Wheel of Death

It's the circle of life

And it moves us all

"Circle of Life" (Elton John)

For me, my enjoyment of mystery fiction comes for a great deal from the feeling of catharsis when at the end of the story, the mystery is revealed and you are shown the complete picture. It's the feeling of being shocked by finally knowing where every piece of the puzzle is supposed to be, and the sense of amazement to see what that picture is actually portraying. The mystery stories I have enjoyed best in many years of consuming the genre, generally have both an interesting mystery set-up and solution, as well as an interesting (logical) process that leads to that solution. So there's usually a clever mystery (a trick to a problem), but the road to the solution equally features interesting ways for the reader to interact with, be it through ingenious clewing or the opposite, shrewd misdirection. Catharsis can be felt with a good-written mystery whether you managed to solve it (partially) or not: perhaps the sense of utter shock is weakened if you guessed how it all fit together already and correctly interpreted all the clues, but you can still be amazed by just how meticulously and neatly the story was planned. Often, the implementation of an original setting, or a completely original take on what is otherwise a classic trope of the genre, can be enough to give me this sense of satisfaction when consuming a piece of mystery fiction, making it all worthwhile when you get to the end and it all falls in place. I am not per se looking for "shocking reveals/truths" in mystery fiction, mind you. In fact, I can still often be very much amazed simply by the process of clewing that is supposed to lead the reader to the truth, even if that truth is telegraphed too obviously.

On the other hand, if a story doesn't manage to quite reach that threshold of "amazement/shock/wonder" for me, it can feel a bit.. disappointing, even if the book isn't actually bad by any standards. I might recognize clever ideas here and there, but if the execution of the ideas feel underwhelming, I miss that feeling of catharsis at the end of the book, the satisfying feeling of finally realizing how all those lingering questions you had about the mystery and the clues fit together.

Tomonaga Rito's Kanransha wa Nazo wo nosete, which also has the English title Ferris Wheel With Mysteries on the cover, is an example of a book where I simply didn't manage to get that satisfying feeling at the end of the book, even if I see there are clever ideas there. But ultimately, it just doesn't quite manage to provide that feeling of wonder and surprise I am looking for in mystery fiction. Tomonaga made his debut in 2020 with Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei ("The Alibis of the Ghosts"), a book which may not have been perfect, but which did make it into my favorite reads of that year, exactly because there was that sense of catharsis when you finally learned how a student could have been killed without anyone noticing during a haunted house event inside a classroom. It was the reason I immediately bought Tomonaga's second book when I learned it had been released, because I craved for more of his work and the concept of the book sounded interesting: a ferris wheel in a nature park mostly visited by families and young children makes a sudden stop due to small mishap, and while nothing is wrong with the wheel itself, it will take about ten-twenty minutes to start turning again as a safety measure. We follow six groups of people in the carriages of the suspended ferris wheel who all cope with different problems at that very moment. For example, we follow a teenage girl who has followed a middle-aged man inside the carriage, who handcuffs her... and takes out a sniper rifle, for he is a hired killer and she has hired him to make a hit from the ferris wheel when it is in its heighest position. Forced to wait due to the sudden stop, the man however suddenly starts to wonder why this girl wanted to come with him in the carriage and why she ordered the hit in the first place. Meanwhile, we follow a man who actually ends up speaking with a ghost who haunts one of the carriages. She was killed many years ago inside that carriage and only appears whenever the ferris wheel makes an emergency stop like now. She wants the man to solve the mystery of her murder: her memories are vague, but she was stabbed inside the carriage, but how did that man escape from the carriage without any of the attendents noticing there was a body in the carriage? But there are also other, less criminal mysteries going on, like the two female high school students, of which one now wonders why the other girl invited her here and told her to dress in more boyish clothes today. The ferris wheel carries six mysteries, and they all have to be solved before the ferris wheel starts turning again...

