A Script for Danger

「警察？あんたが？」

「はい」

「保険会社の人かと思った」

「よく言われます」

「禁断の筋書（プロット）」

"You're with the police?"

"Yes."

"I thought you were selling insurances."

"People often do."
"The Forbidden Plot"

Even with series I like, I usually don't get farther than two books a year, so in that regard, I'd say that Mitsuda Shinzou's Toujou Genya series has been a real anomaly these two years. And that also holds for the series I'll be discussing today.

Because this is the third time I'll be reviewing Ookura Takahiro's Lieutenant Fukuie series here this year. Though I'm pretty sure this will be the last one this year: I read the paperback pocket version of this series, but the most recent two volumes are at the moment still only available in the larger format. In essence, this series has not changed a bit since the first volume. In this Columbo-inspired inverted mystery series, we follow both the criminals in each story, as well as Lieutenant Fukuie, a mysterious young-looking woman who is often mistaken for everything but a homicide detective. Her keen eye for detail, her extensive knowledge about the most obscure fields of interests and most of all, her almost frightening focus on the case at hand (she hardly sleeps) always allow her to pick up the little mistakes of even the most perfectly planned crime, and while some might try, nobody mangaes to escape the Lieutenant for long. Fukuie Keibuho no Houkoku ("The Report of Lieutenant Fukuie", 2013) also carries the alternate English title Enter Lieutenant Fukie With A Report and features three new stories of criminals who are unlucky enough to find her on their case.

Three? Okay, if I had to mention one thing that is different from the previous two volumes, it's that this volume features only three stories instead of four, as the middle story is about twice as long as the usual story length. Besides that, it's still the comedic inverted short story series it's always been. Like Columbo, Lieutentant Fukuie has a lot of comedic traits, mostly her forgetfulness in her own private matters, even though she's a mad computer when it comest to her cases. Scenes of Fukuie forgetting to switch on her phone or simply leaving the thing at home, or having to borrow money from her subordinate to pay her cab because she lost her wallet add some personality to a woman who'd otherwise be an almost perfect cop, being able to outwit both criminals and even the brass in her own organization in her pursuit of justice. Fukuie is even portrayed as an almost supernatural being similar to a fairy at times, as many of the witnesses she questions often end up in a better mood after she's finished her business with them. This series features a lot of witnesses by the way: each story has like five or six segments told from the POV of a witness who happens to be visited by Fukuie, so that goes on top of the segments that focus on the criminals themselves and the parts where Fukuie interacts with her fellow detectives.

In the first story Kindan no Plot ("The Forbidden Plot") we are introduced to Kawade Midori, a manga artist who feels herself forced to kill off Miura Mariko. Once they were best of friends and worked together as aspiring manga artists but eventually, only Midori was approached by a publisher to become a professional. Mariko on the other hand became an editor at a publisher and later the head of the sales department. Mariko however never forgave Midori for abandoning her and going pro solo, and in her new position of power, Mariko has slowly been killing off all the projects involving Midori. When Midori realizes that even her new serialization is in danger of being cancelled before it has even started, Midori decides to plea with Mariko, but when she's laughed away, she killed her old friend in a rage. She dresses the scene to make it seem like Mariko had slipped in the bathroom (Mariko had injured her leg earlier and was using a crutch). Things of course don't go as she had plotted when Lieutenant Fukuie appears, who manages to not only immediately prove it was not an accident due to the seemingly insignificant fact of an open bathroom door, but she also quickly finds Midori's trail, who is desperate to make her new series a grand success. On the whole a good, but perhaps not particularly outstanding story. In essence it's built around the same concept of most of the other stories, with Midori not aware of a certain fact as she committed the crime, which eventually ties her to the murder. As always, this is presented in a reasonably fair manner to the reader, so getting there is always satisfying. Like Columbo, Fukuie will also point out countless of other, minor contradictions that the reader is often also capable of guessing, and this keeps the story from start to finish interesting to read, but Kindan no Plot is not particularly better than the usual Fukuie story (or worse, for that matter).

