A Figure in Hiding

It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. Behind the figure was a vague suggestion of a Cyclopean architectural background.

"The Call of Cthulhu"

I'm still bummed I have the first few books in this series with their original pocket covers, as the current covers with Arai Keiichi's art are much more alluring!

Disclosure: I translated Higashigawa Tokuya's Lending the Key to the Locked Room, the first book in same series as the book discussed today.

Ikagawa City series:
Lending the Key to the Locked Room
Misshitsu ni Mukatte Ute ("Shoot Towards The Locked Room")
Kanzen Hanzai ni wa Neko Nanbiki Hitsuyouka ("How Many Cats Do You Need For a Perfect Crime?")
Koukan Satsujin ni Mukanai Yoru ("A Bad Night to Exchange Murders")
Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! ("Don't Dump Your Bodies Here Please!")

Squid-sou no Satsujin ("The Squid House Murders")

 

Short Story Collections

Tantei Sae Inakereba ("If Only That Detective Hadn't Been There...")

Adaptations
Watashi no Kirai na Tantei ("The Detective I Don't Like")

Two years ago, I reviewed Squid-sou no Satsujin ("The Squid House Murders"), which was the most recent entry in Higashiwa Tokuya's Ikagawa City series. At the end of the review, I noted that while I was at that point up to date with all the novels, I hadn't read the three short story collections yet. A minor trouble I had was that while I hadn't read the books, I did already know about more than half of the stories found in the first two collections due to them being adapted for the live action drama or having read the story in an anthology before. So I was not really in a hurry to read these books. But that did mean I still had the third collection to read, and that is of course the topic of today's post. Tantei Sae Inakereba ("If Only That Detective Hadn't Been There...", 2017) has a suggestive title, and indeed, the stories found in this book are mostly inverted mystery stories, which is... in hindsight not as surprising as I had initially though. While the novels aren't really inverted mysteries, you had some stories like Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! ("Don't Dump Your Bodies Here Please!" 2009) that have multiple narratives, and one of them being about two people who have to get rid of a dead body (and no, this is not even the main mystery!). In fact, the series always features multiple narratives, most often following the adventures of private detective Ukai and his assistant Ryuuhei, and a duo of police detectives simultaneously, with a lot of the mystery being structured around how these narratives intertwine. So in a way, having stories seen from the POV of the murderer isn't that odd for this series. The book is very short though, as are the stories, so I can already start with the conclusion that this is a funny book to read, but it's unlikely to actually "fill" your stomach if you're hungry for mystery. Most of the stories have interesting ideas, but often work towards what could be considered a punchline, and it's more the kind of book you want to read between more "serious" mystery.

Kuramochi Kazuya no Futatsu no Alibi ("The Two Alibis of Kuramochi Kazuya") is a pure inverted story, following the attempt of Kuramochi Kazuya of succesfully killing his wife's uncle and get away with it. His wife's uncle is a wealthy man who owns a restaraunt which is now run by Kuramochi, but business has not been great, and his uncle now refuses to pump more money in the restaurant. So the solution is of course to kill the man and inherit his money through his wife. The plan is to create a perfect alibi: he has invited the private detective Ukai, saying he wants to hire Ukai to find his lost pet. During their talk, Kuramochi excuses himself for a moment to use the bathroom, but in fact he drowns his uncle, whom he had rendered unconscious beforehand, in river water he brought home, so when he will later dump the body in the river, the police will determine his uncle actually died by drowning in the river, at a time Kuramochi was talking with Ukai. Of course, things go wrong, but why? The mistake he makes is incredibly cliche'd, but it actually works here, because the set-up for why Kuramochi fell for it was done really well: as always, it was hidden in the funnier parts of the narrative, and you'd never know that running joke was actually a set-up for the solution. Definitely a "punchline" type of solution, but one I liked.

Ukai and his landlord Akemi are visiting the local multi-day festival at the Ika River River Side Park, and the big finale is a competition between mascotte figures. One of the people they run into at the festival is Sayaka, a girl they met during a previous adventure, and who is most definitely not also the squid mascotte figure Kenzaki Maika, for Maika is of course really a cute character and they are not humans pretending to be mascotte figures. In the dressing tent, they also find others like Pufferfish Harry, the turtle Kamekichi and the masu salmon Yamame-chan, who are all getting prepped for the contest. Harry goes having a smoke in a seperate section of the tent, when after a while, Kamekichi, who had also been smoking, suddenly cries out. When they all go the smoking section, they find Harry lying on the floor, bleeding, and they find the person inside had been stabbed through his suit. Given that there had been only one other mascotte in the smoking section, it seems obvious who stabbed Harry, but is the answer really so simple? I am not that big a fan of this story: I do like the concept of how Harry was stabbed under seemingly impossible circumstances, but it seems a bit too little to carry a whole story, it would have worked better as a supporting concept, rather the main, as it is a bit too straightforward and I think it also works better in a visual medium.

Doctor Akihabara is a self-proclaimed genius in Hakase to Robot no Fuzai Shoumei ("The Alibis of the Doctor and his Robot") who has finally succeeded in creating a bi-pedal, talking robot after years of experiments (and yes.... he's a bit late...), but he owes his sponsor a lot of money, so the easy way out is to kill the man, and he realizes he can use his robot to create a fake alibi! Both he and his sponsor have a second villa in the mountains, and the plan is to kill the man, have his robot pretend to be the man while the doctor himself visits the neighbors, making sure they see his robot pretending to be the victim moving about in front of the windows, moving the estimated time of his death to the period while the doctor was having dinner with his neighbors. Akemi also happens to be visiting those neighbors, and while the doctor is quite smitten by her, he does not forget to make sure they all see "the neighbor" walking up and down in front of the window in a programmed routine. The next day, the corpse is found, but the weather conditions make it clear the murderer is likely someone staying on the mountains now, and there are only a handful of them in this season. I think this was the best story overall of the volume: there is funny banter between the doctor and his talking robot as they work together to kill their target and set-up the ruse, but the mistake the doctor makes is thematically brilliant and I really didn't see it coming. I'm trying to imagine it being used in a more serious story, but I don't think it would have been even half as effective as it's done here, as it adds a wonderfully ironic tone to the story. It's still a very simple, 'one-trick-pony'-esque inverted mystery as most of the others, but very satisfying considering its length.

To Aru Misshtisu no Hajimari to Owari ("The Beginning and the Ending of a Locked Room") has Ukai and Ryuuhei working on a case for a mother: she suspects her daughter-in-law is cheating, and has hired the two detectives to find evidence. They find out who the partner is and have the evidence, and the mother wants to confront her son with the evidence, and Ukai and Ryuuhei come along. They find the house locked, which is odd, as the son should've been alone in the house while his wife was visiting her own parents. Fearing something is off, they break in the house and find it empty. At least, they think so, until they enter the bathroom, and in the tub, they find a chopped up body, with the head of the son floating in the tub! But if the house was locked from the inside, where did the murderer go to? The story starts in media res, allowing for some tension, but the solution to the locked room is almost hilarious silly. Like the other stories, it's really just a punchline, but it works because it's not treated too seriously, and it is a neat subversion: you'll see the same trick used in a serious way far more often, but I didn't immediately recognize it because it is used in such a silly, non-practical manner now, so it kinda slips beneath the radar. Again one of those ideas that work because it's done in such a light-hearted manner in a very short story.

Higaisha to Yoku Nita Otoko ("The Man Who Greatly Resembles the Victim") follows the story of Kitayama Masato. Masato is the illegitimate son of Anekouji Kenzou, the former head of the wealthy Anekouji clan which runs Anekouji Products. But while his older brother Anekouji Kazuhito became the new head of the company, Masato was never recognized officially and is now living from one part-time job to another. One night, he is approached by a beautiful woman, who confides to him she plans to kill Kazuhito, as he had dumped a dear friend of hers who committed suicide because of it. It turns out Kazuhito and Masato, while they have not met in years, actually resemble each other a lot. The woman's plan is to use Masato to create an alibi for her: Masato is to pretend to be Kazuhito by visiting a cafe Kazuhito frequents and have some drinks there, while she'll kill Kazuhito, thus making it seem like Kazuhito died much later than he actually did. Kazuhito finally agrees to the plan, and both do everything according as discussed, but the police still manages to figure out how they did it. But why? The story has a very interesting twist before the true end, that changes your views on the murder scheme slightly, but it is fairly minor, as two pages later, you'll already arrive at the true solution. Which is a bit predictable, once the jokes about a certain trait of Masato are introduced in the story. Not a bad story per se, but perhaps the "lightest" of the five stories, and they are all very light in content matter in the first place.

