Law of the Jungle

「 お前を信じる俺を信じろ」

『天元突破グレンラガン』

 

 "Believe in the me who believes in you!"

"Guren Lagann"

Final review of the year, but it's about a great book!

Ootoya Takashi was always content being a minor private detective, always observing cheating spouses and that kind of work, so at first, he didn't quite understand why the student Ririko wanted to be his assistant, and when she explained, he refused her at first. Ririko's mother, during her lifetime, had been a member of a cult, which had swindled her out of her money, leading to Ririko's father kicking her, and Ririko out of the house. After Ririko's mother's death, she learned the truth about the cult, and wanted to expose their tricks under the cover of a detective agency. Ootoya eventually gave in, and together with Ririko, he exposed a gigantic scam conspiracy. Soon, Ootoya himself became a well-known detective too, but the truth was that while Ootoya did indeed solve a lot of cases himself, it was actually Ririko who was often one step ahead of him, even though she was his "assistant." When one day, in November 1978, Ririko disappears, Ootoya becomes worried about her because they have made enemies in the past, but he learns quickly she has gone to the South American country of Guyana, to the community called Jordentown.

Jim Jorden claimed he could heal any illnesses and injuries, and started his own, Christianity-based cult. He gathered quite some followers in the United States, but also enemies: many people who have also left the cult, portraying Jim Jorden as a fraud and eventually, even politicians started to take a better look at him. Jim Jorden swiftly left the United States to found his own community in the jungles of Guyana, and he was followed there by about a thousand followers from the US and other parts of the world. The people of Jordentown mostly keep to themselves, led by Jim Jorden and his upper management members, but lately, US politicans have been putting political pressure on them, and Jim Jorden wants to move his community to the Soviet Union, with the help of a prominent US businessman with ties to the Soviets. This businessman however wants to know whether Jim Jorden really has powers to heal people, and after some negotations, Jim Jorden agreed to invite a team who will investigate whether his powers are real, and to observe the living conditions in Jordentown. Ririko had been chosen as one of these people thanks to her experience with exposing a fake cult, and she is joined by Jodie Randy, famous for exposing fake psychics on television, Yi Ha-jun, a Seoul University student who exposed a sexual abuse affair by the Christian church, and former FBI agent Alfred Dent, who has actually managed to go undercover, acting as an attorney for Jim Jorden. Ririko and the others however didn't return to their respective countries even though they were only to stay there for a few days, so suspecting they might be being kept captive by Jim Jorden, or worse, Ootoya himself travels to Jordentown with the help of a reporter childhood friend. When they arrive there, they learn Ririko and the others were held captive, because they didn't believe Jim Jorden's "miracles", so Jim decided to have his "guests" stay longer so he could convince them of his powers and report back to the businessman so he and his flock can go to the Soviet Union. As the people in Jordentown all believe in Jim Jorden as their "god" who can heal them, and some of them are such fanatic believers they are willing to kill for him (and the community is armed!), they have no choice but to stay there for a while, but they are fairly sure they won't be hurt because that would definitely mean no trip to the Soviet Union. The following day however, Dent is found stabbed to death in his room, and the room was locked from the inside. Was this an impossible murder? But in Jordentown, there is a man who can perform miracles, so is he the murderer? While Ootoya and Ririko try to solve the murder despite the unique circumstances, more impossible murders occur, but will they be able to uncover the truth, and get away safely? That is the question in Shirai Tomoyuki's Meitantei no Ikenie - Jinminkyou Satsujin Jiken ("The Sacrifice of the Great Detective: The Peoples Church Murder Case" 2022), which also has the alternative English title The Detective Massacre. 

The first time I read anything by Shirai Tomoyuki, was the short story Chibiman to Jumbo, which was beyond nasty, with a lot of gore. And I don't mean "decapitated people" gore, but a lot of vomiting and eating sea roaches and stuff like that. I was told "nasty" was something Shirai wrote a lot about, so I was kinda avoiding him, despite hearing also positive things about his mystery stories in terms of... mystery. So when I saw The Detective Massacre won the '23 Honkaku Mystery Award and ranked in first place in the Honkaku Best 10 2023, and I heard this one didn't have the gore, I picked this book up as my first Shirai novel, and I am so glad I did, as this is easily one of the best books I've read this year, and I can definitely see why it'd end up high on people's rankings!

