A Scary Night with a Snow Beast Fright

"No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty."

"A Christmas Carol" 

A few months ago, I reviewed Killer X, a novel written by Nikaidou Reito and Kuroda Kenji, and the first of the Killer X trilogy, which are about murder mysteries set in ski resorts in Japan that also feature "Killer X", a mascotte figure of a stationary brand. Merchandise with the cute, former monk-turned-assassin figure features in all the three books, though I won't call the character really a major theme in the two novels I have read. Two, I say, for today's post is about the second book in the series. You should also briefly skim through the review of the first Killer X book to learn more about the authors of the books first hid their identities under a pen name and how the Killer X trilogy is also just the last three entries in a tetralogy.

Anyway, Nikaidou Reito and Kuroda Kenji's Sennendake no Satsujinki ("The Killer on Mt. Sennen", 2002) is set on the fictional mountain of Mt. Sennen in the Y Prefecture. Fumiko is a Japanese woman who teaches at a Japanese language school in Australia. Most of her students are actually around her age and just call her "Fumiko" instead of "Sensei" and when they learned she hailed from Y Prefecture in Japan, they decided that they'd have a ski trip to Mt. Sennen with Fumiko: her students are of course not allowed to speak any English during the trip. Lately, strange rumors about Mt. Sennen have been making the rounds: two different persons have appeared at the hotel Fumiko and her group are staying at, claiming to have come from a few days in the future. Fumiko and her students are all relatively accomplished skiers, so they are going to heli-ski from Mt. Sennen. They'll be dropped off at a high point with a helicopter and then follow the course to the pick-up point. However, they apparently get off-track and end up near the torii gate which is where the time-jumping supposedly took place. It turns out their their navigator intentionally sends them off-course, because he's interested in the so-called time-wormhole and he knew nobody would be willing to follow him voluntarily. By that time, the weather has taken a turn for the worse and it's already too late to turn back, so they are forced to stay in one of the empty mountain lodges near the gate. However, they get murdered one by one by an unseen murderer, and the only clue pointing at the murderer is a diary that purports to come from the future in which all the events that have happened, were already written...

Sennendake no Satsujinki is slightly shorter than Killer X and is this time not confined to a single building, but basically set within a small, closed circle high up in a mountain that's closed off because of the snowfall. The group is trapped there, but they have access to a small mountain lodge, and as they later discover, a second one that's actually nearby but originally barely visible due to the snowfall. It's here that the friends get murdered one by one, while the survivors are getting more neurotic by the minute, as they also have possession of a diary that's supposed from their future, and it details everything that's happened, and will happen, and they're basically afraid to know what their future will be. This main storyline is interrupted a few times with a second storyline set at the hotel that is more about setting-up the motive.

The premise of a time-wormhole is an interesting idea, and the concept does actually play a role in the way the mystery is set-up in this book, but because the book isn't clear on whether time travel is actually real or not until very late in the book, it feels not completely fair, as obviously, your theories would change depending on knowing whether time travel is actually feasible or not. The murders themselves don't really depend on any time travel-trickery though, with most of them just being 'well, any one of us could've done that' type of killings, or at best 'okay, at least these people wouldn't have been able to do it'. While some of these murders do rely on tricks ultimately, they remain relatively simple: partially because the group is trapped in a snowstorm on a mountain, with no real opportunities for a thorough investigation. Some of the tricks behind the murders also rely on dynamics I'm not a huge fan of, but your mileage may vary there. 

Rather than figuring out how these murders were committed, I'd say the main mystery's focus lies more on what connects all these murders: who would've have a reason to be committing these murders here while there's stuck on a mountain, cut-off from the outside world? The set-up for this reveal is probably the most memorable part of the book: some of it might be guessed early on because of the somewhat obvious clewing, and I don't think the execution is as good as it could've been, but I think the underlying idea is good. A lot of the heavy lifting is done in the secondary storyline though, making the main storyline ultimately feel more like a horror film plot, focusing more on the reactions of the group getting smaller with each consecutive murder and allowing little room for actual investigations/deductions. It's actually a complete contrast with the previous book, which was absolutely packed with all kinds of ideas: this one is definitely more limited in scope, and while I haven't read enough of Kuroda's standalone work to realize recognize his hand, this limited scope certainly doesn't help Nikaidou's style, who usually is at his best in terms of mystery plotting, tricks, and atmosphere in longer stories.

