The Mystery of the Flying Express

“Trains are relentless things, aren't they, Monsieur Poirot? People are murdered and die, but they go on just the same. I am talking nonsense, but you know what I mean."

"The Mystery of the Blue Train"

My version of this book had the first cover, but I had to post that second cover too because it's just too... memorable.

It is a November morning in the lobby of Hotel Soukai in the hot spring town of Wakura on the Noto Peninsula, when a tour guide notices one of her travellers hasn't shown up yet for their upcoming bus trip. She has the front desk call to Mitsubayashi Masase in room 711, but there's no answer, so they go up to wake the woman, who's registered as a housewife living in Yokohama. The bellboy opens the door with the master key, only to find Masae lying dead on the floor. Police investigation soon seems to settle the matter as a suicide: Masae died of consuming cyanide, but the hotel room key was lying besides her in the room, and the master key is kept safe by the manager at all times. There's also a magazine lying on the table, with a passage underlined which seemed to indicate the motive for suicide: a bad marriage. The participants of this tour all arrived on their own at the hotel yesterday, and while most of them had dinner together as arranged by the tour, Masae had chosen to have dinner herself, and it seems like she committed suicide that evening, without ever sleeping in her bed. The police also soon learn she indeed had a very bad marriage with a husband who had been openly cheating on her for years with the same partner and they are very surprised to learn the man won't even travel from Yokohama to Wakura to identify his wife's corpse, stating he's busy with renovating his shop. Instead, Masae's uncle comes, who says he is hardly surprised by Masae's husband's behavior, and he even accuses him of murder, while Masae's half-brother confirms her sister's marriage was dead, though he seems to agree it was a suicide. While the police seems content to wrap things up, news reporter Tanida, head of a kisha club, smells a potential scoop, so he calls his friend Uragami Shinsuke, a freelance reporter and tells him about the death of the beautiful Masae, and how she was found dead in a locked room and how it perhaps could be murder. Uragami takes the job, and together with Miho, a student he helped a while back and has now become a part-timer at the magazine he writes for, the two start digging in the case, but the more they learn, the more impenetrable the locked room, and the alibi of their main suspect is. Is it really suicide, or are they being fooled by an ingenious alibi trick in Tsumura Shuusuke's Noto no Misshitsu - Kanazawa Hatsu 15ji 45pun no Shisha ("The Locked Room in Noto - The Dead Leaving Kanazawa at 15:45", 1992).

Tsumura Shuusuke was a writer who for twenty years long, worked on  The Black Report, a long-running series which fictionalizes real-life incidents. In 1982, he became a novelist with the recommendation of Ayukawa Tetsuya, and two years later, he wrote his first novel starring the freelance investigative journalist Uragami Shinsuke. I had never read any of his works, but he was fairly prolific, writing about four novels each year until he passed away in 2000 and his work has actually been adapted for television too. I myself first heard about this book via Ooyama Seiichirou's Twitter account, who was quite positive about the work. Based on the style of his book titles and Noto no Misshitsu, it's clear he writes in the travel mystery modus: mysteries set in touristic destinations, and often featuring alibi tricks using trains and other modes of transport. 

 

By the way, I do always have a fondness for diagrams in mystery novels that are clearly hand-drawn. Like sure, diagrams drawn on the computer look slick and are often very clear, but there's a charm hand-drawn floorplans have...

Plot-wise, Noto no Misshitsu is pretty much nothing more or less than you'd expect of a mystery novel featuring a train-based alibi trick, and in that sense, it's hardly a surprising book, but I do have to admit I really liked how the book provides a reason why the detective (Uragami) would start to have doubts about what is on the surface a perfect alibi. Early in the book, it is established that if this was a murder, there are three suspects. Masae's father recently passed away and most of his fortune will go to her. The first suspect is Masae's husband, who is cheating on her and owed his father-in-law money, so now his own wife who might be leaving him, the second is Masae's half-brother, who had swindled a company before and supposedly lives a better life now, but still with money borrowed from his father, and Masae's uncle, who also borrowed money. All three of them seem to have pretty solid alibis, so why would the police, without any real cause, suspect their alibis are fake? I remember how in the film edition of Ten to Sen, the way the police detective suddenly decides to suspect someone who just showed he had a perfect alibi was absolutely hilarious because how forced it was (+ the acting was very stilted), but in Noto no Misshitsu, there's a pretty good justification: Uragami is looking for a scoop, so yeah, he hopes Masae was killed in a locked room and the murderer came up with some brilliant alibi trick, because that's what will sell: he has no guarantees it's actually true, but it does give him a reason to try and dig deeper into everyone's stories than the police would. It's a bit silly of course, but it strangely works.

It doesn't take long for Uragami and Miho to start having doubts about the suspect who claimed he was on board the Twilight Express, travelling from Osaka all the way to Sapporo. I usually try to avoid spoiling too much about a book, but the book literally opens with a time schedule for the Twilight Express and a map of Japan showing which stations it stops at, so at this point, even the book itself doesn't pretend like the other two suspects are viable suspects: yes, we are going to focus on that one suspect who was in the Twilight Express. The man was seen during four different times throughout the trip starting late afternoon until the following morning, from when he got on the train, to during dinner and at arrival, so that seems to prove he was there all the time. Meanwhile, Masae was killed in the early evening in Wakura, and while the Twilight Express does go in the general direction of Wakura, it does not pass the town, making it impossible for that suspect on the Twilight Express to kill her. And then there's of course the locked room, which makes it not only impossible for that particular suspect, but for anyone in general.

The locked room mystery by the way, is not something to really write home about: while the precise set-up of how it was done is interesting in terms of Tsumura actually clewed it, the trick itself is rather trite, and one of those ideas you could imagine someone who'd never even heard of a locked room mystery to come up with. So while the "locked room" is part of the book's title, don't expect much of it. 

As a story focusing on someone with a perfect alibi by being inside a gigantic moving steel box however, Noto no Misshitsu is far more interesting. Mind you, the fundamental idea behind how the murderer managed to create this perfect alibi, while at the same time also committing a murder elsewhere, might not be very surprising: once you know this is an alibi story revolving around a train, it's likely you'll have some idea how it was done. But what Tsumura does do extremely well is... covering his tracks. Like, the basic trick is, on paper at least, very simple, but Tsumura then makes sure the trick actually works by adding little tricks on top of that to hide the main alibi trick, and while it wouldn't be special if it had been only one thing, Tsumura does this so extensively, it actually helps make the main alibi trick really feel like an impenetrable wall. Uragami starts attacking the alibi pretty early on in the book, but each time what appears to be a weak point in the plan, turns out to be covered with a line of defense by the murderer, and it slowly, but surely makes you believe perhaps he's really innocent. While I'm not a huge fan of the main, connecting element that allowed the murderer to create so many walls of defense (it demands a lot of moving parts for this plot work!), I do like how thorough Tsumura was with plotting this perfect alibi: you really can't be sure it's over until it's over, for each time the murderer conjures up a new bunny from his hat. In this regard, you can see how Tsumura had been writing these novels for about a decade by then, so it's a very competently constructed puzzle.

I wouldn't call Noto no Misshitsu - Kanazawa Hatsu 15ji 45pun no Shisha a particularly remarkable example of a mystery novel with an alibi trick, but it is competently plotted and a pretty solid read on its own. It's definitely written by someone who has a lot experience penning such novels relying on train time tables, and I do enjoy reading them once in a while, so I might read more by Tsumura in the future too.

Original Japanese title(s): 津村秀介『能登の密室　金沢発１５時５４分の死者』

To Wake the Dead

Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' 

And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive

"Stayin' Alive" (Bee Gees)

It would have been cool if an iron fan had been used as a murder weapon...

Disclosure: I have translated Arisugawa Alice's The Moai Island Puzzle.

A young teacher is strolling down the beach one morning, when she happens to come across a young man who seems a bit... lost. As she talks with him, she learns the man suffers from acute amnesia: he has no idea who he is, and why he is here at the beach. He has no wallet or any form of identification on him, only carrying a beautiful Japanese fan. The woman immediately notifies the hospital and the police, who start looking into the man's origin. The man turns out to be a gifted artist, skilled at drawing portraits, which of course immediately reminds of the Piano Man. Eventually, the police manage to identify the man: he is Takemitsu Souichi, the youngest son of Takemitsu Housen, a famous artist specializing in Japanese paintings. His father has already passed away, leaving his mother and three siblings, as well as his uncle and aunt. However, Souichi left his home over six years ago and has not been in contact with his family since, and therefore his family is just as surprised to learn he finally resurfaced, but with no memories of his past life. Souichi is taken back to his home, The Genbu House, located in Takaragaike, Kyoto, a Japanese manor which is neighbored by his uncle and aunt. His family, who haven't seen him in over six years, are not sure how to react to his amnesia: his sister for example seems to think the "new" Souichi has a far better, more assertive attitude than the Souichi she knew, while his brother misses "his" Souichi, and his mother seems reluctant to push Souichi too much into trying to retrieve his memories. It is during this time, a murder occurs at the house: Morisawa Yukie, an art merchant who has known the family for many years had visited the house and left, but the next morning, her dead body was found in the annex in the garden where Souichi lived. Souichi himself has disappeared too, as has the Japanese fan, but oddly enough, the annex was locked from the inside when the victim was found, and Souichi's keys are also found inside the house. So how did the murderer kill the merchant in a locked annex, and escape, and where is Souichi? Criminologist Himura is asked for assistance by the police, and he of course brings his good friend Arisugawa Alice along, who has been asked by his editor to write the book The Japanese Fan Mystery.... in Arisugawa Alice's Nihon Ougi no Nazo ("The Japanese Fan Mystery", 2024).

