番外編：The Red Locked Room Released

Some readers may have been disappointed when Locked Room International didn't release a full-length Japanese mystery last year. Abiko's hilarious locked room mystery The 8 Mansion Murders was released in 2018 and while Abiko's short story A Smart Dummy in the Tent was published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 2019, most people had probably expected something more from Locked Room International after the annual releases of The Decagon House Murders (2015), The Moai Island Puzzle (2016) and The Ginza Ghost (2017). But I'm happy to say we can offer you something now in these times.

For the short story collection The Red Locked Room was released today, with a selection of seven stories with locked room murders, perfect alibis and other impossibilities by none other than the illustrious Tetsuya Ayukawa. I was once again very fortunate to be involved with this project as the translator. Ayukawa (1919-2002) was one of most respected driving forces of puzzle plot mysteries in post-war Japan. His creative output was excellent, with meticulously written plots that often involved perfect alibis that had to be cracked, but he was also a master of other impossible mysteries like the locked room murder. While he has not been translated in English before, you may know his name from the award named after him: the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award is awarded annually by the publisher Tokyo Sogensha, which gives newcomers an opportunity to debut as a professional authors. Ayukawa was very keen on finding and nurturing new and old mystery talent, as he himself had a rather rough start as a mystery writer. Keikichi Osaka was for example a mostly forgotten author, but Ayukawa was one of the people who brought his stories back on the stage and for all we know, The Ginza Ghost would never have been released without Ayukawa. Many shin honkaku authors made their debut because of Ayukawa's editiorial efforts. Two of them are Taku Ashibe and Alice Arisugawa, the duo responsible for the initial selection of the stories included in Locked Room International's The Red Locked Room.

Unfortunately enough, Ayukawa himself did not see an English translation of his own works during his own life-time. One of his short stories was actually considered for Ellery Queen's anthology Japanese Golden Dozen: first that story didn't made it because it was considered perhaps too complex, and when it was finally included in the second volume of Japanese Golden Dozen, that second volume never got an actual English release!

The Red Locked Room includes seven stories, four starring the foppish great detective Ryūzō Hoshikage, three starring the ever-diligent Inspector Onitsura. The Hoshikage stories are about locked room murders and other impossibilities: a murder in a locked autopsy room, a killer clown disappearing from a tunnel and more. The Red Locked Room, The Blue Locked Room and The White Room form a colorful trio, and especially The Red Locked Room is regarded very highly among fans of the genre. The Clown in the Tunnel is a personal favorite with its brilliantly plotted impossible vanishing, and I don't even like clowns! We also have Inspector Onitsura, who is always facing suspects who appear to have a perfect alibi even though Onitsura's certain he's on the right trail. Both Whose Body? and Death in Early Spring keep you guessing what really happened as Onitsura investigates each possible trail, while The Five Clocks is a genuine masterpiece about a man with a perfect alibi vouched for by no less than five different clocks! The book also features an introduction by Taku Ashibe, who has been a tremendous help in making this project possible in the first place. His preface gives you insight in how important Ayukawa was for the genre both as writer as well as an editor.

My own reviews of the stories included are a bit scattered, as The Red Locked Room features an original selection: you can find the Hoshikage stories here and here, and the Onisura stories here (never reviewed Whose Body? I realize now). Publishers Weekly's early review is also available now, which gave the book a starred rating and says "The seven whodunits in this outstanding collection reveal Ayukawa (1919–2002) to have been one of Japan’s most accomplished writers of classic fair-play mysteries" and "Ayukawa’s ingenuity will make golden age fans hope his novels will also be translated." On The Threshold of Chaos also has reviews of the Japanese version of the Hoshikage stories here and here.

Anyway, I think that people who have enjoyed the previous Japanese release by Locked Room International will have a lot of fun with these stories too. The fantastical impossibilities of the Hoshikage stories and the slightly more realistic approach of the Inspector Onitsura stories cover a wide range and on a completely personal note, I am really thrilled to see Tetsuya Ayukawa finally getting an international audience! And that's it for today's service announcement. Enjoy The Red Locked Room!

