「あの娘のまえには多くの男の血が流されるであろう。彼女は女王蜂でる」

"Love is a moment of weakness that allows someone to hurt you more than you ever thought possible. Men were given the strength to be brutes to women, and women were given love to wreck their revenge"
"Discworld Noir"

And still the Yokomizo Seishi pile doesn't seem to shrink. It's going a lot slower than I'd expected. Even with a book every week it seems like that pile is still as high as ever.

Jooubachi ("Queen Bee") is another of those high-profile Kindaichi Kousuke novels, that often makes the jump to both the small and the silver screen. With a focus on beautiful women, it's not too surprising maybe. As per the will of her mother, Daidouji Tomoko is to move from the island of Gekkintou to her stepfather in Tokyo after her 18th birthday.. Brought up on Gekkintou by her grandmother and her tutor, Tomoko has turned out to be just like her mother: a beautiful woman who manages to capture the hearts of every man around her. She is not a temptress or something like that though, she just has something that attracts men,without herself being aware of it. However, someone seems to have something against her, as several persons close to her receive threatening letters saying she should never leave Gekkintou. For she, like her mother, is a Queen Bee, and the men who try to get close to her will die.

Kindaichi Kousuke is hired to accompany Tomoko, her grandmother and her tutor on their way to Tokyo, and they meet up halfway with Tomoko's stepfather, his son (no blood-relation to Tomoko) and three suitors for Tomoko he himself has selected. What was said in the threatening letters seems to be true though, because already after the first day one of the suitors is found murdered. And he is not the only one to go. The murders in the present seem to be connected with the death of Tomoko's real father, 19 years ago, a picture of a bat nobody has seen and a certain locked room, but is Kindaichi Kousuke able to solve these interlinked crimes in the past and present?

Of course he solves it. Like so often, Kindaichi only manages to solve the crime after dozens of people have died, true, but he does solve the case. Seriously, Kindaichi Hajime might not be very much like his grandfather, but they both have the knack of not being very useful in preventing serial killings, only in solving them afterwards. Even if they have their suspicions, they never seem to actually act on it and well, maybe try to shorten the list of the dead.

For a Kindaichi Kousuke case though, the setting of Jooubachi is pretty different: most of the novel is set in relatively urban spaces (murders occur in a hotel and theater amongst others) and I have to say I was really surprised when I realized not much was going to happen on the island of Gekkintou. I was expecting murder and mayhem before Tomoko could ever leave the island, but when they left the island in like a two-sentence description, I was both disappointed (no island murders?) and happy (at least I don't know what's going to happen). Despite the urban setting though, this novel does feel like a genuine Kindaichi Kindaichi novel with the serial killings, complex family relations, multiple persons with their own agendas working against each other making the mystery that more hard to understand and a lot of scratching of the head by Kindaichi.

The mystery itself though, is not entirely fair, as even though the red herrings were easy to spot and I had set my sight on the right person, there was actually little proof that definitely indicated the real criminal. You sense who it is quite quickly and then you might come up with indications with hindsight, but it would be harder to build a case beforehand, I think. A lot of the backstory was told (too) late in the game too, which is a shame, because I do think this was a very enjoyable book. But don't expect much of the problem of the locked room. The plot runs at a high speed with things happening all the time and it simply never bores, something Yokomizo excels in. Unlike the last two Yokomizo novels I discussed (Yoru Aruku and Yatsu Haka Mura), this novel is written in a third person narrative, and like I thought, this style is much more suitable for the stories Yokomizo writes.

It's a perfectly enjoyable story at any rate and I'm actually pretty curious to the many movie/drama versions of Jooubachi, if only to see who is selected to play Tomoko. 

Original Japanese title(s): 横溝正史　『女王蜂』

「ばんなそかな」

"Oh, yes,” said Miss Marple fervently. “I always believe the worst. What is so sad is that one is usually justified in doing so."

"A Pocket Full of Rye"

I always try to expect as little as possible of anthologies. Because often, the majority of the stories in an anthology are somewhere between mediocre to outright bad. There might be one or two stories that make the collection sorta worthwhile, but you usually have to fight a couple of frightful dragons.

