The Curse of the Golden Cross

Wake Up! The Hero

燃え上れ！

「仮面ライダーBlack RX」(宮内タカユキ) 

 

Wake Up! The Hero

Turn into a blaze!

"Kamen Rider Black RX" (Miyauchi Takayuki) 

As I usually have quite a lot posts written and waiting to be published, I generally just add a review to the queue if it's not a particularly timely post, while I do usually push posts on recent releases forward. I didn't watch today's topic immediately upon release like most people did, but still rather soon after it started streaming... and then forgot about actually writing the post. All well, it's still kinda timely, I guess...

After a troublesome career in boxing followed by a period of penitence and search for salvation, young Jud Duplenticy has become a Catholic priest, who is sent to become an assistant pastor in a church in a small New York town. Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude is a small church led by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, the grandson of Reverend Prentice Wicks. Jefferson Wicks is charismatic in his ways, but his flammatory preaching style have basically driven everyone away but a handful of the most loyal and miserable of his parishioners, effectively resulting in a cult revolving around the vengeful Monsignor Wicks. The moment Jud arrives Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, he feels he is not welcome as an outsider, and while he recognizes how Monsignor Wicks is in fact doing not the work of God, he is not able to convince the believers of Wicks that they are all walking down the wrong path. When Wicks finds out about Jud's attempts in undermining his authority, he soon turns his believers against Jud. Despite the trial, Jud remains in the parish.

Wicks holds another fiery service on Good Friday for his cult, and then moves into a closet off the side of the chancel for a short break, while Jud takes over. When an audible thud is heard coming from the closet, Jud approaches the alcove, followed by the other people in the church and to their great surprise, they find Monsignor Wicks collapsed on the floor. A quick examination shows the man is in fact dead, and very likely because there's a knife sticking in his back. His clashings with Monsignor Wicks give Jud a motive, but everyone in the church had his eyes on him between the time Wicks entered the closet alive and the victim collapsing on the floor, making it impossible for him to have committed the murder: likewise, Jud too knows none of the church-goers approached the closet on his side during his part of the service, and everyone is such a big believer of Wicks, so would any of them even have a motive for killing him...? The police struggles with pinning the crime on any specific person with actual proof, and thus enter Benoit Blanc, private investigator who may not strongly believe in the Church, but he does seem to strongly believe Jud is in fact not the murderer in the 2025 film Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.

I liked the first Knives Out film (2019), but for some reason I just never got started on Glass Onion, the second film and the first after Knives Out moved on to Netflix. Hype from the mystery community on Wake Up Dead Man seemed much bigger though, which may also be because of the overt John Dickson Carr-inspired plot, with not only a locked room mystery (well, technically the closet is not locked, but the entrance is being observed) and a seemingly supernatural event in the second half of the story, Carr's masterpiece The Hollow Man/The Third Coffin is directly referenced in the film, as a "guidebook" on solving locked room mysteries (though to be honest, the film only goes through the most basic forms from the famous Locked-Room Lecture, and the sequence is not even nearly as impressive as how they presented the Locked-Room Lecture in Detective Chinatown 3). So when I learnt I could safely skip Glass Onion for now, I did so, and I have no regrets!

For Wake Up Dead Man is indeed a fun classically-styled locked room murder mystery film. It brings the tropes and set dressing we know from a Golden Age novel and move it... well, to the modern world, to a degree, as the church-setting itself feels like it would've been the same whether it had been used in a 2025 film or one from 1930. Which is a good thing I guess for those looking for something that obviously tries to go for that vibe. Whereas the first Knives Out film gave us the oh-so-familiar set-up of a murder on a wealthy family patriarch and his whole family as the suspects, this one focuses on the churchgoers as the main suspect (if we believe Jud to be innocent), resulting in a slightly more disjointed cast (as you get a group of random cult members), though most do fall in familiar mystery "suspect" roles (a doctor, a loyal help, etc.). Jud as a leading man is a joy to follow though, a man who went through a dark place in his life, found a new path in life only to be thrust into a basically hopeless situation by becoming the assistant-pastor in the most impossible parish ever. He forms a nice contrast with the far more cynical Benoit, especially when Jud is confronted with situations that could practically mean choosing between either his own beliefs, or his own freedom. Thematically, Wake Up Dead Man is far stronger than the first Knives Out film I think, and the highlight of the film as a mystery, as the themes of religion and personal beliefs pervades throughout the plot and motivate the actors to play their role in this mystery. The cinematography in general is pretty strong, especially in the scenes set within the church, and it really helps strengthen the religious themes, literally constantly casting new light on the setting.

The main locked room murder mystery itself is not very surprising on a technical level though. If you have come across a few of them in your life, it's very likely you will have seen some variation of the basic fundamentals already, so, in that sense, I was a bit disappointed in what was supposed to the main attraction. Fortunately, the second half of the story adds a few more developments that also intertwine with the locked room murder, and that adds some well-needed complexity to the mystery. I also like there's some synergy between all these elements, i.e. elements of the main locked room mystery are intertwined with the why or how events of the second half, and they're not just distinct, seperate events that happened to occur one after another. The film plays the game fair and does some of the crucial clues are shown on screen with some audicity, though very briefly. It kinda reminded me of some of the sneakier moments in Anraku Isu Tantei (a show written by Ayatsuji and Arisugawa where viewers could win money if they guessed the culprit), where the clues were like on the screen in a small corner for a brief moment, but Wake Up Dead Man is fortunately never as vexingly mean as Anraku Isu Tantei (like having to see how shadows in the backgrounddiffered slightly depending on the scene... in a show that was shot in standard definition and broadcast in a time when lots of people still probably had a CTR at home). There is also a secondary plotline revolving the hidden legacy of Reverend Prentice Wicks, grandfather of Jefferson, which could be a motive for the murder. This plotline also ties neatly into the whole mystery as well as the underlying theme of the film, making one nice neat package.

I do have to say I think Wake Up Dead Man was rather long and I certainly wouldn't have minded a shorter experience, but still, Wake Up Dead Man is an entertaining and highly competently-created mystery film. Its themes are its strongest points, as they tie in meaningfully with not only the characters and the overall story, they also interact on a crucial level with the main mysteries plot-wise, offering strong synergy overall. It definitely elevates the technical aspects of the mystery, which may come across as a bit too familiar to some viewers. Between Wake Up Dead Man and the original Knives Out, I think Wake Up Dead Man is the stronger story and cinematic experience, though as a viewer, I do have to admit the slightly shorter runtime and the more overt story dynamics of "detective vs a criminal trying to hide her crimes" of the original Knives Out offered me a much more easier film to just watch and enjoy.

As for Glass Onion. Errr, perhaps in the future? Should I? 

Double Jeopardy

"Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions."

"And Then There Were None" 

The first time I saw the cover of this book, it was a small thumbnail and I could barely make out the garbage truck on the cover, so I thought it'd be like some weird Drifting Classroom-esque Umezu Kazuo story. Things don't get that crazy. 

Hitou travels with six friends to a small private island off the coast in Kumamoto Prefecture. The island used to be inhabitated by a few people, but has now become the private property of the aunt of Urai, one of Hitou's friends. Urai's aunt had cottages built on the island so it can be opened as a resort island. There's no established means of transportation yet though, so the group is brought over to the island by a chartered fisherman's boat and the fisherman is to pick them up in about a week, while the caretaker hired by Urai's aunt also there to entertain the group during their stay. However, Hitou has other plans. He's planning to kill all other six people on the trip. For Hitou was never really their friend. Several years ago, while the six targets were still in high school, they tried out drugs and while under the influence, were about to start a fire. A boy from another school spotted them, but he was caught by them and assaulted, with the victim biting off the tip of his own tongue during an attempt to escape. One of the friends took all the blame. Hitou was a friend of the victim and he swore revenge: after graduating high school, he intentionally picked a university where the six were living and found a part-time job where one of them was working. He became friends with him and was thus slowly introduced in their circle. And now they were going on a trip together: the perfect chance to just kill all of them. Hitou's plan is simple and self-destructive: he's going to poison all of them and then commit suicide, because he realizes this would be a severe crime. He even has a full confession that will be posted online automatically in a few days, where he explains why he decided to kill these people. After they arrive on the island, where they also find the caretaker waiting for them, Hitou makes sure to sabotage the one public pay-phone on the island: the only way to communicate with the mainland.