I already mentioned it earlier, but Tantei Sae Inakereba is on the whole a funny collection, but it's very short and light-hearted, and not likely to really satisfy you if you're looking for memorable detective stories. But as something you can read very quickly between heftier volumes, it's alright. I doubt this volume alone will convince anyone to seek out all the Ikagawa City books, especially as you don't see as much of the series characters in these stories due to the inverted format of most of the stories, but having read all of the novels, I did enjoy this brief return to the odd city. Now to see when I will tackle the other two collections...

Original Japanese title(s) 東川篤哉『探偵さえいなければ』: 「倉持和哉の二つのアリバイ」/「ゆるキャラはなぜ殺される」/「博士とロボットの不在証明」/『とある密室の始まりと終わり」/「被害者とよく似た男」

The Case of the Photo Finish

 Where do I 

Fit in the picture of your world

"Impossible" (Nadia Gifford)

Most of the books I discuss on the blog are part of a series, and I have mentioned before that's because I generally do like reading series. It's just convenient knowing, with some wiggle space, what you could expect from a certain book in advance if it's a series work, so I often end up reading a book in a series I am already familiar with (or perhaps of a writer I already know). If I read a book with the most brilliant alibi trick ever, it is just unlikely a book in the same series (written in the same period?) will turn out to be the absolute worst mystery novel I ever read, or at least, I assume so. So when I don't have any titles I want to read immediately for one reason or another, I usually end up picking up a book in a series I already know.

Not all series actually benefit from... being a series though, I realized as I read Aizawa Sako's Invert II - Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku ("Invert II - The Blind Spot in the Finder", 2022). This is the third book featuring Jouzuka Hisui, an attractive, mysterious woman who is a self-proclaimed "spiritual counselor". In the brilliant first book from 2019, Medium - Kourei Tantei Jouzuka Hisui ("Medium - The Medium Detective Jouzuka Hisui"), we learned that as a spirit medium, she had the power to channel of the deceased and see flashes of their dying moments. In the book, she teamed up with a mystery writer, who had to reverse-engineer Hisuis visions and find real proof and come up with a supporting line of reasoning to present to the police, as they weren't likely to believe them just saying "she channeled the victim". The book was exciting from start to finish, and could surprise you any time because it would use Hisui's abilities in rather unexpected ways. The second book, Invert - Jouzuka Hisui Toujoshuu ("Invert - A Collection of the Inverted Stories of Jouzuka Hisui" 2021), managed to keep this element of surprise and an air of mystery surrounding Hisui by presenting inverted mystery stories: by this time, the police is, reluctantly, working with Hisui as they recognize she has certain abilities that allows her to pull of things others can't, even though they don't really understand how and in Invert, we followed three different murderers who would be approached by a rather mysterious woman who'd claim she had channeling powers. At first, none of these murderers believe her of course, but you can imagine the shock when she tells the murderers things only the victim would know happened at the time of the murder, and she'd slowly connect those visions to real evidence of their guilt. What made this book work, once again, was that we never saw too much of Hisui and never knew what she had up her sleeve: in the first book we saw from the POV of the mystery writer who had to interpret her visions, in the second book we mainly follow the murderers. Invert II - Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku is, as the title suggest, however following the same format as the first Invert: the book contains two stories (one short story and one basically long enough to be considered a novel on its own). This of course already takes away a bit of the surprise element, as the book more-or-less follows the same formula as the previous book and it does feel like more of the same, which is very disappointing: I remember being very excited to realize how the format had changed between Medium and Invert, allowing for more surprises and mystery around Hisui, but Invert II just follows the trodden path.

Which isn't helped by a second element of this book I didn't really like: the focus on Hisui as a character. I think this is because the Jouzuka Hisui series had turned into a multimedia franchise by the time these stories were written: there's a manga adaptation by the artist behind the The Decagon House Murders manga and a live-action drama series started airing around the same period Invert II - Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku was released (with the first story adapted in the series too). The live-action series is pretty interesting by the way because it actually changed titles midway: the first half was based on, and named after Medium, but once they got past those stories, the series changed titles to Invert, and a new promotional poster was released, making it technically a "different" series (and of course, the stories then shifted to the inverted mystery format). But I have the feeling both stories found in Invert II were written with this expansion into different media in mind, with a bigger focus on Hisui as the protagonist, with probably more scenes focusing on Hisui personally and her private life in this book alone than in the two previous books combined. Like I mentioned earlier, one of the reason I think both Medium and Invert worked so well was because Hisui was a rather mysterious, hard-to-read character, which allowed for cool surprises sprung on the reader, but Invert II moves away from that and instead decides to reveal much more about her. The result is a book that is an okay inverted mystery story collection, but which misses that *extra* element of surprise the other two books had that made them especially good. Invert II is a normal inverted mystery collection, in a series that had been above normal, so it stands out a lot.

The first story is also a bit simple in set-up despite its length. In Seija no Kototsute ("Message of the Living"), Hisui and her assistant/housekeeper Makoto end up stranded on the road with their car, next to a dangerous-looking cliff, during a storm, so they run to the nearby house with the lights on they passed just a minute ago. They ring the bell and hope to be offered shelter until the storm is gone, but find the door open and a surprised teenager in the hall looking at the two beautiful women in wet shirts. But the reason Souta is surprised is actually because this isn't his home and the woman who lives her is lying upstairs dead with a knife in her body. This is actually the second house of a classmate of Souta, and Souta had been hiding here after running away from home. Never could he have dreamed the house would be used this very day though, so he fell asleep in one of the bedrooms, but then woke up when he heard the woman coming inside the house. After accidentally making a noise, the woman came upstairs suspecting a burglar and before Souta knew what had happened, they were struggling, they both fell on the floor and when he woke up, the mother of his classmate was lying dead in front of him. He had just cleaned his hands and face when Hisui and Makoto stepped inside the hall, so, yes, he was very surprised at the sight of the two women. As they're already inside, he can't really send them back outside in the storm, so he finds himself forced to play the role of someone who lives here, allowing them to stay here until the storm is over. Normally, a teenage boy would be more than excited about being to spend the night in a house with two beautiful women and his hormones certainly clouds his judgment at times, but there's still the body upstairs, and keeping up the lie of him living here becomes harder and harder as Hisui starts asking more questions...

Okay, this is an inverted mystery, but as Souta didn't plan any murders and he's honestly completely surrpised by the sudden stay of Hisui and Makoto, he obviously keeps making small mistakes and rather easy-to-see through lies. It's not really satisfying as an inverted mystery, as even Souta himself knows the lies he's been making are just barely believable ("I'm not on any of the family pictures because I don't like being in pictures") and while Hisui and Makoto usually let things slide, many parts of the Challenge to the Reader Hisui presents to the readers at the end of the story aren't really impressive: she asks us to identify what put her on the trail of Souta being not a resident of the home, while as the reader, you feel more like "in what way was Souta ever believable as a resident of this house???". Souta is just stumbling from one lie to another, so unlike most inverted mystery stories, it's not like you are trying to find the one flaw in an otherwise perfectly planned murder and the tone of the story, where Souta is also just fighting his hormones and fantasies of being alone with two beautiful older women, of which Hisui especially isn't shy of some physical contact, and your mileage will vary on that comedic element of the story. The big mystery is of course how Hisui will eventually find the corpse. There are some parts of the problem-solving that depend on things I usually like: Queen-like deductions based on physical evidence (like a woman's wallet lying on the table and wet sneakers outside) that allow Husui to deduce what happened, but some of these deductions seem a bit iffy, and one negative clue in particular didn't really work for me, because it was too much of a jump for me to have readers guess that would be missing simply based on what was found. So this was not my favorite story in the series by any means.

The second story, Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku ("The Blind Spot in the Finder") has Hisui becoming friends with Junko, a photographer who shares an interest in mystery fiction. Little does Hisui know that Junko's interest in mystery fiction actually sprang from the fact she's been planning murders, as she wants revenge on the bullies who are responsible for her younger sister's suicide many years ago. The victim is Kanon, a popular model who went freelance a while ago, who has no idea the photographer she has asked to take her new photographs is actually the sister of the girl she used to bully in high school. Kanon has been tormented by a stalker lately, so she had moved to a somewhat remote lodge near the mountains for some privacy, and it was here where her body was found in the bath tub, with some signs indicating her stalker had broken in and after a struggle, stabbed her. Police investigation however also leads to finding Kanon had contact with Junko lately about a photo shoot, and that Junko's sister's suicide had been caused by Kanon. She's questioned just to be sure, but she has an iron-clad alibi: for on the day Kanon was killed, in the afternoon (the estimated time of death), Junko had been together with... Hisui, going on a photo shoot date together. Hisui confirms she had been with Junko the whole day, spending the day at a park with Junko taking pictures of Hisui. She is also reluctant to look more into the case, as Junko's one of the few friends she has made since returning to Japan, but as the police investigation digs deeper into things, Hisui realizes Junko's alibi might not be as strong as believed.