Futoumei na Satsujin - Mystery Anthology ("Opaque Murders - Mystery Anthology") is probably the most boring anthology I've ever read and not even the big names like Arisugawa, Norizuki and Maya were able to save this anthology. It might explain why I've had this anthology for almost three years now and I only finished it just now. When I first started it, three years ago, I thought my proficiency in Japanese was to blame for not enjoying the stories. I gave up halfway through. But now I've read everything, and even re-read some stories, but the conclusion is that this is just an awful anthology. Halfway through I noticed there was no editor for this anthology and that should have tipped me off. The title is horribly wrong too, as several stories don't even have murders, and this is not so much a mystery anthology, but rather a crime anthology.

Arisugawa Alice's Onna Choukokuka no Kubi ("The Head of the Sculptress") is a Himura Hideo / writer Alice short story, so it's the usual: Himura and Alice are asked by the police for their assistance. The problem? The murder of a sculptress, whose head has been cut off and replaced by the head of a Venus statue. With only two suspects (her husband and the neighbour), this is  a rather small story that gives a reasonable explanation for the decapitation. A decent story, but nothing more than that (and that final clue... I'm sure I've heard it somewhere else before).

Kujira Touichirou's Animal Iro no Namida ("Animal-colored Tears") is the first story in this collection that doesn't actually contain murder. Anyway, it's the narrator's first day at a psychiatrist as the new assistant, but he is quite disappointed when he first meets doctor Namida, the head of the clinic. She is rather ditzy and doesn't even seem to be properly educated in psychology. When the first client of the day arrives and comes up with a story of seeing animals like tigers and mice, the narrator thinks the man should be sent to a mental home rather than treated here, but Namida shows that there is more behind the illusions of this patient. A story that just barely falls under the genre and really not worth reading.
   
Anekouji Yuu's Fukuzatsu na Izou ("A Complex Bequest") is slightly more interesting, with a rookie solicitor having to deal with the problem of two wills: which of the two is to be executed? Add in some references to Oooka Echizen, and we have a story that does actually belong to the genre, but not really an outstanding one.

Yoshida Naoki's Snow Valentine doesn't belong here. At all. Man traveling back in time, wants to change his future. A twist ending doesn't equal a mystery story! And a murder doesn't mean a mystery story per se either, but this is another story without a murder, despite the title of the anthology.

Wakatake Nanami's OL Club ni Youkoso ("Welcome to the OL Club") is heavily inspired by The Moving Finger, as both stories revolve around poison pen letters. In this story, anonymous letters are spread at a big company and a secretary is requested to find the sender of these letters. Too bad most of the deductions made are very much like those in The Moving Finger, so nothing new here. It does offer some ideas though, looking at these Japanese companies with their hierarchy and OL's and human relations as a counterpart to those Marple-ish small English villages.

Nagai Surumi's Omosugite ("Too Heavy") is another of those stories whose inclusion in a mystery anthology can be justified only barely. An OL has some problems with a former lover/co-worker in the stairs and he accidently falls down the stairs. She thinks he's dead and leaves him to be, but it seems he's still alive, even if in critical condition. And then she thinks a lot about killing him or not killing him just to get rid of him and how this all came to be and stuff and then it's really really boring and all.

Tsukatou Hajime's Eden wa Tsuki no Uragawa ni ("Eden is on the other side of the moon") is the only story with a map. My interests were aroused. A visit to a tech company by the two protagonists (who were looking for someone who used to work there) ends in a murder, as they see two men fighting on the roof of the tower opposite them, and one of them suddenly falling down into the pond at the foot of the tower. When they come looking for the man in the pond, they see he is dead, with an arrow in his back. Who shot the man down with an arrow? The solution is a rather surprising one. Maybe because it was part of this anthology, maybe because I'm not familiar with Tsukatou, but the story clearly belongs to the scientific kind of detectives like Higashino Keigo's Galileo series. I wasn't prepared for that. A sorta decent story, if you're into this kind of stories.

