Tricky Business

Ah Why Why Ah Tell me why you hold me

"Why" (Color) 

Serializations of novels or short stories have become quite rare globally, but the format is still quite viable in Japan, with many novels/short story collections still being serialized first before they are actually published as books. Or in some cases, stories remain in serialized form. Ooyama Seiichirou is an author who specializes in the short story format, and nearly the entirety of his creative output is serialized in magazines in both physical and digital formats first before they get a book release. I have for example discusses his series like Watson-ryoku/The Watson Force, Alibi-kuzushi Uketamawarimasu/The Clockmaker Detective and Akai Hakubutsukan/The Red Museum, which are classic examples of Ooyama first publishing four or five stories in magazines first, before they are collected as one book, occasionally with Ooyama adding one original story for the book release. However, if you take a look at his (Japanese) Wikipedia, you'll notice some of the stories he's been serializing have not seen a collected release yet. For example, in the past I have reviewed a short story in a series where an actor specializing in villain roles turns out to be a gifted amateur detective, and while Ooyama has already released enough stories in this series to fill a volume, it has not seen a book release yet.

The same holds for the series I am discussing today: Wayama Yawa no 5W1H Jikenbo ("Wayama Yawa's 5W1H Casebook") consist of five stories Ooyama wrote between 2022 and 2023 for the magazine Shousetsu Tripper. The fifth story was in fact also announced in as the "final" story in the serialization, making this a finished story, but even now in 2026, there's no sign of a collected release being considered. And that's a shame, for the five stories have been very entertaining! As the title of the series suggests, each story in this series is centered around the five Ws (Who, what, where, when, why) and the one H (how). The series detective is the titular Wayama Yawa, a young, petite woman in her early twenties, who is absolutely fantastic at her work, with the catch being... that she's working somewhere else every time. For Wayama has nothing but admiration for all the kinds of work to be found in our modern society, so she tries out something each time (and always masters the profession in seconds). Each story follows new characters as they get entangled in mysterious incidents (sometimes criminal, sometimes not), with Wayama somehow getting involved too because of whatever new job she's doing now, and of course solving the case in an instant.

In a way, this series reminds me a bit of Awasaka Tsumao's A Aiichirou series: there, the titular amateur detective isn't the focal character either, as each short story focuses on a different cast, and then Aiichirou happens to get involved too, either in his role as travelling photographer, or because he happens to have found a different job for a period. 

Oh, in case you are wondering what the illustration is featured in this review? It is an illustration that accompanies the title page of the first story of this series as featured in the magazine Shousetsu Tripper, though I don't think it is specifically related to Wayama Yawa no 5W1H Jikenbo. At least, I'm pretty sure Wayama doesn't look like that, and none of the other stories have such illustrations.

The first story, Dochira ga Saki ni Shinda ka? ("Who Died First?"), opens in the hospital, where Futagawa Eisuke, director of Futagawa Funerals, drawing his final breath. Present are his wife Tomiko, his nephew Takashi and his wife, and Nagadate Michio, the corporate solicitor. Not present is Eisuke's younger brother/father of Takashi, Yuusuke. Nagadate is surprised Yuusuke isn't present at his brother's deathbed, but Takashi explains he hasn't managed to reach his father at home. Eisuke and Yuusuke never got along and indeed, before their wealthy father died, he wrote a will that put all of his fortune in a trust: Eisuke and Yuusuke would only inherit his money once they were both respectively 62 and 60 years old, to ensure they wouldn't try to kill each other in order to inherit everything. The two brothers therefore started avoiding each other for many decades, wtith Eisuke becoming a succesful funeral director, while Yuusuke remained an unsuccesful painter. Some years ago, their father's inheritance was finally released, but the brothers remained estranged. The day after Eisuke's death, Yuusuke still can't be reached at home, so Nagadate and Takashi drive to Yuusuke's remote home to check up on him, but there they find... Yuusuke dead in the bath tub. It appears Yuusuke too died yesterday, though the coroner can't determine a specific time of death. However, Nagadate instantly realizes the order of the death of the brothers will become a matter of great importance to Takashi due to Eisuke's will, in which he bequeaths one quarter of his tremendous wealth to Yuusuke and the remainder to his wife Tomiko. If Eisuke died before Yuusuke did, that quarter of his inheritance will first go to Yuusuke, and because of his death, then go to Takashi. However, if Yuusuke died first, Tomiko will inherit everything from her husband, while Takashi will only inherit from his not really well-to-do father. The moment Nagadate tells his new employee Wayama Waya about this conundrum however, she senses they have to work fast to prevent a murder from happening...

This story poses a very interesting problem, and in a rather devious way poses a double problem: the title in English ends up focusing on the "Who?", but of course, from the set-up you'll also see the problem presented is very much about "When?". One thing I have to say about this story that holds for all five stories is that these stories are very short, so it's hard to write a lot about them without giving too much away. I really like this story though! Ooyama actually adds this extra mystery at the end by having Wayama declare she sees a potential murder coming, so that leaves the reader with the question of which of the two brothers died first and also the question of who Wayama thinks is going to be murdered and why. There's some very cleverly hidden misdirection in this short tale, and while I don't always like unanswered questions in mysteries, this one has one I can live with very easily, as it really adds an ironic twist to the theme of the tale.

The second story, Doko de Orita no ka? ("Where Did She Get Off?"), a lawyer Shinpei is trying to locate a potential witness who can prove his client is innocent of a robbery. The problem however is that this witness can't be found, even though in theory, locating the person should be easy: according to the client, at the time of the crime, he ran into a woman dressed in ancient garments, like she had just come from the  Heian period. However, despite the police's best efforts, they can't find the woman nor any other witnesses who saw her that day. Until Shinpei discusses the case with his cousin Yuuna, a college student. It turns out that when Yuuna took the bus back home after her exam yesterday, that woman was already on the bus. Yuuna dozed off and woke up just before her own stop, by which time the woman had already gotten off. Yuuna and Shinpei decide to locate the woman and try to interview the bus driver who drove that bus yesterday, but it just so happens yesterday was that driver's last day before the start of his extended leave today after decades of being dedicated to his job. The new driver has not seen the woman in question unfortunately. This leaves Yuuna and Shinpei getting on and off at every stop between the university and the stop near Yuuna's home to see if they can find any clue leading to the woman, but then the new bus driver, a young woman called Wayama Yawa, has a suggestion for them... A relatively innocent story with no real crime as the main mystery, which adds some variety. There's some funny circular reasoning going regarding the woman: the reason the woman was dressed in very traditional garments is likely related to the bus stop where she got off: do you have to deduce why the woman was dressed the way she was and from there deduce where she got off, or do you have to deduce where she got off, and based on that location deduce why she was dressed like that? It's a bit of both of course. While the woman being dressed like that is a bit strange, I think there's one main hint given in the story that allows for a natural, intuitive guess why she's dressed like that. I am more of a fan of the clues that allow the reader to guess at what stop she got off and why, as that is a multi-layered one that also cleverly includes Wayama herself in the mystery.

In Nani wo Takurandeiru no Ka? ("What Has He Planned?"), the narrator is a former test driver who lost his job after gamble problems, but his skills allowed him to secure a very unique job: a transporter. Transport objects or persons from A to B and he's paid enough to accept the fact that some of these jobs aren't always safe. This time, he's asked to drive a wealthy hotel owner called Kureta Kouzou and one of his possessions from Tokyo to Karuizawa. The object in question is the Cretan Cat, a figure dating from the fifteenth century which is said to bring fortune to those who cherish it, and misfortune to those who don't treat it well. It has changed owners during the last few centuries, and has been the possession of some of very succesful people indeed. Kureta had purchased the Cretan Cat for a pittance after its previous owner died, but now two people are after the Cat: the nephew of the previous owner who sold the Cat to Kureta not knowing its true worth, and a high-ranking police official who might even use the power of the police to get his hands on the Cat in order to climb to the top. The driver and Kureta are joined by a hired bodyguard... a young small woman called Wayama. While the driver first thinks this must be a bad joke, he soon learns the woman is indeed suitable for the job, so the three drive off in a car especially prepared by Kureta, racing to Karuizawa via local roads. They get ambushed along the way, but Wayama not only finds a way out, she also immediately deduces which oppenent is behind the operation. 