While this is an inverted mystery story, we don't get to see the details of how Junko managed to have her alibi with Hisui for the time of the murder, so that's a big part of the mystery for the reader too. Another point about this story, is that it's only about Junko for about half of the narrative: a lot of the story is dedicated to Hisui herself, where we learn about how she's really fond of Junko as she has troubles making friends and this leading to her dilemma of not wanting to suspect her friend of murder. This look into Hisui's personal life and feelings on a case are what doesn't really work for me personally in this volume, as I loved the mysterious vibe of Hisui in the previous stories. This story is rather long, I have read full novels of about the same length, but for me, the story could've left these Hisui-focused parts out, and be about half the length it is now for a better, more focused mystery story, but I guess this focus on Hisui as a character is an intentional change in direction for this series. As a mystery story, I think its merits lie especially in the way to how it is proven how Junko managed to fake her alibi: the trick itself is perhaps not very surprising, though it's set-up well, but the clues leading up to this conclusion are really good: focusing on the state of physical evidence, theorizing about why they are in a certain state, and combining all of that together to a comprehensive line of reasoning. This is certainly the best part of the story: if the story had only been about the trick of Junko, it would have been an okay, but not remarkable story, but the clues leading to the conclusion defnitely make this better than it would've been otherwise.

So Invert II - Nozokimado [Finder] no Shikaku didn't manage to impress me as much as the really impressive Medium and the entertaining first Invert. This is due to a directional change I personally didn't really like, and that combined with the fact we only have two stories now, one of which is probably intentionally a bit lighter and more comedic than usual, we end up with a volume that has very little of what made the previous two volumes so memorable. The title story is a fine inverted mystery story with a focus on the logical reasoning leading to the downfall of the murderer, but I don't feel this book is a must-read in comparison to the previous two books, and to be honest, if an Invert III is released, I'll probably wait for a while before I return to this series, as I don't really feel compelled to read more of Invert right now. Though I'd be enticed to read more of Hisui again of course if the series takes another directional change, because I know Aizawa can come up with really surprising twists with this series when not sticking to any specific formula..

Original Japanese title(s): 『invert II 覗き窓の死角 』：「生者の言伝」/「覗き窓（ファインダー）の死角」

Ever After

 Made from a tree, 

But he's like you and me!

"Pinocchio: The Series"

Now I think about it, I have probably seen much more of Pinocchio: The Series (the Tatsunoko anime) than the Disney adaptation...

Don't forget: Netflix will be releasing the adaptation of the first book Akazukin, Tabi no Tochu Shitai to Deau ("And On Her Way, Little Red Riding Hood Met A Corpse" 2020), and it's directed by the person who also did 33pun Tantei!

After safely delivering her basket and solving a couple of murders along the way, Little Red Riding Hood returned home to her mother. One day, she happens to pick up a wooden arm lying by the road, left by two cats and a fox who were struggling with something inside a bag. To Little Red Riding Hood's big surprise, the arm can actually move on its own, and when she gives it a pencil, the arm starts to communicate: the arm belongs to Pinocchio, a wooden marionette who dreams of becoming a real boy, but some foolish life choices later he was sold off to a circus to do a living wooden puppet act: the fox and cats Little Red Riding Hood saw earlier were actually dragging Pinocchio back to the circus after a failed escape attempt, and his arm was accidentally left behind. Little Red Riding Hood's mother, quite aware of her daughter's rather sharp mind, tells her daughter to help the poor boy and get him out of the circus. And so Little Red Riding Hood's off with an arm in her basket as she travels the world to retrieve Pinocchio's body and help him become a real boy, but the way to the end of their quest is long, and along the way, she of course encounters fantastical murders she has to solve in Aoyagi Aito's 2022 short story collection Akazukin, Pinocchio wo Hirotte Shitai to Deau ("And After Picking Up Pinocchio, Little Red Riding Hood Met a Corpse").

By now, you should now the drill with these Once Upon A Time short story collections by Aoyagi. Akazukin, Pinocchio wo Hirotte Shitai to Deau is the fourth book in the series. The first and third books, titled Mukashi Mukashi Aru Tokoro ni, Shitai ga Arimashita ("Once Upon A Time, There Was A Body", 2019) and Mukashi Mukashi Aru Tokoro ni, Yappari Shitai ga Arimashita ("Once Upon A Time, There Really Was A Body", 2021) respectively, had Aoyagi turn well-known Japanese fairy tales and fables into puzzle plot murder mysteries, where the magical and fantastical of the original stories were used in surprising ways to present wonderful detective stories. The second volume however was about Western (European) fairy tales and fables and also had a slightly different set-up: whereas the "Japanese" volumes featured short stories which were not related to each other besides their themes, the four stories found in Akazukin, Tabi no Tochu Shitai to Deau ("And On Her Way, Little Red Riding Hood Met A Corpse" 2020) all formed one larger narrative together and featured a recurring detective character in the form of Little Red Riding Hood, who was travelling with her basket and who usually had to solve the murders along the way so she could continue with her journey. The fourth volume in this series follows this same set-up, with four stories (+ one intermezzo) that form one narrative about Little Red Riding Hood and (parts of) Pinocchio travelling together as they try to retrieve the marionette's body and make him a real boy.

Mokugekisha wa Deku no Bou ("The Eyewitness is a Wooden Boy") starts with Little Red Riding Hood finding Pinocchio's arm and learning about his predicement, so she quickly stuffs his arm in her basket and makes her way to the nearby town, where the circus is. She eventually watches the show and sees how Pinocchio (without one of his arms) is forced to do an act, but when she demands his release, Little Red Riding Hood is thrown out of the circus tent. She returns home with Pinocchio's arm to contemplate their next move, but the following day, Little Red Riding Hood is visited by the police, as the fox Antonio has been murdered in one of the circus tents last night, and there was an eyewitness who states Little Red Riding Hood was the killer. And this witness happens to be... the head of Pinoccio, a boy who can't lie or else his nose grows. And thus the weird situation arises where Pinocchio positively states Little Red Riding Hood is the killer of Antonio, even though she's here to save him. I have to admit I have never read Pinocchio or seen any adaptation completely, so I only know bits and pieces, a scene here and there. But while the idea of Pinocchio, a boy who can't lie, stating Little Red Riding Hood (our protagonist) is the killer, is a pretty funny to use pre-existing elements. In this story, we learn that Pinocchio had been taken apart as a punishment for messing up his act earlier in the day, and a series of accidents led to his head being in the tent just as Antonio was being killed, but so much of this mystery plot, about how Pinocchio could've "witnessed" Little Red Riding Hood commit the murder, hinges on elements that, as far as I know, don't come directly from the original Pinocchio story, so you can easily guess that these original elements will feature in the mystery one way or another. Which makes it a rather simple story, and where you also feel the story strays too far from the original Pinocchio story, taking away a lot of the charm. So I thought the opening story rather weak.

Onnatachi no Dokuringo on the other hand stays much closer to the source fairy tale and is also much more fun. It is a kind of inverted story, where we first learn about Hildehilde, a beautiful girl born in a village of witches, but who had no talent for witchcraft herself. She eventually ran away from her home village, with her mother's magic mirror, which allowed her to see anything she desired. Hildehilde eventually married the king of the Apfel Kingdom, who already had a daughter Snow White from a previous marriage. While things were good between Hildehilde and Snow White eventually, things soured after the king's death, and now Hildehilde sees no other way but to kill Snow White. However, the hunter she hired to kill Snow White betrayed her, and now Snow White is living with the seven dwarves in the forest, a fact she learned through her magic mirror. She now still plots Snow White's death. Little Red Riding Hood, having retrieved Pinocchio's head in the previous story, is still after the rest of his body as it was stolen at the end of the story, runs into one of the seven dwarves, and is invited for a meal at their home. Hildehilde witnesses all of this through her mirror, and eventually comes up with a plan to poison Snow White with a poisoned apple, but how will her plans go? This is a funny inverted-type of mystery, where we follow both Hildehilde and Little Red Riding Hood. In the Hildehilde side of the story, we see how the queen uses information she sees via her mirror as clues to come up with her poisoning plot, while in the Little Red Riding Hood parts, we follow a plot where first one of the dwarves is killed and Little Red Riding Hood slowly realizing what is going on. Telling more would be spoiling the best parts of the story, but this is a huge improvement over the first story, for while things like Hildehilde's backstory and everything may be original inventions, the core mystery plot makes good use of familiar elements like the magic mirror and the poisoned apple to present a fun 'battle of the wits'.