And thus, imagine the surprise when late on the first evening, one of the friends won't respond to any calls at his cottage. They break the door down and inside find... no living friend, but a corpse,  whose face has been bashed in horribly and with the tip of his tongue cut off. Hitou however did not commit this murder. Realizing there's a murderer on the island and that they can't call for help, the would-be murderer acknowledges it'd be too dangerous to continue his plans and even tries to swim back to cancel his scheduled online confession, but the sea has become too wild for him, and he is barely saved from the raging water. The next morning, they find another corpse: this was the friend who first discovered the previous body and he too has the tip of his tongue removed. And the following day, the same thing happens again... While Hitou was planning to kill them anyway it's not like he's really sad they're gone, he knows he isn't committing all these murders, so he needs to find out who the real murderer is in order to escape the carnage.

Three years later, a young woman working at a garbage disposal facility in Osaka is out on her rounds collecting garbage, when she finds the body of an old lady among the garbage. She reports it to the police, but she is immediately put in their custody: there is a serial killer on the loose in Osaka, who each time, has been killing the person who discovered the previous body. The victims are connected by the fact they all have part of their tongues removed. This immediately reminds everyone of the horrible series of murders that occured three years ago on an island in Kumamoto, where a Hitou Kiyotsugu had killed everyone on the island and made a full confession online....

Chigereta Kusari to Hikari no Kirehashi ("Broken Chains and a Sliver of Light", 2023) is Araki Akane's second novel after making her debut the previous year by winning the Edogawa Rampo Award. The book's main feature is probably the fact it is divided in two distinct parts, the first half set in 2020 on an island, while the second half is set in 2023 and starts off in the bustling city of Osaka. The two narratives are also clearly inspired by two Agatha Christie novels, a thing that is made very apparent when the characters themselves make references to Christie in the second half.  

The first half is of course inspired by And Then There Were None, as we have a closed circle situation set on an island, where everybody is being killed one by one. In this book however, we have the added tension of knowing Hitou was planning to kill everyone himself too, only someone else managed to get to them first. But who? The murders are also all connected through two mysterious facts: the murderer cuts off the tip of the tongues of all his victims, and for some reason, the next victim is always the person who discovered the previous body. Even though this is only "half" of the book, Araki somehow manages to really pack it full to the brim. There's the locked room situation of the first body for example, but there are more mysteries like one victim having been cut, even though they threw away all the knives and other potentially dangerous objects in the sea after the first murders. Araki manages to craft a great mystery in this book: the many props allow the characters to come up with various theories, and the grand denouement scene in particular has some great Queenian theories being posed based on the evidence we've all seen and been exposed to, which are then debunked as easily again with other evidence we also saw, but simply overlooked. 

The second part is set three years later and we learn about a serial killer in Osaka who for some reason has been committing murders similar to what by now has become known as the Hitou murders: when the police arrived on the island, they found that everybody on the island was dead and Hitou missing, but he had conveniently posted a full confession online. Maria, the young woman who found the most recent victim, is put under police custody and she soon becomes friends with one of her guardians. Maria also happens to be living with a young man (not her boyfriend), who happens to have bitten off the tip of his tongue some years ago... This part of the book is more inspired by The ABC Murders, as the one of the characters comments, as they are not sure why the serial killer is linking these murders in this way, and of course, the whole connection to the Hitou murders is enigmatic. As you can guess, these events are very strongly connected to the first part of the book, and they work very well as a "continuation" of the first half, while also going in a completely different way. This is not just 'part 2 by doing the same things again", this is a "part 2 that tries different things, but by building on part 1". And it's all in one book!

While I will be the first to admit I don't care about characterization that much in my mystery novels, even I have to make a special note about how strong the characterizations are in this novel. Hitou is a great protagonist and anti-hero, who is so full of hatred towards his "friends" for what they did in the past, but at the same time, you see glimpses of him struggling with the aftermath of each murder because... perhaps he did really become friends with them while he had infiltrated their circle. Maria too has a chip on her shoulder and has finally been getting her life on rails and is enjoying her work as a garbagewoman, when the whole serial killer thing confuses things once more. The strong-minded Maria is very fun to follow, as she does struggle in life, but still tries to make the best out of everything and she isn't kind to people who look down on her for doing so (cue: the veteran policeman who will regret looking down on her just because she's a woman collecting garbage).

The strong characterization does elevate Chigereta Kusari to Hikari no Kirehashi a lot, as some of the actions taken by the characters in this book do demand for those characters to have a lot of motivation/determination to do so, so Araki's strong character writing is in fact an essential part of the mystery, much more than I had ever expected.

I had read two short stories by Araki before (here and here), but this is the first time I read a full novel by her and Chigereta Kusari to Hikari no Kirehashi. It's quite long and ambitious, providing two fully worked out narratives inspired by Christie's work all in one book, but Araki pulls it off, and does that with both competence in the mystery writing as well as characterization. Recommended material!

Original Japanese title(s):  荒木あかね『ちぎれた鎖と光の切れ端』

The Problem of the Ghost Woman

It is indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow,plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke　from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense　chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming,　boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream　onward over its jagged lip.

"The Final Problem" 

Now I think about it, having a waterfall right behind your school is probably not that safe. Sure, high school students aren't stupid, but still, something is bound to happen sooner or later...

Shiotani Ken's Meitantei Futabi (2025) also has the English title The Return of The Great Detective (well, technically it's The Return of Great Detective) and indeed, the book is about the legend of a great detective is given new life again. The Raihen Academy for Girls offers free schooling and accomodations for the family members of those who have contributed to the school's long history, and nobody has contributed more to the safety and reputation of Raihen than the legendary great detective Tokiya Yuu: she was a student at the school in the early 1990s, who solved many incidents that occured at Raihen. While they started out as minor incidents, things soon escalated to even murder. Yuu eventually figured out there was a mastermind behind all these crimes: Yuu confronted the mastermind at the waterfall behind the school and in the subsequent struggle, both fell down, with Yuu's remains never recovered. Tokiya Shou had never heard specific stories about her great-aunt, which is why she's surprised to learn she gets to study at the prestigious Raihen Academy for free. When she arrives at the school, she's welcomed as if she were a princess, as for Raihen, Yuu was indeed a queen. In fact, the dorm director was a student at Raihen herself in the early 1990s and assisted Yuu. Shou becomes classmates with Mima Shizuka, president of the newspaper club with a knack for making up stories. Shou is first shown around the school, which has memorial plates for Yuu all over the place, commemorating the various incidents she solved, like the mystery of the unconcious student in the communal bathroom or the murder of a student in the art room. 

The rumors of Shou, a relative of Yuu, soon spreads across the school, and it doesn't take long for a student to ask Shou for help. She recently got a polaroid camera, and while playing around with it, she and her friends took risqué pictures of each other in the bathroom while getting undressed. However, after they had their bath, they found the pictures missing, and now she got a blackmail letter with one of the stolen pictures, demanding for money. The victim rather not have the police involved, which is why she wants Shou to help. The problem: Shou isn't any good as a detective. Of course, just because your great-aunt happens to be a great detective, doesn't you are, but Shou can't say no, and ends up accepting the request. Out of her wits, Shou strolls to the waterfall where her great-aunt met her end and to her great surprise.... a ghost appears! The ghost agrees to help Shou and act as an armchair detective for her, if Shou helps gather her remains and properly bury her, so her spirit can finally pass on to the life beyond. The case is soon solved, earning Shou a reputation as a great detective herself, but then more incidents start to happen at Raihen, and another figure who saw Yuu's ghost, starts plotting against Shou...

It's of course no coincidence the school's called Raihen (Reichenbach) and that the great detective and her nemesis both died falling down a waterfall. The book's not designed as a Sherlock Holmes pastische though, nor are there really meaningful references to Holmes canon beyond these ones, so you don't need any knowledge of Holmes to enjoy this book. The book is structured as a connected short story collection, where Shou is confronted with ever-escalating cases during her time studying at Raihen, culminating in a grand finale involving both her great-aunt and her nemesis. One thing I have to mention first is how different this book is than Hakushaku to Mittsu no Hitsugi ("The Count and the Three Coffins"), the only other book by Shiotani Ken I have read at this point. That book was a historical epic with drama and tragedy like a Dumas novel, while this is a fairly light-hearted, comedic short story collection set at a girls' high school. Shiotani Ken does like using unusual settings/ideas though, and that's what we do have here too: Shou being helped by an armchair detective ghost each time, all just to maintain her reputation as a great detective herself (or as her excuse goes to keep the family name high). This device has some parallels to how Conan feeds Mouri his answers to maintain the Sleeping Kogorou's reputation high, only in this case, Shou herself wants to be fed all the answers, as she genuinely isn't smart enough to solve the crimes herself (though she does get "educated" as a great detective herself slowly but surely over the course of the book).

