A History of Murder

Step by Step あせることなんてないのさ

「Step by Step」(Ziggy)

 

 Step by Step, no need to be impatient

"Step by Step" (Ziggy)

Personally, when it comes to titles of short story collections, I actually prefer those with an original title, rather than being named after a story featured in the collection.

Sashichi is an okappiki, a kind of private detective who is hired by a doushin, the official Edo-period police detective, to serve as the doushin's eyes and ears on the ground in the capital of Edo. The woman-loving Sashichi works in Kanda and is known all around as 'the doll Sashichi', as his handsome face resembles those of Kyoto dolls (kyouningyou). Married to an older woman, with whom he often bickers, Sashichi runs around town, solving mysterious crimes as they happen, usually assisted by his two footmen Tatsugorou and Mameroku. The crimes Sashichi encounters are set in the world of the lowest classes, from merchants, actors to simple restaurant owners, but that doesn't make his mysteries less appealing: from a serial killer who targets women who have lately become models for illustrations hagoita paddles, to a series of murders that appear to mimic a serialized story, there's more than enough to do for Sashichi in Yokomizo Seishi's short story collection Meigetsu Ichiya Kyougen - Ningyou Sashichi Torimono-chou Kessakusen ("Kyougen on A Full Moon's Night - The Doll Sashichi Torimono-chou Masterpiece Selection", 2023). 

While Yokomizo Seishi is now best known for his creation Kindaichi Kousuke, and the books starring him, Yokomizo had other long-running series before he created Kindaichi after World War II: one of them is Yuri Rintarou, but his greatest success, and the series people knew him best for, was the Sashichi series. This is a so-called torimono-chou series, a historical detective series starring a character in a role close to what a modern police detective is. Readers of Japanese fiction in translation might know Okamito Kidou's Hanshichi series, which was the pioneer in that genre. Mind you, when I say historical, I don't mean Yokomizo really minded historical accuracy very much. While the 17(!) stories found here are definitely set in the past, and often do interesting things because they're not taking place in the modern world, the language used is fairly modern, and these stories are really easy to read. 

The Sashichi stories are really short, meaning they were pretty easy to write, and Yokomizo wrote 180 of them between 1938 and 1968! For this volume, editor Suekane Yoshimi selected the 17 stories he deemed as the best ones mystery-wise, and he also penned a very informative afterword, where he goes over every single story and explains precisely why they were chosen for this book and the unique points of each of them. Usually, I discuss all stories in a short story collection in detail, but 17 are just too many, and while the selection itself is varied enough, the stories are usually very simple in set-up and besides a core plot, feature a lot of "series tropes" (Sashichi being a womanizer, him bickering with his wife etc), so it's pretty hard to say something substantial about them without basically telling the whole story.

But I think Suekuni's afterword does a fantastic job at pointing out the more interesting points of these stories. Most importantly, or at least, what I thought the most engaging, is the fact that you can recognize ideas in some of these stories that would later be developed further in some of the more famous Kindaichi Kousuke novels. Some of these tricks in the Sashichi series are a bit simple, and because of the very short length of the stories, often it feels like clues are introduced just moments before the denouement, but at the very least, they are plotted as proper mysteries and often feature just enough of unique historical elements, ranging from popular culture like kabuki to women's sumo wrestling, to keep the reader engaged. But it is really seeing how for example one of these stories utilized a trick that you'd later see developed in much more interesting form in the Kindaichi Kousuke novel Gokumontou. Mind you, I don't really mean you see "proto-versions" of the trick in these stories, like how Agatha Christie's The Second Gong became the longer Dead Man's Mirror, but it's more like you see Yokomizo tackling a trope from mystery fiction here, which you'd also would see in a Kindaichi novel later on in his career. You can thus see him grow as a mystery writer, trying ideas out here and returning to them a decade, or more, later. 

And Yokomizo does also come up with interesting situations with his historical settings. In a few cases for example, there's a killer who removes the arm or hand of a victim, but in a world where you don't have fingerprints or DNA testing, why would a killer remove such part? In a contemporary world murderers might do that to hide the identity of their victim, but why would someone do that in the Edo period? Some of the answers provides are memorable because they are based on historical facts, so that make these stories feel firmly set in this setting, while others feel like they could have been easily rewritten to have taken place in a contemporary setting. Among the 17 stories are for example the first Sashichi story Hakoita Musume ("The Girls on the Hakoita"), where three young women have been featured as models for the art on hakoita paddles die one after another, with their own paddle lying next to thier bodies. In Ikiteiru Jiraiya, a thief thought to have died returns, but this time, the "non-violent thief" has committed murders. Or did he? In the title story Kyougen on A Full Moon's Night, Sashichi visits a party, where he is asked by a mysterious woman to pass on a note to one of the other guests, but later this guest is found dead, and three different clues found on his body, point to three different suspects. Horimonoshi no Musume deals with someone trying to identify his granddaughter, whom he has not met but does know has a certain tattoo on her back, but then two women with that tattoo appear before him. As Suekuni also points however, sometimes the underlying trick/solution does feel familiar to some classical Western mystery fiction, with Yokomizo adapting similar concept to the Edo era.

Personally, I thought having 17 of these stories in one volume was a bit overkill, but overall, Meigetsu Ichiya Kyougen - Ningyou Sashichi Torimono-chou Kessakusen is a fun, and especially very readable short story collection, that gives you a good idea of the torimono-chou subgenre and whereas Okamoto Kidou's Hanshichi series felt rather Holmesian, I would say Yokomizo's plotting in this selection of stories, is definitely closer to the puzzle-type plotting like Christie. Personally I found this book especially interesting having read a lot of Kindaichi novels, because you could really tell how Yokomizo first experimented with some ideas he'd later revisit, but even without that knowledge, the stories here are entertaining, even if quite simple. On the other hand, if these are really the best of the best in terms of mystery plotting of Sashichi, I can't say I am very interested in reading the other 150+ stories.

Original Japanese title(s): 横溝正史『名月一夜狂言  人形佐七捕物帳ミステリ傑作選』:「羽子板娘」/「名月一夜狂言」/「戯作地獄」/「生きている自来也」/「出世競べ三人旅」/「鶴の千番 」/「春色眉かくし」/「彫物師の娘」/「春宵とんとんとん」/「狐の裁判」/「当り矢」/ 「風流女相撲」/ 「たぬき汁」/ 「遠眼鏡の殿様」/「呪いの畳針」/「ろくろ首の女」/「初春笑い薬」

The Poet and the Lunatics

"One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off."

"Letter from Chekhov to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev"

I like this cute cover!

Publisher Tokyo Sogensha has been offering a fantastic platform for mystery writers who haven't been published yet for decades now with the prestigious Ayukawa Tetsuya Award: the award includes a publishing contract for the winning manuscript, and writers like Ashibe Taku, Asukabe Katsunori, Aizawa Sako, Aosaki Yuugo, Amon Junichi, Ichikawa Tetsuya, Ichikawa Yuuto, Imamura Masahiro, Houjou Kie and many more have all made their professional debuts by winning this award aimed at novel-length works. In the meantime, Tokyo Sogensha has also provided a platform for short stories, which would also be rewarded with publication in their literary magazine. 2022 was the last time this award was called the Mysteries! Newcomer Award, as it is now called the Sogen Mystery Short Story Award. The last winner of the Mysteries! Newcomer Award was Mamon Kouhei, with the short story Lunatic Retriever. This short story is included in Mamon's 2024 short story collection Bokura wa Kaishuu Shinai ("No Pay-Off for Us", 2024), which provides a nice showcase of his mystery plotting skills, as well as his talent for writing characters.

The book opens with Gaitou Interview ("Street Interview"), which offers a seemingly harmless mystery: Kirito is approached by classmate Fujiwara, who needs some help, and Kirito is known for having a very keen eye for details. Fujiwara's sister was recently interviewed on the street about a few topics, like the trend of younger people not reading newspapers anymore. Her sister thought the interview went well, but after it was broadcast, people on the internet started bashing her sister for giving stupid answers, and some even just bad-mouthed her appearance. Fujiwara doesn't know what Kirito can do, but hopes he can somehow make it stop. After a careful examination of the street interview video, Kirito is however indeed able to miraculously stop the bashing. This is a unique kind of mystery, as it doesn't involve any real crime, but it is set-up in a convincing manner, even if some of the clues are introduced too close to Kirito's proposed solution to resolving this matter. It's a mystery you could imagine happen in real-life, and I really like how the story eventually wraps back to Kirito's own backstory of how he became known at school as a kind of detective.

