The Sign of the Twisted Candles

A white flame still enveloped the building like a shroud, and, streaming far away into the quiet atmosphere, shot forth a glare of preternatural light;

"Metzengerstein" 

As I also mention below, I happened to have visited Kyoto just before reading this book. Hadn't been there for over a decade, but it was interesting to see how... little had actually changed. 

High school student Sanada Amane won a contest which got her ticket on a special try-out tour of the soon-to-be-opened space station hotel Stardust, a new step in the world of budget space tourism. A series of murders happened in the space hotel during their stay, but Amane survived the ordeal and on her way back to Earth, she made a live-stream of herself playing Queen's Don't Stop Me Now on the keyboard. For Amane, this was her goal all along: she was trying to reach out to a friend, who had gone missing for over a year now: a live-stream from space might attract her friend's attention, especially when playing a song which held a certain meaning to the both of them. But after her return to Earth, it was not a warm reunion with her friend that awaited her: Amane had become the target of internet rage. People were stunned by the complete lack of respect she showed by trying to win internet credits,  while people had been murdered on the station. The comments on her stream soon turned to flaming and also started to shift to Amane's hometown, Kyoto, as was her haughty attitude and complete disregard for her fellow man not exactly what people had come to expect from those who hail from the ancient capital of Japan? Media of course had a field day with Amane, and influencers, hoping to attract more viewers and controversy, even hang around Amane's school, trying to bait her into engaging with them. 

The school tries its best to protect Amane and the rest of its students from the unwanted attention, and they direct Amane to the Kyoto Support Foundation, a group specializing in assisting "offenders" and their family in dealing with the reactions to their actions: for yes, Amane is seen as the "initial offender", but the backlash to her actions is way out of proportion and there is fear even her family will become targets themselves of all the bashing. Fujishiro Miyako of the foundation sets out a strategy for Amane to avoid most of the bashing and to protect her family. As she interacts with the people of the Foundation, she learns Touko, the friend she has been looking for, had actually been receiving help from the Foundation too: it turns out her father is involved with a pyramid scheme. Mei, a friend of Isesaki Nanatsu, has been looking for her friend too, and it turns out Nanatsu and Touko both disappeared around the same time and that they knew each other via the Foundation. Meanwhile, Amane has left her live-stream online in the hopes of getting a comment from Touko, but amidst all the bashing aimed at her and all the people of Kyoto, she notices a strange message:"First Kinkakuji Temple will burn." A strange sensation sends Amane to the famous temple, and just as she walks on the grounds, the temple catches fire. Amidst the chaos, she notices someone resembling Touko. Has Touko set fire to this symbol of Kyoto? What is her goal? That is the great mystery of Momono Zappa's 2024 novel Rousoku wa Moeteiruka, or as the cover also says: Is the Candle Burning?

 Rousoku wa Moeteiruka is the direct sequel to 2023's Hoshikuzu no Satsujin, which I reviewed a few months ago. And I have to admit, I have seldom experienced such a tonal shift in the same series. The first book is set in space in the very near future, where budget space tourism had become available. The space station served as an original closed circle situation while not feeling too futuristic, and the result was an engaging mystery with an original first murder. Its sequel however not only focuses on a different protagonist, it is also set in a very realistic Kyoto, and the mystery itself is also far more grounded in reality, so no "how could a man hang himself in a zero-G environment" premises. In fact, while people do die in this novel, most of the deaths occuring in this book are results of people caught in the fires (yes, plural), and there's generally not really a mystery of how the fires are started. So as a mystery, it starts out much vaguer, instead focusing more on the live of Amane: a girl who is seen as an instigator and whom everyone has a beef with, suddenly accosting her on the street to accuse of her everything wicked just because she made a live-stream, and because of the way she handles everything with a very Kyotoite-esque attitude, sparks are also directed to the local people of Kyoto. As a human drama, the story does give you some food for thought about how people, especially in a society like that of Japan, like to pile on top of "offenders" (in the very broad definition of the word) and like to show their superiority over them by bashing and condmening the offenders and their family in the oblivion.

