The Quest of the Missing Map

Convenient for reading this post: a post on glasses in mystery fiction.

Don't you just get excited when you open a mystery novel and you discover there are floorplans or other diagrams inside? There's just something romantic about a visual depiction of the setting of a story. In some stories, having a clearly drawn map might be necessary in order for you to solve the mystery, while in other stories, the map is merely there to assist the text, just to make things a bit more clear and perhaps to add a bit of flavor. And as I've also mentioned in my reviews of novels like Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken and Murder Among the Angells, settings like houses, mansions or castles can also act as a character on their own in mystery stories, and floorplans really help giving life to these sinister settings.

For this short post, I wanted to show a couple of floorplans that made an impression on me. I won't be talking about them too much, as in some cases one can even figure out something important by looking at these diagrams if you know what to look for, but I think that no matter what, these floorplans just look impressive.

Ayatsuji Yukito - Meirokan no Satsujin ("The Labyrinth House Murders", 1988)

The title basically says it all. After his debut novel The Decagon House Murders, Ayatsuji continued with this series featuring the creations of the architect Nakamura Seiji and this third novel features an underground 'house' designed after the Labyrinth of the Minotaur, and the building is absolutely insane.

Shimada Souji - Naname Yashiki no Hanzai ("The Crime at the Slanted Mansion", 1982)

The second novel in Shimada's Mitarai Kiyoshi series has an interesting diagram, as it's drawn with depth. Floorplans with perspective aren't really common actually, and I really like how this house looks with the tower.

Nakai Hideo - Kyomu he no Kumotsu ("Offerings to Nothingness", 1964)

These floorplans are a bit smaller in scale compared to the previous ones, but I love the hand-drawn feeling of these plans. Kyomu he no Kumotsu is an infamous anti-mystery novel where the protagonist detectives try to figure out how a murder was committed even though there's no proof it's a murder and they just want it to be a murder because it's more fun and they hope more murders happen. These plans of course help them with their deductions.

Ayatsuji Yukito - Kirigoetei Satsujin Jiken ("The Kirigoe Mansion Murder Case", 1990)

Another novel by Ayatsuji. Technically, Kirigoetei Satsujin Jiken isn't part of Ayatsuji's House series, though the connection is heavily hinted at and the floorplan certainly seems similar in its complexity. This one is remarkable because of its sheer size, and this is just the ground floor!

Nikaidou Reito -  Jinroujou no Kyoufu - France (" La Terreur Château du Loup-garou La Second Partie: France, 1997)

Jinroujou no Kyoufu is a mammoth of an impossible crime mystery, consisting of four volumes of 600~800 pages each. These 8(!) floorplans are of the Blue Wolf Castle, which lies in France. A serises of horrible murders and other gruesome crimes happen in this gigantic castle, but what makes this a true terrifying experience is that this just half of the mystery: the Blue Wolf Castle is just one half of a set of twin castles, and another series of murders happen in the Silver Wolf Castle, just across the border in Germany. The Silver Wolf Castle has the exact same layout as the Blue Wolf Castle, but the happenings that occur in these two castles is just amazing, and one can sense the scale of this story just by looking at these castle plans.

Chisun Inn

 Oh, wait, this isn't from a mystery novel. This is in fact a floorplan of the Chisun Inn, a hotel located in Nagoya, Japan. Which also happens to look exactly like something from a mystery story. The hotel is designed in a spiral form, with a lot of rooms in a fan form, but one can easily imagine this to be the setting of a series of murders, right? I for one would make sure my door was locked and double locked if I were to stay here, as there's bound to be someone who's planning some kind of ingenious alibi trick or an impossible murder!

Anyway, these were a few floorplans from mystery novels that made an impression on me because of how they were designed, the scale of the setting or simply how they were drawn. Feel free to leave a comment with the floorplans from mystery novels (or TV series/manga/games) that made an impression on you.

L'offrande au neant

 J'ai, quelque jour, dans l'océan,

(Mais je ne sais plus sous quels cieux),

Jeté, comme offrande au néant,

Tout un peu de vin précieux...

 "Le Vin Perdu" (Paul Valéry)

Twain's comment on 'classics', "a book people want to have read, but don't want to read" has been true for a lot of books for me, but with detective novels, I usually really do want to read the 'classics' myself. Of course, what's a 'classic' to one, might not be to another, and canons are rarely perfect. And yet, you have to admit, a title like "The Three Great Occult Books" sounds alluring, right? And so the reading of the classics continues...