Kaeru-Goroshi ("The Murder of a Frog") is about the comedy duo Frogs in the Well, consisting of Shougo and Mitsunori.  Shougo is introduced to Miki, a great fan of the duo, via a mutual friend, and the two start seeing each other more often, eventually leading to them dating officially. While the two comedians have been working hard on their act, they never had their big break, until they finally manage to win first place in a prestigious comedy contest, which results in them getting more offers for appearances on television. The two are not used to their new succes, getting drained by the constant stream of gigs and to make things worse, Shougo is suddenly rejected by Miki, who, despite still being fond of him, somehow can't stand being with him anymore. It's during this period a comedian from the same agency, who has been in the trade for a very long time without any succes, finally wins his first contest. Masuoka Hideki never had much success, but he was always super nice to his juniors at the agency, so everyone is beyond happy for him, and they all gather at the offices of the agency to celebrate his long-awaited award. They all have something to drink and after a while, people walk in and out the room to make phone calls and smoke, but when Mitsunori goes out on the balcony on the third floor, he spots a dead Masuoka on the street below, and lying next to him, is a squished frog. Considering Masuoka just won an award and had his big break that very night, it doesn't seem likely this is a suicide, and suspicion falls on all who were in the building at the moment, but because it is not clear at first when Masuoka left the room and died, it is difficult to establish who was where when, and therefore who has an alibi or not. After reading the first story, I had mistakenly assumed this book would not feature murders at all, so this was a pleasant (?) surprise. Mamon spins a very Queen-esque whodunnit tale, where you use the various physical clues sprinkled across the tale to cross out suspects off the list, and there are some clever twists hidden in this process too, but what is the most memorable about this story, is definitely the motive for the murder. While a motive is a very subjective thing (one can find a motive satisfying, while someone else not at all), I find Mamon's efforts in presenting this aspect too as a fair-play mystery, and the way he set-up the motive with foreshadowing quite memorable. Considering how the whodunnit-part clewing went and the way the motive was so thoroughly foreshadowed, I can easily imagine this same short (very short!) story be fleshed out into a full novel, and it would've worked as well.

Tsuisou no Ie ("The House of Memories") is a very short story, where a father and his two adult children visit the home of the grandfather, who recently passed away. While going through his stuff, the narrator realizes something odd's going on: he has vivid memories of visiting his grandpa's study, which had bookcases filled completely with books. He hadn't visited his grandfather at home for many years, especially not because they had a fight a few years ago, but he knows his grandfather kept on buying books and that he never ever sold his books... But where have all the books his grandfather had bought after he last visited him, have gone to, as the bookcases in the study were already completely full back then? Cute little mystery that may have a very simple solution, but it just works very well with the theme of childhood memories.

Hayami Shirou wo Oikakete ("Chasing after Hayami Shirou") is a two-party mystery, where the narrator first tells how his classmate Hayami Shirou once saved him from a false accussation at school: trash had been thrown around the pool, and because the narrator had a fight with the teacher of the swimming club at the time, he was accused of the vandal act. Hayami however very ingeniously, and swiftly proves who the real culprit was. The narrator and Hayami now go to the same high school, and Hayami's talents are once again needed, when the football (soccer) club find their storeroom ransacked, with balls and other equipment stolen. The stolen items however are found the following day, having been left somewhere on the school grounds. The way Hayami deduces who the culprit is, and why, is clever and I do like the clues are based on physical senses that usually aren't featured as strongly in written fiction, though at the same time, that is also why the story kinda falls flat for me, as we read a lot about these senses, but while your mileage may vary, I did find it hard to believe how "exactly" for example a character could recognize a lingering smell. I do like the little twist at the end of the deduction process that allowed Hayami to point at the one and only culprit, and the motive works well in this school setting too.

Lunatic Retriever is set at a college mixed dormitory, which has one 'famous' inhabitant: Yoshida Haruka won a literary award at age 20 and has been publishing books these last two years. She's also quite arrogant and doesn't mingle much with the other students living in the dorm. However, that doesn't mean her death isn't a shock. On the day a solar eclipse happens, she is found dead in a storeroom inside the dorm. The storeroom was originally a smoking area inside the common room, with two doors (one opening in, the other door opening out). Before the eclipse, people tried going to the storeroom to get something, but found both doors locked for some reason. After the eclipse, the students find it odd the doors are still closed, so they force the doors open. They not only learn the doors were "locked" because they had been taped tight with duct tape, they also find a dead Haruka lying on the floor, as well as a burning stove. The room being taped shut and the burning stove suggests Haruka committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, but on the other hand, they also are of the opinion Haruka would be the last person to commit suicide. But if it was murder, how did the murderer escape the taped storeroom? This is a very dense story, with a lot to offer: a taped locked room, Ellery Queen style deductions to determine who the murderer is, and we even have a solar eclipse... Because of the clue density, we even have room for multiple people presenting their theories, and interestingly, I think that in terms of the locked room mystery, the final solution isn't even as impressive as the earlier ones. What is really memorable about this story however, is the ending, when we are confronted with what is thematically an absurdly shocking revelation. It is a funny, meta-level observation that in a different work could have catastrophic implications, but it works in this short story setting and gives you some food for thought regarding the mystery genre, while also still functioning as a mystery story itself. The theme, in hindsight, can be found in other stories in the volume too, which wraps things up nicely.

This is the first time I read anything by Mamon Kouhei, and while I am generally more a fan of short stories, and I did enjoy the short stories found here, I have to admit they left me wanting for more, for stories that show the same type of plotting, clewing and ways in identifying whodunnit, but with more room for depth and that is also the case for the motives, there are some really originaly character motivations at display here that result in interesting mystery settings, and I'd love to see Mamon for example trying to do a longer detective novel with such themes. So I'll keep an eye out for Mamon's future output!

Original Japanese title(s): 真門浩平『ぼくらは回収しない』 「街頭インタビュー」/「カエル殺し」/「追想の家」/「速水士郎を追いかけて」/「ルナティック・レトリーバー」

The Bear Detectives

Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife

"The Bare Necessities" (Phil Harris, Bruce Reitherman) 

While I am not in direct contact with current members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, as a former member I do still follow their social media. Personally speaking, my favorite activity at the club were the sessions with whodunnit/guess-the-culprit scenarios: these were short mystery stories written by club members which were clearly divided in a "problem" and "solution" part. The idea is that everyone is first handed the problem part, which traditionally ends with a Challenge to the Reader. The participants get about 45~60 minutes to read the story and (logically!) figure out who the culprit is of the story. If you think you know whodunnit, you can discuss that with the author and they'll tell you whether you got it right or wrong, and after the initial session is over, the author hands out the solution parts to everyone. In a way, the stories do tend to be a bit formulaistic in form, often following Queen-style deduction methods to prove who the culprit is (the culprit knew fact X. Y is proven to not have known fact X, therefore they can't be the killer), but it's exactly the type of mystery story I love, and it was great seeing different members using this form to tell different tales. And while these stories remain "private" for the club generally, I still liked seeing the KUMC social media account briefly tweeting about once in a while about how they did this or that story this week, and how it was received at the session.

Because of that, I still remember how last year, the KUMC account posted how one of their members had written a Danganronpa fanfic as a whodunnit scenario. As someone who enjoys the quirky mystery game series, I was of course intrigued by this concept, as at least in the year I was at the KUMC, people always opted for "original" settings (i.e. not based on existing IPs). But as with most of these stories, I assumed I'd never get a chance to ever read it as I wasn't an active member anymore, and you generally only get to read the story the time it's read at a club session. However, a few weeks ago, I learned the author, Kunou Junki, had actually self-published their fanfic late 2023, selling it at doujin markets. Which was cool, but again, I wasn't really in the position to visit those doujin fairs to pick the booklet up. It was apparently received pretty well though, and Atsukawa Tatsumi even mentioned the story in his ongoing column on mystery fiction, praising it as a whodunnit scenario and as a Danganronpa fanfic. But then.... a few days ago, Kunou announced they were finally selling the fanfic via Booth. So I finally got to read it.

Danganronpa FF - Ame no Kigou, Soshite Happy Birthday ("Danganronpa FF - Rain Code, and Happy Birthday", 2023) is set at the aptly Doujin Academy, where a group of students, each being extremely skilled in a very specific field, are held captured by Monokuma, a cute-looking, but horrifyingly sadistic robotic bear who has set up a game of death among the students. If a student kills a fellow student, a class trial will be held, in which the participants must decide (vote) on a culprit. If the students manage to identify the real culprit, the latter will receive "punishment" (be executed) and the game will continue (more of these rounds) until there are two survivors left, who are free to go. However, if the real culprit manages to elude suspicion at the trial, they are the one will be released, and all the rest of the students will receive "punishment". Monokuma has been feeding the fears and desires of the captured students, making some of them desperate enough to want to kill their fellow students in an attempt to escape Doujin Academy, but fortunately, up until now, the remaining students have been able to correctly identify the real culprit each time, allowing the rest to survive while the real culprits have been executed. At the start of Danganronpa FF, about half of the initial group of students is already dead, either having become a murder victim, or having been executed as a murderer.

