Minute for Murder

“Nonsense. You can’t order life mathematically,” retorted the Judge.  

"The Spanish Cape Mystery"

Still weird how the author Hikawa just... disappeared...

After a succesful party with employees of a computer company and the game company Joyit, they decide to have another one at Joyit's offices. Saeko, who was a great success at the previous party, goes again, bringing along her friend Shiori. They arrive early at Joyit, and are led to an office room where they can wait for the party to start: due to unforeseen circumstances in the program they are working on at Joyit, there's a bit of a delay, as the programmers and managers who are scheduled to go to the party too have to scramble and quickly fix the program. People walk in and out the office while waiting for the party to start, chatting in the hallways, and with some people using this opportunity to talk with people private. But when the party is about to start and everyone heads back to the office, they find the sales manager Senzoku alone in the office, sitting dead in a chair having been strangled. The police start to investigate the murder, but Shiori quickly realizes this is a kind of locked room. From the office where Sensoku was killed, there were three routes via which the killer could've escaped between the murder and the discovery of the body: going right from the office, or left and another left for the emergency exit, or left and then a right to go to the normal staircase. These three routes however where all observed, as people had been chatting at those spots before the body was discovered. Recognizing this puzzle, Shiori and Saeko decide to present this problem to their friend Hikawa Tooru, an aspiring mystery author, who too admits this is not a "real" locked room mystery, but a "rhetorical" one as the escape routes were all blocked, and he takes on the puzzle in Hikawa Tooru's Misshitsu Logic, also known as The Rhetorical Locked Room (2003).

Misshitsu Logic is the last novel in Hikawa Tooru's five-part series about the same-named Hikawa Tooru, an aspiring mystery author who after five books still hasn't quite managed to make his professional debut. The actual novelist Hikawa Tooru stopped publishing books after 2003, and has basically vanished, so I guess that ended the fictional Hikawa Tooru's career too! I've been reading these books the last few months, because they were touted as Ellery Queen-inspired books, which they certainly are, but while they shared a focus on both physical evidence and the actions of people, based on what they knew/could have known at what time, and longer deduction chains, these books never really quite managed to capture the spirit as well as other Queen-inspired authors like Arisugawa's Egami novels or Tsukatou Hajime's Nationality novels with Mikikaze. 

Misshitsu Logic is a rather strange novel though, as it's extremely short. It's basically a novella, even though the price of the book was certainly not lower than you'd normally expect. What's more, this book, more than ever, feels likely barely more than a logic puzzle, as the title suggest. It barely feels like a work of "fiction" in the literary sense. The book consists of three parts, with the longest part being the first part, which basically sets the scene for the puzzle: we follow different characters in the two hours leading up to the discovery of the murder, with people chatting with each other, walking in and out of the office and of course, with time stamps. The second part focuses on the investigation, showing how the murder was practically impossible because the escape routes were all under observation by people standing in the hallways, but basically adds no new information beyond what we learned in part 1. Part 3 is obviously Hikawa explaining who the murderer is, and when you're done, you've barely read 160 pages (to put in context: the previous novels were all at least 250 pages, and closer to 350 pages). 

So most of the meat of the book is found in Part 1, but this really reads a logic puzzle. It's so... devoid of energy, just swapping between perspectives with time stamps and everything as everyone moves around. Previous books did the same, mind you, but at least continued this after the discovery of the murder too. But because this book is so short and the bulk of the pages is devoted just to the lead-up to the discovery of the murder, it just feels like a logic puzzle, and nothing more. I also had real trouble getting into the minds of all the different characters, partially due to the weird set-up. Why do they have a inter-company party... with just like 10 people... at the offices of one of the companies? Why not just somewhere in a restaurant or bar? Why does the "company party" read more like a mixer party, with some of the men obviously just here to ogle the women? Why are the people joining this party from completely different sections of each company? Why is Saeko basically the only one from the computer company? While not really a big deal, I just got distracted constantly by the weird company party this was supposed to be, and I kept wondering why it couldn't just have been any other occassion, set at Saeko's own company, rather than it being about a inter-company party.

