Recipe for Turnabout

「弁護士はピンチの時こそふてぶてしく笑うもの」
『逆転裁判』

"Defense attorneys have to smile brazenly especially when they are in a pinch."
"Gyakuten Saiban"

Need to cheat with a short manga review. Again. But it's game-related, so it still fits in with this month's theme.

Like mentioned in the Trick X Logic post, Kuroda Kenji has been connected to the Gyakuten series for several years now, being the script-writer of the serialized manga version. The manga is not a comic-version of the games, but contains original stories set in the Gyakuten world with art by Maekawa Kazuo. Just like the games, the manga started out as Gyakuten Saiban ("Turnabout Trial"), with defense attorney Naruhodou as the protagonist, but two years ago the title changed to Gyakuten Kenji ("Turnabout Prosecutor"), and features prosecutor Mitsurugi as the protagonist now.

Gyakuten Kenji 4, released in February, contains two complete stories, Gyakuten! Kikikaikai  ("Turnabout! Strange Monsters") and  Gyakuten Clinic ("Turnabout Clinic"). In the main story, Gyakuten! Kikikaikai, Mitsurugi and detective Itokonogiri end up in a small hotel in the mountains after a driving accident (resulting in Itokonogiri's patrol car's fall of a cliff). With the Supernatural Phenomena Research Committee gathered in the hotel and no rooms left, Mitsurugi and Itokonogiri are forced to stay at the hotel-annex. Fire has broken out several times the last month in the annex and one of the guards even says he saw an Oni in the midst of the fire once. Add a woman who thinks her husband disappeared from the hotel, an excorist and a rather touchy hotel owner and you have all the ingredients for murder. When the hotel owner is found dead outside the hotel, seemingly pushed from the seventh floor of the annex, Mitsurugi starts his investigation. He has done it in other stories in this series, but Kuroda focuses a lot on architecture and the movement of people in this story and while the story has no real original elements, the solution consisting of two smaller, well known tricks, Kuroda managed to mix the elements in an amusing way.

Gyakuten Clinic ("Turnabout Clinic") is a short story and has the same  focus on architecture and the movement of people, but is less interesting that the previous story. It features a very crude locked room mystery, one of the most basic forms (and solutions). The usage of a modern kind of key actually makes this kind of locked room even more easy to pull off (and see through), and I am actually kinda disappointed in Kuroda for writing such a story.

But the biggest problem I have with this volume is that it strays far from the focus of the Gyakuten series on contradictions and turnabouts. People who have played the games will know that the title "Turnabout Trial" doesn't only refer to the flow  of the trials in the games, where you often need to switch between defense and offense. You also often have to look at the facts from the totally different angle (sometimes it's even needed to actually turn evidence around) to get to the truth. While Kuroda's earlier stories for the manga did reproduce that turnabout feeling, lately his stories are "just" normal detective stories. They just don't feel like they are specifically turnabout stories, which was why I liked the manga in the first place. It is still a decent, sometimes quite good detective manga, but I don't see the need of the Gyakuten name anymore. At this point, I would say Kuroda might as well drop the Gyakuten franchise name and just write an original detective manga.　

Original Japanese title(s): カプコン（監修）、 黒田研二（脚本）、 前川 かずお（漫画）『逆転検事４』/「逆転！鬼々怪々」/「逆転クリニック」

「たたりじゃ、あ、あやしろけのたたりじゃあ！」

「ざけんなよっ！ガキの探偵はファミコンだけだ」
『ファミコン探偵倶楽部PartII うしろに立つ少女』

"Don't fuck around!  Kid detectives only exist on the Famicom!"
"Famicom Detective Club Part II The Girl Standing in the Back"

I think the very first Japanese mystery adventure game I ever played, was the Super Famicom port of Famicom Tantei Club Part II Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo ("Famicom Detective Club Part II The Girl Who Stands Behind") (FamiTan 2). A time when I couldn't read Japanese. When we still had dial-up internet. A time when I was still computer-literate enough to do something as simple as download a(n excellent!) fan translation patch for a videogame ROM and actually patch it. While I had played many point and click adventures, FamiTan 2 was the first time I played a command-style adventure game. Nowadays, it seems like most adventures I play are of the command-style variety. Anyway, at that time, I knew there were other games in the FamiTan series, but as I couldn't read Japanese and there were no translation patches, not much could be done then.

But that's hardly a problem nowadays, so I decided to play through all the games this week. And it was at times a frustrating, yet certainly a satisfying week.