It's of course clear right away this book was inspired by the real story of Jonestown in a lot of ways, and that is also the defining feature of this book: a story set in a very unique place, a closed-off town in the jungle, for a cult built around one single man, who rules the whole community and who is beloved by everyone as a god with healing powers. For Ootoya and Ririko, this is effectively a closed circle, as they can't just leave Jordentown alone and you definitely need a car to make it through the jungle to a landing strip, and of course you also need a plane to get away there. Due to the beliefs of the cult members, about a thousand of them in all ages (children go to school during the day, while the adults work on the fields to farm food), the impossible crimes also are not considered to be as grave or serious by them, as by the outsiders: impossible murders aren't strictly impossible for the cult members, especially not if those who are killed were punished by the heavens for opposing Jim Jorden and his followers. The result is a book with a fantastic, suspenseful and tense atmosphere, where you know any false move by Ootoya could perhaps lead to them being punished by the cult members right away for going against their rules and yet they do want to solve the murders.

On the other hand, the cult members aren't like brainwashed Kali cult members, but often ordinary people from the US with their own personal traumas, which they finally learned to cope with thanks to their life in Jordentown and the teachings of Jim Jorden. While they believe in Jorden, they are also, on the whole, peace-loving people who just want a place for themselves to live without being judged by others, and while initially cautious for the strangers, they do welcome Ririko and the others to Jordentown and are eager to show how great their community is and how they'd like to move to the Soviet Union in order to continue this life. It's under these circumstance we have these murders, and we clearly see how people on one hand know murder has occured, but also try to give these deaths a certain meaning that fits with their lives and their beliefs, again resulting in a very unique atmosphere that really makes this a one-of-a-kind mystery novel.

Over the course of this novel, several murders occur during their stay in Jordentown, that are in principle simple, yet impossible. A man murdered in his bedroom, but with the key inside the room, a woman who was poisoned during a tea party, but the other women are all fine, things like that. The situations themselves are fairly small-scale and taken on their own, they might not be super impressive. However, The Detective Massacre manages to use these seemingly "small" murder situations in conjunction with the unique setting that is Jordentown to present an absolutely phenomenal mystery novel. That is in part already hinted at by the text on the obi of this novel, which tells the reader the solution part of this book is 150 pages long (close to 40% of the book!). Mechanically, these impossible crimes might seem simple, but because they are in such an odd place, where people literally believe in miracles and thus impossible occurings, the detectives have to go a long way to not only logically explain how things happened and the reason for that, they also have to explain why these murders aren't impossible, while at the same time, the explanation needs to accept the existence of miracles, because the people here believe in them. So the solutions often have to go a roundabout way to explain things, because the detectives have to incorporate the "common sense" that exist in Jordentown, while also arriving at a logical explanation acceptable for them. This leads to some brilliant pieces of deduction that only work in Jordentown and no other mystery novel. The book is also full of false solutions, as it takes a while for the detectives to arrive at the actual truth, but it's amazing how Shirai structured this book. The same situation allows for several false solutions, but they are all properly hinted at, and while not all of them are as clever and you quickly realize these must be false, it's still impressive how he managed to properly hint all of the false solutions as well as place the clues for the counter-argument to the false solutions, and also have a final solution ready. Fans of the works of Brand, Berkeley and Queen, with deeply structured false solutions that build on each other and stuff like that will definitely like this book too.

The placing of clues and foreshadowing in The Detective Massacre also deserves a special mention. Shirai does a fantastic job at placing all kinds of hints that come back much later for these false solutions, not only in the form of actual physical evidence being referred to later, but also situations or moments that seemingly have nothing to do with the murders, but that are mirrored in surprising and clever manners to become relevant to those murders. Some segments really just sound like nothing more than small characterization snippets used for a cheap chuckle, but then turn out to be applicable to the murder mysteries too by looking at those stiuations from a very different angle. It might be because of the weird location that is Jordentown, but it's easy to look at Jordentown as its own thing, so it's extra surprising when you see moments "outside of Jordentown" suddenly being used in a clever way to set things up that happen inside Jordentown.

The two detective characters of Ootoya and Ririko are also used in a really good way. The two detectives (technically, Ririko is Ootoya's assistant) have very different approaches when it comes to the question of what a detective is, and what they do, and that also results in them going for approaching the people of Jordentown very differently, and also trying to explain the murders in very different ways (hence there are not only false solutions, but actually different strands of solutions, where they work from different angles precisely because Ririko and Ootoya look at the people of Jordentown, and what they believe in, very differently). The ending, which puts Ririko and Ootoya at very completely sides in terms of "what being a detective is about" is amazing, as it really gives meaning to why we have two different detective characters. Some of the set-up to the final stretch of the book doesn't feel as strong as other parts of the book, but ultimately, it's a book that'll stick in your mind for a while, and the ending will play an important role in that.