Little Red Riding Hood's quest then brings her to Hamelin in Hamelin no Saishuu Shinpan ("The Last Judgment of Hamelin"), where 45 years ago, the Pied Piper took away the town's children after the town refused to pay his reward for saving them from a plague of rats. The Pied Piper however was caught, and kept imprisoned in the town prison all this time because the laws don't allow for a death penalty. The Pied Piper has since then always played the mandelin every evening from his prison cell (they don't dare give him a pipe instrument). The people in Hamelin also always play music day and night, a kind of superstition as they are afraid of the same tragedy happening again so the idea is they'll drown out the Pied Piper's luring music. There is still a kind of curse hanging over the town though, as there are still next to no children born natively to the town. Little Red Riding Hood arrives just in time for the Hamelin Music Festival and becomes friends with some of the town council members, when on the first evening, everyone is warned: the Pied Piper has somehow escaped his prison, and killed a guard on his way out. Little Red Riding Hood has to figure out how the Pied Piper managed to escape his prison and how to catch him next. While this story is set decades after the original story, it still builds really well on the lore of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, with a town that is still visibly affected by the fact all the children were spirited away by an eerie tune almost fifty years ago. The mechanical explanation of how the Pied Piper managed to escape his prison isn't really impressive, but the explanation of why now, why he escaped after 45 years of imprisonment is good and is a good continuation of the original story.

The final story, Nakayoshi Kobuta no Mittsu no Misshitsu ("The Three Locked Rooms of the Three Little Pigs"), brings to Oinkburg, a town founded by the three little pigs. The town is divided in three sections with buildings made of straw, wood and bricks, as originally the three little pigs each built their own houses using those materials. And the whole town is full of factories, where.... other pigs work. Or technically, these are humans turned into pigs. The three little pigs have teamed up with a witch, turning humans into pigs and having them work as slaves in their straw/wood/brick factories to pay back their debts. You're supposed to be changed back into a human once you have paid back your debt, but of course, nobody has ever managed to do that. To the outside world however, the three little pigs pretend to be good businessmen who have started their own town with a good running economy, so they try to play nice to the tourists visiting the town, like Little Red Riding Hood. At least, that is only at the beginning, for Little Red Riding Hood soon notices there's a rift between the three little pigs, three brothers in fact, about how to run the town, and when one of the brothers is found dead in a straw house, she immediately suspects it's a locked room murder even though to the others, it seems just like an unfortunate accident of the victim falling on a knife. This isn't the only murder to occur in the town however, for soon a locked room murder follows inside a wooden building, and another in a brick building... This is a story that shares a lot of the points I didn't like about the opening story, in that while the idea of three locked rooms in buildings of different materials is fun, a lot of how these mysteries are resolved hinge on elements completely original to this specific story, which means they stand out and make it really easy to solve them. Both the straw and wooden locked rooms are solved within seconds, and even the brick one, which involves a brick wall being made in front of the (inward-opening) door) is solved rather too quickly, and that one is also clewed rather sloppily. There's more to this story in regards to mystery, as this story also involves the climax of the whole Pinocchio storyline, and Little Red Riding Hood herself is put in mortal peril as she's forced to confront the person who stole Pinocchio's story. This is similar to the finale to the previous collection, which also has Little Red Riding Hood having to use her wits to escape a dangerous situation, and while it's fine as a finale to the collection, it still feels a bit underwhelming in terms of surprise and cleverness. 

So all in all, I thought Akazukin, Pinocchio wo Hirotte Shitai to Deau was actually the least entertaining collection of the four released until now. While I love Little Red Riding Hood as a protagonist, and I think the middle two stories are really good at staying close to the source material while also spinning a good mystery story out of it, the opening and finale stories just feel just a tad too distant from the source fairy tales/fables, adding too many original elements that stand out, making it far too easy to guess what the story will do with those elements. Whereas the Snow White and Pied Piper of Hamelin stories stick closer to the source material and build on elements already seen in the original stories, which mean these elements don't stand out nearly as much, making them more surprising when you do see how they were used to facilitate the mystery. I'll still read this series as long as Aoyagi keeps on writing them, as on the whole, it's an entertaining series, but this one was clearly not as strong as previous entries.

Original Japanese title(s): 青柳碧人『赤ずきん、ピノキオ拾って死体と出会う』:「目撃者は木偶の坊」/「女たちの毒リンゴ」/「ハーメルンの最終審判」/「なかよし子豚の三つに密室」

Invisible Green

To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man—the mystery, the power, the freedom.

"The Invisible Man"

For some reason I thought the original 2020 paperback release of this book had a different cover with a more greenish tint, and the 2022 pocket release had similar, but different art with a more blueish tone, but it turns out they have the exact same cover...

I quite enjoyed the two novels by Atsukawa Tatsumi I read previously, so it was only a matter of time before I would try out his short stories, as I tend to prefer the the short story format when it comes to mystery fiction. Toumei Ningen wa Misshitsu ni Hisomu ("An Invisible Person is Lurking in the Locked Room") was originally published in 2020 and consists of four short mystery stories, which are all unrelated to each other. The only connection between the various stories is that each story has a clear source of inspiration: each story is book-ended with a short bibliography with the stories that served as inspiration or helped deepen his tale. Sometimes, the stories are directly based on the premise of the main inspiration source, sometimes it's just a single sentence that helped this imagination. If I had to voice a "complaint" about this short story collection however, is perhaps that it's rather short, and not having a real connecting theme between the four stories means that while I did generally enjoy all of them, the book as a whole doesn't really leave much of an impression. It's over before you know it and perhaps works well as an 'inbetweener' between longer books, but I think that for example in the future, if I were to refer back to this work, I am more likely to recommend a specific story from this collection, rather than the collection as a whole because everything is so disconnected away. This doesn't mean the book is bad, the opposite actually, but it somehow still lacks impact because it's all over too soon.

The title and opening story Toumei Ningen wa Misshitsu ni Hisomu ("An Invisible Person is Lurking in the Locked Room") is inspired by H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man and tells about a worldwide disease which makes people invisible. People slowly turn completely invisible, including their bodily fluids and human waste and for the moment, No permanent cure has been found yet, and society has learned to adapt to the people with invisibility condition. Modern society generally only works if everyone is visible, for even doing groceries or walking down the street can be difficult if people can't see you and constantly walk into you, so invisible people are expected to either use make-up to become visible, or take daily inhibitor pills that turn them visible again, The story starts with narration by an invisible married woman, who one day learns a professor at a nearby university is close to producing a permanent cure to the invisibility disease. The woman decides she needs to kill the professor and destroy his research, and plans his murder: her plan involves parking near the university, undress completely and in her invisible state, sneak inside the lab offices and kill the professor. She meticulously plans her deed, plotting which route to take so she won't bump into people, stop taking her inhibitor pills early in the week so she becomes invsible again, but masking that fact by wearing make-up and even making sure to have an easy to digest breakfast, as until the food is digested, you'd see food flying around. The woman manages to slip in the lab and indeed kills the professor, but then loud cries come from the other side of the door. At that moment, we switch to the viewpoint of the husband, who first thought his wife might be cheating on him and hired a private detective to trail her, and eventually, the two realized the woman was planning to kill the professor. They arrived at the lab just after the murder occured, and together with two students, they enter the room and immediately lock it behind them, for they know the murderer, the invisible murderer must still be inside the room. And thus starts a game of cat and mouse, where the four men try to catch the invisible murderer hiding in the lab, while our murderer knows that if she manages to escape this locked room, they can never prove she killed the professor.

An incredibly fun premise and it's almost a shame this is a short story, because there is a lot of potential for more! Because of the relatively short length of the tale, the game of cat and mouse is over pretty soon, but it's a fun one: the four men know the murderer is somewhere in the room as the professor is dead and nobody had opened the door since he was last seen alive by his students, but it's a pretty spacious lab with desks for the various students, so how are they going to find an invisible person here? They try all kinds of things to search the spacious room, but also have to be careful she doesn't attack them suddenly in an attempt to escape. Meanwhile, the invisible woman has staked all her bets on one attempt to escape this room, and it's a pretty daring one and while after a while, you probably start to guess what she's doing, it's a perfectly well-clewed solution to her situation. But it's all over rather soon, and you just wish Atsukawa had done more with the idea of the invisibility disease. Perhaps as a follow-up novel?

