The Adventure of the Three Students

「無理でしょうね、久保先生がいうような軽業は。話になりませんよ。オラヌータンやチンパンジーじゃあるまいに」

「ははは、そいつはいい。真犯人はオラヌータンだったりしてな」

「ははは、馬鹿な。そんな話は、仮にミステリとしても三流ですよ。そんな小説書く人がいたら、みんなの笑い物ですね、きっと」

「・・・・・・・」久保はふと笑うのを止めた。「つかぬことを聞くが、君、本当に探偵小説研究部なのかね」

「え、ええ、そうですよ」

あれ？あれ、なにかマズイこといったのかな

『学ばない探偵たちの学園』

"It's not so easy as you make it out to be, Mr. Kubo. That's just not possible. It's not like you're an orangutan or a chimpansee"

"Hahaha, a orangutan as the murderer!"

"Hahaha, that's just stupid. Even if such a story existed, it would be just a third-rate mystery. Everyone would laugh at someone writing that!"

"....," Kubo stopped laughing. "Are you really a member of the detective fiction study club?"

"Ye...yes!"

Hm? Hmm? Did I say something wrong?

"The School of the Detectives who Don't Learn"

The long awaited continuation of Sherlock was surprisingly fun. While the first couple of minutes were kinda cheap, I thought the story was actually a lot more interesting than the original Scandal in Bohemia (which I don't like that much, thus I had no high expectations for this particular episode). Might write something about all three episodes when they're done later this month, as I don't really feel like doing episodic reviews this time. Looking forward to Sherlock's The Hounds of Baskerville next week!

I've become quite a fan of Higashigawa Tokuya lately. The way in which he mixes humor with actual orthodox detective plotting is simply wonderful. His stories aren't just [detective stories] + [humour], but the humour is actually an integral part of his plots, as humor is often used as either a smokescreen or a hint (or both) by Higashigawa. I also love his protagonists, who usually act as the Watson to the detectives. They seem a bit clueless at times, but are often just genre-savvy enough to come up with surprisingly sharp observations. There's also often a slight gap between the narration of these protagonists and 'reality', which is really funny to see in text. It's the gap between [serious detective story] - [humour], the gap between [narration] - [reality] that makes all three of Higashigawa's series (the Ikagawashi series, the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series and Mystery Solving is After Dinner series) stand out in the crowd.

Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen ("The School of the Detectives who Don't Learn") is the first book in the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series. The titular Detective Club of Koigakubo Academy used to be the Detective Fiction Study Club, but for reasons unknown (to even the president) changed its name to the Detective Club, meaning that their main activity is... to detect. Because the Detective Club's activities are rather vague and irregular (unless you're name is Conan, you are not going to come across a mystery a day), the club is not officially recognized by the school and even though they have a teacher willing to be the club's supervisor, they are not allotted a classroom for their extra-curricular activities. Akasaka Tooru, transfer student and narrator of Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen was actually fooled by this, as he foolishly thought that the people present in the Literature Club room were in fact people of the Literature Club and that he was signing up for that club. Who would be so dumb as to ignore the possibility that the two persons there were actually people from the Detective Club who were 'borrowing' the Literature Club room?

One day, as Tooru, the club president and Yatsuhashi, another member of the Club, stayed late at school discussing how the most suspicious people in a locked room mystery are 1) the one who opens the the locked room and 2) the first one approaching the body and 3) the one who says it was a locked room, they happen to find a student stabbed in his chest in the nurse's room. Which was of course locked. And to make it even more interesting, the three teachers who were present there too did precisely what makes them suspicious in a locked room mystery. Our three students, for the honor of the Club, naturally try to solve the mystery themselves.

The story develops in its own pace with subplots concerning Koigakubo Academy's geinou class (a class for students who work in the entertainment industry as idols, singers, actors etc.) and another locked room murder, but I have to admit that Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen is not as good as other Higashigawa mysteries. It's still very funny, with some great slapstick-esque scenes you'd never expect in a detective and the school setting is, like in Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni, something that makes this series stand out, but its problems lie with the locked rooms and the structure of this book. The solution to the first locked room is a bit too farfetched to be credible, while the second is actually quite good, but it is introduced late in the story, resulting in lesser sense of mystery. Furthermore, the solutions to both locked rooms are more of a mechanical type (opposed to the psychological type), which is simply something that doesn't feel as fitting to Higashigawa's writing style. Higashigawa's best impossible stories hinge on some kind of (often humorous) gap between observations of the people involved and that's what is best suited to his funny writing style. The synergy between these elements is not present in Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen, making this feel like a less accomplished Higashigawa work.