The Mystery at Lilac Inn

「Aの予感」

『名探偵コナン　14番目の標的』

 

"A sign of 'A'"

"Detective Conan: The Fourteenth Target"

Like the two Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de volumes and Kagi no Kakatta Heya last month, we have a novel today I had been postponing for several years now because I already knew the contents in some way.

The Villa Lilac was once the home of a wealthy merchant, but after his suicide, the house in the mountains of Chichibu fell in the hands of the Japan Art Academy, which offered the facility to its students. One day, the caretaker and his wife welcome a group of seven students who are to stay a few days in the Villa Lilac. The Japan Art Academy is the result of a recent fusion between a music academy and an art (as in paintings) academy, and the background difference between these schools is also reflected in members of the colorful group, who don't really all get along with each other. Part of that is because of professional rivalry, but human emotions also play a role: the first night Tachibana and Salome announce their engagement to the others, which shocks at least three people heavily. The change in atmosphere is clear, and small, but strange happening occur afterwards, like a raincoat being stolen and all the spades being taken from a deck of cards. The following day, a local charcoal burner is found dead near the villa, with the stolen raincoat. At first, the police thought it was murder, but the fact the Ace of Spades was found near the body raised some questions. But they could never have expected that more deaths would follow in the Villa Lilac, and besides every body a Spade is found, counting up as the number of murders increase in Ayukawa Tetsuya's Lila Sou Jiken ("The Villa Lilac Case", 1959).

Ayukawa Tetsuya (1919-2002) was an influential post-war mystery writer and editor who specialized in classic puzzle plot mysteries. Lila Sou Jiken is one of his best known novels (Kuroi Trunk is probably the best known) and actually one I already sorta knew before I even read this book! For long, long ago, I read the short story Jubaku Saigen, which served as the prototype for Lila Sou Jiken. While a lot was changed, with complete sections omitted or changed (the setting for example was from Kumamoto to Chichibu) and the overall backstory quite different, one can still recognize the core plot of Jubaku Saigen in Lila Sou Jiken, although one of the more remarkable elements is missed, as Jubaku Saigen was also a crossover between Ayukawa's two best-known detectives Inspector Onitsura and the private detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou, while in Lila Sou Jiken, it's only Hoshikage who appears at the end of the novel to explain everything.

Given the premise, it shouldn't surprise the reader Lila Sou Jiken is breathing classic puzzle plot mystery from every single page. Seven students (and two caretakers) staying at a mountain villa who are killed one by one is as classic a set-up as you can get, and with a prop like the playing cards being placed beside every body, you know somethings fishy is going on. People who have read The Decagon House Murders will certainly notice the influence Lila Sou Jiken had on Ayatsuji, with the students gathering at a remote location, the cracks of the friendship between the students showing and even a scene where they play cards together. A lot of people die over the course of this story, which is even a bit unbelievable considering the fact that after the first couple of murders, the police is at the scene to keep an eye out on the situation, and even then people die, and even then the police doesn't allow the students to move to a safer place for the time being. Anyway, many murders happen, but interestingly enough, they all get killed in different manners, and that is also a driving mystery of the plot: why is the murderer being so varied?

As you read this novel though, you might notice that Ayukawa's writing is a bit... dry. One can feel that he was focusing everything on constructing a tightly plotted whodunnit, but the result is that a lot of the events feel rather abrupt and sudden, brought to the reader just as a matter of fact. Like I mentioned, you'd expect the students, and certainly the police to react a bit more, either emotionally or with action, to the fact a serial murder is in the house and committing murders while the police's there, but the narrative brings each subsequent murder just as 'oh yeah, that happened.' The novel's not short, and the string of events that happen, but don't really happen to the characters can feel rather long because of that. Usually, when a new murder or some new mystery occurs in a novel, you're given all kinds of new information to process, or new clues that either bring new light to prior events or manage to muddle things even more, but in Lila Sou Jiken, most of it feels like discrete events happening one after another, with each subsequent event not having much effect on previous events, so by the end of the novel, you might feel a bit tired. There's variation in the murder methods, but besides that, it's just reading on as you're given new murders every few pages.

