Aibou ("Partners") is a very succesful police drama in Japan that's been running since 2000, with season 20 probably nearing its end by the time this review is published. The series is about the Special Orders Unit, a two-man unit within the Metropolitan Police Department that is basically only there to keep Sugishita Ukyou there: while Sugishita is one of the most brilliant men to be found within the police force, his sense of justice often clashes with the decisions of administration. The people at the top know Sugishita is indispensible, that if they need him they really need him, but at the same time, they like to keep him locked up in a box until that time, and that's basically what the Special Orders Unit: he is to do nothing, unless there's a special order. Of course, Sugishita likes to poke into his business that aren't his, so more often than not, he decides to look into homicide cases, figuring that he's allowed to do this, unless there are special orders that tell him otherwise. In the series, Sugishita is always accompanied by a younger subordinate, his titular partner, who forms a contrast with the cool-minded Sugishita. While Sugishita has been a constant in the television show since it started in 2000 however, he has seen partners come and go, with his current partner in Season 21, Kaburagi, being his fourth formal partner in the SOU. I occassionally watch an episode or special of the show, but I haven't really been following this series lately, even though I did watch the whole run of Kaito (the third partner) in season 11 - 13, as well as the first seasons with Kaburagi.
The first story, Daifugou no Chousenjou ("A Challenge from a Billionaire") in the book opens with Sugishita receiving a letter from an old college friend. Takamatsu Hirofumi belonged to the contract bridge club at university, while Sugishita of course belonged to the chess club, and it's througn these games that the two first met. They had not kept in touch however, which is why Sugishita is quite surprised to receive this letter. After college, Takamatsu started a venture business in semiconductors, which eventually grew into the major company Semicon Z. Recently, he announced he'd retreat as the head of the company however. He plans to retreat to his new house on Kubura Island, an island in Okinawa he has bought for himself and his wife. In his letter, Takamatsu invites Sugishita to a small party to commemorate this new phase of his life, but in a special post-scriptum accompanying the invitation, he says he's planning to hold a special detective game during the party, and he hopes Sugishita will come. Intrigued by this letter, Sugishita decides to go to Kubura Island, where he learns the other guests are all people who work at Semicon Z, as well as the architect of the splendid house Takamatsu had built. The house is built against the cliff, and there's an elevator that goes down into the cliff, leading to a special room below sea level with a glass wall that serves as a private aquarium, looking out right into the sea!
Before the party starts, Takamatsu confides to his old friend that he fears someone's after his life, and that's why he gave up his position at Semicon Z: curious incidents that could've ended very differently for him have occured recently, and he doubts they were accidents Takamatsu suspects this is related to a case of a leak of confidential business information that happened at Semicon Z, and a bugging device he found in his office. The other guests at the party are in fact all suspects in the eyes of Takamatsu, and he has a "detective game" in mind during dinner to smoke out the spy. That evening, Takamatsu disappears during dinner, but is then shown on a television screen to his guests. Sitting in the aquarium room, he announces they are going to play a detective game. The "made-up" case is about a company spy, a bugging device, and the summing up of suspects who all have a reason to betray the company, and of course, the "story" told by Takamatsu basically applies to what really happened, and the persons present at the party. Takamatsu then says that he challenges his guests to guess who the spy is: they have twelve hours to figure out which of them is the traitor, with Takamatsu also claiming he has found a fingerprint on the bug he discovered in his office, and that combined with the fingerprints he will retrieve from the tableware used during dinner, they'll know for sure who the spy is (a bluff). Takamatsu even challenges the murderer to come to the aquarium room, as he and the evidence will be waiting there the coming twelve hours. Sugishita wants to stop this game and urges the spy to come clean, but is immediately knocked out by the servant. By the time he wakes up, it's basically twelve hours later, but there's no announcement by Takamatsu. When they go downstairs in the aquarium room, they find Takamatsu stabbed to death in the aquarium room, as well as one of the guests, but time-wise it doesn't seem he could've killed Takamatsu and what's even more puzzling: the door of the aquarium room can't be opened from the inside and Takamatsu had been acting as bait to trap the spy inside this room. But if so, how did the real murderer escape the room after killing Takamatsu?