Shoujo no Chinmoku ("The Girl's Silence") is by far the longest story in this series until now, being twice as long as the average length. One year ago, the Kuriyama Group (a yakuza organization) was disbanded, and the now deceased head asked his right hand Sugawara Tatsumi to take care of the 13 members, by helping them find a proper job and keeping them on the straight path. This was of course no a simple task, as few businesses are eager to hire former gang members and it's been a heavy year for Sugawara finding a place for his flock in society and making sure they wouldn't go back to the underworld again. Kuriyama Jirou, younger son of the former head, wants to bring the Kuriyama Group back again though, and kidnaps the daughter of his brother Kunitaka. Kunitaka had always lived a normal life removed from the gangster-business of his father, but now Jirou wants Kunitaka, as the proper heir to the Kuriyama Group, to gather up the members of their old group and attack their nemesis to start a new gang war. Desperate to stop Jirou from undoing everything the old head had wanted, Sugawara quickly takes steps to locate Jirou's hide-out in the mountains using Kanazawa, a former Kuriyama Group member who went to another yakuza group. Sugawara kills both Jirou and Kanazawa and makes it seem the two abducted the girl together and then killed each other in a fall-out. Eventually the local police find the girl alive and unharmed, standing in a pool of blood of the two dead men. It seems like an easy case at first, but Fukuie quickly deduces there might have been a third person present at the crime scene. Sugawara however is desperate not to get caught as long as the members of the former Kuriyama Group still need his help.

A very long story, which in fact doesn't do anything different from the other Fukuie stories in terms of plot, only being longer. It really does drag a bit due to its length, though I have to say that Sugawara is by far the most sympathic murderer we've seen in this series until now. We see a lot of him due to the length of the story, so it helps his story arc is actually engaging to follow, while we also see a bit of more Fukuie's scary side as she also tackles some corrupt cops in the anti-organized crime unit.

The last story, Megami no Hohoemi ("The Smile of The Goddess") features an unlikely duo of murderers: an elderly couple, of whom the wife is mostly confined to a wheelchair. The story starts with the duo making a bomb, which they plant on an unsuspecting man. The elderly man calmly waits to find the man with the bomb step inside a van with two other man, and then coolly detonates the thing, blowing a car up in broad daylight in the busy shopping streets of Ginza. It turns out the three men were actually bank robbers on the run, who were about to strike again. At first, the police suspects the three had a bomb ready to blow up the safe of their new target, as they had used a bomb the last time too, but small details like the fact the van was parked a block away from their target and a restaurant which had a fake reservation bring Fukuie to the old couple, who thoroughly enjoy Fukuie as a person, but whose sharp questions show she's right on their trail. The final fact Fukuie uncovers to prove the old couple did is really cleverly done and even after Fukuie revealed the fact initially I didn't quite comprehend what the implications were, leading to a delayed "Ooooh, of course!" sensation. The part where Fukuie explains how the couple horribly misunderstood part of the robbers' plan would've been better as a fair-play part in a visual format I think, as it's really cleverly done, but in novel form, it's just told to the reader, and there's no way they could've figured out that part themselves.

I don't sound particularly enthusiastic about Fukuie Keibuho no Houkoku perhaps, but it's really a well-done inverted short story collection. After reading three volumes in a (for me) relatively short period of time though, the stories do feel similar in terms of set-up, so by now, I might be missing a genuine feeling of surprise. All three volumes until now have maintained a very good level of quality in terms of readability and plotting, so any of these volumes is a safe read, guaranteed to satisfy a mystery reader. That said, I do think it's a good thing that I'll have to wait a while for the paperback pockets to be released before I'll see the Lieutenant again.