So how does Lila Sou Jiken fare as a whodunnit? I'd say this is a well plotted and complex mystery, that does suffer a bit from the aforementioned lack of real effect and consequence shown to the reader. Looking solely at the core plot, one can see Ayukawa's skill: a lot of ideas and tricks are utilized for the murders, and all of them are used very competently. One particular, physical clue I liked especially, as it's so obvious in hindsight once you think about it as it's part of everybody's daily life. Other parts of the mystery are well-done, but a bit dependent on trivia: the clue that explains how a certain poisoning was done is really impossible to get unless you just happen to know one certain, obscure fact. There's another gimmick that Ayukawa often likes to use I think (I have certainly seen it in another of his short stories), that was handled pretty well, with multiple, diverse clues that help the reader deduce a certain fact in a fair way (one clue wouldn't be fair perhaps: multiple yes). But the plot does feel a bit sterile: each event is given little time to really settle, and with so many things going on, nothing really gets a chance to stand out. A lot of these ideas would've worked very good in short story whodunnits, but now they're thrown into one novel (even if connected in a believable way), weakening the impact of each seperate element. I think you have material here for three excellent short stories, but with this novel, you know that each part is pretty smart, and that they are still connected in a meaningful way, but you still wonder, perhaps the sum of everything isn't equal or more than the parts.

That is not to say that Lila Sou Jiken is a badly plotted mystery novel, as it really isn't. Most authors would kill to come up with something as tightly plotted as this. But having read my share of Ayukawa novels and short stories, I feel that this book wasn't as "novel-like" as his other novels. That said though, Lila Sou Jiken is an impressively structured whodunnit mystery that is as classic as you can get. Lila Sou Jiken isn't considered as one of Ayukawa's best known novels for nothing, and for those who really enjoy a traditional puzzler, this is a no-brainer.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也『りら荘事件』

Misty Time

Time after time 君と出逢った奇跡

緩やかな風吹く街で

そっと手を繋ぎ歩いた坂道

今も忘れない約束

「Time After Time　～花舞う街で～」（倉木麻衣）

Time after time / The miracle of meeting you

In the city where the wind blows gently

That hill road where we walked as we softly held each other's hands

And the promise I even now still remember

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

While I have to admit I don't always wear a wristwatch anymore like I used to (i.e. I don't bother when I go out for groceries), I still often take the thing with me, even if I have a phone with me. I wonder when Conan will trade his tranquillizer gun wristwatch in for a tranquillizer gun smartphone...

As readers of the blog have already noticed, I've become quite a fan of Ayukawa Tetsuya. He was a post-war writer who specialized in impossible crimes of both the 'old-fashioned' locked room murder kind, but also of the uncrackable alibi kind, where an ingenious murderer uses train time tables and other tricks to concoct a perfect alibi for themselves. Ayukawa also wrote really great 'Guess the Criminal' puzzle plot short stories, where the reader is challenged to prove through logic who the murderer is and he was also a very influential editor at publisher Tokyo Sogen, with writers like Ashibe Taku and Arisugawa Alice basically making their debuts under his guide. Itsutsu no Tokei ("The Five Clocks", 1999) is the first volume of two in the series Ayukawa Tetsuya Short Story Masterpieces and as the name suggests, the bulky volume collects some of his best short works. The collection features two of Ayukawa's most infamous creations: Chief Inspector Onitsura and the brilliant amateur detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou, with a slight emphasis on Onitsura stories.

In the past, I reviewed the two Great Detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou Complete Collection volumes, and several stories featured in Itsutsu no Tokei are also available in there. So for my thoughts on the stories Shiroi Misshitsu ("The White Locked Room"), Doukeshi no Ori ("The Clown's Cage"), Barasou Satsujin Jiken ("The Villa Rose Murder Case") and Akuma wa Koko ni ("The Devil Is Here"), I'd like to point you to those older reviews. I'll only be reviewing the stories I hadn't read yet in this post (which by default are all Inspector Onitsura stories).