This book also appears to be part of a series which follows the title convention of "Meitantei no..." ("The Detective...") but I don't know how strongly connected these books are, if at all, in terms of story. Story-wise, The Detective Massacre feels fairly self-contained, but there are a few references and characters who might be series characters? I guess there's one way to find out...

But as Stan Lee also wrote, 'Nuff said. Meitantei no Ikenie - Jinminkyou Satsujin Jiken or The Detective Massacre is a fantastic mystery novel, which uses a unique setting to tell the kind of detective story fans of Brand, Berkeley and Queen are likely to love with its many (properly built-up) solutions, but it's also a great book on its own as it uses the setting of Jordentown to present a mystery story you really won't be seeing anywhere else. Even something like Queen's And on The Eight Day doesn't quite come close to this. One of my favorites of this year, and I hope to read more of Shirai's work in the future.

Original Japanese title(s):白井智之『名探偵のいけにえ: 人民教会殺人事件』

Choosing Sides

A place for everything and everything in its place.

(Saying)

Time for my single anthology review of the year... And yes, it's a bit late this year...

Disclosure: I am a member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. However, I didn't vote for the stories this year.

Every summer, the Honkaku-Ou ("The King of Honkaku") anthology is published, collecting the best honkaku short stories published the previous year, as selected by the members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. The selection of short stories basically acts as a counterpart to the Honkaku Mystery Award, which is awarded to the best published book each year. Short stories are usually published in different magazines or online, which can make them difficult to obtain at a later stage, so having all the chosen short stories collected in one book is quite convenient. The Honkaku-Ou format was started in 2019, as the previous format also included the year's best mystery-related essays chosen by the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club, but while not every year was as strong as others, I do think the last two years had really strong contenders, some of them I'd even consider candidates for my own best-read mysteries of those years. So I had been looking forward to the 2023 edition too. 

Honkaku-Ou 2023 (2023) opens with Imamura Masahiro's Aru Heya Nite ("In A Certain Room"), and apparently, this is the first short story Imamura wrote that is not part of a series. Oh, and another disclosure message: I translated Imamura's Death Among the Undead and Death Within the Evil Eye. This is, interestingly, considering his other works, an inverted mystery and opens with a scene where Kengo tries to talk things over with Yuuka his... girlfriend? ex? and things go horribly wrong, ending with her death. Because he snuck in the apartment building, he figures he might get away with it if he can spirit her body away for a while, and he's just done stuffing her body in a suitcase and about to leave the place, when an attorney appears at the door, who says he has an appointment with Yuuka, as she wanted to discuss something with him regarding a rather pesky stalker. Kengo pretends he's Yuuka's brother, hoping to fool the attorney long enough to get out of here, but the attorney seems to notice a lot of little things that add up to a big truth while he's in the room... This is a rather short story, and it's one I like better for the turnabout climax at the end of the inverted mystery, when things inevitably go wrong for Kengo, than for the build-up. While I like the big "twist" you often have in inverted mysteries that is presented here (when you realize the murderer made a truly fatal mistake), the minor mistakes and faults the attorney notices in the build-up feel less strong, and don't really give that satisfying feeling you often have even with smaller points like in Columbo. Not a bad story by any means, just a bit underwhelming on the whole.

Yuuki Shinichirou was featured in the 2020 edition of this anthology, and returns with the oddly-titled Koronde mo Tada de ha Okinai Fuwadama Toumyou Soup Jiken ("The 'If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade' Fluffy Egg Pea Sprout Soup Incident"). This time we follow a kind of Uber Eats driver, but one of the shops he works for is rather special: the restaurants is also actually a detective agency. By making very specific orders via the app, clients can engage the detective/cook's services, who uses a select number of trusted Uber drivers to visits to the clients to gather the necessary information to solve the case. This time they are working on a case of a dead woman found in an apartment building that went up in flames. While people were watching the smoke outside, a woman saw another woman who mumbled "Good for him!" and then ran into the building. Later this woman was found dead in one of the apartments, which was occupied by her ex, who escaped from the fire in the building in time. Because of his connection to the victim, police are of course investigating him, but as the woman was seen going into the building herself, it doesn't seem it was his fault she died, but why did she go inside in the first place? At first sight, I thought the idea of an Uber-detective-service sounded fun, but I didn't think it was really used meaningful here. I assume this story is part of a series, but the way the story was told with bits of the driver returning to the cook to discuss the case didn't help the pacing of the story. The fire incident itself is not super complex and I think many will guess early why the woman went to the building herself, but I liked it enough, so I thought it was a shame the story read a bit awkward.