The structure forms a second minor problem. Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen, because of its setting, is also a gakuen-mono (school-drama-ish) and it kinda follows the rather high-paced structuring of those works. The detecting method of three detectives (who end up as the Watson to supervising teacher Ishizaki) is quite chaotic and there is a lot going in this relatively short book. It's this chaos that makes Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen feel a lot less polished than the short story collection supplement Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni, which excelled in its simple, short brilliance.

I love the Detective Club though. It is certainly not an unique thing, as they actually exist in Japan and are thus often used in (meta)-fiction too. Jukkakukan no Satsujin for example features one heavily, but Kindaichi Hajime and Miyuki are also members of the Mystery Fiction Study club at their school, just like Nikaidou Ranko and Reito. The difference here is that the members of the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club are in fact, not really detectives themselves (like Kindaichi en Ranko), nor are they so brilliantly meta like the people in Jukkakukan no Satsujin who spout random quotes from detective fiction and refer to themselves with nicknames like Carr en Queen and act like those detectives. The members of the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club are precisely what you'd expect from high school students who are a bit of a mystery geeks: they have a lot of passion for their hobby, but not much besides that. In fact, they are the most human of them all, and certainly feel the most familiar to me.

While a bit disappointing, Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen is still a very funny book that shows that detective fiction does not have to be serious (or realistic even, as this borders on slapstick humor at times) to be offer genuine orthodox detective plots. He doesn't even have to reach out to the old parody-method. Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni is the better installment in the Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series, but Manabanai Tanteitachi no Gakuen is certainly recommendable to anyone who wants to laugh while reading orthodox detectives.

And hey, a post title that relates to both the introduction and the main topic of the post?! Rare indeed.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉 『学ばない探偵たちの学園』

「告っといてそのあとなーんもないなんてまずありえへんしなっ！」

「和葉！電話や！」

「け、警察に！？」

「ああ！探偵の目の前で人、殺しよってドアホがここにおるってなァ！」

『名探偵コナン』第７４巻

"Kazuha, call 'em!"

"Who, the police?"

"Yeah! Tell'em there's an idiot here who dared to kill somebody in front of us detectives!"

"Detective Conan 74"

And no, even in the new year I won't stop writing about Conan. Oh, and congratulations Conan, for having passed the 800 installments mark. Yes, I know that this was last month's (last year's!) news, but it took some time for Conan 74 to arrive at my home.

Detective Conan 74 starts with the final chapter to The Female Detective Writer Murder Case, which is actually two cases in one: at one hand we have a murder on the titular female detective writer, with the investigation being focused on the enigmatic nicknames the victim had for the three suspects. On the other hand, we have a slightly more desperate situation at the Mouri Kogoro Detective Agency, as the victim's brother is keeping the three victims, Mouri Kogorou, Ran, Conan and not-sure-what-she-is-and-not-even-whether-she-is-really-a-she Sera Masumi hostage there, until they figure out who killed his sister. Of course with the intent of then killing the murderer himself. I am not a big fan of figuring out codes (in this case, what names correspond to which people), so not too big a fan of this story. Conan stories also occasionally address the question of what the implications are of a detective's actions, but the if-the-detective-solves-the-case-the-murderer-is-going-to-die scenario is a bit too obvious.

The Movie Site Kidnapping Case is a rather minor Detective Boys story (though it seems big in at first). Ayumi gets kidnapped while she's at Agasa's house, and the Scooby Gang are forced to find a cat for the kidnapper to get Ayumi back. Yes, it is exactly as silly as it sounds. There is something behind the whole case of course, but I'd say that the most interesting part of this story is the attempt of Aoyama to depict Sera Masumi as a candiate suspect for Black Organisation member and disguise specialist Bourbon, who should have infiltrated the Conan cast by now. And I guess there's also a Beware-What-You-Post-On-The-Internet lesson for kids too. Remember, glasses reflect!

