"Next Stage, Resume and Revive"

"It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget, Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun"

"Evil Under the Sun"

I doubt I'm the only person who takes a look at adaptations of mystery fiction, as there is much good to be found there. For example, both Yougisha X no Kenshin ("The Devotion of Suspect X") and Inugamike no Ichizoku ("The Inugami Clan") are great movies. Some episodes of the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo anime are done very well and while I don't always like the Conan anime, there is no denying that the Detective Conan main theme is one of the most awesome instrumental themes ever. Every single time (my favorite is the Countdown version by the way).

But I digress. Adaptations! Now that I think about it, it can become quite silly actually. I like Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun. I really like the story. But as of now, I have 1) read the book, 2) seen the Ustinov movie, 3) seen the Agatha Christie's Poirot episode, 4) listened to the BBC4 radio dramatization and 5) played the PC/Wii videogame by The Adventure Company. I have seen the murder on Arlena Marshall a bit too often by now. And yes, I know it's even worse with Murder on the Orient Express. Anyway, I finished the game over the weekend and it was.... interesting. Note that I use interesting as an euphemism for quite bad. Note how I emphasize that negative tone by explicitly mentioning it.

The game starts off suprisingly for the people who know the original story: it actually starts during World War II, with Poirot and Hastings having a talk in Poirot's office, waiting for the air raid sirens to stop. To pass the time, Poirot decides to tell Hastings about the Marshall murder case. In fact, Poirot tells the story in such a fashion, that Hastings feels like he himself is Poirot and is solving the case on his own.The story of the Marshall murder case is still mainly the same as the original novel: a group of tourists gather on a small island off the coast of Devon. Add in a lot of underlying tension and finish it off with the strangulation murder on actress Arlena Marshall. Who was the killer? Her lover? Her lover's wife? Arlena's husband? Her stepdaughter? Or someone else in the hotel? It's a classic, so I doubt I need to tell more about it.

So the player actually controls Hastings, who 'role-plays' as Poirot. It's a pretty neat plot-device actually, as it allows for several things: 1) if  'Poirot' makes a mistake, it's actually Hastings who makes the mistake, thus preserving Poirot's image. 2) It explains why some locations are so empty, or why so few people are on the island (Poirot only tells Hastings the details necessary to solve the case). And 3) it makes for some delightful banter between Hastings and Poirot. Whenever Hastings tries things that make no sense, Poirot makes wonderful comments about Hastings' actions. It's almost like manzai. The voice-acting for these two is pretty decent too.

Too bad most of the game is mediocre to bad though. I'll start with the easy parts: the graphics are horrible, as are the animations (I understand that the models on the Wii are not as detailed as on the PC, but seriously. This is terrible and the clunky animation doesn't help either). The music is OK, but there is actually very little music, and all the pieces are very short, so very often there is no background music, and parts that do have music have pieces that loop too fast. The voice-acting is all over the places: the main parts of Poirot and Hastings are pretty good, but most of the other voices are pretty bad.

And then we get to the important part: how was the novel translated to a game? I have to say that the writing was pretty decent: the story was extended at several points (i.e. the other strangulation cases, the smuggling ring) in a very decent way that worked very well with the original story. I applaud the writer for this. A couple of nods to other Christie games (that have game adaptions) were pretty funny too (I actually laughed when I found Love's Captive by Arabella Richardson in someone's luggage). The story was just told in very boring and at times very troublesome way.

As a gamer, I understand the structuring of the story in chapters and having a set of quests/sidequests to be completed for every chapter. Like [Chapter 1: get clue 1, 2, 3] -> [Chapter 2: get clue 4, 5, talk to A] etc. The problem is, these quests have to feel meaningful. I want to understand why I am getting clue 1, 2 and 3 and why the chapter ends at this point (and not for example, after clue 5).