The latest entry in the Himura & Alice series (AKA the Writer Alice series) has an interesting title: when Ellery Queen's The Door Between was first announced to serialize in Cosmopolitan, it somehow was reported in Japan that the story would be titled The Japanese Fan Mystery, and it is a title that has always stuck with Japanese mystery fandom, even though it was not true and there is of course no such Ellery Queen novel. This story starts with Alice being asked by his editor to write a story with that title, and gives him a lot of reference materials on fans, and we first see Alice struggle with all kinds of ideas that involve fans, like locked room murder tricks that use fans. And none of them are really good, to be honest, though that's the joke of course. The actual story is connected to fans because Souichi had a beautifully illustrated Japanese fan in his possession when he was found, earning him the John Doe name "Mr Fan" for a while, but it is a bit of a shame the actual object isn't really "used" in the mystery plot.

The mystery thus revolves around a murder in a locked annex, as well as the mystery of Souichi's disappearance, and the question of why he had lost his memories and what he had been up to in the last six years or so since he ran away from home. That said, it should perhaps be noted that unlike the very mystery-plot-focused books in the Student Alice series (disclosure: I translated The Moai Island Puzzle), the Himura and Alice series usually have more room to be a bit more character-introspective,  and that is certainly noticable in this book, where a major portion of the book is dedicated to hearing the thoughts of all the family members and other related people on Souichi, both how he was as a child to how they think they should approach Souichi now he has lost his memories, and their views on how to move forward into the future. Personally, I have to admit I found the book to be moving a bit too slow, but Nihon Ougi no Nazo will probably entertain people who are into the human drama aspect of someone suddenly disappearing for years, and then coming back as a different man. Some parts are great in characterization, while mystery-wise, you could easily just not have them, and still have the mystery work. I know I am slightly more extreme when it comes to 'minimalist puzzle' mystery fiction, so I assume other readers will find these segments far more interesting (and I wouldn't even say I found them dull, just a bit long).

When the story returns its focus to the questions of who committed the murder in the locked annex, and where Souichi has gone off to now, we are treated to some great deduction scenes we have come to expect from Arisugawa. Interestingly enough, Himura himself does say that while he usually goes for truth borne from the logical inferences based on the evidence, this time we have Himura almost turning things around, coming up with a theory that can be supported by the evidence they have, but which ultimately is difficult to stand indepedently as logical proof, because so much of the background of the case is left in the dark. That said, the way Himura logically shows who the murderer is, is really good. Unlike a really cool locked room murder trick, it's kinda hard to explain "clever" lines of deduction and what makes them so good, but I really like the one here: Himura pushes his deductions to answer a question which seems very trivial at first, but the logical implications of this conclusion allow him to determine who the killer is, and it's this jump from what seems like an inconsequential deduction, to suddenly solving the whole case, is great. Nothing beats the one deduction line from The Moai Island Puzzle, of course (that one is... unbeatable perhaps...), but if you like that one, you're sure to like what Arisugawa does in this one too, though the set-up is far simpler (just a disappearance + one murder). Oh, and don't expect too much of the locked room murder, as always in these Queenian stories, it's more the why that is used in clever ways than the actual how. There is a hidden tragedy that is unveiled as Himura explains how and why the murder was committed, and it is here Arisugawa does a great job at connecting the 'story' of Souichi and his family to the core mystery plot, presenting a sad, ironic tale of death that was lurking beneath the surface.

This story was serialized in Mephisto starting in 2023, so some time has passed since the height of the pandemic, and Arisugawa (the author) does bring it up quite a few times as the story progresses, with little comments how not long ago, they couldn't even just go out to eat normally and things like that. It's interesting how references like these really "date" the Himura & Alice series, and like The Simpsons, shows that these characters (and their surroundings) are "timeless", as they haven't really aged since the first book (46 Banme no Misshitsu) and that came out in 1992 and now they survived the pandemic! Interestingly enough, Nihon Ougi no Nazo is actually touted as the book written to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the series (how many modern mystery series do you know that have been running for so long?!), though its serialization started a bit late. But that is also why this book was released in two versions, one regular pocket, as well as a luxurious hardcover.

I happened to have re-read the first novel a while back, so that made the changes in Arisugawa's style in over thirty years rather obvious, but as a whole novel, Nihon Ougi no Nazo is a far more complete work, with a dramatic tale about a young man who lost his memories, and his family coping with that realization, with a locked room murder mystery forcing everyone to readjust once again. The core mystery, while limited in scope, offers Arisugawa to show off once again how great he is at impressive lines of deduction that start out from seemingly innocent clues but then are nurtured into brilliant logical proofs that point beyond any doubt towards one culprit, but it does take a long while to get there.

Original Japanese title(s): 有栖川有栖『日本扇の謎』

Much Ado About Murder

We that are young 
Shall never see so much, nor live so long. 

"King Lear"

These re-releases by Tokuma have really cool art...

Kaji Tatsuo's Lear-Ou Misshitsu ni Shisu ("King Lear Dies in a Locked Room", 1982) is set soon after the second World War in the ancient capital of Kyoto. Takeshi is a student at the prestigious Third High School, a school affiliated to Kyoto University and which would later be absorbed into it (note that under the old school system, this "high school" basically corresponds to the first years of modern-day university). The students of the Third are highly respected around the city, and due to their superior education, the students also tend to... have interesting characters, resulting in them all calling each other by nicknames. Takeshi, known as Bon to his friends, is roommates with Iba, better known as King Lear (because he's a realist -> riarisuto -> ria -> Lear) and they live together in what is technically just a storehouse: the owner is still storing valuable items there, but wants someone to keep an eye on things out of fear for burglars, so he's having these two students live inside the front part of the storehouse, using them as basically live-in guards. Bon has a part-time job as a Kyoto tourist guide, and after showing a visiting elderly couple around town, and being thanked very generously with a meal, he returns to his home, only to find a fellow student, Bart ("Beard" in German), standing in front of the storehouse: he and another friend had visited King Lear earlier, but he forgot his wallet, and has now returned to get it back, but for some reason, King Lear won't open the door for him, which is very odd, as he called to say he was coming. When they peek inside through the keyhole, they see to their great surprise King Lear is lying motionlessly on the floor. Bon finds his own key and opens the door, but it is too late for King Lear: he is dead. Police investigation indicates he had been injected with a poison in his arm, but there were no signs of resistance on his body, suggesting he was caugh off-guard by someone he trusted and furthermore... the door of the storeroom was locked from the inside and the key was found inside Lear's trouser pockets. This however soon results in Bon becoming the main suspect of the murder: excluding the owner of the storehouse, Takeshi had the only other key in possession, and he actually had a bad relation with King Lear as of late, as they were both in love with the same woman (Bart's Schwester (sister)), though it seems like Bon had been the victor. It doesn't help that Takeshi's alibi of showing a couple around Kyoto can't be verified by the police. Bon's friends don't really believe he's the killer though, so his friends, including people like Reich (rich), Magen (stomach) and Razor start investigating the case too, but are they truly ready for that, for deep down, they do know it is likely the murderer is a person in their circle of friends...

If people thought the characters in The Decagon House Murders were obnoxious by using nicknames like Ellery and Carr: I assure you, the reverse weaboos in this novel who call each other Bart and Magen and each other's sisters Schwester are worse...

Kaji Tatsuo (1928-1990) was a mystery author who debuted in the fifties and kept on writing until he passed away in 1990. Last year, I discussed Kiyosato Kougen Satsujin Bessou ("The Murder Villa in the Kiyosato Plateau"), a novel which managed to surprise me in a way I really hadn't expected, so I knew I would be reading more of his work, something made easier because publisher Tokuma has been re-releasing some of his novels the last few years, and they also happen to feature very nice cover and inner art!