It's kinda a shame Nikaidou and Kuroda decided to go with a completely fictional location and background story this time, I think. While their story requires the rumours of a person travelling through time, they didn't even bother to pick a real existing prefecture or mountain. I'd loved to see this story using the local stories/myths of an existing place, perhaps reworking them a bit (i.e. a place known for disappearances, and then rewriting them so it turns out these disappearances were actually people being displaced in time). The previous book was specifically set in the prefecture of Hokkaido, near the city of Otaru, so it just felt jarring to have the story now take place in... Y. It'd have made more sense if they had used another place famous in Japan as a ski resort (and it's not like they don't have enough of them in Japan), rather than a made-up place, as it weakens the theme of the series. 

A character from the previous book (as well as Hakuginsou no Satsujinki by Nikaidou Reito and Aikawa Akira) appears also in this book by the way, but under an assumed name. This character is also 'connecting tissue' between the books, so in that sense, it's perhaps better to read these books in order, but it's not like you see that much development for this character across this books, it's more like a surprise reveal each time to realize X is actually also Y from the previous book.

You'll probably have guessed by now I'm not that huge a fan of Sennendake no Satsujinki: I think the first Killer X novel was just better conceived as a huge treasure box of perhaps not hugely impressive box, but still stitched together in a very competent manner, resulting in an overall entertaining story. In comparison, Sennendake no Satsujinki is not only smaller in scale, but is also less intricately plotted as a mystery novel and simply have fewer bells and whistles, making it not a bad book per se, but at the very least, it's a book that simply has less going for it. Thematically, it is stronger than the first book on some points, but picking an absolute favorite between the two of them won't be difficult. There is one more Killer X book waiting for me, so it'll be interesting to see what direction that final book will go.

Original Japanese title(s):  二階堂黎人, 黒田研二『千年岳の殺人鬼』

Snow Job Too Small

"X marks the spot."

"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

Guess it'll be starting to become warm again by the time this post goes online. I actually read this book during one of the hottest summers in Japan...

Six men and women nearing their thirties each make their way to the mountains near Otaru City in Hokkaidou to arrive at the Deep Snow House, the private residence of Tachihara Shigeru, retired teacher, photographer and self-proclaimed inventor. This group of six used to be in Shigeru's class in high school and have been invited to a small gathering at his home. Almost a year ago, they had a class-wide reunion, but Shigeru had an accident then, falling off the stairs at the restaurant they were eating/drinking at, which left him unable to walk. His former pupils received an invitation to visit him at his home and stay for a few days for skiing, but as they arrive, they do find it odd they are only six of them here, especially as some of them weren't even that close with Shigeru. When they arrive at the house, they are shocked to see Shigeru after the accident: he wears a mask, sits in a wheelchair and can't talk, having to use a computer-generated voice coming out of a robot to speak. As they talk things over, Shigeru explains he didn't send all these letters and that he never had any plans to have any parties at his home. While everyone wonders who then sent these letters, Shigeru says his former pupils might as well stay. However, strange events occur and when they look into some of Shigeru's private files, they find clues indicating a plot: for over a year now, a "pusher" has been active in Sapporo City, pushing people from stairs and elevations out on the streets, in malls and everywhere, injuring people severely. Notes on Shigeru's computer seem to suggest Shigeru suspect his fall wasn't an accident, but also engineered by the pusher, and that this pusher is one of his students, more precisely, one of the six students now present at his house. What is going to happen at this house, especially as a snow storm prevents anyone from leaving in Nikaidou Reito and Kuroda Kenji's Killer X (2001).

Killer X is the first novel in a trilogy, but also the second novel in a tetralogy. That might sound confusing... and it kinda is. So to explain: in 2000 publisher Kobunsha published the novel Hakuginsou no Satsujinki ("The Killer of the Silver House") by the author "Psycho Jun", an pseudonym to signify two collaborating authors. A quiz was set-up, and participants had to guess who these two writers were. 233 people made a guess, with only 8 getting it right. It was eventually revealed that the writers were Nikaidou Reito and Aikawa Akira. The next year, Killer X was published, this time a book written by a duo operating under the name "The Queen Brothers" (the name that Nikaidou and Aikawa were planning to use originally). It was later revealed this pen name belonged to Nikaidou Reito and Kuroda Kenji. Nikaidou Reito and Kuroda Kenji would pen two more novels in this series. So the first novel was by the duo of Nikaidou and Aikawa, and the remaining three novels by Nikaidou and Kuroda. The four books also all share the same theme of being closed circle mysteries set in ski resorts, so are often referred to as the Ski Mystery Tetralogy. So far so good. 