Early in the game, there is no murder yet, so quests for every chapter mostly amount to getting to know everybody in the island. How is this archieved? Most people you can just talk to, but for some sidequests have to be done. Cleaning birds? Building a bird-blind? Finding wedding gifts for the Gardener couple? These sidequests feel very artificial, as I can hardly see the real Poirot doing this. Nor do I see Poirot snooping around other people's rooms (and stealing items!) without any reason to do so. Practically everything you do in the first few chapters feel arbitrary. It's not meaningful. There is no goal I'm working towards to and makes for very tedious sidequests that just make no sense in the context. At times, you also need to obtain certain items to end the chapter, but it's never explained why you have to get them during that specific chapter and not earlier or later. The murder occurs halfway in the game and then the game becomes a bit more streamlined, but even then the way chapters end is very enigmatic.

To take some good examples: the Gyakuten Saiban games, though those are kinda special, as they consist of specific investigation and court chapters and story-wise, the switch between the two segments is always perfectly logical. A great example would be year two of Grim Fandango (AWESOME GAME): at the beginning you hear what your main objective is (get out of Rubacava) and you hear how to accomplish that (fullfil [condition 1], [condition 2], etc.). Even though there is a lot to do in the chapter, you always know why you are doing everything, so you never wander around aimlessly hoping you haven't missed some kind of object that doesn't feel important. The Tantei Jinguuji Saburou games have very streamlined stories, so it's mostly a one-way road to the chapter-ending, but even then they never feel meaningless, as you know why the chapters end there (cliffhanger that leads into the next chapter's objective)

So... in hindsight, I only liked the textual additions and nothing of the gameplay and audiovisual additions to the story. Heh. That's pretty bad if we're talking about videogames right? Even if it's a game that relies heavily on text.

Oh, and why does the Wii version of the cover feature a hand with a wineglass?! I mean... there is not...uuugh.

And yes,  I still need to write something on the narrative structure in detective games and the workings of deductions systems in detective games.

A Stitch in Crime

「えー完全犯罪とかけて、日曜日にお父さんが作る晩ご飯と解く。その心は、必ず失敗します。お後がよろしい様で」

『古畑任三郎：　若旦那の犯罪』

"Errr, talking about perfect crimes, you interpret the words as a comment about the dinner Dad makes on Sunday. The answer: it always results in failure. Please enjoy the rest of the show"

"Furuhata Ninzaburou: The Young Master's Crime"

One day, I'll have used all of Furuhata Ninzaburou's introducing quotes in my posts! And I'll even try to make sure that the quotes are actually related to the main post!

Een Lampion Voor een Blinde of de Zaak van de Hollandse heelmeesters ("A Lantern for the Blind or the Case of the Dutch Surgeons") is a 1973 Judge Ooka novella, written for the Book Week (annual week to promote Dutch literature). The protagonist is still a fictionalized judge Ooka Echizen, but we are introduced to a new location. Instead of the Edo where Ooka resides, we are brought to the neighbourhood around the city of Nagasaki and the Dutch factory on the small island of Dejima. I'm not going to hold a history lesson here, but let's say that from a certain point in history, Japan closed it borders and the Dutch were the only Western people allowed in Japan (only on the island of Dejima) to trade. The Japanese acquired all their information on the outside (Western) world through the Dutch, resulting in the so-called Rangaku ("Dutch learnings"), a corpus of knowledge on Western society, languages and technology.

Anyway, Judge Ooka is sent to Dejima to accompany the Dutch troupe on their 'hofstoet', a visit to Edo to pay tribute to the Shogun. As Judge Ooka is a learner of Rangaku himself, he has no problem communicating with the leaders of the Dutch Factory and he soon hears from the current Opperhoofd (head) of the Factory that he is in a pickle. The last ship from Holland to arrive in Dejima brought two 'heelmeesters' (surgeons). One of them is supposed to stay in Japan as the Factory's surgeon, while the other is supposed to move on to Siam (Thailand), as they are in need of a surgeon there. The problem is, both heelmeester Badings (an experienced surgeon who was the heelmeester in Dejima some years before) and heelmeester Oranje (a young, but talented doctor and master in warfare and strategems) want to stay in Japan. What's making things worse is that they both claim they had a letter proving that they were appointed the Dejima surgeon, but that the other had destroyed the letter on their way to Japan. Which of them is lying? Tension rises as the Dutch party set out to go to Edo. Early in the trip, Judge Ooka makes a horrible mistake by inputting the idea of a perfect crime in the heads of the two heelmeesters though, and as a result the Opperhoofd is killed. The only witness to the murder, is a blind girl...