The book opens with the title story: Itsutsu no Tokei ("The Five Clocks" 1957). Inspector Onitsura is asked by the fiancée of the main suspect to take a new look at a murder investigation. Money appears to be the motive behind the murder, and the suspect definitely needed that for his upcoming wedding, but his bride-to-be is sure he's innocent. Onitsura's problem is that the only other suspect has a perfect alibi. The other suspect was accompanied by a witness almost all night, who can swear to almost every single minute (with other witnesses backing the blanks up). The way this suspect managed to create his perfect alibi is brilliant: at one hand, it is actually just a series of otherwise simple ideas, but it's the way it's all combined that makes this story so ingenious. Definitely a great alibi deconstruction story.

Soushun ni Shisu ("Death In Early Spring", 1958) was a case that Onitsura had a lot of trouble with, the prologue says. The investigation on a murder that happened at a construction site at night had quickly led to a suspect (a rival contender for the hand of a certain lady), but this suspect has an alibi for the time the crime must have happened, as witnesses at the victim's workplace, the train time schedule and a letter written on that train show when the victim arrived in town. The solution to Onitsura's problem is one that neatly makes sense out of all the chaos. It's perfectly hinted at, and while not very difficult to solve, I think this is a good example of doing a well-constructed mystery that doesn't aim at completely baffling the reader, but instead offers the reader a good chance at solving it themselves without making it overly simple. And that in itself is an art many writers seem to forget.

Ai ni Kuchinan ("Withering in Love") starts with a theft of a wooden crate from a shipping company in Osaka, but the ensuing chase ends in the water. As the people of the shipping company try to save the crate, they open it, and find the dead body of a woman packed inside. The victim was an employee in the shipping company back in Tokyo, but nobody has any idea how she got inside the crate. Was she packed inside by the sender of the crate (a luxury furniture maker), the Tokyo branch of the shipping company, the driver of the truck, or someone else? What is even more confusing is that while the sender had shipped off two crates that day, one smaller to Osaka and a larger one to Shizuoka, but for some reason, the body was discovered from the larger crate, but in Osaka. The solution depends on a fact that may or may not have been common knowledge back when this story was written (1958), but it certainly isn't now, so to me, it really came out of nowhere. It's of course a problem that occasionally occurs: mystery writers usually make use of conventions of every day life to create a mystery plot, but time will eventualy change these conventions, making such stories difficult to graps for other times. Mind you, this story is not incomprehensible today, as I myself went 'Aah, I see, I get that', but the main gimmick certainly needs explanation and is not considered 'basic knowledge of society'. The idea behind this trick though is one I really like, it's just that the execution is a bit outdated for a reader almost 60 years later.

The murder on an affluent writer is what drives the plot in Ninomiya Shinjuu (1958), with the police focusing on literary colleagues of the victim. One of the suspects has a rather peculiar alibi: he tried to commit suicide with a woman on the night of the murder, first by throwing themselves in front of a train and later by taking sleep medicine. The alibi is dependent on where they tried to commit suicide and when, but the solution is rather weak: the police first proves one part of the alibi to be false because the murderer did something inexplicably stupid (there was no way that part of the alibi was going to hold!) and then they show you all kinds of train time tables that come out of nowhere and talk about characteristics of the night trains to show how the trick was pulled off. I think that if this story had been extended to a full novel, with more room to properly introduce the necessary clues to the solution, this story would've been much more enjoyable.

Fukanzen Hanzai ("Imperfect Crime", 1960) is an inverted story, about a publisher plotting the death of his business partner, who has discovered that he cooked the books of their company. He comes up with a plan to make it seem like his partner had fallen of the train elsewhere, while in fact he'd kill him in town. The conclusion is predictable, once a certain character trait is shown in the story, and the behavior the murderer shows at the end is actually rather unbelievable, as it's clear from the start that that behavior could be the only thing that could prove he had anything to do with the crime, so why do that!? Funny is that Chief Inspector Onitsura isn't the detective in this story: a rather unexpected character solves the crime, showing that everyone can be a great detective if they learn to observe, not only watch.