The first game Famicom Tantei Club Kieta Koukeisha ("Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir") (FamiTan 1) was originally released in 1988 in Japan for the Famicom Disk System, with big Nintendo names as Sakamoto Yoshio (Metroid, Kid Icarus) and Yokoi Gunpei (Game & Watch, GameBoy) involved with the development. Similar to the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series on the Famicom, FamiTan 1 was a mystery adventure game. And for people familar with Nintendo, or even more specifically Nintendo of that period, a very heavily plot-oriented game from Nintendo might be a bit surprising

A plot-device that isn't surprising at all though, is amnesia. FamiTan 1 starts when the (nameless) protagonist, a teenage boy, wakes up in the arms of a man. Which is not what it sounds like, because it seems the protagonist has been pushed off a cliff at the beginning of the game and he was just found by a man passing by. Because amnesia is something that occurs immediately when you hit you head (?), the player shouldn't be too surprised at seeing the protagonist wondering what he was doing near the cliff and what happened. As he investigates his own incident, the protagonist meets the girl Tachibana Ayumi, his colleague. He hears from Ayumi that he's the assistant of Utsugi Shunsuke, a famous detective and that he had just begun an investigation in the recent death of Ayashiro Kiku, a wealthy land-owner and head of the Ayashiro Trade Company, living in the village of Myoujin. While it seems like she had just died from a weak heart, her butler isn't so sure and had hired the hero to investigate her death for him. As it's obvious that his own 'incident' is connected to the case, the hero continues with the investigation.

As the hero investigates the family, he finds many people who had a motive for killing Kiku. Her two nephews, Kanji and Jirou, and her niece Azusa wanted to see Kiku dead to get her money. Her grand-nephew Akira had been seen loitering around the house lately. Or are Kiku's missing daughter Yuri and her missing adopted son somehow connected to Kiku's death? And then the case enters a new stage when Kanji is killed. And more follow.As more and more people get killed, the people of the Myoujin village recall the old legend of corpses getting back to life and getting revenge on the living. Are the murders the work of a revived Kiku?

Well, of course not, but FamiTan 1 sure is creepy. 8-bit music and crude pixel-art help a lot of course, but this game surely has the atmosphere right. The suggestion of the supernatural would remain a characteristic of the FamiTan series. As an adventure game, it's still quite rough with unnatural actions required to activate story flags (and a very irritating maze at the end). As a detective game, it's also quite crude, the game doesn't really allow you to think and there are only two or three instances where you have to input a name of a suspect / item to show your own deductions. And while Ayumi returns several times in the story, offering support, it's strange that detective Utsugi, who is supposed to be the boss of the hero, doesn't show up in the whole game. Not even once.

Yet, I really liked it. The atmosphere was creepy, the story OK (don't expect a masterpiece though) and for a Nintendo game, it was quite dark with the murders and all. It has a cool commercial too!

The second game is probably the most famous, also in the West. Famicom Tantei Club Part II Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo ("Famicom Detective Club Part II The Girl Who Stands Behind") (FamiTan 2) was originally released for the Famicom Disk System in 1989, but it was ported to the Super Famicom in 1998 for the Nintendo Power cartridge system. As there is an English fan translation for the Super Famicom version available, this is probably the only FamiTan most people have played in the west. It's arguably the best of the series anyway.

FamiTan 2 is a prequel to FamiTan 1 and stars the same hero. The game starts with a short prologue explaining how the hero became the assistent of detective Utsugi (who makes an actual appearance in the game), followed by the discovery of the strangled dead body of the schoolgirl Kojima Youko. The hero starts an investigation at Ushimitsu High School, assisted by... Tachibana Ayumi, who was a close friend of Youko. The two of them had a detective club, and it seems like Youko had discovered something big. The murder of Youko seems connected with the school legend of the Girl Standing in the Back, a school ghost that would appear right behind you and the disappearence of a high school girl many years ago.

I don't why, but schools in Japan all seem to have some kind of urban legend. At least, that's what detective manga have taught me. And games. Anyway, as FamiTan 2 is mostly set in a high school, it's slightly less creepy than FamiTan 1, though those empty corridors and classrooms (with portraits hanging on the wall) can be quite scary too. Once again, not much is asked of the player's intelligence, but players will have experienced a satisfying story ties nicely in with FamiTan 1. I haven't played the Famicom Disk System version, but the Super Famicom version is actually fantastic. Nintendo's R&D1 did an outstanding job with some graphical tricks and music. As FamiTan 2 was released 8 years after the Super Famicom's release, R&D1 really pushed the hardware. And with an English translation patch available, this is the most easily accessible game of the series. Except for me. When I replayed this game yesterday, I got stuck on trying to patch the ROM, so I just gave up and played it in Japanese. I could do something as simple as that many years ago, why not now?

Anyway, storywise, the story ends with Ayumi joining the Utsugi Detective Agency, leading into the events of FamiTan 1. Set in the same year as the events of FamiTan 1, is the third and last game in the series.