Ferris Wheel With Mysteries follows all six groups simulteanously, jumping back and forth between the six different storylines constantly in real-time as they all wait until the ferris wheel starts turning again. The concept itself is fun: it reminds of real-time drama like 24 and this story could easily be adapted for an actual television production. The groups are quite diverse, and provide different kind of mysteries, some more serious like one person who has to solve a puzzle box or else be bombed, some more "mundane" like a boy wondering why that girl he hung out with for so long said she hated him when he confessed his love to her. But ultimately, Ferris Wheel With Mysteries didn't work for me, because the mysteries provided are just too simple in set-up and execution. They don't really provide the sense of shock and wonder I am looking for in the genre, neither in the actual solution nor in the process leading up to the solution. While you are coping with six mysteries taking place simultaneously, you're likely to have very close guesses as to the solutions of most of the mysteries, because more often than not, they are among the first guesses you'll have based on the limited information provided. Even after the different plotlines develop a bit more as you read on, you'll realize your first guesses probably still fit, and at the end... you learn your early guesses were actually correct all the time. This wouldn't be disappointing per se if only the process towards the solution would be more clever, but most of the mysteries are just solved by... the main character of the specific storyline just remembering stuff in a very convenient order, and then realizing what is going on. Very seldom does the book expect the characters, or the reader, to actually contemplate about the logical implications of clues introduced or think more than two seconds about a statement. Everything is very straightforward in this short novel, so you don't get that satisfying feeling of catharsis at the end: you could already see most of the book coming miles ago, and the road to the end didn't provide much excitement either.

There are some clever ideas in this book, but those ideas often feel underutilized. There are some parts of the story that actually do make good use of the unique setting of a ferris wheel, but they are short, and rather pushed to the background, making them hard to stand out. The book even tries to pull a "gotcha!" on you involving the ferris wheel at one point, but it just falls flat because the build-up ("the process") is barely there, making you once again think "Okay, it's not a bad idea, and in fact, it can be interesting if it had been presented in a different way." And that is how I feel about the book as a whole: it somehow fails to present the mystery ideas it has in a rewarding manner for the reader, sometimes because the mystery solving process is boring, sometimes because the truth is not particularly surprising. The attempt to connec these various stories through the ferris wheel is interesting in concept and has a few moments where it does work, but it's hard to be really impressed by it if the minor mysteries that function as the focal point of this book, don't appeal to you.

Tomonaga Rito's debut novel had its flaws, but still managed to become one of my favorite reads of 2020. His second novel Kanransha wa Nazo wo nosete or Ferris Wheel With Mysteries, however does not manage to invoke the same positive feelings. The easiest way to put it would to be say it's underwhelming. While the book does deal with six very different mysteries, the truths behinds these mysteries and the path leading to them just feel too straightforward, never truly surprising or impressing the reader, and while they are not bad in concept, I couldn't help but shrug at the end of the book, for the book just never really managed to "get" me. It's a very short book, and perhaps some of the ideas would've worked better with more pages, but it's not a book I'd put very high on the priority list unless you're specifically looking for ferris wheel mysteries.

Original Japanese title(s): 朝永理人『観覧車は謎を乗せて』

Stop the Clock

"Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP , clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?"

"Ghostbusters"

One recurring motif I mostly know from anime and manga is the school festival. If I am to believe all the fiction I read, many high schools and universities have an annual festival where classes and clubs organize all kind of activities for both fellow students, and visitors from outside. Popular activities are running food stalls and cafeterias in classrooms, while clubs often organize events to show off their own activities, like music clubs performing on stage. I myself have only been to university festivals both as visitor and participant, but my experiences there were similar to how high school festivals are often depicted in fiction. I participated with Kyoto University's November Festival as a member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club for example, so we all worked on the annual booklet that is sold at the festival, and had to man a booth for several shifts etc., but you also have time to wander around yourself to see what the other clubs have done.