Who's the Great Detective? features our favorite Osaka duo, Hattori and Kazuha, so yes, this is the best story in this volume. Kazuha (and another familiar face) get involved with a poisoning case in a restaurant, with the only clue being that the murderer is someone from Osaka. What follows is a fantastic story for anyone interested in dialects, local speech-styles and stereotypes. Which is exactly where I specialized in with my Japanese studies. So I might be a bit biased. From a linguistic point-of-view, this really is a puzzle that makes good use of the linguistic and cultural diversity (and the stereotypes of said items) within Japan. From a translator's point-of-view, this seems like a nightmare though, precisely because of that. I guess lots of footnotes? Oh, and there is a funny sub-story here, with Sera Masumi wanting to know whether Hattori or Kudou is better. Cue heated deduction battle.

In comparison, The Distorted Optical Illusion Murder Case seems less interesting, even if this is supposed to be the 'main' Hattori story. Appearances of Hattori are often split in two: it usually starts with a short story just as Hattori arrives in Tokyo to visit the gang, followed by a longer story that is about the actual reason for Hattori visiting Tokyo. Which is also true for this volume. The reason Hattori came to Tokyo was because Hattori was challenged by a murderer to solve a crime that happened a bit earlier in Karuizawa. The gang visits the family of the deceased, but murder strikes again and Hattori and Conan are forced to reconsider the theories about the first murder. This is quite a large case, with a disappearing dying message, an unknown poisoning method and much  more beneath the surface, but the story is kinda chaotic and a bit too bloaty to be considered really good. Even though I have to admit that the story continues into the next volume and I have no idea yet what happened.

While not a bad volume per se,  volume 74 feels like 'just' a transition volume. The last volume featured Sera Masumi's introduction, so this volume was more focused on making Sera Masumi seem like a totally suspicious person and the two Hattori stories here are definitely just "let's throw in Hattori now, because I can't do an plot-important story so close to Sera's introduction, but I need to come up with something to hook the readers"-stories. Which again isn't bad per se, but the The Distorted Optical Illusion Murder Case certainly is not as amusing as regular Hattori stories.

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌　『名探偵コナン』第７４巻

The Oracle of the Dog

「たしかに、　遺体の第一発見者を疑えというのは、殺人事件の鉄則である。あまりそんな話が広まると、誰も遺体の発見を届け出てくれなくなるので、警察も、おおっぴらには言わないが」

『犬のみぞ知る DOG KNOWS』

"Suspect the one who found the dead body, that's a fundamental rule in murder cases. But nobody would come report finding dead bodies if everybody knew this, so the police does not say this out loud"

"DOG KNOWS"

Kishi Yuusuke's The Glass Hammer was one of my favorite novels of 2011. While the story certainly suffered because of the two-part structure, the solution to the triple-layered locked room murder was simply incredible, which was made all the more impressive because I knew nothing about the book or Kishi. It was just a blind purchase based on a single mention of Kishi by a friend. In retrospect, I don't even think my friend recommended Kishi as a mystery writer, but she probabl just said she liked his novels. Luckily, The Glass Hammer really made an impression.

Security consultant (and probably burglar-in-his-free-time) Enomoto Kei and attorney Aoto Junko return for more impossible crimes and locked room mysteries in Kitsunebi no Ie ("House of the Will o' the Wisp"), a short story collection and second in the series. This collection once again shows what was so fun to The Glass Hammer:  Kishi's creativity. While there is no triple-layered locked room in this collection, even the mundane locked rooms are made interesting by Kishi's fantastic use of his two protagonists. While Enomoto is definitely the detective in this series (being a thief is useful when trying to get in and out of 'sealed' spaces), Aoto is certainly more than 'just' a sidekick and as a highly intelligent laywer, she comes up with great deductions and hypotheses that many readers wouldn't even come up with. Even if the locked room situation seems kinda boring, the way the two protagonists keep making hypotheses based on the evidence, point out the faults in each others hypotheses and slowly move towards the truth is really exciting. The pacing in these stories is fantastic and I finished the book in a record time.

