Clock Watcher

正しいリズムで刻をきざむ

銀色の針が胸を刺激する

「晴れ時計」（Garnet Crow)

The silver hand that marks the time passing at the correct rhythm

Also makes me excited

"A Sunny Clock" (Garnet Crow)

I'm writing this review literally over four months after reading the book. There's also like three months between me writing this review now, and this review actually getting posted. I guess it fits the theme of clocks and time...

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Kishi Yuusuke's Colossus no Kagizume (The Colossus' Claws), a pocket release featuring two stories which were originally collected in 2017's Mystery Clock: when the pocket version of this book was released late 2020, they decided to split the 2017 release up in two seperate pockets with their own titles. Two of the four stories became Colossus no Kagizume, while the other two stories were bundled together as Mystery Clock. The 2020 pocket Mystery Clock therefore only contains half of the stories included in the original Mystery Clock book. Naturally, the stories here are still about the attorney Aoto Junko and her acquaintance Enomoto Kei, an expert on security whom she strongly suspects is a burglar himself: unfortunately for her, Enomoto is brilliant at solving locked room murders and other impossible crimes, and she often needs his help to save her clients.

The first story Yuruyakana Jisatsu ("A Slow Suicide") is quite short and apparently, I already knew this story as it was adapted as part of the 2014 television special of the Kagi no Kakatta Heya drama series, but to be honest, I could remember absolutely nothing of the tale. Enomoto finds himself dragged to a yakuza office, where he is forced to open a door. Earlier, the yakuza captain Nonogaki left his low-level grunt Mitsuo alone in the office, but just as Nonogaki was greeted by his driver and about to get in the car, a shot rang out from the office. With the entrance locked from the inside and the office being very well secured, the daughter of the head of the organisation decides to bring Enomoto in to pick the lock for them, a job Enomoto would rather not do as it's obvious he's getting involved in stuff he doesn't want to get involved with, but he has no choice. When he opens the door, they find Mitsuo alone and dead inside the office, with a pistol in his hand and a hole in his head. Mitsuo's death has parallels with the death of a rival captain of Nonogaki who died earlier, and at first it seems Mitsuo commited suicide because he was somehow involved with that previous death, but Enomoto quickly stumbles upon a few contradictions at the scene that seem to indicate Nonogaki planned Mitsuo's death, but how could he have killed Mitsuo inside the locked office at the same time he was outside about to get in his car? Not a fan of the solution to be honest. The prologue already makes it clear Nonogaki is indeed the guilty one, but the question of how he managed to kill Mitsuo is a bit unsatisfying: it demands a lot of incertain/unpredictable actions from Mitsuo for example, and because the story is very short, it feels a bit forced too. More time for the set-up/foreshadowing might have helped the tale.

The titular Mystery Clock on the other hand is very, very long and almost closer to an actual novel than a novelette. Junko has been invited to the holiday villa of Mori Reiko, a famous mystery author and her client who is celebrating her thirtieth anniversary as a professional author. Other guests include her nephew, her first husband, her editor and... Enomoto Kei, who Junko brought along as a security expert to help make the villa safer, but she's terrified he's going to steal something. During the little party, Reiko goes upstairs because she has a deadline to meet and needs to finish her manuscript. She asks her current husband, the mystery author Tokizane Genki, to entertain the guests and he shows off her fabulous collection of antique clocks, including the transparant Mystery Clocks designed by Houdini himself. They play a game where the guests have to guess the relative values of the clocks, with the winner being awarded an antique clock, When the game is over, the whole party goes up to check on Mori Reiko, but they find her dead in her study. Her husband Tokizane however suspects one of the guests killed his wife, and he grabs a rifle and threatens them all, hoping the murderer will confess. He eventually decides to have his guests deduce who the murderer is, rounding them up in the dining room and having them basically accuse each other based on the evidence they found earlier. Eventually Tokizane gives up and allows them to call the police, but by that time, Enomoto has more than a strong suspicion that Tokizane himself is the murderer. The only problem is that Tokizane's alibi is perfect: from the time his wife left the room until they found her body, his alibi was vouched for by five different clocks: the real time clock in the victim's computer, the radio-controlled clock in the main hall, a clock in the study and two clocks in the dining room including a grandfather clock. So how did he kill his wife when he didn't have the time?

The story does not pretend like it's a secret that it's inspired by Ayukawa Tetsuya's short story The Five Clocks (included in The Red Locked Room. Disclosure: I translated The Red Locked Room) as it even mentions it explicitly. But Mystery Clock is The Five Clocks on drugs. The moment the story starts, it keeps on making very, very clear that time is very important to this story. Every single timestamp mentioned in this story is bolded, to make it absolutely clear how long each event takes and at what time, and at the end of the first act, you'll realize that Tokizane couldn't have committed the murder as basically every second has been accounted for. And what makes Mystery Clock a lot trickier than The Five Clocks is that we have newer, modern clocks like satellite-linked clocks that can't be easily changed by hand. So how did Tokizane manage to find the time to kill his wife even the clocks say he didn't? Well, by an insane combination of different tricks to fool each seperate clock, but by the time you get to the end of the story, you'll just be exhausted as it's just too complex. Each of these tricks could have possibly worked as the single idea for a short story, but when thrown together it's just too much, and some of the trickery performed is almost too complex. Like with one of the final things explained: I could hardly make any sense of the written explanation of the trick, and I was happy to see the following page had a diagram to make things clearer... only it still took me a long time to really comprehend what that diagram, and the text earlier were trying to convey, and from a certain point on, you kinda understand that the ideas used in this story can be pretty interesting, but it's just told in an incredibly dry manner. It stops being a story and just feels like a puzzle. 

Perhaps the story would have worked better if it had been adapted in a visual format, for while there is pretty ingenious story buried here, the many, many bolded timestamps just make the tale appear like nothing but a set of puzzle pieces and it results in a very tedious read. This is truly a story that's just too clever for its own good.

To be honest, I liked the two stories in Colossus no Kagizume a lot better than the two in Mystery Clock: the first story is just too short with an idea that doesn't really manage to impress, while the titular Mystery Clock is perhaps the other way around: it's way too ambitious, resulting in a story that is more like a dry puzzle than an actual story, with too much tricks packed into the tale of which some are just too clever for their own good. It's more a story where the author can show off his ingeniousness in plotting an imposssible alibi, rather than a story that is actually enjoyable for the reader to err, read. So if you had to choose only one of these two volumes which were released on the same day, I'd definitely recommend Colossus no Kagizume over this one. 