My interest in this book at first lay in the fact it was set around students of the Third High School, so basically Kyoto University: I myself studied for a year at that university, and there are actually still remnants of the Third High School to be found around the main Yoshida Campus. However, for me that was just a 'Huh, that sounds interesting for me personally' thing, but once I started reading this book, I was pleasantly surprised by the way Kaji really focused on the lives of the students. This is for a large part also a story of growth, a story about students who are not quite adult yet and perhaps think too much of themselves as students of Third, but who have lived through a war and now try to build a future for themselves by proving themselves at this school, not only to the outside world, but especially to themselves and their direct peers. This results in some really colorful characters who are full of pride, but who do really show you glimpses into the lives of the respected elite students of Third in Kyoto and it's the interactions between these characters that really drive the plot, as ultimately, this is best read as a tale of mystery focusing on motive, rather than the locked room of the title.

Though I have to say: I do really like the locked room mystery of this novel. The book is split in two sections, one set immediately after the murder on King Lear. Bon (Takeshi) is more-or-less accused of the murder by the police, while his friends, led by Razor (who is one year above the rest) tries to prove Bon is innocent, leading into them coming up with all kinds of potential theories about how the room could've been locked from the inside, and who the murderer could be. At the same time, we get (a lot) of flashbacks to the time leading up to the murder, and we learn how both King Lear and Bon first learn about Bart's Schwester by coming across her photograph, and then the two of them both trying to woe her by visiting her home, under the pretense of  wanting to visit Bart during the holidays. Yes, this is pretty stalkery behavior. The roommates become romantic rivals, which according to the police is a motive for the murder, even though it was Bon who managed to win the sister over, and King Lear who was, for the moment, the loser in the love war (meaning King Lear had a motive to kill Bon, not the other way around). Eventually, a kind of conclusion is reached which points to someone else, but true answers are never obtained and the truth behind King Lear's death remained vague.

The second part of the book is set many decades afterwards, when Bon's son hears about the ordeal his father lived through in the past and he starts to get an idea of how King Lear could've been killed by someone inside a locked room. This part is interesting, because we see Bon in a very different role, and we hear what happened to everyone after the murder: some managed to accomplish their life goals, some ended up completely different and there's a distinct, sentimental tone here, as for some characters, you really wish things would have ended differently.

The locked room murder is thus more like the driving force that changed everyone's lives in this young adult novel, though as I said, on a technical level, the locked room mystery is pretty good. I love how it basically reversed a certain dynamic often seen in simpler locked room mysteries to create something original, and while the concept on its own is very simple, it works great here, especially in this specific setting (old building in Kyoto soon after the war). However, what is even more memorable is definitely the motive behind the murder. While I am not a big fan of some of the workings behind the murder (too many moving parts), the motive is one that really fits these characters attending Third. I wouldn't call the motive completely original in all aspects (it isn't, and it's likely you'll have come across variants of the same idea in other mystery novels), but it is incredibly well-integrated in this tale of mystery, growth, dreams of the future and wanting to escape the shadow of the war, and because of that, Lear-Ou Misshitsu ni Shisu feels like a very complete and balanced novel.

So I was once again very pleasantly surprised by Kaji Tatsuo. Lear-Ou Misshitsu ni Shisu is pretty short, but a very well-balanced mystery novel that will even appeal to non-mystery readers. The setting is original, and Kaji really makes fully use of it, and he has a rather colorful cast of characters to keep the reader entertained too. I am certainly going to read more of him in the future too.

Original Japanese title(s): 梶龍雄『リア王密室に死す』

The World's End

"We cannot conceive of a life other than this one - of a life after death. We can visualize only a continuation of what we know. We have no real belief in a God."
"Death Comes as the End"

It's just a feeling, but I have a suspicion a majority of posts on snow-themed mystery stories on this blog are actually published in the warmer half of the year...

As I announced in my review of The Werewolf Murder Case in volumes 14~16 of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Kindaichi, Age 37"), the plan was to wait until a full story was released before I'd do another review of this series within the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo franchise, where we follow a now middle-aged Kindaichi Hajime as he gets involved in murder cases despite not wanting to solve mysteries anymore. But then it was announced this series would wrap up last year. So I figured, as stories in this series usually carrying over across multiple volumes, I might as well just wait until the last volume is released to do a review of the remaining volumes. So volume 18 of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo was released earlier this year... and I completely forgot to get the volume. So that explains why this review is coming now so late after its release. Anyway, volume 16 first starts with the very last chapter of The Werewolf Murder Case, where we learn about the motive for the murders in that case (yes, it's revenge, it's always revenge), but then it's back to business as Hajime's assigned to a new project for his event-organizing company: Hijiri Island, a mountainous island in Hokkaido wants to drive its economic activity by profiling itself as the perfect resort for backcountry/off-piste skiing. Hajime and his subordinate Marin are to check out the place and will be staying in a lodge high up in the mountains, a place only reachable via helicopter. They will be joined not only by someone from the municipality, but also by the backcountry ski team of the skiing club of the Imperial Women's University, a prestigious club whose members often appear in the World Cups. The team always trains here, so they know the grounds well, so Hajime and Marin will be questioning the young women about the mountains in order to develop the place as a resort. Everyone is to stay in a newly built lodge, but the evening they arrive, they find someone has tampered with the heating, and it's slowly starting to become freezing cold inside. 

Fortunately, the old lodge is 500 meters away from the new lodge, and everything should still work there, so they decide to move to the old lodge: the men go first to make sure heating there does work and to carry the kerosene, while the women will follow later with the food supplies. The men have just arrived at the old lodge and starting to prepare for their stay here, when the women in the new lodge use a walkie talkie to contact the men: one of the skiers has gone missing, and there's blood in the hallway. Two of them return to the new lodge, while Hajime and the municipal official stay in the new lodge, but then they discover the body of the missing skier: her head has been cut off, and placed on her lap! When everyone has moved to the new lodge, they learn that their radio is not working and the skis have gone missing, making it impossible to contact with the outside world nor to go down the mountains themselves. By discussing the case, they discover that while nobody has an actual alibi for the murder, as they don't know what time exactly the victim was killed, everyone does have a soft alibi: nobody could've carried the body from the new lodge to the old lodge unseen: the round-trip would've taken quite some time, but nobody was gone for long times/went unseen between the time the victim was last seen alive and the time the body was found. Soon one of the women suggests it's the headless skier: two years ago, a team of skiers got stuck on the mountains when the weather suddenly changed for the worse. Stuck in the cold and with no way to call for help, the team's leader volunteered to ski down the mountain alone to get help. However, after she left, a rescue helicopter found the remaining team members, but the leader never made it off the mountain alive. Only her cut-off head was later discovered: someone had strung piano wire between trees, so when the leader was hurrying down the mountain to get help...  Some say a headless skier is now haunting the mountains, but is this ghost also responsible for the murder, or is this the work of a living and breathing human?

You know, The Headless Skier Murder Case, which spans volumes 16 and 17, has a funny setting. Closed circle settings in this series are often either on an island or somewhere in the mountains... so why not set the story on a mountain, on an island, writer Amagi must've thought. But if this fusion of ideas sounds like he was trying to cook something grand, I'll have to disappoint you, as The Headless Skier Murder Case is a surprisingly simple case, basically revolving around one single trick. The mystery revolves around the fact nobody is ever gone long enough to allow them to carry a dead body and their head to the other lodge and return, which thus gives them all an alibi. This mystery is repeated later, as another dead body is found, this time at the new lodge while everyone was staying in the old lodge. The problem is that it is really just this mystery that drives this story, and the solution is not only a concept we have definitely seen previously in this series, in those stories we ususally get more than just this one idea, so there they can at least benefit from being presented as more difficult puzzles as they are interwoven with other ideas. Here, the problem is presented so bluntly it's nearly impossible to not guess what's going on. The big surprise is actually when the murderer is revealed and they start explaining their motive (yes, it's revenge, it's always revenge), as we learn how this person had been directed by a certain character to commit these murders: while the identity of this person won't be revealed until the next story, I *kinda* suspected who it was, though I thought it would be cheap, and then it turned out it was really that person and now I have no idea how this is going to develop in future series. 

The final volume of this series, The Sealed Space in the Sky Murder Case, starts with Hajime confronting his old nemesis The Puppeteer from Hell, a "crime consultant"-esque character who helps people bent on revenge by supplying them with perfect crime plans. While the Puppeteer has been in prison all this while, Hajime knows the Puppeteer has disciples: they call themselves the Olympian Gods, with the Puppeteer as Zeus the omni-god and Hajime has already encountered and captured a few of them. But after a conversation with the Puppeteer and a hint from his cousin Fumi, Hajime realizes one of the Olympian Gods, Hephaestus, is actually a person near him: he deduces Hephaestus is someone at his work, and that Hephaestus, with the help of another inside person at the company, has been keeping tabs on Hajime, which is why all these murder cases have been happening to Hajime each time he's gone on a business trip. Hajime has a pretty good idea of who Hephaestus's accomplice in the company must be, but the moment he decided to keep tabs on her, she ends up dead: ostensibly via suicide by throwing herself off the rooftop of the company building. She had borrowed the key to the rooftop to water the plants there, and as the key was found in her pocket, the rooftop door was indeed closed/locked and the guard kept the spare key safe, it looks like a genuine suicide, but Hajime knows better: Hephaestus must have killed their accomplice to silence her, and used a "sealed space in the sky" murder trick to challenge Hajime himself. But how could Hephaestus left the rooftop after the murder, as the door to the rooftop was locked (with the victim down below in possession of the key) and no way to reach the surrounding buildings? Hajime knows this is his chance to nab Hephaestus, and narrows the pool of suspects to a handful, but the list includes not only his direct superior, but even his faithful subordinate Marin...