While I do describe this book as a short story collection, the individual mysteries are not titled as "stories", but as "chapters" in a novel, so I guess they do want to present this as a novel rather than a story collection. Anyway, the first story involves the stolen polaroids, with the mystery revolving around who could have stolen the polaroids and how: the only persons to know about the pictures are the group of four who took the pictures in the first place, but the pictures had been put in a locker while they were in the bathroom, and nobody had the pictures on them when they left, so the theft was impossible. This is a fairly short mystery, as it is also used to explain how Shou first went to the waterfall and stumbled upon the ghost, but it is a fairly well-constructed, if simple mystery, doing what you usually expect of an impossible heist story (offering multiple false solutions, offering a true solution that builds cleverly on the discarded false ones). The banter between Shou and all the other school girls is really fun though: not only with her roommate Shizuka (who's a bit insane when it comes to wanting to find a scoop and has no qualms about making things a bit more spicier in her articles), but also with her ghostly mentor, as she too is basically just a high school student who likes to chat about ordinary life (or at least, the ordinary life she saw pass by ever since she became a ghost). The second story is about an assault on an art student that occured in a classroom that could only be accessed via another classroom, that was occupied by the art club at the moment. Again, a seemingly impossible crime, and while I didn't like this mystery on its own that much, I loved how it really built on the previous story, as it showed the previous story had real consequences for the student life at Raihen Academy, making people act and think differently. 

The third story in turn has the first murder: members of the newspaper clubs of several school are invited to the house of an alumnus of one of the clubs. It's supposed to be a kind of training camp to hone the journalistic skills of the members, but Mima Shizuka, who had attended last year too, knows the organizer just uses this occassion to vent his frustrations on the current club members by completely roasting their writings. During the snowy evening, the girls sleep together in the storehouse of the manor, which can only be locked from the outside (as it's not meant to be lived in). During the night however, the organizer is found dead in the courtyard, his head bashed in. The only footprints left in the snow in the courtyard however belong to the victim, with no footprints of the murderer. The victim was furthermore found near the window of a room of the annex, where the guests were sleeping, but the windows on that side can't be opened, so the occupant of that room couldn't have hit the man either. Shou is asked to look into the case, not only because of her roommates involvement, but her uncle, a police inspector, is also on the case and has heard of the exploits of his niece. This is quite an elaborate story, that is great at using the various moving parts of the story (characters) to create a seemingly impossible mystery. The reason why the murderer ended up dead in the courtyard is a bit silly, but well-clewed and the way the culprit created the footprint mystery isn't per se that impressive method-wise, but very convincing motive-wise.

Up until this point, the stories also saw short intermezzos told from the POV of a character, who has also seen Tokiya Yuu's ghost herself, and has deduced that Shou is actually getting assistance from Yuu in solving the mysteries. This person however absolutely hates what Shou's doing, so they set a trap for Shou.

Shou, her uncle, the dorm director and some of Shou's allies have gathered, because they have realized the incidents Shou has been involved with, mirror those Tokiya Yuu solved during her time at Raihen. Yuu at the time deduced a mastermind "M" had been orchestrating all these crimes, and she died during her confrontation with M. It is now suspected a new mastermind has also been behind all the crimes Shou has been involved with. During their meeting however, Shizuka keels over after drinking her tea. A message is then delivered to the room: the tea cups have been poisoned and the door has been locked, with no way to call for help. The only way to open the door and get help for Shizuka, is if Shou drinks one of the cups: only one will not kill her. With no way to go to the waterfall to get help, can Shou manage to solve this mystery herself? The story feels a bit like a Liar Game game, where Shou has to deduce which of the cups is safe to drink (with a lot "if they think I think they think..." type of thoughts). The solution is simple yet elegant, and the story moves right to the finale, where Shou is confronted with the mastermind behind all the crimes and the truth behind the death of her great-aunt. This part of the mystery is elegantly clewed, with great foreshadowing planted throughout the various adventures to build up to this Reichenbach Falls-esque finale. Unfortunately, I already knew a bit how this finale would end up, because I happened to have met the editor of the book who kinda spoiled it to me, but despite my prior knowledge, I did think the mystery was constructed very neatly.

So while Meitantei Futatabi is not at all like the historical epic drama that was Hakushaku to Mittsu no Hitsugi, I did greatly enjoy the book: it's a fun, light-hearted school mystery (the sometimes venomous banter between Shou and her ghostly mentor is especially a highlight) with a clear, overarching story that manages to achieve exactly what it sets out to do. The individual mysteries are often fairly short, but competently constructed and the overall storyline, with Shou slowly growing into a detective herself, is satisfying. This is a great book to read between heavier stuff.

Original Japanese title(s): 塩谷験『名探偵再び』 

The Tuesday Club Murders

Sur les crédences, au salon vide: nul ptyx

"Sonnet en X" 

And yet I'm sure this is not the only book that's been on the 'to-read' list for over fiteen years...

The retired French literature professor Zuimon Ryuushirou is a huge fan of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé and owns a curious home which is named, and designed after meaningless word "ptyx" Mallarmé used in the poem Sonnet en X. To be exact, it follows the Japanese translation of the word, with a stem word for "shell", so the two-storey building is built like a spiral, with spiraling hallway on both floors, and a courtyard at the center of the building, that can only be reached by the stairs that are found at the very end of the hallway upstairs. Zuimon often holds gatherings at his manor to discuss literature, aptly called the Tuesday Club. In 1987, members of the Tuesday Club included, among others, an active professor in French literature and three students, a famous actor and... the great detective Mizuki Masaomi and the legally required Watson, Ayui Ikusuke, who has been chronicling all of the adventures Mizuki and he have as succesful novels. That night, after everyone has gone to sleep, a loud cry wakes everyone up and as they look for the origin of the voice, they find one of the guests lying dead in the courtyard, apparently having slipped from the stairs upstairs down onto the courtyard. But it was in fact not a natural death, and of course Mizuki promptly solves the case, allowing for Ayui to write a new book. The Ptyx House Affair is serialized in parts in magazines as always and while basically all of the story was serialized, with the case solved and perhaps only needing an epilogue, the book was never actually finished, and also never collected and published as a single, standalone release. This also marked the last of what the public would learn about Mizuki: Ayui stopped writing books and nobody heard of Mizuki again.

14 years later, the great private detective Isurugi Gisaku is contacted by a literary editor who wants Isurugi to reopen the investigation of the murder that took place at the Zuimon residence 14 years ago. The editor finds it strange Ayui never had the final book properly published and suspects there could only be one reason why Ayui had made such a drastic decision: what if in the process of writing down the adventure he had with Mizuki, he had inadvertently realized Mizuki might actually have nabbed the wrong culprit in this case? Isurugi, who is a big fan of the Mizuki Masaomi novels, accepts the request, and investigates the case by not only reading the installments of The Ptyx House Affair, but also by interviewing the real people involved in the actual case 14 years ago, and as he asks more questions, he slowly starts to notice little things in Ayui's account that bothers him too. Can he outwit the great detective Mizuki in Shunou Masayuki's Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi, which also carries the German title Im Spiegel ist Sonntag ("It's Sunday in the Mirror", 2001)?  

Shunou Masayuki was an author who was only active for a very short period of time, writing about seven books in four years, but he is still well-remembered in the world of Japanese mystery fiction and you'll often find one of his titles (especially Hasami Otoko ("The Scissor Man") in 'best of' lists. I don't know why I hadn't gotten started on him yet, especially as fifteen years ago (back when we had like only three people blogging in English on Japanese mystery fiction!), I already wrote I had put this book on my 'to-be-read' list...It took me a bit of time, but I finally got around to it!

The books in the Isurugi Gisaku series are apparently all takes on familiar mystery tropes, with Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi being an obvious variation on the familiar yakata-mono, murders occuring in a curiously built building like we see in Ayatsuki's House series. Here we have a house that is built in the most inconvenient manner as the house is just one giant spiral that goes up one floor, and it's of course nuts you'd need to go walk down the spiralling hallway of the first floor, go up the stairs, go down the spiralling hallway of the second floor and go out on the balcony and go down another set of stairs just to reach the courtyard, which is of course completely surrounded by walls so there's nothing to see (as there are no windows looking out into the courtyard). Houses like these are great for mysteries, not so for actual living.