So ultimately, you just have a logic puzzle about what route the murderer could've taken after the killing, and why they went unnoticed. As expected of Hikawa, the focus of the chain of deductions is very Queen-esque, zooming in on the various people standing at the chokepoints and examining in a logical manner whether for example they would've been lying about not seeing the murderer leave or not, and things like that. He does this in a meticulous manner, checking the various witnesses (suspects) one by one and explaining how their observed actions would prove whether they did lie or not, but it all feels too sterile in this book. The meat-to-mystery ratio is too lean, leading to something that isn't fun as a book to read. There's not really a brilliant "gotcha" moment, something that turns the chain of reasoning around or provides a brilliantly new angle to the puzzle. It's very business-like, and while there's one moment that's kinda presented as a clever piece of insight on Hikawa's part to allow him to push the chain of deduction forward, it falls flat, as the build-up is chaotic and not fun for the reader at all. I guess the 'cleverest' part was the final step, which allowed to Hikawa strike away the last of the innocent suspects and end up with the identity of the guilty murderer, but even than it was something that was just.. okay, and not something worth recommending this book for.

Misshitsu Logic may be the last Hikawa Tooru novel starring the same-named detective, it is also by far the worst one. It is extremely short, basically a novella, but even then it's far too sterile, with the book barely feeling like anything more than a logic puzzle, only told in a slightly longer manner, while not being enjoyable to read as a prose story. Even as a Queen fan, this is too dry, with a set-up that is just people walking in and out of rooms, and then just a dry: okay, now solve this puzzle! The deduction chain, while meticulously set-up, lacks a really impressive moment, resulting in a book you'll just shrug at. A sad way to end a series, but that's the way things go.

Original Japanese title(s): 氷川透『密室ロジック』

The Mad Mermaid

It was many and many a year ago, 

 In a kingdom by the sea, 

That a maiden there lived whom you may know 

By the name of Annabel Lee

"Annabel Lee"

I seem to have been experiencing the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon regarding the city of Choufu. I recently heard about it (home of Mizuki Shigeru!), and since I see the place appear in all kinds of novels...

Budding mystery novelist Hikawa Tooru is on his way to the Choufu Welfare Hospital, where his old high school friend Ikuta Shun works as a psychiatrist there. On his way, he has a rather weird encounter with someone who seems to hit on him, or perhaps not, but that was not the strangest happening that day. When he arrives at the hospital, he is surprised to see fire trucks parked around there, and when he asks what's going on, he's told shocking news: his friend has died! A fire occured in one of the free offices, which was assigned to Ikuta that day. Inside that office, a burnt body was found, but its face has been rendered completely unrecognizable. Because Ikuta was supposed to be working that time at that office, and he's not found anywhere, the people at the hospital of course assume it was him who died, but both the police and Hikawa are familiar with tropes of detective fiction, and Hikawa in particular wonders whether the body is really that of his friend. But what if the body is not that of Ikuta, whose body is it, and is Ikuta then involved with this person's death? As he asks Ikuta's co-workers about how Ikuta was as a person, since they didn't see each other much any more after high school, he learns Ikuta was indeed always the person he was at school too, but could that have led to his death? Hikawa is determined to learn the truth in Hikawa Tooru's Ningyo to Minotauros ("The Mermaid and the Minotaur" 2002), which also carries the English title The Border-Line Case.

Ningyo to Minotauros is the fourth novel in the Hikawa Tooru series, written by the same author, following the Ellery Queen model not both in this form, but also by how the character of Hikawa Tooru solves the crimes in these books, with a focus on chains of deductions, physical evidence and the conclusions one can make based on them, and eliminating suspects one by one off a list until the last suspect ends up being the murderer. As in previous novels, the crime takes place in a semi-personal circle, with Hikawa Tooru being friends with the (supposed) victim this time, while in previous novels too, his friends and people he worked with ended up being victims and/or suspects. Story-wise, we have some references to earlier novels (including the second one, which was published by a different publisher than the other books), but there's not much of story development here, as Hikawa is still a struggling novelist at this point, still waiting for his first book to be published.