Again, while this is a short stories, it's cool to see Ooyama use Wayama in all kinds of scenarios, this time in a more action-oriented story. There's of course a kind of hard-boiled atmosphere at play in this story with the first-person narration and a McGuffin in the form of the Cretan Cat, which again is very unique compared to the "everyday life mystery"-esque setup of the previous story. This story spends quite some time on the set-up of explaining who the narrator is and the backstory of the Cretan Cat, so by the time we get to the ambush, there are really not that many pages left to really develop the mystery. Guessing the mastermind behind the ambush is thus not very difficult simply because of the small scale of the story, though I like the motive behind the ambush: it's not simply greed that drives the culprit, but something more unexpected, despite it being fairly hinted at. Of course, that is the main problem of the story as proven by the title, but because most of the story is more focused on the who and how of the ambush, the question of why/what the goal was doesn't pop up until relatively late.

Naze Mainichi Ippon Dake Kau no Ka? ("Why Does She Buy Just One A Day?") is a variant on the famous real-life story of mystery author Wakatake Nanami: she worked at a bookshop when she was in university, and every Saturday a man would appear with twenty 50-yen coins, exchange those coins for a 1000-yen bill and leave again. She never figured out why that man did that, and her story has become the topic of two anthologies with both professional and amateur detectives providing a possible solution to her problem, and other writers have also utilized variations on this problem, like Ooyama here. The narrator works at Trico Mart, a convenience store and due to a lack of employees, often ends up working a shift all alone. For the last few weeks, a woman has been coming to the story every single weekday morning at forty-past-seven to buy one thing: a pencil priced at 95 yen. It is the only thing she buys every time she comes. The question of why has been weighing on the narrator's mind for some time, so he brings it up to the manager, but he has no idea either. The manager does bring good news: he has hired a new employee, a young woman called Wayama Yawa. When the narrator starts "training" Wayama the following day, he soon realizes she's a very fast learner. When he happens to mention the story of the pencil-buying woman, she asks him to guess why the woman would be doing that. The answer he arrives at, and the answer Wayama arrives at however are quite different. While the set-up is basically simply an inverted version of the 50-yen coin problem, I really like the problem presented. The narrator's main theory is actually quite interesting. Obviously, his one will end up wrong, so it's supposed to be a false theory, but I wonder how many people would have arrived at this one: his theory is built on a certain characteristic that is apparently present in convenience store registers, but I wasn't aware of that! The Wayama theory is of course far more interesting: the first part of her theory is pretty easily guessed, but the "jump" to the latter of her theory is a bit more difficult. Mystery fans might guess this "jump" rather easily as it is a trope that's sometimes seen in mystery fiction, but I think an extra hint to guide the step from the first half to the second half just a bit more cleaner, as making that connection is a bit more difficult without knowledge of that trope. Still, I think it's one of the better stories of the series.

The final story is Kyouki wa Douyatte Idou Shita no Ka? ("How Was The Murder Weapon Moved?") is set on the "Labyrinth", a so-called event train consisting of three carriages. The first and third carriage are normal carriages for passengers, but the second carriage has been completely stripped from its seats and instead, walls have been placed in the carriage to create a labyrinth, challenging passengers to find their way from the first carriage to the third or vice-versa. They change the layout of the labyrinth periodically, providing train fans even more reason to take this train frequently. It's the first time Hirokawa Daisuke is travelling all alone (knowing his parents wouldn't like this) and he's been having the time of his life. He recognizes one of his fellow passengers as Ootsuki Shinichi, the famous puzzle designer who also designed the labyrinth in this train. When the train conductor, a young woman in her twenties, announces someone has thrown paint on one of the walls of the labyrinth and that therefore she asks passengers to not use the labyrinth anymore, Daisuke is relieved he already explored the labyrinth. He dozes off. When he later wakes up, the conductor is here again, checking up on Ootsuki, who is sleeping in the seat in front of Daisuke. Or least, it appeared he was sleeping, but Wayama soon discovers Ootsuki is in fact dead, and the syringe cap lying on the floor seems to suggest a certain method of death. Then a passenger from the third carriage makes his way through the labyrinth, telling Wayama he found a syringe underneath his seat. The police soon discover that syringe was indeed used to give Ootsuki a lethal injection. However, an examination of the security camera in the labyrinth carriage show only Wayama made her way through the labyrinth between the time Ootsuki was last seen alive and then found dead, so how did the murderer move the syringe from the first carriage to the third carriage?

An impossible crime as our last story, and one in a rather fanciful setting too! Having worked on the English translation of Ayatsuji Yukito's The Labyrinth House Murders, I of course have a soft spot for labyrinths and I can't conceal my slight disappointment at the realization  Kyouki wa Douyatte Idou Shita no Ka? didn't feature a map of the labyrinth even if it's not directly needed to solve the mystery. This story is slightly longer than most of the other stories, so it has some more room for fake solutions, which is always appreciated. I think this case actually has one of the more outlandish tricks used in Ooyama's books (who is usually fairly realistic, and focuses more on the logic needed to solve the problem), so that actually came as a pleasant surprise, and it really helps sell the unique location. Still, it wouldn't be an Ooyama if the trail leading to the solution wasn't mostly built around logical deductions based on the crime scene and the actions taking by the people involved: a lot of theorizing is done on the reason why the syringe was moved to the third carriage after killing Ootsuki in the first place, and it serves as a first step towards the solution, which is clever, though it immediately points at one single character as the culprit, so it's a bit of a double-edged sword.

By now, you should know that I thoroughly enjoyed this series by Ooyama, and it's such a shame it hasn't been collected yet as a volume, as it can be difficult to obtain the stories now, as you can only find them in the magazines where they were serialized. I really like how unlike a lot of Ooyama's other series, we don't have a series detective (or "detective enabler", in the case of Watson-ryoku) who gets involved in most of their cases because of their profession/expertise (police detectives, alibi-cracking expert, locked room expert): Wayama can be in any role, and her stories can be about anything, from an impossible crime to a relatively cute story about where someone got off the bus and within these five stories, we already got a wide variety of characters, settings and problems. It would be so cool to see this series continued in the future...

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎　「どちらが先に死んだのか？」/「どこで降りたのか？」/「何を企んでいるのか？」/「なぜ毎日一本だけ買うのか？」/「凶器はどうやって移動したのか？」

The Problem of the Red Rose

"There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."

"A Study in Scarlet" 

Unsurprisingly, I have quite a few mystery books that have red as the main color on the cover. I wonder what color is the rarest though. Something like purple?

Terada Satoshi is a young detective assigned to the prestigious homicide division of the Metropolitan Police Department with a bright future awaiting him.... until he foolishly left confidential files at the house of a suspect during a house search. The woman living with the suspect posted the files online, making a laughing stock of the police, questioning their capabilities of actually conducting a criminal investigation. Terada wasn't a scapegoat, but the actual person who made the grave mistake of course, so he was severely punished for the deed: he was removed from the homicide division and effectively demoted by his assignment to the Red Museum. Following the example of the Black Museum of Scotland Yard, the MPD has its own Red Museum, where files and evidence concerning cases of which the statute of limitations have already passed are stored in the archives beneath the old brick mansion in Mitaka, Tokyo. His pride couldn't have been hurt worse, as gone are the days of investigating serious crimes, and left are just boxes filled with old evidence waiting for Terada to stick a nice label with a QR code on them so they can be registered into a database. The same old, day after day after day. 

The Red Museum is headed by Hiiro Saeko, an attractive woman but rather emotionally detached, and often referred to as the Snow Woman. Hiiro's rank is superintendent and she's supposed to be in the elite 'career path' within the police, so Terada suspects she must have really messed up too in the past to be stuck here despite her career history, staring at dead cases all day. However, soon after Terada's assignment to the Red Museum, Hiiro orders Terada to look into an old unsolved case they are registering into the database. Once he reports his findings to her, Hiiro manages to solve the case and identify the culprit decades after the murder happened! It turns out that while the Red Museum is storing away old cases, Hiiro doesn't consider all cases dead, and she goes over every case they register, solved or not, to see if she can uncover the real truth. In Ooyama Seiichirou's short story collection Akai Hakubutsukan ("The Red Museum", 2015), we follow Hiiro and Terada as they tackle five cases from the past... and the present.

In 2016, Akai Hakubutsukan had a live-action adaptation, which I reviewed back then. It was a feature-length special, adaptating multiple stories and in the end, I wasn't too impressed because it felt a bit chaotic. But on the other hand, I am a huge fan of Ooyama Seiichirou, which is partially connected to the fact I love short mystery stories, and Ooyama's a master in that form. As I have read most of Ooyama's work already (yes, I know I haven't written the review for the second Watson-ryoku yet...), it was just a matter of time I would get started on the Red Museum series. Actually, besides the television special, I had actually already read one of the stories collected in this first volume of the series, but for some reason it appears I never reviewed it, as I can't find a review of it on my blog. But as the third volume of the series released a few months ago, I knew it was time to finally get properly started on this series.