Heh, despite my bizarre way of writing the summary, the story is in fact an inverted detective story.  And pretty cool too! I liked this story a lot more than any of the stories in Een Ladder tegen een Wolk ("A Ladder against a Cloud"). Those stories were just too short to really make an impact, while this novella was great with both the atmosphere and the main problem. The setting is actually pretty sober, lots of indoor scenes, mostly with Dutch persons. Which was done on purpose actually: the novella was also to be filmed as a TV show, and there were few Asian actors in the Netherlands, so the focus was on the Dutchmen (and Ooka as the sole Asian). But this setting doesn't hinder the story at all; the happenings within the Dutch factory in Dejima are, despite the length of the story, pretty suspenseful and the inverted murder was a lot more interesting than I had expected.

In fact, I enjoyed the story thoroughly and I hope the other Judge Ooka stories by Aafjes are more like this. It's just hard to write something substantial about these stories, because they're so short. I might go on deeper on the whole Dutch in Sakoku Japan and stuff, as I'm supposed to know about that as a Dutch student of Japanese studies, but... I don't feel like it. Though I have to admit that the trick used in Een Lampion Voor een Blinde is interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view, or more specifically, using role language theory, which is something I wrote my thesis about...

But no. Let's not.

Original Dutch title: Bertus Aafjes, Een Lampion voor een Blinde

Dial M for Murder

「7万人からは逃げられませんよ」

『７万人探偵ニトベ』

"You can't escape from 70.000 people"

"70.000 People Detective Nitobe"

Reading how Lt. Columbo used a cellphone in The Columbo Collection, was a small surprise, but it didn't feel strange. Columbo is just a timeless character. I was also one of the persons who rejoiced at how Holmes and Watson used their cellphones in Sherlock. Because it was quite logical: nowadays everybody seems connected to each other, through phones, the net, SNS like Facebook and the like.

So in hindsight, the concept of the 2009 TV drama 7 Mannin Tantei Nitobe ("70.000 People Detective Nitobe") is actually quite realistic. Young student Nitobe Tsugumi (played by Kutsuna Shiori) doesn't have many real-life friends, but she does have a very popular cellphone blog, Octopus Net, with over 70.000 readers. She usually takes pictures of anything that interests her, is funny, annoys her, etc. One day, she gets involved in a murder case inside a bus and it seems like she was the only person capable poisoning the poor victim. In her desperation, Tsugumi uses her cellphone to ask for help on her blog, uploading pictures of the murder victim and the crime scene, and what do you know, the combined knowledge of 70.000 readers is a force to be reckoned with! By collecting the comments people leave on Octopus Net, she manages to solve the case and prove her own innocence. Well, that is, until the next episode... Rinse and repeat for several episodes, that include locked room murders, impossible crimes and other crimes that one person might not be able to solve, but 70.000 can.

The series itself is a run-of-the-mill comedy-detective, with over-the-top and at times cringeworthy acting. It seems that Japan has a lot of these comedy-detectives, which seem to focus a lot on slapstick comedy (a bit like Monk at times), but I'm always surprised at how these series still manage to present classic murder problems. They are hardly masterpieces, but not really bad either. This is only about the standard comedy-detective that seems to run every season in Japan by the way: Trick is absolutely awesome. In everything.

But I like 7 Mannin Tantei Nitobe despite its cringeworthiness, because I absolutely love the concept. We all know the great detectives with super-intellegence, photographic memory, knowledge about everything esoteric etc., but let's face it, in real life very few people are like that. Few people have all these abilities. But what if you harness the power of many? The manga/anime/TV drama Tantei Gakuen Q ("Detective Academy Q") already did this with Q class, with the five members having specific fields they excelled in (deductive power/pure logic/photographic memory/IT/martial arts). 7 Mannin Tantei Nitobe is a bit more realistic, as it's much more likely that one person might know this, and another person might be able to crack a code. A third might notice something on a picture that is uploaded, while another might be able to help Tsugumi in real life as he's in the neighbourhood. 'Cause you can't run from 70.000 people. Considering the speed at which information is exchanged on SNS like Facebook and other sites, I could almost see this happen in real life.