Rokunin no Nekkyou Suru Nihonjin ("Six Enthusiastic Japanese") is inspired by Mitani Kouki's play 12nin no Yasashii Nihonjin ("Twelve Gentle Japanese"), itself a parody of the film Twelve Angry Men. In Twelve Angry Men, we had jury members in a murder trial who were immediately convinced of the defendant's guilt, 12nin no Yasashii Nihonjin started with the jury members all being convinced the defendant is not guilty, so what is this story about? The narrator is a professional judge, who together with two other professional judges and six lay judges are deliberating over a murder trial. The defendant and victim were both fans of the idol group Cutie Girls, and they had been travelling together to attend to a two-day event of Cutie Girls. The victim had been murdered in their room at an inn, apparently they were watching a DVD of Cutie Girls together when they started arguing resulting in an unfortunate lethal blow. Initially, most lay judges seem to agree the defendant is guilty as he has confessed to the crime, but one isn't convinced, and as he starts zooming in on all kinds of facts at the crime scene, the others are slowly won over and together, they arrive at a rather surprising solution... This story is really funny, and definitely intended as a kind of parody. The crime scene is rather unique in that the story utilizes a lot of "idol otaku props", like glow sticks, idol calls and more, and you get surprisingly deep deduction chains about something like the proper way to store a glow stick. The big climax of the story is really something you have to behold, and while I think that the individual deductions are not super memorable, the "punchline" of this story definitely is.

Touchou Sareta Satsujin ("The Tapped Murder") introduces us to Mimika, a young woman who works at a detective agency and who has superior powers of hearing, being able to make out the smallest of noises. But that's all she can do however, so usually, it is her boss who has to make the connections based on the evidence Mimika heard. Their current case however, is special. For the last week, they had been investigating Kunisaki Chiharu, whose husband suspected she was cheating on him. With the help of the husband, they planted a teddy bear with a sound recorder inside it in the sitting room, but one day Chiharu was killed in the sitting room. When the teddy bear was discovered, the detective agency of course became a momentary target of investigation by the police, so now Mimika's boss wants Mimika to help clear their name. The teddy bear had indeed recorded the moment of the actual murder, and while listening to the audio file, Mimika hears a faint dissonant tone, but she can't figure out what the noise exactly is. Because they know the husband himself was actually also cheating on his wife himself, they suspect he might be the murderer, and they come up with an excuse to visit the apartment and the crime scene again, with Mimika trying to figure out what the dissonant tone was she heard during the murder and whether it can help them solve this case. This is a story that I really would have wanted to experience as an audio drama! The mystery of the dissonant tone and other hidden "audio" clues in the audio file are all fairly clever, though I do think more clues pointing directly to the murderer would've been nice, but reading about these clues you were supposed to hear does make it feel a bit less impressive than I think it should be. Definitely a fun take for a mystery story though. In fact, it's a shame you don't really have "direct-to-audio" mystery fiction...

Dai 13-gou Senshitsu Kara no Dasshutsu ("Escape from Cabin 13") is inspired by Jacques Futrelle's The Problem of Cell 13, but with a very modern twist: escape rooms! Kaito is a high school student who is attending a special invitation-only preview of an escape room event of the popular series Great Detective Sakuragi. The murder game event is held on a ship and has the participants solve a series of puzzles which will eventually lead them to the identity of the murderer. At the event, Kaito runs into his classmate Masaru, with whom he has a kind of a rivalry going. Masaru and his younger brother Suguru are sons of a wealthy family who happen to be sponsoring this event, which landed them the special invitations. During the game however, Kaito and Suguru are abducted by men dressed as sailors and held captive in Cabin 13, while for some reason Masaru keeps on playing the escape room game. Why were Kaito and Suguru captured, can they escape their predicement and why is Masaru still playing the game? I believe this is the longest story in the collection, and it is pretty "busy": we have Kaito and Suguru trying to figure out how to escape the cabin, but meanwhile Masaru is playing the escape room event as planned, so we get the four puzzles in the event to solve ourselves too. Of course, the big surprise is to see how these two plotlines eventually connect back together again, and while I do like the basic ideas behind this story, it somehow didn't quite work for me. The plot of the story is a bit reminscent of Detective Conan treasure hunts, with a few puzzles with a hidden meaning behind them, and while I like the big connection that is revealed, the actual puzzles of the escape room didn't really interest me (they are also discussed rather briefly), while the escape attempts from Cabin 13 also move rather slowly. 

As mentioned in the introduction, I think Toumei Ningen wa Misshitsu ni Hisomu on the whole has some pretty good stories: three of the four I really like, and I don't really dislike the last either. But the stories are all very short, so especially the first story feels like it has an underutilized premise and because the book is so short, I also kinda hesitate recommending this in this specific form, as a short story collection. I will gladly point to the title story if I happen to be talking about invisible murderers in the future, but perhaps some of these stories will make their way into an anthology or something like that, and you might as well read them there then. 

Original Japanese title(s): 阿津川辰海『透明人間は密室に潜む』:「透明人間は密室に潜む」/「六人の熱狂する日本人」/「盗聴された殺人」/「第13号船室からの脱出」

The Dead File

"Oh, oh, one more thing before I forget."

"Prescription: Murder"

I can't quite recall which episodes of Columbo I first saw, though I have distinct memories of watching some kind of rerun of the first two episodes of season 8, Columbo Goes to the Guillotine and Murder, Smoke and Shadows on television. Though I think I already knew Columbo at that point, so that means I had already seen episodes before those...

While I often take a look inside the little free library in the town centre, it's not often I take something back with me. Of course, sometimes, you manage to stumble upon Christianna Brand, but more often than not, I leave empty-handed, or it's a book I end up returning swiftly because it was not very interesting. Today's book was one I was surprised to see in the free library and I immediately took it with me: William Harrington's The Grassy Knoll (1993) was Harrington's first original tie-in novel based on the Columbo series, which would be followed by a few others. The book introduces us to TV-host Paul Drury of The Paul Drury Show, a rather popular live talkshow, not in the least due to Paul Drury's personal interest in a topic that has interested Americans for decades: the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. The experience of actually having been there as a child when this happened turned into an obsession, and Drury has dedicated almost fifty shows to the JFK assassination, inviting historians, legal experts and people with new theories to appear on the show. The real star however is Drury himself, who has a gigantic database on everything JFK-related and is always ready to fact-check anyone on the show or callers back home. But what Drury didn't know about, was his own murder-to-be. After another show on JFK, Drury returns home in the evening, only to be ambushed in his own garage by Tim Edmonds, the producer of the show, and Alicia Graham Drury, assistant-producer on the show, but also Tim's current lover and Paul Drury's ex-wife. They swiftly murder the star of The Paul Drury Show, and also set-up things so it looks like a burglary and arrange for a false alibi for themselves, and the following day, the two naturally appear at the house again after the discovery of the murder by the housekeeper, playing the roles of the shocked producer and ex-wife. At first, they seem rather delighted to see this scruffy detective Lt. Columbo lead the investigation, but as times passes by, Alicia in particular starts to realize there's more to the man than meets the eye. Meanwhile, a virus is used to wipe out Paul Drury's computers and his whole JFK database at the office, which seems to suggests his murder is related to this database, but how?

The Grassy Knoll is a novel that often feels very much like a Columbo story like you'd see on television, but at the same time, it often feels very much unlike a classic Columbo story. Some elements, I will let slide because this book was published in 1993, so after the (relatively) newer series of Columbo which sometimes do have a different vibe compared to the original series. A bit more sex, Paul Drury apparently liking to walk around naked, not exactly what I expect from classic Columbo, but I could imagine things like that in the series from season 8 on. And the fact that the narration actually refers to Mrs. Columbo, confirming her to be absolutely alive and all is also something later Columbo seasons did, having third parties confirm her existence, though I must admit I always loved the ambiguity regarding her existence of the earlier seasons. But on the whole, we have an inverted mystery story set in the flashy television world of Los Angeles, we have murderers who think they are thousand steps ahead of Columbo and make fun of him only to find that the man is slowly but surely learning the truth by asking a lot of questions and finally, it all comes falling down. In that sense, The Grassy Knoll is of course what you'd expect of a Columbo novel.

