Secret Seven Adventure

Seven little Soldier Boys chopping up sticks;  

One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.

"And Then There Were None"

Semi-regular "hey, there's a Honkaku Discord server" message. 

Hmm, the review of the first book in this series I posted last summer, even though it had a winter theme, and now I'm posting the review of the second book now at the end of winter, even though it has a summer theme...

It has been three years since Japan saw its first criminal trial on a locked room murder. While the police and prosecution were convinced the defendant was the murderer, they just couldn't figure out how the locked room murder was committed. Their argument in court was that it was a moot point: everything else pointed at the defendant and because it was clearly not a suicide in the locked room, but a murder, obviously commited by a third party, it meant it shouldn't matter they couldn't prove how the defendant escaped the locked room, because it remained a fact a murder did happen. The judge however didn't go with this story: the prosecution being incapable of proving how anyone could've committed the murder and escape a locked room basically meant every single person on the planet had an alibi. If it was impossible for anyone, why would it be possible for specifically the defendant? The defendant was declared not guilty, but this trial was the start of the Golden Age of Locked Rooms: would-be murderers realized they could get away scot-free as long as they committed a locked room murder the police couldn't solve. Each year saw more locked room murders, which in turn led to the rise of specialists in locked room murders both within the police, but also as private detectives and even cults that worshipped locked room murders started to arise.

After the murders in the House of Snow, high school student Kuzushiro Kasumi and childhood friend Yozuki are invited by Ootomigawara Aoi to her private island Kanaami Island. Ootomigawara is a young, but incredibly succesful entrepeneur and fan of mystery fiction, and last year, she bought Kanaami Island, which used to belong to the famous mystery author Richard Moore. Moore used his vast fortune to indulge in his passion for mystery fiction on the island, building cottages here and there that he could use for experiments for locked room murders, and he even had the complete island surrounded by a thirty-metre high wire mesh fence, hence the name Kanaami (wire mesh). In the previous two years however, two real locked room murders, in which the victims were decapitated occured in one of the cottages on the island. Moore himself has since died, and thus the island, and everything on it, was up for sale. Ootomigawara Aoi has now invited a few people to her newly acquired island for a murder mystery game, offering a fortune to the winner. Kuzushiro Kasumi is invited due to his involvement in the events at the House of Snow, and other guests include a mystery Youtuber Poirozaka Kousuke, mystery musician General Otozaki and... Kurokawa Chiyori, former judge who gave the sentence in the first locked room trial in Japan, and whom by many is seen as the "cause" of the influx of locked room murders in the country. Another guest is Kuzushiro's friend and classmate Mitsumura Shitsuri, who... was the defendant in the first locked room trial. Ootomigawara Aoi's game involves drawing lots, with one person having to create a locked room "murder" (of a doll) and the others trying to solve it. If the "murderer" gets away, they get 5 points, if someone guesses how it was done, they get 3 points and this game is repeated over the course of a few days. The first day goes as planned, but on the morning of the second day, the people on the island are shocked to find that two people have really been murdered, and in locked room situations too, one in a locked basement and another in one of the guest cottages. With the phone lines cut, it will take a few days before the scheduled boat arrives, but because the island is literally surrounded by a thirty-metre high fence with cameras, it seems likely the murderer must be one of the persons on the island... Furthermore, clues left behind at the crime scenes seem to indicate the murderer is... The Locked Room Encyclopia, a legendary assassin-for-hire who supposedly knows all locked room murder tricks. Can they figure out how The Locked Room Encyclopdia did all this, and who they are before they all end up dead in Kamosaki Danro's 2022 novel Misshitsu Kyouran Jidai no Satsujin - Zekkai no Kotou to Nanatsu no Trick which also has the English title The Murder in the Age of Frenzy of Locked Rooms: The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks on the cover?