The story is told from the POV of Yomikura Suzu, the Ultimate Narrator, who has been acting as a kind of Watson to Aizawa Seishun, the Ultimate Detective, who has been the MVP in the class trials until now: not only has he been solving most of the murders, he is also trying to figure out a way to escape from Monokuma's prison. After the latest execution, Aizawa hopes to set a plan in motion that will allow them to go against Monokuma, and he decides to rope in Yomikura as his accomplice. While the gymnasium is closed off during the night (22:00 - 08:00), all other rooms in the school are accessible, and Aizawa has found out the dressing rooms in the corner of the lecture hall, in front of the passage to the gymnasium, do have cameras, but no microphones, and are also completely soundproofed, so he spends the whole night discussing his plans with Yomikura there, assured Monokuma can't overhear them. When they leave the dressing room the following morning however, they are shocked to find two murdered bodies lying in the lecture hall and that they have been penetrated with a spear. There's also a bloody trail leading from the gymnasium, through the passage, to the lecture hall. A new game of life and death begins, as the remaining students need to figure out who the killer is, or else they themselves will be executed.

Save for the occasional pastiche, I generally don't read fanfics, so I have no real idea of what the standard is, but I sure found Danganronpa FF to be a very effective one. It starts already with the great cover art and the next page introduces you to the various school rules of Doujin Academy, which will be a familiar sight to those who have played the original Danganronpa games: there are the general rules that explain under what conditions a student can escape the school, but also rules about the night time, about ownership of student notebooks and even about how many people a killer may kill (as in: you can't just kill everyone and win the game in that way.). Most of the rules are exactly the same as the games, so it really feels like this is a story set in that world, even if we're now at Doujin Academy. While the characters are original, the characters have concepts that would seem to fit perfectly in the Danganronpa world, from the Ultimate Narrator, to characters like The Ultimate Twin, the Ultimate Ninja and the Ultimate Mountaineer. This story is set after half of the cast has already been wiped out, so it's a bit of a shame some characters are only mentioned briefly by name only, and I'd love to have seen more of them (I wonder of Kunou is planning more stories/"chapters" set in this world?). However, I do have to say that for the most part, you don't really need much prior knowledge of Danganronpa to enjoy this story as a tale of mystery: the essentials are explained adequately (especially with the rule book at the start of the booklet) and ultimately, the mystery really revolves around these specific murders, committed at this specific point in the ongoing story, so no knowledge is necessary about what happened before, or what happens later or about Danganronpa in a meta way. In Danganronpa terms: this is a specific chapter, with its own case.

As a pure whodunnit mystery, I have to say I was surprised how dense this was. It's been a while since I did a 'real run' of a whodunnit scenario, so I'll be the first to admit my deductive senses aren't what they used to be, but Danganronpa FF seems about a full step more complex than the usual KUMC whodunnit scenario, making it unlikely anyone could have gotten all the points within the usual session time (though perhaps they held a longer session than usual). So yeah, this is a really deep whodunnit story following the Queen format, where you can logically deduce who the killer is by identifying criteria the killer must answer to, and then figuring out who of the suspects answers to all of those criteria. Some of these criteria are relatively easy to notice, allowing you to cross off some names early, but others are really cleverly done, and I am the first to admit that I wasn't even close to the answer model provided by the detective at the end. There are quite a few (very devilish!) twists and turns in the long deduction process (which is why I think it would have been difficult for someone to solve all of the story during a normal club session), but for Ellery Queen logic-lovers, this is really great stuff  and I love a lot of the logical processes shown in this story (the initial step alone of the long elimination process is already really good!). What is even more commendable is how cleverly Kunou makes use of the Danganronpa setting. A lot of the things pulled off here in terms of logic only make sense in a Danganronpa-inspired world, with the school rules and Monokuma antics and stuff like that. So I really agree with Atsukawa here about Danganronpa FF is satisfying as both a mystery story, and a Danganronpa fanfic.

The third act of Danganronpa FF wasn't originally part of the scenario presented at the KUMC, as after the initial murder problem and the subsequent solution part, we are treated to what is basically an in-depth essay on the Danganronpa games as mystery games. If you have played the games (or you don't care for spoilers at all), there are some interesting points made (ha, I hadn't expected Kunou to quote Morooka's academic work on shin honkaku mystery and games!), but it is certainly a part that 'takes you out of the story', so your mileage on this closing part may vary. This part has no direct influence on the logical parts of the mystery, so you could choose to ignore it if you wish to do so.

At any rate, I did really enjoy Danganronpa FF - Ame no Kigou, Soshite Happy Birthday, as both a really well-plotted whodunnit scenario as well as a mystery story written with a lot of love for the Danganronpa franchise. Danganronpa FF was apparently also a reason why Kunou was asked to pen an original whodunnit story for the Mystery Carnival event of publisher Seikaisha held last week. I haven't read that story, but I do hope I get to read more of Kunou in the story, as what I have read here really makes me curious to what more they can come up with. Hopefully, we'll see more of them in the future!

Original Japanese title(s):　久納淳生 『ダンガンロンパFF　雨の記号、そしてハッピィバースデイ』

The Time Thief

We could steal time just for one day

We can be heroes for ever and ever 

"Heroes" (David Bowie)

Gorgeous cover!

Earlier this year, I discussed Yuuki Haruo's Salome no Guillotine, a very memorable mystery set in the Taishou era, revolving around a series of murders among artists. It was only after reading the book I learned it was actually the latest entry in a series. In fact, I only realized that after I first opened the book of today's review, and saw the names of the protagonists of Salome's Guillotine on the first page... Yuuki Haruo's Tokeidorobou to Akunin ("Clock Thieves & Crooks" 2023) is the second book featuring the adventures of painter Iguchi Sakuta and his friend and former burglar Hasuno in the late Taishou era, with the handsome Hasuno with his criminal experience of course being the detective, while Iguchi functions as our Watson. Iguchi and his wife are good friends with the loner Hasuno, who after a short career in relieving people of their possessions has now become mostly an upstanding citizen, though the adventures of the two occasionally force Hasuno to make use of his unique talents again. And yes, this is the second book in the series apparently, so I'm reading these out of order and I have no idea how much about their initial meeting is explained in the first book, but in Tokeidorobou to Akunin, they form a great team. The book is technically a short story collection, but the stories do flow from one into the next, even if there's no tight overarching storyline. 

The book opens with Kaemon-shi no Bijutsukan ("The Art Museum of Mr Kaemon"), where Iguchi has a major problem. Long ago, his father had bought an antique Dutch clock which once belonged to the Dutch royal family. When he purchased the clock, he also received a very well-made imitation of the clock, as the previous owner had been scared of theft. When Iguchi's father sold the clock to the collector Kaemon, he gave the imitation to Kaemon. The latter never noticed it, and Iguchi suspects his late father did it on purpose. The elderly Kaemon has not long to live anymore, and has recently had his country house renovated to include an art museum to display the art collection he gathered throughout the years. This would include the Dutch table clock, and Iguchi is afraid fellow art connoisseurs who will visit the museum will realize it's a fake, and that it will become public his father sold Kaemon imitation art. Iguchi and Hasuno visit Kaemon at his house, to see if they could just apologize and give him the real clock, but the attitude of the grumpy old man makes it clear there is only one solution: Iguchi and Hasuno have to break in the museum and swap the fake clock for the real one themselves. What follows is a fun adventure of Iguchi and Hasuno trying to sneak inside the museum, but while they are there, they notice something is off about the museum, but what? This is one of those mysteries where you don't really know what the mystery is until the conclusion, so I can't say too much about the mystery. But I'd definitely say it's a memorable one! The ingenious twist is definitely set-up very well with both physical and psychological clues, and I love the themes (motive) behind this story. Great opening of the book, especially with the banter between Iguchi and Hasuno.

Akunin Ikka no Misshitsu ("The Locked Room of the Family of Crooks") follows Atsuko, the maid of the Minoda family, who live in a large manor in Yokohama. Patriarch Akiyoshi lives in England with his wife, while his four children live in their parental home in Japan. None of the children, all of different mothers, really like their father, nor each other, but money is a great binding tissue, so they all live together. Oldest son Yukimasa one day receives a letter from his father telling him he is returning from England and he has also sent boxes full of furniture back to Japan. It appears his wife died, and now he's coming back, but his father wants his home in England replicated perfectly in the annex of their Japanese home, hence Akiyoshi not only sending back sofas and chairs, but even the doors. Yukimusa arranges for builders to come and construction starts based on the photographs his father sent him. One night however, as the maid Atsuko returns, she notices a figure floating in the rooms under construction, and when she peeks through the window, she sees Yukimasa's body hanging from a rope, with his legs resting on the bolted door latch (which was also imported from England). She calls the other siblings, but they can only enter the room by breaking the door down: meaning this was a locked room. At first sight, this therefore looks like a suicide, but when Iguchi and Hasuno visit the place (Iguchi's patron had sent Iguchi and Hasuno to sort out something with Yukimasa), they soon uncover not only that all of Yukimasa's siblings had a motive to kill him,, but they also find clues that indicate this was indeed a murder. But how could the murderer have left the locked room? On a purely technical level, the locked room mystery is not very original perhaps, but the way it ties to the motive is really great! It provides a fantastic reason why such a rudimentary trick was used, and the small unique elements of this locked room, like balancing the victim's feet on the latch, do transform it enough to create a good story. But it's definitely the motive, and the final implication regarding the victim, that makes this another good entry.