I would love a more serious remake of this. Imagine, someone with a detetive-related site gets involved with some kind of superspecialawesome locked room murder, and uploads pictures and information, asking for the help of his fellow genre connoisseurs! How long would it take them to solve the case?

Oh, and audiovisual clues, pictures and the like. I really need to write something about them one of these days...

Original Japanese title(s): 『７万人探偵ニトベ』

The Myna Bird Mystery

「この悪魔を向こうにまわして闘うものは、小林少年を団長とする少年探偵団です。『怪人二十面相』をお読みになった方は、少年探偵団がどのようなものであるかを、よく御承知でしょう。あの十人の勇敢な小学生によって組織せられた少年探偵団、団長は明智探偵の名助手として知られた小林芳雄少年、その小林少年の先生はいうまでもなく大探偵明智小五郎です」

 『少年探偵団』

 

"It is the Boys Detective Club, led by young Kobayashi, that will fight with this demon. Those who have read "The Fiend with Twenty Faces" are probably well aware of what the Boys Detective Club is. The Boys Detective Club that consists of ten brave elementary school students, with detective Akechi's famous assistent young Kobayashi Yoshio as its head and the teacher of young Kobayashi is of course that great detective Akechi Kogorou."

"Boys Detective Club"

As I focus mostly on (Japanese) detective fiction here, I don't often write about comics here. Well, of course, Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo are mentioned enough here and I might one day write about lesser known gems like Shoujo Tantei Kaneda no Jikenbo ("Girl Detective Kaneda Hajime's Casebook") or the almost Mythbusters-esque reversed-engineering hybrid-detective The Accidents, but I read enough manga that's not directly detective-related. One of my favorites is still Tezuka Osamu, who is probably on everyone's list (if you have any taste, that is). From his earlier works, to his full-blown series, from Astro Boy to Human Metamorphosis, I read everything. Which is also why Nikaidou Reito's Collector no Fushigi was so awesome. A detective about collectors of Tezuka Osamu manga? Now that I think about it, as series detective Mizuno Satoru is an otaku, would that mean that this novel could somehow bridge the gap between detective readers and manga readers?

Anyway, Tezuka Osamu pretty much wrote everything, so yes, he has some works in his collection that feature the words detective. I am a bit careful not to call them detective manga, as I equalize that to the Japanese term suiri manga ("deduction comic"), which more or less implies the orthodox model of fair play. One of the more often quoted "detective" manga by Tezuka Osamu is Ken-1 Tanteichou ("Chief Detective Ken-ichi"), a short series that ran from 1954 ~ 1957. Protagonist of the series is Kenichi of course, the original protagonist in Tezuka's star system. Like the title of the manga implies, Kenichi, a young boy, is the head of a big detective agency with 26 branch offices all over Japan. Kenichi is a master in disguises, karate and is always assisted by the Myna bird Donguri, who is able to imitate any voices it hears (and record and replay dialogues, gather up birds for big attacks, etc.). As head of the agency, Kenichi travels all over the world, solving cases like locked room murders, mysterious kidnappings and even bizarre happenings like radioactive fish popping up on a mountain.

I'm not going to summarize the stories, as the official Tezuka Osamu site has an absolutely excellent summary page for the series. So I don't see any need for me to try to write something that will turn out to be inferior anyway. I do have to say that my pocket edition doesn't have the final story (Incident of the House Spiders) included.

The stories in form are a bit like Edogawa Rampo's Shounen Tantei Dan series. Which isn't too strange: the Shounen Tantei Dan series became really big after the war, so Ken-1 Tanteichou was released in a time when children's detective fiction was quite popular. Kenichi certainly reminds of young Kobayashi, as young capable detectives. Who carry guns (seriously, WHO ALLOWS THESE CHILDREN TO CARRY GUNS? IN JAPAN OF ALL PLACES?!). And their disguises. And the use of birds as partners. The Baker Street Irregulars were used because they didn't attract attention, but both Kenichi and Kobayashi are actually known all over Japan as great detectives and were clearly written as characters children could look up too. Kenichi also has his own nemesis in phantom thief Mouseboy, a master in disguises who reminds of certain other phantom thieves (more the latter than the former though).