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介『ミステリークロック』:「ゆるやかな自殺」/「ミステリークロック」

Sunken Moment

波の上漂う海月（くらげ）をみるのが好きで

「君という光」（Garnet Crow)

 

I like looking at the jellyfish floating in the sea

"The Light That Is You" (Garnet Crow)

Don't you just hate it when they suddenly switch cover styles for a series you've been following for years and the new covers are better than the old ones? It's not like I'm going to buy the re-releases of the older books for their covers, but it still bugs me a bit.

It's been almost ten years since I first read Kishi Yuusuke's The Glass Hammer, which introduced me to the attorney Aoto Junko, who has become well-known as the person you want to retain if you're confronted with a locked room murder. In truth, it's not Junko who solves these cases, but the security consultant Enomoto Kei, whom Junko sees as an neccessary evil and she's often reluctant to call in his services. For while Enomoto's expertise on all things security are undeniably first-rate, she has the very very very strong suspicion that Enomoto is actually a burglar himself and that his talent to break down locked room mysteries is also used to actually break into other people's houses. I've enjoyed the other books in the series a lot, as well as the (excellent!) live-action drama Kagi no Kakatta Heya ("The Locked Room"), which was titled after the third book in the series. In 2017, the fourth book titled Mystery Clock in the series was published, collecting four stories. I usually buy the pocket re-releases which commonly follow a few years after the initial release, so I didn't pick the book up back in 2017. The pocket release finally came late 2020, but in a form I had not expected. Usually when a book is re-released in the bunko pocket form in Japan, it's the 'extended' version despite the smaller format. Besides text revisions, pockets often feature a commentary essay by a mystery writer/critic on the book, and some pocket releases even feature bonus stories not included in the original release. Interestingly, they decided to split up 2017's Mystery Clock into two seperate volumes for the 2020 pocket release. This is a practice that often happens with novels that are too long  (part 1, part 2, etc), but I had never seen this done to a short story/novelette collection, and in this case, the two volumes aren't even called part 1 and 2, but each feature their own distinct title, making them complete seperate releases. Which is why I will also discuss them as seperate books in seperate posts now, even though they originally formed one single book.

Colossus no Kagizume also has the English title The Colossus' Claws and features two novelettes, one of which I already knew quite well. Kagami no Kuni no Satsujin ("The Mirror Land Murder") was part of the source material used for the 2014 television special of the Kagi no Kakatta Heya drama series, and that story definitely left an impression on me back then. The story starts with a visit by Inspector Kouno to Junko, who confides in her that Enomoto will probably soon become a suspect in a murder case. A gallery director was murdered in his office and it just so happens that a burglar who seems very similar to Enomoto was caught on a hidden security camera as he made his way inside the building. While there were a few other people inside the gallery working on an Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found on the Other Side-inspired trick art exposition too that night, security footage show none of them approached the director's office. Enomoto contacts Junko, 'assuring' her that he was hired by the director to test the gallery's security measures, and swears he didn't kill the director. Which in turn means that one of the three people working on the trick art exposition has to be the murderer.

The problem however is that in order to reach the crime scene, a person has to go through the whole Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found on the Other Side exposition and take the stairs at the end of the hall. The exposition is actually an elaborate mirror maze that makes use of trick art (optical illusions) with an Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass theme and while there are multiple routes through the maze, there are two points one has to pass, and there are security cameras here: the entrance is a big 3D sculpture of Humpty Dumpty which has to be moved to gain access to the maze, while there's also a security camera aimed at the see-through corridor at the end of the maze. Nobody is seen on the security footage of these cameras around the time of the murder, but if Enomoto is truly innocent, this means someone managed to go through the maze completely unseen. But how?

Looking back at my review of the drama adaptation, I think I have little much to add to that, because it was a fairly faithful adaptation and I still feel largely the same about the main ideas. The first part of the solution, in regards to how someone could've possibly gone through the Humpty Dumpty-blocked entrance even though the sculpture is never seen moving on camera nor anything else out of the ordinary, is really clever, but it works soooooo much better in a visual format. While you understand the explanation as you read it as prose, being actually shown what was done is not only more impressive, but also more convincing. Also, it's neigh impossible to think of this solution based on just the text, while in the visual format, the problem feels fairer. It's a trick you really have to visually see and I have to admit I was glad I had seen the drama version first. The second half of the explanation of how someone made it out of the maze unseen is clever in the sense that you can actually imagine it being done, but it does rely on the knowledge of the existence of something specific, and if you don't know about it, you're definitely not going to figure out for yourself how someone could've passed through a see-through corridor unseen. Ultimately, Kagami no Kuni no Satsujin has a few very clever tricks that allowed an invisible murderer to pass through the maze, but these ideas also undeniably more about the surprise of learning about some specific concept or piece of technology, and then seeing it applied to a mystery story. If you don't know about them, it's unlikely you'll ever solve the murder yourself.

The same basically holds for Colossus no Kagizume ("The Colossus' Claws"), which is about a mysterious death occuring in the ocean. The Neo Seatopia Project is headed by both the government and Ooyashima Maritime Development to develop new solutions for seabed mining. It operates from an experiments ship in the ocean, with divers doing experiments on the oceanbed. Hotei is the fiancé of Yuri (daughter of the CEO of Ooyashima Maritime Development) and made head of the operation, even though he's not really suited for the job and therefore not liked at all by his former colleagues. One night, Hotei went out for some night fishing, when suddenly his boat was flipped over amidst rising sea foam and when his body was finally found, there were odd scratches across his body. While there were plenty of people on the New Seatopia ship who didn't like Hotei, none of them could've actually reached his boat unseen: some people physically saw how Hotei's boat was suddenly swallowed by the foams with nothing in the vicinity, the sonar system of the experiment ship caught no other boats nearby and the only people "near" Hotei's boat were diving deep below, and because of the medical sensors on these divers as well as the dangers of decompression sickness, none of these divers could've physically gone up to the surface to attack Hotei and dive back again. The only explanation is that a Collosal Squid might've decided to attack Hotei, but fiancee Yuri isn't convinced of that and wants Junko to find out whether Hotei could've been killed by a human.