But one thing that does make this feel very much unlike any other Columbo stories is the focus on the JFK assassination. Apparently, the other Columbo original novels by Harrington also tackled real world crimes, but it's just something I didn't really like about this book, as it is definitely more just 'fluff' or a thing only Paul Drury was on about, the actual murder becomes a major theme of the book when Columbo starts suspecting Drury's obssession with the case is what led to his murder, so some parts of the book have Columbo actually looking into the JFK assassination and learn the details about that death and theories regarding the "true" shooter. It is weird seeing Columbo investigating a real world crime, and while he doesn't come up with some history-altering theory about this murder, it was still something that felt out of place to me, even though it is apparently Harrington's hook for this series of books.

The mystery plot itself is also slightly different from what you'd expect of a Columbo. Yes, it is an inverted mystery, with the murderers having created a false alibi for themselves for the murder, but this element isn't even the most important part of the story: the false alibi is torn apart rather easily, and when you come to the end, you'll realize there's not really a "big" satisfying moment where Columbo laid a clever trap, or where the murderers made a truly "oh, in hindsight I should've seen that coming" mistake (their biggest "mistake" was just having a rather simple plan...). The murder itself, and the way Columbo solves whodunnit are Columbo-esque in form, but in terms of feeling as satisfying as the best of Columbo episodes, like the gotcha moments in episodes like Suitable for Framing or A Case of Immunity, you won't find that here. It doesn't help that Tim and Alice aren't really interesting opponents either. What the mystery is mostly about, is the reason why Tim and Alice killed Paul Drury. We soon learn that Tim and Alice are actually in contact with a third person in regards to this murder, and most of the mystery for the reader is figuring out why Tim and Alice decided to kill the star of their show. This quest into the motive brings Columbo even outside Los Angeles for a short period, and ultimately links back to the JFK assassination in some way, but as I mentioned above, I didn't really like the real-world crime connections here, so it kinda fell flat for me. I think the idea behind the motive itself is interesting, just that it doesn't really belong in Columbo.

As a 1993 book, the book is interesting in the way it was modern for the time when it comes to the usage of computers, but it's really dated when you read it now, which is quite funny. We're not just talking about the police doing 'zoom and enhance' on pictures and having to explain what a virus is, but also Columbo being impressed by computers with dozens of megabytes of storage space or computer back-ups on hundreds of floppy disks.

I wouldn't say The Grassy Knoll feels completely unlike a Columbo story, for that is not true. It has all those trademark moments and lines you should expect of a Columbo tie-in novel. But the murder mystery itself is not particularly memorable and when the book goes deeper into the matter of motive, it does feel like it's doing something you normally wouldn't expect of the series, and your mileage may vary on how much you like that. Tone-wise, the book is also a bit closer to the last few seasons of Columbo, which I'll admit are not my favorite seasons, so that plays a role too in how I feel about the book. But still, it was perfectly fine for a book I found in the free library!

Weave a Tangled Web

" Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."

"The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

You may have noticed the new tab at the top of the page mentioning Higurashi: When They Cry. Yes, I have started my visit to Hinamizawa recently and am currently playing Higurashi: When They Cry. Like last year, when I was playing Umineko: When They Cry, I'll be keeping notes there about each seperate chapter while I try to figure out what's happening in Hinamizawa, jotting down the questions and suspicions I have after finishing each chapter. Obviously, there'll be spoilers for the various chapters, so you probably should only look if you're familiar with the franchise. I'm going in mostly blind by the way (not even seen the various anime adaptations) so no spoilers please! Note that I am playing the Switch version though, which is a bit different than the more popular PC version, also following a different order. I'll probably be going through the game slowly, so I'll try to mention it in the regular posts too whenever there's an update.

Anyway, as I'm writing about mystery games anyway, I figured I might as well write a short short on some mystery games I played recently, especially the games that were fun, but not really deep enough to write a whole post about, so perfect to just throw on one heap and discuss briefly together.

Last year, I wrote a short article on the Kibukawa Ryousuke series, a series of mystery games which were originally released on feature phones in Japan. Due to the collective jump to smartphones, a lot of feature phone games are now lost media, but luckily, publisher G-Mode has been releasing ports of feature phone games on the Switch (and occasionally Steam) for over a year now, saving these games from obscurity. The Kibukawa Ryousuke series was perhaps the biggest feature phone-original series, spanning nearly two dozen of games. G-Mode has been publishing these at a fairly steady rate and I still plan to write a larger post about the series in general in the future, because while not every single release is as interesting as others, I think there are some entries that are worth highlighting.

Another feature phone game series that had always interested me was Izumi Case Files, developed by G-Mode and at one time popular enough to even warrant a DS release. The series ran from 2002-2009 and in it you play as Izumi, editor of the famous mystery novelist Kyougetsu Masamune, who often gets involved in murder cases, forcing Izumi to solve the murders to get Kyougetsu back to work again. One characteristic of this series was that each game would play out at a different (touristic) location, and that the team would actually travel to do research on the location (despite the limited budget!). G-Mode recently ported the first volume Shiosai to the Switch, and it's a very limited, but promising series. These games were originally released for feature phones (with limited storage space), and unlike some feature phones, these games did not work with a subscription model, where they'd cut a game up in different parts which you could download seperately each time you finished the previous one. Izumi Jiken File: Shiosai Hen (2002) was just a single download app, and an early one too, so it's really, really small in scope and you'll be done within forty minutes. In this first episode, Izumi is informed by Kyougetsu that he's distracted by a murder he heard about while visiting the harbor town of Shiosai in Kanagawa and that he thinks he knows who did it. Izumi has to investigate the murder herself to confirm Kyougetsu's suspicions and thus she's off to the harbor, where a man waiting for a fishing buddy was found murdered on one of the docks in the early morning.

 

The game is very simple: you just talk with all the suspects, have a look at the various locations and then it's the finale already: talk with Kyougetsu, who will ask you a few questions to see if you know who did it and point out how you came to that conclusiom. This is done by pointing out some contradictions between the various testimonies you got, and that part of the puzzle is okay, even if a bit simple in design. After answering Kyougetsu's questions, he'll say whether you were right or not, and then give you the option of whether to rethink your answers, or just continue on with the game, as Kyougetsu will explain the case and the clues anyway. Very simple game, made for simpler times for simpler machines, but I do like the realistic tone of the game and as feature phones evolved and more storage space became available, I assume these games also developed, become greater in scope (something very noticable with the Kibukawa Ryousuke series), so it's a game that is not a recommendation on its own, but it certainly is worth keeping an eye on this.

In Kitfox Games' Lucifer Within Us (2020), the player takes up the role of Sister Ada, an excorcist of the Church of Ain Soph. The deity Ain Soph is believed to have banished Lucifer and his horde of deaemons to the Aether a century ago, allowing for the world to flourish and develop into the high-tech world it is now, where cybernetic enhancements to the bodya re normal and sophisticated machines are powered by the Aether. Murder too has been a sin forgotten in this world, at least, that is until the start of this game, because Ada is asked to investigate a mysterious death, which may actually be the first murder committed in over a century. However, the only way a murder could happen in this world, is if a Daemon has managed to escaped the Aether and corrupted a person into committing the murder, so Ada's task is not only to solve the mysterious death, but to also identify which of Lucifer's minions have made their way back to the human world to corrupt mankind again.

Lucifer Within Us is a very interesting mystery game, that builds on familiar mechanics, but blended into a very original and promising game... that unfortunately is also way too short to really make the best of its amusing gameplay ideas. The game throws you right into a case from the beginning, where you're introduced with the core mechanic: timelines. Each suspect you interrogate will give an account of what they were doing around the time of the murder, which is reflected on a timeline, which you can play like a video, with the timeline divided into smaller segments to indicate the precise action they were doing at a specific time. However, as you listen to more and more suspects, you'll notice that their claims sometimes contradict each other: Suspect A for example may say they saw Suspect B picking up the murder weapon at 01:00, while Suspect B's story has them relaxing behind their desk at that times. By pointing out these contradictions between stories, you can force suspects to change their stories and tell you what they were really doing. The idea of allowing players to pick out contradictions was of course introduced by the Ace Attorney series, but has since seen various implementations. The idea seen in Lucifer Within Us is similar to what the demo of Armchair Detective did too, allowing you point out contradictions between various suspect testimonies, though Lucifer Within Us's presentation is very different, showing an isometric 3D world where you can actually see each testimony playing out on the screen, with characters moving around the map and telling you what they were doing and what they saw. Each time you point out an inconsistency in a suspect's story, you also gain an opportunity to peek into their "sanctum" (psyche), scanning their mind for markers and traits that might indicate certain Daemons.  By checking a compendium on Daemons, you can identify what Deamon is behind the murder. Eventually, the goal is to match up the various timelines and identify who the murderer is, when the crime was committed, the weapon and the motive, ultimately leading into the identification of the Deamon that has corrupted the mind of the culprit.