This volume ends with Kyuukou Izumo ("The Izumo Express"), where Onitsura has to solve a murder on a blackmailer. The main suspect is a farmer whose fiancée is now in a mental institution because of blackmailing. The man claims he had only just arrived in Osaka by the Izumo Express just minutes before the murder happened, so there was no way he could've made it out of the station and picked a cab to go the crime scene, especially not as it was his first time in town. Passengers riding in the same coach of the Izumo Express that day however don't remember seeing him. Is the man lying, or is something else going on? The main trick is probably not very difficult to guess once a certain word is dropped, and on the whole, I'd say this is a decent, but not particularly outstanding story. There is a hint of an impossibility here (the suspect claiming to have been present in a coach while the other people in the coach deny it), but the solution is rather obvious and if you really think about it, it's clear that any close investigation by the police would've soon brought the truth to light.

Itsutsu no Tokei is on the whole a great short story collection by Ayukawa featuring a great selection of impossible crimes. Locked room murders are probably usually the most popular variant of the impossible crime, but Ayukawa shows with his Inspector Onitsura stories that alibi deconstruction stories can be just as fun. People with interest in trains in particular will have a blast with these stories. I'm based in the Netherlands, where we have rather dense network of railways, similar to Japan, so I do like train mysteries, but I wonder whether it's something less attractive for readers based in countries lik the United States, where trains are less part of daily life? Anyway, what makes the Inspector Onitsura also interesting is that he is by no means the quintessential brilliant police detective. Sometimes, he'll be fooled by a murderer's tricks for weeks on, and in some stories, it isn't even Onitsura who solves the crime!

So, yes, Itsutsu no Tokei s definitely recommended material for people interested in Ayukawa Tetsuya, and Japanese mystery short stories in general. The Ayukawa Tetsuya Short Story Masterpieces offers some of Ayukawa's best work (complete with commentary for each story by Edogawa Rampo by the way), and with both Inspector Onitsura and Hoshikage Ryuuzou present, there is also diversity in this volume. I'd say this volume is better balanced than the Great Detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou Complete Collection series (which obviously only focuses on one character), so at the moment, I even think this is the best book for people who have never read Ayukawa before.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也　『五つの時計』：　「五つの時計」 / 「白い密室」 / 「早春に死す」 / 「愛に朽ちなん」 / 「道化師の檻」 / 「薔薇荘殺人事件」 / 「二ノ宮心中」 / 「悪魔はここに」 / 「不完全犯罪」 / 「急行出雲」

Blue, Over The Blue

I have a blue house with a blue window.

Blue is the colour of all that I wear

"Blue (Da Ba De)" (Eiｆel 65)

Because of a ridiculous backlog of reviews, this post won't be published until December, even though I'm writing this in mid-July. A message to my past self: don't worry, the weather will eventually become cooler! And now, back to the main topic of today.

Hoshikage Ryuuzou series
Akai Misshitsu ("The Red Locked Room")
Aoi Misshitsu ("The Blue Locked Room")

The first time I read Ayukawa Tetsuya was two years ago, with Akai Misshitsu ("The Red Locked Room"). I thought it to be a great short story collection overall, with some good impossible crime stories (with Doukeshi no Ori the absolute masterpiece). But because Ayukawa Tetsuya is better known for his detailed, sober and down-to-earth alibi deconstruction stories where you need to take notes and calculate everything, Akai Misshitsu was perhaps not representative of Ayukawa's complete oeuvre. I later reviewed Kuroi Trunk ("The Black Trunk"), which I loved, despite the slightly shocking discovery that the thing about taking notes and calculating alibis wasn't just a joke. But now, I return to Ayukawa's more showy side. Aoi Misshitsu - Meitantei Hoshikage Ryuuzou Zenshuu 2 ("The Blue Locked Room - Great Detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou Complete Collection 2") collects the last set of short stories featuring Hoshikage Ryuuzou, the import/export tradesman / amateur gentleman detective. Most of them were published in the period between 1958 until 1961, except for the last one which dates from 1974.