This is a weird story to rate. It basically falls in the same trap as the previous story, in the sense that it makes clever use of some kind of technology/specific piece of knowledge to make the impossible possible, in this case, allowing someone to approach the victim undetected in the ocean, but the story's hardly going to feel very satisfying if you didn't know about it before (and few people are likely to). It's almost like suddenly being told that flying pigs do exist, and that that allowed the murder to commit the crime. It's a shame, because like the story also points out, this particular trick does result in a very unique moment where it's shown that the person who was most unlikely to could've committed the murder, is shown to be the only person who could've committed the murder as the introduction of that specific piece of knowledge turns everything around.

On one hand, I do think the two stories in Colossus no Kagizume are interesting in the way they use new, modern technology to create solutions to locked room murder mysteries we hadn't seen before, but it feels like it's just too early for them: while the application is clever, as a reader, you feel slightly cheated because the stories keep bringing up concepts that aren't quite common knowledge yet. Kagami no Kuni no Satsujin is the better one of the two, but I'd recommend the drama adaptation over the original story because the trick simply works better in a visual format. The review on the accompanying book to this volume will follow soon.

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介『コロッサスの鉤爪』:「鏡の国の殺人」/「コロッサスの鉤爪」

The Locked Room

 Liar Liar 嘘も誠も 

Tell me Tell me 見えなくなるよ

「Face Down」（嵐）

Liar Liar  / I lose sight of

Tell me Tell me / Both lies and the truth

"Face Down" (Arashi)

Huh, I managed to read this book in one day. I've been a very, very slow reader lately, so kinda surprised by that, but then again, this was a great book.

It was many years ago when a friend recommended the author Kishi Yuusuke to me, and while in hindsight I'm pretty sure she didn't even recommend him as a mystery writer (as he also writes horror), man, I was quite impressed by his locked room mystery The Glass Hammer and it got me hooked on the Security Consultant Detective Enomoto Kei series. Enomoto Kei runs the shop Forewarned & Forearmed, which sells anything concerning crime prevention, ranging from locks to security cameras. When the attorney Junko first met Enomoto, she found his expertise in cracking a triple-layered locked room mystery indispensible, though after a while she also started to suspect that the man was in fact a thief himself, as his expertise on how to get into a secured room was a bit too practical. Nonetheless, Enomoto has become a very useful man to know, as Junko's been getting more and more cases where her client wants her to prove that what appears to be a suicide or an accident in a sealed room, was in fact a locked room murder. In the third book of the series Kagi no Kakatta Heya ("The Locked Room", 2011), Enotomo and Junko find themselves working on four different locked room mysteries.

The title Kagi no Kakatta Heya might sound familiar to the television-viewing audience here: when the Security Consultant Detective Enomoto Kei series was adapted as a television series in 2012, the series was titled Kagi no Kakatta Heya, after this third book. The series was based on all three books which were out at the time (The Glass Hammer, Kitsunebi no Ie and Kagi no Kakatta Heya: a fourth book was released last year). This series was absolutely fantastic by the way and a must-see for fans of locked room mysteries. The locked room mysteries of this series are in general already great, but the TV drama really managed to give the whole thing something extra. What was especially amazing was that for each episode, they made little scale models of the crime scenes, which Enomoto used to explain his various theories of how the locked room murder was done. It was also followed by a good TV special one year later. Anyway, I think I purchased a copy of the short story collection Kagi no Kakatta Heya soon after watching the TV series, but as I already knew the stories from the TV adaptation, I figured I'd read it later, after I'd ve forgotten most of the details. So now, in 2018, I finally decided to read Kagi no Kakatta Heya.

The book opens with Tatazumu Otoko ("The Standing Man"), which was incidently also the basis for the first episode of the TV series. Enomoto and Junko are asked to see whether an apparent suicide couldn't have been a murder. The CEO of an undertaker's had indeed been suffering from cancer, so the notion of him deciding to commit suicide wasn't too farfetched on its own, but there were still many questions. The man was found inside a small villa in the mountains, where he had been working. The room in which he had been found was completely sealed: the four French windows had all been locked (one of which broken when they first discovered the body), and the only door to the room had been practically sealed: a table had been moved so close to the door, which just enough space for the victim to be sitting there with his knees up and his back to the door. At the other end of the table, a sofa had also been placed. With the door being blocked by the victim, a table and a sofa in that order, no murderer could've left through the door, which itself was also covered by a large white sheet and flanked by flowers and a scroll with a Buddhist text, all invoking a traditional funeral service. As there was also a last will found on the table, the police have no other reason to believe that this was a suicide, but the lawyer of the victim is convinced it was a murder, committed by the victim's cousin and also the man who together with the laywer first discovered the body. A young witness who thinks he saw the murderer standing in the room however seems to be the key to solving this mystery.

An excellent opening story. As with most of the short stories in this series, the whodunnit is quite obvious and not even remotely hidden, but it's the question of how it was done that's really a brain teaser. The goal of the murderer is revealed very early on to have this case closed as a suicide, so they really did their best making sure that it couldn't be anything else but a suicide. With both a sheet and the victim themselves blocking the door directly, and a table and a sofa also preventing the door from opening wide, it really does seem impossible for the murderer to escape the room and it's both a delight and a disappointment when you see another of your ideas shot down like a lame bird. The actual solution to the conundrum is brilliantly hinted at through two seperate clues and very plausible. It might require slightly specific knowledge, though it's something mystery fans are likely to know about, so I can definitely live with that.

Kagi no Kakatta Heya ("The Locked Room") is the title story, and starts with the story of Aiichirou, a former sneak thief who had just spent five years in prison for an unintended murder during one of his outings. His sister died during those five years, but he wasn't able to go to the service, as he didn't want his nephew and niece know that he's a criminal. Now he's free, he's finally able to go visit his brother-in-law and see his beloved nephew and niece, but something is wrong: his nephew won't come out of his room, and it is locked from the inside with a new lock. After drilling a hole in the door, Aiichirou manages to use his old tools of the trade to open the lock from the inside, only to find out that the door has been taped tightly to the wall. Eventually, Aiichirou, brother-in-law and niece manage to get inside the room, but they are too late, as they find Aiichirou's nephew has committed suicide through mono-dioxide with the help of a barbecue inside his room. While Aiichirou, as a master thief who can open any lock, knows the door he opened was properly locked and taped down when he opened it, he still suspects his nephew's death was no suicide, and the suspect is his brother-in-law, who is not the biological father of the two children, but as Aiichirou doesn't know how it was done, he decides to ask his old friend Enomoto for help.