Kondou Fumie's Saishuushou kara ("Starting at the conclusion") indeed starts with the conclusion, when a female writer tells that she has just killed her boyfriend, an aspiring actor, and she then explains why.  It's not a bad story, but surely not impressive either.

I had some expectations for Maya Yutaka's White Christmas. His stories have amused me until now, so I had no reasons to do otherwise here. Takeshi and his daughter has invited four men to his cottage to spend Christmas.His daughter doesn't know that Takeshi has relations with all these four men. The four lovers however do know this of each other and they all vie for Takeshi's attention. As he is the center of everything, it shouldn't be too surprising when I see that Takeshi gets killed. A story that ends in a Queenian way with identifying the characteristcs of the culprit and then crossing off suspects and it is easily the best story of the bunch, but that's not saying much. It's a pretty decent story on its own, but I doubt it would rank among Maya's best.

Double Play is surprisingly a crime story by Norizuki Rintarou and not a puzzler. The story is about a murder exchange (you know, I'll kill someone for you if you kill someone for me, it's easier with the alibis and stuff), but the more interesting anecdote about this story is that Norizuki sorta rewrote this story as the puzzler Return the Gift for the short story collection Norizuki Rintarou no Shinbouken ("The New Adventures of Norizuki Rintarou"). I was planning to link to a review, but because I read the book before I started writing reviews, I don't have one on the site. Hmm..

Nevermore, I hope.

Original Japanese title(s): 『不透明な殺人　ミステリー・アンソロジー』/ 有栖川有栖　『女彫刻家の首』/ 鯨統一郎　『アニマル色の涙』/ 姉小路祐　『複雑な遺贈』/ 吉田直樹　『スノウ・バレンタイン』/ 若竹七海 『OL倶楽部にようこそ』/ 永井するみ　『重すぎて』/ 柄刀一　『エデンは月の裏側に』/ 近藤文恵　『最終章から』/ 麻耶雄嵩　『ホワイト・クリスマス』/ 法月綸太郎　『ダブル・プレイ』

『DRINK ME』

「ある金持ちが鏡をほしがっている。依頼が俺のところに回ってきた。それだけのことだ」

「結局あなたたち探偵の存在は、あなたの云 う『それだけ』のものなのでしょう？ シャーロック・ホームズもエラリー・クイーンももういない。彼らが探偵として勝ち得たはずの誇りは、現代において既に失われているのです。姿かたちばかり 彼らに似せた、まるで紙人形のような人たち！探偵たちの終わりを戦争のせいにしますか？時代の流れのせいにしますか？好きなように何かを責めるといいです ネ。でも、これだけは云えるのです。探偵は生きていてはいてかない。死ぬべきなのです。」

『『アリス・ミラー』殺人事件』

"Some rich guy wants the mirror. He came to my place. That's all."

"In the end, 'that's all' is all there is to you detectives, right? Sherlock Holmes and Ellery Queen are no more. The pride they fought for as detectives, has been lost in the modern age. You only look like them in appearence. Like paper dolls! Are you blaming the war for this ragnarok for the detectives? The change in trend? You can blame whatever you want. But I'll tell you this. Detectives shouldn't be alive. They should be dead.", 

"'Alice Mirror Castle' Murder Case"

I think that Alice in Wonderland is the non-detective novel referenced most often here, but I have to confess: I haven't read the book. Nor its sequel. Nor have I seen the Disney films. All I know of Lewis Carroll and Alice derives from writers like Queen and Arisugawa Alice. If you'd ask me about Alice in Wonderland, I could tell you about how it's an awesome source of inspiration for detective writers, but little more.

And of course, the Alice in 'Alice Mirror Jou' Satsujin Jiken ("'Castle Alice Mirror' Murder Case') refers to Alice in Wonderland. A group of detectives is gathered on the island of Erikajima, all with the same objective: to find an item called the Alice Mirror. They reside in the Alice Mirror Castle, a strange castle with mirror-rooms, doors that seem to appear and disappear and various references to Carroll's work. Their search for the Alice Mirror changes into a game of survival, as they start to get killed one after another. From locked room murders (how did the first victim get through the Alice Door, a very small door? Did he drink the shrinking potion?!) to a murder in a gigantic mirror-room and cut-up bodies, the murderer seems to be a connoisseur of classic murders. Which is also shown by a chessboard, with white chess pieces disappearing one after another every time a murder is commited, until there were none.

