Mystery on the Menu

"Only in England is the coffee so atrocious. On the Continent they understand how important it is for the digestion that it should be properly made."

"The Big Four"

I actually have a story to tell about this book, but now is not the time... yet. Probably! Maybe in the future!

Disclosure: I translated Higashigawa Tokuya's Lending the Key to the Locked Room. If you haven't read it yet... read it! 

Murasaki Renji, a writer for the magazine Future Weekly for the publisher Hodansha (do not confuse for Modern Weekly of Kodansha), is sitting on a big story, but his editor won't accept Renji's first draft of his article. Renji is mixed up with a genuine murder case, with a crucified victim no less. The victim is Renji's uncle professor Takafumi Midorikawa, who was found inside the annex in the garden, his lifeless body bound to two planks which formed a cross. The man had been strangled before he had been put on the cross and left inside the annex, which had been discovered with the door locked from the inside. Renji had been visiting his aunt and uncle that day, who live with another relative in a spacious home. The professor was actually having an affair with a student of his, and Renji's aunt had asked Renji to keep an eye on the professor while he was in the annex, to make sure he wouldn't slip away. The following morning, the professor still wouldn't come out of the annex, so Renji, his aunt and the other relative go and check up on the professor, only to see him lying on the floor, his body fixed to a cross. But how did the murderer get inside and out again, without being seen by Renji last night and locking the door from the inside? That is the answer Renji's editor also wants to know, as he doesn't care much for simply a personal, and yet sensationalistic account. While trying to come up with a possible answer to the impossible crime, Renji wanders around the streets of the ancient capital Kamakura, when he notices a sign saying "Ippukudou" standing in front what appears to be a private home, but it's in fact a quaint little café. Inside, he finds one of the customers is the police detective Akane, who is friends with Yoriko, the extremely shy proprietor of the café who can't speak with first-time customers because of how nervous she gets. Renji decides to confide his story to Akane, hoping she give him some pointers for a possible solution, but to his great surprise, it's not the veteran police detective, but that shy woman dressed in traditional Japanese clothing behind the counter who'll turn out to be the armchair detective in Higashigawa Tokuya's short story collection Junkissa Ippukudō no Shiki ("The Four Seasons of Café Ippukudou", 2014).

If you have been reading my blog for some while now, you'll probably be familiar with the name of Higashigawa. Not only because I translated his debut novel Lending the Key to the Locked Room, but because I very often discuss his work here. His trademark light-hearted style where he uses the slapstick comedy in his stories to ingenously hide clues for the mystery plot is something I'll never stop loving, and he writes consistently enough for every read to be worthwhile. Most of the work I discuss by Higashigawa belong to the same few series (Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de (The After-Dinner Mysteries), Koigakubo Academy and the Ikagawa City), though I have read a few of his other series or non-series work too. Junkissa Ippukudō no Shiki is also the first book in a series, all with an armchair detective setting (the second book is set in an izakaya, though I am not sure if it's the same Yoriko as in this book). Yoriko is a fun character: extremely shy when it comes to first-time customers, to the extent she can't even manage to ask the customer their order and she has next to no confidence in her coffee-making skills, as she inherited the Café Ippukudou, but she listens very carefully to the discussions her customers have, and once she notices something her customers don't, she won't hesitate to snap (somethings breaking plates in the process) to tell them how they're on the completely wrong track (often by comparing their thoughts to her own, badly made coffee).

The four stories in this book are all set in different seasons (hence the title), but another connecting theme between the four stories is surprisingly, the gruesome murders. While the stories are told within the setting of the quaint Café Ippukudou, with Yoriko often clumsily trying to serve her customers, who are bantering about whatever case they got involved with (in a comedic manner, of course), the cases are actually quite grim, with grotesque murder scenes. The contrast between the framing story, and the actual case is pretty significant, and it leads to an unusual, but very alluring tone at times.

The opening story, Haru no Juujika ("A Crucifix on Spring") for example has the victim crucified (well, tied to a cross) and discovered under seemingly impossible circumstances, as the annex had been watched for Renji for most of the night, and the door was locked from the inside. The story provides three suspects, because three is the magic number (the aunt, the relative and the student with whom the victim was having an affair), but none of them appear to have been able to enter the annex (and certainly not unseen). The solution to the problem is probably not very surprising if you're experienced with these kinds of locked room mysteries, but I think it works well enough, considering the limited page count and Higashigawa did enough to properly clue the path to the solution too, so while not a gem by any means, I think it's a very capably plotted story, that shows that Higashigawa at least knows how to handle t a plot that could've come out a lot less enterrtaining if not for his experience.