The titular Kitsunebi no Ie ("House of the Will o' the Wisp") is the most reminiscent of The Glass Hammer, both in structure as in story-type. Aoto is hired to defend a man living in a small village in Nagano Prefecture who is accused of killing his own daughter. The man claims that his daughter was already dead when he came back home, but also swears that there were no footsteps around the house when he arrived there (rain had made the ground muddy). A eyewitness also states that the man only came back to his home after his daughter's estimated time of death. All the doors and windows were locked from the inside, except for a window near the back, facing a forest. If there was a killer, he must have escaped there, but there are no footsteps to be found at the back either. Security consultant Enomoto is once again hired by Aoto to prove how someone could have escaped the house without leaving any traces. Similar to The Glass Hammer, the ending is told from the murderer's point of view, but this time it was just a few pages instead of half the book, so it felt less disjointed from the main storyline. All in all a great locked room mystery that keeps the reader guessing.

In Kuroi Kiba ("Black Fangs"), Aoto's client is claiming that a woman is planning to kill the pets she inherited from her dead husband. Aoto and her client meet the woman, trying to get her to hand over the pets she clearly does not want to her client. The fun part in the first part of the story is that Aoto at first assumed that her client was talking about cats, but she discovers quite late that her client was talking about a totally different kind of pet. We enter the second part when Aoto starts to suspect that one of the two killed the woman's husband. However, the police say it was an accident and furthermore, he died inside a locked room. The rest of the story unfolds as she holds a phone-conference with Enomoto in order to discover how the murderer could have created the locked room. And interestingly enough, the story actually has two locked room mysteries, as one of the pets seems to have gotten out of its holding place. As a locked room mystery, this is definitely what the Japanese call a bakamisu, a "What-the?!!-Mystery", because the first reaction you will have when you get to the solution, is "What the...?!!". This does not necessary mean that it is a bad solution, it is just so surprising that that the reader is not sure how to react (it's something I have with some of Shimada Souji's tricks, which are so grand that it almost seems silly). Also definitely not for people with a certain kind of phobia.

Bantan no Meikyuu ("The Board Labyrinth") seems like a simpler story than the previous two stories, but its plot is actually constructed quite complex. A famous shougi player is found stabbed in his hotel room, with the chainlock locking the door. Who stabbed him and how was the locked room created, seem like obvious questions, but what Enomoto focuses the most on is why the locked room was created in the first place. Once again, the constant examination of hypotheses is what makes this story. The solution does require a lot of imagination if you want to arrive there on your own power. The setting reminds of the Furuhata Ninzaburou episode Kegareta Oushou ("The Tainted King"), both stories set during an important shougi match and with shougi playing a big role in the problem itself too.

Inu Nomizo Shiru DOG KNOWS ("Dog Knows") is very different from the other three stories. The main problem revolves around the classic curious incident of the dog in the night-time, but the solution is so simple that any reader think of that. The story is also very short and the characters act so surreal, that Dog Knows might be regarded as a humorous mystery / parody mystery, but Kishi's writing style is so ambiguous here, that I'm not sure whether that was his intention. A disappointing story, but because of its length and place in the collection, maybe I should just regard it as a light bonus story.

As the second entry in the Security Consultant Detective Enomoto Kei series, this is a robust collection and certainly recommended if you liked The Glass Hammer. There was less information on security this time, which is a shame as I really liked that in The Glass Hammer, but Enomoto and Aoto's teamwork certainly makes a lot good. I definitely want to read more of this series.

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介　『狐火の家』: 「狐火の家」 / 「黒い牙」 / 「盤端の迷宮」 / 「犬のみぞ知る DOG KNOWS」

"Ah, the days of my youth... Just like the scent of fresh lemon, you see"

「 しかしある先輩が、ぼくにひとつの福音を与えてくれた。それは、名探偵の名前は漢字三文字がよい、ということ。金田一、加賀美、二階堂。そうだ！霧ヶ峰はエアコンなどではなく、名探偵にこそ相応しい名前だったのだ ！」

『霧ヶ峰涼の放課後』

"But then a senior told me something good. All great detectives have three characters in their name. Kindaichi. Kagami. Nikaidou. Yes! Kirigamine wasn't a name for the air-conditioning, it was the name suitable for a great detective!"

"Kirigamine Ryou's After-School Hours"

If I were to exclusively review audio dramas, my post-count would explode, I think! They take no time at all! Hmmm, let's go back to my homework. A paper scheduled for right after New Year is just evil (or: A Lesson In Planning: How To Avoid Doing Everything The Last Few Days).

Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni ("After School, together with Mystery") is an absolute hilarious supplement short story collection to Higashigawa Tokuya's Koigakubo Academy Detective Club series.The series is of course about a detective club at the titular Koigakubo Academy. Note that it is actually a detective club and not a detective fiction club, so the members don't discuss detective fiction there, they actually detect. Or at least, that's what they are supposed to do, but because their activities are rather irregular (despite popular belief, it is not likely to come across a case every day), the club has not been officially recognized by the school yet. And thus the members spend their after-school hours looking for cases to solve around campus. These range from 'simple' theft cases to full-blown murder cases. At school.

As a supplement novel, Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni features a different protagonist from the main series: Kirigamine Ryou, a tomboyish second year student and vice-president of the detective club. Her heart is definitely in the right place, having an almost surreal passion for finding mysteries (especially of the impossible kind) and even already having made her name-card, but she is actually usally not playing the detective part in the stories: she is certainly not dumb, but it seems there's always someone better around her (even though she's the vice-president!).  As a protagonist, she is awesome though, being both sharp and clueless at the same time and she is certainly strong enough a character to carry her own series. The setting is also fun: the mysteries are all set around the after-school campus, with club activities going on. The stories convey an actual school-feeling (without convining it to 'class' situations), which actually few mysteries set at schools manage to do (without resorting to the old school festival setting).

I had actually been waiting for Momogre's adaption of Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni, which was scheduled for today, but then I discovered that NHK already did a 10-part radio drama adaption of the book in their Youth Adventure serials earlier this year. I totally digged the Youth Adventure's adaption of Norizuki Rintarou's Ni no Higeki, so I had high expectations for this adaption. Which were totally justified. I love Asagura Aki's Kirigamine Ryou and even though the adaption may seem short, with 10 episodes of 15 minutes each, the pacing of the stories is just impeccable (which is also probably because of Higashigawa's writing style) and never feels too hasty. The original book featured eight short stories, but they sadly enough only adapted six stories (leaving out Kirigamine Ryou and the Invisible Poison and Kirigamine Ryou and the Tragedy of X, the latter being one of Higashigawa's own favorite stories, having spent 10 years (!) plotting this short story). Making it interesting to see what Momogre's going to do.

In Kirigamine Ryou no Kutsujoku ("Kirigamine Ryou's Humiliation"), our hero gets assaulted by a thief in the audiovisual materials room as she visits the E-Building, an annex built in the shape of the letter 'E'. She and some other people she meets on the way chase the thief across the building until they reach the only open exit of the building, but it seems he has disappeared: someone was near the exit the whole time and swears nobody left the building. How did the thief escape from the E-building? The solution might seem obvious, as it certainly invokes a certain mystery in a room of the yellow kind, but that's actually Higashigawa's specialty: making you think that the story's probably simple and easy to solve because it's so light-hearted and funny, but there is usually something deeper behind it. The solution is good, because it really fits the school-setting, something that not many mysteries set at school can say.

Kirigamine Ryou no Gyakushuu ("Kirigamine Ryou's Counterattack") starts with Ryou who comes across a paparazzi camera-man one day after school. The cameraman had been waiting in front of an apartment the whole day, trying to get a picture of a rising star actor and his girlfriend, both of them alumni of Koigakubo Academy. The cameraman is sure both of them entered the apartment (seperately), but needs a picture of them both together. After some events however, Ryou and the cameraman are invited to the room themselves by the woman, who says that she knows what the cameraman is thinking, but that she is not dating the actor and nobody entered her room at all. Ryou and the cameraman search the room and discover that the room is indeed empty. Was the cameraman wrong? Or did the actor just disappear from the room? Once again Higashigawa plays with the expectations of the reader/listener, luring him in a false sense of security and 'ha, I already know this trick', only for him to reveal his layered trap. It has parallels with Higashigawa's own Jisoku Yonjuu Kilo no Misshitsu, both stories featuring a room under observation and an impossible escape, but the latter story is also burdened by a rather hard-to-believe murder trick.

Kirigamine Ryou no Zekkyou ("Kirigamine Ryou's Scream") is the only story adapted that was only one episode long (15 minutes), but it was enough to convey this short, yet fun little story about a student who was attacked on the running grounds of the school. There were no footsteps around him except for his own and the girl who discovered him lying unconcious on the ground (and she couldn't have hit him, as seen from the footsteps), so who attacked the boy and how? A somewhat incredible solution, but it fits the humorous tone of the collection.

