Detective Conan, Kindaichi Shounen and Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou, coupled with the series set-up with a regular cast of main characters and recurring characters and an internal chronology, with characters sometimes re-appearing after a few years. But while the stories may be a bit simple at times, there are still quite a few stories that stand out: as I'm writing this I can already see I'm not going to mention all the titles on my list, because there are just too many. In my earlier article, I already mentioned The Secret of the Red Pool in my first post, a fantastic school mystery about they mystery of why someone would throw red paint in the swimming pool, ruining the water. The motive for this 'crime' is both original and fitting the setting. Yasashii Hanzai ("A Gentle Crime") is set at the school festival, which has been threatened by a bomber. The gang of the Mystery Club eventually reveals a rather surprising truth lurking behind this truth. It's the type of story you might see in Q.E.D. or C.M.B. but not told like this.

Most of the series consists of The Professionals chapters and some of these stories take on a rather large scale: in the three-parter Tokibus Tour, Daichi and Kazuki are hired by Nonose, their former student council president who is now a lawyer. One of his firm's clients owns a touring bus company, but rumors have it that these touring buses are used to sell stolen art: potential buyers are given instructions to board certain buses on certain days and then the thieves will somehow contact them. The client has information that a recently stolen painting will be offered on one of the buses soon, and Daichi and Kazuki decide to go undercover by planting allies in and outside the bus to figure out who the thieves are and where the painting is. The story features a lot of familiar faces from the high school days who help out Kazuki and Daichi by pretending to be normal passengers and as a kind of ransom story like you'd see in Kindaichi Shounen (like the Shinsengumi story), it's fairly entertaining. The two-parter Panic in Hospital feels like Detective Conan movie: Daichi, Kazuki, Mimei and Takuma are visiting Nonose in a private clinic. At least, that's their excuse, because their real reason to come is to spy on one of the other patients. During their visit however, the clinic is taken over by an armed gang who take everyone on the floor hostage. Kazuki happened to be disguised as a nurse at the time, and with the help of the real nurses and doctors, manages to keep up the game and given some freedom to go around the floor to 'check on the patients.' As time passes by however, she starts to suspect that the gang's real goal isn't the ransom money.

There are some other minor gems in The Professionals: Listen to the Eternal Song is a fantastic everyday life mystery, where at a small party in a karaoke hall, Kazuki notices that the young man in the room opposite theirs is constantly repeating the same old song, but he does not sing and just sits there looking at the television. The young man is also visited by an elderly man, who seems to have a minor argument with him. The gang follows the man when he leaves the karaoke hall, only to find he's gone to another karaoke hall, where he plays the same song again! The explanation for this seemingly meaningless act is touching and very original. A Small Affair puts Mimei in the spotlight: her appearances in the series tend to be minor as Daichi and Kazuki are the main detectives, but she's not a founding member of the Mystery Club for nothing. In this story Daichi is investigating a doctor who's selling inventory to a dealer. He follows the dealer to his home and instructs Kazuki to tail the dealer by telling her where the dealer lives. When Kazuki arrives at the apartment the following morning however, she finds the man has moved everything away. She doesn't manage to pry information from the estate agent, but Mimei miraculously manages to find out where the dealer has gone too. It's pretty easy to guess what Mimei did differently than Kazuki, but the set-up is really good. In Worthy Juniors, Daichi, Kazuki, Mimei and Takuma are invited to the school festival by the current members of the Hazuru High School Mystery Club, who are dying to see the 'legendary' gang. Their project at the festival is a mini-murder play: a room has been changed into a murder scene and it's up to the participants to guess who the murderer is. But it turns out that the body in the room is really dead.  The reason why there was a real dead body in that room is quite original and it's really fun to see how these new members of the Mystery Club seem to have some of the guts the original members have.

The chapters with Hinako can be fun too: the single chapter Puzzle Game ☆ Angel is about Hinako's first model gig as a baby for a wine company. The night after an event of this company visited by Daichi, Kazuki and baby Hinako, the son of the company's owner is found murdered at home: a burglar stole several bottles of the wine collection of the father and killed the son. Hinako however helps Daichi and Kazuki solve the case despite being still a baby. The plot is based on a certain Columbo episode (not the one about wine...), but the punchline is completely original and really funny. Hinako relly shows of her own deductive skills in Police Station Chief for One Day, where she and her boyfriend Juri (also a child actor/model) are made "boss of the police station for a day" in a campaign to bring youth crimes under the attention. Naturally, this usually just consists of participating in all kinds of events during the day, but Hinako manages to stop a crime-in-progress that nobody had even suspected simply by combining all the information she hears over the course of the day.