Original Japanese title(s): 大倉崇裕　『福家警部補の報告』: 「禁断の筋書（プロット）」/「少女の沈黙」/「女神の微笑」

Famous Mistakes

「いろりろおききするのが、私の仕事でして」

「失敬な人だな。いったいどこの局？名前と所属を聞いておくよ」

「名前は福家です。所属は警視庁捜査一課です」

『相棒』

"It is my job to ask questions about everything."

"Do you know how rude you are? What station are you working for? Give me your name and your department."

'My name is Fukie. My department is the Metropolitan Police Department, Division 1."

"Partners"

Now I think about it, I don't really read many inverted mystery series. Sure, Conan and Kindaichi Shounen have some occasionally, but I haven't actually read a whole series that consists solely out of inverted stories... (with the Columbo and Furuhata Ninzaburou novels/short stories being exceptions, but not really series on their own in the first place).

Earlier this year I reviewed Ookura Takahiro's Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu, the first volume featuring the inverted mystery stories starring Lieutenant Fukuie of the Metropolitan Police Department. Ookura had in the past written several official Columbo novelizations for the Japanese market and the inspiration the Lieutenant Fukuie series takes from his grand predecessor are quite easy to pick up. Fukuie is a youthful-looking, small woman with frameless glasses who is often mistaken to be a college student, reporter, secretary or anything but a police detective, but she is in fact one of the sharpest officers in Division 1, in charge of homicide investigations. The first impression of most people is that of a scatterminded, clumsy woman, who has a knack for losing track of her police badge, but the real criminals soon learn that Fukuie is more than meets the eye, as the efficiency with she works, as well as her eye for fine detail usually put her right on their trail. Fukuie Keibuho no Saihou ("The Second Visit of Lieutenant Fukuie, 2009), which also carries the alternate English title of Reenter Lieutenant Fukuie, contains four stories told from the perspective of the criminals as they're being cornered by the Lieutenant, from a popular screenwriter who comes up with an elaborate fake abduction to secure his own alibi to one half of a comedy duo who takes drastic measures in order to break up his partnership.

Not much time passed between me reading the first volume and this second volume in the series, which usually indicates that this is a series I enjoy, obviously. And it is! Granted, the stories are all relatively short and because each of these stories follow the same inverted style, they eventually feel somewhat alike as most of the time the set-up of the core plot is rather similar (criminal comes up with perfect plan to commit murder, unforeseen happening during the crime allows Fukuie to solve the case), but nonetheless, this is great entertainment, and like an episode of Columbo, much of the joy comes from seeing how Fukuie slowly but surely manages to creep up to the murderer with evidence. Part of the fun also lies in the diverse backgrounds of each of the stories. In one story, you'll be reading up on the world of vinyl figures and counterfeit toys, the other is about a manzai stand-up comedy duo and the entertainment industry. Each story touches upon completely different worlds, so at least in that aspect, this series never disappoints. Like many of the Columbo episodes, the criminals are usually people who have been succesful in their lives (or at least in the past). Different however is that most of the murderers in this volume are driven to their crime because they're being blackmailed for a past mistake. Only one story features a motive that is closer to the "immediate gain"/"removing an obstacle" motive often seen in Columbo.

I didn't mention it in my review of the first volume, but the Lieutentant Fukuie also resembles Columbo due to the comedic undertones. Fukuie being mistaken for all kinds of people, the way the forensic investigator Nioka always ends up having to tag along with Fukuie as she goes off on a hunch of hers and the numerous hints to Fukuie's private life all bring some lighthearted moments. Fukuie makes no hints about her husband or any private relations, but she reveals herself to be a big fan of stand-up comedies and even children's action hero series, and it's a mystery how she manages to watch them as she never sleeps whenever she's working on a case. A lot of comedy is also derived from the many, many side characters who appear each story. Each story is usually divided in about 10 segments, and often, four or so of them are about related parties, like acquaintances of the victim or culprit or just the waiter from an often-frequented restaurant, getting a visit of Fukuie. These segments are usually very short, five or six pages, each featuring characters who only make their one appearance then, so while the stories are relatively short and the core crime fairly compact, you'll always see quite a few characters pass by as you follow Fukuie's investigation. These characters are also surprisingly well-defined despite their short time on the stage, and they too often lighten the mood.