So in a way, it might not even be surprising there's someone, singular or plural, who is starting to burn down all the famous locations in Kyoto, each time announcing their target in the comments to Amane's live-stream. It starts with the Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji Temples, but more follow, sending Kyoto into a mood of fear, as Kyoto happens to be full of touristic hotspots and nobody can tell what the next target will be. Amane however happens to spot someone who looks like Touko at every crime site, and she soon suspects Touko might be involved in the fires, but how, and why? And that is indeed the crux of this book's mystery: it is mostly a whydunnit Why is someone burning down famous locations in Kyoto, and why is Touko there every time? This mystery is interwoven well with the aforementioned focus on the human drama and the discussion regarding the 'sense of social justice towards offenders and their family'. While this is definitely not the kind of mystery I usually read, and I still find it surprising how such a grounded, realistic story serves as the sequel to a "murder... in space!" type of mystery, I do think this is a well-constructed story, where the core mystery might be a bit simple, but still quite captivating, because we do want to see Amane have her happy ending, or at least, have a somewhat tolerable conclusion to her experience.

This book oozes Kyoto by the way: many, many places are visited throughout the tale, from the more famous places to less famous ones, and the depiction of the locations and how they are connected to each other is great, and there's also a lot of focus on the cultural aspect too (like the stereotype of a Kyotoite and how neighboring prefectures look at Kyoto). I happened to have gone to Kyoto about two weeks before reading this book and it was pretty funny to see how a famous Japanese sweets shop I visited for the first time then, was also featured in the tale for a bit (Demachi Futaba). In fact, I was only in Kyoto for about a day, and I wasn't even touristing (I already did that when I actually lived there over a decade ago!), but even still, a lot of the places I passed through that day were also featured in the book, simply by virtue of it being a very realistic depiction of the city. So it's definitely a recommendation if you want to steep yourself in Kyoto atmosphere. 

I have to admit that I was a bit unsure initially about Rousoku wa Moeteiruka: I liked Hoshikuzu no Satsujin because of its (nearby) sci-fi setting, and Momono's first book, Rouko Zanmu, was also super memorable because it was a wuxia-themed mystery novel. Rousoku wa Moeteiruka in comparison feels drearily real, focusing on a girl who accidentally causes an online uproar and then gets caught in a series of arson in Kyoto. But as a realistic human drama focused mystery set in Kyoto, somewhat similar to a story you'd might expect from Higashino Keigo, it's quite entertaining and I'd definitely recommend it to those who are into the city of Kyoto. 

Original Japanese title(s): 桃野雑派『蝋燭は燃えているか』 

The Border-Line Case

"Space, the final frontier."

"Star Trek"

This has nothing to do with the book of this post, but: Mu is one of my favorite characters from Saint Seiya, and I love his attacks Starlight Extinction and Stardust Revolution.

Hase Homare is a tour attendent on a special monitoring trip for the first low-cost space carrier: a group of guests have been selected to come along to spaceship "Hope!!", which will bring them to the space station hotel Stardust, where they'll enjoy a few nights before heading back to Earth. The service will start officially soon, so this special trip is one last check to see if everything will go as planned. There are just a handful of guests coming along, most of them who have paid a lot of money to be able to see Earth from space (and one student who just happened to win a contest), so there are only two staff members on Hope!!: Homare and the captain Itou, a former astronaut, who after a period of seeing the bottle too often, has gotten his life on control again, eager to prove himself to his family and the rest of the world. The trip to Stardust goes perfectly, with all the guests arriving safely at the hotel, where they are greeted by the hotel staff who had arrived earlier. The hotel resembles a cone with a halo around it: the main cone building, with the dock, storerooms and all the equipment and machines, has mainly zero or low gravity, so people are advised to use the special belts they have to anchor themselves, though there's is gravity in the halo part of the building, which is where the guests rooms and lobbies are. While Homare goes off to write up a report on the trip for headquarters, Itou starts carrying out rations they brought on their ship to the storerooms, but when Itou doesn't return, Homare goes looking for the captain, only to find Itou dead in one of the storerooms. However, the scene is bizarre: it looks like Itou hanged himself with a belt... only you generally can't hang yourself if there's no gravity. Staff members all have special smartwatches that monitor their movements, and it appears nobody of the staff came even close to the storeroom around the death of Itou, so that seems to clear them, so does that mean one of the hotel guests is the murderer? Or was it suicide. The management back on Earth however order Homare to continue as planned, as too much is at stake on this first test trip. When a second death happens however, the hotel staff members use escape pods to return to Earth, citing their legal work conditions (only allowed x hours in space), leaving Homare and the guests alone in the hotel. Homare can operate "Hope!!" all by himself up to a degree, but the guests all seem reluctant to return to Earth now, as they have just arrived, so it's decided they stay in Stardust as initially planned, but then more deaths occur while trapped up in space in Momono Zappa's Hoshikuzu no Satsujin (2023), or as the book also says on the cover: Stardust Murder.