In execution, Shounen Tantei Dan and Ken-1 Tanteichou are very different though. Shounen Tantei Dan was written as kids' adventure novels, but they were still written by Edogawa Rampo. Who was an authority on detective fiction. He knew what he was doing. Tezuka on the other hand, was a master in story-telling, but certainly not an authority on detective fiction. Ken-1 Tanteichou is an amusing series, but most of the stories are really just old-fashioned Tezuka SF spy adventures Metropolis and Lost World or 'normal' spy adventures like Herge's Tintin. Stories like Treasures of Gandhara and Showa Shinsen-gumi are very much stories in the vein of Tintin. The Case of Landownership on Mars and The Case of President Pero's Hidden Treasure are much more like 'normal' detective stories, but clearly written by the very creative mind of Tezuka, with the more fantastic elements overpowering the 'detective' elements. A lot of fantasy (Evil Indians escaping by climbing away on a rope; giant magnets etc.), evil societies and the like, it's really an early Tezuka work and it shows in both the story-telling as well as the art.

Which for the most part is pretty boring for Tezuka's standards. Many pages that only have four or 6 big frames and practically nothing that would suggest that Tezuka would come up with brilliant framing like in Phoenix. Sometimes movie/cartoon-like effects are used, like when someone tumbling changes in an image of a airplane propellor turning, or (classic Tezuka) slapstick moments to break off the tension, but I would say that something like Crime & Punishment was way more experimental than this.

The series is pretty fun for someone interested in Tezuka's early adventure stories, but I don't recommend it to someone who got attracted to this manga just because of the word 'detective' in the title.
  
Original Japanese title(s): 手塚治虫 『ケン１探偵長』

「この真相は、絶対俺が解いてやる」

「私に言わせれば、すべてのホラー現象はほらに過ぎない。超常現象を恐れてはならない。ＤＯＮ’Ｔ　ＢＥ　ＡＦＲＡＩＤ！ どんと来い、超常現象！」

『どんと来い、超常現象』

"If you ask me, horror phenomena are all nothing more than big talk. You musn't fear paranormal powers. DON'T BE AFRAID! C'mon, paranormal powers!"

"C'mon Strange Powers" 

The second episode of the Conan live action series. It's still early, but at this stage, I doubt this series will become as popular and famous like the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo live action series, not having a real Conan-feeling, nor its own unique feeling. But it's entertaining enough, so we'll see how this series develops.

Meitantei Conan - Kudou Shinichi e no Chousenjou (Detective Conan - A Challenge Letter for Kudou Shinichi)
Episode 1 (July 7, 2011): Before he turned into Conan, the high school detective solved the mystery of the adultery murder!
Episode 2 (July 14, 2011): The locked room murder commited on air! Reveal the secret cursed by the psychic
Episode 3 (July 21, 2011): Murder Case in a Locked Courtroom! Reveal the Trick of the Hostess Murder
Episode 4 (July 28, 2011): Perfect Crime! Murder Notice at a Wedding, Reveal the Locked Room Poisoning Trick
Episode 5 (August 5, 2011): The Glamorous Murder Trick of the Actress who lost her Memory - Perfect Murder at the Summer House
Episode 6 (August 11, 2011): The Magnificent Murderous Kiss of Twenty Beauties! The Murderous Intent Hidden in the Murder Equation!
Episode 7 (August 18, 2011): Inheritance Murder Among Bloody Relatives! Reveal the Mystery of the Kidnapping Trick!
Episode 8 (August 25, 2011): A Woman's Determination, Revenge on the Molester! The Murder Trick hidden in the Security Camera
Episode 9 (September 01, 2011): Hattori Heiji and the Mystery of the Invisible Locked Room Murder Weapon! Deduction Battle between the Detectives of East and West
Episode 10 (September 08, 2011): The Mystery of the Body that Moved 200 KM Within An Instant! Reveal the Perfect Crime Scheme of the Evil Woman
Episode 11 (September 15, 2011): A Kiss Is the Reason for Murder, A Revenge Murder After 20 Years! The Mystery of the Perfect Alibi
Episode 12 (September 22, 2011): I Killed Her! 3 Single Murderers? Reveal the Mystery of the Fake Murder!
Episode 13 (September 29, 2011): Ran Dies! The Final Challenge of the True Criminal to the Genius Detective - Reveal the Mystery of the White Room