The book starts rather sudden, with just a few moments before Hikawa arrives at the hospital, only to hear his friend (very probably) died in the fire. Shocked by the loss of his friend, Hikawa goes around the hospital, asking Ikuta's co-workers what kind of person he was at the hospital, as Ikuta was a very unique person at high school, one of the few people Hikawa could really get along with, and he wonders whether or how his personality could've led to his death, as he was the sweetest guy around. During his "investigation" Hikawa gets to know several people around the hospital, from nurses to fellow doctors and even some of Ikuta's patients, and they all seem to agree Ikuta was not the kind of person to get himself murdered. Some of the women Hikawa talks to even seem to fancy his old friend, which hurts as hell, knowing he just died so young. Because of previous cases Hikawa got involved with, he also gets fed some confidential investigation information from a friend with the police, which slowly give Hikawa a better idea of what happened before he arrived there. 

As a puzzle however, Ningyo to Minotauros isn't that interesting. Perhaps it's because the setting is very limited, with few characters who were at the hospital at the time of the fire, meaning there are very few suspects, and most of the book is just devoted to Hikawa interviewing people about where they were at that time, with almost no other story developments after the initial scene of Hikawa arriving at the hospital. After that it's just a lot of talk about Ikuta, and occasionally some talk about alibis of where everybody was before the fire. The idea is of course you've got to check whose alibis are actually confirmed and which are just based on the suspect's own testimony (without supporting proof), but this is something Hikawa Tooru has already done in previous books, and each time it just felt... too bland. This focus on timelines is very technical, but it is also told in a very dry manner, and because there are usually few other developments in the story, it all feels very clinical, with little to keep the reader entertained but hoping the next bit of information will be interesting. Previous novels however were a bit lengthier than Ningyo to Minotauros, which allowed for a bit more variation and more insight in the characters, but that is a bit lacking here, especially as a lot of the book is devoted to drawing a portrait of Ikuta, at the expense of the actual (living) suspects. 

There ultimately isn't like something clever or trick behind the arson in the office, and while there's some meta-talk about the unrecognizable corpse, this does not remain a mystery for long as the police just have the body examined and they arrive at a clear answer relatively soon (before the actual conclusion), so the mystery ultimately really revolves around who committed the murder and set the office on fire, and therefore, the matter really just revolves around alibis. While there are a few clever clues that point to the murderer at the conclusion, leading to an interesting revelation about the whole first scene (the final step in determining the murderer is interesting), I still find this the least engaging book of the series until this point. There's just too little really interesting about the mystery and the way it is solved, and I guess there's some interesting talk about gender studies here (hence the Japanese title), but it's not enough to really keep my attention.

As a fan of Queen-esque mysteries, it's a bit of a shame that while on a technical level, Ningyo to Minotauros certainly follows the model in terms of chains of deduction to identify the murderer, the very brief story is told in a rather dry manner, despite the "personal" angle about Hikawa's friend either being a victim, or otherwise involved in the mysterious death, and while the chain shown here would be okay for a short story, it's not enough to carry a whole novel, at least, not the way it is told. One more of these novels to go!

Original Japanese title(s): 氷川透『人魚とミノタウロス』

The Body's Upstairs

Two little Soldier Boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one.

"And Then There Were None"

There is no reality where students would gladly say yes when their Philosphy professor invites them to their office to talk about Ellery Queen and the philosophical problems regarding mystery fiction...

Hikawa Tooru is a budding mystery author who has been trying to get published ever since graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy, but he hasn't had luck on his side. One day, he receives a call from Sumiyoshi Masaki, a former upperclassman of the faculty, who is a rising star in the world of philosophy, having published a popular book on the subject, and now teaching at the elite women's university Seishuuin in the city. Sumiyoshi has recently read Norizuki Rintarou's essay on the philosophic problems inherent to the earlier Ellery Queen novels, which would form the basis of the so-called Late Queen Problem, indicating a post-modern problem in mystery fiction. Sumiyoshi wants to pick Hikawa's brain, knowing he's trying to become a mystery author and that he's a Queen devotee, and they agree to have a chat in Sumiyoshi's office after class. They are first joined by a teaching assistant with an interest in mystery fiction, but then a trio of students also appear. One of them, Sanae, is a student of Sumiyoshi, but the other two, Naoko and Miho, are not. It turns out Naoko wants to discuss something in private with Sumiyoshi and asked Sanae to introduce her. The three join the discussion on the Late Queen Problem for a while, and when it becomes late, Sumiyoshi decides to invite everyone for some drinks, but not before he has a talk with Naoko. 