There are more chapters I really though worthwhile, but this post has been going for too long now. As I mentioned earlier, the original series ran from 1983-2001, but the series continued more-or-less non-stop with other publishers and other magazines. These various series too focus on different phases in Daichi and Kazuki's life: some return to the high school setting, some continue telling stories about their lives as professional detectives etc. Puzzle Game ☆ Mystere was the eight follow-up series which had only just started when Noma passed away (she had only finished the first chapter), so unfortunately this is where the series stops.

Anyway, Puzzle Game ☆ High School turned out to be a very entertaining mystery series with a clear focus on puzzle plots that are perhaps a bit simple at times, but the plot idea of jumping through time and seeing everyone grow really gives this series its own face. The sheer diversity in plots is also very memorable, while the fact the series ran in Hana to Yume (a magazine aimed at girls) also allows it to tackle very different themes than the mystery series than run in boys magazines (even if it can feel a bit too melodramatic at times). Puzzle Game ☆ High School is a series that really grows on you due to its enormous scale in story and the focus on the growth of the characters while also constantly offering different kinds of mysteries to the reader. I do intend to read the post-2001 series one day, but for now I'll take a break to let it sink in a bit.

Original Japanese title(s): 野間美由紀『パズルゲーム☆はいすくーる』(花とゆめ版）

Sins of the Fathers

父なる天

九つの龍

母なる地 

我が友

『シェンムー　一章　横須賀編』

Father's heaven

Nine dragons

Mother's earth

Comrades

"Shenmue"

And let's slip something English in for a change! And a double review, something I haven't done in a long time! Well, technically, I have short shorts, but I haven't written one of those in a long time either, and those faux double reviews of There Was An Old Woman/Double Double and The Dragon's Teeth/The Scarlet Letters don't really count. The last proper double review of a book was in September 2012 by the way, of two novels by Abiko Takemaru; of two games in January 2013. Can you believe that when I first started writing this blog, I always did double (or even triple) reviews in one post?

The title Inspector Queen's Own Case kinda explains itself, I think. Son Ellery has solved many cases that baffled his father, but this time it's Richard Queen's time for some action. And he needs it badly, because his forced retirement is driving him crazy. Old Queen was once one of the most fearsome police inspectors of New York City, but now spends his days doing very little. He spends some time at his friends' beach house near the Conneticut shore, near Nair Island, a private haven for the rich. The Humffreys are one of the multimillionaire inhabitants of Nair Island, and having recently been blessed by a baby, hire nurse Jessie Sherwood to take care of their child. One night, the most horrible thing possible happens to the baby, but his death is thought to be an accident. Jessie is the only one who is convinced it as a murder though, and together with old Queen (who has also taken a romantic interest in Jessie), try to figure out what happened that fatal night in the Humffrey mansion.

After many, many, maaaaany stories were we saw Ellery explaining how elementary everything was to his father, old man Queen finally has a chance to show why he made it to police inspector. In a somewhat clumsy way. Inspector Queen's Own Case definitely has some elements we know from the other Ellery Queen novels, but is not nearly as complex as anything we've seen in past releases. It is not a bad read though, as we see the old man cope with his own age and the blossoming of a new love. I am not a real fan of the love subplots in the Queen novels, but this was the most tolerable one of all Queen novels I've read until now.

The murder is quite shocking, in my opinion and that's something considering we've seen decapitated bodies and bodies exhibited in department stores. The Murder on the Orient Express effect, if you like. But the truth behind the case is revealed quite early on in the novel (or to be more precise: old man Queen guesses, and suddenly it becomes true despite it was never proven logically to be true...) and it has a tendency to drag a bit despite the short length of the novel. I understand that old man Queen works in a different way than Ellery, and as a police inspector, he might work a bit more singlemindedly (because all policemen are like that in detective fiction featuring amateur detectives), but I did find Richard a bit... simple in this novel. But then again, the plot of Inspector Queen's Own Case is a bit simple. The solution does mirror some elements we already saw in Cat of Many Tails, but doesn't pull it off as well as Cat.

