The Armchair Detective

 「実に非論理的だ」、湯川学、『ガリレオ』

'Truly illogical', Yukawa Manabu, "Galileo"

Huh. I hadn't written anything about Carr yet?

Looking at my preference in detective novels, you'd think I'd be a big Carr fan, but I am not. Carr's The Hollow Man and The Judas Window are excellent novels in my opinion, but I just can't get very excited about Carr's works in general. Which is really weird. There are no reasons for not liking him and a lot to like him. I do want to be more enthusiastic about his works, so I'm always looking for the book which will convert me into a Carr-fan.

And I was hoping 13 to the Gallows to be that book when I started reading it. 13 to the Gallows , by Carr and Gielgud, is a collection of 4 plays by Carr en Gielgud, similar to the (excellent!) The Adventure of the Murdered Moths and other radio mysteries (Queen). It should have been the book that would have converted me, as I'm a fan of a) detective novels, b) radio dramas and c) detective radio dramas.

The last two stories in the collection, Intruding Shadow and She Slept Lightly didn't impress much, but I was very taken in by the first two stories, Inspector Silence Takes the Air and Thirteen to the Gallows. Inspector Silence Takes the Air was more Queen-ish than Carr, as the plot revolves around a gun used in a murder disappearing from a BBC studio. The setting of a BBC studio is also used in Thirteen to the Gallows which is classic Carr with a seemingly impossible murder. Both stories are great in their setting, the problem and the solution. And I quite enjoy reading detective plays.

And yet, I wouldn't say this book made me a Carr fan. I will happily recommend this book to everyone (after they've read Queen's The Adventure of the Murdered Moths...), I don't really have any complaints about this book, in fact, it features quite interesting problems. So I like it on a personal level, it's also solid on a more technical level. Heck, this book even features an introduction and notes and everything I get all happy about in book releases. And yet... it didn't convert me. Even after reading this, Carr is just "the writer who has some excellent books among his books" to me.

Therefore I conclude there is some irrational part within me that just doesn't want to get all fanboyish with Carr's work like I am with Queen's work. Or maybe it is rational, as I can only read that many books in this lifetime...

Luckily, I've already ruled the possibility I will ever like Sayers' work (except for Lord Peter Views the Body). I keep trying, but it never, ever pays off. Strong Poison, the last one I read, actually had a simple, yet effective plot. Which had its interesting parts. However, the interesting parts were either in the first chapter or the last chapter. The 20-ish chapters between those chapters were awful. This will be the last time I'll mention Sayers here. I give up on her.

「むろん、お前はABCをしっているな」

"You have to excuse me, but I've seen you play this routine time and time again. The paper shuffling, the distractions, the talk about your wife, or in this case your broken percolator. If you've got me in your cross hairs, you really have to do better than using all that crap.", 'The Gun that Wasn't', " The Columbo Collection"

Desperately trying to shorten the backlog before a ridiculous amount of books is delivered here from Japan. But I don't really think I'll be able to shorten it significantly. Especially not if I forget which books I have read and which not.

The week started with ABC Satsujin Jiken ("The ABC Murders"), an short story anthology named after Agatha Christie's classic. Like with Y no Higeki, a book discussed earlier, stories in this anthology all play with the theme of Christie's The A.B.C. Murders. Both Arisugawa Arisu and Norizuki Rintarou contributed to ABC Satsujin, as well as Onda Riku, Kanou Tomoko and Nukui Tokurou.

And as I was reading this book, I realised I had actually read half of this anthology before, but I couldn't remember what happened in the stories, so I had to re-read them. However, the fact I couldn't remember a single fact of most stories was indeed a sign the stories weren't that interesting. Maybe I had supressed them in my memories.

Which in hindsight seems plausible. Veterans Arisugawa Arisu and Norizuki Rintarou offer slightly entertaining stories with "ABC Killer" and "ABCD Houimou" ("The ABCD Line"). ABC Killer is closest to Christie's ABC, with a string of serial murders of people who are killed in alphabetic order. "The ABCD Line" starts with a man who keeps confessing to murders (and saying he's responsible for accidents), but whom it was impossible to commit those. Why would someone confess to murders he didn't commit?