They leave the others in Sumiyoshi's office and walk to Seminar Room 1 on the same floor, which is unused at the moment. Just before they enter, a different professor wants to discuss something with Sumiyoshi, so Naoko enters the room first. As the two professors walk away, they notice a guard also entering Seminar Room 1. Meanwhile, Hikawa and the two girls who remained also loaf around a bit, going to the bathroom before they'll leave, but then a loud cry comes from Seminar Room 1. Everyone runs to the room, and they find... a dead guard lying in the room. But for some reason Naoko is not here. Around the same time, the police arrives at the campus, even though nobody here called for them yet, but it turns out someone else called because they saw something outside: the body of a woman was hanging from the roof of the building. This woman of course turns out to be Naoko, who was tied by her legs and thrown from the roof, hanging her upside down with her skirt hanging upside down. But when did Naoko leave the Seminar Room, why is there a dead guard there, and why was Naoko herself too killed? Hikawa, who has solved a few cases before, of course wants to know the truth, but it turns out Miho herself might be an even sharper detective than himself in Hikawa Tooru's 2001 novel Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu or The Penultimate Truth.

After Makkura no Yoake and Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle, it was very clear that Hikawa (the actual author) is a big fan of (early) Ellery Queen, writing in the same style, and of course,  Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu follows the same idea. However, I feel that after the more exciting second novel, which utilized a closed circle situation to keep the story tense, Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu was surprisingly boring to read, with an incredibly slow mid-section. As much as I love Queen-style detective stories, with an emphasis on longer chains of deductions based on physical evidence and the knowledge of what characters did or could have been aware of at what time, these kind of novels do rely a lot on presenting this kind of data to the reader, so the investigative portions of a story can feel a bit dragging. Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu is an example of a book where the mid-section indeed suffers from this mode of writing, because it's just slowly feeding you data, and in a very passive way. Like in the first novel, Hikawa soon gains the trust of the police detective in charge of the investigation, who then occasionally gives Hikawa confidential information, and Hikawa has a few talks with the suspects, but all of this moves very slowly.

I think Hikawa (the author) tried to battle this by introducing the rival character of Miho, similar to the character Komiyama in the previous novel: in the second novel, the editor Komiyama turned out to be a talented fan of the mystery genre who pro-actively wanted to solve the mystery, and Miho too turns out to be very sharp, capable at times of out-thinking Hikawa (the character). But their battles only really become meaningful near the end of the tale, as Hikawa has a kind of inferiority complex regarding Miho throughout the tale, meaning it's just Miho sometimes posing a (clever) theory and Hikawa just reacting in awe and admiration. Perhaps it's because I read Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle and Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu basically one after another, but the 'Hikawa feels inferior to rival' part of both stories felt very similar, so it was also not as exciting anymore (that, and you already know Hikawa's the series detective...)

Anyway, this time Hikawa is once again facing a situation that is not quite an impossible situation, but only nearly one. Nobody was constantly watching Seminar Room 1's door, but they can't figure out why the guard went in the room and ended up dead, while Naoko somehow ended up dead on the roof. Examining the timelines and noting the time the body of Naoko hanging from the roof was discovered by a taxi driver passing by the campus, they also realize Naoko must have left the room very early, creating only a small frame of time in which the murder could have happened. Meanwhile, there were only a handful of people left in this particular university building. In a way that's incredibly convenient for a detective story, it turns out the security company in charge of the building had secretly built an experimental system that logs the time and duration any time any door in the building is opened, which allows them to determine around which time Naoko slipped away out of the room, but again, this creates problems with the time needed to kill the guard in the room, and kill Naoko on the roof. Due to the system, the police also knows exactly how many people were in the building at the time, but not everyone with a connection to Naoko (mainly the people on the philosophy floor at the time of the murder) have a clear alibi.

