「からすなぜなくの」

There simply must be a corpse, and the deader the corpse the better

"Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories"

Wow, it's been almost two weeks. Maybe I should update more often. I actually have read and played and seen quite some things the last few weeks, but there is a proble with the conversion of my experiences into written words. As in I have several half-written concept posts and I don't think any of them are going to work the way they are written now. But because I am lazy and really want to get them out of the way, I'll finish them all the way they are. Today. Before noon. Though the posting will be spread. There. I said it. And so it will be.

[addendum] You know what, I am not going to finish them before noon. Mainly because I think I will just throw most of them into a future short short post. That is way more efficient. 

I think I already mentioned we sometimes have reading club-esque sessions at the Kyoto University Mystery Club. It's pretty much what you expect: the leader of the sessions chooses a novel the attending members have to read, the leader presents his opinions about the book and then members can state what they thought about the book and the presentation. The level of discussion is actually quite high, with people coming up with stories on the spot that would have been better than most of the reviews I write.

Last week we discussed Kanou Tomoko's debut work Nanatsu no Ko ("Seven Children"). Within the novel-universe, there is a novel called Seven Children written by Saeki Ayano, which is about the strange events the young boy Hayate encounters. And with strange events I don't mean bloody murders, but just small events that may make you think "?!". One stolen watermelon. Blue crayons being stolen. Little occurences to which most people would shrug. But not for Hayate. And luckily for him, he has a little girl friend, Ayame, who has a wonderful knack for pointing out why or those strange events happened. The university student Irie Komako is a big fan of this novel and lately she has encountered a bunch of little mysteries herself too! As these mysteries remind her of the stories in Saeki's Seven Children, Komako decides to write Saeki a fan-letter, telling her also about her own experiences. But it seems like Saeki is no less a detective than her own creation Ayame, as Saeki's reply letters always explain the strange mysteries Komako encountered!

Nanatsu no Ko is a representative work in the subgenre of 'everyday life mysteries'. I am not really sure whether there is an equivalent English term for this subgenre, but it basically refers to mystery stories.... that you encounter in your daily life. Yes, I just repeated the words in the term. Anyway, the mysteries you find in this short story collection are not murder and other foul crimes, but just odd occurences. 99% of the people would just shrug and forget it. If there was a proper use for the word 'cozy', it would be for this subgenre. Because this is really cozy. Just events that anyone really could encounter. To be honest, I did find it a bit lacking (murder please), but I can definitely understand why people would like this light, almost feel-happy, mystery subgenre.

I usually go with a story-by-story summary/review for short stories, but I am afraid they would tell way too much because of the story-within-a-story setup (which would require me to write a lot). Like I mentioned, while I thought there was definitely a nice feeling to the stories, I found most of them lacking. The problem here is that there is almost no way back once you fall into the trap of becoming one of the 99% of the people who would shrug at the mysteries presented here. Which is what I had somewhere around the fourth story. I thought the best story to be the fifth story, Ichimannisennengo no Vega ("The Vega of 12000 Years Later"), which features a gigantic plastic dinosaurus disappearing from a department store, only to appear at the playground of an elementary school. Which was actually probably the story that seemed the least like a problem you'd encounter in real life.

I did like how this short story collection actually featured a storyline that developed over the course of the seperate stories, which is something I actually like very much. I also liked the rather light-ish approach of the two detectives Ayame (in the novel-within-the-novel) and Saeki. They practically never say it was like this, but they always carefully propose solutions that might be correct. It's just a guess, but I think it might be like this. It fits the light-hearted tone of this volume perfectly and is actually quite refreshing to see, being used to the absolute confidence most great detectives have. Finally, I think this is actually an excellent book for getting people into the mystery genre. Nanatsu no Ko can be read perfectly as a 'normal' book, but it is also constructed very good as a mystery actually. I might not be a fan of the content, but the way the stories are structured, the way Kanou weaves her hints into the plot is really good and it never feels unfair.

In short, not my cup of tea, but certainly a well-constructed light-hearted 'cozy' short story collection.