As a recurring event in everyone's school life, the school festival is also often featured in Japanese mystery fiction. For example, Detective Conan (volume 72: The Operation Room of Screams for example) and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo (several short stories like about a stolen Holmes collection and another one about a murdered cross-dressing maid) have all featured stories that were set during a school or campus festival. I think I remember the Q.E.D. live action drama also featured an episode about a school festival mystery (presumably based on the original manga). Meanwhile, the school festival is also seen in prose stories: the first three novels of the Classic Literature Club actually feature a whole story arc where the adventures all revolve around preparing for the school festival, while the second volume of Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni also features a story arc with several of the short stories included revolving around Ryou encountering mysteries as the school prepares for their festival. Heck, even Jinguuji Saburou has been called to solve a crime at a school festival in a bonus episode of the 3DS game Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Ghost of the Dusk.

Obviously, you can guess by now that today's book is also about a school festival, the one of Youmou High School to be exact. This school, which for some reason has significantly more female than male students, always schedules its festival in a weekend in late September and this year, the students of Class 2-2 decided to turn their classroom in a haunted house. Inside the pitch-dark classroom, a zig-zagging pathway is created through the use of black curtains, which leads from the back entrance of the classroom to the front entrance. The children have of course prepared all kinds of scares for the visitors along the way, like a decapitated head, disappearing ghosts, zombies who suddenly close in on you and a dead body hanging from the ceiling which suddenly attacks any passerby. The attraction is a great succes and people, both students from the school as well as people from outside the school, are still lining up by the dozens on the Sunday (the last day of the festival) to get a good scare. The success also means everyone in Class 2-2 has to do their part: most of the students have to help out both with their class activity as well as their club activity, and obviously you want some time for yourself too, so the cast of ghouls work in shifts of about two hours. It's near the end of the day, when one of the "zombies" notices that the last few visitors have not reacted to one of the greatest scares in the haunted house: the dead girl hanging from the ceiling who attacks the visitors. He decides to take a quick look between visitors to see what's wrong with Ashitaba, the girl playing the body. To his surprise, he discovers that Ashitaba has been turned into a real corpse, as the poor girl's been strangled.

Narrator Kantera Nao, and Koumori Riruko, the gloomy, negatively-thinking girl of the class, decide to work together to solve this case: Nao because he was in love with Ashitaba, while Riruko hopes she'll finally attract praise and attention from her fellow students if she solves this case. But that's easier said than done, because in a way, this murder was impossible! For how could anyone strangle Ashitaba while she was an active part of the attraction? There was a constant stream of visitors inside the haunted house, her fellow cast members were also inside the room (though all holding their own spots along the route) and nobody could've just simply gotten inside the classroom without either the people outside the classroom, or those inside, noticing. In order to solve this mystery, it will become necessary to examine not only whodunit, but more importantly, whendunit in Tomonaga Rito's Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei ("The Alibis of the Ghosts", 2020).

Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei is the winner of the Excellence Award of the 18th Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! Award (2019) and was published in March 2020, marking the official debut of Tomonaga Rito, who has been very close to winning one of the annual mystery fiction awards in Japan for some time now. He made it to the last stage of the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award in both 2016 and 2017 for example (with other novels). Those awards were ultimately won by respectively Ichikawa Yuuto's The Jellyfish Doesn't Freeze (reviewed last week) and Imamura Masahiro's Shijinsou no Satsujin, which are prime examples of the genre, so it's no shame to lose against them. Yet, Tomonaga perservered, and now he's finally here too. His debut novel may not be perfect, but it's one I really like nonetheless.

Readers will have to be patient with this novel though, as it's really slow at the start. After a prologue where the discovery of the body is described, we jump back a few hours in time as we follow Nao in the last few minutes of his shift at the frontside of the haunted house, and are gradually introduced to all the characters as we see everyone slip in and out of the classroom to take over for the final shift. You go through a lot of descriptive passages (with repeated writing!), including a lengthy one where Nao and his energetic classmate Zakuroko go through the haunted house themselves. Obviously, the inside layout of the haunted house and how all of the scares inside work will become important later on, but be prepared for a lot of exposition. That also includes exposition about Nao's classmates, who are mostly girls (and for some reason, the few boys that do appear in the novel are basically thrown onto one heap and treated as one homogeneous entity). Like with Arisugawa Alice's debut novel Gekkou Game though, you're confronted with just too many schoolgirls who are, well, they are differentiated through their various backgrounds (different clubs etc.), but there are simply too many to remember. Some of them barely say something over the course of the story and each time you come across a name, you wonder whether it's someone you had already encountered before or not. What doesn't help at all is that Tomonaga came up with all kinds of odd names for the characters (these are not normal Japanese names). If only one of them had a special name, they'd be easy to remember, but everyone has a weird name and after a while it just becomes one big mess in your head.