Yuukai to Ooyuki - Yuukai no Shou ("Abduction and Heavy Snow: Abduction") and Yuukai to Ooyuki - Ooyuki no Shou ("Abduction and Heavy Snow: Heavy Snow") is a two-part story, each focusing on a different mystery. In the first part, Hasuno asked to come disguised as a salesman to Iguchi's sister-in-law's place. When he arrives there, he learns Iguchi's niece Mineko has been abducted and a ransom note has been left in their letter-box. They ask Hasuno for advise, but the latter soon notices several odd points about the ransom note, leading to a surprising conclusion regarding why Mineko was abducted. The story then deals with the drop-off for the ransom, which is done by Iguchi's father-in-law, while Hasuno and Iguchi, in disguise, try to spot the abductors. Again, Hasuno quickly sees through the trickery of the abductors and soon the two are on their way to save Mineko. This chapter is the most adventurous of the whole book, I think, with a good deal of suspense as Hasuno slowly deduces the bigger story behind Mineko's abduction simply based on the instructions in the ransom note. The trick regarding the ransom money drop-off is fairly simple, but it's basically just a set-up to lead into the second part of the story. There we follow the story first from Mineko's point of view, as she finds herself abducted by a group of men. In the night, she's taken by one of the leaders to a hut outside and thrown on a hay bed: Mineko fears the worst and is knocked out by the man. When she wakes up however, she finds that man stabbed to death lying next to her. It is at that time her uncle arrives together with Hasuno, having found out where she was being held, but they have two problems: one is that their car broke down and even if they try to get away on foot now, they'll probably be caught by the rest of the gang in the house next door. The second problem is that the only footprints leading to the hut are those of the dead man, Mineko and Iguchi and Hasuno who arrived just now, meaning the only person who could've killed that man is Mineko. While Mineko has no recollection of killing the man, and Iguchi and Hasuno also don't believe that is the case, who then did kill the man, and how? While it might be hard to guess the details of how this was done, I think the general idea behind the locked room is probably fairly easy to guess, even if it can be a bit tricky figuring out the exact timing. The story then ends in a kind of reverse Home Alone, where Iguchi, Hasuno and Mineko try to round up the whole gang themselves, which results in some funny swashbuckling scenes.

Iguchi, like many of his fellow artists, has found a patron in the art-loving businessman Harumi. In Harumi-shi no Gaikoku Tegami ("Mr Harumi's Letter from Abroad"), Harumi asks Iguchi for some help, or to be exact, he needs the help of Iguchi's friend Hasuno. Not because Hasuno was a burglar, but because Hasuno also knows languages and Harumi needs a translator. His wife passed away some time ago, and he only now got around to sorting out her possessions, but he came across a strange letter from France, even though she did not have any friends there. Hasuno translates the letter, which is sent by the nephew of Marcel Champlain, stating he writes on behalf of his recently deceased uncle, who implored him to write a letter to Japan to express his thanks, and love to Ms Harumi. Harumi has no idea who this Marcel Champlain is, and asks Iguchi and Hasuno to figure out who he is and what his relationship was with his wife. The two dig into the history of Harumi's late wife, which is rather complex: Harumi's recently deceased wife was actually his second, and his first wife was actually her twin sister, who also passed away early, and there was another older sister too. The precise relationship between Harumi and his wife and sister-in-laws is rather complex and can make this story a bit confusing, and again, this is the type of mystery you don't really know was even present until it is explained to you, though I do like the truth Hasuno eventually uncovers, and it gives a very sad, but memorable meaning to the letter sent on Marcel's behalf.

In Mitsukawamaru no Ayashii Bansan ("The Alluring Dinner on the Mitsukawa-Maru"), Iguchi, Hasuno and fellow artist Ootsuki find themselves on the ship Mitsukawa-Maru, as representives of Harumi. The Mitsukawa-Maru recently returned from India, but ran into trouble just off the coast: while the ship itself is in no direct danger of sinking and the crew safely returned to the mainland, it will take a few days before the ship itself can be pulled free. However, the ship was carrying a unique cargo: two tigers.... which are going to be served at dinner. Hirokawa Koutarou, the owner of the ship, also runs a shady secret club where the members can enjoy strange things, which is why he had planned a dinner party with tiger meat. Due to the ship's troubles however, he has decided to hold the party on the ship itself now, with the invitees being brought especially on the Mitsukawa-Maru as it lays off the coast.  While one tiger has already been prepared, the other is bit more troublesome: the ship's troubles led to one tiger cage being broken, and now that tiger is running free in two connected rooms in the hold. Terue is Hirokawa's maid, and she's on the ship too to take care of her boss' guests, but she comes across the dead body of one of them! She reports to her boss, but when they return to the place, the body is gone, and her boss is not really believing her. Hasuno and Iguchi however have reason to believe Terue might be right, as the victim was a reporter on the trail of a serial killer, who might be one of the other guests, and they start poking around and looking for the body. This is by far the longest story of the bunch, offering a closed circle mystery with unique elements like a friggin' tiger in the hold, but I feel this story was way longer than it needed to be, and even felt a bit tiring after a while. Hasuno and Iguchi are already aware of much of the background story by the time the story starts, so the reader is always at a disadvantage, and unfortunately, this story has no floorplan even though the characters move around a lot on the ship. Eventually, Hasuno deduces who the murderer is based on the actions they took, but to be honest, the whodunnit wasn't nearly as impressive as the whydunnit. At least, the whydunnit regarding the direct motive for the second death and the implications of that death was absolutely great, and I would perhaps have preferred a story focusing solely on that.

Houseki Dorobou to Okidokei ("A Jewel Thief and the Table Clock") brings up back to the Dutch table clock from the first story. Iguchi receives a letter from the (son of the) previous owner of the clock, who hopes to buy back the clock. Iguchi has two major problems: due to the conclusion of the first story, Iguchi is still in possession of the clock, even though it belongs to Kaemon and two: the clock was stolen. He had kept it wrapped up in a cloth in the bedroom, but for some reason someone stole the clock, and just the clock, with nothing else in the bedroom being disturbed. This was also only one theft in a series of thefts among friends of his wife: several rubies have been stolen, but all under nearly impossible circumstances: for example, one friend had a bracelet with a ruby embedded in it, and hidden it within an orange cloth, put in a box with many other wrapped up cloths, but the thief managed to steal only the one with the bracelet in it, without opening the other cloths. In another theft, the thief stole a ruby which had been put on a dress, but there had been four identical dresses, with the other three having very well made imitations, so how could the thief so quickly found the real ruby, not even having to touch the other three dresses? While the tricks behind each of these cases is fairly simple, I do like how some of them are connected, leading to some nice synergy moments: the explanation for the ruby on the dress theft for example is pretty clever on its own, but it also gives a great explanation for how the thief managed to find the antique clock in Iguchi's home. While I don't really think this is a very memorable story (I think I had expected it to connect a bit more strongly to the previous stories), it's an okay one, and it also leads directly into the events of Salome's Guillotine.

Overall though, I did really enjoy Tokeidorobou to Akunin. I think Yuuki Haruo especially excels in coming up with cool motives that not only are memorable, but they also often naturally lead to the core mysteries of howdunnit or whodunnit. I already noticed that in Salome's Guillotine, but as a short story collection, you of course see more instances of that here. The banter between Hasuno and Iguchi is also fun, and while some of the stories can become a bit darker, there is usually a slight comedic tone to them (the two stories told from the maid's POV for example have some funny moments where they lament having to work for their employers). So another recommended read! I should probably read the first book too...

Original Japanese title(s): 夕木春央『時計泥棒と悪人』: 「加右衛門氏の美術館」/「悪人一家の密室」/「誘拐と大雪　誘拐の章」/「誘拐と大雪　大雪の章」/「晴海氏の外国手紙」/「光川丸の妖しい晩餐」/「宝石泥棒と置時計」

Art of Darkness!

「人を呪わば穴二つ」

 

"Curses return upon the heads of those that curse"

(Proverb) 

Huh, I have done more audio drama reviews than I thought... Though it's been a while!

Kitayama Takekuni is a writer strongly associated with the locked room murder mystery and other impossible crimes, and as his nickname of "Kitayama of the physical tricks" implies, he specializes in impossible murder mysteries that rely on a physical trick. And with that, I don't mean a string and needle, but like (hypothethically) houses that rotate or fly around, corpses being shot across a field with a cannon, that kind of thing. Most of the mysteries I have read written by him will feature visual aids like diagrams and floorplans to help the reader visualize the scene, as you often have to think in two, or three dimensions to figure out how the murderer managed to set the scene in such a way. When the murder is being explained at the end of  the story, you can often expect an updated diagram with arrows and other additions to explain how a corpse disappeared from scene A and appeared at scene B, or how a Rube Goldberg contraption helped lock the door from the inside.

In that sense, Kitayama Takekuni is basically the last author I'd expected to write an audio drama, precisely because his mysteries often rely on the visual aspect. Of course, he does not exclusively write such mysteries, but it's definitely his trademark style and his strength, and it is hard to imagine how a genuine Kitayama Takekuni mystery would work within the framework of an audio drama.