Which was actually released one year before the Super Famicom version of FamiTan 2. 1997 brought us BS Tantei Club: Yuki ni Kieta Kako ("BS Detective Club: The Past Lost in the Snow"), released on the Satellaview add-on hardware for the Super Famicom. Due to how the system works (connecting to a satellite), it's actually impossible nowadays to play the game (at least not with all the music and voice-over work). In the end, I had to give up and I watched a full play-through of the game on Youtube. From a VHS source. I hope I will never have to do that again.

This time, the protagonist is Tachibana Ayumi, who has gone back to visit her mother in Ochitani village, who is recovering from illness. When Kusano Genzou, the former mayor of Ochitani village is found murdered, Ayumi's mother is a suspect, because only her footprints were found in the snow leading to the crime scene. When the son of Kusano, current mayor of Ochitani village, is also killed, stabbed by a spear, the villagers start talking about a legend of a fallen warrior coming back to life to kill the corrupt mayor. Ayumi, helped by her friend Reiko, tries to find out the real murderer, but she finds out her family has had a family fued with the Kusano family for a long time. Is the murderer someone in her family?

BSTan is probably the shortest and weakest of all FamiTan games. While it features voice-work and a cleaned up interface, it's very small in scale with few characters and few developments. Which is a shame, as the story offers many opportunies to make it a grander story, but it never really gets anywhere. The footsteps in the snow? The locked room where they found Kusano's son? They are solved mostly as an afterthought. The ending is quite bad though. While the FamiTan games have always been more about telling a story, than making the player a real detective, to have Ayumi pretty much walk in on the murderer who happened to be confessing to the murder, well, that's a bit easy.

But the first two games were great and I do hope that Nintendo will revisit this little R&D1 series in the future again. But please not for something obscure this time please. Famicom Disk System, Nintendo Power cartridges, Satellaview, no wonder this game series is practically unknown except for a small group of fans.

Original Japanese title(s): 『ファミコン探偵倶楽部　消えた後継者』、『ファミコン探偵倶楽部PartII　うしろに立つ少女』、『BS探偵倶楽部　雪に消えた過去』

Awesome music: ？？？- ファミコン探偵倶楽部BGMアレンジ (Famicom Tantei Club BGM Arrange)

「論理の旋律は必ず真実を奏でる」

１．アカシャに書かれていることは全て事実。ただし犯人はウソをついている可能性がある

２．動機の強い弱いは重要ではない

３．トリックや犯人は、超能力や宇宙人など超常的な事象によるものではない。冥界の住人も、現世の事件に一切関与していない

『TRICK X LOGIC』

1. Everything that is written in the Akasha is true. However, there is the possibility that the murderer is lying.

2. It is not important whether a motive is strong or weak.

3. Tricks and criminals are not supernatural, like psychic powers or aliens. The inhabitants of the underworld are not involved with incidents in the world of the living.

"Trick X Logic"

More games!

I think I bought my PSP in the winter last year, but I have to honestly say I haven't played it that much this year. Strangely enough, the PSP games I have cleared  are all detective games. Weird. You'd think I'd clear something like Warriors Orochi faster than a game that actually requires me to read.

I've already covered the first season of PSP game Trick X Logic in an earlier post, and I won't go into the specifics of how this game works here, neither the details of the story as it's all there. Trick X Logic Season Two is exactly the same as the previous season, except for the stories of course. As my previous post was mostly about how the game works, I'll discuss the stories of Season Two more deeply this time. Once again, all of these stories are loosely linked by the story of prosecutor Yoshikawa trying to solve his own murder by reading underworldly Akasha (crime records) and young camera-woman Tsukasa who keeps getting involved with murder cases.

As the problem- and solution-chapters of Bourei Hamlet ("The Ghost Hamlet") by Kuroda Kenji were divided among Season One and Two, I started this season just checking whether my deduction was right. Which it was. The story was a very interesting one, with a man, dressed as the Phantom (of the Opera) being killed at a costume party. His murder is caught on CCTV, but it seems his murderer was... an armor of suits. Was it the Ghost of Hamlet that killed someone? With a gun?! I had a lot of fun with this story, and I think that came from the fact I'm somewhat familiar with Kuroda, due to his manga adaption of the Gyakuten series ("Ace Attorney series"). If you read this story as a Gyakuten story, everything makes sense.

Bloody Mary no Nazo ("The Mystery of Bloody Mary") by Takemoto Kenji starts with a famous detective writer visiting a hotel. Several fans knew he would visit this hotel and have booked their own rooms there too. Add in some other suspects, and you're all set for a Murder of a Detective Writer. Hardly an original premise, but it's usually entertaining. Which it was, but this story certainly didn't offer something original or innovative. A decent story, but nothing more than just a decent story.
 