Kirigamine Ryou no Houkago ("Kirigamine Ryou's After School Hours") is a really fun misdirection story, that starts out with Ryou and her friend Nao discovering a delinquent student smoking in a little storehouse, but the story develops in rather unpredictable ways from that point on, so I don't want to spoil it. A lot of fun in this story is because Ryou (and therefore the listener) has no idea what's going on. Higashigawa did a very nice job with this story, having carefully clued everything, yet at the same time succeeding wonderfully at hiding the truth. There is actually an official web-movie version available of this story (to be found at the 'actual' Koigakubo Academy website), which I really recommend to people who want to have a taste of Higashigawa's unique sense of storytelling (no subtitles though!). The production is pretty good though and the way they did the first-person narrator thing... is just genius. And cute.

Kirigamine Ryou no Okujou Misshitsu ("Kirigamine Ryou's Locked Rooftop") features something that totally seems like an urban legend: as Ryou and a teacher are on their way back home, a girl falls on top of the teacher. Ryou checks the rooftop right after the girl landed on the teacher, but it finds it empty and the staircase was watched the whole time, so Ryou concludes that it must have been an attempt at suicide. Which the girl (who fortunately didn't die) denies, saying that she was called to the roof and pushed off there. What happened on the roof? Did the would-be murder just disappear in thin air? A somewhat flawed mystery: the solution is rather simple and a bit disappointing even, but the same elements could have resulted in a more impressive impossible crime, which they mention it themselves in the story. On the other hand, the elements that could have made this a more impressive mystery can only be made known the listener after the solving of the crime, or else there is no mystery at all. A conundrum.

Kirigamine Ryou no Nidome no Kutsujoku ("Kirigamine Ryou's Second Humiliation") is once again set at the E-Building, like the first story. And once again features an impossible disappearance. Ryou happens to find a student who was attacked in the art room in the E-Building and is then attacked herself. Her attacker runs back into the hallway of the E-Building and Ryou wouldn't be the vice-president of the detective club if she didn't give chase immediately. Like in the first story, the attacker manages to escape even though all the exits being watched. Despite the story being set at the same place, with the same type of impossible situation, this story is quite different from Kirigamine Ryou's first humiliation, featuring a totally different kind of solution and even features a second, hidden problem and thus feels surprisingly fresh.

All in all a very fun short story collection, that manages to combine humor with orthodox detective plots with great success. It works great as an audio drama too, with a great Kirigamine Ryou voice-actress. Now I'm very interested in Momogre's adaption too: as I wonder how the adaptions of Momogre and NHK's Youth Adventure differ.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉（原作）　ＮＨＫ青春アドベンチャー　『放課後はミステリーとともに』: 「霧ヶ峰涼の屈辱」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の逆襲」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の絶叫」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の放課後」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の屋上密室」 / 「霧ヶ峰涼の二度目の屈辱」

The Robots of Death

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

The Three Laws of Robotics

Yes. It has finally happened. I've reviewed more English-language works than Japanese works this month. (The Japanese audio drama of Christie's The ABC Murders is a special case though). But actually having discussed more non-Japanese works than Japanese works feels.... really weird. Almost disturbing. Shouldn't do this too often.

Anyway, earlier this week I took a look at the classic in the science-fiction mystery subgenre: Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel. I doubt Asimov needs any introduction (or else I refer to wiki). The story of The Caves of Steel is set in a faraway future, where space-travel has been perfected and planets near Earth have been colonised by mankind. The descendants of these colonists, Spacers, are rich and make extensive use of robot labor on their planets. Earth itself is having troubles with overpopulation and man has started to live in so-called Cities, gigantic building complexes covered by metal that are barely able to economically sustain the millions of inhabitants inside it. Spacers have taken a rather imperialistic stance towards Earth, while Earthmen in return don't like Spacers.

The story starts with the murder on a Spacer ambassador / scientist in the Spacer outpost on Earth. The Spacers think it was someone outside their outpost (i.e. a non-Spacer) who killed their man and low-level Earth cop Elijah Baley is charged with the job. Elijah is forced to work with the Spacer robot R. Daneel Olivaw (R. stands for Robot) to solve the murder, all to prevent a gigantic diplomatic incident. Yes, it's a buddy cop story.