Shiotani Ken's 20XX-nen no Shuki ("Accounts Dated 20XX") consists of a series of reports written by different people, portraying a unique dictatorship led by the Great Leader X, who guides the strictly-led nation. The first account is from A, the director of Camp 33 in the Kanto region, a training camp where men are trained in several skill fields. His account to his superiors says nothing is wrong at the camp, but the next report already introduces to B, the replacement of A, as A was caught lying in his reports. B reports on the death of K, an injured man who had been sent to the camp to recover, but who accidentally died during his stay at the camp, a fact A tried to cover up. More letters follow, which slowly delve into the secret behind K's death. This was a short, but fun story, with each letter changing your views on what was said in the previous letter. It's not really fair play puzzle in that sense, as the writer of each new account always knows much more than the reader, but it's cool to see how the case changes and events described in earlier accounts can suddenly take a completely different meaning. The world described in these letters give this story both a very large, and small scale: apparently this is a North Korea-esque society, but at the other hand, all we see of this world is through these letters, which are all about events occuring inside a special training camp, so ultimately you don't see that much of this unique society. This would be cool to see in a full series.

According to Yagi Jun's own introduction, Chikusare ("Fatal Blood") was written as a horror story, so he was surprised it got picked for this anthology. It's about a sister, who joins her younger brother and his two children on a camp, as his sister-in-law is too busy with work to go with them. During their time outdoors, the sister remembers how there's a shrine in the forest here, with a cursed stone which can cut ties between people if you put the blood of the one you want to cut ties with on the stone. But as time passes by, she starts to see her younger brother act suspiciously with a cloth with some blood on it... This is indeed more of a horror story than a straight puzzler, revolving around the sister's suspicions about her brother's actions. Not bad per se, but also not really what I expect to read in an anthology like this. Had it been written more as a straight mystery story, I think I would have liked it better, because the last revelation is good, but the hinting/foreshadowing is a bit weirdly paced because it's more a horror story.

Araki Akane's Doukou no SHE ("Fellow Traveller SHE") is about Yuuko, who is going to kill somebody. She boards the night bus with just a kitchen knife inside her coat pocket, ready to strike when she arrives in Tokyo. The woman next to her however almost immediately notices the knife, and says she'll tell the driver, but Yuuko places the knife against the woman, Ruri, and tells her to stay quiet. The bus makes its way towards Tokyo, occasionally stopping at rest areas. During one of these stops, the passenger in front of Yuuko and Ruri says his phone and wallet was stolen from his bag in the overhead rack, and when they look around, the wallet is found inside Yuuko's bag! Yuuko knows she didn't steal the wallet, and immediately suspects Ruri pulled the stunt off to get out of her predicament, but how did she manage that while being kept at knife-point? A very thrilling story, though mystery-wise it is a bit... convenient? Like, I know people doze off in a night bus, but would nobody have noticed what was going in with that bag considering what was done with it in order for the wallet to end up in Yuuko's bag? The mystery of the smartphone is better, and I like the final turn of events regarding Yuuko's intended murder overall very much too though.

Shirai Tomoyuki's Moterean no Tekubi ("The Hand of the Moterean") starts with a group of three looking for crystallized fossils on the island of Posta, the realm of Gods. Once upon a time, an alien species called Moterans lived on the island, but they are now all extinct, and having been in the ground for so long, the three think they might find fossils turned into gemstones here. They eventually do find a cut-off hand, which is a bit weird, so they dig even further and far deeper in the ground, they stumble upon an arm. When they dig dozens of meters further, they find a body with a missing arm, and also signs they were naked when they died. This however leads to a very puzzling question: how did this Moterean's body end up like this on Posta Island, naked, and with their hand and arm at completely different depths in the ground? The one Shirai story I ever read was pretty gross and I hear that's his thing, but that was fortunately not the case here. This was an interesting archeological mystery. While I think the 'big' twist in the middle wasn't as surprising as it was probably intended, I liked the theories posed as to how parts of the fossil ended up seperated so far. The scale of the story encompasses thousands of years, so it's a weird "murder mystery" in that sense, but I really liked how this was used to come up with a very surprising explanation for the fossil being like that, as the misdirection really takes advantage of the unique setting.