Maya Yutaka's Rifling Murder is one of those stories I don't know whether I should love or hate. With a man being killed in his cottage on a small island, with the trajectory of the bullet suggesting the murderer was flying (or "Being sniped by a man hanging from a helicopter!"), it certainly has an interesting concept. The solution however, while adequately hinted at (well, that's pretty mandatory with this game), borders on the fantastical. It's not impossible, but quite improbable.

Me no Kabe no Misshitsu ("A Locked Room with Walls of Eyes") by Ooyama Seiichirou is maybe the most ambitious story of the whole bunch. In this story, the owner of a building is found killed in his office. But strangely enough, no murderer is seen entering the office through the door (there is a camera), nor through the window (witnesses). What makes this story so interesting, is that everything up to the discovery of the corpse is written from the viewpoints of the suspects, switching between them. One of the rules of the Akasha is that everything that is written there is true. The only exception is that the murderer might be lying (in conversation). Therefore, a sentence like "He thought that was strange" is true, while an utterance of "That's strange" might be false. Making use of these Akasha rules, Ooyama has neatly written one of the better stories of Trick X Logic.

Y no Hyouteki ("The Target of Y") is probably the story that attracts most attention. Written by Ayatsuji Yukito and Arisugawa Alice?! That's like Queen and Carr collaborating on a story! The story itself felt very Trick-ish, with a sun-worshipping cult-like new religion and the second patriarch being killed while he was performing the daily Southern prayer. Who killed him, and more importantly how? The prayer was held in a special court, locked from the inside with only his two most trusted followers besides him. Neither of them seems to have done it though. This religious element as well as the solution also remind of Chesterton and it's all in all a very neat story. The solution is somewhat spoiled by the title (which is a very Arisugawa-like title!), but like the previous story, one of the better ones. Well, it has to be! I'm not sure how the two worked on this work though. While I'm fairly well-read with Arisugawa, I'm not that far with Ayatsuji and it's hard for me to point at something and say, 'well, that's clearly Ayatsuji there'.

The final story, Kanzen Muketsu no Alibi ("The Absolutely Perfect Alibi") by Abiko Takemaru is a rather simple story compared to the previous two. The story obviously is about breaking an alibi, but the solution is an old, old one and thus a somewhat dissappointing ending to a fun series.

Well, it's not the ending actually, as there is also a bonus story (you unlock a chapter for every story you clear). Bousou Juliet ("Juliet Running Wild") by Kuroda Kenji is once again that is so obviously inspired by the premise of the Gyakuten series, I wonder whether he was planning to use this in the Gyakuten Saiban/Gyakuten Keji manga originally. Here, a man, Shuuhei gets crushed between his own car and a truck. Tsukasa, who was sitting in the backseat of the car, swears the car started to accelerate on its own, killing Shuuhei. She remembers the story she was told by Shuuhei. When he bought the car, the seller said it was called Juliet and that the previous owner had commited suicide. The car was still looking for its owner. Did the car run over Shuuhei? And why? This bonus story is just a normal story, so there is no looking for keywords/mysteries/insights here, but Kuroda Kenji did manage to slip in a Challenge to the Reader here and somewhat hard to believe at a certain, crucial point, it's a very nice bonus story.

The worst of the lot, has to be the overall storyline though. Yes, Yoshikawa "solves" his own murder, but in such a ridiculous way, it's not even worth mentioning. Tsukasa as the sole link between every story also feels very forced and didn't really add something for me (especially the obligatory "chief inspector Marunouchi suspects Tsukasa did it" scenes every single time were horrible). Maybe it bugs me that much because I have been praising the Gyakuten series for good overall storylines, but I expected something better from Chunsoft. You know, the company known for writing stories and sound novels.

Trick X Logic, basically being a interactive novel written by several big names in the world, is still very entertaining though and hope Chunsoft will use this deduction system with a few tweaks in future detective games though.

Original Japanese title(s): 『TRICK X LOGIC』/ 黒田研二　「亡霊ハムレット」/竹本健治　「ブラッディ・マリーの謎」/麻耶雄嵩　「ライフリング マーダー」/大山誠一郎　「目の壁の密室」/綾辻行人 & 有栖川有栖　「Yの標的」/我孫子武丸　「完全無欠のアリバイ」/黒田研二　「暴走ジュリエット」

「弁護士は諦めの悪さが肝心」

「検事として犯罪と戦っていくのか、弁護士として人を助けていくのか。」
『逆転検事２』

"Will you fight crime as a prosecutor, or help people as a defense attorney?"
"Turnabout Prosecutor 2"