The Three Great Occult Books
Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken (The Black Death Mansion Murder Case) (1934)
Dogura Magura (1935)
Kyomu he no Kumotsu (Offerings to Nothingness) (1964)

Hinuma Souji and Kouji lost their parents in the great Touyamaru accident, just like their cousin Aiji. They all seem to cope with their loss in a different way: Souji has become quite pessimistic, Kouji tries to occupy his mind by writing a detective novel, while Aiji has of late become a frequent visitor of gay bars. But was the death of their parents really just an accident? The Hinuma family is said to have been cursed by an Ainu god for cruelties done by the first Hinuma in the family line and indeed, Aiji has lately been seeing a suspicious Ainu hanging around. Hearing more about the Hinuma family, chanson singer Nanamura Hisao forespells that there will be more deaths in the family soon, dubbing it "The Hinuma Murders". And indeed, Kouji is one day found dead in the bathroom. Because everything was locked from the inside and Kouji had a weak heart, the police decides it was an accidental death, but not everyone is convinced by that, especially because this is awfully similar to the novel Kouji had been writing. A group of interested people, including Aiji and Hisao, decide to deduce who the murderer is, but surprisingly, they all arrive at different conclusions. But this was just the first act in the long tragedy to be found in Nakai Hideo's Kyomu he no Kumotsu ("Offerings to Nothingness", 1964).

Ranking in second in the Tozai Mystery Best 100 list, Kyomu he no Kumotsu has the reputation of being an anti-mystery novel masterpiece. While not as... crazy as Yumeno Kyuusaku's Dogura Magura (at least I can write a normal review for this book!), it is not surprising why this book is considered one of the Three Great Occult books of Japanese mystery/fantasy fiction. Kyomu he no Kumotsu manages to be a great anti-mystery, but also to be a great 'normal' detective, a quadruple locked room mystery nonetheless, at the same time and it works. There is something for everyone here and anyone who can read Japanese, should read Kyomu he no Kumotsu.

The initial set-up reminds of Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case, of course. Like I mentioned in the review of that book, Berkeley often comes close to being an anti-mystery. but always stays on the safe side of the line. Kyomu he no Kumotsu in comparison, crosses the line. And is on crack. Similar to The Poisoned Chocolates Case, the amateur detectives each arrive at their own conclusions; they deduce different tricks, different murderers. And now multiply it by four different locked room murders and you might get an idea of how the deductions and hypotheses of Kyomu he no Kumotsu really feel like offerings to nothingness. This is nothing like the progressive, evolving theories of Ellery Queen, or the blatanly false, but plausible theories presented by the attorneys in Van Madoy's Revoir series: in Kyomu he no Kumotsu, you're presented with an amazing amount of theories for a series of locked room murders, basically posing the infinite possibilities of the imagination, and doubting the possibility of certainty. Heck, at one point, the detectives actually theorize about a locked room murder they think the murderer will commit, figuring they can then solve the murder before it has even happened! The contineous deductions are a bit tiring, but that is the point. Yet, every single one of these deductionsis certainly interesting, and keeps your eyes glued to the pages.

The amateur detectives are also very meta-concious, refering to a whole slew of detective novels, and in particular, the Ten Commandments of Knox and the Twenty Rules of S.S. Van Dine. During their deduction battles, the detectives also, for 'fun' reasons, have to adhere to the famous rules and even have a rule their solutions to the locked rooms must be original: they are not even allowed to use tricks seen in other detective fiction! One character who is not as big a mystery reader as the others is even given a copy of Edogawa Rampo's famous essay A Categorization of Tricks, so he check whether his trick is original! Just consider: here we have writer Nakai Hideo, forcing himself to come up with an original solution for every hypothesis posed by every character, for all four locked rooms! As reader you get mesmerized by this parade of ideas, but to think one man did all this, for one story! In fact, Kyomu he no Kumotsu was written in two parts, and when Nakai initially send in the first part to a competition, the judges thought this novel was a joke novel, because the neverending deductions and the strict following of the Decalogue and Twenty Rules made it seem so absurd. I have to note though that unlike Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolate Case, Kyomu he no Kumotsu always keeps a straight face, a very serious and straight face indeed.

In the end, the story actually denies being a mystery novel. Unlike some anti-mystery novels, this novel does indeed have a proper solution to the whole series of deaths, but the conclusion forms a magnificent ethical criticism on the whole genre. But the great part of this is; you, as the reader, have the freedom of how to read Kyomu he no Kumotsu. Sure, the conclusion sets "The Hinuma Murders" in a different light, but even so, it remains an excellent locked room murder mystery. The criticism on the genre works, because Kyomu he no Kumotsu has taken on the form of a proper detective novel, but at the same time this book shows exactly why detective novels have been so popular. Read it as anit-mystery, read it as a proper mystery novel, it works both ways.

A great locked mystery, a great anti-mystery, an ode to deduction, a criticism on detective fiction. Kyomu he no Kumotsu is an offering to nothingness, and an offering to detective fiction. Definitely a must-read. Oh, and no, I won't be doing Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken anytime soon, I think. I have it here, but to reading all Three Great Occult Books in a short period of time is probably not good for you.

Original Japanese title(s): 中井英夫 『虚無への供物』