For a story that is mostly about very quickly wrapping things up and features a very simple trick for its main mystery, I have to admit I liked it better than I had initially expected. A lot of the initial chapters is about trying to bring back the whole story about the Olympians back to the foreground again, as it's not been a priority plot element throughout, usually only being mentioned at the end of a case if the murderer happened to be one of the Gods and forgotten again, but here we get a crash-course on the related previous events and a rather cool deduction by Hajime about who he thinks Hephaestus' accomplice is and why. This is the type of hinting and plotting you very often see in Conan, using its serialized format to plant clues within various stories, across a longer period of time, but Kindaichi basically never uses this, with far more compartmentalized storytelling (and very loosely connected stories), so it's cool to see it utilized here. The 'Sealed Space in the Sky" mystery is relatively simple, with rudimentary visual clues and like the previous story in essence a one-trick-pony, but I do like that the focus in fact does not even lie on the howdunnit, but the whodunnit, as we see Hajime then utilize the howdunnit to cross off the suspects of the list, using Queenian logic to identify Hephaestus. This series more often uses a straightforward way to identify the killer (X making certain utterances/doing certain things/in possession of certain things), so seeing a Queenian chain, even if very short, is pretty cool.  The identity of Hephaestus is perhaps not as interesting as the direct aftermath, as the gameboard is reset to lead into the next series. We do get a brief explanation why Hajime swore off solving mysteries long ago, but we don't get the details, but then it's basically off to the next series. And very literally too, as this volume also included the first chapter of the new series: Kindaichi Papa no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Dad Kindaichi"), in which Hajime has been a father for a few years while running his own detective agency.  Hajime's new client instructs him to go a certain place on a certain date, and because Hajime is a very responsible father and definitely knows what's going to happen whenever he goes to a remote place, he decides to take his son with him and the two find themselves arriving at an old decrepit hotel that's absolutely safe and where no murders will happen...

Anyway, that wraps up Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo. I have to admit, the initial shock factor of seeing a suddenly aged Hajime quickly waned after the realization that storywise, these cases weren't that different from the usual affairs save for a few rare exceptions like stories with a more urban setting. Some ideas never really come to full fruition I think, but as a limited series, it at least had more direction than the 20th Anniversary series or 30th Anniversary series. The last story at least does a lot to make it feel more like a series on its own, so that helps, though I can't feel super excited about the deal of the Olympian Gods basically halting midway, and I'm still not sure what to think about that one character turning out to be one of the Gods too... I guess I'll have to keep on reading the new series to see if Amagi decides to actually end some of these plotlines anytime soon (I mean, I know Conan is long, but at least it has arcs that actually start and end).

Original Japanese title(s): 天樹征丸（原）、さとうふみや（画）『金田一37歳の事件簿』第16~18巻

The Third Bullet

"Sometimes, I just want to put this gun right against her head, and ever so gently, pull the trigger."

"Death on the Nile" (1978 film)

Huh, it's been over 13 years since I first heard about this book, and through that the Mikikaze series... and I end up reading this one as the last of the novels in the series...

Minami Mikikaze, professional photographer and amateur detective, is asked by his high school friend Kazuya for desperate help: Kazuya is the defendant in a double murder case, and the prosecution's case against him is very strong, as he was found together with the two victims inside an apartment room which was locked from the inside. The two victims were ex-convicts, who were working for a company that was actively recruiting ex-convicts to help them get their lives on the rails again. When they didn't show up for work, their boss went to the apartment room, but found it locked with the key, latch and door chain, so the building's caretaker had to break open the door. Inside, they found the two men shot through their head, one lying near the door, the other sitting on a sofa, with an unconscious Kazuya sitting next to him and the pistol lying on the floor. Based on what the three men were wearing, it seemed like they were planning to commit a robbery, but Kazuya denies everything: he knew the two men, because he once helped his brother-in-law who had written an article on the company's commendable efforts to help ex-convicts on their way back into society, but he swears he was not planning something criminal with them: he only had something to discuss with them, but after drinking something, he lost consciousness, so he claims to have no idea why the two men were shot to death, and why the door was locked thrice. The police investigation however fingers Kazuya as the culprit and some months later, the case is all ready to be handled in the court, at which point Kazuya asks Mikikaze to help solve this locked room mystery. Mikikaze manages to get hold of a lead, which leads him to the United States to visit a certain witness, but while talking with this witness, he's knocked out by something in his drink, and when he wakes up... he finds himself lying next to the dead witness he was talking to, in a locked room! Finding himself in the exact predicament as his friend, Mikikaze knows he's on the right track, but can he save both himself and Kazuya in Tsukatou Hajime's F no Madan ("The Magic Bullet of F" 2004)?

F no Madan is the second novel in the Minami Mikikaze series following Agni no Atsui Natsu, and with that, I have now read all the full-length novels in this series (I still have to read two short story collections). Misshitsu Kingdom (Kingdom of the Locked Room) is still by far the best one in the series by the way, but this novel too will probably interest locked room murder enthusiasts, as they will probably recognize the set-up of this novel: yes, this is Tsukatou's take on Carter Dickson's The Judas Window, focusing on the trial of a young man accused of murder because they were found in a locked room, with a murder victim in the same room. Of course, the similarities are in the base setting, as here we don't have a locked room in a large country house, but a very urban setting, with a triple-locked apartment in a city just across a giant department store. And there's the mirrored situation, where Mikikaze visits a witness at a farm in the American countryside and wakes up in a room with a dead body, but the twist here is that Mikikaze is aware the murderer is outside the room and busy "completing" the locked room situation. The book jumps back and forth in time, with the Mikikaze segments being in the present/real-time, and the segments that go over how Kazuya was discovered in the room and the subsequent investigations by his attorney set a few months before that. As you can understand, the Mikikaze segments are far more exciting, as Mikikaze knows the murderer is busy setting things up to make him into a scapegoat, but the fact he's been drugged and his own weak heart (and the fact the murderer is likely armed) prevent him from doing anything reckless to apprehend the killer, even if he knows the murderer is still in the house.

The book itself doesn't hide the fact it's basically a tribute to The Judas Window by the way, and I do recommend reading that one first before reading F no Madan. While the latter does not explicitly spoil the former, it is clearly written as a modern take, and while Tsukatou adds a lot of original, and frankly told very clever twists to it, I think you do get more out of it if you know the underlying context too. 

Purely seen as a locked room mystery, I think that F no Madan has both really clever parts, but also parts that do demand the reader to just with certain things. As a modern take on The Judas Window for example, I think the concept Tsukatou used is really clever, and the way it's a surprisingly safe method for the murderer to commit a double murder in a triple-locked room is quite memorable. However, to get everything into position, the murderer would need to manipulate a lot of moving parts and actors, and especially the latter part feels a bit unbelievable at times. This isn't a murderer who subtly manages to force someone to act in a way that benefits them, this is almost truly being a puppeteer, because it's quite unbelievable different actors would all exactly act in the way the murderer would need them to act without even one moment of hesitation. So in that sense, the locked room situation does feel a bit cheap, as too much works out for the benefit of the killer, simply because it needs to do so. On the other hand, I really love some of the preparations the murderer did do in order to make things go the way they needed to: I still don't think his preparations would've ensured everything would go the way they needed, but that one action they did explicitly take beforehand, in order to ensure at least two actions would be taken by one of the people they needed to manipulate, was done really clever, and worked perfectly to strengthen the trick of the triple locked room. That part alone does make this a memorable locked room, as it shows Tsukatou's eye for detail.

The present-day situation, where Mikikaze finds himself trying to fight the sleeping drugs he's been fed and figure out how to escape the room, without alerting the killer in the house, is an exciting read, and it does hold hints that are also applicable to the Kazuya locked room, but the story moves very slowly in those segments and ultimately, this part is far more simple than the Kazuya locked room, so it's not as surprising mystery-wise. It's more a grand way to allow Mikikaze to solve things and confront the killer.