Again a masterpiece: with the door and windows locked and taped down, and the expert testimony of a thief who specialized in opening locks, it seems like this couldn't have been anything but a suicide, but it's of course murder. But how?! Like in the previous story, some rudimentary knowledge of science is quite handy, especially as the necessary piece of knowledge is not really well hinted at this time (if you don't know it, you'll only learn about this at the conclusion), but it's a gem, and also perfectly designed, with every single element in the story serving a clear purpose. What makes this a surprisingly devious scheme is that in a different setting, the solution might be easily guessed at. However, set in a normal house, in the room of a teenager, this solution isn't likely to come up in your head any time soon. 

In Yuganda Hako ("The Crooked Box"), a teacher is all set to marry with his collegue and move into their new home, but there's one problem: their newly built home is a total disaster. A small earthquake (which happen fairly often in Japan) has revealed a whole list of fatal flaws in the house, as the far too weak concrete foundation has cracked, resulting in a crooked house: the living room has a horrible slant which also collects all the leaking water in a corner, the doors don't fit in their frames anymore and the kitchen might collapse. He decides to kill the contractor, who denies any blame, as his aunt, who is the vice-president of the company, will no doubt build a new home for him. He dresses the death like an accident, by making it seem like the man slipped and hit his head while in the living room. We don't get to see how the teacher manages this, so we are only presented with the result, which is a true locked room mystery: the windows were covered in plastic sheets taped to the wall from the inside, the door to the kitchen was kept closed at all times and taped off carefully because it had become a supporting wall due to the shifting foundation, and the door to the hallway wasn't exactly locked, but simply jammed stuck into the framework: the doors of the house didn't fit the frames anymore, so to "close" the door, one needed to kick, punch, hit and push the doors at multiple spots to get them inside the framework, and this could only be done from inside. The living room was thus a locked space, so how did the teacher escape from this room?

I vividly remember the TV adaptation of this story, and again, it was absolutely fantastic. The introduction of a certain object used in the story could've used a bit more build-up, but the way the murderer managed to create this locked room is absolutely brilliant. It has some parallels with the solution of the Detective Conan episode Noroi no Kamen wa Tsumetaku Warau, though still very different. What I realize now as I write this is that Kishi also manages to use very different kind of solutions even though these first three stories are very alike in concept: namely simply a locked room. There's no question of whodunnit, and each story is solely about how the murderer managed to create a locked room. While all the solutions are very mechanically inclined, they all focus on different elements in the room, and nothing is reused or redressed. In terms of "visualization", I'd say both this story, or the opening story Tatazumu Otoko came out really well in the TV adaptation, and I'd certainly recommend at least these two stories from this collection.

The last story in this collection is Misshitsu Gekijou ("Locked Room Theater"), which is a sequel to Inu Nomizo Shiru DOG KNOWS in the previous short story collection. Enomoto and Junko solved a murder within a theater groupe back then, and this time, they are invited to see ES&B's latest play: Yonder Bird. It's the most horrible play Junko has ever, ever witnessed, but at the end of the play, a performer who starred in the pre-show with three other performers is found dead in one of the dressing rooms. The problem is that the murderer couldn't have escaped from the crime scene: the victim was found in the dressing room to the left of the stage, and the hallway with the dressing room in question only has two exits: either to the lobby (where someone was standing watch all the time), or the stage itself. The troupe members of ES&B all came from the dressing rooms on the right side of the stage, meaning that the only persons "free" to kill the victim were the three other performers in the pre-show. Yet not one of them could've left the crime scene without being seen by either the people in the lobby, or the audience and the actors on stage. Enomoto however says he can solve the case in a mere thirty minutes.

Like Inu Nomizo Shiru DOG KNOWS, Misshitsu Gekijou has a different tone from the other stories, which is distinctly more nonsensical and focused on comedy. And once again, I have admit I didn't really like the comedy here. The humor just doesn't work for me. The solution to the locked room murder is also a bit hard to swallow: I can definitely see it work in a smaller scale, but it's not likely to work in reality and in this particular situation, even if it's a fairly well-hinted solution that works well in the general setting.

Kagi no Kakatta Heya was overall an excellent short story collection though that provided some fantastic locked room mysteries. Even though I knew these stories already from the TV adaptation, I really enjoyed reading them, and I had forgotten just enough about them to be still surprised by some of them. I know a fourth book in this series, Mystery Clock, is already out, though I'm still waiting for the paperback pocket version to be released, but I'll be sure to read it once it's out!

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介『鍵のかかった部屋』：「佇む男」/「鍵のかかった部屋」/「歪んだ箱」/「密室劇場」

Well-Schooled in Murder

「Oh, you were to enter Todai? Sorry, you are going to die.」

『悪の教典 - Lesson of the Evil』

I love Japanese bunko pockets, but they don't really work for novels with a really high page count. I have some pockets that go to around nine-hundred pages (Nikaidou Reito's Akuryou no Yakata and Shimada Souji's Atopos for example), but these are quite difficult to handle. More often, novels are split in multiple (normal-sized) volumes, but that is usually a more costly investment for the reader, as they have to buy two or more books. On the other hand, you can easily drop out after the first volume; I have often seen that people decide to drop a book split in multiple volumes after the first. As a reader, I am still not sure what is best. But that's enough for today's non-sequitur introduction...