The second episode (subtitled "The locked room murder committed on air! Reveal the secret cursed by the psychic") starts where the last episode ended: with Shinichi, Ran and Kogorou in the second white room. A floating spoon (which was just hanging from a string) and the date on the password-entry display refer to a case the three of them were involved with: the murder on TV host Harada Takayuki commited during a live broadcast!

The ★ Taiketsu is a TV program that is about paranormal phenomena. In the newest episode, the main guest is the psychic Washimi Jirou, while high school detective Kudou Shinichi has been invited to check if Washimi really has paranormal powers, or whether he is a fraud. Kudou says he doesn't believe in paranormal powers of course, but Washimi still claims his powers are real and demands Kudou to apologize on air if he can't prove he is a fraud. Shinichi however quickly sees through Washimi's parlour tricks and the host, Harada, picks up on that, verbally abusing Washimi and even challenging him to kill him on air, if he really has paranormal powers. Washimi takes up the challenge and to Shinichi's surprise really manages to strangle Harada with his powers, from a distance!

Well, of course it's just a parlour trick. And to be honest, the case is really too easy, as it consists only of very well known tropes of the genre (and it's not completely fair). It would hardly take the likes of Kudou Shinichi to solve this case. Which is a bit of a shame, because the theme of this episode is like Furuhata Ninzaburou's Kuroda Seinen no Yuutsu episode, which is a very good one. Both episodes deal with psychics on TV, who are on the verge on being revealed as mere frauds, when they pull off a big trick in front of a live audience. The Furuhata Ninzaburou episode is more original than this story though. I also felt that the episode was kinda short (they are actually!), which results in rather easy stories. There is just too little time to really work out a deep story. With anime, it seems that story-telling can happen at a much higher pace than with live-action, so even if an episode of the live action series is as long as an anime episode, it seems like the anime is capable of conveying more information in less time (thus also capable of offering deeper plots).

(Totally random, but halfway through the episode I finally remembered where I had Kutsuna Shiori (Ran) before)

And the big storyline? No new information whatsoever. After the main story, Shinichi inserts the new password and opens the door to the next white room. It sorta bothers me that Kogorou put the spoon in his pocket as they moved to the next room though. Will the spoon be used in a future episode? And I'm really looking forward to the next episode though! I know the anime of Conan has original episodes featuring Kisaki Eri as a laywer-detective, but as I don't watch the anime, I don't know any of these stories. The previews suggests that Eri seemingly kills someone during a court case with just a finger-gun motion! 

Original Japanese title(s): 『名探偵コナン　工藤新一への挑戦状』　サブタイトル 「生放送で起きた密室殺人! 超能力者の呪われた秘密を暴け 」
Date & Password: 2010.09.02; ドッキリ

『小さくなった名探偵』

「立てやＯＯ！！手帳に付いとる桜の代紋が泣いとるぞォ 」

『名探偵コナン』

"Stand up !! Don'cha see the sakura mark on your police notebook is cryin'?!"

"Detective Conan"

 
Again a book with a mask in its title? It's really just a coincidence...

Like Kindaichi Kousuke no Shin Bouken, Nanatsu no Kamen ("The Seven Masks") is a short story collection by Yokomizo Seishi, featuring his series detective Kindaichi Kousuke. I wasn't impressed at all by the stories in Kindaichi Kousuke no Shin Bouken. Most of them had promising premises, but were executed very poorly. But those stories were indeed rewritten at a later stage in (presumably) a better form. No such excuses for the stories in Nanatsu no Kamen. What you see is really what you get. This makes the stories sound really, really horrible, which is not completely true. They are just... very disappointing for someone who loves Yokomizo Seishi's longer novels. Almost like somebody else wrote the Kindaichi Kousuke short stories.