Michio Shuusuke's Hariganemushi ("Horsehair Worm") is part of a series where each story includes a QR-code to a Youtube audio file, where you get to hear a specific scene/moment from the story. I think this is a pretty cool idea, but on the other hand, it's not really used in a meaningful manner in this specific story. I guess that's because the prose story has to work on its own, so you can not really have the audio track be the actual solution or a vital hint, but still, it's little more than a gimmick now. In this story, we follow a cram school teacher who is stalking one of his students: he has given her an USB charger, but in fact it's a listening device, and the last few days, he's been following her to her home, and listening from his car to the sounds from her bedroom. While doing this, he learns more about her home situation, which is quite grave with an abusive step-father. Things eventually explode in the household, but there's nothing the teacher can do. But what did really happen in the house, and what was it he was actually listening to? I think the problem with this tale is there's no real surprise? It's more a thriller than a detective story, as even at the end, when a detective-like figure explains everything, it doesn't feel like an explanation, because the teacher heard all of this himself and... there was no mystery or anything. The audio track you get to listen at the end, is also just part of a scene the teacher was listening to, with the exact same phrases, so all the audio track offers is just... hearing the scene acted out.

Overall, I think Honkaku-Ou 2023 was not as strong as previous entries. The last three years, there was always at least one story I really, really liked, making the whole collection worth reading, but while there were stories I simply liked in this year's edition, I don't think any of them were really must-reads. I think my favorites are Shiotani's story for having a unique premise and a good build-up to the solution, as well as Imamura and Shirai's entries for their more focused story-telling, but even then, it's not like I think these alone make this really a worthwile read. Oh well, I guess there's always next year!

Original Japanese title(s): 『本格王2023』: 今村昌弘「ある部屋にて」/ 結城真一郎「転んでもただでは起きないふわ玉豆苗スープ事件」/ 潮谷験「二〇XX年の手記」/ 矢樹純「血腐れ」/ 荒木あかね「同好のSHE」/ 白井智之「モーティリアンの手首」/ 道尾秀介 「ハリガネムシ」

Update on Crime

Something old, something new,
something borrowed, something blue

(Bridal rhyme)

One reason I don't often do anthology reviews is because I'm never able to fit all the tags I want to use within the character limit. So if I do an anthology review, it's likely of a relatively short one.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. I didn't vote for the stories this year though (or for any year since I became a member.... I read far too few new releases each year...)
 

The Honkaku Mystery Award is awarded every year to the best mystery novel published in the year as chosen by the members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. One of the qualifications to be eligible for the award is that the story must have been published as an individual, standalone release, which is of course seldom the case with short stories and essays, which are usually first published in magazines or other publications (short story collections are exceptions of course). That is why the top-rated short stories and essay of the year are usually collected in a special anthology edited by the the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. Until 2018, this annual anthology was titled Best Honkaku Mystery [Year], and contained up to ten different stories, as well as one essay on mystery fiction. However, the format was changed for 2019, and with that, the title too. Honkaku Ou 2019 ("The King of Honkaku 2019") is not only published in the muuuuuch handier, but smaller pocket format, it loses the essay and is also somewhat shorter than the previous releases, but its goal is still the same: to collect the best-rated mystery short stories of the year within one anthology.

Golgotha by Amemura Kou starts with the arrival of a letter by Akihiro's uncle Nakamitsu Eiichi, who says he'll be travelling for a while and he wants Akihiro to baby-sit his house for a while. Akihiro has only just arrived at this house out in a small village, when the phone rings. The man on the other side seems surprised by the fact Akihiro's answering the phone, and asks some questions about who he is and where his uncle is. The man also drops some names that don't ring a bell with Akihiro, but the man says he'll swing by right away. The man has a curious conversation with Akihiro, apparently hinting at something without really pushing the matter, and eventually leaves Akihiro with a present: a mystery novel titled Labyrinth By The Sea by Horinaga Saiun. A note was wedged between the pages, which says "Doorplate". Akihiro learns his uncle's house used to belong to the author Horinaga Saiun and starts digging in the life of the writer, slowly uncovering the trail the mysterious man has been laying out for Akihiro. Golgotha is more a thriller than a puzzle plot mystery: the mysterious visitor keeps feeding Akihiro small hints that seem to point towards something, but it's not like the reader is challenged to solve the puzzle themselves based on these hints. It's an okay thriller story, but perhaps not the story I had expected as the opening story of this anthology.