Hasumi Seiji appears to be the perfect high school teacher. Not only do his students like his enthusiastic way of educating the English language, but as a homeroom teacher Hasumi has also shown to have a great eye for the 'feel' of his class, solving the various problems his pupils cope with. Hasumi is also well-respected by the rest of the school staff, because of his commitment to the cause and the image of the school. From bullying to 'monster parents' (helicopter parents) and sexual harassment from staff, Hasumi manages to deal with every obstacle that appears on his way of becoming the best teacher of the best class. Hasumi also happens to be a complete psychopath though and not seldom does his idea of dealing with a problem involve rather violent and deadly solutions. And as the academic year progresses, more and more people start to suspect there is more behind the perfect facade of Hasumi in Kishi Yuusuke's Aku no Kyouten, which also bears the English title Lesson of the Evil.

Lesson of the Evil was originally serialized between 2008 - 2010 and won the first Yamada Fuutarou Prize, first place in both the Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! and Weekly Bunshun Mystery Best rankings and was nominated for a heap of other prizes like the Naoki Prize. I first saw the title in the Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! list, but had rather forgotten about it until I attended a lecture of writer Kishi Yuusuke in 2012 at Kyoto University (on the role of violence in the entertainment sector), in which he mentioned this book several times and showed the trailer of the film adaptation by Miike Takashi that released the same year (the movie is also released outside Japan with the grammatically more sensible title Lesson of Evil). As a work of entertainment fiction, this is a pretty big title (there's even a comic version!).

But the first thing I have to say before anything else is: WHY IS THIS CONSIDERED A MYSTERY NOVEL BY SOME? How the heck did this won first place in not one, but two mystery novel rankings?! Setting aside the question of whether Lesson of the Evil is a good read or not: this is not a mystery novel. It's a horror novel. In the broad sense of the word, you can call it a crime novel. But not a mystery novel. The fact Lesson of the Evil won a mystery award is a mystery though. I had suspected something like that having read the description of the book in the Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! guidebook and the film was definitely meant to be bloody horror, but somewhere that it would turn out to be a mystery novel (like Abiko Takemaru's Satsuriku ni Itaru Yamai). It didn't. I think most sources refer to Lesson of the Evil as horror, which is correct, but I just can't understand multiple juries could have considered this the best mystery novel released in 2010!

Aaaaanyway. But as I have read the book and it's not completely off-topic here, still the review. The pocket version of Lesson of the Evil is split in two volumes and I quite liked the first one. The first chapter starts out as any typical school drama. Hasumi learns that one of his students is being sexually harrassed by one of his fellow teachers and helps the victim, while on the other hand manages to convince another hardheaded teacher to apologize to a student he had hit. Standard stuff here. But a third problem involves Hasumi getting rid of some crows that bother him at home and the method employed is the first hint you get that Hasumi might not be as normal as he appears to be. As the story continues, you'll see Hasumi taking more and more extreme measures to wipe out any problem in his way, from blackmailing a fellow teacher to setting things up so a problem child gets himself expelled. This first half is easily the best part of the novel, as the gap between Hasumi's perfect appearance and his ruthless behaviour is quite creepy. The build-up in the first chapter to make you feel uneasy is great and the way the story develops to the more extreme second half is effective.

The second half of the book however is mostly a splatter-horror story, when some of Hasumi's pupils start to suspect there's more behind their homeroom teacher than just his smile, and Hasumi decides to kill his entire class during a school festival, put the blame on someone else and start anew (and this kinda sounds like a big spoiler, but considering this is also written on the back cover description and the film trailer is all about this particular part...).  This part has some similarities with Battle Royale, with kids trying to defend themselves from a shotgun-carrying assaillant,all  locked up in one area (and the bloody bloodiness of the bloodshedding). For those who like over-the-top violence, you can find plenty of that here, and in the pool of blood that drips out of the pages.

Did I like the book? Well, reasonably. Like I said, I thought the first half was good, especially if one sees it as a parody/subversion of 'traditional' school drama like Great Teacher Onizuka, where an unconventional teacher helps students and fellow teachers alike. If one considers the place of the educational system and teachers in society as pillars (especially Japanese society) and the school as a safe haven for minors, one has to admit that Lesson of the Evil plays a lot with that. A lot of 'stereotypical' and real social problems fly by: from grand-scale cheating, 'monster parents', corporal punishments, sexual harassement to indecent teacher-student relations, but the way Hasumi deals with them is not as typical. By the way, this school has way too much serious problems, even without Hasumi!

I was less a fan of the second half. Not because I dislike the blood, but that massacre takes just too many pages. It just goes on and on and on and whereas the first half had a good sense of speed because Hasumi was multitasking on several schemes across the school, the second half is just straight splatter horror.

Lesson of the Evil is the first time I read horror by Kishi Yuusuke, by the way. Is it a mystery? Noho, absolutely no. Is it entertaining? Well, yeah. As a psycho-horror novel, it's okay and I personally liked the way the story resembles a standard school drama in form (including the social problems), but handles it in a very warped way. If what I've said sounds alluring, or if you think the film trailer looks cool, take a look. For those who want a real mystery, try Kishi's Security Consultant Enomoto Kei locked room mystery novels (also known as the Kagi ga Kakatta Heya series).

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介 『悪の教典』

Dead Man's Mirror

迷わず秘密の裏側を知りたくて扉開けたなら 

どっかでみたようなデジャヴが何度もUpside Down

 「Face Down」 (嵐）

Opening the door because I want to know what's behind it without getting lost

I find a deja vu I've seen somewhere else before, countless of times Upside Down.

"Face Down" (Arashi)

Writing this review reminded me that I went to a forum organized by Kyoto University featuring Kishi Yuusuke last year. He talked about violence in media and its (perceived) consequences on society, which was quite interesting. I still have my notes somewhere, should probably write them out one of these days though... Don't know why I never mentioned the forum here though.

I first wrote about Kishi Yuusuke's Security Consultant Detective Enomoto Kei series about two, three years ago, with my review of The Glass Hammer. It is still one of the more memorable locked room mysteries I've ever read and I've enjoyed other entries in the series too. The series was made into a TV drama titled Kagi no Kakatta Heya two years ago and I also praised that production as an excellent series focusing solely on locked room mysteries. And attornies Aoto Junko, Serizawa Gou and security consultant Enomoto Kei returned to the small screen last night (January 3) in Kagi no Kakatta Heya Special: Kagami no Kuni no Satsujin ("The Locked Room Special: The Mirror Land Murders"). Serizawa Gou still has the ability to come across locked room murders despite Enomoto's disappearance at the end of the TV series, as he finds one of his clients clubbed to death at home. Locked, naturally. His junior associate Junko on the other hand is dealing with a locked room revival: a man was having a heart attack in his own, locked apartment room, but someone appeared and called an ambulance for him. But how did his savior get and out of the room? Serizawa and Junko are both having troubles with their locked rooms, when Enomoto Kei appears again.