Like I mentioned in the other review however, I do find it hard to write down my thoughts on the individual stories, as it's so easy to spoil too much about them. Their inverted nature mean that the reader will always know more than the Lieutenant and that much of the underlying mystery plot is revealed right from the start to them: from the way the murderer committed the crime to the lines of defense erected by them to divert suspicion. Most of the time, the mystery for the readers revolves around two points: how did Fukuie first start to suspect the true criminal, and how will she manage to prove her target did it? Usually, the trail is born because some unforeseen event occured during the crime, for example because the victim fought back or something else happened at the same time as the crime, and it's up to both the reader and Fukuie to deduce what that event is. This is also the case in the opening story, Max-Gou Jiken ("The Incident On The Max"). Harada Akihiro is the director of a home security company who who is an often-seen guest on television as an expert on his field, and his security company is preparing to do business in the States too. That is why Harada is desperate to hide the fact that long ago, when he started out as a private detective, he blackmailed people: it was this money that eventually made him the man he is now. His partner in crime then was Naomi, a freelance investigator. She too used her money to open her own business, but her bar has now folded, and with gambling debts too weighing her down, she turns to Harada "for old times' sake", with some audio tapes with incriminating conversations as her insurance. Fearing she'll forever keep him on a leash, Harada decides to kill Naomi. He invites her to the Max, a small leisure cruise ship that's usually carrying guests from Muroran, Hokkaido (Northern Japan) to Hakata/Fukuoka (Southern Japan), but  this time, the Max has been chartered by a tour operator for a overnight trip to the islands south of Tokyo back. Harada's plan is to kill Naomi and make it seem like another of her victims is the killer (as one of their men was sent to the Max too to keep an eye on Naomi). What Harada couldn't have guessed however that Lieutenant Fukuie would accidently become a stowaway on the Max (having lingered too long on the ship for a different investigation). Most of the mystery is already revealed to the reader, though it's a bit of a stretch of how Fukuie managed to guess that Harada would be present on the ship in the first place. The clue that proves that Harada is the killer however is done splendidly, with you knowing that something must have happened that neither Harada nor the reader know, but which Fukuie manages to deduce based on the same things both the killer and we know.

Ushinawareta Tomoshibi ("Lost Light") reminds slightly of the Columbo episode Negative Reaction, as it concerns a fake kidnapping. Toudou Masaya is a succesful screenwriter for both the silver screen and television, but nobody knows his hit debut work was actually stolen from a childhood friend who died young. Well, nobody except for a shady antiques dealer who happened to come across the same script when the friend's parents were selling the contents of their old storage. Toudou comes up with an elaborate plan to kill the antiques dealer. Mimuro Kanji is a unsuccesful actor who is a big fan of Toudou and even comes close to being a stalker. Toudou tells Mimuro he wants him to play the role of the kidnapper in his upcoming production. The final call is on the head of the director and the producer of the movie, so Toudou says he'll secretly go through the play together with Mimuro so he'll nail the audition. The two leave in secret to Toudou's villa in the forest to practice the role, but in reality Toudou's been secretly recording all of Mimuro's lines as a kidnapper. Later, he knocks Mimuro out, and uses the recordings to call his own secretary to fake his own abduction. Of course, Toudou kills the antiques dealer during his "abduction" and after his return to the villa, Mimuro is also silenced, with the scene looking as if Toudou killed Mimuro in self-defence. This is the longest story of the volume, with two murders no less, and it's certainly also one of the better stories in the series. Fukuie's suspicions are first pointed towards the curiosities at the abduction site. The clues are relatively "insignificant", but taken together really show Fukuie's suspicions are justified, like how the order of the shoes in the entrance was wrong, or how strangely enough, Toudou's laptop's battery was empty despite him having been captive for the day. The way Fukuie eventually manages to trap Toudou on the murder on the antiques dealer depends on a very old trope in inverted mystery stories, but the way this is set-up is good: Ookura leaves several incomplete and seemingly insignificant clues throughout the story that when taken together indicate a certain happening that forms the key to solving the case.