The confusing thing however is that there's also a binding factor only present in the three novels by Nikaidou Reito and Kuroda Kenji. Killer X is not only the title of the first book, it is also the name of an in-universe character. Killer X is a (fictional) mascotte figure created by a stationery maker and hugely popular. The titular Killer X is a former monk, and stationery and other merchandise featuring Killer X usually feature a visual of him, accompanied by English sentences with trivia about X, like  "X Is Monk" (sic) or "X Likes Cooking". Killer X as a character appears in three of the Nikaidou/Kuroda novels, thus these three books specifically are also referred to as the Killer X Trilogy. In Killer X, one of the characters is a huge of Killer X, and as it is the title, you can also guess the Killer X character is in fact connected to the mystery.

I have no idea how Nikaidou and Kuroda divided their work and planned out this novel, but I can say one thing: they were enthusiastic as hell. The book is not short, though very readable because of the simple prose, but it's crammed full with all things mystery readers like. The closed circle situation set-up of a house isolated from the outside world due to a snowstorm is of course very, very traditional, but there's plenty more of that to come, like a masked host who used a computer-generated voice to speak with his guests, who even denies he invited them, mysterious letters, a dark backstory of a person who randomly pushes people in the city, a mysterious companion to the host who seems to have secrets of her own, a group of high school comrades who aren't quite just friends anymore because of time passing but also because of personal history... There's a very detailed floor plan of the Deep Snow House too, which immediately gives the reader all kinds of ideas of how murders could occur there... The suspense parts of the book work well, and you can constantly feel something will go wrong, because somehow, not everything fits.

As a mystery novel, it's perhaps not exactly what you'd expect it to be. I at least had hoped for some bombastic locked room murder situation (and solution) from Nikaidou, which I didn't really get here. What I did get is a very complex, tangled web of narratives that is slowly unraveled. The story jumps between perspectives and times, showing us glimpses of one character in the present, but then for example jumping back to the perspective of the pusher while they are committing one of their crimes, only to jump to another character soon before arrival at the house etc. Keeping a keen eye for how everything is connected is not only necessary to solve the mystery, I'd say you also need to pay attention simply just to keep up with the plot due to all the jumping around. 

When the snow prevents anyone from leaving the house (note: nobody actually goes skiing in this book despite it being called the Ski Tetralogy!!), the mood becomes suspenseful, but also very slow, because little actually happens for a large part of the novel. It's mostly the ex-students trying to figure out who and why they have been gathered at the house of Shigeru, with a focus on the tripping accident of Shigeru some time earlier, when they were having a class reunion at a bar and Shigeru tripped down the stairs on his way back from the bathroom. So a lot of the actual criminal investigation is aimed at the past incident, while the present-day events are more about the building suspense of finding out what is happening in the first place, though slowly but surely, things are about to occur in the present-day too Ultimately, the mystery behind Shigeru's fall in the past is fairly simple, but also very adequately clewed (some of the clewing is even quite cheeky!) and I do love how it very naturally connects to the many other plotlines going on this book. Keeping all of the narratives in mind can be a challenge, but once this part of the mystery is solved, you can slowly see how a lot of the seperate narratives you have been reading come together. There's some great misdirection going too in regards to the motive, and I really liked how that was done, even if it sometimes borders on the unfair. The more memorable parts of Killer X is definitely how in the end all the disjointed fragments we saw are given their proper context,  though obviously, I can't really explain that without spoiling that/explaining too much in detail. The device of Killer X as a character was alright, though I am surprised they decided to use it as the title of the book too, as Killer X's role in the book isn't that important on its own. I am interested to see how Nikaidou and Kuroda will use Killer X in the following two books.

Oh, and there's one more thing to note: the very ending of this book does reference, and I suspect even spoils the previous book (Hakuginsou no Satsujinki by Psycho Jun = Nikaidou Reito and Aikawa Akira). I haven't read that one yet, but they discuss a certain character in a way that makes me think it's a fairly major spoiler? It might just be something revealed to the reader at the start of that book, but you might want to read them in order just to be safe.

Killer X was perhaps not the kind of mystery I had expected as a collaborative effort by both Nikaidou Reito and Kuroda Kenji, but I did enjoy the book overall. It is never revolutionary in the way it handles mystery tropes, but you can definitely feel both authors are confident in their art and used to playing with the familiar tropes of the genre to come up with something that is very recognizable as a mystery story, yet also bringing enough energy to also pack this "Definitely A Detective Story With All The Usual Twists" with a few good ideas of their own. This was a decent enough read, and it does make me interested in the other two novels, which I fortunately already have in my possession. 

Original Japanese title(s): 二階堂黎人、黒田研二『Killer X』