Which is why I was pretty surprised when I learned that Kitayama Takekuni has indeed written the scenario of a mystery audio drama: Shiromajutsu Tantei Mashiro Mami ("White Mage Detective Mashiro Mami") was released in 2020 by Mausu Promotion (a voice acting school) in their "Two Actor Theater" line: these audio dramas only feature two voice actors, each having a fixed role, so the stories play out via the conversations of these characters. Shiromajutsu Tantei Mashiro Mami features the talents of Kuwahara Yuuki and Takada Yuuki and starts off with Rina, a high school student, on her way to visit a venue with fortune tellers: the place is hugely popular, with a three month waiting list and a consultation session is far from cheap! But when Rina arrives the venue, she's spoken to by a girl with an eyepatch and a crutch, who tells Rina she really shouldn't go to that place, as the fortune tellers there are just money-grabbing charlatans. The girl then introduces herself as "the white mage detective" Mashiro Mami, and explains she too is a fortune teller, specializing in undoing curses (She choose the title 'white mage detective' to sound cooler). Because Mami looks as suspicious as her self-chosen name sounds, Rina is at first hesitant to listen to her any longer, but when Mami manages to accurately point out something that relates to the problem Rina has, she decides to visit Mami at her office for a consultation.

For Rina has an occult problem. Her family owns a painting which is said to be cursed: the painting depicts a woman, with wet hair and a haze covering the painting, like it's raining or there's mist. A rope-like line can be seen extending upwards from behind her neck, which is why the painting is known online as the hanged woman. The painting belonged to Rina's uncle, but he and his family died three years ago: he and his wife were hanging from a tree in the garden, while their son had been drowned in a puddle just outside the garden, having been hit on the head first. The circumstances seemed to suggest Rina's uncle had decided to commit suicide with the whole family (killing the son first). While the fact Rina's cousin had recently quit his job and was becoming more and more socially isolated had been weighing on her uncle's mind, it seems a weak motive for a forced suicide. The fact her uncle and aunt died in the same way as the painting doesn't help Rina's worries, especially as soon after their death, an image of the painting started to make its rounds on the internet, accompanied by the story it is cursed. Murder however seems ruled out: it had been raining earlier that night, and no foot tracks of outsiders were found in the grounds surrounding the house. Rina hopes Mami can investigate the painting and lift the curse, if there's one. But surprisingly, Mami's method of 'lifting a curse' depends a lot on meticulous investigation and deducing what really happened at the house...

As a mystery story, this is pretty short and while nothing mind-blowing happens here, it's pretty decent. You can tell Kitayama does know he's writing for an audio production with only two actors: the list of characters is fairly limited and there are little "tricks" to make some conversations feel natural, like Mami being too frightened to look at a photograph of the cursed painting, so Rina is forced to explain it verbally to Mami (and to the listener). Which is why it's funny how one of the most important twists in the story is actually visually based, but if this were actually a visual medium, the twist might have been a bit too obvious: while it may have been more fair, the twist does work better having the relevant object being described to the listener, who will then imagine the object as they listen to the drama, and then having the twist sprung upon them. As a mystery, Shiromajutsu Tantei Mashiro Mami is a fairly lite tale, with Mami solving not only the mysterious deaths of Rina's uncle, aunt and cousin, but also the mystery of why there's an urban legend surrounding the painting, but don't come in expecting some of Kitayama's best work here, but it's decent enough. Though I guess, a lot of it does implicitly includes the disclaimer of "within the confines of an audio drama". For at the same time, I can't deny the framework of the audio drama really doesn't allow Takeyama to do what he's best at (impossible crimes based on almost ridiculously grand physical tricks) and the drama isn't very long either (less than a hour). I would have loved to see more of this series, as this feels more like a nice prologue/first story, and you can are left wanting for the "main body".

I also like the two characters a lot: Rina's a lot sharper than she appears at first and certainly not just a gullible high school student, while Mami on the other hand is obviously a clever detective, but can also be very clumsy and she's a bit of a scaredy cat and these two have some really funny interactions. Which is another reason why I'd want to see more of this series: they are set-up as a really entertaining detecting duo and the epilogue of the story also shows the two having becoming close, so you feel more should come.

Shiromajutsu Tantei Mashiro Mami is in no way really a work that allowed Kitayama Takekuni to do what he's best at in terms of mystery writing, but nonetheless, it's an entertaining short mystery that shows potential for more. Though I guess since this originally came out in 2020 and nothing has followed, neither as audio drama nor in any format, I guess this will be all we'll hear from Mami and Rina.

Original Japanese title(s): マウスプロモーション、北山猛邦 (シナリオ）『マウス二人芝居     白魔術探偵・真白真実』

Mystery on the Menu

"Only in England is the coffee so atrocious. On the Continent they understand how important it is for the digestion that it should be properly made."

"The Big Four"

I actually have a story to tell about this book, but now is not the time... yet. Probably! Maybe in the future!

Disclosure: I translated Higashigawa Tokuya's Lending the Key to the Locked Room. If you haven't read it yet... read it! 

Murasaki Renji, a writer for the magazine Future Weekly for the publisher Hodansha (do not confuse for Modern Weekly of Kodansha), is sitting on a big story, but his editor won't accept Renji's first draft of his article. Renji is mixed up with a genuine murder case, with a crucified victim no less. The victim is Renji's uncle professor Takafumi Midorikawa, who was found inside the annex in the garden, his lifeless body bound to two planks which formed a cross. The man had been strangled before he had been put on the cross and left inside the annex, which had been discovered with the door locked from the inside. Renji had been visiting his aunt and uncle that day, who live with another relative in a spacious home. The professor was actually having an affair with a student of his, and Renji's aunt had asked Renji to keep an eye on the professor while he was in the annex, to make sure he wouldn't slip away. The following morning, the professor still wouldn't come out of the annex, so Renji, his aunt and the other relative go and check up on the professor, only to see him lying on the floor, his body fixed to a cross. But how did the murderer get inside and out again, without being seen by Renji last night and locking the door from the inside? That is the answer Renji's editor also wants to know, as he doesn't care much for simply a personal, and yet sensationalistic account. While trying to come up with a possible answer to the impossible crime, Renji wanders around the streets of the ancient capital Kamakura, when he notices a sign saying "Ippukudou" standing in front what appears to be a private home, but it's in fact a quaint little café. Inside, he finds one of the customers is the police detective Akane, who is friends with Yoriko, the extremely shy proprietor of the café who can't speak with first-time customers because of how nervous she gets. Renji decides to confide his story to Akane, hoping she give him some pointers for a possible solution, but to his great surprise, it's not the veteran police detective, but that shy woman dressed in traditional Japanese clothing behind the counter who'll turn out to be the armchair detective in Higashigawa Tokuya's short story collection Junkissa Ippukudō no Shiki ("The Four Seasons of Café Ippukudou", 2014).

If you have been reading my blog for some while now, you'll probably be familiar with the name of Higashigawa. Not only because I translated his debut novel Lending the Key to the Locked Room, but because I very often discuss his work here. His trademark light-hearted style where he uses the slapstick comedy in his stories to ingenously hide clues for the mystery plot is something I'll never stop loving, and he writes consistently enough for every read to be worthwhile. Most of the work I discuss by Higashigawa belong to the same few series (Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de (The After-Dinner Mysteries), Koigakubo Academy and the Ikagawa City), though I have read a few of his other series or non-series work too. Junkissa Ippukudō no Shiki is also the first book in a series, all with an armchair detective setting (the second book is set in an izakaya, though I am not sure if it's the same Yoriko as in this book). Yoriko is a fun character: extremely shy when it comes to first-time customers, to the extent she can't even manage to ask the customer their order and she has next to no confidence in her coffee-making skills, as she inherited the Café Ippukudou, but she listens very carefully to the discussions her customers have, and once she notices something her customers don't, she won't hesitate to snap (somethings breaking plates in the process) to tell them how they're on the completely wrong track (often by comparing their thoughts to her own, badly made coffee).

The four stories in this book are all set in different seasons (hence the title), but another connecting theme between the four stories is surprisingly, the gruesome murders. While the stories are told within the setting of the quaint Café Ippukudou, with Yoriko often clumsily trying to serve her customers, who are bantering about whatever case they got involved with (in a comedic manner, of course), the cases are actually quite grim, with grotesque murder scenes. The contrast between the framing story, and the actual case is pretty significant, and it leads to an unusual, but very alluring tone at times.

The opening story, Haru no Juujika ("A Crucifix on Spring") for example has the victim crucified (well, tied to a cross) and discovered under seemingly impossible circumstances, as the annex had been watched for Renji for most of the night, and the door was locked from the inside. The story provides three suspects, because three is the magic number (the aunt, the relative and the student with whom the victim was having an affair), but none of them appear to have been able to enter the annex (and certainly not unseen). The solution to the problem is probably not very surprising if you're experienced with these kinds of locked room mysteries, but I think it works well enough, considering the limited page count and Higashigawa did enough to properly clue the path to the solution too, so while not a gem by any means, I think it's a very capably plotted story, that shows that Higashigawa at least knows how to handle t a plot that could've come out a lot less enterrtaining if not for his experience.