Pan no Minoshirokin ("Ransom for Bread") is the opening story. It was originally titled Akai Hakubutsukan ("The Red Museum") and is also about twice as long as all the other stories, so it was basically a pilot which was later extended into a full series. As such, it spends relatively much time explaining how Terada came to work at the Red Museum, his first impressions of the cold head of the museum, his meeting with the two other staff members of the museum and portraying Terada as someone who really is proud of having been in the homicide division, looking down at Hiiro as someone who probably has never conducted any real investigation herself and only being in a managerial role. Things of course change with this first case. Terada is sent to transfer evidence from the Shinagawa Police Station to the Red Museum for filing: the evidence is from a case that occured in 1999, when the director of the big bread supplier Nakajima Bread was murdered. Someone had been tampering with products of the company, introducing nails into the bread, which of course led to a huge drop in sales. The blackmailer then sent a letter to the director, demanding for a fortune if he wanted it to stop. The director was to bring the money in a suitcase by car, and he'd be contacted via his phone installed in his car. The police was of course not to be involved, but they were secretly informed and a police detective was hiding in the car's trunk, which allowed him to communicate with the director and maintain radio contact with the supporting detectives. The director was led to an abandoned manor in the forest. When he didn't appear after a while, the detective in the trunk sent supporting detectives in the house as he too entered the building, but they only found the suitcase with money in the house, and the director gone. While they did find an underground passage leading away from the house, they couldn't understand why the money had been left behind. Later, the director's dead body was found elsewhere, making this a murder case. The police soon suspected the ransom money had just been a ruse, an excuse to camouflage the real goal of murdering the director, but the person with the best motive for doing so had an iron-clad alibi and the case was left unsolved.

For some reason I thought this had been adapted as part of the first television adaptation, but I guess they only did the introductionary part and not the actual mystery. Which is a shame, as this is a great opening story. In a way, it reminds me a lot of the short story Y no Yuukai ("The Kidnapping of Y"), the last story in Ooyama's debut book Alphabet Puzzlers. It too deals with a case set in the past, an abduction case (a child in Y no Yuukai, the director who disappears from the house in this story), someone is ordered to drive around in a car as they are directed to deliver ransom money and the money ending up not being retrieved by the culprit, leading to speculations to their real goal. The mechanics behind the case and the way they are solved are completley different though. Pan no Minoshirokin cleverly disguises the main driving dynamics of its plot as a different kind of mystery, hiding the true solution behind a well-designed veil of deceit. Once you recognize the mystery for what it really is, everything falls nicely in place, showing the tight plotting Ooyama is known for. If there's one thing I would fault the story for, it's that it doesn't make as clever use of the series' premise as some of the other stories in the same collection: while the conclusion might feel more impactful because the story took place ago in the past, a lot of how the main mystery would've been solved, would have been the same whether the story had been told real-time (i.e. in 1999) or as it is now, as an account of something that happed long ago. I feel other stories, like the second and the last one in this volume, utilize the concept of these all being old cases to better effect.

Fukushuu Nikki ("Diary of Revenge") is Ooyama's take on a device seen in both Nicholas Blake's The Beast Must Die and Norizuki Rintarou's Yoriko no Tame ni ("For Yoriko"), being about the diary of someone planning to commit murder out of revenge. In fact, these three stories, written by different people at different times, form a kind of series: the diary of Yoriko no Tame ni starts the day after the diary in The Beast Must Die ends, and Fukushuu Nikki´s diary starts after Yoriko no Tame ni's diary ends! The diary in question is of Takami Kyouichi, a student who vows revenge for the death of his ex-girlfriend Maiko. The two had broken up some months ago, but one day, he suddenly got a call from Maiko who wanted to see him. When he went to her place, her body was found lying in the garden outside of her apartment building, having apparently leapt to her death from her balcony, but Kyouchi suspects there's more behind her death and based on evidence found in her apartment and the fact she had been pregnant when she died, he theorizes Maiko had been murdered by her current boyfriend, who wanted to get rid of her and the baby the easy way. Kyouichi feverishly starts to look for clues to identify this boyfriend so he can kill him, detailing his thinking process in his diary. After he managed to execute his plan, his diary was removed during a burglary in his apartment building and the diary was sent to the police, who of course wanted to have a talk with him: he died in a car crash while running away. 

Both Terada and Hiiro read through the diary, which seems like an open-and-shut case as the murderer confessed to every detail, from motive to how he planned the murder, in his diary, but to Terada's surprise, Hiiro seems dubious about the "truth" behind this case, as she notes a few strange discrepancies within the diary's account. The result is an excellently plotted tale of mystery, where Ooyama managed to plant so many clues and foreshadowing in a surprisingly short diary: the diary hides an intricately designed plot that, despite the diary's short length, allows for clever red herrings, multiple solutions and a neat conclusion to it all. I actually recently did go through The Beast Must Die in anticipation of this story, but I liked the clewing in this story so much better and the way the plot is constructed so much better, being much closer to the type of mystery I like (Ellery Queen-like plotting).  

Shi ga Kyouhansha wo Wakatsu made ("Till Death Do The Conspirators Part") is about a murder exchange, a trope very dear to Norizuki Rintarou, so these two stories do make it feel like Ooyama had him in mind while working on this book. Terada is out driving when he becomes witness to a tragic incident involving a truck hitting a car. The lone driver of the car is hit fatally, but in his dying words, he makes a confession to Terada. Twenty-five years ago, he was involved in a murder exchange: he wanted to kill somebody, but he'd become the main suspect, so he swapped his murder with someone else, allowing both of them to obtain perfect alibis for 'their' murders. While the man manages to explain they committed the murders one week after another, Terada unfortunately couldn't make out the names the dying man was trying to convey and by the time the emergency services arrived, the man had already passed away. The man is easily identified by his wife and his driver's license and so Terada and Hiiro start looking into a death that occurred twenty-five years ago in his circle, for which he would've been a suspect if not for a perfect alibi. They learn his wealthy uncle had been murdered, supporting the claim of the murder exchange and leading to the next question: who killed the uncle and who was the person they ordered a hit on?

This was the main plot of the (first) live-action special, but whereas I remember nothing about the plot from the special, I think it is a great story here. The story certainly starts out in an open manner: you know there have been two murders twenty-five years ago, one being on the rich uncle, but Terada's investigations into murders in the same time window lead to two possible candidates, where someone was murdered and there had been an obvious suspect in the possession of a perfect alibi. Here the fact this series is about cases set long in the past helps develop the mystery, as what makes this mystery hard to solve is the fact you can hardly expect someone to remember what they did on a certain day at a certain time twenty-five years ago, and how are you going to prove that? So it's neigh impossible to prove either of those suspects committed the uncle murder, and yet... Hiiro is not the type to give up easily and despite these setbacks, she boldly proposes a theory that proves with whom the traffic accident victim swapped his murders and how the other murder was committed. At this point of the series, Terada is still hoping he can one day return to the homicide division and as he was the one to hear the dying man's last words, he also wants to show Hiiro he's a better investigator than she'll ever be due to his hands-on experience, but of course, we all know who's better at this...

Honoo ("Flames") is a relatively short story and the one I know I had read before, but for some reason I never wrote a review for it. Hiiro draws Terada's attention to an essay written by a photographer, whose family died in a fire: when she was in elementary school, she had gone off on a school trip, only to return an orphan. It was only later she heard the horrible truth: her aunt (sister of her mother) was going to stay at their home for a day because she and her boyfriend had a horrible breakup and they needed to talk things over to calm things down. Her mother, pregnant with a sibling, and her father had also been present. A fire broke out and the burnt bodies of her father, her mother and her aunt were found in the ruins. It turned out that all three of them had been poisoned before they were consumed by the fire, leading to the conclusion the jilted boyfriend killed everyone after their chat went wrong. The case was never solved, but Hiiro seems quite interested in the account of the now-adult photographer about her childhood. As said, this story is relatively short and features few characters, making it a bit easy to guess how everything falls into place eventually, but it is a neatly constructed mystery, with a lot of subtle clewing. This is the second time I read the story, but it only made me realize how well the story is written, as so many little passages and comments take on a completely different meaning once you know the truth.