Nair Island, an island for millionaires, reminds of The Spanish Cape Mystery and that island from The Treasure Hunt in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen. And wasn't there an island in The Eygptian Cross Mystery too? But then again, the island, as a geographical location, is never of real importance: movements of the persons on it and the location of buildings are not crucial to the understanding of the crime.

I was not really impressed or anything by Inspector Queen's Own Case, but considering it was a short read and I did like seeing old man Queen on his own for a change, I don't consider it a bad Queen. I wouldn't put it high on the priority list, which is actually precisely the case with me: I just don't have that many unread Queens left.

Especially not because I read the direct sequel to Inspector Queen's Own Case on the same day. In the House of Brass, Richard and Jessie get married (with the blessings of son Ellery). Jessie receives an enigmatic letter one day, with as contents: a hundred dollar bill, half a thousand dollar bill and the message she'll receive the other half if she comes to the House of Brass. When she and her husband arrive there, they discover that a group of six has been assembled at the house in true And Then There Were None style. Their U.N. Owen: old Hendrik Brass. He says he is considering to leave his fortune to his guests, but requests them to stay here until he can make up his mind. Anyone who leaves forfeits his claim. Jessie does not like the story, but old Queen thinks something's up and the couple stay there to see how things work out. Of course, anyone could guess it would all end in murder.

Ghost-written by Avram Davidson, The House of Brass feels more like a classic Queen novel. It's once again mostly old man Queen's show (together with his wife, which explains the detecting couples tag I used), but with a double-twist ending, some appearances by filius Ellery and a plot about a big search for something, it is hard to deny this book seems more like an Ellery Queen novel. Especially the big search, in this case for Hendrik's fortune, is undeniably a classic Queen trope. It was also featured in Inspector Queen's Own Case actually, but as a lesser plot-device and the story never went deep into that until the last minute. Here it is a major part of the story, and it reminds of scenes like the search for a victim's hat in The Roman Hat Mystery, or the search for the will in The Greek Coffin Mystery.

In Inspector Queen's Own Case, Richard called his own Baker Street Irregulars (of similarly retired policemen) to help in the Hummfrey case: they return in The House of Brass. Both books have a slight (just sliiight) getting-the-gang-back-together feeling to them, but I stress the 'slight', because we actually hardly know this gang. Sure, I understand that people like Velie are probably still in the force, but old man Queen calling his old gang without calling old faces the reader actually knows, was a bit disappointing.

The double twist and the identity of the murderer are also quite easy to predict if one has been keeping up with his Queen reading: in the Queen universe, some people just have more chance of turning out to be cold-blooded murderer than others. The double (or triple, or quadruple etcetera) solution has been a Queen staple ever since The Greek Coffin Mystery, so you usually expect one (or more) if you read one of these novels. Surprising, these tropes are not, but it does help in creating that Queen feel.

Inspector Queen's Own Case and The House of Brass might not be Ellery Queen on his best, but having read so many Queen novels with the old man, I have to admit it was quite refreshing to see inspector Queen on his own for a change. The House of Brass feels more like a part of the series due to its usage of familar tropes, but Inspector Queen's Own Case might be more interesting because it presents a different kind of Queen than we're used to. As a set, they form a fun little mini-series.

「I can't hang out this world こんな思いじゃどこにも居場所なんて無い」

「はんにんはおいつめられるとどうきとかをじぶんからベラベラしゃべるのがおやくそくや」

『課長は名探偵』

"It's a rule that the criminal will start talking about the motive and everything when he's cornered"

"The Section Chief is the Great Detective"

Hmm, so now half of the posts of this month are on audio dramas. My amount of audio dramas I haven't heard yet is also getting dangerously low. Contemplating about rereading Queen's nationality novels for reviews. Not sure yet. Ah, choices, choices.

But anyway... back to one of the main pillars of this blog: Edogawa Rampo. I can always rely on you!