Howver, the remaining stories are not interesting at all. Onda Riku's Anata to yoru to ongaku to ("You, the night and music") has an interesting setting, at a radio station, but is a mediocre story. And the strangest part is that it is less of a homage to The A.B.C. Murders, than to Ellery Queen's The Mad Tea Party or The Finishing Stroke. Kanou Tomoko's Neko no Ie no Alice ("Alice of the House of Cats") does revolve around a plot of poisoned cats (yes, in alphabetical order), but is full of distracting Alice in Wonderland references. Which again reminds more of Queen than Christie.Nukui Tokurou's Rensa suru Suuji ("Connected Numbers") is actually bad, with bad pacing in story, a bad plot and bad characters. I won't even bother writing about it.

Compared to the very entertaining Y no Higeki, this anthology is mostly disappointing. The A.B.C. Murders is one of the most famous detective stories ever and you'd think writers should be able to do more with the ingenious theme of the book. And not really related to that, but maybe I should finally start reading Alice in Wonderland.

Luckily I read The Columbo Collection afterwards, a new collection of Columbo short stories! Written by series creator William Link and published by Crippen & Landru, this set of 12 stories revive the old show. In a new setting though. It's hard to imagine the lieutenant using a cell phone. But he does. Still, what is there to complain about a continuation of good old Columbo, who'll keep hounding his suspect till he catches them on one small mistake?

Even though the series stopped many years ago, reading these stories will make you realize Columbo is a series that will never age. While these short stories are indeed short (compared to the 60 till 90 minutes episodes), the psychological fencing between murderer and Columbo is still as entertaining as ever. Looking for the one mistake the murderer made is still as exciting as ever. And everyone will read Columbo's lines with Peter Falk's voice in their heads. It's classic Columbo, in 2010. And it's good.　

Original Japanese title(s): 『ABC殺人事件』/有栖川有栖　「ABCキラー」/恩田陸　「あなたと夜と音楽と」/加納朋子　「猫の家のアリス」/貫井徳郎　「連鎖する数字」/法月綸太郎　「ABCD包囲網」

「君ね、決め台詞のない名探偵なんて、存在価値がないも同然だよ」

"But what is often called an intuition is really an impression based on logical deduction or experience. When an expert feels that there is something wrong about a picture or a piece of furniture or the signature on a cheque he is really basing that feeling on a host of small signs and details. He has no need to go into them minutely - his experience obviates that - the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong.But it is not a guess，it is an impression based on experience.", Hercule Poirot, "The ABC Murders"

Upon my return, I discovered I had a bigger gaming and detective fiction backlog than expected, so it was nice (and more efficient) to have something that was both a game and detective fiction. Trick X Logic Season One was a game I bought only days before I left Japan (because I have wa~hay too many point cards), but that doesn't mean it was just chosen on a whim. I had been actually looking forward to this game for some quite time.

This visual novel, developed by veteran Chunsoft, caught my attention because many big-name Japanese detective writers collaborated on it. Seven writers wrote ten scenarios for the game, with the reader being forced to solve the mysteries themselves.

The premise: after being pushed off of a building, prodigy prosecutor Yoshikawa Itsuki wakes up in Hell. Where the judge of human souls, Yama, asks Yoshikawa for his help with some unsolved cases. Yama usually reads a record of human deeds, the Akasha, to pass judgement on human souls, but in some cases he can't figure out whodunnit just by reading the Akasha. Hence the need for Yoshikawa's mind. He is to read the Akasha and figure out the culprit. If he cooperates, Yama promises to return him to the land of the living.

Cue the scenarios of the detective writers. Season one consists of 5 and a half stories, being 0) Yubisasu Shitai ("The Pointing Corpse", credited to Chunsoft), 1) Nusumerata Figure ("The Stolen Figurine", written by Abiko Takemaru), 2) Akari no Kieta Heya de ("In the dark room", written by Takemoto Kenji), 3) Yuki furu Joshiryou nite ("At a snowing Women's Dormitory", written by Maya Yutaka), 4) Setsudan sareta Itsutsu no Kubi ("Five Necks Cut Off", written by Ooyama Seiichirou) and the story part (no solution chapter) to 5) Bourei Hamlet ("The Ghost Hamlet", written by Kuroda Kenji). The stories all feature classic detective themes like dying messages, impossible disappearences, cut up bodies and alibi tricks.