As you can guess, the story becomes quite focused on deductions based on time, on figuring out where there's a gap in everyone's alibis which would allow them to commit the murder, and I have to admit, this can be quite boring. There's not much of physical evidence around, so you don't get much of those evidence based chains of deductions I tend to like, where you have to figure out why an object was used or what the use of a certain object tells you about the killer. Time table-based deductions can be interesting in combination with other elements, but on their own, or at least as the main focus, they tend to be very dry puzzles, and that's the same here, and part of the reason why this is definitely my least liked Hikawa novel of the three I have read now. Not that it is devoid of clever parts: the deductions regarding why Naoko was hung upside down from the roof are pretty interesting and exactly the kind of chains of reasoning I do like to read about, but it's definitely just a smaller element of a book that is more focused on time. The way the rivalry between Hikawa and Miho is also resolved in an interesting manner, that ties back in a meaningful manner to the discussion on Late Queen Problems mentioned earlier in the novel. Considering there's a second detective character, you know one of them will pose an incorrect solution at some time, but the way it's framed here, it doesn't feel like just filler or a fake, but it feels like an interesting thought based on the earlier philosophical discussion.

But on the whole, Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu is certainly not my favorite of the Hikawa novels until now. While I appreciate the mode of the detection utilized in these novels, the way it is told now is a bit longwinded and I am in general not a super big fan of stories that require you to fill out time schedules for a dozen of characters and try to find a logical gap in them. Hopefully, the next will bring back some of the more focused mid-section like the second novel had. 

Original Japanese title(s): 氷川透『最後から二番めの真実』

A Little Night Work

“I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.” 

"The Big Sleep"

Brown covers lately...

A few weeks back I wrote about Hikawa Tooru's debut novel Makkura na Yoake. Hikawa was strongly inspired by Ellery Queen, by not only using a same-named detective character who was an aspiring mystery author, but also by presenting the reader with a pure, logic-based whodunnit where a chain of deductions ultimately proves who the murderer was. Hikawa made his debut via the Mephisto Prize, which is awarded to unpublished authors (of novels), but Hikawa hadn't been keeping all of his eggs in one basket. As many starting novelists do in Japan, he had sent in different manuscripts to apply for different publishers' newcomer awards. He ended up winning via the Mephisto Prize, but that's what makes his second novel quite interesting. Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle ("A Locked Room is a Sleepless Puzzle", 2000) was actually originally a manuscript Hikawa had written for the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award, where his story did made it to the final selection (alongside manuscripts by Tsukatou Hajime and Shirodaira Kyou among others!). It wasn't picked as the winner, obviously, but oddly enough it was later picked up not by Kodansha, through which Hikawa made his debut via the Mephisto Prize and who published his first novel. Even weirder is that this second book, of which the original title was Nemurai Yoru no Tame ni ("For A Sleepless Night"), was also not published by Tokyo Sogensha, the publisher behind the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award. It was Harashobo that published Hikawa's second book, and because of that, we end up with something that might annoy some people: Hikawa Tooru wrote five books in total starring his same-named detective, and four out of those five books are published by Kodansha under the same label as pockets. But this second book was published by a different publisher, in a complete different format, with a large hardcover format, so if you place this series in order on your bookshelf, this book will stand out a lot.

The book starts, not surprisingly, at night, at the offices of the publisher Touto Shuppan. Hikawa Tooru is having a meeting with his editor Komiyama, who is very enthusiastic about Hikawa's work and they're adding the final touches to Hikawa's book to have it published so Hikawa can finally make his debut as a novelist. The meeting turns into a normal chat, with some drinks Komiya keeps at the office, and they're occassionally joined by some other people who are still at the office late at night, like the part-timer Ueno and the managing director. When it's about time to leave the building, they get out of the editor's office. Hikawa happens to look down the hallway, where he sees the managing director step inside the elevator. He approaches the elevator, only to see another office worker lying on the floor just around the corner behind the elevator, nearly dying! The man's been stabbed, but manages to say he was stabbed by the managing director, who Hikawa just saw taking the elevator up to the executive floor on the sixth floor. Hikawa and his editor quickly decide to warn the guard and the other people still staying in the building, but then they learn the outside door has been blocked from the outside. A printer's salesman who had been visiting another editor and an artist elsewhere in the building for a final check on a cover, but has not been able to go out the building because something's blocking the door from outside. They learn the phone line's also been cut, meaning they're all trapped inside the building now, with a killer! But when the elevator is stopped again, they find.... the managing director also stabbed in the back inside, dead. But who could've killed the director, and why, and why did the director kill the first person?