The Kindaichi Kousuke stories in this collection pretty much all share the same problem: Kindaichi hardly appears in the stories and that's also because it always takes an awfully lot of time for either a) an actual crime to happen or b) enough information to become available for a detective to start deducing. One story has the first (contemporary) murder about two pages before the end and on the same page the murderer commits suicide and leaves a confession note. What were the other 38 pages before the murder about then?! Yokomizo comes with relatively interesting premises for his stories (a murder in a house full of cats; a dead body hidden in the pilar of a sun dial, a murder commited by what seems a Bat Man), but somehow manages to forget to insert a puzzle plot in his stories until the last 2~3 pages. For every story. Pretty much all important clues are to be found there. It makes for very tedious reading. 

Nanatsu no Kamen ("The Seven Masks") is written from the perspective of Misa. She tells how she was once known as a saint on her (Catholic girls') school, but once she crossed the line by sharing her bed with her senior Rinko and became aware of her physical beauty, Misa started to become much crueler. She leaves Rinko and starts to seduce men at the cafe she works at for fun. To the outside world though, she is still the saint Misa. One day, her schemings fall apart though and one of her lovers is found dead. Was it murder or suicide? This story is more crime-thriller than a puzzler, but Yokomizo put in a simple locked room murder near the end for... some reason or another.

In Neko Yakata ("Cat Mansion"), a bunch of kids find the dead body of a fortune teller. She was killed in her home, which was dubbed 'the cat mansion' as she picked up street cats and let them walk free in her house. And they were indeed walking around the crime scene. A simple, short story with a conclusion no one would really care about. 

Mehiru ("Female Leech") is probably the best story here, though that's not saying much. Kindaichi Kousuke gets a very strange request: whether he would retrieve a handbag left in an apartment. The client says she'll leave the key on top of the phone box she's calling from and asks Kindaichi to be discrete above all. Kindaichi takes the cases and actually disguises himself (in 'western' clothes, as his hakama appearance is known to all), but when he enters the apartment, he finds the bag in the sleeping room. On the bed he also finds two dead bodies, with their faces burnt away with acid. Who are these people and who is his client?

In Hidokei no Naka no Onna ("The Woman in the Sundial"), the new owners of a mansion find the mummified body of a woman inside the pillar of the sundial when they tried to move it. But the identity of the woman isn't really a mystery. Oh, and a murder like two pages before the ending. Once again, premise is promising, but bad execution. By the way, Yokomizo Seishi has written a whole series of OOO no Naka no Onna ("The Woman in the OOO") short stories. 

In Ryouki no Shimatsusho ("The Bizarre Explanation"), Kindaichi Kousuke is invited to visit his old senior (at school) at his mansion near the sea. He and other guests discover the dead body of a woman on a boat in the small cave in the sea across the mansion. The victim died because of an arrow in her breast, but was it the arrow Kindaichi's host shot earlier towards the cave, meant to scare the people there? Here we see a Kindaichi Kousuke who is awfully like his grandson, because they both seem to drive murderers into total despair and finally suicide. Of course, most clues of this story were only given in the final 3~4 pages of the story. Again. 

Koumori Otoko ("Bat Man") starts with the scene of young Yukiko cramming for the university entrance exams. One day, late at night, she sees how a figure resembling a human bat kills a woman in a room in the big apartment across her room. The next day, the dead body of the woman is found inside a trunk sent to her work. Kindaichi happened to be visiting the police, and quickly solves this case that is sorta competent, but like all these stories feel imcomplete. Most stories feel too short and that's not only because of the page count, but mainly because Yokomizo doesn't make optimal use of said page count. 

Bara no Bessou ("The Villa of Roses") also spends too much pages to not very interesting dialogues and descriptions, leaving less room for the (very simple) locked room murder of an old lady who had invited all of her relatives, as well as her solicitor and Kindaichi Kousuke, to her mansion for a mysterious announcement. Despite its length, this story has an unbelievable amount of characters. I guess that's where all the pages went to.