As mentioned above, I read Kamosaki's debut work last year, and while the concept was a bit underutilized, I really liked the idea of the Golden Age of Locked Rooms, the whole premise of an age where so many murderers commit locked room murders the government even publishes an official "locked room lecture", so I was looking forward to returning to this world. The second book is very similar to the first book in many ways, as you may have guessed from the cover (which too resembles the first one a lot). Whereas the first book was a pretty stuffed story with six impossible murders, this one goes beyond that and features seven locked room murders (some of which part of the mystery game, but most of them real murders). This story too features a closed circle situation, with everyone trapped on the island, and even the character naming style is the same, with most characters having names that references their role or occupation in very literal ways. I'm not really a fan of the dialogue sections where the characters themselves explain out loud for for example the butler Shitsugi sounds like the Japanese world shitsuji (butler), because it's a bit overkill, but I guess it does make all these names easier to remember. Like the first book, the fact this is a closed circle situation also means you don't get to see much of the "larger" society coping with the Age of Frenzy of Locked Rooms, though this book does improve a lot on that by having both the defendant and the judge of this first trial appear together, and have the judge comment on the current state of Japan brought forth by her ruling.

Anyway, so we have seven locked room murders (some game-murders) happening in this story, and let's make this clear at once, the book is in general more about quantity over quality, though that doesn't mean they are all bad locked room murders. In fact, some are really good, but especially the ones that appear early in the story are not really memorable and too simple. Because this book is so insanely packed, most locked room situations don't last really long in the narrative: the scene is discovered, and sometimes it only takes one "investigation" scene in between to immediately move to the solution. It does feel like this book is more about showing off locked rooms, so if you're more interested in solving them yourself, the book might feel far too hasty. Like Kitayama Takekuni, it is clear Kamosaki loves mechanically constructed locked room solutions, and the more mundane ones are the early ones that just feel like variations of tricks you have likely seen elsewhere, similar to a string and needle trick. You know they work, but it's not really surprising, so you end up shrugging at them. Because these ones mostly appear early in the story, and they follow each other up so quickly, I would understand if a reader would give up early, though some of the later ones are far more fun. And with just the right amount of ridiculousness, similar to Kitayama's work. While not going as far, some of the tricks here have a welcome notion of madness the first book didn't really have, making these tricks more memorable.

I think the more memorable locked rooms in this book, concentrated in the latter half, share a few similar traits in terms of set-up and execution in terms of narrative. That is, the mechanics behind the tricks are different, but they are similar in the sense that Kamosaki is very careful to stress the impossibility of each situation, but that when it comes to setting up clues to lead to the solution, it's sometimes a bit sloppy or just too haphazard. Him being very meticulous in stressing the impossibility of situations is also seen in the way he assures the reader there is no third party on the island, by stressing 1) this is an island, 2) with a thirty metre- high fence around the island, 3) with alarms that sound if someone would climb it, 4) cameras monitoring the single entrance in the fence, and an computer AI macro that checks who gets in and out, 5) assuring nobody has been hiding on the island before this security system was made because of police searches conducted when the decapitation murders were committed earlier and... 6) camera's placed on top of the fences, pointing upwards to the sky to check whether nobody is coming from above. One of the later locked room murders involves a key to a locked room, being held in a box, which is locked by a number of different keys held by different people, and the box being held in another locked room. Yeah, that seems quite impossible. This book improves on the previous book at some points by having more connections between some of the locked rooms, so they're not all discrete situations and there's one moment where that's actually brilliantly used. The decapatitations that occured inside a cottage the last two years on the island also have a very memorable solution, though I hate the way how it is "clewed" and how the detectives figures it out, because it was pushed so unnaturally. And the last impossible crime, which also involves a decapitation, is.... it's nuts, and it's definitely not my favorite situation of the book, but kinda funny to imagine. Though I have major doubts about whether things would actually go that way.

I do like the way the whodunnit aspects of this series is set-up. While the books are very much about locked room murders and how they were committed, both the first book and this book have trails that remind of Ellery Queen's style, with deducing what the murderer did and how that allows you to eliminate suspects and finally arrive at one name. While the chain here isn't long at all, and I think the Big Clue is telegraphed a bit too obviously, I do like that at least here, Kamosaki does a better job at setting up the clue-to-conclusion process more carefully and allowing the reader more time, compared to the hasty locked rooms.