One tradition I have is that I play at least one game in the Gyakuten (“Turnabout”) series every year. The quirky detective adventure game series (released in the west as the “Ace Attorney” series) was actually the reason for me to purchase my Nintendo DS and I have not regretted it a bit. And to be honest, the Gyakuten series offer me something few other media can give me. Characterization in novels have never been able to get me as much as visual media and I think some readers might have noticed it already, but I read detective novels mostly as an intellectual challenge. I’ll re-visit this topic in the future, but detective games for me have mostly been very story-heavy, leaving little space for interesting gameplay. The Gyakuten series is one very rare example that managed to combine my love for puzzle-plot detective stories with interesting gameplay and fantastic characters. Murder cases that involve magicians flying away after they committed a murder, the actor of The Evil Magistrate in a children’s show being skewered by the hero of the show, murders seemingly committed by people possessed by spirits and flying angels, it’s really all classic stuff! Add some amazing music and you have one very happy fanboy.

While all games in this series are split up in several criminal cases, like a short story collection, one staple of this series has always been that series creator, scenario writer and director Takumi Shuu managed to link those stories together with one clear storyline in a very satisfying way. While solving several cases, you slowly learn more about the characters and small events, which always culminate in a Grand Finale. Gyakuten Saiban (“Turnabout Trial”) (GS) introduced us to Naruhodou Ryuuichi (“Phoenix Wright”), a rookie attorney and to the question of what makes a good defense attorney. GS2 showed us a fundamental gap in Naruhodou’s beliefs, while GS3 gave us the past and present of Naruhodou and one of the most rewarding storylines I ever encountered in fiction. GS4 then gave us the fall of Naruhodou as a defense attorney, a new protagonist in rookie attorney Odoroki Housuke (“Apollo Justice”) and the limitations of the judicial system.

Gyakuten Kenji (GK) (“Turnabout Prosecutor”), a spin-off not created by Takumi, made recurring antagonist prosecutor Mitsurugi Reiji (“Miles Edgeworth”) the protagonist, focusing on his fight against an international smuggling ring. As the protagonist is a prosecutor and not a defense attorney, the game moved from its court-based story setting (as that’s where the defense attorney defends his client), to a crime-scene-setting, as the prosecutor, together with the police, looks for the culprit to prosecute. While I liked the game, one problem I had was that the overall storyline wasn’t as involving as the previous storylines. Previous storylines had been quite personal and thus much more rewarding, while a fight against a smuggling ring is more like ‘part of the job’ (yes, there was something personal about it, but not as big as in previous games).

Aaaaaaand that’s why I really loved Gyakuten Kenji 2. The newest game in the series was released early February and something I had been looking forward to for quite some time now. This time, the overall story line was great. As you can guess from the introducing quote, protagonist Mitsurugi is posed with the question how he wants to proceed. As a prosecutor. Or like his father, like a defense attorney. For people who have played the games until now (especially GS), this must surely be an interesting theme! New characters are actually memorable this time (compared to the first game), with a quirky defense attorney Shigaraki and the "first" rate prosecutor Ichiyanagi ("...'first'?!") as my favourites.

I plan to write something about gameplay mechanics in video games in the near future, so I won’t go into the gameplay mechanics in this post at all. It'll suffice to say that the game is built around contradictions between evidence and testimonies. As for the stories, they are once again full of contradictions to find. The second case, Gokuchuu no Gyakuten (“Turnabout in Prison”) is a wonderful Queen-ish story, with a prison-setting (yes, a man is murdered in prison!) and a grand search for the murder weapon. The third case is a great piece of story-telling, as it features two parallel storylines, one in the present, one in 17 years ago. You switch between the two and slowly unravel the (connected) truth in both cases. The final cases should be played back-to-back, as it all builds up to a grand finale. I don’t want to spoil too much, but memorable scenes in this game include a man seemingly killed by a…. gigantic Gojira-esque monster, a girl being attacked by a man who can apparently walk in the air and a murder during a dessert-baking contest.

While I usually go deeper in the stories in these reviews, it’s harder for me to do so for two reasons. As the overall storyline in these games is essential, I don’t want to spoil too much. And secondly, for some reason, it seems etiquette doesn’t allow me to spoil as much about video games plots in reviews than for books. Or other media. Don’t ask me why.

I do like this big storylines in short story collection format though. Like Christie’s The Big Four. But actually executed well. For me, it combines the best of both worlds and even offers something more. The interconnections between the cases in the Gyakuten cases, be it actually connections between characters and the like, or just thematic connections, really made the series stand out from the rest and offer a detective story with characters I actually care for.

But by now, I really won’t mind if Takumi Shuu would come back as scenario writer/director of the series to continue with the Gyakuten Saiban series.