So by now I know that Yokomizo Seishi can pretty much only write superspecialawesome novels, and that short stories are not his forte. With short stories, he uses too much pages for creating atmosphere, leaving like two or three pages for puzzle + clues + conclusion. It's almost painful to see Kindaichi Kousuke appear in these stories. He should stand proud, not be burdened by these half-complete stories. Boy, do I feel stupid for getting so much Kindaichi Kousuke short story collections! Another three to go. Sigh.

Original Japanese title(s): 横溝正史　『七つの仮面』 / 「七つの仮面」 / 「猫館」 / 「雌蛭」 / 「日時計の中の女」 / 「猟奇の始末書」 / 「蝙蝠男」 / 「薔薇の別荘」

『呪いの仮面は冷たく笑う』

「人生は仮面舞踏会みたいなもんだ。男も女もみんな仮面をかぶっ​て生きている」

『仮面舞踏会』

"Life is like a masked ball. All men and women live their lives wearing masks"

"Masked Ball"

Maybe I should think about actually coming up with original post titles; finding appropiate titles/quotes for everything is getting more difficult everytime...

Today a writer whose work is actually available in English. Takagi Akimitsu's Shisei Satsujin Jiken ("The Tattoo Murder Case") is one of the best locked room mysteries in Japanese detective fiction history and one that everyone should have read. This was Takagi's debut work in 1948 and he followed with many other novels and I think a total of three of his novels have been translated in English.

Noumen Satsujin Jiken ("The Nou Mask Murder Case") is Takagi's second novel, published one year after Shisei Satsujin Jiken. The novels starts with strange things are happening in the Chizui mansion. One night, a person was seen walking around the mansion wearing the cursed Hannya mask (from Noh theater), an item in the possession of the Chizui family for many, many years. Young scientist Yanagi has been residing in the Chizui mansion ever since he came back from the war and he is asked by the head of the Chizui family to find someone to investigate the case. Yanagi's friend, Takagi Akimitsu, a detective fiction critic / aspiring writer (who may or may not be the same person as the writer of this novel) happens to be staying in the neighbourhood on a holiday and is thus asked to investigate this case, but tragedy strikes pretty much immediately after Takagi is hired: the head of the Chizui mansion is found dead, in his study which was locked from the inside. And besides his dead body lies the cursed Hannya mask. Was it just a normal heart attack, or was he the victim of something more sinister? And who was the person who called the undertaker and asked for three coffins...?

A locked room mystery, written by Takagi Akimitsu. A novel that won the Japanese Detective Writers Assocation Price? Expectations were high. Naturally.And the novel starts out pretty good too; the curse of the Hannya mask, the strange members of the Chizui family, the locked room mystery, it reminded me of Takagi's previous novel. And that's never a bad thing.

But the end was... quite horrible. Plot devices were taken from other, famous Western novels (though the locked room itself is an original trick, as far as I know, but not as awesome as that of Shisei Satsujin Jiken) and Takagi actually spoils the ending of two or three books in this story. Yes, Takagi, I understand you're a fan of Van Dine, but I do not feel any urge to pick The Bisshop Murder Case any time soon now. Neither Christie's The Murder on Roger Ackroyd, if I hadn't read it already. References to other detective novels are great, but never ever should you touch upon the main plot twists in the novel (at least not in a way that spoils it to people who haven't read them yet).

Takagi Akimitsu and Yokomizo Seishi's orthodox detectives pretty debuted around the same time and both writers made use of references to Japanese culture, so in my mind a connection is made rather quickly. So I was hoping that Takagi's Shisei Satsujin Jiken / Noumen Satsujin Jiken would be as strong a duo as Yokomizo's Honjin Satsujin Jiken / Chouchou Satsujin Jiken, but Noumen Satsujin Jiken is obviously the weak link here. Actually, these two couples have quite some parallels, but I'd be entering spoiler-heavy areas then.

This book is probably historically important, as it is part of the post-war orthodox boom in Japanese detective fiction, but as a novel on its own, it's pretty weak, spoiling too much and borrowing a bit too much of other novels. The locked room itself is original, as far as I know, but not nearly as impressive as in Takagi's previous book, and almost disappointing.
  
Original Japanese title(s): 高木彬光　『能面殺人事件』