My first reading Kitayama Takekuni and it was a pleasant experience. As the main players in the novel are all (fairly genre savvy) detectives, the discussions they have on mechanical locked room tricks are very interesting, almost nearing the philosophical. Because all these chesspieces are so genre-savvy, the novel also clearly messes with the reader on a meta-level, and you always wonder how many levels you have to enter in the 'if Kitayma thinks I think that he thinks that I think...' game. The denouement shows that Kitayama manages to pull off hard to do things quite nicely. The locked room behind the small Alice Door is basically a rather gruesome variation on a very widely used locked room trick, but it was done so wonderfully with the Alice in Wonderland references that it manages to impress. What I liked most though was again how Kitayama (the murderer) makes uses of meta-level knowledge and justifies the locked room murder and the cut-up bodies in a way that works.

Thematically, this novel is very much like Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no Satsujin, and it's certainly nice to read these two as a set. Discussions of the genre on a meta-level have of course been in detectives for ages, but it's nice to see how it develops as an actual field of study and how modern novels build on the knowledge to explore new realms. Once again, this is not a new practice, but it's a bit more rare to see in modern times. Well, it's a staple of New Orthodox novels, but a more global approach to it would be nice too, right?

The only thing I really, really didn't like was the characters' motivation for participating in the game. You'll probably never ever hear me talk about character motivation here again, but it's one thing to have characters that are brought to life to die (in most detective novels), but to have genre-savvy characters brought to life to die is something completely different. The characters know that they'll probably die if they go to the island to look for the Alice Mirror, but go nonetheless. For the money. I think I'd rather have a more nihilistic approach to accompany the dreamy atmosphere that's present anyway: a gathering of detectives who are destined to die, without all the 'we're in it for the money' justification, and without the utterly weird motive of the murderer.

One of these days I really have to read Alice in Wonderland though... 

Original Japanese title(s): 北山猛邦　『『アリス・ミラー城』殺人事件』

「汝夜歩くなかれ」

「それほど異様な事件なのだから、よってもって由来するところも、遠く、深く、かつ複雑であった。憎悪、貪欲、不倫、迷信、嫉妬と、あらゆるドス黒い要素が、執念ぶかくからみあい、もつれあいながら、それでも辛うじて平衡を保っていたのが、ついに保ちきれなくなって爆発したのが世にも凄惨な、あの殺人事件であったといってもいいだろう。」『夜歩く』

"It was such a strange case, so its origin was complex, hidden somewhere deep and faraway. Hate, greed, infidelity, superstition and jealousy, even though all these dark elements were intertwined and entangled with each other teniciously, somehow balance was preserved, until it could go on no longer and it exploded as this never-seen horrible murder case.", "It Walks By Night"

Another Yokomizo Seishi?Actually, with my current backlog, even if I would read a Yokomizo novel every two days, I could still go on for several weeks...

Yokomizo Seishi's Yoru Aruku ("It Walks in the Night")  has an awfully familiar title, but I don't think it was something to do with John Dickson Carr's novel. Have to admit I haven't read it though and Wikipedia doesn't really help (yes, a summary shouldn't be too hard to find, but I'm somewhat lazy), but I'm just going to assume the story is totally different. Yoru Aruku is not one of those high-profile novels by Yokomizo Seishi like Yatsu Haka Mura, Honjin Satsujin Jiken or Inugamike no Ichizoku, but not as obscure as his short stories. It does feature his series detective Kindaichi Kousuke, even though in somewhat small role. It links in with Yatsu Haka Mura, as Kindaichi Kousuke solves the case of Yatsu Haka Mura on his way back from solving this case. And it's mostly set in the Okuyama prefecture (and indeed part of the "Okuyama Prefecture Period" of Kindaichi Kousuke, the first couple of novels).