Gyakuen no Gogo ("Gyaku-en in the Afternoon") is part of Nagaoka Hiroki's 119, a series on firefighters (119 is the emergency number for fire and ambulance services). The "Gyaku-en" in the title refers to the sad happening when children die before their parents and the parents have to arrange for the funerals of their own kids. That is exactly what Yoshikuni Satoshi has to do, as his twenty-four year old son Yuuki died in the line of duty. Both men were firefighters and knew the risk of their profession, but Satoshi couldn't have imagined his son would fall off the fifth floor of a building while attempting to save a woman in her apartment. The story is set at Yuuki's funeral service, where Satoshi tells the people gathered (mostly collegues) about what kind of child Yuuki was and how proud he is of him. However, as Satoshi's speech continues, he starts focusing on the incident that took his son's life, and by the time he's showing pictures of the apartment of the woman who Yuuki failed to save, the reader is fully aware something's wrong with Yuuki's death. A very nicely clewed story, with clues that are hidden very naturally in the text, but which really take on a different meaning once you arrive at the conclusion. The main hint that sets things off is rather mundane if taken fully on its own, but it works surprisingly well as a 'jumpstarter'  for the rest of the reveals. I do find it kinda hard to believe that one character would do that in such an impulsive manner, but okay, I guess it was also kinda hinted at.

Tomoi Hitsuji's Biwa no Tane ("Loquat Seeds") stars Tsutabayashi, a young man with violent deaths hiding in his past, who still seeks redemption and hopes to find forgiveness from the people hurt. While Tsutabayashi tries to keep quiet about himself, his rare family name often often rings some bells with people, and he has been forced to quit his job more than a few times because his "colleagues" started to shun or harass him after finding out. That is also the reason Tsutabayashi at first didn't feel like informing the police when he discovered the body of a murdered high school student, a new victim of the serial killer who has been terrorizing the city. He does do his civic duty however, and to his surprise, he finds him invited by the division manager of his job. The man learned about Tsutabayashi's past due to an acquaintance at the police, but does not seem to be planning to ask him to quit his job. His son was a classmate of the victim found by Tsutabayashi, so they have a talk too, but while everything seems to end peacefully here, Tsutabayashi's past ends up exposed to his workplace, and he's forced to quit anyway. It's at this point Tsutabayashi decides he should try solve the murder on the student, as a way of redemption. The story was originally written for an anthology with "twist endings" as its theme, though I have to say the twist ending was kinda telegraphed too obvious. The rest of the story is also rather straightforward: some of the clues are literally "the killer dropped their personal belongings at the scene of the crime", so that's not really surprising. The underlying themes of the story are good though, and perhaps this story is best enjoyed for that.

Toda Yoshinaga's Negaisasa ("Wish Tree") is set at the end of the Edo period and stars a patrolman called Toda Souzaemon. His prey, a notorious swindler, leads Souzaemon to Maruya, one of the better known "establishments" in the entertainment district. The swindler had been using his earnings to spend several nights with Peony, the top girl of Maruya, but of course, he never should've stayed for so long at one place, as that's how Souzaemon managed to catch him. Souzaemon becomes interested in Peony himself, not as an object of lust, but as an adversary in the game of Igo, so he too starts visiting the girl. Maruya itself has been in financial problems lately due to the useless spendings of Tomizou, who married into the family of O-Sen to become master of Maruya. Tomizou became obsessed with Shiroinugami, a deified form of a white dog from England which died near Mt. Fuji and whose deaths Tomizou happened to witness. Since then, Tomizou has been using all his money on dog idols and import from the West like sofas, tables and coffee. O-Sen plans to kill her husband, but wants to make it seem like it was Shiroinugami's curse that did it and sends a fake threatening letter. On Tanabata (July 7), the day the dog was born, her husband conducts a strange dancing ritual to appease Shiroinugami. Souzaemon is asked to watch Tomizou. Tomizou is surrounded on three sides by four-part panels, while Souzaemon sits in front of the open side. Souzaemon doses off slightly due to the long ritual, but then Tomizou suddenly falls down, having been stabbed by a sharp instrument. But how could that have happened: Tomizou was surrounded by the three panels (which are undamaged), and Souzaemon was sitting in front of the open side, and while he was drowsy, he surely would've seen someone carrying a weapon appear right in front of him. The way this impossible murder was committed can be guessed quite easily, but it fits really well with the historical setting of the story, making it quite memorable. It's definitely a good example of how a good background story/setting can elevate a plot idea.