Before you start asking me: yes, most of the time this book isn't about a locked room. The setting is a closed circle, and there are some impossible crime features to the crime, but most of the time, this book does not focus strongly on the impossible aspects of the crime.

Anyway, this was a book that felt very similar to the first, and also very different, and part of that is probably because this was originally written for a different type of newcomer award. This was originally written for the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award, and perhaps that is why this one feels far more puzzle-focused than the first novel, as the Mephisto Prize isn't as puzzle mystery-focused in general. This book also has something that really helped an aspect I found tiring in the first novel: the middle part was very slow, as a lot of time was spent just jumping between characters, with Hikawa occasionally dicussing theories with others and few revelations made until the very end. This book is a lot more interesting in that regard due to the closed circle situation. In the earlier parts, they try to find every person in the building, while being careful not to run into the managing director, but later, when the director himself is found dead in the elevator, things still remain tense because they really don't understand why he ended up dead too, and whether there is another killer in the building, or perhaps it turns out one of them is the killer (you can guess what the answer is). They also try to find ways to contact the outside world or to open the door, but this leads to some interesting observations regarding the closed circle. Because the door is locked from the outside, it means the killer is outside the building, right? Meaning this is the reversed idea of a locked room or a closed circle, being the killer who intentionally closes off a space to show they couldn't be inside during a certain period, and the discussions regarding this topic will appeal to mystery readers alike.

This leads me to another thing that made this book a lot more enjoyable in the middle parts than the first book, and that's the presence of a rival for Hikawa in the form of his edtor Komiyama. At least, he becomes a rival because this is the second book published, but if this had been the first book, I suppose you were supposed to think Komiyama was the real protagonist and that Hikawa was just a Watson? Komiyama, as an editor of mystery stories, is a great expert in mystery fiction and uses his knowledge to lead the investigation in the building, as they realize they can't escape anyway until the morning shift people arrive at the office and set them free. Hikawa himself too acknowledges Komiyama is actually a better detective than him, being more pro-active in both voicing his deductions and acting upon them. But because we as the reader know the true series detective Hikawa, there's a certain tension in these segments as you are waiting for Komiyama to make a mistake somewhere which Hikawa will correct. This makes the middle half a much more entertaining read than the first novel. Having a genre-savvy character around also allows for more indepth theorizing about the events, making this a far more puzzle-focused book.

The murders themselves, as in the acts themselves, in this book are quite plain and straightforward by the way, with people just being stabbed. So the puzzle is really focused on figuring out why the first person was stabbed by the managing director, and how the managing director ended up dead too (as he couldn't have committed suicide like that). There is as mentioned a minor impossible aspect to the story, as the back door was blocked from the outside fairly early on in the night (the front door is automatically locked outside of office hours, meaning people coming or leaving in the night have to take the back door, where the night guard is) and after the first murder, Hikawa sees the elevator move up to the sixth floor, until it is called down again and the managing director's body is found inside. Meaning that if there is an unknown murderer loose, they should be on the sixth floor, but when they go up the elevator to the sixth floor, they find it completely empty, meaning there couldn't have been a murderer up here anyway, especially as the door to the staircase is locked from the inside too. The book therefore starts to focus a lot on the alibis of all the characters inside the building, to see if any of them could've killed the managing director, and this is coupled with a lot of Queen-esque deductions about who could've have known what at what time to allow for a certain action. Stuff I like a lot personally, and it made this a very entertaining read.

Ultimately, I do have to admit the solution is fairly simple, and I think genre-savvy people like Komiyama would likely think of the real solution as a very viable candidate very early on. That said, while I think a lot of readers can intuitively guess the solution, the logical road to the solution is definitely worth reading too, as you can clearly see Hikawa is a Queen devotee, and in these kinds of novels, it's not about guessing what the solution is, but having an actual chain of reasoning built on the evidence and testimonies and actions of all the characters, and in that regard, Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle is quite solid too.

Overall, I think I liked Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle better than the first novel. While the first novel had a better final chain of reasoning leading to Hikawa identifying the murderer, I think that on the whole, this second novel was much more readable, while still staying close to the Queen style despite being a closed circle story too. While the solution to the impossible aspects of the story might be a bit simple in design in comparison to the logic needed to solve it, I do think this was a good novel that makes me want to read the rest too.