This volume collects two other color-themed mysteries, Shiroi Misshitsu ("The White Locked Room") and Aoi Misshitsu ("The Blue Locked Room"). The first derives it's title from the ever-popular theme of footprints in the snow, in this case, a professor has been murdered in his home, and the only footprints left in the snow on the path to the victim's house, were of the two persons who discovered the body. A simple trick to suit the low page count, but nothing special here. Aoi Misshitsu lends its title to the collection, but there is not much blueness in the story: the not-very popular stage director of an acting troupe is killed inside a his bedroom with a blue lamp: the door was locked and while the window was open, no tracks were left beneath the window. The impossible situation is alright, but the basic idea behind the locked room murder is very similar to Shiroi Misshitsu.
 
A set of three similar stories form the core of this collection, in my opinion, consisting of Barasou Satsujin Jiken ("The Villa Rose Murder Case"), Akuma wa Koko ni ("The Devil is Here") and Suna to Kurage to ("Sand and Jellyfish"). All three of them have the writer-character Ayukawa Tetsuya visiting some his holiday villa, with murder happening there and all three stories also take the form of a guess-the-criminal script complete with Challenge to the Reader. It is kinda difficult to write more detailed about these stories, because like the traditional guess-the-criminal script, these stories take a very minimalist form and focus very strongly on just presenting a (completely fair, well hinted) puzzle plot to the reader. Which is also the problem of these stories: they are very similar in both set-up and execution and the fact that these stories are ordered after each other in this collection isn't really helping with the differentation process. They are also very classically written: I guess that the first members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club took inspiration from Ayukawa Tetsuya's stories, but a lot of the elements seen in these three stories are still often used tropes in the scripts members write nowadays and feel a bit outdated. But of course, you can hardly fault Ayukawa for having people imitate him. One special mention for Barasou Satsujin Jiken though, which features the most daring Challenge to the Reader I've ever encountered.
 
Guess-the-criminal scripts often resemble early Ellery Queen stories, because they often focus on identifying characteristics of the murderer and comparing them to each suspect. Akanesou Jiken ("The Dark Red Mansion Case") and Akuma no Hai ("The Devil Ash") invoke a bit of Queen in another way. Recognizing Hoshikage Ryuuzou's gift for detection, a group of people occasionally comes together to dine and for a  Puzzle Club-esque practice, or one might want to call it a Tuesday Night Club practice. The guest of the day is to tell about a mysterious problem they encountered and after they have finished, Hoshikage Ryuuzou is given fifteen minutes to solve it. Which he does, of course. Akanesou Jiken is actually a very simple and bland mystery plot, about a blackmailing journalist who thought it was smart to stay at the same inn as his victims (spoiler: he dies), but I actually quite enjoyed reading the story. Just to show that a mystery plot is not necessarily the single element makes or breaks a fun detective story (but, it often is). Like the stories above, the deduction style kinda resembles Queen, but I have to say that this story is not really as fair, or at least does not feature as obvious/clear-cut/unrefutable deductions as you'd like such a story. Akuma no Hai is about the death of a professor in a locked room. His dead face was covered by ash, simulating the incidents of his father and grandfather's busts being covered by ash. Just the right amount of complexity for the short page count and definitely one of the best constructed stories of the whole collection.

Shu no Zeppitsu ("His Last Writings in Red") is a novellette which was later rewritten to full-fledged novel with the same title (similar to Jubaku Saigen in Akai Misshitsu, which was also rewritten to a novel). Hoping to receive his ordered manuscript, an editor visits the house of a famous author, which also serves as a gathering place for more writers/illustrators/people in the business. The author is murdered in his study and more murders follow. The story starts out simple enough, but more and more elements make their way into the plot until it you realize the story is a bit too ambitious for its format. No wonder Ayukawa made it into a full novel. It's a fairly okay story, but the main trick is rather obvious to guess, I think and the pacing of the presentation of all kinds of story elements is a bit unbalanced.