Original Japanese title(s): 『逆転裁判』、『逆転検事２』

Oh, awesome orchestral music: 岩垂徳行 - 御剣怜侍　～異議あり！２０１１ (Iwadare Noriyuki - Mitsurugi Reiji ~Objection! 2011)

『日本扇の謎』

"Magic? For old hands, gentlemen, that's naive. The ancient formula: pick out the facts and put them together. Mix thorougly with plenty of logic. Add a dash of imagination. Presto!"
"Halfway House"

My fairly, maybe very irritating habit of using quotes as both post titles and introductions, I stole from Ellery Queen. Many of his novels have themed chapter names and introducing quotes. And apparently this attention to detail made so much impression on me that I too name my posts thematically. Even though I often can't find good quotes to go with my posts. You'll notice the relation of the quotes to the contents are somewhat farfetched. But I just compulsively name them like this. Imagine my shock when I found I had accidentally saved over the file where I wrote down usable quotes. I was not pleased. Just as I'm not pleased I have to work on a netbook because my normal laptop (with a normal size monitor and keyboard) won't connect to the Internet. I'm pretty sure this post has a lot more typos/weird sentences than usual, as I really hate writing on this small thing.

But coming back to Queen, I hadn't read novels by him for some time now. Two years maybe. Which wasn't because I had already read all the books (far from it!). But as can be deduced from this blog, I mostly read Japanese detective fiction lately. So reading Halfway House felt sorta like coming back home. Ellery is asked for help by his friend Bill, when he finds his brother-in-law Joe Wilson murdered in a shack near the Delaware rivier. And that's about all I can tell you about the story. Because one of the major plot-twists follows immediately and it would be a shame to spoil it. Like the text on the cover of my copy did.

But I quite like this novel. While this novel technically isn't one of Ellery Queen's The [Country] [Noun] Mystery novels, it is certainly written as one. Thematically titled chapter names, introducing quotes and the last Challenge to the Reader (until a much later published The Finishing Stroke) are the aesthetical proofs of this, while the incredible deductions Ellery makes serve as the spritual proof. Ellery's deductions (like in The Greek Coffin Mystery, The Tragedy of X, The Tragedy of Z etc.) are still among the most impressive feats of detective fiction, I think. From all the evidence available, Ellery makes a list of attributes of the murderer and then examines every suspect to see whether they fit or don't the profile. And finds the murderer. Q.E.D. It's as easy as 1 + 1 = 2.

But on the other hand, Halfway House is truly halfway. With few suspects, Queen spouting less quotes and a rather clumsily inserted clue that explains everything, it's certainly not as complex as earlier novels. With the Hollywood and Wrightville novels following, this is truly a bit of both worlds of the Queen canon spectrum.

And to continue in the Queen tradition, I might as well discuss Arisugawa Alice's Burajiru Chou no Nazo ("The Brazilian Butterfly Mystery") now. Because this review has been waiting for almost a month now. Yes, backlog. But this is the last one left. Burajiru Chou no Nazo is the sequel to Russia Koucha no Nazo ("The Russian Tea Mystery") and is the same in set-up. Himura, the "Clinical Criminologist" (as dubbed by Alice) and Alice, a mystery writer and long-time friend, assist the police in five short stories.

The titular Burajiru Chou no Nazo ("The Brazilian Butterfly Mystery") start Queen-ish with a rather bizarre murder scene. A man, who had been living alone on an island for ten years, has come back to get his inheritance from his deceased brother, but he is found murdered himself in a room with dead butterflies pinned to the ceiling. With his sister-in-law, her brother and a lawyer as suspects, Himura solves this rather disappointing case easily. I really wanted to like this story, as it began so good, but the solution was just too simple in my eyes. For some reason or another though, this story is going to be adapted for the theaters, with a planned release for the winter this year.

Mousou Nikki ("Diary of Fantasies") is also very simplistic in design, but I sorta liked. Himura and Alice investigate a diary of a man who had been burned to death. The man had gone mad after losing his wife and child and was living with his parent-in-laws. But the problem is that the man, having gone mad, had also lost the ability to write words. Himura and Alice stand for the problem of reading a diary of a man who couldn't write.

Kanojo ka Kare ka ("Her or him") is somewhat fitting to go with Halfway House, as the story is about an investigation of a transvestite (no, there is no transvestite in Halfway House). The victim was a man, but would at times dress up as a woman. Just as he inherited from his father a small fortune that would have allowed him a sex-change operation, he is found murdered. The investigation in his private life is quite interesting and the hint pointing to the solution was quite interesting, from a personal point of view. Yes, this a rather vague, but you'll understand if you read it.

Hitokui no Taki ("The Man Eating Waterfall") is the longest story in the collection and the most interesting. With a legend of a man-eating waterfall that calls for victims, a movie being filmed there and the footsteps of a man walking into the waterfall, we have the ingredients for a nice story with a supernatural tone. 