That said, while the main mystery might seem to be the mysterious death in 1987 at the Ptyx house, one could argue that it is in fact another trope that is the main topic of this book: the unreliable narrator. Which might seem like a huge spoiler, but not only are we already told that Ayui apparently suspected Mizuki might have been wrong, meaning the solution presented in Ayui's book should be wrong, Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi in fact opens with the most unreliable narrator we could have: a person suffering from Alzheimer in 2001. This person, closely related to the 1987 murder, does not recognize themselves, and can barely recognize people anymore by 2001. Isurugi Gisaku's investigation into the murder however stimulates the narrator in ways Isurugi could not have foreseen, and flashes of memories slowly show a glimpse of the solution awaiting at the end. The second part of the book flashes a bit back and explains how Isurugi Gisaku's investigation actually gets started and is interspersed with The Ptyx House Affair written by Ayui Ikusuke in 1987. It's here where we get another glimpse of how the 'unreliable narrator' works: while Ayui is almost fanatical in being accurate and truthtful in his account, as he thinks that is the best way to show how much of an amazing detective Mizuki was, Ayui does have to let his imagination do the work when it comes to portraying the people other than himself in his book. When in Isurugi goes interviewing the people involved in the case 14 years later, we see that Ayui often didn't get things quite right in his book, creating slight gaps between reality and his reconstruction of the case and the people involved. For example, in Ayui's book, he decided to use one of the visiting students as the main narrator, but the real "him" differs from the fictional one in quite a few ways. It's of course up to Isurugi, and the reader, to figure out whether these little discrepencies relate to what really went on 14 years ago, and whether Mizuki got the right killer or not.

Ultimately, I think the book's merits also lie in how these various narratives (Alzheimer/Isurugi/Ayui) intertwine, and the truth hidden between the web spun between these three that makes Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi an interesting mystery novel, The actual murder itself, and the clues leading up to resolving that, are not as interesting as seeing what is really hiding within Ayui's The Ptyx House Affair and learning how the narrator with Alzheimer links up with Isurugi's investigation and what these threads all actually mean. It's hard to explain precisely what this book does well, because that does go a bit too much into spoiler territory, but I can safely recommend this as a well-structured mystery novel. The only caveat I could have is simply the fact I feel nothing for Stéphane Mallarmé, and obviously, they do talk about him and his work a lot in The Ptyx House Affair

The bunko pocket version of Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi includes the direct sequel Shikimi/Muro ("Anise/Juniper"), originally released in 2002. These are two interconnected short stories, with an interesting title convention: if you take out the "tree" radical from the kanji of either title (Shikimi and Muro), you end up with the word misshitsu, or "locked room". And thus both stories are about locked room mysteries. Shikimi ("Anise") is a story written by Ayui Ikusuke and details a case he and Mizuki had while visiting a small town with hot springs, as they had been invited to the hotel run someone they had become acquainted during a previous adventure. Ayui and Mizuki learn about a local legend telling a Tengu (a bird-like goblin) used to live here and that he had dropped his axe: the axe is enshrined in a local shinto shrine. Lately, the priest claims he saw the Tnegu with its long nose on Tengu's Hill in the night. What sounds like a tall story, turns into a creepy seed of doubt when one night, one of the guests won't come out of his room. They try to unlock the door with the master key, but the door is latched from the inside. When they finally break into the room, they find the guest lying dead on his bed, having been hit fatally with... the Tengu's axe.

Muro ("Juniper") is set 14 years later and follows Isurugi Gisaku, as he goes visit an old friend who runs a certain hotel in a town with hot springs... Isurugi actually lived in this town for a short period fourteen years ago to prepare for his school entrance exams, though he had left the day Mizuki and Ayui solved the locked room mystery in the hotel. His friend had been working part-time in the hotel at the time, and later married the proprietor. Isurugi is glad to see his old friend, though the wife is seemingly not so happy to have her husband's friend staying at the hotel as a guest (any hopes for a discount are soon thrown away as soon as Isurugi meets the wife). History seemingly repeats itself when a student reports to the reception his professor won't respond to knocks on his door. The professor had been a guest 14 years ago too and all of this soon sparks fears into all that were here too then, so after confirming the door is indeed latched from inside, they force the door open again... only to find the room empty. The professor later appears, saying he had gone out drinking, but who then had latched his door from the inside?

Both stories feature fairly simple tricks for their locked rooms, but the way the two stories intertwine, one set in the past and the other in the present, is good. Some things in Shikimi take on a different meaning when you have read Muro, and the trick in Muro definitely benefits from having read Shikimi first. These stories do really feel like a set, and while they are short and quite lite, I did enjoy them, espcecially as an extension of Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi, as it once again plays with past/present narratives.

So overall, I really enjoyed Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi and its sequel Shikimi/Muro. They provide fun takes on familiar mystery tropes which allow for some pondering on the genre conventions, while at the same time, they are actually written in a very accessible manner, being very easy reads. I do recommend reading Shikimi/Muro together with Kagami no Naka wa Nichiyoubi though, as they are really too lite on their own (which would explain why they are published as one single book nowadays). Anyway, I will be reading more of Shunou soon!

Original Japanese title(s): 殊能将之『鏡の中は日曜日』/『樒 / 榁』 

The Broken Anchor

Night of fire 

この気持ちに勝るものなんてないけど

「Night of Fire」(Dream) 

 

Night of fire!

There is nothing that can overwhelm my feelings

"Night of Fire" (Dream)

Disclosure: I have translated novels by both Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice.

"Mystery Night" was a special event to commorate the 15th anniversary of the "shin honkaku" (New Orthodox) movement of mystery fiction, marked by the publication of Ayatsuji Yukito's 1987 debut novel Jukkakan no Satsujin (The Decagon House Murders). The main stars of the events were Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice, and as many mystery stories are set in closed circles, the event was held in one, for the event consisted of a special cruise tour. Fans of mystery fiction would be spending one night on a ship where there'd be talk shows with Ayatsuji and Arisugawa, as well as a lot of fellow mystery writers like Nikaidou Reito, Takemoto Kenji, Yamaguchu Masaya, Maya Yutaka and Norizuki Rintarou, and there'd also be an interactive murder mystery show: participants would be presented the story of a mystery writer who was murdered, and try to solve this mystery (the writing of this mystery was supervised by Ayatsuji and Arisugawa). The book Mystery Night (2003) contains a detailed report of all that happened on the ship during the event, including all the interviews and the murder game.

So this is a bit of a strange book, as this is not a novel per se. Half of the book consists of the murder play, written in screenplay format. The other half includes write-ups and reports on all the other things that happened during the event, from how people arrived on the ship to completely transcribed interviews (and even a transcribed... magic show), as well as photographs of the trip and of the belongings of the authors which had been exhibited at the show. The trip was held twice, once in October 2002, embarking from Tokyo, and once in December of the same year, embarking from Kobe: this book reports on the events on both trips. The general flow of both trips was that people could get on board in the afternoon, after which the ship would depart the harbor. After a while, guests would be shown a video that laid out the basics of the murder game they'd try to solve. They could then find panels on the ship with additional information and the clues needed to solve the murder (for example, panels with close up photographs of the crime scene). In between, there'd also be dinner, with talk panels with the authors and at a certain point, the participants would also be asked to go to either an Ayatsuji or an Arisugawa room, where they'd talk a bit and also provide an exclusive clue to solving the mystery. At the end of the evening, people could fill in a form to guess who the killer was, and the big reveal, and they'd award the person who got the answer right by picking up on all the clues. The book reminded me a lot of Ayatsuji Yukito Satsujin Jiken - Arujitachi no Yakata ("The Ayatsuji Yukito Murder Case - The House of the Owners"), which was also a screenplay-format write up of a murder mystery play in honor of Ayatsuji, accompanied by write-ups on the events around it.

The story of the murder play revolved around Katayama Kippei, an infamous mystery writer who was harshly criticized for his books that were basically plagiarized from other writers. One day, he didn't appear at an appointment, so his wife and his editor visited him in his office, which they found locked from the inside. When they got in, they found Katayama stabbed with a knife and his head resting on a few of his books (like a pillow), his body surrounded by torn pages from the books that were allegedly plagiarized. Oddly enough though, the police discovered the only key to the office in the victim's mouth, so how did the murderer escape? Among the suspects are Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice, as Katayama also published books titled The Hexagon House Massacre and The 64th Locked Room...

To be honest, I only picked up this book because I was interested in the murder mystery supervised by Ayatsuji and Arisugawa, as I have loved a lot of their collaborative work (on Anraku Isu Tantei and Trick X Logic). This story was only supervised by the duo though, and as a mystery story, I ended up not liking it nearly as much as I had hoped. While the backstory of the plagiarizing writer is pretty funny and meta, the actual murder plot is (of course) presented in a rather disjointed manner, with both parts with actual characters and dialogue, but also just still photographs of the evidence and things like the locked room murder element don't really come alive due to the dialogue-heavy set-up of the story, and the fact it was designed as a story where info would presented in several bursts (video/panels etc). I am not a big fan of the trick used for the locked room an sich, though some of the hints for the surrounding mystery are good. Though I guess I do very much miss the big "reveal that changes your look on how things played out" that a lot of the Ayatsuji/Arisugawa duo mysteries pull off greatly, making this one feel a bit underwhelming.