While the book feels a bit artificial due to the machinations of the killer going so perfectly, F no Madan does happen to also be the one book in this series where Tsukatou clearly tries to work more on characterization and even tackles social school problems: a lot of the Kazuya-focused chapters focus on Kazuya and his stance in life: part of the mystery revolves around the question why he's so reluctant to talk about why he was visiting the two victims, if he was not involved in anything criminal and we learn a lot about his views on societal problems. I thought these parts were a bit too longwinded, but there's an interesting subplot hidden here that deals with his motive for keeping silent, and while it's not really presented as a "solvable" problem, the idea itself is good. Personally, I could've done with a tighter plot with less of the character musings, but your mileage may vary. I do have to admit I was surprised that early on in the book, we get a diagram of the crime scene, and then the narrative moves more to exploring Kazuya's character and his relations to everyone, and when the story returns to the locked room, we get the crime scene diagram again... and I do mean again, because it's the exact same diagram. As if Tsukatou himself suddenly realized he had drifted from the main mystery too much and feared the reader might've forgotten about it, so he showed you the same picture twice to jog your memory.

Also: for some reason the book does not really explain what the "F" in the title means..

Personally, I liked F no Madan the least of all the Mikikaze novels, though that's not very surprising: it's hard to beat the brilliant combination of the locked room mystery with Ellery Queen-esque deductions of Misshitsu Kingdom, of course I'm going to like the even more Ellery Queen-inspired Aru Girishia Hitsugi no Nazo ("A Greek Coffin Mystery), and in the end I prefer the brevity and focus on the mystery of Agni no Atsui Natsu simply better than the more prosey F no Madan, but readers who like more characterization, or the way the book builds clearly on The Judas Window might feel very differently. I do think it's a decent locked room mystery, and definitely worth a read if you have already read The Judas Window.

Original Japanese title(s): 柄刀一『Fの魔弾』

Murder A La Mode

Paris in the fall, the last months of the year, at the end of the millenium. The city holds many memories for me, of cafes, of music, of love, and of death.

"Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars"

This review was originally scheduled to be published in August last year, but another review took its place so I pushed to the far end of the waiting queue...

Art dealer Akatsuki Hiroyuki is the brain behind an explosion in the popularity of the artists of the École de Paris (the School of Paris) with an extensive book on its major players, but one evening, the man is found dead in his study in his manor, which also functions as a private art gallery. After hearing a loud noise, his butler hopes to check up on his master, but he finds the door locked. When he unlocks the door, his master lies dead on the floor with an army knife in him, there's a smear of blood on the window's lock, and below in the garden, footprints are found in the sand. Outside, the watch dog is also found dead, having been poisoned, making this a double murder, but how could the murderer have escaped the locked study with the door and window locked from the inside? Inspector Unno soon realizes the impossibility of the situation, but unfortunately for him, his direct superior Oobeshimi is rather eccentric, and more interested in accusing the first people that come to mind or commenting on how beautiful the widow is. Unno is also surprised by his cousin Shinsenji Shunichirou, who had been traveling the world for a few years, but had just returned to Japan to visit Akatsuki's gallery. Shunichirou, as a gifted artist himself, is desperate to see the gallery, so plans to give tips to his uncle so the case can be solved quickly. It seems likely Akatsuki was murdered because of his work as an art dealer, so Shunichirou recommends his uncle to read Akatsuki's book on the École de Paris, and of course, we as the reader know this book will be important as Fukami Reiichirou's 2008 novel is called École de Paris Satsujin Jiken ("The École de Paris Murder Case"). 

École de Paris Satsujin Jiken is the first in Fukami's art-themed series of mystery novels, and when it released, it managed to rank in at a respectable ninth place in that year's Honkaku Mystery Best 10 ranking. Earlier, I read Fukami's Mystery Arena and I loved that book, but that's basically all I've read by Fukami, so I figured it was about time I'd read more by him. I do think this book was the first time I ever heard of Fukami, having seen this book reviewed on the (now defunct) On the Threshold of Chaos blog. I don't really have any affinity with art, but as this was one of Fukami's better known works, I felt this was probably a good work to return to Fukami with.

I do have to say, as something not particularly interested in art, getting into the book was a bit difficult, as each chapter starts with sections taken from the in-universe book by Akatsuki on the artists of École de Paris. You'll get to read "scholarly" writings on artists like Soutine and Kisling, on their personal history as well as on their art style and more, and while these sections are relevant to the plot, they do really read as excerpts from a completely different book, and depending on your interests, reading about the life of Soutine might not be very exciting. But again, these sections are relevant to the case (which is not only made clear by these excerpts, but also by Shunchirou saying that out loud), and I have to admit: the way the École de Paris ties in back to the mystery plot is honestly quite good, with real history being used for the murderous plot in a very clever way. This is by far the best, and most memorable part of the book. Fukami made his debut by winning the Mephisto Prize, and while this is his second book and not the actual prize winner, you can recognize a bit of the tropes you see in a lot of Mephisto Prize winners, with a focus on specialist fields of knowledge and flaunting said knowledge. In this book, it however stays firmly connected with the mystery plot and isn't just there for entertainment purposes, and I'd say this is an example of the "trivia mystery novel" done well.

As for the rest of the book though, I found it a bit too light-weight, I guess? The main mystery is the locked room mystery, but while the École de Paris does tie back to parts of this mystery in a satisfying way, the actual physical dynamics behind the mystery were rather simple, and you could only barely call it an actual variant to a rather often seen solution to the locked room mystery. While I think it's pretty guessable, the actual clewing to this solution was also a bit lacking, meaning it doesn't feel nearly as satisfying as the reveal regarding the connection to the École de Paris. 

Despite the "serious" excerpts from the art history book, the book has a slightly comedic tone overall, mainly personified by Inspector Oobeshimi, who is constantly saying everything he thinks out loud, always immediately going for the easy explanations, offending and showing no regard for other people, and Unno having to cope with such a boss. I didn't really find Oobeshimi funny though, and while this series stars Shunuchirou as the detective and it's clear right away when he first appears it's he, and not Oobeshimi is our hero, the book is mainly told through Unno's eyes, and he (naturally) mostly narrates his investigation as led by Oobeshimi, so you are constantly confronted with Oobeshimi. For me, this also meant the investigation felt incredibly slow as Oobeshimi was always barking up the wrong tree. Your mileage may vary here, but after a while, I found Oobeshimi more tedious than the art history lessons at the start of each chapter. Shunichirou is also portrayed as a slightly eccentric figure, roaming the world as a freeter and having more than a few things to say about Japan's rigid, stagnate culture and society, and he's infinitely more interesting to follow, but unfortunately, he appears far less in the book compared to the police characters.

So overall, I thought École de Paris Satsujin Jiken was a bit of an uneven novel. I really liked how the actual history of the École de Paris was used for the mystery plot of the book, but the two other major elements, being the locked room and the tone of the book, couldn't really convince me. That's why I don't think I'll be reading the other books in this series soon, though never say never.

Original Japanese title(s): 深水黎一郎『エコール・ド・パリ殺人事件』

The Witch's Curse

ひとつの目で明日をみて

ひとつの目で昨日を見つめてる

「The Real Folk Blues」（山根麻衣）

 

With one eye I look at tomorrow 

With one eye I keep staring at yesterday 

 "The Real Folk Blues" (Yamane Mai)

To be really honest, I wish we'd move away again from these covers, with a close up of a face, even if the illustrations themselves are pretty...

Three years after Heathcliff Bloodbury left the family home to wander the world, he finds himself hurrying back, as his mother Charlotte, ravished by disease, is about to die. Not once in those three years had he come back to the Bloodbury Manor, better known as the House of Eternity as the first Bloodbury had the manor built next to a waterfall symbolizing the eternal tears he shed for his deceased wife. When Heath arrives home, he learns Charlotte has already passed away and this younger sister Cordelia, who was born both blind and unable to walk, has been making the arrangements for their mother's funeral instead. Heath apologizes to his beloved sister, declaring he will take his place as the new head of the Bloodburys and give their mother a worthy send-off. Several guests have already been invited to come that same day for the wake, including uncle Edward and cousin Jefferson, as well as Chesterton, a local clergyman and one of Charlotte's close friend. One face however Heath had not expected to see: Gyro is an obnoxious self-proclaimed great detective, who had been hanging around the family ever since Heath's father Theodore died three years ago. Theodore was found dead in his locked study, with a noose around his neck: the remains of a rope hanging from a beam made it clear he had hung himself and the rope had snapped. Gyro however claims it was not a suicide, despite the head butler having seen and heard the master alive in the study when he locked the doors for Theodore to let him rest: meaning nobody gotten in the study to kill Theodore, and get out again. Despite that, Gyro has been dogging the family for many years now, and he especially has suspicions about Heath, who left his home immediately after his father passed away.