Seeing the different testimonies play out on your screen is interesting, and the way the game has you compare the various accounts to find contradictions is fun, making these investigative puzzle parts the highlight of the game, but ultimately, Lucifer Within Us is just far too short to really make an impression. The game offers three cases, which all take about an hour or so, but it feels like too little is done with the concept. The first case barely differs from the the last in terms of difficulty or clever plotting/hidden contradictions and the overall story the game tries to tell feels rushed, with surprise plot twists not feeling as such in any way because the player has barely been settled into the world and characters. The small scale of the game is perhaps best represented by the idea of the Daemon compendium: the idea of having to identify a corrupting Daemon is fun, but there are like only 4 or 5 Deamons in that thing! The game tries to sell itself as a game twice, thrice as big, but it isn't, making it feel a bit underwhelming by the time you're done, which is a shame, because I do think the core ideas work well, it's just the execution doesn't macht the potential of the ideas. 

Last one today is Inkle Studio's Overboard! (2021), a simple but very fun inverted mystery game. Set in the 1930s on board of the SS Hoook you play as Veronica Villensey, who has just thrown her husband overboard in the night, and with some hours left until the ship will arrive in New York, it's up to you to erase all traces of your crime and get away scot-free. Each action you take in the game will take a certain amount of time, and the other passengers and the crew on the SS Hook all have their own schedules to. People you meet might ask you about your husband, and others might even have heard something suspicious last night, but it's up to you to deal with any problems that might pop up and make sure your stories to the various unique characters match as the ship approaches its destination.

One of the most unique licensed detective games was Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo - Hoshimitou - Kanashimi no Fukushuuki, based on the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo series. But in that game, you didn't get to play as the series protagonist, but as a murderer, who has to plan and commit their murders, without getting caught by the series' hero! This was a very memorable game, and there never has been anything similar to that game, until the release of Overboard!. That said, Overboard! is more limited in scale. Your first two playthroughs make take about thirty minutes or so, but afterwards you'll start to realize what you have to do and manage to speed-read through most of the game. As this is an inverted mystery, the "mystery" of this game is of course the question: how are you going to get away with murder? Each action you take, from visiting the deck to having lunch or chatting with fellow passengers about what they may have heard last night will take a certain amount of time. The clock will keep on ticking, and each character has their own schedule, so sometimes you might find that a character you want to speak to isn't available at that moment, because they are napping. 

The first playthrough, it's likely the passengers will notice your husband has disappeared from the ship and ultimately realize that you killed your husband. But no problem! You are supposed to play through the game multiple times to learn the best and most efficient way to get away with murder. That character who heard you throwing your husband from the ship last night? Perhaps this time, you can convince them that what they heard was something else. That piece of evidence you dropped on the deck? The second time, you'd better get there early to pick it up yourself. With each subsequent playthrough, you'll identify what problems lie on your path to freedom (the mysteries), and through trial and error, you'll find the correct actions (and the time to do them!) that will solve those problems (the solutions). It's a simple game that will take just a few hours to get through, but the presentation is really good (as is the voice acting), and it's a short, but memorable experience. Especially enjoyable I think for those who don't usually play games, as this is very easy in terms of mechanics and controls.

Three very different games, which basically only have in common that they are all relatively short. Of these three titles, I think Overboard! that has made the best of its potential, as it does appear to get the most out of the idea without overstaying its welcome. Lucifer Within Us feels like it has the potential of becoming something much greater, and feeling too short at this moment, while  Izumi Jiken File: Shiosai Hen might have very harsh hardware limitations, but that doesn't take away the fact it's really, really short. Oh well, what isn't short is Higurashi: When They Cry, and I'll be busy with that for the coming months, though hopefully I'll be (mostly) done by the time The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story will be released, because I'm really looking forward to that new game by one of the writers of 428 and the director of Trick X Logic! Anyway, if people here want to share something about these games or about some interesting mystery games they have played lately, comments are always welcome!

Original Japanese title(s): 『いづみ事件ファイル Vol 1: 潮騒編』

The Dying Game

「この世界は不思議に満ちている。どんなにあり得ないことでも起こり得る」

『名探偵に甘美なる死を』

"This world is brimming with the unknown. No matter how impossible it seems, anything can happen."

""Delicious Death" for Detectives"

Anyone here reading the manga Delicious in Dungeon by the way? I absolutely love it...

It's the very distant year of 2024 and the world has finally started moving forward again after an unparalleled pandemic called COVID-19 basically stopped the lives of everyone on the world. The last few years, many people were forced to stay at home, but there was one industry that profited from everyone barely getting out of their houses: the video game industry. The VR game industry in particular grew immensely, as the technology allowed people to go outside and explore fabulous locations, without actually going outside physically. One of the major companies to benefit from the increased popularity is Megalodon Soft, best known for its hit open-world RPG Battle Without Honor and the unique detective game Mystery Maker. The latter is of course similar to Super Mario Maker, allowing players to solve murder mysteries in a VR environment, but more importantly allowing players to create their own cases to challenge other players. Especially popular is the real-time versus mode, where one player has to plan and commit a murder in real-time, with other players roaming around on the stage. Once, and if the murderer succeeds in killing off one of the other participants, an investigation phase follows where all the players (including the unknown murderer) are allowed to investigate the scene for clues and question each other. The unique gameplay made Mystery Maker an immense hit, and Megalodon Soft is already working on its sequel, which also includes upgraded hardware: besides the usual VR-goggles and gloves, players can now wear a special feedback suit which can also simulate temperatures and a sensation of pain among others. The suit also synchronizes with the hardware module RHAPSODY, a special seat regulating the VR-environment and it has the advantage of making you not look like a fool in the eyes of the other people i the room while playing a VR game.

As part of the marketing campaign of Mystery Maker 2, Kurata Chiaki, the producer of the Mystery Maker series, plans to invite eight amateur detectives to play a session of the upcoming game within RHAPSODY. The idea is that they'll record everything, both inside the VR world and in the real world, to make a kind of web-series/documentary and show how these amateur detectives tackle a case. Freelance journalist Kamo, who has written on miscarriages of justice, is one of the people invited as an amateur detective, but he is asked a special favor by Kurata: she wants Kamo to become the murderer in their session of Mystery Maker 2. She hopes he can come up with a brilliant murder to fool the other seven detectives and stay undetected himself. Kamo agrees, and is given some time in advance to work with the development team to plan his fictional murders and to implement the things he wants for his plan into the special stage the eight detectives will be playing. Three months later and the eight amateur detectives are brought to a small island. The Megaladon House on this island is of course owned by the company, and they'll be playing the game and recording everything in this private building due to security reasons, as the game is still in development. Among the other guests are a famous private detective, a former police detective who still appears regularly on television as a criminal expert and a high school student detective. And then there's Yuuki, a budding mystery writer who also happens to the cousin of Kamo's wife. But they have only just arrived on the island, when everyone is knocked out by their coffee. When they wake up, they find that the only people inside the Megalodon House are the eight detectives. They find instructions that tell them to wear their personal VR gear found in their room and log-in in their ID-locked RHAPSODY units to come to the VR world.

Inside the VR world, they find themselves in the Doll House, the setting of the murder game Kamo had planned. However, someone has taken over as the Game Master, and it's the same person who is keeping them captured inside the Megalodon House in the real world too. They are informed that the smart watches they are wearing have a poisonous injection installed into them and are advised to obey the game master's orders, especially as these injections are also installed in the smart watches "gifted" to the participants earlier on, and which they have all given to their loved ones, meaning people like Kamo's wife and daughter, and Yuuki's girlfriend, are in danger too. The game master's orders are simple though: the eight detectives are to play a game of Mystery Maker 2 as planned. The Murderer (Kamo) has to try to commit his murders undetected in the Doll House, while the Normal Players have to figure out who committed the murders and how. The game is divided in a Murder Phase, where in principle only the Murderer is allowed to move inside the Doll House to commit his crime (the others are to stay in their room, but are allowed to "fight" back against the Murderer), and an Investigation Phase, where the Normal Players can investigate the murder, while the Murderer of course has to remain undetected by pretending to be a Normal Player too. However, the Game Master makes this virtual game of life and death, one of real life and death. One of the eight amateur detectives is actually an accomplice of the Game Master called the Executioner. If the Murderer is found out by the others, or if a Normal Player makes a wrong deduction, the Executioner will kill them in the real world in the Megaladon House as punishment. Kamo is thus forced to commit murders in the VR world, while in the real world, everyone is on their guard for the Executioner, but it doesn't take long for locked room murders to occur both in the VR Doll House and the real Megalodon House. But who is the murderer? The Game Master has dubbed this game "Delicious Death" for Detectives, which is also the English title of Houjou Kie's Meitantei ni Kanbi naru Shi wo (2022).