Yoru Aruku's story is a peculiar one. Here we have the Furugami family, an old rich family. The Sengoku family has been serving the Furugami family since the Edo period and even now, in the post-war period, they act as financial managers for the Furugami family. The Furugami family consists of Shuei, his stepmother and his stepsister Yachiyo. The Sengoku family consists of father and son Naoki. This house of freaks is just waiting for an incident though, with Shuei, a hunchback, in love with his stepsister Yachiyo, Sengoku Naoki also in love with Yachiyo, old man Sengoku having an open affair with the Furugami widow and also in the habit of swinging old swords when drunk and Yachiyo being an almost conciousless beauty. Oh, and Yachiyo has the habit of sleepwalking (thus the title). Things go wrong when Yachiyo announces she wishes to marry the artist Hachiya, who also happens to be a hunchback.

Naoki calls his friend Yashiro, a detective novel writer, over to the mansion, because he feels something is going to happen. Which does. A decapitated hunchback is found in the annex one night, but who is it? Both Shuei and Hachiya have disappeared, so which of the two is the victim? And how could the murder have been commited in the first place, because the murder weapon, a Muramasa, was kept in a double locked safe (key and combination lock), with Yashiro and Naoki present in the room the whole night! It's just the beginning of it all though, as heads are found and more people are decapitated. Add in some sleepwalking. And finally, great detective Kindaichi Kousuke appears...

Maybe the reason this novel isn't that well known among the Kindaichi Kousuke canon is because it's not completely fair. Just a guess. I wouldn't say it's completely unsolvable, but it keeps hovering above the border of fair and unfair and I totally understand why people wouldn't be satisfied by this book. Especially as this novel was preceded by perfectly fair-play masterpieces. Disappointment is to be expected then.

But like I said, it's not completely unfair and a great deal is indeed perfectly solvable. The atmosphere is top-notch, again, with hunchbacks, decapitated bodies, sleepwalking and cursed swords and stuff; it's almost like an Edogawa Rampo novel with its grotesqueness. The use of writer Yashiro as the narrator is also very similar to Edogawa's writing style, who often used a first-person narration in his books, also by writer characters. Seriously, we're only missing a killer-midget or transvestites (or killer midget-transvestites) here. Heck, my edition (which somehow seems to be published somewhere in the 70's and actually sold for only 300 yen at the time) even has cover art that reminds more of Edogawa's writings, rather than Yokomizo's writings.

Yokomizo used the first-person narrator again with Yatsu Haka Mura, and both these novels feel very different from other Kindaichi Kousuke novels, as you usually follow Kindaichi Kousuke from a third-person perspective. In both these books, Kindaichi only makes short appearences until the denouement and it somehow feels like it's not enough. Kindaichi is not someone like Kaga Kyouichirou or Furuhata who only appears at intervals, he should be in the center of everything! Yokomizo did return to the third-person narrative with the next novel, Inugamike no Ichizoku, which is a much more satisfying book than Yoru Aruku anyway. But Yoru Aruku has its merits and I understand why it's usually seen as one of the B-rank Kindaichi Kousuke novels.   

Original Japanese title(s): 横溝正史　『夜歩く』

The Tragedy of Y

「恐らく、ダイイング・メッセージだと思いますが」

耳慣れぬ言葉にとまだった

「ダイニング、何ですって？」

「ダイイング・メッセージ。死に際の伝言ということです。」

『一の悲劇』

"It was probably a dying message.’

I wasn't familiar with that word, so was taken aback by it.

"Dining what?"

"Dying message. A message left at the brink of death."

 "The Tragedy of One"

To continue with the series of books that have waited too long: I'm pretty sure I bought this on the first night, maybe the second day I was in Tokyo. Over two years ago. And yes, this summer I'm intend to get rid of my backlog.

I remember that Norizuki Rintarou Ichi no Higeki ("The Tragedy of One") caught my eye in the Ekoda Book Off, because it was just so perfect: a novel by a writer inspired by Ellery Queen, with a title that clearly references Queen's Drury Lane series, of which the first three books are called The Tragedy of X, Y and Z. With the Drury Lane books ranking among my favorite EQ novels, I had high expectations for this book. It starts rather heavy though, with a mistaken child kidnapping. The intended victim was Yamakura Takashi, but his classmate Tomosawa Shigeru was kidnapped by mistake. It seems the kidnapper hasn't realized this though, so he demands that Takashi's father, Shirou, come bring the ransom money. Through unbelievable bad luck though, Shirou isn't able to give the money to the kidnapper and the dead body of Shigeru is found thrown away on a empty lot.