Original Japanese title(s): 加納朋子　『ななつのこ』:　「スイカジュースの涙」 / 「モヤイの鼠」 / 「一枚の写真」 / 「バス・ストップで」 / 「一万二千年後のヴェガ」 / 「白いタンポポ」 / 「ななつのこ」

「むろん、お前はABCをしっているな」

"You have to excuse me, but I've seen you play this routine time and time again. The paper shuffling, the distractions, the talk about your wife, or in this case your broken percolator. If you've got me in your cross hairs, you really have to do better than using all that crap.", 'The Gun that Wasn't', " The Columbo Collection"

Desperately trying to shorten the backlog before a ridiculous amount of books is delivered here from Japan. But I don't really think I'll be able to shorten it significantly. Especially not if I forget which books I have read and which not.

The week started with ABC Satsujin Jiken ("The ABC Murders"), an short story anthology named after Agatha Christie's classic. Like with Y no Higeki, a book discussed earlier, stories in this anthology all play with the theme of Christie's The A.B.C. Murders. Both Arisugawa Arisu and Norizuki Rintarou contributed to ABC Satsujin, as well as Onda Riku, Kanou Tomoko and Nukui Tokurou.

And as I was reading this book, I realised I had actually read half of this anthology before, but I couldn't remember what happened in the stories, so I had to re-read them. However, the fact I couldn't remember a single fact of most stories was indeed a sign the stories weren't that interesting. Maybe I had supressed them in my memories.

Which in hindsight seems plausible. Veterans Arisugawa Arisu and Norizuki Rintarou offer slightly entertaining stories with "ABC Killer" and "ABCD Houimou" ("The ABCD Line"). ABC Killer is closest to Christie's ABC, with a string of serial murders of people who are killed in alphabetic order. "The ABCD Line" starts with a man who keeps confessing to murders (and saying he's responsible for accidents), but whom it was impossible to commit those. Why would someone confess to murders he didn't commit?

Howver, the remaining stories are not interesting at all. Onda Riku's Anata to yoru to ongaku to ("You, the night and music") has an interesting setting, at a radio station, but is a mediocre story. And the strangest part is that it is less of a homage to The A.B.C. Murders, than to Ellery Queen's The Mad Tea Party or The Finishing Stroke. Kanou Tomoko's Neko no Ie no Alice ("Alice of the House of Cats") does revolve around a plot of poisoned cats (yes, in alphabetical order), but is full of distracting Alice in Wonderland references. Which again reminds more of Queen than Christie.Nukui Tokurou's Rensa suru Suuji ("Connected Numbers") is actually bad, with bad pacing in story, a bad plot and bad characters. I won't even bother writing about it.

Compared to the very entertaining Y no Higeki, this anthology is mostly disappointing. The A.B.C. Murders is one of the most famous detective stories ever and you'd think writers should be able to do more with the ingenious theme of the book. And not really related to that, but maybe I should finally start reading Alice in Wonderland.

Luckily I read The Columbo Collection afterwards, a new collection of Columbo short stories! Written by series creator William Link and published by Crippen & Landru, this set of 12 stories revive the old show. In a new setting though. It's hard to imagine the lieutenant using a cell phone. But he does. Still, what is there to complain about a continuation of good old Columbo, who'll keep hounding his suspect till he catches them on one small mistake?

Even though the series stopped many years ago, reading these stories will make you realize Columbo is a series that will never age. While these short stories are indeed short (compared to the 60 till 90 minutes episodes), the psychological fencing between murderer and Columbo is still as entertaining as ever. Looking for the one mistake the murderer made is still as exciting as ever. And everyone will read Columbo's lines with Peter Falk's voice in their heads. It's classic Columbo, in 2010. And it's good.　

Original Japanese title(s): 『ABC殺人事件』/有栖川有栖　「ABCキラー」/恩田陸　「あなたと夜と音楽と」/加納朋子　「猫の家のアリス」/貫井徳郎　「連鎖する数字」/法月綸太郎　「ABCD包囲網」