Chouchou ga habataku ("Butterflies flying away") is another of the simple stories, where Alice talks with a man in the train and hears the strange story of how he had just seen two people on the platform across the train, who had disappeared many, many years ago. The man had gone on a holiday with those two and other friends, but one day they had just vanished from their inn. They couldn't have gone out through the locked doors and windows, while the back of the inn looked out on a beach and they wouldn't have able to go there without leaving any footprints. Just as Alice wants to ask more about it, the man leaves the train though, and Alice is left with a problem without solution. It's up to Himura to solve this problem

All in all a decent, if slightly simple short story collection. This time, the stories are less urban (mostly Kare ka, kanojo ka) and the stories and solutions very much depend on interpretation, rather the dying clues or mechanical solutions of the previous story collection. While it's good Arisugawa is writing more types of stories, I have to say the first was a better. I only have one short story collection left by Arisugawa, so I hopes the next combines the best of both.

And Edogawa Rampo month taught me not to be as foolish as to actually announce it, but I will suggest, hint and imply that March might be rather more video game orientated than other months. Maybe.

Original Japanese title(s): 有栖川有栖　『ブラジル蝶の謎』/「ブラジル蝶の謎」/「妄想日記」/「彼か彼女か」/「人食いの滝」/「蝶々がはばたく」 

"Why not avoid the danger of a personality that is ever the same?”

"'The fox changes his skin,' quoth Ellery, 'but not his habits. or would you prefer it in Latin. My classics used to irritate you.'"
"Halfway House"

 
And with most of the backlog gone, I'll go back to one-post-a-week.

I have read Maurice LeBlanc's Arsène Lupin novels in English, German and Japanese now. And not one in the original French language. It's a bit creepy realizing, I have forgotten a language I have studied for several years at school. I do seem to have done bits and pieces of a bit too many languages, resulting in me being a jack of all trades, but master of none.

Like with La Demoiselle aux yeux vert, La Demeure mystérieuse isn't available in English as far as I know. So I had to settle with Kaiki na Ie ("The Strange House"), another re-release of the Minami Youichirou translations by Popular. The novel starts with the kidnapping of a young singer, Régine. She is taken by her two kidnappers to a mysterious mansion, where she is robbed of her diamonds, lent to her by Van Houben. A similar incident happens a bit later with a model called Arlette . The police, with the help of  the baron Jean d'Enneris (Yes. In fact Lupin) manage to identify the mansion the girls were taken to. The Valamare mansion, inhabited by the count Valamare and his sister. While evidence of their guilt is everywhere, the diamonds are nowhere to be found. The police is convinced the Valamares are guilty, as all the clues point to them, but d'Enneris seems not so sure. Convinced someone is trying to set up the Valamare's, he starts another investigation, with a certain Antoine Fagueraul, fiance of Arlette, as his main suspect. But it's all just to get his hands on the Van Houben diamonds.

At this point, I wonder why Leblanc even bothers to give Lupin a different name, as anybody knows who Lupin is, the moment he enters stage. It is difficult not to recognize his raw power and charisma. But still , LeBlanc keeps trying. One of the later chapters even "tries" to create confusion by suggesting Fagueraul might be Lupin. As if.

What's even more confusing is that the cop Bechoux knows that d'Enneris is in fact... the private detective Jim Barnett (from the short story collection L'Agence Barnett et Cie). Who in fact is Arsène Lupin.

The story is pretty fun though. The main trick is reminiscent of a famous Ellery Queen short story, which was released several years after this novel. Somewhat rare in a Lupin novel, the novel ends in a Classic Gathering In the Saloon where d'Enneris (Lupin) explains how the set-up was managed and how he deduced it from the clues. If I didn't knew Lupin was doing all of this just to get hold of Van Houben's diamonds, I'd almost believe him as an instrument of pure good (well, the exploits in The Eight Strokes of The Clock were for a kiss, which is less criminal... but still).And totally unrelated to this story, but I never did understand why people consider Le Bouchon de cristal (The Crystal Stopper) as one of the better Lupin stories.

I really dig these old-school covers though! Too bad I already have English translations of the other books Popular released and they seemed to have stopped now. I should do an awesome detective-cover post someday.