In Mottomo Ryoukitekina Natsu (A Most Macabre Summer), Renji is meeting someone at Ippukudou: Miyuki got involved in a murder case recently, and is being interviewed by him. On a summer day, Miyuki was helping her childhood friend Kousaku on his rice farm, cutting weeds together. They see three people visiting Kousaku's neighbor Nakazono's place that afternoon: a representative of a supermarket that wants to buy Nakazono's land, Nakazono's ne'er-do-well cousin, and the local madwoman who started a snake cult. All three seem to find the house empty, as they each of them go inside and leave after a short while. After finishing their work and having dinner together, Miyuki returns home only to be sent to Nakazono's place to return a pineapple cutter. She finds the door unlocked, and inside, she discovers Nakazono's dead body has been tied to a cross, placed against the main pillar of the house The man was killed during the afternoon, but which of the three visitors killed the man? This story competes with the last story for being the best: while the set-up is very simple, I love how the incriminating clue was hidden in the text: it's easy to overlook it, but once you realize its significance it points so clearly to the culprit, and it's quite daring in that regard. 

Kiritorareta Shitai no Aki ("A Cut-Up Body in Fall") has the not very succesful author Minamida Gorou visiting his friend, the very successful Higashiyama Atsuya (not to be confused with Higashigawa Tokuya, of course). Higashiyama invites Minamida out for a night of drinking, and after saying goodbye to Higashiyama's secretary/assistant/lover Nakahara Saeko, they spend the night hopping bars and end up in a karaoke bar with a guy they don't even know. When they return to Higashiyama's home in the morning, they find Renji in front of the house: he had an appointment with Saeko to discuss a project for Higashiyama, but she won't respond at all. Minamida and Renji decide to check if Saeko's in her own apartment, but they find the door not locked, and inside the bathroom, they stumble upon her body, minus some body parts like her head. The following day, her head and other parts are found scattered around town in gardens and other places. Minamida and Higashiyama end up discussing the case at Ippukudou, after hearing Renji talking about Yoriko, and indeed, she quickly points out why the murderer must've cut the body up in pieces and more importantly, who the murderer is. This story suffers a bit from the limited page count of the stories: there are extremely few characters in this story and basically only one is a viable suspect, meaning the story doesn't really have whodunnit aspect, only a howdunnit, but once you can safely guess who done it, you almost immediately arrive at the how as the possibilities to commit the murder for this person are just too limited. So this story feels a bit too straightforward, and it would have felt more satisfying if the story had a larger scale. 

Barabara Shitai to Misshitsu ni Fuyu ("A Chopped Up Body and a Locked Room in Winter") has Akane visiting Café Ippukudou again, and after some chatting, she's asked to tell about a case she had mentioned she had been working on the last time she visited (when she met Renji in spring at the Café). She and her subordinate had by driving along a road undergoing reperations after part of it collapsed the previous night, when a patrol officer notes he feels something off about one of the two lonely houses standing in front of the site: the lights in the house have been on since the previous night, but not once has the inhabitant come outside or even peeked outside at the construction work. They take a closer look and through the windows, they find the man lying dead inside in the living room, his throat having been cut with the knife lying besides him. They break inside as the doors and windows are all locked, and while searching the house, they stumble upon a second body, which is lying in pieces in the bath tub. Because the house is completely locked from the inside, and the chopped-up body obviously didn't commit suicide, it appears the first man must've killed the other man (his brother), chopped him up in parts, but then committed suicide by slicing his own throat. However, Yoriko quickly points out there's one other possibility, which is actually quite ingenious! While I liked Mottomo Ryoukitekina Natsu for its simplistic set-up and the execution, this final story is probably the best in terms of actual plotting and clewing: the solution Yoriko proposes comes in two parts, both quite surprising, and they result in an extremely memorable solution for this locked room mystery. The first part isn't really fairly clewed perhaps, but it plays wonderfully with the expectations and assumptions of the reader, and even adds a surprisingly emotional touch to an otherwise very light-hearted collection of stories, while the second part of the solution (the actual howdunnit) is just... a very unique way to commit a locked room mystery. It's not completely fair because unless you are aware of a certain thing, you wouldn't know it could be used in that manner (and they only first mention it explicitly in the solution), but the idea itself is both original and memorable, and it's especially the two-part set-up, with the first part of the solution allowing the introduction of the second part of the solution, that makes this a very unique locked room mystery.

Overall, I enjoyed Junkissa Ippukudō no Shiki: it's not big epic mystery by any means, but it's a short, yet pleasant read, where Higashigawa gets to show off his trademark style of comedic writing coupled with proper puzzle-focused mysteries, and he certainly always manages to keep a certain level of quality, and that consistency is also found in this book. Perfect material to squeeze in your schedule between thicker and darker mysteries. I might return to Ippukudou myself in the future too, because I am curious to see how the second book works as it has a different setting, but seemingly also (a?) Yoriko working there as the armchair detective.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉 『純喫茶「一服堂」の四季』:「春の十字架」/「もっとも猟奇的な夏」/「切りとられた死体の秋」/「バラバラ死体と密室の冬」