Akechi Kogorou is Edogawa Rampo's most famous fictional detective and a study of the character is in fact a study of Edogawa Rampo's complete work. Akechi first debuted in D-Zaka no Satsujin Jiken ("The Murder Case on D Slope"), where the amateur-detective Akechi solves a murder that happened in a sealed space (bookshop). Afterwards, Akechi sporadically made appearences in Rampo's work, like Shinri Shiken ("The Psychological Test"), Yaneura no Sanposha ("The Wanderer on the Attic") and even in a slightly disguised form in Nanimono ("Who"; translation available at this blog). The character of Akechi slowly changed as he started to appear more often in Rampo's stories and while he started out as an amateur detective / student clad in traditional Japanese clothing, he ends up as a dandy gentleman private detective. This Akechi Kogorou is used in several of the high-profile adult stories of Rampo, like Kurotokage ("The Black Lizard"). In Kyuuketsuki ("Vampire"), we are first introduced to young Kobayashi, Akechi's assistent. Both Akechi and Kobayashi would be used for Rampo's children's series Shounen Tantei Dan (with especially Kobayashi gaining fame in that series), but both characters thus in fact originated from Rampo's particular brand of grotesque mystery stories. Akechi is thus a character that has been used for a wide variety of stories by Rampo, from his early orthodox detective stories to the more popular ero-guro (erotic-grotesque) nonsense stories to children's stories.

Rampo's postwar creative output was dominated by the Shounen Tantei Dan series, but Kenin Gengi ("The Inhuman Illusion Game") is one of the few postwar novels that aimed at adults, featuring both Akechi and Kobayashi. I listened to the NHK's radio drama based on the book, titled Kenin Gengi yori: Akechi Kogorou Saigo no Jiken ("The Last Case of Akechi Kogorou - Based on The Inhuman Illusion Game"). The story is set in postwar Japan, with a 50 year old Akechi, who is still happily married to the beautiful and smart Fumiyo. "Boy Detective" Kobayashi isn't a boy anymore and all is well. But not for long, of course. One day, Akechi is invited by ex-nobleman Ookawara and his wife Yumiko to their summer house in Atami. As the three, joined by Ookawara's secretary, are enjoying the view from the balcony with binoculars (Yumiko has a fascination for lenses), they witness a man falling from a cliff across the house into the sea. The victim turns out to be Himeda, an employee and confidante of Ookawara himself. Ookawara hires Akechi, wanting to know whether this was just an accident or a murder and Akechi gladly accepts, also because he sees the case, if there really is a case, as a personal challenge to him as a masterdetective.

And there is a case. While it might not be clear whether Himeda's death was an accident or not in the beginning, the fact that potential suspects get bumped off one after another (including one in a locked room) suggest that there is something sinister going on. Has it something to do with the white feather that was sent to Himeda just before he died and which he seemed to fear? Is the fact that the Ookawaras like detective novels and that they love coming up with murder methods relevant? And is an elderly Akechi still capable of the deductive feats that made him famous?

My first comment is not about the actual contents, but the length of this radio drama. Kenin Gengi yori: Akechi Kogorou Saigo no Jiken was originally broadcast in 1983 in twenty (almost) 15-minute installments, so the complete runtime is nearly five hours. Listening to five hours of old and slightly less than perfect audio-circumstances in Japanese is pretty tiring, I can tell you. In fact, I've tried listening to this radio drama several times in the past, but always gave up because it was just too difficult to keep concentrated on it for a long time (by which I mean, I always gave up after thirty minutes, because I kept falling asleep). It took me two years and the fact I have no books I want to read at hand to listen to this drama.

But this was actually pretty fun. Most surprisingly, Kenin Gengi yori: Akechi Kogorou Saigo no Jiken is an actual attempt of Rampo to write an orthodox detective novel, something he hadn't done in years! Alibi tricks, a locked room murder, a layered plot, this is a story that feels very different from the popular pulp stories of pre-war Rampo. Which is also why the original novel kinda bombed in Japan. The story featured orthodox detective tropes, but it is not particularly impressive, with a rather easy locked room murder, alibi tricks that seem kinda dependent on luck and it is quite easy to point out the murderer. In an era where Yokomizo and Akimitsu had already shown what an orthodox detective could be, Kenin Gengi was too simple. For the fans of Rampo's ero-guro nonsense pulp stories, Kenin Gengi was just too tame and normal, missing the bizarre and grotesque taste from Rampo's other works.