Original Japanese title(s): モーリス・ルブラン、南洋一郎 　『怪奇な家』

「・・・そして伝説は、もう一度、逆転する」

「真実なんてものはないんだよ。仮に、もし真実なんてものがあったとしても全て時の流れの向こう側だ。真実は人に記憶された瞬間から変質していく。記憶は年老いて薄れる、死んで消え去る。真実とか記憶とか、くだらないものにこだわるなんて、人間ってバカだよな。」
『SPEC〜警視庁公安部公安第五課 未詳事件特別対策係事件簿〜』 

"There is no such thing as the truth. Even if there is something like the truth, it is all on the other side of the flow of time. Truth changes the moment people store it in their memories. Memories get old, become vague, die and disappear. Mankind is really stupid to be so obsessive about insignificant things like truth or memories."
"SPEC ~ The Case Files of MPD Public Security Department, Public Security Section 5, Special Counter Measures to Unsolved Cases~"

Rewrite after rewrite tell me I am definately not going to say anything new or actually relevant about Ayatsuji Yukito's Jukkakukan no Satsujin ("The Decagon House Murders").  It's like being asked to say something innovative about Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in this time and age. It can be done, but certainly not by me.

So I'll just choose the easy difficulty. Click.

(See also this general post on the Yakata/House series.)

A group of students, all belonging to a local university mystery circle, head out to Tsunojima, an small island off the coast of Kyuushuu. Their goal? The ruins of the Blue Mansion and the only building still left on the island, the Decagon House. Owner of both buildings was the architect Nakamura Seiji, who along with his wife and servants, were killed and burned half a year ago on Tsunojima. The members of the mystery circle have plans to spend a week of leisure at the island, whilst taking a look at a real crime scene. But what begins as a nice holiday, ends in a tragedy, when the students are murdered one by one by an unknown killer. Meanwhile, on the mainland, an ex-member of the mystery circle receives a letter claiming to be from the deceased Nakamura Seiji, hinting something is going on. And so the stories progresses as investigations on both the island and the mainland develop in Jukkakukan no Satsujin ("The Decagon House Murders", 1987)

Jukkakukan no Satsujin is hailed as the first in the wave of new orthodox detective novels in Japan. It is a Giant in the history of Japanese detective fiction. If there is something like a canon to detective fiction history, this would be in it. And I personally thought that fun: I've come to a stage where it is hard to find detective fiction that are historically relevant that I haven't read yet. I have to read The Moonstone yet though. Which I actually have somewhere, I think.

But anyway, this was the start of Japanese new orthodox detective novels. A blast from the past. The description of the story should have tipped you off, as it's all classic stuff, right? The story on the island is a take on Christie's And Then There Were None and is pretty fun, even though the murders don't actually happen till relatively late in the book. The story on the mainland is a more orthodox investigation based on questioning witnesses et al and seems to connect directly to the island narrative only at select times, thus creating a gap between the tension on the island and the more open mainland, but the mainland plotline does give insight in the background of the murders on the island.

Ayatsuji also manages to slip in quite some meta-references in this work. The students are all known by their nicknames (like Agatha, Carr and Ellery) and the discussions the students have when they are trying to find out who is trying to kill them, are not the discussions of people afraid of getting killed, but most definitely of people who are very familiar with the tropes of the genre and think accordingly. Ayatsuji is very concious of the fact he is not one of the Great Ones before him, that he is, in fact, a mystery fan writing a mystery, and that makes this novel really entertaining.

And besides the book being obviously being a homage to And Then There Were None, Ayatsuji also wrote this as sort of a challenge to surprise Christie endings like And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I won't go into the trick itself, but the trick is very much like a magic trick. It's a trick that has certain limits (and can be seen through immediately if you just happen to look at from a certain angle) and while I think Ayatsuji plotted this novel very neatly, it left me with some ambiguous feelings. Also because I had seen the trick used somewhere else before, so I saw through it quite quickly. Can't remember where I had seen it though, not even whether it was detective fiction of before or after the release of this book.

But Ayatsuji had succes with this book, with a lot more novels in the Yakata (mansion/house) series published after this one. And of course the whole wave of other new orthodox detective novels. Starting a wave should count as 'succes'.

A friend commented that it seemed like new orthodox detective novels have some relation with (odd) architecture, posing that more orthodox novels are more difficult to use. Indeed, Jukkakukan no Satsujin features a decagon house. A slanted mansion features in Shimada's Naname Yashiki no Hanzai ("The Crime at the Slanted Mansion"). Stories in Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Young Kindaichi"), especially the later, often use this too. But this might be very author-specific, as writers like Arisugawa Alice and Norizuki Rintarou usually use modern urban settings in their stories. Granted, Arisugawa and Norizuki don't write locked room mysteries often, but when they write them, it's in a 'normal' building. Of course, a strange building is a lot easier to manipulate for a locked room murder, but I think (odd) architecture is more a general thing for detective fiction, rather specifically for new orthodox detective fiction.

But yes, Jukkakukan no Satsujin. Important. New Orthodox School. Read It.

Why isn't this translated in English?

Original Japanese title(s): 綾辻行人　『十角館の殺人』