In Mottomo Ryoukitekina Natsu (A Most Macabre Summer), Renji is meeting someone at Ippukudou: Miyuki got involved in a murder case recently, and is being interviewed by him. On a summer day, Miyuki was helping her childhood friend Kousaku on his rice farm, cutting weeds together. They see three people visiting Kousaku's neighbor Nakazono's place that afternoon: a representative of a supermarket that wants to buy Nakazono's land, Nakazono's ne'er-do-well cousin, and the local madwoman who started a snake cult. All three seem to find the house empty, as they each of them go inside and leave after a short while. After finishing their work and having dinner together, Miyuki returns home only to be sent to Nakazono's place to return a pineapple cutter. She finds the door unlocked, and inside, she discovers Nakazono's dead body has been tied to a cross, placed against the main pillar of the house The man was killed during the afternoon, but which of the three visitors killed the man? This story competes with the last story for being the best: while the set-up is very simple, I love how the incriminating clue was hidden in the text: it's easy to overlook it, but once you realize its significance it points so clearly to the culprit, and it's quite daring in that regard. 

Kiritorareta Shitai no Aki ("A Cut-Up Body in Fall") has the not very succesful author Minamida Gorou visiting his friend, the very successful Higashiyama Atsuya (not to be confused with Higashigawa Tokuya, of course). Higashiyama invites Minamida out for a night of drinking, and after saying goodbye to Higashiyama's secretary/assistant/lover Nakahara Saeko, they spend the night hopping bars and end up in a karaoke bar with a guy they don't even know. When they return to Higashiyama's home in the morning, they find Renji in front of the house: he had an appointment with Saeko to discuss a project for Higashiyama, but she won't respond at all. Minamida and Renji decide to check if Saeko's in her own apartment, but they find the door not locked, and inside the bathroom, they stumble upon her body, minus some body parts like her head. The following day, her head and other parts are found scattered around town in gardens and other places. Minamida and Higashiyama end up discussing the case at Ippukudou, after hearing Renji talking about Yoriko, and indeed, she quickly points out why the murderer must've cut the body up in pieces and more importantly, who the murderer is. This story suffers a bit from the limited page count of the stories: there are extremely few characters in this story and basically only one is a viable suspect, meaning the story doesn't really have whodunnit aspect, only a howdunnit, but once you can safely guess who done it, you almost immediately arrive at the how as the possibilities to commit the murder for this person are just too limited. So this story feels a bit too straightforward, and it would have felt more satisfying if the story had a larger scale. 

Barabara Shitai to Misshitsu ni Fuyu ("A Chopped Up Body and a Locked Room in Winter") has Akane visiting Café Ippukudou again, and after some chatting, she's asked to tell about a case she had mentioned she had been working on the last time she visited (when she met Renji in spring at the Café). She and her subordinate had by driving along a road undergoing reperations after part of it collapsed the previous night, when a patrol officer notes he feels something off about one of the two lonely houses standing in front of the site: the lights in the house have been on since the previous night, but not once has the inhabitant come outside or even peeked outside at the construction work. They take a closer look and through the windows, they find the man lying dead inside in the living room, his throat having been cut with the knife lying besides him. They break inside as the doors and windows are all locked, and while searching the house, they stumble upon a second body, which is lying in pieces in the bath tub. Because the house is completely locked from the inside, and the chopped-up body obviously didn't commit suicide, it appears the first man must've killed the other man (his brother), chopped him up in parts, but then committed suicide by slicing his own throat. However, Yoriko quickly points out there's one other possibility, which is actually quite ingenious! While I liked Mottomo Ryoukitekina Natsu for its simplistic set-up and the execution, this final story is probably the best in terms of actual plotting and clewing: the solution Yoriko proposes comes in two parts, both quite surprising, and they result in an extremely memorable solution for this locked room mystery. The first part isn't really fairly clewed perhaps, but it plays wonderfully with the expectations and assumptions of the reader, and even adds a surprisingly emotional touch to an otherwise very light-hearted collection of stories, while the second part of the solution (the actual howdunnit) is just... a very unique way to commit a locked room mystery. It's not completely fair because unless you are aware of a certain thing, you wouldn't know it could be used in that manner (and they only first mention it explicitly in the solution), but the idea itself is both original and memorable, and it's especially the two-part set-up, with the first part of the solution allowing the introduction of the second part of the solution, that makes this a very unique locked room mystery.

Overall, I enjoyed Junkissa Ippukudō no Shiki: it's not big epic mystery by any means, but it's a short, yet pleasant read, where Higashigawa gets to show off his trademark style of comedic writing coupled with proper puzzle-focused mysteries, and he certainly always manages to keep a certain level of quality, and that consistency is also found in this book. Perfect material to squeeze in your schedule between thicker and darker mysteries. I might return to Ippukudou myself in the future too, because I am curious to see how the second book works as it has a different setting, but seemingly also (a?) Yoriko working there as the armchair detective.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉 『純喫茶「一服堂」の四季』:「春の十字架」/「もっとも猟奇的な夏」/「切りとられた死体の秋」/「バラバラ死体と密室の冬」

The King is Dead

“The trial cannot proceed,” said the King in a very grave voice, “until all the jurymen are back in their proper places—all,” he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as he said so.  

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Huh... they did the title for these covers in yellow twice in row now...

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

Honkaku-Ou is the annual summer anthology collecting the best honkaku short stories published the previous year, as selected by the members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. The publication is basically a companion to the Honkaku Mystery Award, which is awarded to the best published book (novel or short story collection) each year. Short stories often get lost as time passed by, as they are commonly published in magazines or online. Unless they are later collection in a short story collection or an anthology like this one, short stories can become difficult to track down several months later. Anthologies like Honkaku-Ou ensure these stories can be easily found. The current format of five, six stories in 1 volume started in 2019 and I have been discussing the books annually since, and there have been some really cool inclusions in these books, so I was of course also looking forward to this year's entry: Honkaku-Ou 2024 ("The King of Honkaku 2024").

Honkaku-Ou 2024 opens with Ja, Kore wa Satsujin tte Koto de ("Okay, So This Was Murder") by Higashigawa Tokuya, and the story is part of his Ikagawa City series (disclosure:  I translated Higashigawa Tokuya's Lending the Key to the Locked Room, the first book in the series). This is a hilarious inverted mystery, where Oomaeda Noriyuki plans to kill his uncle, Tokujirou, in order to become owner of Oomaeda Pharmaceuticals himself. The idea is Noriyuki will use the trick from a locked room murder mystery he read as a kid to make it seem like his uncle committed suicide in the annex of his seaside mansion, where his uncle usually sleeps. Noriyuki sets the plan in motion, and while the moment when his uncle didn't die immediately and was about to grab a pen to write down a message on the floor was a bit scary, his uncle died before he could hold the pen, so with that, the scene is set. The following morning, he drags his younger brother Toshiyuki and his aunt to the annex to discover the body after his uncle didn't appear at breakfast. Their aunt faints upon the sight of her husband's apparent suicide, but Toshiyuki reveals something to Noriyuki he hadn't been aware of: their uncle had a life insurance, and his two nephews are beneficiaries, but no money will be paid out in cases of suicide. So Toshiyuki suggests to his brother... to make their uncle's suicide appear like somebody killed him, using a locked room murder trick! Soon after, familiar faces from the Ikagawa City Police Station arrive, but can Noriyuki manage to walk this tight rope of 'multiple truths'? Absolutely hilarious story, and I really like the simple, but inevitable mistake Noriyuki made that of course eventually leads to the police solving this case of suicide/murder. Nothing complicated here, but a real short, but nice showcase of what can make trope-relient puzzle mysteries so much fun.

Yuuki Shinichirou was featured in last year's anthology too with a story in the same series as Akuryou Taisan Tebasaki Samgye-tangfuu Soup Jiken ("The Case of the Evil Spirits Begone Chicken Wings Samgye-Tang Soup"). And yes, that's another odd title. The narrator in this series is a struggling comedian, who has a part-time job as a kind of Uber Eats driver. One of the shops he works for is rather special: it is one cook who pretends to be running multiple restaurants offering different cuisines, but it also serves as a detective agency. By making very specific orders, usually combining different dishes which usually have no business being ordered together, clients can engage the detective/cook's services. The delivery guy acts as a kind of Watson, delivering the food, but also interview the client for details and occasionally do some extra research. In this tale, the cook is hired to investigate a rather creepy happening in an apartment complex: the client says food has been delivered to the empty apartment next to his more than a few times now. The food was placed in front of the door, and at first, the client thought it had been delivered to the wrong door, but nobody on his floor had ordered any food. This repeated itself more than a few times. Eventually, food and other items were even delivered to another empty flat on a different floor in the building too, where somebody had committed suicide before. After installing camera security and an auto-lock front door to stop the delivery men, the phantom deliveries stopped, but they never figured out who made the orders and why. Or was it really a ghost who wanted something to eat? I still don't really get the necessity of the set-up of the cook and the uber driver, but I do like this mystery. It's a harmless one, but the idea of food being delivered to an empty apartment is pretty creepy, especially if it's one where somebody died in the past. The explanation for the ghostly deliveries is not only convincing, but Yuuki does a great job at setting up the clues, making it a really fair story too.