Momono Zappa is a game scenario writer who made their debut as a novelist in 2021 with Rouko Zanmu ("Dreams Are All That Remain To The Tiger Who Has Grown Old"), a cool mystery novel that utilized a wuxia fiction background. Hoshikuzu no Satsujin similarly has a mystery set in a rather unique location: a space station. At the same time, we're not talking about the super far future: the world portrayed in this book is certainly quite close, with low-cost space carriers probably appearing soon, and the setting is far closer to our current society than say the mobile suits in Gundam Wearwolf, also a mystery set in space. So for a great part, a lot of the setting of Hoshikuzu no Satsujin will be almost the same as ours, with people needing Wi-Fi to do livestreams for back on Earth. In fact, Momono does a great job at portraying the practical difficulties of operating such a space station, occasionally touching upon the technical and scientific details about how things are working at Stardust. At one point, the space station also loses its contact with Earth, leaving Homare unable to call back to headquarters and inform them about the subsequent deaths after Itou's death, and the idea of just... being stuck in space without a way to call for help is just horrible. Of course, they have escape pods they could use, but Homare does emphasize that the escape pods just shoots them towards Earth to the ocean, so it could take days before the pods are actually retrieved and they're saved, so it's a last resort. So there's a lot of mileage to be taken from the concept of a closed circle situation... in space.

Like in Rouko Zanmu, Momono does like focusing on their characters and what drives them: each of the guests, but also the staff members have their own specific reasons for wanting to come to space, and it's what also informs their actions while being confronted with their predicament. Like a lot of these And Then There Were None-esque stories, you'll be looking out for motives in each character's backstory for wanting to commit murders while being in a closed circle situation (and in space, no less!), and the interplay between the various backstories does allow for a bit of going back and forth between suspects, though I'll be honest and say that motive-looking is seldom my favorite part of a mystery story. Those who want a more introspective mystery however, might find something they'll like here, as of course, the dream of going into space is one that has mesmerized people since ancient times, and you can easily imagine how everyone holds very different thoughts about what space could mean to them.

As for the mystery, a lot of the immediate riddles Homare and the rest of the guests are confronted with, are about howdunnits: whether it was a suicide or murder, how could Itou have been hanged, if there's no gravity to do the hanging? Another guest is nearly suffocated in his room, even though they locked the door before going to sleep (i.e.a locked room), and more such curious incidents happen. The tricks behind these occurings are... perhaps not surprisingly if you think about it, but I have to admit I was surprised how technical some of these tricks were. In a way, Momono does hint at these tricks, but the jump from being presented clue A and me deducing that could result in trick X was way too far for me, so I personally didn't always feel as impressed with the trick as I could've been: perhaps a more science-minded reader will love what Momono does here, as the tricks utilized by the culprit does make good use of the space station setting. I wouldn't say this is hard science by the way, just some things aren't as intuitive to my feeble humanities mind as for the author.

There's a direct sequel to this book by the way, Rousoku was Moeteiru ka (Is the Candle Burning?), which focuses on one of the guests of the hotel after returning to Earth. I have no idea whether the semi-scifi setting of this book is continued in the second book, so in that sense, that is kinda what interests me.