I on the other hand quite enjoyed the story, as a kind of throwback to the old orthodox Akechi Kogorou stories. One fun part was the way Fumiyo (Akechi's wife) and Kobayashi helped Akechi with his investigations. I had never seen (heard) Fumiyo in action before, but she seems to be a very capable assistant herself, actively questioning people and even going undercover to help her husband. The Akechis are an interesting detecting couple and I'll definitely try to read/see/hear more of them. Also, the use of tropes like disguises and layered plots felt perfectly normal and natural to me, as they are commonly used plot devices in early Rampo short stories. Yumiko's fascination for lenses of course comes from Rampo's own fascination for lenses, as expressed in an essay and stories like Kagami Jigoku ("Hell of Mirrors"). And while I have to admit that the tricks employed by Rampo in this story were relatively simple, it made perfect sense in-universe for them to be like that. Had they been more complex, the conclusion and the identity of the murderer would have made no sense at all and that would have been a shame, because Rampo came up with a really memorable villain.

Which is of course something he excelled in. But the villain in Kenin Gengi is very different from criminals like Twenty Faces, the Black Lizard, Golden Mask or The Clown From Hell. This time the murderer has no crazy name or weird modus operandi. It seems like a Poirot-saying, but it is the psychology behind the murders that is really impressive and that makes the murderer in this story memorable. It was not really conveyed well in the audio drama actually, but doing a bit of background research really brought this interesting aspect of the original story to my attention. Kenin Gengi's murderer differs so greatly from the Funnily Named Criminals of the past that Akechi Kogorou actually claims that the belle epoch of weird criminals has passed and that maybe it is also time for him to quit being a detective, as things have changed too much after the war (explaining the title The Last Case of Akechi Kogorou of the radio drama). Despite this lamenting by Akechi though, I do feel that this murderer does fit with the characters of some other early criminals Akechi apprehended in his early stories. This culprit fits perfectly with NiSiOiSiN's Zaregoto series too.

And I am not sure whether this was also like this in the original novel or not, but I loved the Kyushu dialect speaking police inspector Minoura! How nostalgic! And probably very distracting if you have never heard dialect from places like Fukuoka (Hakata), Nagasaki or Kumamoto before! But how utterly weird too, from a directing point of view (or if it was in the original novel, from the writer's point of view). Naturally, it is conceivable that someone from Hakata would become inspector in Tokyo in real life, but why would you choose to have someone speak in thick Kyushu dialect in the Tokyo/Shizuoka area? To set him apart as an outsider? To characterize him as a typical, high-handed Kyushu-male? They certainly didn't really succeed with either of these choices at any rate... It seems like that there is no real creative reason for him to speak like Kyushu dialect, besides appealing to me for nostalgic reasons, but I doubt that they would have foreseen that when they produced this radio drama.

But I still think that a five hour radio drama based on one novel is way too long! It took people in 1983 a whole month to go through this series! Madness!

Edit: not sure why I didn't notice earlier I was copying and pasting 'gen'i' the whole time instead of 'gengi' as the story's title... >_>

Original Japanese title(s): 江戸川乱歩（原） 『化人幻戯より明智小五郎最後の事件』

Whose Body?

"Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do"
"The Clergyman's Daughter"

Ok, 'guaranteeing' I wouldn't update today was mostly because I assumed I wouldn't finish a book on time. Because I would need a subject to write about. Which usually means I need to read a book. Or watch a movie or something. And I was pretty sure I wouldn't finish anything yesterday.Yet somehow, I managed to finish two books between yesterday and now. Things never go as planned.

Kelley Roos' The Frightened Stiff starts with Jeff and Haila Troy moving into their new garden level apartment. The first day in their new home doesn't turn out too well, as a) they overhear a telephone call in a nearby restaurant that mentions their new address, b) they get home after dinner and discover that someone must have entered their appartment while they were gone and c) a naked dead body is found in their garden the following morning. As if moving isn't troublesome enough.

And I can't be the only one that expected the frightened stiff to turn up in the bathtub when he saw the cover. A skeleton. In a bathtub. It sorta suggest something. And no, I hardly ever read the text on the back of a book. Or else I would have known, I confess.