Kitayama Takekuni's Mikansei Gekkou - Unfinished moonshine ("Unfinished Moonshine") is written as a homage to Edgar Allan Poe, and starts with the narrator visiting Toudou, an old writer friend, who wants to consult the narrator on something important: Toudou says he found an unpublished and unfinished manuscript by Edgar Allan Poe, but the manuscript has been occupying his mind since, making him hear "their" voices who tell him he needs to finish it. The problem is: Toudou doesn't know how. The manuscript tells the story of someone who returns to his destroyed home and runs into a girl in a hut outside of town, who soon dies. The man then goes to sleep in a lookout tower, with a view of the hut, but the following morning, the whole hut has disappeared completely. Toudou doesn't know how the hut could've disappeared, meaning he can't write the conclusion, so the narator must come up with a solution. This is a cute (?) short story, brimming with Poe themes, imagery and references. The explanation for the disappearing hut is rather simple and rather underwhelming on its own, but I think Kitayama did a great job using the Poe framing device to lay out all kinds of hints, though I think that it might be a bit too obvious because a certain hint is probably better hidden for Japanese readers than for those who also regularly read English. It's perhaps not the kind of solution you'd expect from Kitayama for an impossible crime, but it fits the setting well.

Aosaki Yuugo's Ningyo Saiban ("Mermaid Trial") is a story in his Undead Girl - Murder Farce series, and I have to admit I haven't read the books, nor have I seen much of the anime series yet. This story is apparently a prequel story revolving around a murder trial in which a mermaid was the suspect, and where the reporter Annie Kerber first became acquainted with the protagonists Aya (a decapitated head) and Tsugaru, her wise-cracking assistant. It was the first trial involving inhumans in eighteen years in Trondheim, Norway. Holt was a well-known public figure in Trondheim and notoriously anti-inhumans, which made it all the more shocking when after a gunshot, his family found him dead outside at the lake, with the mermaid bending over him. It appeared the mermaid had killed him and was busy trying to set-up the scene to make it look like Holt had gotten into an accident with his row boat, but the family quickly captured the mermaid. As per law, nobody has been able to talk with the mermaid save for the prosecutor. That is, until Aya appeared at the trial to defend the mermaid. The story then unfolds in a familiar courtroom mystery manner, with both sides interrogating the suspects (with their testimonies also serving as the way the reader actually learns about the precise circumstances of the murder), and Aya of course slowly picking up on small contradictions that eventually build up to a major revelation. This is a competently constructed mystery, with short, but good deductions based on the testimonies and physical evidence, though it perhaps lacks a bit in actual surprise, as in: none of the revelations made in this trial feel as triumphant and shocking as you'd like them to be. There are some clever turnabouts though, and on a technical level, I think this is the best story in the collection.

Araki Akane's Kotoeawase ("Checking Answers") starts with the death of the narrator Touma's adoptive father, who was found by Touma as he was lying in the snow-covered garden, bleeding heavily from a cut in his neck. It took five minutes for the ambulance to come, and in the ambulance, his father's final words to Touma were that he loves him and that Touma should take care of himself. When things have settled down, the young teacher however starts having doubts about what he heard. Why didn't his father say anything about who cut him in the neck? With the realization that Touma actually only heard what he wanted to hear from his father, and that it might in fact have been a completely different message, garbled as his father's strength faded, he tries to reconstruct his father's last word and find out who did this to him. This is a story that deals with a theme very important to dying messages (the interpretation of what was said), and it takes on this time in a rather surprising proper linguistic manner, exploring various ways in which Touma could've misheard what his father said. Ultimately, that does make the story feel a bit weak, because it feels a bit arbritrary what could be considered a "plausible" interpretation of the message, and what isn't. I think that thematically, it's a strong story, but all the talk about whether a certain word couldn't be that other similar-sounding word soon becomes a bit boring.

The final story, Saigo no Hitoshigoto ("His Last Job") by Miyauchi Yuusuke,  is about a writer on music, who decides to write a piece on Caustic, an indie duo consisting of lead singer and bassist Yuhara Seiichi and Shiga Makoto on the guitar and side-vocalist. In 2013, while they were recording their third album, Shiga died in the recording studio: he had been bashed in the head. However, Yuhara didn't report the murder until many hours later, even though he had been in that same studio. Eventually, their manager was arrested, but rumors always floated around that it was the eccentric prodigy Yuhara who murdered Shiga, and that their manager took the fall for him. The writer decides to learn more about the way in which Caustic fell apart,  and eventually arrives at a very surprising conclusion... Interesting story about a crime set in the past, in which a suspect was actually arrested and tried, but still, doubts exist about what actually happened, like Christie's Five Little Pigs. The crux of the problem lies in the question why Yuhara didn't report the murder immediately, as you are usually wont to die if somebody is murdered in the same room. The solution doesn't require as much imagination as the story pretends, partially because it is clewed and hinted at early on, so in that sense, it's a fair solution, but it does seem to show its card too early, making the finale, despite having a twist, feel a bit underwhelming.

On the whole, this year's Honkaku-Ou proves to be another fairly decent anthology, though I do think it starts off stronger than it ends, and it misses a story I am really a fan of this year, though I do greatly prefer this one over last year's. And perhaps it's just me, but because most of the stories included in this book are pretty short (and the volume itself isn't very long either), I do often find myself liking the more lighthearted stories better. I often read this anthology while reading other things, so I'll be reading a different book and occasionally squeeze in one of the stories in this volume, but I always end up liking the ones offering mystery and a laugh the best. So that'll always skew my view on these books, I guess. Expect another look at the Japanese short story mystery scene next year! 

Original Japanese title(s): 『本格王2024』:東川篤哉「じゃあ、これは殺人ってことで」/ 結城真一郎 「悪霊退散手羽元サムゲタン風スープ事件」/北山猛邦「未完成月光 Unfinished moonshine」/ 青崎有吾 「人魚裁判」/ 荒木あかね 「答え合わせ」/宮内悠介「最後のひと仕事」

A Blast from the Past

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days

"Those Were the Days" (Mary Hopkin)

It's been a while since I wrote a very timely post (= within week of release)...

Disclosure: I translated Imamura Masahiro's Death Among the Undead and Death Within the Evil Eye. And I do hope one day, I'll get to work on the other books in the series too, regardless of which publisher decides to continue with the books...

While it were the deadly events occuring in Shijinsou no Satsujin (released in English as Death Among the Undead) that changed the lives of Akechi Kyosuke and Hamura Yuzuru forever, their exploits then were not the reason why they were known around campus: they had already built a reputation as the Holmes & Watson of Shinkou University, helping both students and staff by solving serious cases like missing cats and theft. When Akechi first entered Shinkou University as a young, mystery-loving man, he joined the university's official Mystery Club, only to learn the members of that club were not real mystery fans, but just filthy casuals, so he created his own club called the Mystery Society, with himself as the president and... the only member. Until the following year, he found a kindred spirit in Hamura Yuzuru. Hamura, a mystery buff himself, had to admit Akechi was an even bigger fan of everything related to mystery: Akechi very often sticks his nose into affairs out of sheer curiosity because he wants to play the great detective, and... he is actually reasonably good at that, even if he often won't get it right the first time around. Hamura acts as Akechi's counterbalance, trying to make sure Akechi never goes to far, but he knows: Akechi always means well, and together they make the campus of Shinkou University a better place. In Imamura Masahiro's short story collection Akechi Kyousuke no Honsou ("The Endeavors of Akechi Kyousuke", 2024), we are treated to five stories starring Akechi set before the events of Shijinsou no Satsujin.

I had been looking forward to this book for a long time! I have been a fan of the series ever since I read Shijinsou no Satsujin, which is why I was more than thrilled when I was given the opportunity to work on the English release of the book, and the sequel Death Within the Evil Eye too. Shijinsou no Satsujin was a brilliant book where Imamura showed how the supernatural could work perfectly with a pure puzzle plot mystery full of dynamic action, and he only keeps on surprising with each subsequent book in the series. Akechi Kyousuke no Honsou however is completely different from the previous three books, because it is set before the first novel. Where the books deal with supernatural murder mysteries, here we have very minor crimes and other everyday life mysteries, ranging from stolen exam tests to.... someone wondering why after a night of drinking, they are not wearing their underwear but still wearing their trousers.

The first story in this book was originally released in 2019 to coincide with the release of the live-action film of Shijinsou no Satsujin and is titled Saisho demo Saigo demo nai Jiken ("Neither His First nor His Final Case"). It is set about four months before the first book, and deals with a case of assault: a burglar had been snooping inside a building currently only used by the Cosplay Club looking for something to steal when he was knocked out, where he was later found by a security guard. Nobody really believes him, but Akechi is asked to look into the case anyway, as the club members are afraid that if it's not properly resolved, the Cosplay Club might be closed. I discussed this story in detail when it was first released in 2019, so I refer to that review for more details. It's a well-constructed puzzle story that really shows off Imamura's plotting skills, and I do always love mysteries that are about school clubs etc. And wait, this was released in 2019!? I was expecting more stories to follow and that they'd be collected into a short story collection eventually, but I hadn't expected it to take 4.5 years...

