The Red Bull

"Come along, my friend! You want to see the Bull's Head, yes?" 

"Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars"

While this post won't be posted until 2024, I read this book in 2023. I tend to prefer shorter books, but I think read like three or four of these 1000+ pages books in just a few months last year...

After a strange arson incident at the Pasteur Laboratory, Nadia Maugars learns via her father Inspector Maugars and his subordinate that her old friend François Duval, who works at the laboratory, is back in Paris. They lost contact after he moved abroad, where he researches viruses. His return however is not one to be happy about: he had to return to Paris, because he is suffering from a newly discovered virus, which he had been researching and for which there is no treatment yet. Nadia visits François at the hospital, and he asks her to bring a report he had been working on regarding the new virus to his co-worker Pierre Madocq, who is currently in Athens. The thing is highly confidential, so he wants her to personally hand it to Madocq and he also gives her enough money to buy tickets tomorrow, and to stay in Greece for a while after she's done so she can have fun there. Nadia brings her friend Yabuki Kakeru, a Japanese student of philosophy and her tutor in Japanese, along, because she fears his life is in danger in Paris, as his arch-nemesis is in Paris. When they arrive in Athens, Nadia is surprised to learn Madocq is not there, but on Minotaur Island, a small private island off the coast of Crete. She's sent off to Crete ahead, while Kakeru has to make a phone call, and at Crete, she runs into another old friend: Constant, who disappeared a few years ago after getting too involved with the extreme left-wing student movement, but has now become a published philosopher. Nadia convices him to come along too, as Kakeru is not here now. When Nadia arrives at the village near Minotaur Island, she learns there are more people slated to go to Minotaur Island, including a doctor from Sweden and a few Americans, who are all invited by a "Laurence Bloom", even though the island is the property of one Paul Alexander, of the pharmaceutical company Biocross. On the day Nadia and the others are to arrive at the island however, a fellow guest of Nadia's hotel is found dead, having dropped off a cliff. The victim's name Dedalus reminds Nadia not only of Joyce's Ulyesses, but also the Deadalus myth (even though it's Icarus who fell), and it already gives her a bad feeling. Meanwhile, Kakeru has also caught up, but Kakeru told her to pretend to not know her, as for some reason, he's pretending to be the assistant of one of the other invited guests, a philosopher. When they arrive at the Deadalus House on Minotaur Island, they find a grand manor built in the style of a Minoan palace, with a big courtyard with ten bull statues. Nadia manages to hand the report to Madocq, who acts as the host as neither "Laurence Bloom" nor Alexander are present yet, but she quickly realizes the other guests have all been invited her for a secret reason, which nobody wants to tell her about. As the boat back to Crete won't go until the following day, she and Constant are offered to stay for the night too, but after dinner, one of the guests is found dead: the man seemingly fell of the balustrade on the third floor, falling right on top of the horns of one of the bull statues below in the courtyard. It could be an accident, they think, but when they discover one person on the island has taken off in the island's only boat and they learn the phone line's been cut, they suddenly realize this is really close to And Then There Were None. And indeed, one by one, people are killed on the island, but by whom and why? That is the question in Kasai Kiyoshi's Oedipus Shoukougun ("Oedipus Syndrome", 2002) 

It's been many years since I read Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu ("A Locked Room for Philosophers", 1992) by mystery author, critic and philosopher Kasai Kiyoshi. That was the fourth book in the Yabuki Kakeru series, starring Yabuki Kakeru, a Japanese student of philosophy who solves baffling crimes and mysteries through phenomenology, i.e. the analysis of structures of experience and conciousness and who because of that, usually doesn't start solving a case until the end because he needs to see the whole structure in order to analyse it. It was also the first time I read a fiction book by Kasai (I had read a few of his critical works on mystery fiction), so it took quite a while for me to get started on my second. Interesting to note it also took Kasai ten years to follow up on Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu with Oedipus Shoukougun. I didn't pick Oedipus Shoukougun because I wanted to read things in order or anything like that by the way (I still haven't read the first three books in this series). In fact, I wasn't even planning to read a Yabuki Kakeru novel in particular. I had been looking for Japanese mystery novels inspired by Greek mythology, so I ended up finding this one. Like the previous book though, Oedipus Shoukougun seems to be written really like the fifth installment of an on-going story, and especially in the opening chapters there are segments that are probably spoilers for earlier adventures.