I feel Misshitsu Kyouran Jidai no Satsujin - Zekkai no Kotou to Nanatsu no Trick is extremely similar to the first novel, almost feeling like a remake, but at certain points he did manage to improve himself, showing a bit more interconnectedness between the various locked rooms, and some of the murder situations also being more innovative and memorable. It's a book that is clearly written by someone who absolutely adores locked room murder mysteries and mechanical tricks, and while not every one of them is as good as the other, Kamosaki's enthusiasm seeps through the pages and makes this an entertaining novel as a whole.

Original Japanese title(s): 鴨崎暖炉『 密室狂乱時代の殺人 絶海の孤島と七つのトリック』

Locked in Time

“Time was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.”

"Thief of Time"

Okay, it's almost summer now so a snow cover might seem a bit weird, but was still winter when I read this book...

Three years ago, Japan saw its first trial of a locked room murder case. The police and prosecution knew they had the right person: every piece of evidence they could find pointed towards the defendant, the only person near the crime scene who had anything remotely like a motive. However, there was one problem: they could never figure out how the locked room murder had been executed. They tried and tried, but could not explain how the defendant could've murdered the victim, and then left the room, as it was found locked tightly from inside. The prosecution argued this was a moot point: every thing else pointed at the defendant, and the locked room itself was a just a parlor trick and not relevant to the case at hand. The judge, naturally, did not agree with this argument. The prosecution failing to explain how the locked room was created, basically provided the defendant, and everyone else for that matter, with an alibi. How could the defendant have committed the murder if by all accounts, they couldn't have left the room afterwards? The defendant was found not guilty and with that, the Golden Age of Locked Rooms started in Japan. For all would-be murderers realized that if they managed to pull off a locked room murder the police couldn't solve, they'd always get away, even if they managed to find other evidence implicating them. After the first locked room murder, Japan saw a rise in the number of locked room murders in the country, which also urged society to adapt: locked room specialists appeared, ranging from architects to detctives and the Ministry of Justice even compiled an official list of all existing types of locked room tricks. On the other side, cults appeared that started to worship locked room murders as a way to mourn the dead.

Kuzushiro Kasumi is roped in by childhood friend to Yozuki to visit the House of Snow, a hotel somewhere in the mountains that used to be the private residence of a famous mystery writer. Yozuki is here because of a local Yeti-sighting, but Kasumi's interest lie within the hotel's history: Ten years ago, the mystery novelist who lived here held a party, and during the party he enacted a locked room murder: a "murdered" doll was found inside a locked room of which the key was found inside a bottle next to the victim. Nobody managed to solve the mystery, but it soon became a legend among fans of detective fiction, and even after the house got a new owner who turned it into a hotel, the "crime scene" was preserved and mystery fans still visit the hotel to try to solve the puzzle themselves. The hotel is also extremely popular due to the cooking skills of the owner and basically always booked full. Arriving at the hotel, Kasumi and Yozuki meet some of the other colorful guests, like the 15-year old Riria, an actress who everybody knows. Kasumi's interest is initially only focused on the murder game of 10 years ago, but then a real locked room murder occurs in the hotel, and of course, the usual happens: a snow storm arrives, the phone lines are cut and the one connecting bridge to the other side of the cliffs back to the main road also collapses. Everyone is now trapped inside the Hosue of Snow, and the killer is likely one of them. In the three years since The Golden Age of Locked Rooms started, most people have become somewhat familiar with locked room murders, so some guests try to solve the mystery themselves, but more and more murders follow, and always under impossible circumstances. Teaming up with a somewhat reluctant Mitsumura Shitsuri, a former classmate and fellow club member who happens to be staying at the hotel too, Kasumi too tries to solve the many murders that occur in Kamosaki Danro's 2022 debut novel Misshitsu Ougon Jidai no Satsujin  - Yuki no Yakata to Muttsu no Trick, or like the cover also says: The Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms - The House of Snow and the Six Tricks.