In practice, you get to read a story (or for the lazy: listen to a reading of the story!), with no conclusion. Then you select keywords from the text ("He can't read" and "He was seen reading a book"), in order to generate mysteries (the previous keywords might lead to "Why was the man reading a book if he can't read?" for example). This mysteries can be combined with other keywords to solve them, thus creating insights ("It was an imposter" or "He actually can read"). Finally, these insights are used to answer the questions of who- and howdunnit.

It's like a more advanced version of Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney); reading the text you'll find suspicious sentences, which you pursue further. The difference being the scale: whereas Gyakuten Saiban usually gives you 5 pieces of testimony a time, Trick X Logic will give you a 200 page story to find all the clues. And the mysteries and insights you find while reading the story? A lot of them are plausible, yet false. This combination-of-hints-to-produce-hypotheses system is kinda reminiscent of the Trick game (not related), only at a much higher level.

Which is also the frustrating part of the game: at times you'll figure out what happened and how, but have severe problems finding the right combination of keywords out of a 200 page story. It's a complaint I hear a lot about Gyakuten Saiban, knowing what happened without knowing how to activate the story flags to actually proceed. I personally never had any problems with that in Gyakuten Saiban, but let's say that a 200 page version of that is indeed very vexing.

I certainly had fun with this game; the stories were fun, production values are quite good for the budget price at which this game is sold and I am looking forward to the second season. However, at times it was kinda frustating to actually find the right keywords and mysteries within the story to complement the (correct) ideas I already had in my head. Still, I guess this is the closest you can get to a one-on-one conversion of a classic detective novel to a game.

Original Japanese title(s): 『TRICK X LOGIC』/チュンソフト　「指さす死体」/我孫子武丸　「盗まれたフィギュア」/竹本健治　「明かりの消えた部屋で」/麻耶雄嵩　「雪降る女子寮にて」/大山誠一郎　「切断された五つの首」/黒田研二　「亡霊ハムレット」

A Study in Terror

Something old, something new,

Something borrowed, something blue,

And silver sixpence in your shoe

My backlog is horrible. While I have sent quite some reading materials back home, I was (pleasantly?) surprised to find I had left a lot of reading homework before I left. But as I had already started the book at Hong Kong Airport, I figured I might as well finish Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks by Curran first.

The book contains as the title sorta suggests transcripts of Agatha Christie's notes on the books she wrote, with Curran commenting on them. While not really interesting for the casual reader, the Christie fans will love the book. It's fun to see how awfully clever Christie was, brainstorming on every available piece of paper in random order. Readers will see how some novels evolved into their final form, or how some plot-ideas were incorporated into other novels.

And the main selling point of the book must be the inclusion of two unpublished Poirot stories! The first one, The Capture of Cerberus is actually the first version of the same-named story Christie wrote for The Labours of Hercules short story collection. The contents are totally different from the published version and while Poirot acts somewhat out-of-character at times, the story makes for an amusing read.

The second short story, The Incident of the Dog's Ball, is as the name suggests an alternate version of the novel Dumb Witness. The main ideas are the same, mainly the incident of the dog's ball, and I think the story works better in short story form than in novel-length, though I am kinda biased towards short stories.

The book is a very entertaining read for the Christie fan, but I can hardly recommend it to other people: the notes spoil a lot of books and it's just not as interesting if you don't know anything about the stories, while the new short stories are entertaining, but not among Christie's best.