Overall, I thought that Aoi Misshitsu was a slightly less impressive sequel to Akai Misshitsu. The impossible crime stories in this book miss the Oomph! factor Doukeshi no Ori had in the first volume. Aoi Misshitsu on the other hand features some traditional guess-the-criminal scripts which are fun, but seen from the modern point of view offer little surprising, because a lot of the probably surprising elements at the time of original publication, have nowadays been become the most basic elements of any guess-the-criminal script. The fact Aoi Misshitsu features a bunch of stories which seem similar isn't helping either. If you'd had to choose, I'd say go for Akai Misshitsu, but Aoi Misshitsu does feature a fairly different selection of stories from the first and is worth a read too.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也　『青い密室』: 「白い密室」 / 「薔薇荘殺人事件」 / 「悪魔はここに」 / 「青い密室」 / 「砂とくらげと」 / 「茜荘事件」 / 「悪魔の灰」 / 「朱の絶筆」

A Study in Scarlet

今はわからないことばかりだけど

信じるこの道を進むだけさ

どんな敵でも 味方でも構わない

この手を離すもんか

真っ赤な誓い

『真っ赤な誓い』 (福山芳樹) 

There is still a lot I don't understand

I can only move forward on this path I believe in

No matter the enemies or friends I will come across

No way I will let go of

This blood-red oath! 

"Blood-Red Oath" (Fukuyama Yoshiki)

As always, I tend to do a lot of other things when the time for actual study arrives (test/paper period), so instead of working on my Akutagawa Ryuunosuke paper of 10.000 characters, I decided to read a book I had been sitting on for almost 4 months. Though I really, really should start on that paper now, with just a few days to go... (I am working through the notes for my paper and studying for a kanji test as I am writing this, so please forgive the many, many typing errors that are bound to pop up! Will try to fix the worst of them later...)

Ayukawa Tetsuya, or Ayutetsu because Japanese people like to abbreviate everything, is one of the grand masters of post-war orthodox Japanese detective fiction and the fact that I haven't even mentioned his name even once until now on this blog is actually almost embarrasing. No idea how that happened. Anyway, Ayakawa is especially known for his alibi deconstruction stories (starring police inspector Onitsura) and thus a lot of his stories have a distinct Croftsian tone to them, I said knowledgably even though I've only read one Crofts story in my whole life. But for some reason I chose to Akai Misshitsu - Meitantei Hoshikage Ryuuzou Zenshuu 1 ("The Red Locked Room - Great Detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou Complete Collection 1") to be my first encounter with Ayukawa, which is actually a short story collection focusing on locked room mysteries, instead of alibi deconstruction. And it features the private detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou, instead of Onitsura. I never seem to choose things representative on this blog...

Though Jubaku Saigen ("Reconstruction of the Spell") is sort-of representative, as it is the draft / short story version of Lila Sou Jiken, one of Ayukawa's more famous novels. Seven students visit a villa in their summer vacation in Kumamoto, when one day they discover a card saying that O-tsuga's curse (a local legend) will kill them. And indeed, they start getting killed and for some reason, playing cards are left near the crime scenes. Famous private detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou takes up the challenge of solving this case.... and fails. It is up to the down-to-earth inspector Onitsura to find out who has been killing the students.

A weird story to rate. Maybe it should feel grand because of the two detectives,  because this is a very lengthy short story, but I have to admit, I was quite bored the first half of the story. It was pretty clear what was going on early on in the story and I had actually sorta given up on the story, when suddenly the name of the murderer was given two-third into the story. The remaining part of the story was reserved for the deconstruction of an alibi, which was actually way more fun and interesting than the first two-thirds of the story. I would say that the latter part of this story really makes it worth of going through the rather predictable early parts of the story. And I have to admit: I still get excited whenever I see Kyuushuu dialect in detective stories!