Original Japanese title(s): 氷川透『密室は眠れないパズル』

The Dark Side of the Door

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, 

That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;

— Darkness there and nothing more.

"The Raven" (Edgar Allan Poe)

Two of the major mystery-related newcomer awards (meaning you get a publishing contract for your entry if you win) in Japan are the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award (publisher: Tokyo Sogensha) and the Mephisto Prize (publisher: Kodansha). Both are popular awards and many who want to write mystery fiction, will try to submit their manuscripts for those awards, as getting published via either of them means receiving a major marketing push and a lot of attention. Of the two, my own preferences correspond best to the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award, which is more focused on puzzle plot mysteries. In a broad sense by the way, so you can have a plot set in a nursing home for the elderly with a lot of real-life experience poured into the story,  but also one of the biggest hits ever that make use of supernatural elements in a mystery story. The Mephisto Prize on the other hand is, by its own definition, not really an award that focuses on mystery fiction per se. The jury are looking for entertainment novels, that span several genres from mystery to horror and much more. That means more variety, but also that a lot of the Mephisto winners aren't the kind of puzzle plot mystery I like to read in the first place. Something like J no Shinwa is really not the kind of novel I usually read and I didn't really like it, some aren't even mystery stories, while books like Clock-Jou Satsujin Jiken and Marumarumarumarumarumarumarumaru Satsujin Jiken are memorable puzzle plot mysteries. But in terms of consistency, I can usually assume a winner of the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award will more often be closer to my own preferences than a Mephisto awardee.

Hikawa Tooru made his debut via the Mephisto Prize in 2000, but interestingly enough, he writes in a mode more commonly associated with the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award. His debut work, Makkura na Yoake or Pitch-Black Dawn as the cover also says, is highly inspired by Ellery Queen and is a pure puzzle plot whodunnit. Like Ellery Queen, his detective character is also named Hikawa Tooru, a young man in his twenties who is hoping to become a mystery novelist. He used to be in a band in university, and the band is going to meet up again for the first time in a few years. Hikawa has been chasing his dream of becoming a professional novelist, doing odd jobs to make ends meet in the meantime, but all his former band members have become full members of the working Japanese society, which is one of the reasons why they haven't really come together again in a while (everyone having their own schedules). Izumi, the oldest and leader of the band who now works at the Suginami-ku Ward Office, arranges for the get-together to be held at a restaurant near his work, and while the place is a bit hard to find, everyone eventually makes it there, with some bringing a +1. After a night of catching up, Izumi says goodbye, as he lives in the neighborhood, while the others hurry to the Suginami Subway Station, as the last train will leave in about twenty minutes. They arrive a bit early though, so they hang about at the otherwise empty station. Some have to go the toilet, others walk around in the station while others wait at the platform. Just a minute before the last train arrives, Matsubara goes back up the stairs to go to the bathroom, but the next second, he cries out in terror, as he discovers the body of Izumi lying dead in the station's men's bathroom. Everyone is utterly baffled, not only by the fact that Izumi has been bludgeoned to death by an art object that had been displayed in the station hall, but because they had said goodbye to him before arriving at the station, and that he shouldn't be at the station at all as he lives in the area. Because the only people at the station, besides three station attendants, were the people at the get-together, it seems likely one of them is the murderer, even if the police can't completely rule out the possibility Izumi might've been killed and robbed of his money in the short time when there was nobody in the station hall when everyone were just still waiting for the train. Hikawa intentionally lies during his questioning to make it seem like someone might've escaped the station while he was waiting for the train and standing near the exits in the main hall, but in fact he knows nobody escaped and that therefore, one of his friends is the murderer and he is determined to find out who it is.