Shi ni Itaru Toi ("A Question Unto Death") has a great premise: the Red Museum is asked to release the files and evidence on the death of a man found near the Tamagawa River twenty-six years ago to the homicide division of the MPD, as the exact same murder has occured: from the location of the body to the location of the wound, down to the fact a blood sample of an unknown person (the culprit?) was left on the clothes of the victim. The police fear the same murderer has striked again and thus need the old files to compare, and Hiiro of course hands over the files, as she too recognizes the eerie similarities between the cases. However, Hiiro is then approached by an old friend in Internal Affairs, who wants Hiiro on the case too: because the new body is too similar to how the body was discovered twenty-six years ago and there's no reason why the original murderer would go such lengths to replicate their own crime, he suspects the new murderer might be just a copycat, and more importantly, a copycat with precise knowledge of the police investigation twenty-six years ago, as the new murder also mirrors the old murder in ways not reported in the media and only known to people involved in the investigation. Hiiro accepts the task and starts investigating both the murders in the past and the present, while the homicide investigation too tries to find a connection between the two cases, focusing on the blood samples found at both crime scenes.

And as I am writing this, I learn there was actually a second adaptation of this series, and that second installment was based on this last story. This story introduces an interesting way to have Hiiro involved in an on-going investigation while also keeping her firmly tied to the work of the Red Museum. The mystery basically revolves around the matter of why the two murders are nearly identical down to every point: if it was the original murderer coming back again after twenty-six years, why would they mirror their own crime down to such detail, even down to something that obviously hadn't been planned originally (the bloodstain left on the victim)? On the other hand, if it's someone copying the murder, how did they get hold of such details and once again, what is the goal in mimicking an old unsolved crime, especially as it wasn't even a high-profile crime (i.e. not the type of murder to attract copycat killers in the first place)? The answer Ooyama has prepared for this question is fantastic: he provides the murderer with an incredibly original motive for this mystery to occur, and while it does require one character to be not quite sane for this story to work, the payoff is great, with a twist that will take the reader by surprise, not only because it's so unexpected, but alo because it's surprisingly well-clewed despite of the out-of-left-field-ness. This is the kind of surprise I'm reading detective stories for!

Akai Hakubutsukan shows once again why Ooyama is so well appreciated as a master of the short mystery story. All the stories except for the pilot/first story are pretty short in page length, but he always manages to pack the plots full with clues and foreshadowing that lead to surprising twists, all the while without telegraphing the solutions too much. I think the series works best when it makes actual use of the fact we're investigating old cases now, with limited options to doing reinvestigations. As I mentioned before, the third volume was released late 2025, but given how much I liked this first volume, I think catching up won't take long.

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎『赤い博物館』:「パンの身代金」/「復讐日記」/「死が共犯者を分かつまで」/「炎」/「死に至る問い」 

While the Clock Ticked

 Are you death or paradise?

 Now you'll never see me cry

There's just no time to die

"No Time to Die" (Billie Eilish) 

Disclosure: I translated Ayatsuji Yukito's The Decagon House Murders, The Mill House Murders, The Labyrinth House Murders and of course, The Clock House Murders.

In 2024, Hulu released a wonderfully produced live-action adaptation of The Decagon House Murders. It just so happened I actually was going to meet author Ayatsuji Yukito the day after it was released, so I binged the series the night before, so I could actually talk about it to him. Like many others, I too was curious how they were going to actually film the book, as it is a very difficult work to adapt for certain media, but the result was honestly really, really good. So when I learnt last year they were going to do an adaptation of The Clock House Murders in 2026, I was thrilled: given how good The Decagon House Murders was, I have only high expectations for this new release, which was released this very week. Obviously, The Clock House Murders is a book dear to me: not only because it's easily one of my favorite books in the series, I also did the English translation of the novel, so I spent a lot of time on, and with the book. 

The live-action series releases today (Friday 27th), so I haven't seen the series yet at the time of writing this post. While they released the complete The Decagon House Murders series on the release day two years ago, this time they are splitting the release across two batches, with the first six episodes presenting the main problem released this week, and the last two episodes, with the solution, releasing next month. So I might binge everything next month in one go. 

To celebrate the release of this adaptation, the literary magazine Shousetsu Gendai (published by Kodansha, the Japanese publisher behind Ayatsuji's House books) featured a The Clock House Murders special in its March 2026 issue, with not only interviews with Ayatsuji, Arisugawa Alice and one of the main actors of the series, the magazine also featured no less than five (!) original "House"-inspired mystery short stories, written by as many authors. 

The first story featured is Aosaki Yuugo's Kubisogiyama no Kaiten Yashiki ("The Revolving Manor on Mt. Kubisogi"). The titular Revolving Manor is one of the six manors built by the legendary architect Kurotsubo Shinku. This particular building stands on Mt Kubisogi in the Hyogo Prefecture, and is best imagined as one of those revolving restaurants that offer a 360-degree panoramic view. The "entrance" of the house is actually just an elevator shaft: the elevator that leads up to the circular house built on top of that shaft tower. The house consist of three "rings". The fixed outer ring is the outer wall of the building, and is made of acrylic: the whole outer wall functions as a window, offering a panoramic view. The middle ring is built right against this outer window/window and holds most of the rooms, liking a sitting room, study and bedroom. This ring slowly revolves clock-wise, meaning each room not only has an amazing view, this view actually changes depending on the time! The inner "ring" is the static center of the house around which the second ring revolves, holding the elevator entrance, bathroom and kitchen.

The house is currently owned by Nishikubo Hiroyuki, who runs a make-up company. He and his wife are visited by a crew from a magazine on architecture for an article on the house. The crew are to stay for the night at this unique creation by the enigmatic architect Kurotsubo. The members all stay in a different room. The following morning however, a gigantic hole is found to have been carved out of the acrylic window. It's clear it wasn't just broken by accident, but someone actually bothered to open a hole in the outer wall. Down on the ground, at the base of the elevator shaft, they find one of the crew members lying dead, seemingly having fallen through the hole down the tower. Everyone is perplexed by the situation: did someone kill him and then cut a hole in the window to dump the body downstairs? But what purpose could that have?

This story is actually a sequel to an earlier Aosaki story, which features another house (The Glass Manor) by the architect Kurotsubo. I have the book, but I haven't read it yet. But it's no problem if you start here. The house in this story is actually pretty "normal" all things considered: I can easily imagine someone wanting a revolving house in the mountains with the complete outer wall acting as a window so you can always enjoy the view! It's not a particularly long story, which is why I was surprised Aosaki manages to pack quite a lot into the story, from a secondary storyline involving the narrator to a few (very short) wrong theories and then we have the actual explanation of what happened and it's... pretty hilarious if you visualize what happened and how the victim found their death. It's not mind-blowing good, but I do like the story for its subdued silliness and I'd love to see a live-action adaptation of this! I think Aosaki could even have gotten away with just that one main idea, so I do appreciate it how he decided to still add some more story details that weren't that necessary.

Ibuki Amon's Tsubaki Fujin no Subarashii Yakata ("Madam Tsubaki's Wonderful Home") is a historical mystery, as we may expect from Ibuki. Set in Manchukuo, we follow private detective Tsukisamu Sanshirou (also appearing in this collection), who is hired to find the brother of a young woman. When their father died, the whole family fortune was stolen by their uncle. The young woman and her mother managed to find some work to earn a humble living, but her brother ran away. He became a robber and eventually made it to the position of captain within his gang of robbers: his robbers already took revenge on their uncle. His sister had not seen her brother in a decade, but recently got a letter saying he had been wounded and was now recovering in a strict medical institution run by a Mrs. Tsubaki: patients aren't allowed to write or receive any letters, but he managed to get one of the suppliers to deliver a letter to his sister for him. He would write again later on, but she never got more news from him and when she asked the deliveryman to go ask at the institution, he was found out by guards and beaten to death. Tsukisamu happens to know Mrs Tsubaki from his time working for the railway ministry. He decides to pay the institution a visit, and is shown a truly wonderful place where wounded Manchurians, from criminals, to simple women and children, are slowly nursed back to health with all the love and care they need... but Tsukisamu knows there's something wrong about the house and the intentions of Mrs. Tsubaki.