Anyway, Hoshikuzu no Satsujin uses a unique setting, but without going overboard or alienating readers with the lite scifi setting. While mystery-wise, I felt some of the tricks were a bit too technical for me to feel intuitively clever, as a book about people being trapped in a space station under deadly circumstances, I found the book quite captivating, and I blazed through it in no time, because I wanted to know how it'd end. I will probably pick up the sequel in the future too, so expect a review of that book too. 

Original Japanese title(s): 桃野雑派『星くずの殺人』

The Night of the Tiger

"Wax on, wax off"

"The Karate Kid"

People who read this blog will probably know that I am of the opinion mystery fiction doesn't need to be realistic to be great. In fact, many of the best mystery novels I have read the last few years utilize distinctly unrealistic elements, from time travel to spirits, alchemy, magic and parallel worlds. That doesn't mean they are not well-written and planned, fair play mysteries though. The books with supernatural elements I have read in fact are often pour much more effort than stories with "normal" settings to ensure they are providing a fair play puzzle plot and therefore usually feel more well-planned too. Many people seem to think that "realistic" is a prerequisite for a mystery story to be fair, logical consistent or even satisfying, but that's of course a very limited view on what mystery fiction is and can do.

Momono Zappa's Rouko Zanmu ("Dreams Are All That Remain To The Tiger Who Has Grown Old", 2021) features a theme I hadn't seen used in a mystery story before: wuxia fiction. People in the West probably best know the fantasy martial arts genre through films like Chrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and... I guess Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, but it's probably not a genre you'd immediately associate with mystery fiction, and I definitely think it earns bonus points for the original idea alone. Set in medieval China, Rouko Zanmu introduces us to 23-year old Shion, a young woman who has been trained in martial arts by her elderly master Ryou Tairyuu, an accomplished martial artist who is especially well-versed in the arts of internal qi, allowing him feats like walking across water for extended distances. Shion is Tairyuu's only disciple and has been trained by him since her teenage years, so she is quite shocked when her master tells her that he has invited three martial artists and that he'll convey his ultimate art to one of them. Shion doesn't quite understand why she isn't the one to inherit the art, though deep within her she fears that Tairyuu knows Shion and Tairyuu's adopted daughter Renka are lovers and that that's the reason why she will not be conveyed the ultimate art. On the designated day, the three guests arrive at their home: Gaku Shouten is a childhood friend of Tairyuu and they trained under the same master, making them "siblings", Sai Bunwa is a fellow disciple of the same martial arts school, and Imon is a warrior-monk whom Tairyuu became acquainted with many years ago. On the first night, the three martial artists are treated to a feast, after which Tairyuu retreats to his special dojo: the octagon building stands on a small island in a large lake, and the only way to reach the island is either with the one single boat, or by walking across water, but the distance to the island demands so much mastery of internal qi that only Tairyuu and his disciple Shion can manage this feat. The following morning however, Shion finds her master's dead body in the dojo, and due to the snow around the lake, she quickly deduces that the murderer must be someone on the premise. She brings the three martial artists to the island, and declares she will find out who the murderer of Tairyuu is and avenge her master. Which is easier said than done perhaps, because Shion's been under the weather since the morning, and has not been able to harness her qi in any way, making it impossible for her to fight back against any of the three skilled martial artists who can easily walk across walls, throw qi-guided projectiles or enhance their bodily strength. But with her master dead, Shion has no choice but to avenge her master despite her current state,  but which of these three could have made their way on and off the island and murder her master?