Makkura na Yoake is a surprisingly simple and sobre detective novel considering it's a Mephisto Prize winner, and you can definitely feel the Ellery Queen influence throughout the novel. A lot of the book is devoted to plain investigation and the discussion of possibilities and whether they can discard them, and to be honest, having read it now , I really find it odd this book isn't an Ayukawa Tetsuya Award winner but a Mephisto Prize winner. The murder set-up, while it has a few mysteries about it, is essentially very simple: a murder in the men's bathroom in a subway station and the only people inside, besides the station attendants, all had some kind of (in-direct) link with the victim. Because everyone's memories are a bit vague and it's hard to vouch for each other's alibis, it seems quite a few of them could have committed the murder, but two mysteries remain: why was Izumi in the subway station in the first place, and why did the murderer use the specific murder weapon? For the murderer didn't use the small handy statue to strike Izumi down, but with the flat base upon which the statue stood. The statue is much better suited as a striking weapon compared to the disk-like base, so why did the murderer choose the latter? It's here where the Ellery Queen-flavor becomes the most obvious, as a lot of the book is devoted to discussions about why this weapon was chosen, as well as trying to sort out everyone's positions and a time table until the discovery of the body. And of course, these theories and conclusions are then used to arrive at new conclusions, building whole chains of logic that eventually lead to the murderer.

The situation itself also reminds of the earliest Queen novels, with a kind of public space, but also with a limited cast, and a focus on where everyone was and what they were doing. Hikawa himself as a character obviously isn't early Ellery, especially as he's personally involved in the case, and technically one of the suspects himself too, but you can easily tell who inspired Hikawa.

But even as an Ellery Queen fan, I do have to say the middle part of the book is rather boring. The book tries to help this by telling the story in a kind of And Then There Were None way, with each section following a different character (so the book does not solely follow Hikawa himself). It gives the reader a somewhat more diverse reading experience, as it plays with the idea of you knowing the murderer has to be one of these people you're reading about, but so little happens in these segments. It's basically only Hikawa and fellow member Shiori who genuinely talk about the case, so the segments about any of the other characters just feel like time filler. And while Hikawa, Shiori and the detectives in charge do talk about the various possibilities together, posing theories and also pointing out flaws in each other's ideas, fact remains a lot of it remains rather open to interpretation until later on in the book, so the plot moves very slowly.

Which reminds me, why does the police detective decide to trust Hikawa all of a sudden...? At first they were annoyed with Hikawa's detective playing, but like one chapter later, the main detective decides to trust Hikawa and even feeds him confidential information about the investigation... Hikawa isn't even a renowned mystery writer or anything, he's someone who's trying to become one!

The solution however does remind me once again why I like Ellery Queen-style whodunnits so much. It's these kinds of chains of reasoning that impress me the most about mystery fiction: where the detective use fact A and fact B to arrive at conclusion 1, and combines that with conclusion 2 to arrive at conclusion 3, etc. etc. until lo, you have identified the one single murderer, even though you started with a very, very humble clue. In this case, the way Hikawa arrives at the identity of the murder is truly in the spirit of Queen. It starts with a simple problem, but by focusing on that, Hikawa can use logic to slowly eliminate who it couldn't have been, and finally arriving at who it only could've been. Even though at first, it seemed anyone could've done it. A lot of "side-issues" like motive however are left to speculation and guesses, which are only confirmed because obviously the actual writer Hikawa Tooru wants it to be like that, but the logic itself is sound. The book does feel a bit longer than it needed to be though, and I think I'd have liked it more as a short story, as the deduction itself is great. The book features a second crime in the second half of the book, and while that is fairly simple, I do like the way Hikawa determines the crime is in fact a crime, and not a suicide: this solution hinges on something uniquely Japanese, but also incredibly normal and easy to miss, yet once pointed out, you can't believe you didn't notice it yourself the first time.

Overall, I think that as a debut story Makkura na Yoake is not an outstanding, but still a reasonably consistent mystery novel that is in particular of interest for fans of EQ-style whodunnits. Hikawa would go on writing a few more books, so I'll definitely check them out to see how he further develops. Strangely enough though, Hikawa just suddenly disappeared as a writer. He debuted in 2000 and wrote his last works in 2004, but while he was active on Twitter and last wrote he was moving, he fell silent afterwards and no books have been published since, and his books are also not available as e-books, suggesting perhaps even the publisher can't reach him. For the moment, I have all of the Hikawa Tooru books that also have Hikawa Tooru as the detective, so I'll be discussing them here on the blog eventually.

Original Japanese title(s): 氷川透『真っ暗な夜明け』