I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a bit disappointed when I realized the "house" in this story was not as important as in the other stories in this feature: the focus of the mystery lies more on the intentions of Mrs. Tsubaki and why she is running this hospital. As one can expect from Ibuki, it's a great historical mystery though, set very firmly in the time period and setting of the story, which is of course also fairly original as you don't have many present-day mystery writers anymore who use Manchukuo as a setting. The motive for Mrs. Tsubaki's actions is set-up wonderfully and eventually, Tsukisamu arrives at a heinous plot hiding within Tsubaki's seemingly wonderful hospital. Less of a "add-clue 1-and-clue 2-to-arrive-at-answer 3" mystery, more of a "given-these-remarks, can-you-imagine-why-someone-would-do-this?" type of mystery, but still well-done.

Kesshoukan no Satsujin ("The Crystal House Murders") by Ooyama Seiichirou is set in November of 1990 and first introduces the reader to a group of friends, consisting of Ryouta, Kouji, Shuuichi, Rikka, Maki and Satomi. They are staying at the Crystal House, a small hexagon-shaped hotel in Hokkaido. They have been friends since primary school, and still meet once in a while even now they're all adults. The Crystal House is owned by Ryouta and not in business just yet, but he's giving his friends a sneak peek at his new business adventure. The friends have a pleasant night in the Crystal House, surrounded by nothing but nature and snow, but the following morning, Rikka is found murdered in her room: her head's been bashed in and for some reason, her left hand has been cut off. Rikka has always been the mysterious one of the group, with strange powers of clairvoyance, but is that why she got killed? When they try to call the police, they find the line's dead. Is the murderer someone from outside, or is it one of the friends, and why was the victim's hand cut off? 

This is probably my favorite story in the feature, partially because the story feels the most like a story inspired directly by Ayatsuji's House series, with a few cool nods like the cut-off hand, as well as a great set-up of the narrative: the tale actually starts with a news report detailing how the Crystal House went up in flames and how everyone but one person staying at the hotel had died: one person made it out alive and was saved by the emergency services, but is seemingly suffering from amnesia, with no recollection of the events that led to the deaths of all the people in the hotel. This "book-ending" mystery of who the survivor actually is, and what their role was in the deadly events that occured inside the Crystal House starting with Rikka's death, add a great extra layer to the mystery. The mystery of the cut-off hand, as said, invokes a few moments from Ayatsuji's house series, but the way Ooyama develops this clue feels much more Queenian than Ayatsuji would generally do. So even though the "prop" is the same, Ooyama definitely makes best use of his own expertise, using the cut-off hand for a proper physical-clue-based chain of deduction. I really like what he does with the Crystal House here as a setting too, giving it a unique vibe, and the whole tale feels really complete.

Shasendou Yuuki's Goumonkan no Satsujin ("The Torture House Murders") has the WeTuber Kugi Hikage and her assistant visiting the Torture House, as Kugi is best known for visiting houses with a nasty background stories. Twenty years ago, Horikoshi Toutarou, the original owner of the house kidnapped a few people to torture them to death in his basement with his collection of torture device. One victim managed to escape eventually and notified the police, leading to Horikoshi's arrest. The house, now known as the Torture House, was later bought by Nukube Ikurou and he had an exact copy of the Torture House built next to the original. He has preserved the original Torture House and has a caretaker there keep an eye on things, while he lives in the copy. As this copy houses his collection of antique wares, he has dubbed it the Nostalgia House. He has invited a few people interested in the Torture House and the torture devices kept in the basement to view them, with Kugi as one of his guests. The tour is to be held the next day, but when Nukube doesn't appear in front of the Nostalgia House the next morning as agreed upon, the group crosses a snow-covered field to head for the Torture House themselves. The caretaker there states he did see his master come to the Torture House yesterday. He had assumed Nukube had returned to the Nostalgia House for the night, but the complete absence of footprints in the snow suggest Nukube never left the Torture House. When the group enter the dark basement, they find a dead Nukube, who has been clearly tortured to death, with his joints and bones broken. Unfortunately for the caretaker, it seems that he's the main suspect as he was the only other person in the Torture House last night.

Setting-wise, I really love this story, as the backstory of the Torture House is really cool, as well as the idea of a Nostalgia House full of weird, antique curiosities. It's why I am a bit disappointed that due to the way this story was structured, one person stands out a bit too much as the only viable suspect, which immediately limits the ways the murder could've been committed. The story does make cool use of the torture theme though. I also like the idea of how Kugi manages to trap the murderer in principle, but the way it is written now, the clue depends very much on trivia, while I think it could probably have been written in a way to be a bit fairer towards the reader, if they happen to not have certain knowledge.

The last story, Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken ("The Black Arrow Mansion Murder Case") by Takemoto Kenji, is one I'm not going to discuss in detail. The story is about the detective Norimuzu Rintarou who's asked to look into the disappearance of the owner of the Black Arrow Mansion in Saga Prefecture. Some readers will probably already have realized it by now, but this is a full-on parody of Oguri Mushitarou's Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, one of the most notorious anti-mystery novels from Japan. Takemoto goes full throttle here, doing not only direct mirrors to scenes from that book, but the story is also absolutely brimming with countless of literary references that may or may not be real and characters who don't speak like humans but like... well, I guess, like AI that tries to sound smart and well-read. The story is basically only fun if you know the original Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken and recognize what this story is mirroring exactly. For Takemoto does that really good, it feels as frustrating to read as the original! (Considering the author's intent, this is praise).

Overall, I think this The Clock House Murders feature in Shousetsu Gendai was pretty fun though, and it's great seeing all these authors doing a take on a house-based mystery. I'm looking forward to watching the live-action adaptation too. If you haven't already though, please consider reading the English translation of The Clock House Murders too, as it's really a great mystery novel!

Original Japanese title(s): 青崎有吾『馘殺山の回転屋敷』/伊吹亜門『椿夫人のすばらしい家』 / 大山誠一郎『結晶館の殺人』/ 斜線堂有紀『拷問館の殺人』 / 竹本健治『黒矢館殺人事件』

The Chocolate-Covered Contest

"Life is like a box of chocolates."
"Forest Gump"

Oh, wow, are we going from the yellow/brown covers for this series to blue? I love the art!

It's been over a year since I last discussed Ooyama Seiichirou's wonderful The Clockmaker Detective series here, which is perhaps better known nowadays as known as Alibi Kuzushi Uketamawarimasu ("Alibi Cracking, At Your Service"), which is not only the title of the books, but also of the live-action drama series. In January 2024, Ooyama started the third "season" of this series with the online publication of Tokeiya Tantei to Shinnen no Alibi ("The Clockmaker Detective and A New Year's Alibi"), the first story to be included in what should become the third short story collection. It took over a year for Ooyama to publish the second story, but it has now finally arrived,and you can read it for free on the J-Novel site of the publisher (the first story of this season is also still available). The basic premise of each story is of course the same: the unnamed narrator is a police detective who frequents Mitani Clockmakers, which is run by Mitani Tokino, a young woman who inherited the shop from her grandfather. As per her grandfather's instructions, she also offers an alibi cracking service, because alibis are are "time-related" and therefore part of a clockmaker's work. While he understands that passing on confidential information pertaining to police investigations to Tokino is probably not quite legal, and that it could cost him his job, it is also true that Tokino has managed to solve each of the problems he has brought to her, and that her exploits have helped the police immensely, even if his co-workers think it's him who has solved all these cases. Another reason for our narrator to visit Tokino frequently is the woman herself, as he's quite smitten with her and is trying to woo her.

The stories in this third collection seem to be themed after special events this time, for after the murder on New Year's Eve in the first story, this time we have a Valentine's Day-themed story with Tokeiya Tantei to Doku-iri Chocolates no Alibi ("The Clockmaker Detective and the Alibi of the Poisoned Chocolates"). The narrator this time arrives at the shop with some souvenirs from Kyoto for Tokino: his current investigation had brought him to the ancient capital, but with no clear results, he now has turn to Tokino for help. Hirata Yuuichi, a day trader, was been sent a box of poisoned chocolates and he died immediately after consuming one of them: the parcel had just been delivered, and soon after the housekeeper had given the box to Hirata, she heard how her master toppled loudly on the floor, convulsing in pain and by the time the ambulance arrived, it was already too late. The shipping documents on the parcel had been sent by Oohara Arisa, living at an address in Kyoto. The box also came with a letter, stating the chocolates, Miracle du Février, were a Valentine's Day gift. Because it seems a bit unlikely the poisoner would send the chocolates under her own name, the police don't believe the sender information, but when they call the number noted in the sender information section, they are indeed connected to Arisa, who does know Hirata, as she's in his day trading course, but she denies having sent chocolates to him.