An interesting story, also because it doesn't feel at all like a story you'd see in the normal Aibou series, at least, not in this form. A closed circle mystery on a remote island in Okinawa, with an underwater room being the setting of a locked room murder mystery: while Aibou episodes do provide puzzle plot msyteries at time, they seldom have all these tropes in one single story! The mystery revolves around how the murderer could've commited the crime inside a room designed as a trap, as a space that would seal itself once they set foot inside. The trick behind how this was all done has elements that will feel familiar perhaps, but the manner in which the stories lays out its clues and leads the reader (and Sugishita) to the answer is pretty good. It's definitely a concept you will likely not see in the main Aibou television series and it clearly leans much more into the fantastical ideas and tricks you see in mystery novels, rather than on television. So it gets points for that. It's a simple concept that's easy to visualize, though I have an inkling that readers of mystery fiction will soon think of it, though regular viewers of Aibou might find this much more surprising. I do think the story does feature a lot of coincidences that are designed solely to act as misdirection, and a lot of the latter part of the story consists more of brushing away all these red herrings rather than focusing on the core mystery. Of course, most mysteries do feature a red herring or two, but a lot of the elements here feel like they feel added arbitrarily, functioning solely as a standalone red herring and it can feel tiring to constantly learn that something wasn't relevant to the actual murder anyway.
The second story, Kabe ("Wall") starts with the discovery of the half-decayed body of Watari Junichirou, president of the outdoor sports equipment business Outdoor Dream by his secretary. Watari was believed to have left for the States a week ago and while he was gone, the vice-president wanted to try out the special climbing wall they had built on top of the building of Outdoor Dream. Watari had a special tower made on the roof of the building, with climbing walls on the inside. While "technically" it was for all employees, only the president used it regularly. But the vice-president wanted to have some exercise too, so he decided to ask Watari's secretary to unlock the tower, so he could try it out too during Watari's trip in the US. But it appears Watari never left for the US, and that he had been lying dead in the climbing tower since the day before he was supposed to go on his business trip. At first it's believed the man may have fallen to his death during climbing, but when Sugishita points out the man has no chalk in his hands, suspicion of murder arises, especially when the police learns the man was a notorious womanizer who had been harrassing women at work too. But the tower was locked until the secretary opened the tower eight days after his supposed death, and she saw nobody inside the tower, nor could anyone have escaped from the tower or roof during the time she got help and notified the police. So how was this murder committed?
A much shorter, and more simple story. The idea of a climbing tower as a locked room space is interesting: spatially speaking, it's actually very large (and high), with the extended roof being part of the setting too, but as the only two keys to the tower were either inside the tower, or kept by the secretary during those eight days, it's still a proper locked room mystery. The manner in which the story introduces the culprit and involves them in the core puzzle-solving plot feels a bit forced, but the clues that ultimately point out how the murderer did manage to escape the locked room are good, as are the clues indicating the identity of the murderer. The motive too feels closer to something you'd usually see in the series, which is also strengthened by the appearances of more familiar faces in the series, as we do see people like the forensic investigator Yonezawa despite Sugishita's partner Kanbe having left the series already at this point.
On the whole, I think Sugishita Ukyou no Misshitsu is a pretty decent read for fans of the series. The two stories featured here are definitely more focused on a fair play puzzle plot than the stories you usually see in the television series, which tend to focus more on social school themes, so especially those who do like the world of Aibou, who occassionally wants to see more "classic" mystery set-ups, this book is the way to go. There's nothing mind-blowing here, nor truly original ideas, but the stories are competently written and provide at least the level of entertainment I'd expect from an original Aibou story. I for one am definitely planning to read more of this series. But while these books are written in a very accessible way and take little time to get through them, I do hesitate a little to recommend them to people who don't know Aibou, as these stories do very little to actually introduce the reader to the world and characters. While the mystery plots do work as standalone stories, they do feel a bit underdeveloped without prior knowledge of the series. So this book is best read as a companion to the series, even if theoretically, you can read them without knowing the television show.