Aibou ("Partners") is about the manzai stand-up comedy duo Yamanote Nobori / Kudari, veterans in the trade but lately not doing as good as in the past. Half of the duo, Tachiishi Kouji, has been offered a chance to go at it solo, but his partner, Utsumi Tamao, is not willing to disband, at least not until the anniversary of the death of their mentor. The offer for Tachiishi however will not last for so many months. It also frustrates him that these last months, Utsumi has clearly been winging his gigs with Tachiishi, sometimes forgetting his lines or mistiming them, so Tachiishi decides the only way out is to eliminate his former partner. The plan is to lure Utsumi to their secret hide-out, a house they bought together long ago in the outskirts of Tokyo where they could practice their sketches. Knowing that Utsumi, who has lost his key, will try to climb the tree in the garden to get the spare key hidden in the potted plants on the balcony on the second floor, Tachiishi awaits Utsumi there to push him from the tree. He succeeds, but Fukuie, a fan of manzai comedy, quickly notices something's off. The greatest mystery here lies in the fact that Utsumi had taken a few weird actions before coming to the house (like dressing up in the clothing from when Yamanote Nobori / Kudari debuted). This is a riddle to both Tachiishi and the reader, so in that aspect, you're on level ground with Fukuie, who is still likely to figure things out swifter. Once you know why Utsumi did those things, it still takes a bit of imagination to arrive at the clue that will prove that Tachiishi killed his partner, but overall, this is a short, but nice enough story.

The final story is Project Blue. Arai Nobuhiro is the director of Swamp Imp, a project planning bureau that specializes in toys, coming up with toy designs, promotions for toys etc. 15 years ago however, Arai made money by manufacturing counterfeits of rare vinyl kaiju/monster figures. Nishimura, a toy modeler, has finally found proof of Arai's shady past, but Arai quickly eliminates this threat, and dresses the scene to look like an accident, with Nishimura "apparently" having been hit by his own car with bad brakes after he had parked it on a slope. When Fukuie first visits Arai, we learn his alibi for the murder: he claims he had been working on a model figure of the new version of Blueman. The hero of the show that is now airing will have a powered-up form next year, and final decisions on the design were only made last night by the TV production team: they immediately mailed the design to Swamp Imp, and Arai made and painted his prototype that same night, giving him the alibi. It's not particularly hard to guess how Arai managed to prepare his alibi, but the manner in which Fukuie eventually manages to prove Arai was at the crime scene at the time of the murder is again slyly done, with several smaller incidents that don't seem to mean much on their own, indicating an important event that had gone unnoticed by both the murderer and the reader until it's too late.

Fukuie Keibuho no Saihou is perhaps not very different from the first volume: here too you'll find four well-plotted inverted mystery stories that admittedly can feel somewhat similar in structure and in the way Fukuie manages to catch the culprit, but the stories are all really well done and the whole volume is a very solid read overall. It's very consistent in its quality, and I think for me, it'll be one of those 'safe reads' when I don't know what to read next and simply want something I know will be good.

Original Japanese title(s):『福家警部補の再訪』：「マックス号事件」/「失われた灯」/「相棒」/「プロジェクトブルー」

Model Crime

「でも何ていうか、あなたはそうは見えなかったから」

「よく言われます」

『最後の一冊』

 

"But you see, you didn't look like you were the boss here."

"I'm often told that."