The police do investigate her just to be sure, but it seems Arisa can't be the poisoner, as she has an alibi for when the chocolates were posted. The chocolates had been sent via the Kujira courier service, and by tracing the shipping slips, they trace the parcel back to a convenience store in Kyoto: it had been sent from that convenience store on the seventh of Feburary, with instructions for the parcel to be delivered on Valentine's Day. The chocolates meanwhile came from a specialty shop that makes special Valentine's Day chocolates each year, and they start selling at 10 am on the seventh of February. Because all nine chocolates in the box had been injected with poison, the police thinks the box of chocolates could have been posted at the convenience store at about twenty-five past ten at the soonest, considering the time needed to prepare the chocolates and moving from the chocolate shop to the convenience store. Arisa however boarded the Shinkansen train to Fukuoka at 10:32, meeting with a friend inside said train and they were travelling together the following three days. This makes it impossible for her to have sent those chocolates. However, as the investigations continues, the police learns Arisa has been deliberately hiding information from them that gives her a very clear motive for wanting to kill Hirata. But how could she have posted the box of chocolates at a convenience store at Kyoto's Matsugasaki Sakuragi-cho and appear minutes later in the Shinkansen train at Kyoto Station?

I thought Matsugasaki Sakuragi-cho sounded strangely familiar, but that's a part of town I passed by relatively often when I was living in Kyoto! At least, it's basically on one side of the river, while I went almost daily shopping on the other side of the river. And am I overthinking things, or is the name of Inspector Ayuta of the Kyoto police a reference to Ayukawa Tetsuya? You know, Ayukawa ('kawa' being 'river') and Ayuta ('ta' being 'field')...

Anyway, this is an interesting problem! While all of the stories in this series revolve around the seemingly obvious culprit having an alibi for the time of the crime, this is a rather interesting alibi, for the alibi revolves around the time the murder "weapon" was sent to the receiver/victim. Once a parcel is signed and been placed in care of the courier (and in this case, in the care of the convenience store until the courier comes and picks it up), you generally don't have any chance to tamper with it anymore. In this case, the parcel was also sent a full week before it would be delivered, and with a box of special chocolates that were first sold on that very day, so it doesn't appear like the suspect could've tampered with the parcel after she had left it at the convenience store, if she's the murderer. Oh, and it should be clear by now, but this is of course also Ooyama's take on Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case, taking its basic premise, but not (really) doing the multiple solution thing. I really like this problem, while I do think that when a certain fact is mentioned, the reader will likely be pushed very close to the solution, though a lot of the details are not that easy to solve.

In fact, I really, really love one of the clues in this story, one I really think is brilliantly hidden. I had in fact noticed that Ooyama had mentioned something, but at the time I thought that was just a cute detail he had added to flesh out the world, only for that detail to be used in the solution in a very clever way... With a story so much about moving objects, it seems almost silly I completely overlooked that one moving object. Absolutely a killer clue. The way Ooyama uses a rather cliche trope for an alibi trick to create a rather surprising "hidden alibi trick" is also very clever, and it really shows Ooyama has been specializing in these stories for some years now, as he's able to cook with familiar, sometimes even overcooked ingredients and still come up with something fresh.

But now I am wondering what the next story will be. Is it going to be a March story? One story for each month, something like Tokino's Labours of Hercules? But a project like that would probably span two volumes instead of one, similar to Norizuki Rintarou's Horoscope stories, considering the length of the previous books... Anyway, I sure hope the next story won't take over a year to come and that Ooyama'll pick up the pace from now on!

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎「時計屋探偵と毒入りチョコレートのアリバイ」 

Triple Death

"Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope... Our four... no... Amongst our weapons... Amongst our weaponry... are such elements as fear, surprise... "

"Monty Python's Flying Circus"

The Honkaku Suiri ("Orthodox Deductive Fiction") and Shin Honkaku Suiri ("New Orthodox Deductive Fiction") anthologies were published between 1993 and 2009 by Kobunsha and were conceptualized as a place where amateur writers could send in their short stories to: publisher Tokyo Sogensha currently has the Sogen Mystery Short Story Award (formerly known as the Mysteries! Newcomer Award) as a counterpart to the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award, which focuses on novel, but that didn't exist yet back in 1993. The original series was edited by Ayukawa Tetsuya, and the Shin series by Nikaidou Reito and supervised by Ayukawa Tetsuya (until he passed away in 2002) and in the fifteen or so years the anthology existed, a lot of people were selected who'd later on become well-known mystery writers, like Mitsuda Shinzou, Ooyama Seiichirou, Ookura Takahiro, Kirisha Takumi, Kuroda Kenji, Tsukatou Hajime and more. Interestingly, I don't think most of them consider having their stories published in these anthologies as "their debut moment", even though it'd be their first "formal" publication. In a very far-away past, I read the last Shin Honkaku Suiri anthology, which was actually one of the earliest books I read in Japanese.

Shin Honkaku Suiri 3 ("New Orthodox Deductive Fiction 3") was published in 2003 and features the subtitle The Heirs to Villa Lilac, a reference to one of Ayukawa's novels. This third entry in the Shin series would also be the final volume supervised by Ayukawa, as he passed away a few months before this book was published (I assume his work had already been finished by then). While I usually review all, or at least most, stories in an anthology, I'll only discuss three of the eight stories (+ essays) included in this book this time: not because the others are bad, but because I was borrowing this book and only had time to read three of them before returning it! So I might return to this other stories in this book in the future, but that's no promise, though going by the quality of the stories I did read, I probably really should read them.

This book features the first time Onuki Kazaki was ever selected for the anthology, but interestingly enough, they got selected three times: three of the eight stories in this book are penned by them. The book also opens with one of them: Tomurai Tetsudou ("The Mourning Railway"), a title reminiscent of Oosaka Keikichi's Tomurai Kikansha ("The Mourning Locomotive"). The story opens with Kasuga Karin sitting all alone on a bench at the station of Inone, a small village. Earlier that day, she attended the funeral of an uncle and was now on her way back home, when she fell asleep in the train. When she woke up, she thought she was at the station Noboribou, where she needed to transfer, so she jumped out. Unfortunately, she got out one station too early. Because it was the late afternoon, she figured more trains would follow... only they didn't, and the busses to Noboribou had also stopped. By the time she figured that out, it was already night and rain had started to fall, making it dangerous for her to walk the way to Noboribou and because the village of Inone is so small and surrounded by the forest, no cars pass by to pick her up. A young man approaches her suddenly and quickly guesses why she's sitting with such a hopeless expression on her face at the station. He offers to pay for her stay at the inn where he'll also be staying. She's a bit suspicious of him, but ultimately accepts his offer. She learns he's interested in a terrorist who's been bombing train lines lately that are financially unviable. Rumors have it they might strike on the train line connecting Inone and Noboribou. That evening, Karin notices the young man went out in the night, and returned... with a bomb. What is he exactly and what is his true motive for helping Karin?

Like I mentioned, the title invokes the famous Oosaka story, and in a way, it has a similar set-up in the way there's no clear mystery in this story. The young man acts suspiciously, but Karin can't figure out whether he's the bomber or not, but the story doesn't focus on Karin trying to investigate that: the story continues the next day, when everyone has to take public transport to Noboribou, and it's then the story reveals its true nature. It's a very clever plot, that might remind people of Father Brown stories, A Aiichirou stories or The Nine Mile Walk, where you don't really know what's going on mystery-wise, until it's suddenly revealed something sinister was going on, based on clues that seem very vague at first. The revelation in Tomurai Tetsudou is brilliant, and really dark, and I can definitely see why it was selected for publication. Cleverly plotted, and theme-wise very, very memorable.

Sonoda Shuuichirou is an author who is featured in several of the (Shin) Honkaku Suiri volumes, but he never made a major debut as a professional writer, nor have his stories been collected in a single collection. I suspect he was a Kyoto University Mystery Club member, but am not 100% sure. I loved the story I read by him in the last Shin Honkaku Suiri anthology, so I was very curious to see what the story in this volume would be about. Dokusha Yo Azamukarurunakare ("Reader, Don't Be Fooled") starts with a segment where the narrator Sonoda discusses Chesterton's The Invisible Man with his friend Kurashina, a huge mystery buff who thinks very little of the trick of that story. When challenging Kurashina to come up with something better himself, Kurashina admits he already has a similar, but better idea in his mind, and soon after, Kurashina presents Sonoda with a whodunnit script with a Challenge to the Reader, explaining his story tackles the same themes of The Invisible Man, and challenging Sonoda to find the culprit.