The interviews/talk shows give you some background information on how the men look back at (at the time) 15 years of shin honkaku and of course their work, but I have to admit I was not nearly as interested in the interviews as in the murder play.

The official site for this tour is still online by the way, and it looks DELICIOUSLY early 2000s Japanese website. It would fit right in in Project Hacker...

So Mystery Night is more of an interesting anecdote than something you really need to read if you're looking for Ayatsuji/Arisugawa mystery fiction. The interviews might be of more historical value, as well as the write-ups on what is actually a very unique event (can you just imagine it!? A cruise trip to celebrate a group of authors and the mystery genre!), but I wouldn't bother go looking for this book for the mystery.

Original Japanese title(s): 綾辻行人、有栖川有栖（監修）『新本格謎夜会(ミステリー・ナイト)』

Mr Brain

"Thoroughly respectable and honest. Not, perhaps, remarkable for brains."

"Murder on the Orient Express"

Now I think about it, it's been easily over a decade since I first read about this book...

Magical Zunou Power!! ("Magical Brain Power!!") was a long-running primetime television quiz program presented by Bandou Eiji and featured a mostly fixed pool of participants of television personalities, some of which are nowadays so huge they have their own television programs like Tokoro George. The program consisted of several rounds of various quizzes with which you could earn 'Brain Power' and of course, the one who has accumulated the most BP at the end, wins that week's episode. The show itself ran from 1990 until 1999, but for the mystery fans, the period that is of interest, is the early days of the show, from 1990 until 1992. For it was during this period, the final round was the Magical Mystery Theater: a short 5-10 minute drama show where a mystery would be presented. While the Magical Mystery Theater segments are all very short, there is "continuity" between them: in the 'series', we follow the private detective Nakatani Shouichi and his niece Natsuko, a college student who acts as her uncle's assistant. The difficulty of each 'story' would be indicated with a Brain Power value, which was also the maximum of points you could earn if you got the answer right (you could be rewarded points for getting it partially correct). After watching the video, the participants would have to guess how it was done or who did it, with an explanation of course. Once everybody had presented their answers, a final, one minute video would follow with the solution. As it's just one round in a quiz program and participants need to be able to briefly explain their solutions, most of these stories are fairly simple in set-up and often revolve around just one single idea, but even so, some of the ideas seen in these segments are actually quite interesting. That is easily explained, when you learn that among those who provided the screenplay writers with the core mystery plots, there are mystery writers like Orihara Ichi, Abiko Takemaru and Shinpo Hirohisa. According to Abiko, Magical Mystery Theater was actually the highest-rated part of the program initially, but even after the overall show started to get higher ratings, this segment's ratings didn't really change accordingly, so it was eventually cancelled.

Shinpo Hirohisa, one of the 'mystery plot' writers, would later revisit some of the scenarios he wrote for the show in Satsujin Trick Gekijou - Nandai Mystery 11 Renpatsu ("Murder Trick Theater - 11 Difficult Mysteries", 1996). The concept of this book is quite interesting. On one hand, it is a book for fans of the original Magical Zunou Power!! corner: Shinpo gives us a glimpse behind the scenes of the Magical Mystery Theater segment, describing what they were going for, how ideas would be discarded and how the segment eventually was cancelled. The eleven stories featured in this pocket are also all followed by an essay on the specific story, noting when the corresponding Magical Mystery Theater segment was broadcast, reception on the quiz, the creative process behind the story/trick etc and what authors/works he drew inspiration from for the trick. This makes this book very informative also for mystery authors I think, as you get an idea of how a mystery writer might develop an idea seen in work X into a different idea, but with the same "foundation."

On the other hand, the eleven stories in this volume are also decidedly not Magical Mystery Theater stories... because obviously, Shinpo doesn't own the show and the characters created for that show. Because of that, he has rewritten all these scenarios with new characters, as well as sometimes changing the plot/trick/clues to accomodate for the book format. It's not the detective Nakatani nor his niece Natsuko who stars in these stories, but we mostly follow Yukiko and Fuyumi, two friends who after graduating haven't quite decided what to with their lives, and so Fuyumi suggest they become detectives, much to Yukiko's shock. They apply at the agency of the detective Mei, but while they don't get hired, they remain on friendly terms with him, occasionally getting him involved in the incidents they end up in, or vice-versa. One important thing to note is that this book also features many original illustrations by Noma Miyuki, the creator of the extremely long-running mystery manga Puzzle Game ☆ High School. They really add a lot of character to this book, especially as it's not 'just' character art, but also depictions of scenes from the stories etc.

Ultimately, these stories were created to be quizzes, so they are by design very straightforward and simple, usually only utilizing one single idea. The book acually retains the "Brain Power" concept of the original show, with each story being worth a number of points, and there's usually also a story section before the solution, that is considered optional: you can skip it to get a high score, or read it to be pushed in the right direction. Note that this optional section isn't just a list of hints, it's a proper part of the story with dialogue and sometimes even story developments.  But because many of them are really just single-idea concepts that you may have seen elsewhere already, I am not going to discuss each story this time.

The first story, Hito wo Kuu Heya ("The Room That Eats People") is the story that first made me aware of this book: it was mentioned in a mook on locked room murder mysteries edited by Arisugawa, being mentioned in a long list of recommended short locked room/impossible crime stories. In this story, we first see Fuyumi and Natsuko visit the detective agency of Mei, who decides to test the two girls with an excercise in a stake-out. He puts his assistant Dan in a room, and tells Yukiko and Fuyumi to keep an eye on the room, making sure his assistant doesn't escape. Fuyuko is told to watch the door from the corridor, while Yukiko is brought outside and told to watch the window from the street. After a hour, the two are to swap places, and after another hour, Yukiko is to enter the room and apprehend Dan. The two girls do as told, and two hours pass by without anything suspicious happening in the room. But when Yukiko enters the room, she finds the room empty. How did Dan escape? The trick behind Dan disappearing from a room under observation is pretty simple and it's likely you will have seen a variation of the same idea before, but Shinpo does a great job at planting the clues that point to that solution, and I would have loved to have seen the Magical Mystery Theater segment. In the essay, Shinpo mentions how Miyabe Miyuki told him how she really liked the tale, only for Shinpo to reveal he actually got the idea from a Miyabe story, transforming it in a way so even she herself didn't recognize it!

In Shide no Tabi ni mo Kinen Satsuei ("Taking Photographs Even When On Your Way to the Afterlife"), the comedian Hashiba Kenzou wants Mei to help him, because he received a letter from an unknown sender, saying "she wants to return her key, but also talk with him on the 7th, when he's filming at a cliff: Hashiba suspects it's one of his three exes with a key to his apartment, but he finds the letter very creepy, especially as she apparently knows his work schedule and wants to meet him at a cliff. Mei declines the job because he is not a bodyguard, nor does he like the playboy comedian, but then Hashiba is indeed murdered, having been pushed off the cliff.  Miraculously, someone managed to take a picture of Hashiba as he was falling, which provides a vital clue to finding out which of three women pushed him, but how? Once again, the solution is very simple, but I love how it does make very good use of the original visual format: while the illustration by Noma does wonders to support this story in the novel format, I imagine it would have felt more intuitive as an acted segment on Magical Mystery Theater.

In Totemo Kimyou na Yuukai ("A Very Curious Abduction"), Mei tells Fuyumi the tale of the abduction of Yuuka, the daughter of a client, with whom he often played shogi. Mei was present when the father received the call, instructing him to go to a coin locker at the station with a stash of money. Mei is sent instead, and in the coin locker, he receives further instructions to make a phone call to a certain number from the public payphone in a nearby park. The number given goes to Osaka, but the man answering the call says that while he does know Yuuka, he doesn't know anything about an abduction. Because of that, the money deal with the kidnapper seems to have failed, and Yuuka is soon found murdered in a nearby park. Police investigation show that the man answering the phone call in fact did have a perfect alibi for killing Yuuka, but how could have kidnapped Yuuka and killed her in Tokyo, if he answered a phone call in Osaka? The trick itself I find remarkable because it is so much a trick that only works in the period this story was created: it wouldn't fly at all now, because society has changed so much and we don't use certain things anymore. But that is why I really liked this story: it is a simple, but clever trick, but it would also be very understandable to people who don't have any interest in mystery fiction, because it used an object people would know in the nineties in an original manner, but also a manner which would make you go "Aha!" because it's actually so simple. There are a few other stories that have a similar vibe, using everyday life objects/customs of the early nineties which feel out-of-date/not obvious anymore, like in Satsujin yo, Kinou ni Kaere ("Murder, Go Back to Yesterday"), where an alibi is shot down by pointing out a certain object isn't where it should be, but which nobody in Japan nowadays would really think of.

