The Tuesday Club Murders

Sur les crédences, au salon vide: nul ptyx

"Sonnet en X" 

And yet I'm sure this is not the only book that's been on the 'to-read' list for over fiteen years...

The retired French literature professor Zuimon Ryuushirou is a huge fan of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé and owns a curious home which is named, and designed after meaningless word "ptyx" Mallarmé used in the poem Sonnet en X. To be exact, it follows the Japanese translation of the word, with a stem word for "shell", so the two-storey building is built like a spiral, with spiraling hallway on both floors, and a courtyard at the center of the building, that can only be reached by the stairs that are found at the very end of the hallway upstairs. Zuimon often holds gatherings at his manor to discuss literature, aptly called the Tuesday Club. In 1987, members of the Tuesday Club included, among others, an active professor in French literature and three students, a famous actor and... the great detective Mizuki Masaomi and the legally required Watson, Ayui Ikusuke, who has been chronicling all of the adventures Mizuki and he have as succesful novels. That night, after everyone has gone to sleep, a loud cry wakes everyone up and as they look for the origin of the voice, they find one of the guests lying dead in the courtyard, apparently having slipped from the stairs upstairs down onto the courtyard. But it was in fact not a natural death, and of course Mizuki promptly solves the case, allowing for Ayui to write a new book. The Ptyx House Affair is serialized in parts in magazines as always and while basically all of the story was serialized, with the case solved and perhaps only needing an epilogue, the book was never actually finished, and also never collected and published as a single, standalone release. This also marked the last of what the public would learn about Mizuki: Ayui stopped writing books and nobody heard of Mizuki again.

14 years later, the great private detective Isurugi Gisaku is contacted by a literary editor who wants Isurugi to reopen the investigation of the murder that took place at the Zuimon residence 14 years ago. The editor finds it strange Ayui never had the final book properly published and suspects there could only be one reason why Ayui had made such a drastic decision: what if in the process of writing down the adventure he had with Mizuki, he had inadvertently realized Mizuki might actually have nabbed the wrong culprit in this case? Isurugi, who is a big fan of the Mizuki Masaomi novels, accepts the request, and investigates the case by not only reading the installments of The Ptyx House Affair, but also by interviewing the real people involved in the actual case 14 years ago, and as he asks more questions, he slowly starts to notice little things in Ayui's account that bothers him too. Can he outwit the great detective Mizuki in Shunou Masayuki's Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi, which also carries the German title Im Spiegel ist Sonntag ("It's Sunday in the Mirror", 2001)?  

Shunou Masayuki was an author who was only active for a very short period of time, writing about seven books in four years, but he is still well-remembered in the world of Japanese mystery fiction and you'll often find one of his titles (especially Hasami Otoko ("The Scissor Man") in 'best of' lists. I don't know why I hadn't gotten started on him yet, especially as fifteen years ago (back when we had like only three people blogging in English on Japanese mystery fiction!), I already wrote I had put this book on my 'to-be-read' list...It took me a bit of time, but I finally got around to it!

The books in the Isurugi Gisaku series are apparently all takes on familiar mystery tropes, with Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi being an obvious variation on the familiar yakata-mono, murders occuring in a curiously built building like we see in Ayatsuki's House series. Here we have a house that is built in the most inconvenient manner as the house is just one giant spiral that goes up one floor, and it's of course nuts you'd need to go walk down the spiralling hallway of the first floor, go up the stairs, go down the spiralling hallway of the second floor and go out on the balcony and go down another set of stairs just to reach the courtyard, which is of course completely surrounded by walls so there's nothing to see (as there are no windows looking out into the courtyard). Houses like these are great for mysteries, not so for actual living.