Murder in the Mews

「最初は湯気のしずくに花火の色が映ったのかと、そのまま見すごしていたのですが、やがて、紅の飛沫は益々はげしく降りそそぎ、彼自身の額や頬にも、異様な暖かなしたたりを感じて、それを手にうつしてみれば、まがう方なき紅のしずく、人の血潮に相違ないのでした。そして、彼の目の前の湯の表に、フワフワと漂うものを、よく見れば、それは無慚に引き裂かれた人間の手首が、いつのまにかそこへ降っていたのです。北見小五郎は、その酔うな血腥い光景の中で、不思議に騒がぬ裸女達をいぶかりながら、彼も又そのまま動くでもなく、池の畔にじっと頭をもたせて、ぼんにゃりと、彼の胸の辺りに漂っている、生々しい手首の花を開いた真赤な切口に見入りました。か様にして、人見廣介の五体は、花火とともに、粉微塵にくだけ、かれの創造にしたパノラマ国の、各々の形式の隅々までも、血液と肉塊の雨となって、降り注いだのでありました」
『パノラマ島の奇譚』

"At first he just looked at it, thinking the drips of dew were reflecting the color of the fireworks. But the scarlet splashes rained down more and more; he himself felt the strangely warm drops on his head and cheek and when he put some on his hands, there was no doubt those scarlet drops were in fact human blood. And when he looked carefully at the thing floating lightly on the surface of the hot spring in front of him, it turned out to be the wrist of a man, cruelly ripped off; unnoticedly it had fallen down. Amidst that drunkenly blood spectacle, Kitami Kogorou wondered about the naked women who strangely enough didn't panick at all; and he too didn't move one bit, leaning his head on the footpath of the pond, dreamingly gazing at the scarlet fresh wound on the wrist floating near his chest. And thus Hiromi Kousuke's body had exploded into countless of pieces, and it was his flesh and blood that was raining down onto every corner of the Panorama Kingdom he himself had created."
The Strange Tale of Panorama Island

The summer means firework in Japan. And the biggest firework event in Fukuoka, is probably the firework in Oohori Park. Which was yesterday. Luckily, no people who blew themselves up together with the fireworks. Though I was certainly mentally prepared for it.

Somehow, I feel cheated because nobody yelled kagiya or tamaya. The kid behind me did scream tamago (egg) several times though, when the fireworks burst in circle-patterns. Close, but not really what I wanted to hear.

Oh, and also an annoyance when hanami-ing: people who only use half of the space of the giant sheets they lay out to reserve sitting place. Use space more efficiently!

"The game, Mrs. Hudson, is on!"

"I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath; do your research."
Sherlock

My world has become suddenly Sherlock once again. I have always loved my Conan Doyle since I was a whee li'll lad. Heck, I still remember the first Holmes stories I read were abridged Dutch versions of The Adventure of the Speckled Band and The Man with the Twisted Lip, having bought (yes, bought, not borrowed) them at the local library. Heck, The Complete Sherlock Holmes was the first book I bought with my own money in my life. I have really been reading the stories for way too much time. Suffice to say the Canon has made some impact on my life.

So whenever something Holmesian pops up, my eyes and ears will automatically light up. Even if I know better than to expect much of it. Last year's Sherlock Holmes was certainly entertaining in its own right, but somehow didn't feel Holmesian enough. Such was the feeling both me and a friend had after discussing the movie here.

So I was careful in not trying to expect to much of BBC's mini-series Sherlock. While the concept of Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd 21st Century itself is something which would frighten away many a fan, the fact Steven Moffat (of Doctor Who fame) was writing the show managed to plant seeds of hope in my mind. From which would sprout big trees. Very big trees. But still, I tried to keep those expectations in check.

Which in hindsight was totally unnecessary. Because Sherlock was amazingly fun. While concepts of Sherlock Holmes using a cellphone or Watson being a (recent) Afghanistan veteran who manages a blog might sound like bad ideas, they actually work. Brilliantly.

The pilot episode, A Study in Pink, was based on Holmes' debut, A Study in Scarlet, and brings the detective and the doctor together in 2010 for the same reasons as in the original stories: the rent. And the rest of the episode also remains surprisingly loyal to the original stories, while still keeping it modern (like how Holmes deduces facts about Watsons brother not from his watch, but from his cellphone). Add in some awesome canon references (like the ambigious location of Watson's war wound or an early introduction of... M), the slightest hint of Doctor Who and you have everything for an excellent Sherlock Holmes (IN THE FUTURE) series.