Things go a lot faster after the murder though, and I have to repeat that I do like this book despite the mentioned points. The idea of the murder inside a very small, home-made haunted house is really neat, as obviously, a normal classroom is in reality a 'cozy' place, but it still has enough dead angles to make it seem plausible. It works really well with the semi-impossible angle of the tale, as it seems really difficult to figure out who could've committed this murder. Ultimately, the book revolves around one simple question: when was this murder committed? By focusing on this question, Riruko manages to identify the one person who could've killed Ashitaba. It's a fairly unique approach to the mystery story, as it's not a whodunnit, howdunnit or anything like that, but the whendunnit is done fairly well here. We start off with a very wide-ranging period in which the murder could've been committed (based on the medical examination), but Riruko then slowly shortens that period little by little by logically combining both known and newly deduced facts. The type of reasoning here belongs the logic school like featured in Queen, Arisugawa and Imamura's work and with each step, the reader is brought closer to the exact time in which the murder was committed. The final chapter in which Riruko explains all is really lengthy, like ninety pages long (a fifth of the whole), which shows how meticulous the reasoning is in this novel. Some may not like this, but I love this kind of mystery stories, where each logical step is explained and strung together to a long journey of reasoning. Granted, some parts of the mystery are fairly obvious to the reader: the many important clues and hints within the events that Nao experiences before and after the murder are barely hidden and the attentive reader will certainly be able to guess parts of the truth. Especially at the start of Riruko's trip of logic, you'll probably think "Oh, I know where this is going, that thing meant that in reality, X was actually this or that..." Yet, I doubt anyone will be able to combine all the facts together. It's only by getting a clear view of the whole picture that you'll be able to solve the mystery. And even then it'll be hard for the reader to repeat Riruko's greatest feat in this story: while we start with a possible period of death spanning several hours, she manages to pinpoint the exact time of the murder down to the very minute simply by following the trail of logical bread crumbs. The exact minute. It's a feat I've never seen in a mystery story before, and I absolutely love this idea.

Of course, I have read many mystery novels about perfect alibis or things like that do focus on time schedules a lot, and often a few minutes here or there do make a difference there. My to-go titles when mentioning very precise time schedules would be Ayukawa Tetsuya's Kuroi Trunk, Aosaki Yuugo's Suizokukan no Satsujin and C. Daly King's Obelists Fly High, which are all mystery novels where the fixation on the exact time any action is made can be a bit overbearing even if the novels are fun, but I felt it was less... tiring? in Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei. Though I would've appreciated it if the book would've featured a time schedule for the characters going in and out the classroom (there are no time schedules whatsoever in this book, so if you want one you have to make one yourself). With all the confusing characters and all, something like that would've been very helpful, without given the game away, as you need a lot more to work out the trick of when it was done (and by extension, who).

The motive for the murder is very much 'afterthought' material though and it's a bit of a shame, as it does tie in with one important factor of how the murder was committed, so that's again probably that will turn off some readers. Ultimately though, I think that Tomonaga's book works despite these obvious flaws.

As I am writing this, I have a feeling that at the end of the year, I will remember Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei as one of my best reads of this year. And that's despite some obvious flaws which some will even find fatal. Yep, I can easily imagine that contrary to myself, some readers will dislike this book because of those flaws. But if you ask me yes or no about this book, it's a very definite yes. The logical reasoning shown in the conclusion (and the Challenge to the Reader!), the setting of the haunted house inside a classroom, the chatter between the students: this is the kind of mystery fiction I love to read and Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei works for me. I hope more adventures of Riruko will follow!

Original Japanese title(s): 朝永理人『幽霊たちの不在証明』