Satsujin Trick Gekijou isn't really a must-read for mystery fans, though I would definitely recommend it to those who used to watch Magical Zunou Power!! as the behind-the-scenes essays are really interesting (and I say that as someone who hadn't even seen the show!). And of course, I do have an interest in mystery shows that are formally divided in problem and solution sections, so being able to experience the show in some manner, even if in a different format, is something I appreciate a lot. While most of the stories in this book are very simple, focusing on single-idea tricks that you likely have seen in other mystery-themed quizzes, or other mystery stories already, I find the presentation of this book very consistent: Noma Miyuki's illustrations do some of the lifting, but Shinpo's writing is easy, and while the main tricks are pretty simple overall, he does a very consistent job of properly clewing everything, making these stories a bit more involving than just single-concept mystery quizzes. 

Original Japanese title(s): 新保博久『殺人トリック劇場　難題ミステリー11連発』

Accident by Design

Firmitas, utilitas et venustas 

"De architectura"  

 

Firmness, commidity and delight 

"On Architecture"

I wanted to say it'd be cool to have a mystery set in an Escher building, but then I remembered I already read one....

Kenchiku Shizai (2001), which also carries the English title The Builded Dead on the cover, is the 11th winner of the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award and is the "professional" debut of author Monzen Noriyuki, though he had previously self-published a different novel (interestingly enough, that book got a professional release later on). Monzen studied architecture in university, which is all too clear in his debut novel, which originally was sent in to the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award committee under the title The Building That Eats People. The book is narrated by Miyamura Tatsuya, a man in his thirties who's having a long holiday in Nagoya: after attending to a friend's wedding there, he decided to stay at his uncle and aunt's place, which is also an udon restaurant. His cousin Yuuichi is still in high school and (should be) studying for his university entrance exams, which explains why he is still up late at night. One evening, Yuuichi spots a light source moving about on one of the floors of the construction site across the street: a large new building is being erected there, but work has been paused for a few days due to the obon holiday season. His childhood friend Momose, whose father is a subcontractor for the construction site and working in their own workshop to meet a deadline, also sees the light. The two keep an eye on the building, and eventually confide to Tatsuya about the intruder. They decide to sneak inside the construction site to see what's happening. Fortunately, all the foundational work is already done, with the load-bearing walls/support pillars and the stairs finished, allowing them to move about relatively safely. They spot a shadowy figure and chase them into a meeting room on the second floor, but the figure locks the door behind them. Momose is sent to watch the windows outside, while Tatsuya and Yuuichi try to get into the room, which they eventually do by breaking through one of the non-bearing walls. However, they find nobody inside, and the windows are locked from the inside. The trio are puzzled by the disappearance of the figure, and Yuuichi and Momose stay up all night to see if they can spot the figure escaping the site, but it appears the shadow has really just disappeared into thin air.

The following day, they contact Kumode, the on-site supervisor, as he's the only one in authority whom Yuuichi knows the address of, and who hasn't gone somewhere travelling during the holiday season. They have another look in the half-finished building together, while Yuuichi explains what happened the previous night, and suggesting the figure might have hidden themselves inside the walls, but Kumode explains the process of constructing the various walls in the building and how it'd be impossible to either hide into a load-bearing wall, or how they would've instantly spotted someone in one of the non-finished non-bearing walls. The mystery is left unsolved by these men, but then the police becomes involved in a rather surprising manner. The president of the contruction company has gone missing, and the previous day, a cut-off finger had been sent to his home. His secretary is missing too, and one of her body parts was also sent to her home. This also happened to a teacher, who seems to have no connection to the president or the secretary. It also turns out a day worker with no fixed address had sneaked into the construction site on the same night as Yuuichi, Momose and Tatsuya did, hoping to stay in the half-finished building during the holiday, knowing it would be empty. However, he claims he fled the scene when he found three bodies cut up in pieces there, The police suspects those are the bodies of the people they are looking for, but where are the bodies? It seems obvious to assume they are somewhere in the building, but the workers themselves, with their expertise of actually constructing the walls/ceilings/floors seem very sceptical of the possibility of that, as most of the construction involving concrete/mortar was already finished and you'd instantly know if something was 'added' later on. However, when more murders occur at the construction site, it seems clear the building is indeed the crux of this mystery and it is Kumode, with his knowledge of building a house, who tackles this challenge.

A challenge indeed, but not for the reason you might expect at first. The book immediately makes an impression when you open it, as you'll find the volume opens with very detailed floor plans of the five-storey building around which most of the mystery revolves. And while having each floor printed on its own page isn't that uncommon (especially not in Japanese mysteries), the fact each floor is in fact printed on tracing paper is highly unusual! It is here Monzen already shows his familiarity with building design and construction, as tracing paper is used extensively in those fields and it is used here in the book like it is used 'in real life', to show exactly how each of the floors overlap, making you aware of where walls on different floors overlap or not and how corridors/rooms are different between floors. This of course seems to suggest something incredibly clever will be done with this... but I'd say 90% of the justification of this insert, is simply to be authentic, and not per se to faciliate the mystery. Which is a shame, because I was genuinely surprised by these pages when I first opened the book.

In a way, this experience with the very first pages of the book perfectly symbolizes my experience with the whole work. Throughout the book, Monzen really shows he's an expert on the topic of designing and constructing a building and you can feel his enthusiasm throughout the book as he builds the mystery, but it's also his knowledge that really limits the possibilities behind the book. A lot of the mystery revolves around what the murderer did with the three bodies seen by the homeless worker that night: Yuuichi and Momose didn't see anyone carrying three people's worth of body parts out of the building and because the police didn't manage to find the bodies in open spots in the building under construction, the most "mystery-tropey" solution would of course be that the bodies are buried in the walls, but Kumode quickly rejects that possibility by giving lectures on how buildings like these are actually constructed, and with most of the supporting concrete 'parts' of the building set and finished long ago and the non-bearing walls/floors/ceilings simply not lending themselves for hiding spots. Via Kumode, we learn Monzen has obviously given a lot of thought about whether the body-in-the-wall trick could work realistically without anyone noticing, and he gives several detailed reasons why he thinks that's unlikely.

So that leaves the question, where did the bodies in fact go? And how did the dark figure Yuuichi, Momose and Takuya chased, disappear from the locked meeting room? And later in the book, we have another murder on the roof, and all the suspects seem to have a good alibi for this murder, as the time of the crime can be estimated by the fact the murderer left their footprints on a part of the flooring that hadn't set completely yet at that time. While this book thus has as few impossible mysteries (a locked room disappearance even).... I have to admit I basically found all the solutions a bit disappointing. Ironically, this was not because Monzen didn't do his homework on the topic: in fact, it is the exact opposite. He was so thorough in sticking to actual architectural details and realism, the tricks he ends up using just come over as too... plain? While Kenchiku Shizai is definitely a honkaku mystery novel where they talk about locked room mysteries and impossible disappearances and tropes like hiding bodies in the walls, Monzen ends up with far too few options for truly surprising solutions to his own mysteries, and you end up feeling a bit... indifferent to the reveals of what really happened. I can agree his takes would work in real-life at a real construction site, but that doesn't make those solutions really exciting or anything, they just seem like more... realistic and practical versions of tricks I have seen used in more unrealistic, but infinitely more amusing manners, or at least presented with more energy and surprise. I think if you're into architecture, this book can be quite interesting, especially after seeing the more fantastical ways in which buildings are used in Japanese mystery fiction, but for me, it just felt lacking because of the reality.

That said, there are also really brilliant points that help support the mystery. The motive behind the death of one of the victims is really the kind of ideas I love to see in mystery fiction: it strangely fits the realistic angle of Monzen in this book despite also being pretty crazy. The same regarding another late murder: there is a very specific reason for the victim to be found with a knife in his back, which is also brilliantly realistic and at the same time so out-of-there. It's moments like these that really make an impression especially because they make a perversion of the rather realistic look at the construction industry and they really did help elevate my experience with the book.