One thing to mention right away however is that 1) this book is long (more than 1000 pages), and that 2) Kasai likes to write about a lot of topics that are not directly related to the mystery plot. Depending on how much you can stand the latter, this can be a very interesting book, or an extremely long-winded one. I personally tend to fall in the latter category, and I certainly didn't enjoy the book as much as I perhaps could have, because there's just so much chatter about topics that didn't really interest me, but your mileage may vary there. In a way, it's very similar to the writing style Shimada Souji also has in his Mitarai Kiyoshi novels after the first few ones or something like Alcatraz Gensou, where he just starts writing about whatever topic that happens to be interesting him at the moment in a book, making them bloated works. In Oedipus Shoukougun, Kasai's pet peeve is of course philosophy, and characters will sometimes have extended discussions on philosophy. It's a topic that doesn't interest me personally, so I found these parts extremely tedious, but I guess some people will like it. Still, I think some of these discussions don't really make sense. There's a part where the closed circle situation on the island has been going on for a while, and they fear there's a murderer on the island. While some of them go search the house to see if it's safe inside, two others remain outside to wait for the clear sign. And what do these two do? They have a philosophical discussion. Topics range from sex to why a society condems murder, and there are also other discussions regarding the gay community and other topics, but I didn't really like the constant derailing that much, especially as they are only tangentially relevant to the core mystery plot (and certainly didn't need to take up such a large part of the narrative).

Because of the above, it also takes ages for the plot to finally move to Minotaur Island and to have the And Then There Were None-inspired plot to be set in motion (I have books that were shorter than the whole first section of Oedipus Shoukougun). Oh, for some reason this book also makes numerous references to how their situation resembles "a certain famous mystery author by a British novelist" and even spoils that book, but it never actually says the title. The same with the Ulysses references. Anyway, once it gets started, the plot becomes a bit smoother. After the first death, the caretaker disappears from the island with the boat... but is surprised by the storm raging outside, which overturns the boat. Which effectively traps everyone here on the island. But the following day, the murders continue, with more people being pushed down into the courtyard and other attacks being made on people. There's even a simple locked room mystery near the end, though that gets resolved pretty soon after it pops up. Overall though, the murders are fairly straightforward, and it's more a question of "Who could've committed these murders alibi-wise ?" For all the set-up regarding the Minosian palace, bull statues and other references to Greek mythology though, it's a bit disappointing these elements weren't played stronger, as the few links there are, are rather weak and not extremely important to the plot. 

There are clever parts in the mystery plot but I think they kinda get buried by the amount of other things going and being told to the reader, and overall, I thought that as a closed circle murder mystery, Oedipus Shoukougun was just okay, with the potential for being a lot better had it been trimmed down and been focused more. A person obtaining a perfect alibi because of what he saw was done really well for example, and while not every part of the motive of the murderer worked for me, I think one part, the specific reason for why the closed circle was created, was an inspired move: it invokes a certain famous book perhaps, but here it is implemented in a far more natural way in-universe. Some of the clues pointing to the murderer were quite subtle too, allowing for Queen-like deductions, but I do think that due to few likeable characters and the constant derailing because Kasai wants to talk about something, the book overall feels tedious as a mystery novel, especially considering the enormous page count. If you just look at the mystery plot itself, it's a decently constructed story, with a few memorable moments, but it's not mind-blowing or anything.

For people who like their mystery novels to be a bit more pure literature-like though, I guess Oedipus Shoukougun might be interesting? It will certain tick those boxes better than a "straightforward" mystery novel. For me, this mode doesn't really work that well, and just looking at the core mystery plot, it's a good closed circle mystery with some genuinely good ideas, but in its current form, it just doesn't quite manage to capture me. So a book that will choose its readers, I think.

Original Japanese title(s): 笠井潔『オイディプス症候群』

Death Comes as the End

"It's our problem - free philosophy Hakuna Matata!"

"The Lion King"

It took me almost two years to work up the courage / spirit to go through today's book. The prologue was just too dense to get through. Of course, when I finally got past the prologue, it turned out to be not nearly as bad as I had feared. 

A distressed call screaming murder brings the police to the doors of the mansion owned by the wealthy Jewish financier François Dassault. Dassault however refuses to let the local cops inside and uses his connections to get Inspector Maugars in his house, who will hopefully help hush up what Dassault calls an unfortunate lethal accident that happened on his premises. One of Dassault's guests tripped and hit his head on the stone floor, it seems at first sight, but when Inspector Maugars discovers a knife wound in the dead man's back and a broken knife with the SS emblem on it, the case turns into a murder case. And a screwy one too. For one, it seems that Dassault's guest was not a voluntary guests, as the lack of luggage, the bare minimum of furniture in the room and the locks on the door suggest. And even more crazy is that after questioning all those in the house, it seems the man was stabbed in a triple locked space: (1) the third floor room in which the victim was discovered was locked from the outside, the third floor can only be reached from the second floor (which also houses the safe with the room's key), and (2) the staircase to the second floor was under constant watch by several witnesses on the ground floor and finally, (3) the only exit out of the mansion was also being watched. And the case seems to be connected to a group of Yewish people who survived the concentration camps... A most difficult situation, but Yabuki Kakeru (friend of the Inspector's daughter Nadia) is convinced he can bring light to the case with his phenomenology in Kasai Kiyoshi's Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu ("A Locked Room for Philosophers", 1992)

Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu is the fourth book starring Yabuki Kakeru, a Japanese student of philosophy who solves baffling crimes and mysteries through phenomenology, i.e. the analysis of structures of experience and conciousness. It is worth noting that Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu was published almost ten years after the third entry in the series, and while I have not read any of the other novels, it is said that Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu is a turning point for the series with a slightly different tone. Oh, and the long period between the third and fourth book certainly didn't stop Kasai from starting Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu with a long prologue where Kakeru and Nadia talk in detail about their previous adventure, including delicious spoilers, and discuss a bit of philosophy, so Reader Be Warned: the first sixty pages of this book can be difficult to get through.

But then again, what is sixty pages of a story that consists of 1100 pages spread over two volumes? It's certainly not the longest detective I've read (hello Jinroujou no Kyoufu and Ankokukan no Satsujin), but short, it is not.

The triple locked room murder happens early in the story and is great. It has the allure of one of those matryoshka dolls, with a locked room in a locked room in a locked room and Kasai adds enough twists and turns and fake solutions to the plot to keep the locked room mystery entertaining. Especially the way in which series detective Yabuki Kakeru manages to use the Amazing Powers of Philosophy to solve the crime is fantastic and like most of the best locked room murders: the solution itself is actually amazingly simple. And as if that wasn't enough, the story features another triple locked space mystery, one that happened in the past in a concentration camp. While the solution to this past murder is not nearly as elegant as that of the first one, these two mysteries do keep Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu going at a good pace for a fairly good time.

A fairly good time, I stress, because I have to be honest, I didn't enjoy all of the book(s). While this was the first novel by Kasai Kiyoshi I have read, this was certainly not my first encounter with him. I think that anybody who does any serious research on Japanese detective fiction will come across his name very early in the process, as he is also the author of a seminal series of books on the history of Japanese detective fiction and basically impossible not to know if you want to research Japanese detective fiction through the fields of sociology, philosphy and literary history and even formalism. So this might be my first meeting with series detective Yabuki Kakeru, I have been familiar with Kasai Kiyoshi and his thoughts on detective fiction for a good six, seven years now and we haven't always been the best of friends. I have the same with Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu.

There are quite some discussions on philosophy in this story, partly because Kakeru is in fact an international student in France to research philosophy, but an important philosopher who is Martin Heidegger in all but name also plays an indirect role in the plot and sometimes the characters start discussing the meaning of death and Dasein for a lot of pages and while I understand some do love philosophy, it's just not a field of interest to me. Especially not because I have read a lot of Kasai's ideas on philosophy in his academic works on detective fiction (the points he discusses in Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu will be very familiar to those who have read Kasai's Tantei Shousetsu Ron books). That said, I can imagine that someone with an interest in philosophy enjoying the discussions. I for example loved it when Kyougoku Natsuhiko wrote about folklore studies on youkai in Ubume no Natsu, which others might have hated. At any rate, philosophy does play a part in the themes of Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu, as the title A Locked Room for Philosophers suggests, so it's not just pedantry like in Kokushikan Satsjin Jiken. But considering this is a 1100 page story, with quite some talk on a discussion I do not particular like, so you can imagine I did find it a bit tiring. Heck, I think the book could have been half the length it is now and still work. But mileage may vary.

The funny thing about series detective Yabuki Kakeru is that he uses philosophy (phenemonology) to solve crimes. Which means he usually needs to see the whole phenomenon if he actually wants to analyse it. And yes, that in turn means he usually can't solve a crime until all elements of a crime have revealed itself. Kakeru can explain serial killings, but he can't stop serial killings because his method involves analyzing the meaning and connections of the whole picture. Kindaichi Kousuke also has a nasty habit of not being able to save anyone until the end of a case, by the way.

If you asked me if I enjoyed Kasai's Tetsugakusha no Misshitsu, I'd say "Yes, but...". It is a locked room for philosophers, which I am not, but the core locked room mystery is indeed well constructed. I am not sure whether it helped that I was already quite familiar with Kasai's academic works though. At one hand, it was kinda reading the same story again, but on the other hand, it did make the philosophic talk a bit more easier to follow because I knew where Kasai was going to. I think I might read some of the earlier novels in the series (which are less taxing, I heard), but I don't think I will read any of the later novels, if they all follow the tale as told in Kasai's academic work on detective fiction.

Original Japanese title(s): 笠井潔　『哲学者の密室』