Another surprising guest is Lilyjudith Air, a young woman who claims to have been friends with Charlotte and said once she saw the announcement of Charlotte's death, she headed straight for this house from abroad. As there's a storm coming, every guest, including Gyro, is offered to stay at the house for the night, so they can all attend the ceremony tomorrow, as well as the reading of the will, which is kept safe by the head butler. The following morning however, Cordelia doesn't appear at the breakfast table, and when she doesn't answer the door, and it turns out it has been bolted on the inside too, they break the door open to find... the poor girl sitting in her wheelchair... without her head, as it's rolling on the floor in front of her. Heath nearly goes mad from seeing her sister murdered in such a cruel way, but is also perplexed by the fact this was a locked room murder: the door was locked and bolted, and while the window was open, it has bars and you can barely get anything through the window, especially not without disturbing the rose bushes beneath the window. As they are not able to inform the police because of the storm, everyone has to stay put in the house. Heath goes out looking for clues and happens to find Lilijudith deadly injured. He looks into her eyes as she passes away and... finds himself having returned to the start of the previous day. Lilijudith reveals to Heath she is a witch with a curse: the curse of rewinding her own death, and the curse of taking people with her. Every time Lilidies, the clock rewinds to put her back 24 hours back in time, complete with all her memories. The last person with whom she locked eyes before dying also retains all their memories of what happened. Lili explains she has actually been killed multiple times ever since she appeared at the House of Eternity, each time after Cordelia is found murdered. She makes a deal with Heath: he's to help her survive to learn the contents of Charlotte's will (her main objective for coming here), while they'll make use of her powers to learn who killed Cordelia and why, and use that knowledge to prevent her death. For this reason, Heath and Lili must stick together each new time loop, as Heath must be there to lock eyes with Liijudith whenever she dies, and if the occasion demands it, Lili or Heath must even be willing to start a new loop themselves  (i.e. Lili commits suicide or Heath kills her) to ensure they'll reset the loop in time and Heath will retain possession of his memories. How many time loops will it take and how often will Lili have to die in order to save the lives of both Cordelia and Lili in Minami Asov's 2024 novel Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken - Majo wa X to Shinu Koto ni Shita ("The Super Serial Murder Case at the House of Eternity - The Witch Chose To Die With X") .

Locked rooms, reliving the same days over and over again and witches? No, this is not Umineko...

But those key terms were definitely the reason why I decided to pick up this book. Time loops are an often seen concept in mystery-related games, but you don't see them used as often in books actually. Of course, it's because interactive games often do lend themselves better for stories with time loops, as you can more easily allow the player to play through several loops (or even have them go back and replay), or for example use jump systems to jump to specific parts of the story where a story will diverge from the original loop, allowing for complex time flowcharts. That has been the case since Kamaitachi no Yoru, where you don't jump in time formally within the game, but where the player is constantly going back to earlier parts of the story in order to find a way out of the closed circle murder mystery. In that sense, a novel, with a linear way of storytelling, and using solely the medium of words (prose), might be actually less well suited for time loops, as reading the same parts over and over again isn't fun, and on the other side, it is difficult to make different time loops easily understandable to the reader: a game can use nice interactive figures or flowcharts to show you how each time loop is different or the same or in which time you are, but a prose story, even if it uses diagrams, will have more difficulties with that.

In that sense, I often did have the feeling Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken would have worked better as a game, than a novel. The book shows you the "worst" loop possible, of Cordelia being killed in the locked room and Lili dying, and then things are explained to Heath (and the reader) regarding Lili's powers, the limitations to her powers and the task that awaits them. But then Lili also explains she had experienced seven loops before, all with different outcomes and people acting differently, so that suddenly adds a lot more "relevant data" to the puzzle right from the start, that might be difficult to process. A game would have been able to present this in a much more organized manner.

But we are thus dealing with the impossible murder on Cordelia, a possible murder on Lili and there's also of course the mysterious death of Theodore three years back. Which, by the way, has a really neat diagram, shown from no less than three angles. It's rare to see a locked room crime scene depicted in so much detail in a novel! It's weird by the way how easily this locked room murder, as Gyro declares it to be, is resolved rather... swiftly halfway through the book, when there's been barely any investigation into it: basicallly all you need to know to solve it, is relayed to you in the initial discussion about the apparent suicide, and it's in essence a rather basic trick, but the clues pointing to the culprit were done much better, and work thematically very well. The Cordelia murder is... actually in essence also very simple, though made much more complex due to the actions and motivations of the characters in the house. Who admittedly don't always get to do much in each loop (many characters don't do or say anything in a certain loop, so you sometimes tend to forget they were in the house...). The idea behind the trick behind Cordelia's death again is not as inspired as the way Minami sets up the clues, but then again, Minami does do a great job at tying Cordelia's death to the time loop plot device of Lili, with the two cooperating time travellers making the best of the time loops to find clues (by creating different situations each time loop) and create an outcome where Cordelia doesn't need to die.

 In fact, I do think the book is much better at using the time loops to bring an interesting mystery than using its locked room mysteries. Soon after Heath starts working together with Lili, he does start to have doubts about her: why does Lili know so much about his mother? Why is Lili's ultimate goal becoming witness to the reading of Charlotte's last will? What has Lili done in the earlier time loops she had before she started taking Heath back in time each time? It's here where Minami does the most interesting things with the plot device of rewinding death and taking people along, but also where the book at times stumbles as a mystery. Minami does really clever things with the time loops, and I think the actual reason why she picked Heath as her partner in her time loops is perhaps the most surprising and devilish mystery-related element of this whole book, and certainly a notion that makes this book worth reading. But as a mystery with supernatural themes, it's also not always 100% fair. The main rules of Lili's curses are conveyed to the reader fair and square, but then near the end you suddenly are treated to a few instances you were never told were in fact possible until that very moment! That immediately makes the book feel not as fair and clever as it could have been, despite the fact the supernatural elements that tie to the end could and should have been hinted at more thoroughly (though I suppose revealing some things early, might have put the attentive reader on the trail early too). For I do think Minami has all together a great collection of truly fantastic ideas in this book, but in order to play some of these games, a few cards are left unturned for too long. That said, I think the ultimate plan Lili is trying pull off in order to prevent both her own and Cordelia's death and get out of her predicament is conveived really well by Minami and it is what makes this book memorable.

Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken - Majo wa X to Shinu Koto ni Shita was the first time I read anything by Minami Asov, but it sure made me curious to more! As a time travelling mystery, the book does not pull off everything it tries to do perfectly, and perhaps it needed a few more pages to flesh out some of the loops more, but it does try to do really clever things with its time loop plot device. And yes, I did think the locked rooms could've been a bit more surprising (even if they are used in clever ways to synergize with other element of the plot), and I didn't think the supernatural elements were treated as fairly throughout the book, but on the whole, Eigoukan Chourenzoku Satsujn Jiken offers a very interesting mystery novel about witches and time travelling and certainly worth a read.

Original Japanese title(s): 南海遊『永劫館超連続殺人事件 魔女はXと死ぬことにした』

Three Doors to Death

"That is so, monsieur. I ask of you if you have any knowledge of a man named Li Chang Yen?"

"The Big Four" 

I have to admit... I really love Christie's The Big Four, not despite, but because it's so deliciously silly.

What translated fiction does the translator read? Though I read mostly Japanese mystery fiction, I do occasionally read non-Japanese mystery fiction, and like everyone else, my choices are also limited by the languages I can read. So it is always a relief when mystery stories are translated to a language I can read. The Japanese publisher Hayakawa is one that focuses mostly on translated mystery fiction. One important source for translated short stories is Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine: this magazine originally started as the Japanese version of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, but after their licensing deal stopped, they switched over to the current name. Each issue features both serialized stories as well as complete short stories, and the last few years, Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine has been focusing a lot on Chinese-language mystery fiction, even featuring a fixed corner with a new translated story basically each issue. Today, I will be discussing works of two young modern-day authors who have been influenced by Japanese mystery fiction, one known as the Chinese Ellery Queen, and the other as the Chinese King of Locked Rooms, with all stories translated to Japanese by Ai Kousaku.

Shi Chen is a well-known Chinese mystery novelist who is strongly influenced by Japanese shin honkaku mystery fiction and his works have earned him the nickname of the Japanese Ellery Queen. He also runs his own mystery-fiction based book shop in Shanghai. Despite these credentials, his list of translated works in Japan is still criminally short, and none of his novels have made it across the sea, so for now, I'll have to do with short stories. Rinshitaiken wo Shita Onna ("The Woman Who Had A Near-Death Experience") was originally published in 2015 and features Shi Chen's detecting duo who had only debuted that very same year: the mathematician Chen Jue and his Watson, the historian Han Jin. In this story, Han Jin draws his friend's attention to a remarkable article by Professor Guo, who has devoted his life to researching near-death experiences. A few days ago, he manages to interview a woman who had been announced dead, but could be resurrected 40 minutes later. The woman does have vague memories of what happened after she was supposed to have died: some of the motifs are quite familiar and are mentioned in many such experiences, like the sensation of passing through a tunnel or across a river, but the woman had even more memories. The moment Chen Jue reads this account however, he suspects a hidden murder might have been committed, and he starts contacting the right people in a hurry to locate the hospital where the woman is staying. What in the woman's near-death account set off the alarms in Chen Jue's head, and what is the murder he fears may have happened?