 On one hand, I can really appreciate the research Monzen poured into this book, and it results in a book that is really educative about how a building is built, knowledge which of course comes in handy in a genre with a lot of quirky buildings with weird gimmicks. But on the other hand, Kenchiku Shizai's main mysteries are all resolved with rather plain solutions because of Monzen is bound by this realism. It's when he dares to go a bit beyond those limits, when the book feels the most memorable. I wouldn't call this book a complete disappointment though. I am aware there are more books with Kumode as the detective (and architecture/building construction as the theme), and I am curious to see what else Monzen can do with his knowledge, so I will probably try more of his books, so I will likely return to him in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 門前典之『建築屍材』

Seven Dead

"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled."

"Eleonora" 

Eight locked room murders in the last review of the eighth month of the year!

It was Mitsumura Shitsuri who was the defendant in the trial in Japan that created the Golden Age of Locked Room Murders in Japan: she was accused of committing a murder, but the police were not able to figure out how the murderer could've committed and then left the crime scene, as it was found locked from the inside. Shitsuri was succesfully defended with the argument that an unsolved locked room mystery was as strong as any alibi: the prosecution being incapable of proving how anyone could've committed the murder and escape a locked room in essence meant every single person on the planet had an alibi. If it was impossible for anyone, why would it be possible for specifically the defendant? This created a rage among would-be murderers to commit their crimes in locked rooms, for that seemed like a perfect defense. This was the perfect breeding ground for locked room murder specialists, both within the police and among private detectives, but also among criminals, where locked room murder consultants became a lucrative business.

Shitsuri's classmate Kasumi this finds himself dragged to the mountains by his childhood friend Yuzuki, as she's looking for New Nessie in the Tama River. the two end up lost in the mountains a little time before dusk, but are fortunately found by Monokaki Camembert ("his mother was a foreigner"), who lives in the nearby Village of Eight Boxes. Because there is no other place nearby where the two can stay, Camembert suggests they come with him to the village and stay in the inn there. To the great surprise of both Kasumi and Yuzuki, they vind the Village of Eight Boxes is actually located inside a gigantic cave, that can only be accessed via a long tunnel, which is guarded during the day and of which the gate is closed during the night. The villages is called like this, because the houses in this village are built like smooth lacquer boxes (you don't need pointy roofs with a drainage system inside a cave where it never rains!). It takes some time for Kasumi to realize Monokaki Camembert is in fact one of the members of the Monokaki Clan: a family of locked room murder mystery authors, Father Fuichirou was the foremost writer of locked room mysteries in Japan, but he recently passed away, leaving a huge fortune to his nine children, who have followed in their father's footsteps, or are trying to. Each of his children specialize in a different kind of locked room mystery novel, like medical locked room mysteries, historical ones, or even hardboiled ones. The family all live here in the village, though their manor is physically seperated from the rest of the village via a chasm in the cave. Kasumi also learns a local festival is going to start that very evening, and it last for about a week, and during that time, it is not allowed for anyone to leave the village, or else an evil spirit will kill them.

When the festival starts however, one of the Monokaki daughters is seen to be killed by a masked figure, but they quickly disappear with the corpse. However, after Camembert and Kasumi have gone to the Monokaki manor to inform the rest of the family about the murder, the bridge that crosses the chasm in the village is blown up, leaving the people in the manor trapped on their side of the cave. Meanwhile, the other villagers decide it might be better to call the police, but they find the lines have been cut, and when one brave villager, despite the local belief telling him not to, tries to venture beyond the tunnel in order to fetch the police, a gate suddenly closes off the tunnel, and the villager suddenly bursts out in flames, even though nobody was near him. Yuzuki, who is still in the village, discovers the body of the disappearing Monokaki daughter in one of the houses, but to the surprise of both her and the local constable, the house is locked from the inside. And as they scramble about, they stumble upon more dead bodies of members of the Monokaki family inside locked rooms. Fortunately, Yuzuki runs into two women in the village who can solve these crimes: not only is the author Oujou Teika, Japan's young queen of the locked room mystery, staying at the same inn as Yuzuki, it turns out Shitsuri too is working here as a part-time help. Can they solve the many locked room murders occuring the Village of Eight Boxes both on this side of the cave, as well as inside the Monokaki Manor in Kamosaki Danro's Misshitsu Henai Jidaino Satsujin - Tozasareta Mura to Yattsu no Trick (2024), which also bears the English title The Murder in the Fetishistic Age of Locked Rooms: The Closed Village and the Eight Tricks.

This is the third book in Kamosaki's series on the Golden Age of Locked Rooms and The Age of Frenzy of Locked Rooms and by now, the titles have become more and more ridiculous, but I guess that is also the point, which is also exemplified by the fact we are now in the fetishistic age of locked rooms, where the locked room mystery almost takes on a perverted form. For in a way, that is exactly what this book does. The first book featured six main locked room murder mysteries (or otherwise impossible situations), the second had seven of them, and now this third entry has no less than eight of them! And while this was already a problem with the second book, the fact Kamosaki wants to cover so many locked room murder situations in a limited amount of pages, means that on the whole, these books are more about quantitty than quality. That is not to say the ideas behind the locked rooms are bad on their own per se, but there is basically not set-up each time: they stumble upon a murder scene, Kamosaki has just enough space to actually describe how the scene looks like, and perhaps one character might suggest a wrong solution, but then we have Shitsuri who has one look at the crime scene and she can suddenly solve the whole thing, even if the trick is insanely complex and involving multiple steps. There is no real feeling of catharsis when she solves the mysteries, because not enough time is used to actually make it feel like a proper mystery, nor do you feel satisfied by the "logical pay-off" of the solution, because the solution is suddenly sprung upon the reader. So while sometimes the idea behind the locked room mystery can be cool and memorable on its own, it's the execution that lacks, because every murder feels like a descrete point with next to no connection to the other murders.

To be honest, it started out really promising, as the first two murders are the ones that are actually thematically connected, with an interesting conundrum arising when the solutions to these rooms are first suggested. The problem that comes up because of how they are solved is interesting and creates a very fun logical brainteaser. The false solutions proposed here are also far more interesting than the ones we see later, if we see them at all, and it feels like Kamosaki focused a lot of attention to these murders. I think these were among my favorites too in the book, as the synergy shown during this part of the book is what really shows what I think this series should do: have it be meaningful there are so many locked room murders in a closed circle situation, instead of just throwing a bunch of them on a pile. Two others I also liked a lot: one involving the victim having been hanged in a building, but the security system shows nobody entered the building the last 24 hours, neither the victim nor any murderer! The trick might become a bit obvious if I explain a specific point regarding how they found the victim, but the trick itself is original. Another one is one of the most horrifying locked room murder tricks I've ever come across in mystery fiction, and involves the victim having been decapitated in a room while their body had been tied to a table in the room: the mechanics behind how the murderer pulled this trick off are just too terrible to even to think about, and devilishl clever.

The others vary a lot in quality. The combustion murder of the villager for example involves the most crudest of clues, and the "okay, this is silly, but not the good kind of silly" trick has your eyes rolling. There are more murder situations later in the book that are also incredbily silly in concept, but at least those are so silly they become good, even if the execution can be faulted. Others feel more like showpieces of random scientific trivia, while one also feels like a Professor Layton puzzle more than anything. The last 'big' mystery that is solved involves some Queenian logic, which I can always appreciate and something I also noticed in the second volume, but on the whole, Kamosaki is definitely someone who ultimately just wants to show off a lot of locked room murders, that are created via mechanical tricks. He however often does the bare minimum of actually making them relevant to the story or each other. Characters may or may not have a single line of dialogue before they are killed, there's no build in tension because every event feels so seperate from each other and once you're done with the book, you'll have forgotten half of the locked rooms already, because they were handled in such a brief and uninvolved manner.

But again, that is what makes this books a little bit fetishistic, as the title itself also says: the book only exists to flaunder with all the locked room murder situations Kamosaki could come up with, and some of them are really creative on a basic, fundamental level. As you can guess, this also comes back to the motive behind the murders on all these locked room murder mystery authors, and that part I really liked, Interestingly, it reminded me of a certain novel by Kitayama Takekuni, who is also an author who specializes in mechanically constructed locked room murder mysteries, so it's funny how Kamosaki also arrives at a similar "conclusion" regarding locked room murder fiction.

Misshitsu Henai Jidaino Satsujin - Tozasareta Mura to Yattsu no Trick is, unsurprisingly, more of the same after the previous two books. More locked room murders, but beyond that, it's not really that different from them, and while I can recommend this book too to lovers of locked room mysteries, because some of the murders here are really worth reading (no matter how silly they can be at times), but like with the previous books, you do have to admit Kamosaki is mainly about showcasing all these ideas, and they do feel lacking in the way they form a cohesive narrative, and how they are actually presented as "mystery" fiction with clues and a process of logic leading to the solution.