Chibiman to Jumbo ("Chibiman and Jumbo") by Shirai Tomoyuki is the nastiest story of the anthology. Susumu is the poor slave of the three fat speed-eater brothers Mogura, Moguri and Moguru, who in order to maintain their speed-eating empire Munch Land, are willing to torture and kill people on a whim (actually, they enjoy killing and eating them too just for fun). But what they don't need is exposure. Some days ago, Munch Land held a Sea Roach Speed-Eating Contest between Moguru (stage name Jumbo SP) and Chibiman, a female speed-eater. They had to eat a bucket full of sea roaches (with some "Throw-Up Pauses" planned in between). The contest seemed to be going in Chibiman's favor, but then she suddenly started to convulse, and dropped her head in the bucket of sea roaches. To the audience, they lied that Chibiman was just feeling bad, but in fact she had died. The three brothers first agreed to kill off Susumu and make it seem like he had cannabalistic tendencies by stuffing Chibiman's remains in his stomach, but Susumu pleads for his life, saying that Chibiman was clearly poisoned and that the poisoner might be after the brothers too. Susumu is given one day to find out who killed Chibiman, but he has quite a problem to solve: why was only Chibiman's bucket of roaches poisoned, was she really the intended victim and what was the motive for this murder? This is a really weird, distasteful story with gangster speed-eating brothers who are apparently in a habit of killing and eating people, and Susumu himself is hardly a hero, making filthy jokes and kicking women in the stomach so hard they have to throw up too. It makes it really hard to care about any of the characters in this story. The core mystery plot is fairly complex though: the motive for poisoning the sea roaches is really original and probably the best part of the story, but I thought the way Susumu suddenly realizes who the murderer was, was a bit too sudden without much build-up.

Tantei Daihon ("Detective Script") was written by Ooyama Seiichirou as a homage to Abiko Takemaru's Tantei Eiga and follows the same basic idea: Playwright Kasuga Sousuke barely survived a fire in his home, and while he's in the hospital, the members of his theater troupe are left with the little that remains of their upcoming murder play. The policeman who rescued Kasuga from the fire only found a partially burned scenario, so the actors have a start of a murder mystery that happens on a remote island, but not the solution. As they discuss the story, each of the actors comes up with a solution that indicates their own character as the murderer. Madoy's FGO Mystery: The Meihousou Murders I reviewed earlier this year was also clearly inspired by Abiko's novel by the way. It's by far the shortest story in the anthology, but Tantei Daihon is still a surprisingly tightly-plotted story with several fake solutions. The final solution is clever: if you just follow the clues "straight", you're likely to run into a wall, but once you figure out the true meaning of a certain passage in the screenplay, everything is turned upside down, allowing you to arrive at the correct solution. I love this type of whodunnit setups, where you can cross out most of the suspects if you simply carefully follow each clue, but there's one final clue that asks for a bit more imagination in interpretation, which can turn everything around. Short, but satsifying.

To be honest, I have the feeling previous Best Honkaku Mystery anthologies were not only beefier, but also more satisfying as puzzle plot anthologies. Honkaku Ou 2019 in comparison is not only shorter in page count, but fewer of the stories really fitted with my own personal interest: stories like Golgotha and Biwa no Tane are for example thematically strong examples, but seen purely as puzzle plot stories I find them on the whole somewhat disappointing. Nagaoka Hiroki's series on firefighters seems interesting though. As the short story form is still going strong in Japan, I think having these anthologies that collect stories from different magazines is really great and some of the previous Best Honkaku Mystery anthologies I read had some fantastic stories, but the selection for this year was not exactly what I had been expecting.

Original Japanese title(s):  本格ミステリ作家クラブ（編）『本格王2019』: 飴村行「ゴルゴダ」/ 長岡弘樹「逆縁の午後」/ 友井羊「枇杷の種」/ 戸田義長「願い笹」/白井智之「ちびまんとジャンボ」/ 大山誠一郎「探偵台本」