Major suspects of the murder: the Troys. Well, you can't really blame the police for looking at them with suspicious eyes, as it was their garden where the body was lying. The stiff was also drowned in their bathtub. The Troys suspect that  one of the other tenants in their building must be the killer though and in good old fashion, all of these tenants have something to hide from the Troys and the police. Add in some attempts on the Troys' lives and the mystery of how an apartment room could have been cleared completely from its contents without anyone noticing, and you have a fun little adventure for our pair of wedded amateur detectives.

Have I mentioned already that I love Christie's crime-solving couple Tommy & Tuppence Beresford? The Tommy & Tuppence stories are a delight to read because of the dynamic between the loving couple and it's this fun dynamic that I would like to see more often in detectives. I said as I looked wearily at Meitantei Conan (seriously, the only couple that is kinda normal there is Takagi/Satou there, and that took like 40 volumes?). I don't think the Troys are as fun as the Beresfords, but they are really not bad either (ok, they're quite fun actually). The story itself is really amusing, with a nice little impossible situation that is clued very deviously throughout the story, interesting characters lurking around in the appartment and nice banter between the Troys.

I think the best about this book is how easy it is to just pick up and read. Just start with it, and before you know it you're all caught up in the Troys' adventures and you'll probably won't lay the book down until you're at the last page. It's a very entertaining, well structured and plotted story. I can't really add more to this.

"Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused."

"On the whole, jolly good! We're very clever, I think."

"You would think so," said Tommy. "You always do. Now I have a secret feeling that once or twice we've been rather lucky."

"Nonsense," said Tuppence. "All done by the little grey cells." 

"The Man Who Was No. 16"

Yes, still trying to get rid of the backlog.

Somehow I've been using the "Agatha Christie" tag quite often. Even though I hardly ever discuss Christie works here. Because what would I have to add to the discussion on books like The Murder on Roger Akryoid, The Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None? By now, everything must have been said, right?

But I still haven't read everything by Christie, so I expect I'll still ocassionally use the tag. Like today! And it isn't a Hercule Poirot story either! And I don't like Mrs. Marple, so she's out too. But I do love Tommy and Tuppence. Two young, married ex-blackmailing detectives. Scoundrels. I like that word. Scoundrels.

Aaaanyway, I recently finished the 1983 TV-serie Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime and it was a blast! The series is obviously based on the Partners in Crime short story collection, but the pilot episode is actually a movie-length version of The Secret Adversary, the very first Tommy & Tuppence novel.

In The Secret Adversary, young Tommy Beresford and Prudence "Tuppence" Cowley meet again after The Great War. Both are smart, but short on cash, so they start Young Adventurers Ltd., advertising with "willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused.". They get hired the same day, which is the start of a long spy story concerning foreign agents, an important document and the secret adversary Mr. Brown, who seems to be around every corner. A lot happens in the novel, and because the pilot movie is a faithful adaption of the story (in my memory), a lot happens in the movie too. As if Christie wrote this without any planning, as if she was just coming up with new plot developments as she wrote. Look away for a second and you've lost the story. But who would look away? James Warwick and Francesca Annis play a fantastic Tommy and Tuppence, getting the feeling between the two just right, the sets are gorgeous and one of the better adaptions of Christie-books.

Warwick and Annis continue their antics in Partners in Crime, which for the most part follows the original short story collection. Here Tommy and Tuppence become the owners of a detective agency. The overall storyline of Russian spies has been removed though, thus removing the actual need for Tommy to call himself Mr. Blunt. And while in the original book, every short story was a parody of another fictional detective, most references have been removed in the TV-series, figuring most people wouldn't get them anyway. Which is probably true. Because the stories are quite short, some are also extended with original scenes, but all in all a faithful version of the original stories. Which remain as fun as ever.

But like with The Secret Adversary, the driving force of the series is the acting of James Warwick and Francesca Annis. It is just fun watching them. While some of the secondary characters are acted rather dubiously, Warwick and Annis got the Tommy & Tuppence magic perfectly! Camp, but not too camp. If David Suchet is Poirot, then Warwick and Annis are Tommy & Tuppence.