Original Japanese title(s): 鴨崎暖炉『密室偏愛時代の殺人 閉ざされた村と八つのトリック』

Panic on Gull Island

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

            Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
"The Raven"

Suddenly craving fried chicken...

Iwaido Yasumi is a student at Teiou University who hopes to impress his lecturer Uehara Kanon, a beautiful, cool-headed woman who teaches his cultural anthropology class. He ends up writing a paper that is actually quite impressive, so much so she summons him to her office. Not because she's become romantically interested in him, but to make sure he didn't plagiarize his essay. While Yasumi tries more than once to woe Kanon, she brushes his advances and informs him that Professor Kirimura Satoru, the most influential professor at their faculty, has also read his thesis and has ordered Yasumi to be added to an upcoming fieldwork trip. Kirimura will lead a team, including Kanon and Yasumi, to Torikui Island, a solitary island that is technically part of Japan, but which has been deemed "off-limits" for decades. Centuries ago, it was used as an island to send sentenced criminals to, even though there were indigenous inhabitants too, and with time, a unique culture developed, seperating the island in two distinct clans, one of the indigenous people and one of the descendents of the sentenced criminals. The main staple food on the island is surprisingly not fish, but birds of prey, and the two clans are named after their preferred food: the Eagle clan and the Raven clan. Because sentenced criminals were usually branded by having a part of their body mutilated, the people on the island also developed a unique sense of "beauty": when an islander becomes an adult, a part of their body is amputated to mark them as as a full adult person: the Eagle clan people mutilate their face (eyes or ears removed), while the Raven have limbs removed. Long ago, a person rumored to be related to a very important and esteemed bloodline was banished to the island and this Man in the Iron Mask-esque figure became feared and respected as a living god on the island named the Bird Demon. Because of their bloodline, the Japanese authorities also occasionally sent supplies to the island to ensure the people there could live, despite it being completely cut off from the rest of Japan and it was forbidden for people from the mainland to go to Torikui Island, or vice-versa. Some decades ago, Takaoka Jinichi, professor at Teiou University, stayed for months at the island to do research on the local culture, and it is the only source of information on the island.

Kirimura Satoru, who studied under Takaoka, also visited the island in the past, but now returns for a new research trip, because recently, Inou Nao, the young daughter of the island's only doctor, escaped the island in search for help. Inou Kaoruko hails from the mainland, but was stationed at the island to serve as the only medical expert. Nao was raised on the island, but has now violated the island rules to look for help: she claims that the last few years, the peace on the island has been visibly crumbling apart: there are only about thirty people left on the island, with few children, and both the Eagle and Raven clans are on the way to extinction. This has caused a very strong rift between the two clans, and it could go wrong anytime. While usually, the Japanese authorities does not allow for visits to Torikui Island, Kanon reveals to Yasumi there's a hidden agenda to their research: the government wants to use Torikui Island as an experiment to see how people will act in a declining society that is on the verge of falling apart. 

To Yasumi's big disappointment, he learns on the day they are travelling to the island that Kanon isn't allowed to go, because Kirimura Satoru deems her an academic rival and doesn't want her around. Other people in the team however include Kirimura's half-sister (an academic too), a researcher attached to the university and two government "observers". Nao is also brought along, though in disguise, because she violated the local rules. When they arrive at the island by yacht, they are "welcomed" by the Eagle clan, though some of them seem to blame Kirimura for the fall of the island, as everything started to slowly crumble after his visit many years ago. They learn the Bird Demon has disappeared from the island, and because this figure of authority is gone, the rivalry between the Eagle and Raven clans has only worsened. In fact, the two clans are so against each other the houses on the island are in fact built to alternate between a house of the Eagle and Raven clan, so they can all keep an eye on each other like a panopticon. The fieldwork team settles for the night, but Kirimura goes out for a stroll, while Yasumi calls Kanon to report on the on-goings on the island. When Yasumi remembers he left his phone charger in the boat, he returns to the beach to the yacht, but he finds Nao stabbed to dead on the beach. But for some reason, only Nao's own footprints are found in the sand, and there are no signs of footprints left by her killer. At that same moment, he receives a message from Kirimura Misaki, who summons the rest of the team to her, because she found her own brother murdered. These two deaths however are just the starting sign for a full breakdown of Torikui Island in Mori Akimaro's Setsudantou no Satsuriku Riron (2024), or as the cover also says: The Genocide Theories in the Mutilation Island.

This was definitely a book I picked because of the crazy premise and alluring title: an island where people willing mutilate themselves because they think it's beautiful? A closed circle mystery set inn isolated and small society doomed to fail and end in genocide? I had never read anything by Mori Akimaro before, but this description really sounded alluring to me, especially with its focus on anthropology.

Once I got started reading however, it did take me a lot of time to get used to the protagonist, and even at the end, I never learned to like him. He's constantly trying to be witty and hitting on Kanon, his lecturer, and after a while it really got old. There's some mystery revolving around how he wrote his essay even though he himself even admits he doesn't quite understand how he could've written such an impressive work, but that is hardly fairly clewed: while it has huge implications for him, it's not really that well integrated with the main mystery of the murders that occur on the island, and it felt like two completely different ideas that don't work together. But add to that the fact he's really obnoxious every time he talks to Kanon (he's constantly keeping her up-to-date on what has happened on the island), and it's really a shame he's the character we're constantly following in this narrative...

Once we arrive on the island however, we do get the highlight of the book: Torikui Island, its inhabitants and the unique culture they have. Mori does a great job at setting the scene and explaining how the people on the island developed their own cultures, based on their food culture (eating predatory birds, as you obviously can't have cattle on a small island like that) and the fact most of them are descended in some way from mutilated criminals, giving them a warped sense of beauty: all the adults miss a body part, and the children aren't seen as full humans because they still have all their body parts. The rivalry between the clans creates the unique situation where the houses are laid out like a panopticon around the main square, and so you instantly get a kind of impossible crime set-up, because everyone is watching each other. That is how the book also initially sets things up, as while Kirimura Satoru and Nao end up dead, the islanders are quite sure none of them are the murderer, and are more suspicious of the fieldwork team members. We also have the wildcard Kaoruko, the mother of Nao, who does live on the island, but has never been fully accepted by either clan. While we initially are 'treated' to the double murder of Kirimura and Nao, we soon see the native inhabitants be killed too in all kinds of manners: while these situations are seldom 'impossible' or pure mysteries on their own (i.e. killed in a way anyone could've done it), that doesn't make their deaths less interesting: the slow downfall of the island society is truly a sight to behold, and at the same time, Mori manages to use the very unique island culture to create a few very ingenous and crafty situations that could only occur here. The use of anthropology to create tricks in mystery is something I very much like (see for example the use of religious concepts to create mysteries in the Toujou Genya series), and The Genocide Theories in the Mutilation Island very much succeeds in that aspect: a lot happens in this book, and surprisingly enough, those happenings could really only happen here, because this is such a weird place, and some of the mysteries the reader will be treated to, are extremely memorable cause of that. And when Yasumi isn't trying to interrupt the discussions by hitting on Kanon, there are actually quite interesting musings on anthropological topics that pertain to this novel, from the consumption of birds to views on beauty etc.

But there is a caveat. A pretty big one too. Don't be reading this for the impossible crimes. There are a few impossible situations, from the no-footprints-in-the-sand situation at the beginning, to Kirimura also being killed in a place that was basically observed, but the solution to these mysteries is really outrageous. I guess you could say it was hinted at, but not in a sane manner, and nothing about the story leading up to the reveal seemed to even suggest this would be such an insane mystery novel, so to me, it really felt like it came out of nowhere. I loved the way Torikui Island was developed as a very strange, yet weirdly convincing place, but Mori certainly didn't manage to pull the same thing off in regards to his impossible crimes in this novel. In a way, this could be seen as a 'so-silly-it's-brilliant' type of explanation, but I find the juxtaposition with the more serious depiction of the island's culture from an anthropological POV not smooth, though your mileage may vary there.

So in the end, I do think Setsudantou no Satsuriku Riron is a really cool mystery novel, with an absolutely banger of a setting which is used in clever ways for some of the mysteries, but I wouldn't be reading this solely for the impossible crimes, and you do need to be aware it's a bit weird when it comes to the solution, despite the rather heavy themes of the events on the island. Still, a very memorable novel which I am likely not going to forget soon.

Original Japanese title(s):  森晶麿『切断島の殺戮理論』