This is just the beginning of the tragedy though, as a hidden past between Shirou and Shigeru's mother (who has become quite unstable by the death of her son) makes things much more complex and add in a locked room murder and a dying message somewhere between the beginning and the conclusion and the reader is presented with a fairly big puzzle to solve.

Most reviews say this book has a very bitter aftertaste. And it does. The story is truly a tragedy (in the good sense of the word), something also accomplished because it's written from the viewpoint of Yamakura Shirou (thus The Tragedy of One -> first person perspective). I don't think I'd seen this earlier in Norizuki's writings and at times I was thinking I was reading something written by Higashino Keigo. The perspective change also resulted in less appearences by Norizuki Rintarou (the character, not the writer). The story also has a lot of developments (A LOT) which was kinda weird to me (as I'm more familiar with Norizuki's short stories, which don't feel as rollercoastery), so it did feel quite different. On the other side, with multiple fake solutions and a dying message, there is no denying this is a Norizuki Rintarou novel.

Norizuki Rintarou is not particularly good at locked room mysteries (as he says himself), but I have to admit he manages to avoid this problem in a very neat way in this novel. It's still a bit far-fetched and maybe something that have worked better in a short story, but this is a fairly creative way to cope with the locked room problem.

Ichi no Higeki is all in all quite good; it's better than Yuki Misshitsu and while I think that many readers will come up with the solution while reading this, it's competently structured and clued and make this at least a safe read with no real faults. Thematically, this book is followed by Ni no Higeki ("The Tragedy of Two"). I do have the book, but as I already listened to the radio drama (I want a full version of the opening theme!), Ni no Higeki isn't that high on the priority list. 

Original Japanese title(s): 法月綸太郎　『一の悲劇』

「だが、今日からは星占いが趣味の犯罪研究家というわけさ」

「ちょっと待てよ。どうして君は今まで黙ってたんだ？もう昨日から今のこと全部解ってたみたじゃないか」　

刑事は言った。

「僕はみなさんと違ってヒマですのでね、せっかくだから、何か面白いエンディングでもやれないものかと考えていたんです。」

『疾走する死体』

"'Wait a second. Why didn't you speak up until now? It seems like you already knew everything since yesterday,' the detective said. 

'Unlike the others, I have a lot of free time, so I was thinking of coming up with some kind of interesting ending for this special occasion.'"

"The Running Corpse"

Ah, the lonely books that reside in my library. Many of them still waiting for the day they are read. Some have been waiting for months, some even for years. Waiting for that one day. Which reminds me, it's been a while since I last read a detective with books/bookstores as a theme.

I'm pretty sure I bought Shimada Souji's Mitarai Kiyoshi no Aisatsu ("Mitarai Kiyoshi's Greetings") about two years ago. I finished it just now. Some parts do seem sorta familiar, so I think I have tried reading it several times before. Anyway, Mitarai Kiyoshi no Aisatsu is the third entry in Shimada Souji's Mitarai Kiyoshi series, released after the excellent Naname Yashiki no Hanzai ("The Crime at the Slanted Mansion"). This is the first short story collection featuring Mitarai Kiyoshi, and also the first time he makes an acts as a real private detective, as he officially gives up his work as a fortune teller in the first story to work as a professional private detective, accompanied by his Watson, Ishioka.

Suujijou ("Number Lock") is set in the last days of 1979, just when Mitarai and Ishioka are preparing to move to Yokohama. Mitarai is asked to assist the police in solving something that seems like a locked room murder:  a signboard maker has been stabbed to death in his workshop, with only two entrances: the backdoor, locked by a combination lock and the shutters on the front of the shop. It seems rather unlikely that the murderer could have opened the (noisy) shutters without the people in the apartment above the shop noticing, but the combination lock doesn't seem forced and nobody but the deceased knew the combination, not even his four employees (who have an alibi for the time of the murder anyway). Mitarai comes up with a rather surprising solution: I didn't like the locked room at all, as it was literally the first solution I came up with, yet the other trick found in the novel was OK, even though it relies a bit on...well, expert knowledge is too strong a word, but surely something that shouldn't be called common knowledge for someone not living in Tokyo. I do like the story though, even that's more because of the story is plotted and how Mitarai acts within the story.