I'll be the first to admit that it was the title, and a quick glance at the summary, that immediately convinced me I wanted to read this book. The premise of a new age in society, where so many murderers commit locked room murders even the government has to compile its own "locked room lecture", just sounded so incredibly fun, with so much potential to get incredibly meta. Which is perhaps I was a bit disappointed once this book got going. For while the concept of The Golden Age of Locked Rooms is relevant to the story's main plot in several ways, it does feel like this book doesn't quite make full use of the potential of the premise. This is for a large part due to the setting of the book: The Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms - The House of Snow and the Six Tricks is a classic closed circle situation mystery, with the characters stuck in the House of Snow due to a heavy snow storm/collapsed bridge, so ultimately, you don't really get to see much of modern day society that is now experiencing The Golden Age of Locked Rooms. Sure, the characters mentions locked room murders, and among the other hotel guests, you have a locked room murder detective and even someone from the Tower of Dawn, a cult worshipping locked room murders, but it's such a shame we don't really get to see how The Golden Age has really changed society at large, we only get to see very limited snippets of these changes. Would the book have felt very different if it were just set in "normal" times, but with characters who all happen to be locked room murder mystery fans? Probably not very much, and that's where I think the concept of The Golden Age of Locked Rooms has a lot of unexplored potential.

The title reveals of course that this book is about six different locked room murders, with six different tricks utilized to create those situations. Some of these happened in the past (like the murder game organized by the mystery writer ten years ago), some are the current murders. The book is not very long, so you can imagine that the story does kinda rush through all of these murders. I think I can definitely feel the love of the author for mechanical trickery behind locked room murders though. None of the locked rooms featured here are pulled off based on some kind of psychological trickery, like fooling people into thinking a door was locked when in fact it was not: all the doors in this book are properly locked through some kind of mechanical trickery of the needle and string variety. I do have to say that even though mechanical tricks can be kinda tricky to understand because usually there are a lot of moving parts (strings being pulled and moved, for example), I'd say that for a debut novel, Kamosaki does a good job at explaining each trick rather clearly and easy to follow. I've definitely read work by authors who don't write as clear when it comes down to these kind of tricks. The book in general is very easy to read through, though some might not be very much into little techniques to make the reading so smooth, like using simple, "obvious" naming conventions for the characters, basically in the spirit of a manager being named M. Anager. Not surprisingly, the book has a distinct, often light-hearted tone like you'd expect from a light novel.

As for the six locked rooms, I'd say they're... okay? The various locked room murders aren't really connected to each other, as in, it's not like elements in one locked room situation will help you solve another locked room or anything like that, so you basically have six discrete situations. Some are more interesting than others, though I have to say that due to the short runtime of the book, most situations don't really get much time to settle: usually something happens, Mitsumura and Kasumi have a look around and by then they've already solved much of the how of the mystery, because of course the next locked room murder is already waiting around the corner. As mentioned above, the individual locked rooms are very much focused on mechanical trickery and a lot of them do feel like (combinations of) variations of ideas you'll probably have seen elsewhere before, but for the most part, I found this an entertaining book. I do also like the fact that the whodunnit is also given proper attention, implementing classic Queen-style deductions chains that look at things the murderer must have done to create said murder situation and then examining those actions to determine who couldn't or wouldn't have done those things in order to cross off names of the suspect list until you arrive at the murderer. Some of the deductions feel a bit forced (especially the premise that allowed for the final step in identifying the murderer at the very end), but in general, it'd sayt that despite its focus on the how of the murders in terms of premise (and title), the whodunnit aspects feel a bit more impressive: the focus on the mechanical trickery behind six locked rooms do make some parts feel a bit samey, which is less so in the whodunnit parts of the book.

The Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms - The House of Snow and the Six Tricks is obviously written by someone who loves locked room murder mysteries and for a debut novel, it certainly has a lot of interesting ideas. While the full potential of the concept isn't explored in this book, I do like the idea of the Golden Age of Locked Rooms, and having six servicable locked room situations in any debut novel would be quite a feat. This book might not be a true classic of the genre, but I did enjoy reading the book and I'm definitely interested to see what Kamosaki will release in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 鴨崎暖炉『密室黄金時代の殺人 雪の館と六つのトリック』