I actually didn't even know about this special until today, so it kinda surprised me. But like I said, the TV series was excellent, so I started watching this special without too many worries (and a little pile of expectations): I was reasonably happy with the results. The special is based on two stories by Kishi Yuusuke; Kagami no Kuni no Satsujin ("The Mirror Land Murder") and an yet unpublished story, provisionally titled Futatsu no Misshitsu ("Two Locked Rooms").  One problem I had with the special was that it really felt like two stories were just glued together. It wasn't one story, just three locked room problems in a row. Then again, most detective shows have trouble giving you a fair locked room murder in one show, so I guess I shouldn't be complaining about a special that manages to give me three locked room murders, two of which quite good.

The locked room revival is fun as a concept, but the trick behind the locked room is not fundamentally different from a locked room murder: it's still about figuring out how (if) someone got out of a locked room. The other two locked room murders in this special are 'normal' murders (no revivals here), but much more interesting. The first one features a trick actually quite simple and primitive, but it's the way it's executed that's memorable. It's quite easy to oversee the solution because it's so simple, and while I have nothing against complex tricks, I really do like it when tricks turn out to be really simple and executable.

The bigger locked room is the one that lends its name to the special's title: a museum curator is killed, but the two corridors that lead to his office were under camera surveillance; one corridor comes from the main hall, while you'll have to go through an Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found on the Other Side themed mirror maze exposition (in construction) to get to the other hallway. It's pretty obvious that the murderer must have gone through the maze (hence the title), but how? The trick is daring, and reminiscent of The Glass Hammer, but a bit more believable. One part of the solution does rely on a bit of specialist information and while I admit there was a bit of hinting to that, I don't believe it's common knowledge, and it felt a bit like one of those super technical tricks from Higashino Keigo's Galileo series, where you're told about a natural phenomenom that's apparently behind the magic. It's not cheating, but how am I supposed to know about obscure lasers? The first part of the trick is fantastic though and is hinted at fairly well too. It's also a trick that works best in a visual medium, so it really works well here.

As a TV production, Kagi no Kakatta Heya is still excellent. The production team really tries to make you understand the nature of the locked rooms, as well as other relevant information. When talking about alibis for example, timelines are put on screen, to ensure the viewer knows where everybody was at what time. Sherlock does a lot with visual information too, though that is mostly additional information (for example, short deductions, text messages appearing above a cellphone). In Kagi no Kakatta Heya, it's used to summarize (long threads of) information for fair play. And of course, the highlight of the show, the miniatures of all the locked rooms! This special wouldn't be complete with one and once again we see the production team doing everything to present the locked room in an understandable way for the viewer. CG reconstructions are probably easier to construct, which is why I really appreciate the work that goes into these minatures.

Oh, and I think I actually missed the ending of the TV series (which was based on The Glass Hammer), but it seems they finally made it clear that Enomoto Kei is actually a security consultant and a thief. This was clear in the novels from the beginning, but the TV series kinda jumped around that. In fact, it's only in this special that Enomoto Kei starts running his own security shop, something he had been doing from the beginning in the novels.

As a locked room mystery, the Kagi no Kakatta Heya Special is a bit uneven. The stories are glued together and it never feels like one single coherent story, but the seperate pieces of the production are quite good; it's just a shame it's not something bigger than just the sum of the parts. For those who loved the Kagi no Kakatta Heya  TV series, as well as those into a good locked room mystery, this special will provide an entertaining two hours though.  

Original Japanese title(s): 　貴志祐介（原）　『鍵のかかった部屋ＳＰ：鏡の国の殺人』

Hello Mr. my yesterday

「古来より犯罪者による密室が築かれ、そして探偵により崩されていった」

『名探偵コナン　過去からの前奏曲（プレリュード）』

"Since ancient times locked rooms have been constructed by criminals, and deconstructed by detectives" 

"Detective Conan: Prelude From the Past"

Welcome to a new entry in Short Shorts, where the topics that don't convert to proper stand-alone posts are banished to. I actually wanted to post this Short Short later, because I usually gather at least three topics per post. But then I noticed I was already nearing the 200 character limit for the labels for this post with just two topics. Darn tags!

I really miss having a television in my room. I love Japanese variety programs (even if they are highly commercial and capable of rendering viewers brainless) and TV dramas. And this season in particular is full with interesting-looking detective series! A series based on Higashigawa Tokuya's Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni, a series based on Akagawa Jirou's Mikeneko Holmes no Suiri ("Calico Cat Holmes' Deduction")... and the one I am actually watching at the moment: Kagi no Kakatta Heya ("The Locked Room"), a series based on the three books in Kishi Yuusuke's Security Consultant Detective Enomoto Kei series (The Glass Hammer, Kitsunebi no Ie and Kagi no Kakatta Heya).

I'll admit right away that part of my enjoyment of the series derives from looking at Toda Erika playing the young attorney Aoto Junko. While there are some minor changes in the setting, the basic formula of this is still the same as the original novel series: attorney Aoto Junko (and her superior Serizawa Gou) come across suspicious suicide and accidental death cases. Their feeling tells them that it must have been murder, but these cases all occur in locked rooms. Enter security consultant Enomoto Kei (played by Arashi leader Ohno Satoshi), who with an expert knowledge concerning locks and other ways to lock rooms for their cases will find a way to open the locked rooms for our laywer duo.

It's pretty very rare for a TV series to focus completely on locked rooms (so it's not 'just' an emphasis on impossible situations), but Kagi no Kakatta Heya pulls it off perfectly. Which is also because of the fantastic source material. Especially awesome are the little models of the rooms Enomoto constructs every episode, which he then examines through a small fiber camera. It really feels like they did their best on this production, as this is an era where we usually go for easy-made CG models for these kind of reconstructions. Anyway, an awesome mystery series that has is a must-see for those people who especially like locked rooms. And Toda Erika.