The story-within-a-story is set at the building of the Engineering faculty of a university. It's the last day of the academic year, so the building is nearly empty, as classes have already ended about a month earlier and there are only a few professors here and students working on projects with those professors. That is why one of the two guards of the building finds it weird when a humanities student enters the building. Shibata Hirotaka has a student ID, so he can walk in freely of course, but he can't shake the feeling something's off, which seems confirmed when his co-worker mentions he didn't see Shibata when making his rounds, even though they have no record of him leaving the building. The guard makes another round, making sure to check who is in what room. He's at the third of the fourth storey, when he hears the alarm that goes off when a window is opened. He realizes it comes from above, but the next moment, he hears a loud crash, and he already knows what's happened: when he arrives at the open window on the fourth floor, he looks down and sees Shibata lying on the ground below. The police come questioning everyone in the building, and three of the students turn out to know Shibata from their theater group, but it appears they have a perfect alibi, so then who is the killer?

Well, I sure give it to Sonoda: this was an interesting take on The Invisible Man, a killer who is visible in the story, but also not. It only works if you make a very rigid assumption regarding how people talk, but I think it works here and it is absolutely fair. If you assume this story is 100% fair to the reader, then the method with which the killer is hidden works absolutely, but if you have even the slightest doubt about that, this story might feel unconvincing. As a whodunnit with a Challenge to the Reader though, it works, and that means I will have to read those other Sonoda stories that were included in these anthologies too, because that's two good stories out of two read now...

The final story I'll discuss this time is by Ooyama Seiichirou, and this is kinda technically his debut work, I guess, as this was the first story by him that got published in a 'proper' publication. His "author introduction" literally just says this is the first time he got selected. Saint Dionysus no Puzzle ("The Puzzle of Saint Dionysus") introduces us to the narrator (a detective writer), who is the Watson to Sakaki Kousuke, a private detective. Sakaki is asked by Kobayakawa Masatsugu to bring his sister back home: she is a member of a cult run by Kurusu Tokuzou, who thinks he's the reincarnation of Saint Dionysus (Saint Denis of Paris). The sister is actually one of his grand disciples and Kobayakawa tells Sakaki Kurusu and his grand disciples are currenlty staying on an island, marking the perfect opportunity to get to her, as she's usually in one of the well-guarded facilities of the cult. He suggest they use an inflatable raft to make their way there and rescue his sister. Sakaki and the narrator do as suggested and make their way to the island, but are immediately found by guards. The sister hysterically cries she has enough of her brother, and that she's here by her own free will. Sakaki and the narrator are thrown in a cell for the night, but the following morning, the grand disciples bring shocking news: Kurusu has been murdered! The head of the cult was found in the Meditation Chamber, with his head cut off and placed in his arms, just like Saint Denis of Paris. The grand disciples ask Sakaki to figure out who the murderer is: it has to be one of the grand disciples, as the lower-rank members all sleep together, there were guards making sure nobody would enter the island, and Sakaki and the narrator were locked up. Meanwhile, the remains of Kurusu are placed in the Heavenly Chamber, a private room for meditation for the head of the cult, set up at the highest point of each of the cult's bases. Sakaki and the narrator interrogate the grand disciples, of which none seem to have a good alibi for the night. The following morning, shocking news arrives again: the body of Kurusu was found in the Meditation Chamber again, holding his own head in his hands. Did he walk out of the Heavenly Chamber after being decapitated, just like Saint Denis of Paris? If not, why was his body moved?

A story with a very cool set-up with the cult and the ties to the story of Saint Denis of Paris, and while it might sound obvious now, but as this was Ooyama's first published story, I guess readers back then couldn't have known Queenian problems would be one of Ooyama's trademarks. And yep, we have that here too. While a tale about a corpse that leaves a room and walks in the night could easily have focused more on the horror or seemingly impossible aspects of the problem, Ooyama here focuses on the conundrum as a logical issue: why was the body and the head moved? The solution is of course brought by a logical process that focuses on the actions the murderer took and the motives behind it, and while the basic idea is pretty simple, it is a deliciously Queenian approach to the set-up, and I like the story a lot. I have a feeling Ooyama "now" would have planted more physical clues to facilitate the trail to the solution, but it's still very solvable while also making clever use of the story behind Saint Denis.

Anyway, these were only three of the eight stories in Shin Honkaku Suiri 3, but I enjoyed all three of them a lot, so I'll try and get around to discussing the remaining five stories in the future. I probably should try read more of the (Shin) Honkaku Suiri anthologies anyway: I have only read about 1.5 volume, but the quality of the plots is generally really high, and if all 20+ volumes of this series retain that level...

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也（監修）二階堂黎人（編）新・本格推理 03 りら荘の相続人』: 小貫風樹「とむらい鉄道」/ 園田修一郎「作者よ欺かるるなかれ」/大山誠一郎「聖ディオニシウスのパズル」

The Corpse Danced at Midnight

"What a good night for a murder, eh? I mean, if somebody wanted to kill anybody, nobody would know if it was a gunshot or a firework."

"Agatha Christie's Poirot: Murder in the Mews"

This reminds me, I really should check whether I can get a new capacitor for my kinetic-driven watch...

Also: I haven't mentioned the Honkaku Discord in the weekly posts for some time now, but errr.... there's a Honkaku Discord server! It's a pretty easy-going server where we talk about mystery fiction (not exclusively Japanese), do book clubs and things like that, so if that sounds like fun, come have a look: https://discord.gg/z3HMSmf8qd

It's been almost two and a half years since I last discussed The Clockmaker Detective series by Ooyama Seiichirou, a series also known as Alibi Kuzushi Uketamawarimasu ("Alibi Cracking, At Your Service"), which is the title of the books, as well as of the live action drama series. The temporary absence from the blog doesn't mean Ooyama hasn't been working on this series though. Two short story collections have already been released, but earlier this year, the third "season" of this series started officially with the publication of the story Tokeiya Tantei to Shinnen no Alibi ("The Clockmaker Detective and A New Year's Alibi"), which can be read for free at the J Novel site of the publisher. The story starts in the usual manner: the narrator, who is still called a rookie by his fellow police detectives even though he's been in the team for over a year now, visits Mitani Clockmakers, a quaint shop run by Mitani Tokino, a young woman who inherited the shop from her grandfather. As per her grandfather's instructions, she also offers an alibi cracking service, because it is "time-related" and therefore should be part of a clockmaker's work. Tokino has been helping the narrator immensely in his investigations, and this time, he has another problem. After exchanging new year's greetings, the narrator explains the conundrum the police are facing now.

On New Year's Eve, just after midnight, a man was found shot to death on the street. As the man still had his wallet, the victim's identity is soon determined: Noto Shingo is better known as the manga artist NOT, who has a hit manga with Hi no Kuni ("The Land of Not"). It doesn't seem he has any enemies, but one fact does attract the police's attention: the crime scene was close to Shijou-ji, a temple Noto always visited at midnight on New Year's Eve, right after midnight. It turns out an old friend of Noto lives near the temple: Itsu Kouhei, also known as Itsutsuboshi, is the manga artist of Bouzu Deka ("Monk Cop"), and the two have known each other from when they were both still struggling artists. In the past, Noto would go visit Itsu on New Year's Eve and go to Shihou-ji together, though with both of them being busy with their respective hits, they hardly see each other anymore. Still, the police suspects Noto might have intended to go to Shihou-ji with Itsu, and that Itsu might have killed Noto then, so they pay him a visit and of course ask about his alibi for New Year's Eve. Itsu however has a perfect alibi: he had been working hard on the last day of the year because of a deadline, and his assistant was with him the whole day and evening. They worked until the afternoon, fell asleep until the early evening of the thirty-first. They then watched Kouhaku Uta-gassen together as per tradition in many Japanese households on New Year's Eve. When it became midnight, Noto invited his assistant out into the garden to take a breather, where they heard people crying out "Happy New Year" and the bell starting to ring at Shihou-ji: as at many temples, the bell is struck 108 times to drive away earthly desires, and at Shijou-ji, they start exactly at midnight. After that, Itsu also read some manga drafts of his assistant and gave him some pointers, so Itsu thus has a perfect alibi for the time of the murder. Yet, the narrator feels the alibi might have been falsified, but all his own attempts at breaking it seem to fail. Can Tokino solve this mystery?

Well, of course she can. She wouldn't be much of a clockmaker if she couldn't!