Rouko Zanmu is the 2021 debut novel of Momono Zappa (yes, he's a fan of Frank Zappa) and the winner of the 67th Edogawa Rampo Prize, and I have to say, this is a very unique book. It is less a mystery novel with wuxia elements, but really a fusion between the mystery and wuxia genre, with equal importance. So some parts of the story feel a bit "off" when looking at them from a "mystery point of view", but I am familiar enough with the wuxia genre to know those elements are pretty normal for a wuxia story, so I think that people who mainly read wuxia fiction, with no particular interest in mystery fiction, can also enjoy this novel and see it as a fair fusion between the two. There's plenty of talk about martial arts, about schools, and bigger themes like honor, fighting for the country, internal politics and Chinese history, and of course extensive parts that detail fights using fantastical martial arts where qi is used in various forms, but it's definitely the core mystery of Tairyuu's death that drives all of this.

And as an impossible crime, Rouko Zanmu definitely has its unique features. The impossible death of Tairyuu essentially revolves around two problems. One is access to the murder location: the only boat on the lake was found moored at the island on the morning, meaning the boat was not used by the murder to return to the lakeside house after killing Tairyuu. But how did the murderer make it across the lake? Interestingly, the story shows that theoretically, anyone could "walk over the lake" because mastery over one's internal qi allows a person to walk across water for extended periods. But the story is clear by stating that both Tairyuu and Shion are prodigies in that regard and that only they can walk that long a distance across water, and futhermore, Shion's been feeling sick all this time and is unable to harness her internal qi herself. The other three martial artists on the other could not possibly have walked that distance across water as they are not that talented when it comes to using internal qi. The second problem regarding Tairyuu's death is the fact he was poisoned to death... which again is basically impossible: a master of internal qi can theoretically not be poisoned, as their body will automatically work to counter-act the poison and at the very least, ensure consumption will not be fatal either by physically countering the poison's effects on the body, or automatically make them throw up. The fact Tairyuu is dead, and the boat is found near the island, indicates a person with intricate knowledge of internal qi is involved with this, but between Shion, Renka and the three martial artists, only Shion herself would come remotely close to that profile. And she's quite sure she didn't kill her master. Another mystery is the motive behind Tairyuu's death, as he was about to convey his ultimate art to one of the martial artists, so why would he be killed before such a thing happened?

It's in fact the motive which becomes a central focus of the investigation, which by the way feels pretty tense as everyone is locked up with each other in the dojo with Tairyuu's body, and Shion is willing to give her own life if necessary to kill the murderer. It's this focus on the motive where you can feel the wuxia elements strongest, as we dive deeper in the backgrounds of all the characters and here's where all the wuxia tropes come alive the most, with backstories that are intertwined with actual Chinese history (Southern Song dynasty), with character histories that revolve around mentor-disciple interactions, their reasons for being martial artists and much more. It's here where the story becomes something much "bigger" than the isolated dojo setting and where the mystery side of the story feels a bit sidelined, though much of what is mentioned here is actually intricately involved with the true motive behind Tairyuu's death. The impossible crime element on the other hand feels a bit... I wouldn't say underdeveloped, but it was handled rather more swiftly than I had expected and it did take a long time for the story to focus on that part of the mystery for a longer time/more intently. The solution is, as you may expected, unique to this novel, as it does only work in a wuxia world where people can control their qi and can walk across water and do other feats like that, but the solution, while a bit simpler than I had expected, is clewed and signalled fairly, and works perfectly within the unique context of this book, so it is quite satisfying as a proper wuxia impossible crime. Again, I think that had this been a book that was more obviously "mainly a mystery novel, with wuxia elements" I would have wanted to see like "one extra step" to really make it impressive, but as I feel this book really tries to strike an even balance between the two, I think Rouko Zanmu works perfectly fine and provides an entertaining read that focuses equally on mystery and wuxia.

Rouko Zanmu is definitely not the kind of mystery story you're likely to come across often, and for some, the wuxia elements might even feel too alienating, but I think it's definitely worth a read, especially if you're like me and the moment you heard it was combining these elements you started to get excited, imagining all the possibilities. On a very personal level, I think I would have preferred if this novel was balanced more in the favor of the mystery side, but that's not really a complaint about this book: it strikes a surprisingly fair balance between the mystery and the wuxia elements, and whatever you're looking for in this book, it's likely you'll walk away a satisfied reader.

Original Japanese title(s): 桃野雑派『老虎残夢』