Three Doors to Death

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

"The Big Four" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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