That said, while the main mystery might seem to be the mysterious death in 1987 at the Ptyx house, one could argue that it is in fact another trope that is the main topic of this book: the unreliable narrator. Which might seem like a huge spoiler, but not only are we already told that Ayui apparently suspected Mizuki might have been wrong, meaning the solution presented in Ayui's book should be wrong, Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi in fact opens with the most unreliable narrator we could have: a person suffering from Alzheimer in 2001. This person, closely related to the 1987 murder, does not recognize themselves, and can barely recognize people anymore by 2001. Isurugi Gisaku's investigation into the murder however stimulates the narrator in ways Isurugi could not have foreseen, and flashes of memories slowly show a glimpse of the solution awaiting at the end. The second part of the book flashes a bit back and explains how Isurugi Gisaku's investigation actually gets started and is interspersed with The Ptyx House Affair written by Ayui Ikusuke in 1987. It's here where we get another glimpse of how the 'unreliable narrator' works: while Ayui is almost fanatical in being accurate and truthtful in his account, as he thinks that is the best way to show how much of an amazing detective Mizuki was, Ayui does have to let his imagination do the work when it comes to portraying the people other than himself in his book. When in Isurugi goes interviewing the people involved in the case 14 years later, we see that Ayui often didn't get things quite right in his book, creating slight gaps between reality and his reconstruction of the case and the people involved. For example, in Ayui's book, he decided to use one of the visiting students as the main narrator, but the real "him" differs from the fictional one in quite a few ways. It's of course up to Isurugi, and the reader, to figure out whether these little discrepencies relate to what really went on 14 years ago, and whether Mizuki got the right killer or not.

Ultimately, I think the book's merits also lie in how these various narratives (Alzheimer/Isurugi/Ayui) intertwine, and the truth hidden between the web spun between these three that makes Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi an interesting mystery novel, The actual murder itself, and the clues leading up to resolving that, are not as interesting as seeing what is really hiding within Ayui's The Ptyx House Affair and learning how the narrator with Alzheimer links up with Isurugi's investigation and what these threads all actually mean. It's hard to explain precisely what this book does well, because that does go a bit too much into spoiler territory, but I can safely recommend this as a well-structured mystery novel. The only caveat I could have is simply the fact I feel nothing for Stéphane Mallarmé, and obviously, they do talk about him and his work a lot in The Ptyx House Affair

The bunko pocket version of Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi includes the direct sequel Shikimi/Muro ("Anise/Juniper"), originally released in 2002. These are two interconnected short stories, with an interesting title convention: if you take out the "tree" radical from the kanji of either title (Shikimi and Muro), you end up with the word misshitsu, or "locked room". And thus both stories are about locked room mysteries. Shikimi ("Anise") is a story written by Ayui Ikusuke and details a case he and Mizuki had while visiting a small town with hot springs, as they had been invited to the hotel run someone they had become acquainted during a previous adventure. Ayui and Mizuki learn about a local legend telling a Tengu (a bird-like goblin) used to live here and that he had dropped his axe: the axe is enshrined in a local shinto shrine. Lately, the priest claims he saw the Tnegu with its long nose on Tengu's Hill in the night. What sounds like a tall story, turns into a creepy seed of doubt when one night, one of the guests won't come out of his room. They try to unlock the door with the master key, but the door is latched from the inside. When they finally break into the room, they find the guest lying dead on his bed, having been hit fatally with... the Tengu's axe.

Muro ("Juniper") is set 14 years later and follows Isurugi Gisaku, as he goes visit an old friend who runs a certain hotel in a town with hot springs... Isurugi actually lived in this town for a short period fourteen years ago to prepare for his school entrance exams, though he had left the day Mizuki and Ayui solved the locked room mystery in the hotel. His friend had been working part-time in the hotel at the time, and later married the proprietor. Isurugi is glad to see his old friend, though the wife is seemingly not so happy to have her husband's friend staying at the hotel as a guest (any hopes for a discount are soon thrown away as soon as Isurugi meets the wife). History seemingly repeats itself when a student reports to the reception his professor won't respond to knocks on his door. The professor had been a guest 14 years ago too and all of this soon sparks fears into all that were here too then, so after confirming the door is indeed latched from inside, they force the door open again... only to find the room empty. The professor later appears, saying he had gone out drinking, but who then had latched his door from the inside?

Both stories feature fairly simple tricks for their locked rooms, but the way the two stories intertwine, one set in the past and the other in the present, is good. Some things in Shikimi take on a different meaning when you have read Muro, and the trick in Muro definitely benefits from having read Shikimi first. These stories do really feel like a set, and while they are short and quite lite, I did enjoy them, espcecially as an extension of Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi, as it once again plays with past/present narratives.

So overall, I really enjoyed Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi and its sequel Shikimi/Muro. They provide fun takes on familiar mystery tropes which allow for some pondering on the genre conventions, while at the same time, they are actually written in a very accessible manner, being very easy reads. I do recommend reading Shikimi/Muro together with Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi though, as they are really too lite on their own (which would explain why they are published as one single book nowadays). Anyway, I will be reading more of Shunou soon!

Original Japanese title(s): 殊能将之『鏡の中は日曜日』/『樒 / 榁』