Shissou suru Shisha ("The Running Corpse") is a more like the Shimada I know: a grand trick! How did a man seen stealing a necklace and running out of an apartment on the top floor of the building get on the railway bridge in time just to get run over by the train? Not even a world record holder could have covered that distance in just 10 minutes. Especially not during a storm. Even more more puzzling is that the man was apparently strangled to death before he was run over by the train. Did a corpse just run over to the railway bridge? Shimada presents us with one of his trademark grand, almost grotesque impossible situations that, while not as impressive as his novel-length stories, is quite fun. Also for the Mitarai-on-guitars-scene. 

Shidenkai Kenkyuu Hozonkai ("Shidenkai Research Preservation Assocation") is a lot like Holmes' The Red Headed League or The Stockbroker's Clerk, where a seemingly curious, yet harmless incident is connected to something more sinister. A man called Sekine recalls an incident of seven years ago, when someone looking like the colonel from Kentucky Fried Chicken (and apparantly the head of the Shidenkai Research Preservation Association), paid him a visit at the office. This KFC-man seems to know a dark secret connected with Sekine's family and pretty much blackmails Sekine, but only for one day: if Sekine comes over the Shidenkai Research Preservation Assocation to help them address the pamphlets they need to send out that day , mr. KFC will help him hush the whole thing up. Rather surprised, Sekine agrees to help him with the pamphlets and after a couple of hours of work, his work is done. The two part their ways and Sekine never heard anything about it again. Mitarai who hears Sekine telling this story, of course comes up with a plausible explanation for this strange incident.

Girisha no Inu ("The Greek Dog") starts with the theft of a takoyaki stand and continues with the discovery of a strange note with Greek on it and the kidnapping of a little child and ends in a boat-trip on the Sumidagawa. A rather long story that I don't find too interesting, as the solution to the note is pretty much unsolvable for any normal reader (especially for someone not living in Tokyo!), but the way the kidnappers planned to get the ransom was a rather smart one, again one of those grand tricks that border the bizarre. It's at these times that you realize you're reading a Shimada story, but the story is on the whole not particularly interesting, I think.

All in all a pretty good short story collection, with Shissou suru Shisha as the story the most like the previous two Mitarai Kiyoshi novels with a grand trick. I prefer short stories, but maybe full-length novels are more suited to Shimada's style of plotting.

Original Japanese title(s): 島田荘司　『御手洗潔の挨拶』/「数字錠」/「疾走する死者」/「紫電改研究保存会」/「ギリシャの犬」

「六つ墓村？八つ墓村じゃなくて？」

「八つ墓村へかえってきてはならぬ。おまえがかえってきても、ろくなことはおこらぬぞ。八つ墓明神はお怒りじゃ。おまえが村へかえってきたら、おお、血！血！血だ！二十六年まえの大惨事がふたたび繰りかえされ八つ墓村は血の海と化するだろう」、『八つ墓村』

"Do not return to the Village of Eight Graves. Nothing good will happen if return. The Deities of the Eight Graves are furious. If you come back to the village, then.... blood! Blood! Blood! The tragedy of 26 years ago will repeat itself and the Village of Eight Graves will turn into a sea of blood", "Village of the Eight Graves"

We all know The Murder on the Orient Express and I think many of us see it as both a representative work in the Hercule Poirot series as well as an archetype for the Golden Age detective. A closed circle setting, high-class suspects, a murder on a train and a surprise ending. I think many people have such an image of the Golden Age detective and paraodies of Poirot, as well as the genre, often take their cues from The Murder on the Orient Express.