"The Last Volume"

I don't remember when I first heard of mystery author Ookura Takahiro, but I know quite a few years passed between me first learning of him, and me actually getting to know something written by him.  Surprisingly through, my first experience with Ookura was through Detective Conan. Ookura was the scriptwriter for the 2017 Detective Conan theatrical feature The Crimson Love Letter, but in the lead-up to the release of the film, he also wrote the screenplay for episode 829, The Mysterious Boy, of the animated TV series, which was the first time I had seen anything created by Ookura. The Crimson Love Letter was an excellent mystery film (and the novel version written by Ookura was also okay), so I grew very interested in seeing more of Ookura's work, and what better way to start than with one of his more famous creations? And yes, I know he's also working on the 2019 Detective Conan: The Fist of the Blue Sapphire, but the trailer didn't really manage to hit the right places for me quite yet.

Fukuie is a small woman with short, black hair and a pair of frame-less glasses who is often mistaken for a college student, but she is in fact a lieutenant of the Metropolitan Police Department, in charge of homicide investigations. Despite her unassuming appearance and sometimes even careless habits (she often forgets her police badge), criminals are warned not to underestimate this woman, as she has a keen eye for details, and no matter how crafty a plan might be, you count on in it that Lieutenant Fukuie will not only figure everything out, she'll also be sure to come up with some way to actually arrest the criminal with proof. Whether you're a librarian trying to save the library from being sold off or an actress killing off her blackmailing rival, Lieutenant Fukuie will always find the weak spots in the criminal's plan and bring everything tumbling down in Ookura Takahiro's short story collection Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu ("The Greetings of Lieutenant Fukuie", 2006), which also carries the alternative English title of Enter Lieutenant Fukuie.

The Lieutenant Fukuie series is one of Ookura's best known series, especially as it has also seen TV adaptations. Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu is the first book in the still-running inverted detective series. As in the tradition of all great inverted mystery fiction, each story is told from the perspective of the culprit, who carries out their murderous plan. At first, their plans seem foolproof, but then the lieutenant appears, and starts picking out small contradictions left here and there. It might seem Lieutenant Fukuie is just guessing, but by the time the culprit realizes how crafty Fukuie really is, it's already too late and for the reader, the fun of the mystery lies in not guessing whodunit, but how Fukuie is going to figure out what really happened. The Lieutenant Fukuie series is obviously heavily inspired by Columbo, though something interesting has to be mentioned here. Ookura has penned several official novelizations of Columbo in the past and while Ookura was credited as "translator" for these novelizations, he was the person who actually wrote these novels (the prose) especially for the Japanese market. These novelizations were based on the original screenplays of existing episodes, or plot outlines for unfilmed stories, which Ookura then had to expand into a novel-form. For these books, people like Columbo creators Levinson & Link, or other screenplay writers were credited for the "original work", though technically, they didn't write the specific novel form of these stories, which were entirely Ookura's invention and don't exist outside Japan. In a way, it's no wonder Ookura would later write his own inverted mystery stories about a police lieutenant.

By the way, the animation sequence accompanying the fiftieth ending song of Detective Conan (La PomPon's cover of Zard's Unmei no Roulette Mawashite) has the regular cast dressed as characters from several famous police and detective TV dramas, and Ran is featured as Lieutenant Fukuie, looking in her bag for her police badge as always.

One thing I find difficult about writing about inverted mystery stories is figuring out how much I should write about the plot actually, as in most inverted stories, a lot is already revealed to the reader. In fact, the fun in these stories often lies in the fact that although the reader knows more about the facts of the case than the Lieutenant, she'll usually still out-think you. In order not to spoil too much, I'll keep my summaries for the four stories rather short. The volume opens with Saigo no Issatsu ("The Last Volume"), which stars Amamiya Sachiko, head librarian of the Enamito Library. Enamito Kousuke was during his life a true connoisseur of books and when he retired, he had his secretary Sachiko become head of his own library, but after his death, the library became the property of his son Hirohisa, a no-good bum who is keen on selling off everything as soon as he can to get some money. Sachiko plans to kill Hirohisa in order to save the library, and she dresses the scene so it looks like Hirohisa had snuck into the library himself in order to steal some rare books to sell. This first story is a not particularly baffling, but still entertaining mystery, with a few different points that attract the Lieutenant's attention which a careful reader will also notice. Some of these contradictions are presented quite open (fact A and fact B don't mesh), but some also require the reader to make another, logical assumption (if both fact A and fact B are true, that must mean fact C), and this also keeps the reader on their toes in this fairly short opening story.