A very interesting set-up for the story! The story is fairly short, and can be divided roughly in two segments: the first third or so, we deal with what feels a bit like some of the second period novels by Shimada Souji featuring Mitarai Kiyoshi, where the reader is first confronted with a fantastical experience or dream, which is then analyzed and shown d to be some kind of metaphore for an acual event. In this case, the generally "stereotypical" account of how the woman started passing to the other side contained clues that allowed Chen Jue to guess something's not completely all right. While the clue are there, one could argue that Chen Jue's reaction to those clues was a bit strong, as this only works if you can assume that every single detail is absolutely correct, while I wouldn't even trust my own memories of certain details even if I have been completely awake and focusing at the time, let alone if I was near death! The second half has Chen Jue examine the murder, for of course, he was indeed right and the near-death account did lead them to the discovery of a corpse. This then leads to a Ellery Queen-style second half, where we also discover only a select group of people could have committed the murder on the victim, and you're asked to deduce who it is by eliminating the other suspects based on the known facts. This process is done fairly well, though I do really think one certain condition that allows the reader to cross off some suspects, feels a bit unconvincing. While I do like the deduction process introduced here, it's just that... surely there would have been a better alternative to introduce a similar line of reasoning without that object? Because it just seems so unconvincing to me there would be no better/easier/more convenient substitute for that object, and it makes this part of the deduction process feel very artificial, even though I do like the general idea of what Shi Chen was going for. But yes, this is definitely the type of story I would expect from someone with the nickname of the Chinese Ellery Queen, and it does make me very interested to see how he'd a full-length novel!

Sun Qinwen is an author I have discussed in the past already, as I reviewed his first novel Lindongzhiguan ("Coffins in the Cold Winter") last year. He in turn is known as the Chinese king of locked room mysteries and a successor to John Dickson Carr. While his first novel was published under his own full name, he had already published many short stories before that novel under the name Jiding. Hayakawa's Mystery Magazine has featured three of the Jiding stories these last few years, two of them I'll be discussing now. Both stories star Wang Jiayi, a police detective, as the narrator. He's a fairly intelligent detective himself, but he also finds the university student Xia Shi to be more than a match for him: he met the young woman at a party for fans of mystery fiction and has since become smitten with her, though at the moment, they are just friends. In Namida wo Noseta Dangan ("A Tearful Bullet"), Wang Jiayi is visited by a woman whose father recently passed away, as she found a strange entry in her father's diary which seems to indicate somewhere a crime has happened. The diary entry is dated just before his death, and her father, who worked for a renovation company, writes about he and a new part-timer had been sent to a manor to renovate a basement room which had been locked for many years, with the key missing. They managed to break the door open... only to find the skeleton of a man lying in the room, with the basement key next to them. The hole in the skull, and the bullet they find in the wall seems to suggest this man had been shot. But the door was locked from the inside: so it couldn't have been a murder (for then where did the murderer go), nor a suicide (for then where is the pistol?). The owner of the house however wanted to hush things up, and offered the father and the part-timer a lot of money to keep quiet and to seal the basement again. As a murder might have taken place, Wang Jiayi starts investigating and finds out where the father had been working before his death. The owner of the mansion however of course denies a body was found in his basement, stating they just sealed the basement because the damp environment caused by the nearby lake made it not suitable for use anymore. Wang Jiayi suspects he lies, but then this man dies too: he had been fishing and was seen by a witness to enter a hut alone and he was about to prepare his fish when he suddenly keeled over in his kitchen and was dead. Because nobody was seen to have entered the hut besides the victim, it seems this was just an accident, but is that truly the case?

This story deals with two locked room situations, one in the past (the basement) and one in the present (the house owner). I do have to admit I find it disappointing the two locked rooms aren't really connected thematically: while there is something that connects the two situations, it's not like one side works as a strong clue/misdirection for the other per se, so they feel very disjointed. The present-day murder is more of a joke solution I think, it's basically unhinted and then the solution is sprung upon the reader, and it's not a really exciting solution in any way. The past death has a rather surprising solution I liked a lot: the basic idea is a bit simple, but original, and what I like best is how Sun clewed the solution here. There is another layer of mystery that only becomes apparent later in the story, but I wasn't really a fan of that; it works better in the original Chinese I can tell, but in the Japanese translation, it's difficult to convey the exact same idea without feeling a bit unnatural simply due to cultural differences.

Konchuu Koushukei Shikkounin ("The Insect Hangman") has Wang Jiayi investigating the mysterious death of an insect researcher, while also dealing with the fact Xia Shi seems to have attracted another suitor in the form of an old classmate. Wang Jiayi and Xia Shi are hanging out at a McDonalds when Wang is approached by his old classmate whom he hasn't seen in years. The man is working at an insect research facility, and he invites the two to visit. They accept, but they find the director is missing. They start looking for him and arrive at a small storehouse, which is being used as a temporary place to keep their stag beetles as they are moving. They try to open the door, but find the door has been taped tight from inside. When they finally brreak the seal open, they find the director dead inside, with the window and the door all sealed with duct tape, and the glass cases where the stag beetles were kept all thrown on the floor, broken into pieces. The director himself is found sitting with his back against the wall opposite the door, having apparently strangled himself by tying a rope around his neck, fixing the rope against the wall, and then having his body weight do the rest. But why would the director, who loved insects more than anything else, have broken all the cases with the stag beetles?

The story starts with a reference to Carr's He Wouldn't Kill Patience, the famous taped locked room mystery and the tale also has a very short "lecture" on the taped locked room, so you can easily tell what the theme is of the story. As you might guess, this locked room mystery revolves mostly around a mechanical trick that allowed the murderer to kill the director in a room of which all exits are taped tight. The solution is a variation on a solution I had already encountered before, using a similar mechanic, but the 'props' used to create the taped situation are different, and in that way, the story feels original enough. One could argue it is questionable how practical this trick would truly be if executed, but the idea makes enough of an impact to be memorable I think. What I really liked however was that Sun didn't decide to only focus on the howdunnit: the threads he added to support the whodunnit and whydunnit of the mystery do really help make this story feel much grander, despite it being a relatively short story.

I had already read a novel by Sun Qinwen, and while I don't think the short stories I discussed today were better than the novel, they were definitely interesting enough to keep me interested in his output, so I will be sure to read more of them if more of his work becomes available in a language I can read. Shi Chen was the new experience for me, and his story was certainly enough to make me interested in trying out more of his work, as you can recognize the influence of both Ellery Queen, and modern Japanese shin honkaku authors in this short story and I am very curious to see how his longer stories turn out. So I do hope more of both authors will be translated soon!

Original Chinese title(s): 時晨 "濒死的女人 時晨", 文孫沁 "载着眼泪的子弹" , "昆虫絞刑官"

Peril at End House

 迷わずに 瞳信じて 

風のららら…

 「風のラララ」（倉木麻衣）

 

Believing in what I see without any doubts

The wind's lalala...

"The Wind's Lalala" (Kuraki Mai)

Huh, for some reason, I thought I had started on these books much more recently...

Kagami Masayuki made his debut as a mystery author in 1999 with several short stories he wrote for anthologies (collected in 2022 in The Uncollected Works of Masayuki Kagami), but it was in 2002 he published his first full-length novel Sougetsujou no Sangeki ("The Tragedy at the Twin Moon Castle"). He would keep on writing two more novels and a short story collection, all starring the Parisian magistrate Charles Bertrand and his nephew and chronicler Patrick Smith in stories strongly inspired by John Dickson Carr's Henri Bencolin series. Kagami however would pass away suddenly in 2013 in his early fifties. I read Sougetsujou no Sangeki about two years ago and found it a highly entertaining locked room mystery in the tradition of Carr and since then, I have been working my through the (short) bibliography of Kagami, though it took a bit time as the books that were published during his life are only available physically at the moment, and a few of them usually only trade owners for a price I found way too high (as in, some were usually put on offer somewhere between 50 and 100 euro, or even more). So it has been a game of patience for me, keeping an eye on offers and trying to snatch them up if they were finally offered for reasonable prices.