Yokomizo Seishi's Yatsu Haka Mura ("Village of the Eight Graves") (1949-1950) is the Japanese counterpart to Murder on the Orient Express. With three movies, six TV drama serials, five manga, a stage performance, a videogame and audiodramas, Yatsu Haka Mura is the entry in the Kindaichi Kousuke series that is best known to the general public and also the one that is parodied most often. It has the small mountain village, the secluded community, a bit of local flavor through dialects, a long series of murders, a rich family that people look up to, a local legend, the influence of World War II on the lives of said rich family and usually directly connected to some sort of motive. The quintessential Kindaichi Kousuke novel.

The titular Village of Eight Graves is a small village deep in the mountains of Okayama. In the Sengoku period, a group of eight fallen warriors, who had been defeated in a battle, had fled there, hiding in the village with a small fortune in gold with them. One day the villagers killed the warriors to steal the gold, but the villagers never found the treasure. They did get cursed by the eight warriors though, so the murder was actually not really profitable.

What does the curse do? Well, right after the murder on the warriors, other people in the village started to drop dead, culminating in the death of the instigator of the whole incident. Eight deaths in total. It was because of this that the villagers began to worship the eight warriors to calm their anger and that the village became known as the Village of the Eight Graves. Fast forward to 1922, when Tajimi Youzou, offspring of the instigator of the eight warriors murder, became mad one day and slayed 32 persons in the village (a multitude of eight!). He himself fled to the mountains and was thought dead.

And finally, 1948. A young man called Tatsuya is contacted by a laywer, who says that Tatsuya is the son of Tajimi Youzou and that the Tajimi family, now led by the twin grand-grandmothers Koume and Kotake, hopes that Tatsuya will become the new head of the Tajimi family, as his older brother and sister are physically too weak to go on much longer. Tatsuya's grandfather comes to pick up him from Tokyo, but they haven't even exchanged two words when his grandfather drops dead, poisoned. It is the beginning of a horrible series of murders connected with the curse of the eight warriors.

And I'm stopping here with my summary, even though I'm just at the beginning as it's going to be just too long. Too much stuff happens. Secret hallways, underground mazes, the curse of the eight warriors, the mass murder of Youzou, the hidden gold, friction between the rich Tajimi family and a branch family, the fear of the villagers for Tatsuya as the son of the mass-murderer Youzou and more. Suffice to say that it is no wonder that so many parodies go with this book as it's really brimming with things you can borrow.

As a detective novel, it's somewhat disappointing though. While the atmosphere is really great, the plot is not nearly as ingenious as other entries in the Kindaichi Kousuke series like Inugamike no Ichizoku or Honjin Satsujin Jiken. Most murders can be committed by any person, while the one murder with a proper logical clue doesn't point exclusively to the murderer, it only sorta points in the general direction. The story isn't even fair as Kindaichi already has a reason to suspect the murderer at the beginning of the story and thus has access to information not available to the reader. And funnily enough, Kindaichi is not even really needed in the story. He says it himself at the conclusion, but everything had resolved itself naturally anyway and he hadn't done anything. The conclusion consists of Kindaichi telling that he already knew everything but that he wasn't able to do anything the whole time. Well, that's kinda disappointing.

While Gokumontou ("Prison Gate Island"), released two years earlier, is similar in design with a very remote, isolated rural setting, but from what I know, that book has a lot better clued story. So yeah, I'm  disappointed. I really, really love the setting of the story and the atmosphere, but Yokomizo kinda went overboard and little of his originality in tricky plotting like we saw in Honjin Satsujin Jiken is to be found here. 

Because everything resolves itself, the book doesn't really feel like a detective.That's maybe why the famous 1977 Yatsu Haka Mura movie is more a horror movie with a detective element, rather than a detective movie. It does seem that this book is open to a lot of interpretations though. In recent years, it seems that some people read Yatsu Haka Mura as a moe novel, with love interest Noriko and Tatsuya's sister Haruyo as the main subjects of adoration. Which is sorta original.

Oh, and obligatory: The massacre by Tajimi Youzou, based on the very real Tsuyama massacre, in all its bloody glory: 1977 movie version / 1978 drama version / 2004 drama version.

Original Japanese title(s): 横溝正史　『八つ墓村』