In Occam no Kamisori ("Occam's Razor"), Lieuteant Fukuie is investigating the murder on associate professor Ikeuchi, who was seemingly killed by the same robber who has been roaming the neighborhood lately. The questions Fukuie has about the murder however lead her to Yanagida Yoshifumi, a university teacher who used to teach scientific investigation at the police academy, and who has actually taught Fukuie herself in her rookie days. What makes this story interesting is not only the fact we have an expert in crime investigation who commited the murder, the story is also written in a way so not everything about Yanagida's plan is explained right from the beginning, leaving also a few things for the reader to find out as they read on .For example, Yanagida steals a pack of cigarettes from the victim in their first scene, before the murder occurs, but the implication of that isn't explained until later. 

Aijou no Scenario ("A Scenario of Love") is about the actress Ogino Mariko, who's being blackmailed by her rival actress Kakinuma Emi to give up on a certain audition. Mariko kills Emi by feeding her sleeping pills, and then leaving Emi's car running in the garage so she'd suffocate. That way it'd seem Emi had simply taken her usual sleeping draught without switching her car off. A receipt of the things Emi bought at the convenience store gives Fukuie more than enough leeway to suspect this isn't just an accident. While the true motive of the murderer isn't really well-hinted at, I'd say that as a mystery, this short story works reasonably well with more than enough well-clewed parts that explain why Fukuie would start having her doubts about the whole case.

In the final story Tsuki no Shizuku ("Moon Tear"), Tanimoto Kichirou, owner of the Tanimoto Sake Brewery, kills his rival Satou of the Satou Brewery. The two had very different approaches when it came to sake: the Satou Brewery was producing in masses, but connoisseurs couldn't stand their awful sake, while the Tanimoto Sake Brewery did everything the old-fashioned way to maintain quality, but they could hardly produce enough to keep the company floating. Satou was trying to kill off Tanimoto Sake Brewery once and for all by adopting a cost leader strategy, which Tanimoto couldn't survive for long, so Tanimoto Kichirou killed Satou, making it seem like Satou had snuck into the Tanimoto Sake Brewery to spy on their sake and had fallen into one of the empty sake tanks. The decisive hint that shows Tanimoto killed Satou is quite brilliantly hidden within the text, and perfectly fitting for the story. Looking at this core mystery plot, I think this one is the best plotted one, with a really interesting situation for the reader to solve even though they should know more than Fukuie.

By the way, it's interesting how Lieutenant Fukuie is quite the nondescript character most of the time. While the spotlight's supposed to be on the culprit in Columbo, Columbo actually always has a presence on screen whenever he's in the scene. That doesn't really work with novels though. Mitani Kouki's novelization of his own Furuhata Ninzaburou series (also inspired by Columbo) shows this difference very well: while on the television screen, Furuhata has countless of quirky traits and commandeers every scene he's in, he's actually almost a traitless figure in the novel version, who appears only to put the pressure on the culprit. By putting as little emphasis on the detective character, the focus shifts almost completely to the psychology of the culprit and to how they view the detective. This is also more or less what happens in the Lieutenant Fukuie series, where Fukuie seldom becomes more than the woman with short black hair and frameless glasses who has an eerie smile on her face as she talks with the suspects.

Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu is on the whole a capable mystery story collection that really manages to scratch that itch for Columbo-esque inverted mystery stories. There's also surprising variety in these stories, so I am quite curious to see what other adventures Fukuie has in the following volumes and I'm sure I'll be seeing more of her soon here.

Original Japanese title(s): 大倉崇裕 『福家警部補の挨拶』:「最後の一冊」/「オッカムの剃刀」/「愛情のシナリオ」/「月の雫」