 My first post of 2020 was about Houjou Kie's fantastic debut novel Jikuu Ryokousha no Sunadokei ("The Hourglass of the Time-Space Traveller", 2019), and last year's first post was about her second, equally impressive novel Kotou no Raihousha ("Visitors on the Remote Island" 2020). I had hoped that 2022's first post could be about her third novel, but while the previous books were released late fall/early winter, Meitantei ni Kanbi naru Shi wo was released in the second week of January 2022, hence it not becoming 2022's first post. But you guess from my intention to make it the first post, that I had been looking forward to this book. Which is of course because I loved her first two novels. Houjou is a former member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club and also wrote whodunnit stories back then, and it shows in her writing style: these books are pure grand-scale puzzlers, plotted incredibly densely with almost any action, and utterence being a valid piece to the puzzle. While at one hand, you can feel Houjou is really trying to play as fair as possible with the crazy amount of clues laid down, these stories have also been deliciously hard to solve, challenging you to do long chains of reasoning in order to solve the impossible murders seen in her books and personally, it's the style of detective fiction I love best. The other interesting part about her writing is that she loves special settings: her debut novel Jikuu Ryokousha no Sunadokei was a much a fair-play classic puzzler as you can get, but also included the brilliant plot device of time travel, while her second book Kotou no Raihousha cleverly had the characters fight against a true mystery, a being of unknown origins, of which they had to deduce its capabilities and intentions based on its actions and inactions. Houjou managed to write brilliant detectives using original, supernatural ideas, so I was really looking forward to the third novel in the so-called Ryuuzen Clan series, as these books all involve family members of the Ryuuzen clan. Meitantei ni Kanbi naru Shi wo features the both protagonists from the two previous books by the way: Kamo being the protagonist of the first book, and Ryuuzen Yuuki of the second.

Going from themes of time travel and unearthly beings to... a VR game might sound a bit... tame in that regard. Because while the VR-system in this book is slightly more advanced than the things we have now, it's not like the setting is really unusual or "special", because consumers have had access to VR games for years. And while the concept of the closed circle death game, where people are locked up in a location and forced to kill each other while others try to figure out who the murderer is, might not be as popular in detective novels, gamers are very, very familiar with them with popular games like Danganronpa, the Zero Escape series and many, many more about this exact theme (Oh, by the way, I started with The Sekimeiya a while back. It's both very fast, and very slow, so no idea when I'll be done with it...).  And the concept of having special phases for the murders is of course not only familiar for digital gamers (Danganronpa again), but also for real-life board game players who play games like Mafia/Werewolf. So on paper, Meitantei ni Kanbi naru Shi wo might feel not as exciting as Houjou's previous books. Especially not after my over-convoluted summary above!

Because in actuality, the plot of this book gets going surprisingly fast and it basically never stops until the very, very end, keeping you hooked all the way through. Because of the Game Master's rules, the story follows a basic "gameplay loop" of a Murder Phase, followed by an Investigation Phase in the VR World, which will lead to an accusation by one of the Normal Players aimed at who they think is the Murderer within "Delicious Death" for Detectives, while the accused is also given a chance to rebute these accusations. This is followed by a Murder Phase in the real world, where the players are forced to stay in their rooms while the Executioner tries to kill the person who failed in their role earlier in the VR game, which then loops back into a new cycle in "Delicious Death" for Detectives. The eight detectives are given two days to solve all the murders that occur in the closed circles in both in the VR world and the real world (with Kamo, as the Murderer in the game, having an advantage of knowing what happened in the game, but he'll be killed if any of the players figure his crimes out without figuring out those of the Executioner). Because all these phases follow each other and this insane death game keeps on going until the end of the book, Meitantei ni Kanbi naru Shi wo ends up being a very, very densely plotted mystery novel, with accusations, false solutions, clues and foreshadowing constantly flying around. There's the inverted angle for example, as we as the reader know Kamo is the Murderer in the game, but we don't see exactly how he manages to pull off his impossible murders there, so there's plenty of mystery there already, even without considering the other murders committed by the Executioner! Then you have the various characters arguing theories about the murders happening in the Doll House in the VR world, investigations in the locked room murders in the real world, people discussing the reason why they're being held by the Game Master in the first place, and so much more.. And with murders occuring both in the VR world and the real world, this book is truly a treat for those who love solving puzzles.

By the way, I love how the game Mystery Maker is portrayed in this novel. You can clearly tell Houjou is from a generation who grew up playing video games, as the way the game is shown feels so natural to gamers, all the way down to the little things. While the idea of RHAPSODY and VR suits feel a bit "near-futuristic", the actual "game grammar" will feel naturalistic to gamers with little details like having item descriptions for in-game items in your inventory, having save points and floating name markers. The Game Master also immediately rules out the cliched "they were using fake in-game names!' trick that is so outdated now, showing that Houjou is definitely a "contemporary" writer who plays games and is familiar with the cliches of how games in (mystery) fiction are sometimes portrayed. But it's not just the description of Mystery Maker that works; a lot of the ideas in this novel work only because half of the murders are committed inside a VR environment, and there are some brilliant tricks pulled off here! People who have played the Danganronpa games might remember a certain episode that made brilliant use of the game-within-a-game plot device and I'd say it's the same type of idea: some of the things the Murderer (Kamo) and the Executioner pull off are so original in mystery fiction, because they could only have been used within a video game context/world, and yet it makes perfect sense. That is why despite "a VR world" not being a theme as "supernatural" as time travel, Meitantei ni Kanbi naru Shi wo does do a great job at presenting murders that could only have been committed in these special circumstances.

People without experience with video games might find this book a bit too dense because of this though: with murders going on in the real world and the VR world, and having to learning the fundamentals of game grammar, one could say the book can feel a bit overwhelming even at times. I myself had to remind myself to really pay attention to what sections happened in the VR world and which in the real world, because even within one chapter people often have to go back and forth between the two worlds, so the book does require you to really pay much attention, more so than the previous two books, and if you already have trouble adapting to the idea of a VR game,  I can imagine Meitantei ni Kanbi naru Shi wo being a rather hard book to follow. I had to think to the Umezz Collection release of the classic manga The Drifting Classroom, which used different kind of paper depending on whether the narrative was in the present world or the place where the school had been zapped to, or to Shimada Souji's Okujou no Doukeshi, which used different fonts for the four different narratives, but such techniques wouldn't work here as good, as the section cuts are less "clean" with people going in and out the VR world within one chapter multiple times.

But still, personally, I think this book is a banger and certainly one of the best novels I'll read this year. The concept of having murders happening in a closed circle situation in both the game world of Mystery Maker and the real world isn't just a story set-up, it's an integral part of the puzzle plot. There are some great inspired ideas, like having the Normal Players who are killed in "Delicious Death" for Detectives reappear in the game (with a halo!) so they can join the investigation in their own deaths, meaning you have "ghosts" testifying about their own "murder." But you also have small occurances happening in one world that are later revealed to have been connected to incidents in the real world and more connections like these that tie the two worlds together, making this not a book consisting of two seperate halves, but a single story of ambitious scale.  The impossible murders happening here use tricks you are not likely to have seen anywhere else (the big reveal two-thirds in is truly memorable!), made only possible because of the special setting. The false solutions are also great, often very convincing and based on hints you thought were cleverly hidden, only to realize there were even more cleverly hidden hints that disprove those false solutions! For fans of the Ellery Queen-style of reasoning, with an emphasis on fair-play and long chains of deductions based on various clues spread throughout the book, Houjou has never disappointed and she doesn't disappoint in this book either.

In the end, I think I only need to mention two caveats for this book. Yes, this book can become insanely complex due to so much happening, and I also have to mention that it is definitely best read after the first two books in this series, because some of the moments work better having seen Kamo and Yuuki in their own adventures first. But besides that, I think Meitantei ni Kanbi naru Shi wo was another incredibly strong mystery novel by Houjou, one that I'd recommend everyone interested in pure puzzlers. This is the kind of mystery novel I personally love: an ambitious puzzle plot that's packed with clues from start to finish, detectives who throw theories at each other and debunk them, original murders that make good use of the unique setting of the book and long chains of reasoning where you see the detective crossing off each suspect one by one by utilizing every piece of information we've seen until that point until all the loose lines come together at one single point. Few novels manage to make solving a puzzle so fun with such a memorable concept. 

Original Japanese title(s): 方丈貴恵『名探偵に甘美なる死を』