Bonus points for the Heavy Rain-esque pop-up texts, that show Holmes' train of thought (and some other points of interest). From a gamers viewpoint it was both surprising as well as recognizable. Seeing text pop up everytime you select see stuff is normal in games, but in television? It does keep the show more streamlined, as it allows the writers to incorporate more information in the series without actually having to spell everything out in text. Well, actually, they do actually spell everything out in text now, but at least that kind of information doesn't have to be woven into dialogue or special shots anymore. And that's cool with me.

Sherlock Holmes, I welcome thee into the 21st century.

『赤か、青か』

「えー、人間最後に頼れるのは運だけ」
『古畑任三郎：　赤か、青か』

"In the end, you can only rely on luck",
"Furuhata Ninzaburou: Red? Blue?"

For some reason, people here think I really, really like Higashino Keigo. Which is not true. I love his Meitantei Tenkaichi series, but setting that aside, it really depends on the book whether I like it or not. I like his easy writing and his characters, but at times he really doesn't feel like a detective writer.

Which does explain why he is one of the more prominent and better known detective writers.

But as I had to read a book for my Modern Japanese Literature course anyway, I chose a book by Higashino I had on my to-read list. A list tucked away in the depths of my memories, which I happened to remember while playing association games in my mind. But anyho~w.

Kaga Kyouichirou series
Sotsugyou ("Graduation") (1986)
Nemuri no Mori ("Forest of Sleep") (1989)
Dochiraka ga Kanojo wo Koroshita ("One of the Two Killed Her") (1996)
Akui ("Malice") (1996)
Watashi ga Kare wo Koroshita ("I Killed Him") (1999)
Uso wo Mou Hitotsu Dake ("One More Lie") (2000)
Akai Yubi ("Red Fingers")  (2006)
Shinzanmono ("Newcomer") (2009)
Kirin no Tsubasa ("The Wings of the Kirin") (2011)
Inori no Maku ga Oriru Toki ("When the Curtains of Hope Come Down") (2013)

The only reason Dochira ka ga kanojo wo koroshita ("One of the two killed her") stuck in my mind was that it's actually a detective novel without a clear ending. The author doesn't tell you who the murderer is. Which is interesting. The story revolves around the investigation regarding the death of police officer Izumi's sister. While it seems like it was a suicide, Izumi has reason to think his sister was actually murdered. And he sets off to hunt down the murderer himself. He manages to find two suspects. His sister's ex-boyfriend. And his sister's best friend, who stole Izumi's sister's boyfriend away from her. Either of them killed Izumi's sister, but which of them?

There is of course a conclusion to this book, but it doesn't use names, so you're left to deduce the murderer yourself. There is a sealed afterword in the pocket version, a transcript of a meeting held after the hardcover release discussing the solution it seems, but that only serves as an extra hint to the solution, I gather from the web (I, with my strange love for books, don't really want to cut open the sealed part).

The solution is hidden nicely. (it seems a significant hint had been deleted in the pocket version. It's still deducible though) and while in hindsight, it's a very boring solution, Higashino at least uses it in an interesting way. Still, while you certainly have to deduce the solution,

And heck, until halfway in the book I really thought Izumi was the main character, but thenl I noticed this book was the fourth in the Kaga Kyouichirou series. Not the Izumi series. Which explained why that detective Kaga was bothering Izumi with questions all the time.

Kaga is sorta like a Furuhata Ninzaburou, a police detective who picks up on the little things and once zeroed in on a suspect, doesn't let them be. I'm reading a short story collection of the Kaga series at the moment, and there it really feels like Furuhata Ninzaburou. You don't get to read about the crime itself, but in every story you're following the suspect as he/she's getting bothered by Kaga. A lot.

In any case, the Kaga Kyouichirou series seems like a fun Higashino series. It's at least fair, unlike Galileo.　

Original Japanese title(s): 東野圭吾　『どちらかが彼女を殺した』