The titular Akai Misshitsu ("The Red Locked Room") refers to an university autopsy room (and the red brick building it is situated in), where one day the dismembered body of one of the autopsy assistents is discovered. The building served as a double locked room, so how was the murderer able to get in to murder the poor girl? Akai Misshitsu is a neatly constructed locked room mystery, but technically resembles another famous locked room mystery very much, which removes much of the surprise of this story. But it is really well-constructed as a short story, with just the right length to give the reader material to work with, without feeling too bloaty for a short story (like the previous story). Not a difficult or surprising locked room mystery, but expertly written.

Kiiroi Akuma ("The Yellow Devil") is not about a super-difficult boss from the MegaMan series, but about a stripper, who was found stabbed to death in her bathtub in her locked bathroom. She had been threatened by someone calling himself the Yellow Devil for some time now, but how did the Yellow Devil disappear from the bathroom? Mostly a gathering of several familiar tropes of detective fiction, but I have to admit that some of the foreshadowing / hinting in this story was very good.

Kieta Kijutsushi ("The Disappearing Magician") is also not especially exciting, even though it's about a magician who seemingly disappears from a locked room situation after shooting one of his assistants (oh, and don't forget that he poisoned another assistent while doing a 'disappear-from-a-box' trick earlier) . Sounds more interesting than it is, as it is too easy to solve and not particularly well written or structured. But I have to admit: it was hard to lay down because a lot happens within a short amount of pages.

Youtouki ("Record of the Monster Tower") is the shortest story in the collection and I quite like the story, even though it's very easy to solve. Rampo-esque storytelling quickly introduced the reader to the Eye of Shiba, a famous jewel that is supposed to have been lost during the war. The two protagonists suspect that the jewel on top of the turban of a local performing yoga practitioner is the Eye and they practically kidnap the man in order to retrieve it back for Japan. But afraid of the man's yoga powers (Yoga Flame? Yoga Teleport?), they decide to call the police, but not after having tied him up inside an old lift. Which also boarded up. And also raised. Just to make sure he wouldn't disappear. But of course, the yoga practitioner did escape. But how? Like I said, very easy to solve, but I really liked the way the story was told and it was an effective story for the short amount of pages.

But this collection's real gem is Doukeshi no Ori ("The Clown's Cage"). During an interview session by two journalists of a local jazz band at thei base of operations, the singer is killed in her bathtub in her room on the second floor. By a clown. The clown was seen leaving the building by the (tied-up) maid through the backside exit and entering the tunnel right behind the band's building, but witnesses on the other end of the tunnel swear that nobody came out of the tunnel! I really liked this story not only because it once again shows that clowns are evil, but also because it was a really well constructed story, that even if it may rely on what some might consider coincidences, works great. This could easily have been a longer story and still be fantastic, but to pull it off as a short story really shows Ayukawa's gift for constructing great mysteries.

This was just my first encounter with Ayutetsu, but I really liked his style of constructing stories. Even though this collection focuses on locked room situations, it was pretty easy to see that Ayukawa Tetsuya's main love lies in alibi constructions, as half of the locked room mysteries in this collection are mostly based upon the intricate description of character movements during a short span of time and the observation by witnesses of said movements. Jibaku Saigen's Croftsian alibi deconstruction sub-plot was also very interesting and I am tempted to read more of Ayutetsu's 'proper' specialty.

Oh, and one might have noticed that I hardly mentioned the series detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou. He is... just there. He is supposed to be a bit like a Vance-type, but he mostly just appears at the end of the story to explain what happens, with little to nothing to really make him stand out. It's like giving up on a difficult math question and asking the computer to just give the answer to you. He might be different in later stories, but in this collection, he hardly made any impression on me. Well, besides the whole failing part in the first story.

Overall an entertaining collection though and I am defnitely more excited now to read more Ayutetsu. And now to get going on my Akutagawa paper.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也: 『赤い密室　名探偵星影龍三全集１』: 「呪縛再現」 / 「赤い密室」 / 「黄色い悪魔」 / 「消えた奇術師」 / 「妖塔記」 / 「道化師の檻」