And to get back to the TV-story: I also want a television to play videogames on. As of now, I just have to be content with my PSP and DS though and the last two weeks of April were mostly dedicated to playing Meitantei Conan: Kako Kara no Prelude ("Detective Conan: Prelude from the Past"), the newest Conan videogame. It's a direct sequel to last year's Detective Conan: Rondo of the Blue Jewel, featuring an almost identical game engine (with a few little new parts). Like the previous game, Prelude From the Past consists of a series of loosely connected cases which the player, assuming the roles of Conan, Shinichi and Hattori, has to solve. This time, the story concerns a case that spans over time (hence the title), Starting with a case Shinichi solved before he turned into Conan, and the culmination of that case in the present. Oh, and Kaitou KID appears fo no reason at all in the story. But he appears, so that justifies having him featuring prominently on the cover, right?

The gameplay is practically the same to Rondo of the Blue Jewel, so I refer to that review for the explanation of the deduction system. And if I concentrate on the story in Prelude From the Past, well.... it's also very similar to last year's game. The plots of the seperate stories range from the mediocre to the average, concerning impossible disappearances (which you will understand instantly) and crafty alibi tricks (which are not that crafty). The biggest problem however, is the slow, slow pacing of the stories. Most of the stories are not that difficult to solve, but it takes ages to go through all the dialogues in order to progress the story. The way the game feeds the player information is highly flawed. Compare to Gyakuten Saiban, where you still have to figure things out even after you formally finish your investigation: even as you are standing in court defending your client / accusing other people, you have to process new information. Plot-twists keep pushing you to the wall, forcing you to come up with new hypotheses and deductions on the spot. Which makes the story-telling of Gyakuten Saiban fast-paced and exciting. In Prelude From the Past, you are just talking, talking and talking, until you get to the point the game decides that is time to stop the investigation, after which it just leads your train of thought by asking questions that obviously point to the murderer.

The two things I did like of this game: the story is actually written in a way that it does not upset Conan-canon (unlike the TV drama) and the introduction of the game is hilarious with an unexpected person being pointed out as the murderer. In all other aspects, it's a clone of the previous game, but I personally liked the overall story of Rondo of the Blue Jewel better than Prelude From the Past.

And yes, Short Shorts are usually less interesting to read. Ah well, at least tomorrow's post is slightly better.

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介（原）　『鍵のかかった部屋』, 『名探偵コナン　過去からの前奏曲（プレリュード）』

The Oracle of the Dog

「たしかに、　遺体の第一発見者を疑えというのは、殺人事件の鉄則である。あまりそんな話が広まると、誰も遺体の発見を届け出てくれなくなるので、警察も、おおっぴらには言わないが」

『犬のみぞ知る DOG KNOWS』

"Suspect the one who found the dead body, that's a fundamental rule in murder cases. But nobody would come report finding dead bodies if everybody knew this, so the police does not say this out loud"

"DOG KNOWS"

Kishi Yuusuke's The Glass Hammer was one of my favorite novels of 2011. While the story certainly suffered because of the two-part structure, the solution to the triple-layered locked room murder was simply incredible, which was made all the more impressive because I knew nothing about the book or Kishi. It was just a blind purchase based on a single mention of Kishi by a friend. In retrospect, I don't even think my friend recommended Kishi as a mystery writer, but she probabl just said she liked his novels. Luckily, The Glass Hammer really made an impression.

Security consultant (and probably burglar-in-his-free-time) Enomoto Kei and attorney Aoto Junko return for more impossible crimes and locked room mysteries in Kitsunebi no Ie ("House of the Will o' the Wisp"), a short story collection and second in the series. This collection once again shows what was so fun to The Glass Hammer:  Kishi's creativity. While there is no triple-layered locked room in this collection, even the mundane locked rooms are made interesting by Kishi's fantastic use of his two protagonists. While Enomoto is definitely the detective in this series (being a thief is useful when trying to get in and out of 'sealed' spaces), Aoto is certainly more than 'just' a sidekick and as a highly intelligent laywer, she comes up with great deductions and hypotheses that many readers wouldn't even come up with. Even if the locked room situation seems kinda boring, the way the two protagonists keep making hypotheses based on the evidence, point out the faults in each others hypotheses and slowly move towards the truth is really exciting. The pacing in these stories is fantastic and I finished the book in a record time.

The titular Kitsunebi no Ie ("House of the Will o' the Wisp") is the most reminiscent of The Glass Hammer, both in structure as in story-type. Aoto is hired to defend a man living in a small village in Nagano Prefecture who is accused of killing his own daughter. The man claims that his daughter was already dead when he came back home, but also swears that there were no footsteps around the house when he arrived there (rain had made the ground muddy). A eyewitness also states that the man only came back to his home after his daughter's estimated time of death. All the doors and windows were locked from the inside, except for a window near the back, facing a forest. If there was a killer, he must have escaped there, but there are no footsteps to be found at the back either. Security consultant Enomoto is once again hired by Aoto to prove how someone could have escaped the house without leaving any traces. Similar to The Glass Hammer, the ending is told from the murderer's point of view, but this time it was just a few pages instead of half the book, so it felt less disjointed from the main storyline. All in all a great locked room mystery that keeps the reader guessing.

In Kuroi Kiba ("Black Fangs"), Aoto's client is claiming that a woman is planning to kill the pets she inherited from her dead husband. Aoto and her client meet the woman, trying to get her to hand over the pets she clearly does not want to her client. The fun part in the first part of the story is that Aoto at first assumed that her client was talking about cats, but she discovers quite late that her client was talking about a totally different kind of pet. We enter the second part when Aoto starts to suspect that one of the two killed the woman's husband. However, the police say it was an accident and furthermore, he died inside a locked room. The rest of the story unfolds as she holds a phone-conference with Enomoto in order to discover how the murderer could have created the locked room. And interestingly enough, the story actually has two locked room mysteries, as one of the pets seems to have gotten out of its holding place. As a locked room mystery, this is definitely what the Japanese call a bakamisu, a "What-the?!!-Mystery", because the first reaction you will have when you get to the solution, is "What the...?!!". This does not necessary mean that it is a bad solution, it is just so surprising that that the reader is not sure how to react (it's something I have with some of Shimada Souji's tricks, which are so grand that it almost seems silly). Also definitely not for people with a certain kind of phobia.