To Aru Nichijou no Nazo ni Tsuite ("Regarding A Certain Slice-of-Life Mystery") is perhaps the most mundane of all mysteries in this book: we are introduced to Katou Hisao, an elderly man who runs a cafetaria in the somewhat aging Fujimachi Shopping Arcade. Every week, he goes out to have a drink at a local standing bar to gossip with other local shopkeepers. Soon after he arrives at his usual spot, a young student arrives there too, who listens to the gossiping tales of Hisao and the other people there. This time, they're talking about old Nurii, who used to run an lacquerware shop in the shopping arcade: Nuri owned the whole building, but after retiring, he kept on living there because he had no other choice: his wife had passed away already and he was estranged from his daughter, but because the building was so old and lacking in maintenance, he also couldn't sell it to move somewhere else, so he was stuck there. But recently, a mysterious buyer offered to buy the building from Nurii for much more than the building is worth, which of course sparked rumors and gossip among other shopkeepers in the arcade, with Katou himself thinking it'd be nice if he could finally sell the cafetaria and retire himself. Katou can't help but wonder why in heavens someone offered Nurii and he notices the young student has been asking questions too, so it seems there's really a mystery worth investigating... A nice layered slice-of-life mystery: it's interesting to see the world of this series through the eyes of someone completely different, just someone who runs a small cafeteria, which lately has seen a new clientele of children because of the retro Space Invaders table they have. Through Hisao, we learn about how the shopping arcade has changed in the last few decades, with shops coming, but mostly going, and that is why he's wondering why anyone would pay much more than Nurii's building was actually worth, with some even joking whether the buyer hadn't actually meant to buy the larger multi-tenant building next door. These kind of slice-of-life mysteries often revolve around presenting a good explanation (motive) for a seemingly strange action, and I do think the motive is good for this story, though it's a bit hard to deduce beforehand why exactly, until a rather conclusive clue suddenly appears. So in that sense, I found it a bit unfair. I do like the layered puzzle though, which builds on a pretty famous story within the Japanese mystery scene, and I like the solution presented here. This is also the type of story you'd expect the least based on what you hear about Akechi and Hamura's adventures in Shijinsou no Satsujin.

Deisui Hadagi Kirisaki Jiken ("The Case of the Torn Hangover Underwear") starts with Akechi calling Hamura to come immediately. The previous night, Akechi had been drinking with classmates after finish a project together, but when it was time to go home, Akechi seemed a bit too drunk to send back alone. As nobody knew where Akechi lived though, they called Hamura, who brought Akechi home by taxi (one of the classmates gave him taxi money). Akechi, still dead drunk, said he was okay, so Hamura said goodbye at the front entrance of the apartment building and watched Akechi enter, after which he himself went home. Akechi in turn woke up this morning in his own bed with a headache, still wearing the clothes he wore last night. Fortunately, he had remembered to lock the door with his key and the door guard before falling asleep. But when he went to the toilet, he discovered something terrifying. For after removing his belt and trousers, he realized he wasn't wearing any underwear: why would he not be wearing his underwear, but still his trousers, and with the belt on? He then found his undies on the floor, but it was full of tears and rips. Akechi thus summoned Hamura to his room. He honestly can't remember anything of last night, so together, they have to figure out what happened to his undies last night. This is probably the most memorable story of the collection, not per se because of deductive brilliance, but because of the really silly and insignificant mystery (yes, in a positive way). Akechi himself can't remember much, so the two start coming up with various theories about why Akechi would have removed his underwear, while still putting back on his trousers and belt. This is a funny story of course, as we get Imamura's usual plotting revolving around theories based on physical evidence and actions of the characters involved, but about something so silly. I think the solution hinges on something that is hard to deduce beforehand, because of the way the clues are laid out, but I do love how this prequel story actually ties back? forward? to one of the later books in terms of themes.

Shuukyougaku Shiken Mondai Roei Jiken ("The Case of the Leaked Theology Exam") is a case alluded to in Shijinsou no Satsujin and takes place in July. Akechi and Hamura are walking down the stairs of a university building when suddenly a flustered student comes running to them, saying exam questions have been stolen. They have a talk with the student, Kumori Minori, who explains she had been in the office of Professor Yanagi. Minori and another student, Teramatsu Sou, had been told to write a formal apology essays by the professor because they had been cheating with their lecture attendence records. They were told to write the essay in Yanagi's office. While they were in his office, Yanagi had put a USB stick with the questions for the upcoming theology exams in his office safe, but then he had to go out for a bit because of a phone call. During his absence, Teramatsu also finished his essay and left, leaving Minori alone. She went to the toilet, but when she returned, she found Yanagi's office ransacked, the safe opened and the USB stick gone! Akechi quickly confirms with building security that nobody actually left the building the last ten minutes or so, as Yanagi and Teramatsu had been talking at the entrance of the building, while the employees-only exit had also been watched at the time. Suspicion falls on Minori, who had been alone in the office, but if she's the thief, how could she open the safe, and where could she have hidden the USB stick, as she couldn't have left the building? A nice story with a situation that is not strictly impossible, but still allows for Akechi and Hamura to talk about Chesterton's The Invisible Man: the thief managing to search an office and guess the safe combination in just three minutes is hard enough, but then they also needed to get away from that office without being seen by anyone, and pulling off all of that seems impossible. A story with few suspects, which makes it rather easy to vaguely guess who's behind the theft and how it was done, though I think Imamura did a good job setting up the clues and the logical trail you're supposed to follow (and not just a gut feeling). Some parts of the plan of the culprit seem very sloppy, relying on the actions of people they can not be so sure of, but I guess it was a gamble worth taking.

Tegami Baramaki Heights Jiken ("The Case of The Scattered Letters at Heights") is set the furthest back in the past, when Hamura wasn't enrolled at Shinkou University yet. At the time, Akechi, dreaming of becoming a great detective, had started a part-time job at the local Tanuma Detective Agency. Because one of Tanuma's employees is injured and the others have their own cases, Tanuma is forced to take on the new part-timer (Akechi) along as they work on a new case. Someone has been spreading stalker letters to residents of Heights Tokuro, an apartment complex consisting of three buildings. Some of them have received letters and informed the owner and caretalker of Heights Tokuro, who has now hired Tanuma to investigate the case, though on a rather small budget, so they only have three days to work on it. The letters are clearly stalker letters, talking about watching when the recipient returned home, or how they saw them smoking and they are also all written on the same paper and using the same writing style, but for some reason, several residents have received these letters in their letterboxes, until it suddenly stopped. Still, this is pretty creepy, so Tanuma and Akechi first go inquire to see if other residents have received similar letters (and simply not reported them to the caretaker/police). This is probably the most complex story of the volume, with a lot more going than you'd initially suspect. The story starts a bit slow, with Tanuma and Akechi interviewing the residents of Heights Tokuro and asking them in detail about when they received letters etc. Because the letters come from the same sender and seem to be talking about the same person, the detectives first suspect it might be a stalker whose target recently moved to Heights Tokuro, but of whom the stalker does not know which flat they have exactly, but that seems not quite right, as why would the stalker then just put random letters in random letterboxes, rather than first making sure where their target lives? The solution is actually quite clever, though rather complex, and I do think it really demands of you to just roll with a certain revelation. It's a story that perhaps would have benefitted from more pages, like being treated as a novella, or perhaps worked out into a full novel (with of course more body to the story), as I think the core ideas of this story regarding the letters are really cool, with honestly a very cool twist regarding the true meaning behind all those people receiving these letters, but some moments feel a bit too abrupt. Still, one of the cleverest "poison pen/stalker letters" mysteries I ever read and I am generally not too a big a fan of them.

Fans of Shijinsou no Satsujin might be surprised by what Akechi Kyousuke no Honsou has to offer: it is definitely not at all similar to the previous novels: gone are the murders, no supernatural elements that are cleverly integrated in the mystery, none of that. Instead, we have the slightly arrogant, but very passionate Akechi, occasionally supported by Hamura, as he deals with a lot of more mundane, and minor cases. But while I think this book is certainly not as strong as the supernatural efforts of Imamura in the previous books, you still see Imamura coming up with cleverly plotted short mysteries with surprise twists, which are nonetheless well-clewed and of course, always with a comedic tone in which he shows a lot of love for the character of Akechi. My favorite is probably still the first story in the collection, as I do think the "real" crimes (like theft/stolen exams) in this collection allow for the best and most rewarding plots (and I love the school/university setting). As a palate cleanser, Akechi Kyousuke no Honsou is amusing and it did precisely what I already expected it'd do based on the first story I read in 2019, but I do have to say it makes me yearn for the next proper novel in the series!

Original Japanese title(s): 今村昌弘『明智恭介の奔走』:「最初でも最後でもない事件」/「ある日常の謎について」/「泥酔肌着引き裂き事件」/「宗教学試験問題漏洩事件」/「手紙ばら撒きハイツ事件」