And that is why it took me a while to finally get my hands on Kaze Hatsuru Yakata no Satsujin ("The Murders at Wind's End House" 2006), the third and last novel written by Kagami. But now I have finally read it! The book is set after the mammoth Kangokutou ("Prison Island"), the approx. 1200 page adventure where Patrick Smith became acquainted with Mary Kaley, a historian. Their relation has been great, which is why she wants Pat to come along as emotional support when she receives word her grandmother, Ingrid Kaley, has passed away. Ingrid Kaley was the widow of Christopher Kaley, the head of Union Mining Ltd., one of the financial powerhouses in the United Kingdom. She ran the company after Christopher passed away, and succesfully too. She herself however never had children, while at one time Christopher had a mistress Ivonne, who gave birth to triplets. Infuriated by her husband's infidelity, but also recognizing how Ivonne could never support three girls all by her own, she insisted Ivonne and the girls come live at their manor in Northern Ireland. Wind's End House is located on a cliff near Giant's Causeway and got its name because all kinds of air currents somehow make their way to that cliff, making it constantly windy. Ingrid turned out to be very caring of the sisters Claudia, Regan and Margaret, while Ivonne, grateful to Ingrid, ran the household for her. However, tragedy struck when the triplets were around five. One day, the gardener saw Ivonne enter the large hedge maze in the garden. Some time later, Claudia too entered the maze, in search of her mother. When much later Ingrid realizes both Ivonne and Claudia are gone, she goes looking for them in the maze together with the gardener: on the ground, which was still wet due to earlier rain, they could make out two sets of footprints making their way to the center of the maze, where there's a small gazebo. But when Ingrid and the gardener arrive there, they find a horrible scene: Ivonne is lying dead on the ground, her throat having been slit open. Young Claudia too lies on the floor, though she turns out to have only lost her consciousness. The police never could figure out who Ivonne was killed, as there were no other footprints on the ground, and there is no other way to make it through the maze.

Many years later, and the triplets have grown into beautiful women with their own families, but they have completely gotten estranged from Ingrid, who officially adopted them after Ivonne's death, but for some reason she started treating the girls differently from before their mother's death, and that relation never improved. There is also a lot of rivalry between the three sisters, who all have one son and one daughter, though Claudia's daughter Mary is adopted, as she was the daughter of a friend who passed away. While Mary could get along with her brother William and the introverted Patricia, her other cousins Cordelia, Stephen and David were outright bullying her, which was the reason Mary left the house to study when she became an adult and never returned. The will of Ingrid however stipulates all living Kaley family members must be present, so Mary finds herself forced to return home, but she brings Patrick along, introducing him as her fiance. While William and Patricia seem nice enough to Mary and Patrick, the latter can't help notice the other three cousins are exactly as Mary had described them. The will is read immediately upon Mary's return. But while Claudia, Regan and Margaret expected Union Mining Ltd. to be split evenly among the three sisters, the will read by the solicitor is more than baffling: Union Mining Ltd. is to be split between the two families who will get married first: whoever of William, Mary, Stephen, Cordelia, David and Patricia get married together first, will inherit the company, leaving the last family with nothing. Furthermore, in case of death or no marriages within the first three months of the reading of the will, the company will pass on toa certain Peter Graven or his living offspring. While the cousins have never heard of Peter, their mothers were petrified when they heard the name dropped, though they refuse to explain who he is. The mothers quickly call their own family meetings, all with the same message: get married to one of your cousins, as soon as possible. Claudia forbids Mary to marry Patrick, stating they can't be left out of the inheritance. Meanwhile, Mary and Patrick also become worried whether Stephen and David won't force themselves on one of their cousins for a fait accompli. When Stephen insults Mary for the ump teenth time, Patrick challenges him to a boxing match, which he wins convincingly, sending Stephen wimpering that night. However, the following day, an ever bigger surprise awaits everyone: Stephen is found.... hanging from a rope... attached to the top of an old grain silo, about twenty meters high! And something has left a gigantic imprint on the ground near the silo. Almost as if... the giant Finn McCool of Giant's Causeway picked up Stephen and hung him from the silo. Or is there a devious murderer at work here who wants the inheritence for themselves? Patrick and Mary don't have much confidence in the local police solving the case, so they can only hope Pat's uncle Charles Bertrand, the famous Parisian magistrate, can come quickly...

If there's one theme in Kagami's work, it's John Dickson Carr: he has written many straight pastiches of Carr's work (most of them found in The Uncollected Works of Masayuki Kagami), but his Charles Bertrand series too is obviously modelled after the Henri Bencolin series, with the detectives in both series sharing the background story of being French spymasters turned magistrates and having an American narrator. The first book, Sougetsujou no Sangeki, was specifically inspired by Castle Skull, and there are probably many Carr references to notice if you are more of a Carr reader than I am. That is why to my surprise, Kaze Hatsuru Yakata no Satsujin, despite its very British setting of Giant's Causeway, is modelled strongly after Yokomizo Seishi's Inugamike no Ichizoku. We have the family patriarch passing away, leaving three rivalling sisters and their families. We have the reading of the will, where the patriarch says the family business will be left to whoever first gets to marry (in this case, a marriage between cousins). There's the "extra" clause in the will, that stipulates the fortune will got an unfamiliar name or their offspring in case any of the primary candidates will die. And of course, like in Inugamike no Ichizoku, this will and all its crazy conditions sets off a series of horrible deaths, which formally start when Stephen is killed, but might already be announced early, as Mary got a threat letter telling her not to return to Wind's End, and when Patricia picked up Mary and Pat from the station, their car was sabotaged too!

But while the structure of the book follows Inugamike no Ichizoku, the crimes that occur at Wind's End, a large manor with a giant hedge maze in its garden, as well as an old mostly unused silo, are definitely still Kagami's bread and butter of Carr-ish impossible crimes. We have a murder at the center of a hedge maze in the past, where the murderer apparently entered and left the maze without being seen and without leaving any footprints in the soft ground. This is repeated in the present, when Patrick goes meet someone in the maze, but right in front of his eyes, this person shrieks and is found killed with a knife, even though Patrick saw nobody near the victim, and the only footprints leading to the center of the maze belong to the victim, and himself. We also have the death of Stephen, who apparently was hung from the very top of the silo, fifteen, twenty meters up high by the giant Finn McCool and later in the book, there's a death in a bathroom, but no murderer could've approached the third floor bathroom, because a witness had been cleaning out the storeroom and an old sofa had been blocking the corridor. That said, most of the impossible crimes in this book aren't that amazing on their own: the present-day maze murder is comprised out of cliched tricks, the bathroom murder is basically solved the instant a certain piece of evidence is found and the past maze murder is both somewhat unbelievable, and not properly clewed. That leaves the silo murder, which is indeed a rather alluring one: how could anyone hang Stephen from the top of the silo, given... Stephen is an adult male, and the silo is nearly twenty meters high. The giant imprint on the ground next to the silo, resembling a giant feet, seems to suggest the giant neighbor Finn McCool from Giant's Causeway came to pay a visit, but... that is of course not the case. I think most of the readers will have some idea of how it was done, considering it's just such a unique setting which limits the possibilities a lot, though I think Kagami did a good thing at setting up the clewing for this solution, and it is not just the best of all the impossible situations in this book, but simply a very entertaining idea on its own too.

I do think the book is actually both at its best and worst when it comes to playing around with the character relations and their motivations. Like Inugamike no Ichizoku, a lot of the mystery is created because we have a lot of characters with their own agendas, and their actions complicate the matter a lot. I think more than in previous books, Kagami managed to use his large cast of characters to make the mystery more complex. In some cases, this works out really well for this book, but in other cases, you really wonder why some characters did the things they did. One character does something that, okay, I can somewhat understand what you did that before the first death, but why not explain yourself once you see people are dying? The three sisters do things that serve as important events that inform the actions of other characters, but... why would you do that? Right that other event happened? For some reason, the husbands of the three sisters also barely say or do anything in the book, even though they are supposed to be there too as their children are getting murdered and their wives are going crazy from grief... So at times, Kagami succeeds in making the mystery more complex and alluring by playing these characters off each other, but at other times you really don't see why some characters do what they did, even though it has important implications to the plot. I wonder if Kagami had lived to write more books, he would have managed to develop the way in which to use characters to contribute to the mystery, and create more synergy between the characters and his impossible situations.

There were a few other smaller points that did bug me though. Like... did we just gloss over a pretty major crime at the end? And why can't Kagami properly write out English(-sounding) names? I was so convinced that thing with the initials was a hint, but that was just Kagami making a language mistake... Oh, re-reading my own review of the first book, I have to repeat again that despite Kagami writing in the shin honkaku tradition, he really tries to stay very loyal to his mission of writing stories extremely close to what Carr wrote in the 1930, taking the challenge of doing a Golden Age mystery novel on those terms alone, so no narrative trickery, no fantasy or sci-fi background, no focus on comedy, no Late Queen Problems or meta-discussions on the state of honkaku mystery fiction.So despite the book being very much like Inugamike no Ichizoku, you don't hear any snarky remarks about that.

But when Kaze Hatsuru Yakata no Satsujin works, I think it works really well, and overall, I did enjoy the book a lot. After the very grand Kangokutou, I appreciated the somewhat smaller scale of this story (similar to the first book, though a bit longer), and as a Carr and Yokomizo-inspired impossible murder story, it is constructed in a very confident manner, as you'd expect from an author who specialized in writing in the tradition of Carr. I do think that ultimately, I liked the first book the best, with probably the most memorable locked room murder in all of Kagami's writings and while it's the shortest book too, I think it makes the best use of its page length. All three books are worth reading though, especially for Carr fans.

Original Japanese title(s): 加賀美雅之『風果つる館の殺人』