After two relatively stories Tokeiya Tantei to Niritsu Haihan no Alibi ("The Clockmaker Detective and the Antinomic Alibi") and Tokeiya Tantei to Ichizoku no Alibi ("The Clockmaker Detective and a Family's Alibi"), we have a relatively "simple" story this time in terms of structure. What is interesting though, is how Itsu's alibi seems to vouched for by two elements that seem completely out of his control: the assistant was watching Kouhaku Uta-Gassen, which is a live television program which also counts down to midnight, and he heard the striking of bell of Shihou-ji Temple, which again is an element that "proves" what time it is, and not only to the assistant alone, but to everyone else who were watching Kouhaku Uta-Gassen or heard the bell ringing: in a way the assistant (and Itsu) gained their alibi by being a participant in a "group event", and that is a lot harder to falsify than a clock in a room or something like that. I do have to admit that the solution feels a bit underwhelming after the previous two stories, which were much trickier, but I guess this works perfectly as an opening story for a third volume, as the two "communal" proofs for Itsu's alibi do really seem very strong at first sight.

Some elements regarding Itsu's trick are explained in a rather handwavey manner ("Oh, he probably did this...") and feel a bit cheap, but I do really, really like the clue that points to the biggest trick Itsu pulled: while I had guessed what it was beforehand, I actually didn't realize how that clue actually tied back to the solution, and I think that clue was really clever, and perfect in case you hadn't made a guess yet. I'm almost more a fan of mystery fiction that provides clear clue-trails, rather than expecting the reader to make some wild guess based on instinct, so I could appreciate that element. It is also nice to see the narrator is actually starting to get a hang for alibi cracking himself too, as he and his co-workers are clearly are getting the hang of it and starting to think a bit like Tokino, coming up with pretty good theories for how the culprit could've created a fake alibi. 

All in all, a not very surprising, but still consistent opening story to what will hopefully become another solid volume with stories with original perfect alibi stories! I will probably discuss the following stories too in the future as they release (probably not five months late the next time), so let's hope the next one will come soon!

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎「時計屋探偵と新年のアリバイ」

Masquerade Death

The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. 

"The Masque of Red Death"

Always happy when "an out-of-print book I'm eyeing, but won't buy because a used copy is too expensive" is re-released!

Kawamiya Keisuke and Naoko took over their father's detective agency after World War II, and have been slowly making a living as private detectives. It's 1947 when they are hired by Urabe Kiwako. Arriving at Maibara Station, Keisuke and Naoko learn how important the Urabe Silk Mill is around here, being the main economic motor of the entire region. The mill used to be run by Kiwako's husband Ryuuichirou, but before he died, he took in his two twin nephews Fumihiko and Takehiko as his heirs. Fumihiko and Takehiko's parents had been estranged from Ryuuichirou originally, but after their death and the war ended, Ryuuichirou, who had no children of his own, wanted Fumihiko and Takehiko to take over, especially as the family had a history of prospering whenever such identical twin brothers would lead the family. Fumihiko became the president and Takehiko the vice-president, and initially things seemed to go well. But after the suicide of Sayako, a girl who worked at the mill and about whom poison pen letters were being written, things quickly soured. It turned out Takehiko had a relationship with the girl, and he accuses Fumihiko of being behind the poison letters. Takehiko disappeared one day, leaving Fumihiko alone at the helm of the factory. But recently, a letter was sent to him, which prompted his aunt Kiwako to hire Keisuke and Naoko. The letter was accompanied by a newspaper article telling how an illegal plastic surgeon had been murdered, and that the records show his last patient (who killed the medical man) was... Takehiko. Apparently, Takehiko has changed his face and in the letter he says he has returned to Maibara and he'll have his revenge on Fumihiko. Keisuke and Naoko are to protect Fumihiko from the disguised Takehiko, and they stand guard in front of his bedroom the first night, but the following morning, he's found dead inside the room. It appears Fumihiko himself let the murderer inside the room via the window, meaning Takehiko must be a person who Fumihiko met in the last half year or so and won his trust (pretending to be someone else), but who? That's the big question in Ooyama Seiichirou's 2006 novel Kamen Gensoukyoku ("Masquerade Twin Fantasia").

My first encounter with Ooyama Seiichirou was via the PSP game Trick X Logic, and since that occasion, I've been a fan of his puzzle plot short stories, which range from a locked room short story collection with a unique Ellery Queen-style logic focus, to his cracking alibi-cracking stories and a fun collection where you never know who the main detective is, only the Watson, but you might have noticed one thing here: Ooyama specializes in short stories. In fact, Kamen Gensoukyoku is still the only full-length novel he has published at this moment. I had been wanting to read this for a while because I am a fan of his writings, but the original release wasn't really cheap on the used market, so I had been postponing it for a long while. Last year however, at the start of 2022, Ooyama wrote on Twitter he was working on the manuscript of the book to get it ready for a pocket re-release, which really made me enthusiastic... and then the year passed, and at the start of 2023, Ooyama tweeted once again he was (still) working on it. This was getting a bit worrisome, but fortunately, the pocket did get released in 2023, with a nifty new cover too!

I have to admit I was a bit surprised by the very Yokomizo Seishi-esque vibe of the book, being set soon after World War II, set in a rural place with a silk factory as its main economic engine, and of course a family traditions of focusing twins and family fueds playing a big role in the story. A lot of what I read by Ooyama is very contemporary, so I hadn't expected such a shift all, but that did really pique my interest. On the whole, I do think that if you like Yokomizo-style stories, you'll find a lot to like here too, though the writing style itself is contemporary, and definitely lightheartier than Yokomizo. There's of course also a distinct Carr feeling, as the plot is reminiscent of It Walks by Night.

The murder on Fumihiko occurs fairly early in the book, and because they know that a) Takehiko has secretly returned to Maibara the last few months after his visit to the brilliant plastic surgeon and has taken on a new identity, b) that Fumihiko must've been deceived by Takehiko, not knowing that one of the people whom he has become acquainted with/hired these last few months is actually his twin brother, the investigation of Keisuke and Naoko quickly turns to figuring out who of the people in Maibara could be Takehiko in disguise. Police investigation show that the plastic surgeon, Masuo, was absolutely brilliant, having his arts abroad, but he ended up in the illegal sector. While details of his records were wiped, it shows Takehiko did undergo a surgery to change his appearance, though we don't know the details. Still, because he only went facial surgery, Keisuke and Naoko of course realize Takehiko could only be disguised as someone who still resembles his original self somewhat, so being a man in the same age range (and that he's not likely to be living as an old lady now), but who could it be?

The book is fairly short, so while a few more events follow after the Fumihiko murder, including another murder and also a more thorough investigation into Sayako's death a year ago and who likely sent the poison pen letters about her, we're almost near the solution, and that's of course, as you'd expect of Ooyama, very much Queen-inspired, focusing on the actions we know the murderer=Takehiko must have taken to commit the murder on his brother to identify a few characteristics, which are then applied to the suspects to see which of them can be the murderer. There is one major trick here that is probably the one thing you'll remember about this book, and it's both quite brilliant, and a bit underplayed. The idea itself is really good: there's very clever misdirection going on regarding this that really invites you to re-read certain parts carefully to see Ooyama did indeed play very fair. It is a concept that nearly borders on concepts you'd also expect in Mitsuda's Toujou Genya books, which was perhaps why it caught me completely off-guard, because I might've expected in a Genya book, but I didn't because I was still so used to Ooyama's contemporary tales. It is a simple idea, but executed very well. At the same time though, one can also argue the trick only makes sense from a reader's point of view. One can't deny that for this trick to work, the characters of the book basically had to act in a certain way, even if it wasn't the most logical/obvious thing to do. Meaning, the trick itself is done brilliantly: but was it really necessary to do it like that? Would all the actors who are involved one way or another really always act like that? Taking a step back, the plan is a bit more convoluted than it ever needs to be for the murderer, but you know, the main trick is still memorable, and on those merits alone, I think the book's worth a read, as the biggest step on the logical road towards identifying Takehiko is really impressive in its simplicity.

If you're like me and you have read (a lot of other) Ooyama Seiichirou short stories, Kamen Gensoukyoku, will feel quite refreshingly different, despite feeling very much like a classic detective story. The set-up is not overly large in scale, but it is clear from Ooyama had one big idea as he wrote this book, which is executed in a clever manner, resulting in a satisfying mystery novel. Definitely worth picking up if you're an Ooyama fan! If you haven't read anything by him yet, this is still a fun novel, though he's mainly a short story writer, so this book is not really representative of his trademark style.

Original Japanese title(s): 大山誠一郎『仮面幻双曲』