Bantan no Meikyuu ("The Board Labyrinth") seems like a simpler story than the previous two stories, but its plot is actually constructed quite complex. A famous shougi player is found stabbed in his hotel room, with the chainlock locking the door. Who stabbed him and how was the locked room created, seem like obvious questions, but what Enomoto focuses the most on is why the locked room was created in the first place. Once again, the constant examination of hypotheses is what makes this story. The solution does require a lot of imagination if you want to arrive there on your own power. The setting reminds of the Furuhata Ninzaburou episode Kegareta Oushou ("The Tainted King"), both stories set during an important shougi match and with shougi playing a big role in the problem itself too.

Inu Nomizo Shiru DOG KNOWS ("Dog Knows") is very different from the other three stories. The main problem revolves around the classic curious incident of the dog in the night-time, but the solution is so simple that any reader think of that. The story is also very short and the characters act so surreal, that Dog Knows might be regarded as a humorous mystery / parody mystery, but Kishi's writing style is so ambiguous here, that I'm not sure whether that was his intention. A disappointing story, but because of its length and place in the collection, maybe I should just regard it as a light bonus story.

As the second entry in the Security Consultant Detective Enomoto Kei series, this is a robust collection and certainly recommended if you liked The Glass Hammer. There was less information on security this time, which is a shame as I really liked that in The Glass Hammer, but Enomoto and Aoto's teamwork certainly makes a lot good. I definitely want to read more of this series.

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介　『狐火の家』: 「狐火の家」 / 「黒い牙」 / 「盤端の迷宮」 / 「犬のみぞ知る DOG KNOWS」

The Invisible Man

「あなたの本職については、訊かない方がいいんでしょうね？」

「別に、かまいませんよ」

「もし聞かれたら、何で答えるの？」

「現実世界のハッカーとでも」

『硝子のハンマー』

"It's probably best not to ask about your main occupation?"

"I don't really care"

"If asked, what would you answer?"

"A hacker of reality"

"The Glass Hammer"

Oh, that's what they meant with the master's program takes up your time! While I try to read books in the train, I'm usually too tired to read because it's so early on the way to the university, and I'm just tired from class on the way back. So no, that's not working out really good.

Anyway, I've said it before, but I usually have trouble finding new authors to read. Or to be more precise: it's the not the trouble of finding names, just how to select them. There seems to be a trend in the English-language orthodox mystery blogging sphere of having a profound effect on itself: when one author gets a (very) favorable review on one blog, it usually doesn't take long for that author to also appear on other blogs. Being placed in a somewhat more niche area within this sphere though, the authors enjoying a boom usually don't really fit within my own reading-diet. So how do I choose new authors?

I'm not sure actually. For example, I know I had heard the name Kishi Yuusuke from a friend, but to be honest, I can't really remember in what kind of context. A quick search told me that he was primarily a SF-writer, but that he had also written mystery novels. In the end, I just took a gamble with the friend's recommendation without any real research, so I started pretty clueless with my first Kishi Yuusuke novel.

The Glass Hammer is the first novel in the Security Consultant Detective Enomoto series. Protagonist Enomoto Kei reminds of Bernie Rhodenbarr, with both characters having a rather shady past and both actually being active burglars. But while Rhodenbarr runs a bookstore during the day, Enomoto runs the shop Forewarned & Forearmed, selling anything concerning crime prevention, ranging from locks to security cameras. As a burglar, he is obviously quite an expert in this field. And just to make it clear: he runs the shop honestly, making use of his own knowledge to come up with optimal security solutions for his clients (so he is not making flaws in security plans so he can break and enter himself).

In The Glass Hammer, the president of Bayleaf, a company that offers nursing case solutions, ranging from 'normal' nurses to trained monkeys and nursing robots, is found dead in his office, being knocked on his head rather hard . A security check quickly shows that only one person could have commited the murder. Bayleaf's executive offices are all located on the top floor of a skyscraper and one needs to enter a password for the elevator to move to that floor, so no-one outside the company could have commited the murder. And because the corridor was watched by a camera (with nobody suspicious appearing in the footage) and the window of the president's office can't be opened, the crime was only possible for the senior managing director, as the offices of the director and the president are directly connected (thus it is not necessary to go out to the corridor to go from one office to the other). The director's lawyer Aoto Junko believes in her client's innocence though and hires Enomoto as a security consultant, hoping he can prove that someone could have overcome the obstacles of the code-locked elevator, the infra-red camera and the eyes of the guard and secretaries to murder the president!

But I'm not sure what to think about the novel though. Kishi obviously started out with a brilliant idea for a locked room murder (which I really like) and then came up with the rest of the story. The trick is quite original and makes me curious of Kishi's other novels, as it reminds me a bit of Shimada Souji's large scale mechanical tricks, but set more firmly in contemporary times, with more high-tech obstacles like cameras.

The main problem, for me, is how the book is structured. The book is divided in two parts, the first starting with the discovery of the crime and the subsequent investigation by Aoto and Enomoto. This part is really fun, with both Aoto and Enomoto trying to find a solution to the multi-layered locked room.

The second part however is written from the viewpoint of the murderer, explaining everything from the very beginning, from motive to the planning of the crime to the actual execution. The problem I have with this part is that I really don't care about why the murderer commited the murder. It is not that I don't need motives for murder, but I really don't need 100 pages of character building. The rest (the explanation of the murder) might as well have been included in the first part. While the novel runs at a better pace here compared to the first part, I don't really care about the contents of this second part. It's also in this second part that Kishi comes up with plotpoints that are awfully convenient for the murderer, something that could have been avoided if Kishi had continued with the Enomoto narrative.

Both parts are about the same length (300 pages), but they feel rather disjointed. It's like Kishi wrote two stories based on his locked room trick (one written from the viewpoint of the detective, the other from the criminal's point of view), not sure what would be better story-wise and in the end decided to use them both. But it's not like the story gains anything from that: focusing on one single point of view would have been much more effective, I think.

The trick is really good though and I like the characters Enomoto and Aoto, so I think I'll read more in this series, but I hope the other books are structured better. But despite its faults, I do think this novel is worth a read.

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介　『硝子のハンマー』