There is a locked room element to the murder of the Spacer, but I feel that it is hard to describe it without making it all too obvious what the solution is. Which makes it seem like a very obvious solution, but I have to admit that Asimov wrote a very satisfying mystery set in the future. Yes, this is definitely SF, with Asimov describing his future Earth in great detail, adding in speculations about the way human society is going to evolve and technical advancements, but we also have a very competent mystery plot. The hinting, a locked room situation, it even features false solutions. It's a very competent novel that is exactly what it was intended to be: a science-fiction mystery that is fair and fun to read.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the 2001 movie Metropolis (loosely based on Tezuka Osamu's manga) borrowed some its plot-elements (especially concerning robotics) from The Caves of Steel. Then again, The Caves of Steel is apparently a science-fiction classic, so that's not really surprising, I guess.... (hey, I really know nothing about science fiction).

The only science fiction mysteries I've read are The Caves of Steel and Sonada Shuuichirou's Dakara Dare Mo Inaku Natta ("And That Is Why There Were None"), but I have to admit that I like the latter better. The latter is purely a puzzle plot built on the Three Laws of Robotics, a compact thing that never feels too big to me. It was definitely set in the future with robots and all, but they were clearly just part of the mystery story. Just the three rules. The Caves of Steel is fun and there is no mind-boggling technobabble in it, but the extensive attention to the future world, to the future society do give the book a distinct 'future' feeling, something I am not too  familiar with and is thus a bit distracting at times.

But I do like the way Asimov clearly indicated what was possible in his future world and what was not. It seems there is always a need to make very, very clear what the rules are for the mystery. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics as they are used in The Caves of Steel are a clear example, but Mitsuhara Yuri's fantasy story Hana Chiru Yoru ni ("On the Night the Flowers Scattered") also went out its way to describe the workings of the Devil Fruit in detail. The use of these non-meta rules (as opposed to the meta-rules by Knox and Van Dine) to create clearly definied mystery that still manages to surprise is something I have enjoyed for a long time. Take a look for example at the usage / interpretation of rules in the popular manga Death Note and Liar Game.

And yes, my reviews of non-Japanese works are always written this badly. Should work on that, actually. Hmm...

「古い戦術だね。細かいムジュンを突いて証人の動揺を誘う」

"Well... it's monday night in San Francisco and we're keeping our weekly date with Gregory Hood and his friend Sanderson Taylor. Tonight's rendezvous is at one this city's oldest and best restaurants - Fior d'Italia. The furnishngs are tasteful, the music discreet, and the veal à la maison, so Gregory tells me, is incomparable. Let's join them, shall we?"

"The Black Museum"

Listening to audio-dramas is for me always a race against time. Or more specifically, sleep. I only listen to audio-dramas in bed and I close my eyes to concentrate on the audio. It probably doesn't take a genius to guess that I thus often, very often, very very often fall asleep while I'm listening to audio-dramas. It usually takes me days to finish a drama, because I keep falling asleep halfway through, forgetting most of the story. So then I have to re-listen from the point I do remember. Rince and repeat. Efficient, I certainly am not.

On one hand, scripts of audio-dramas are a solution to that problem, as I can actually read the stories. The downside is of course that I miss the audial element of the audio dramas. Which in some circles is considered a fairly important feature of audio dramas. Forcing me to choose between sleep and audio though, leaves the latter with no chance at all.

I have listened to... the first part of several radio plays in The Casebook of Gregory Hood series, but I don't think I ever finished one. Or at least, never while I was awake. So the book of The Casebook of Gregory Hood, collecting fourteen scripts of the radio play, was my way of cheating me out of it. The Casebook of Gregory Hood (the show) was an invention of Anthony Boucher and Denis Green, following the amateur sleuthing adventures of Gregory Hood in San Fransisco, assisted by his laywer Sandy. I could go on telling about Antony Boucher, or repeat everything that is said in the introduction of the book and is found in every review of the book on the internet about how the show came to be, but let's be honest: I see no reason in doing because it's out there already. Yes, I am lazy.

My third-rate writing style compels me to compare The Casebook of Gregory Hood to Ellery Queen's The Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries. Not original, but it gives me a structure to build my review on. Anyway, it is pretty natural that the stories in The Casebook of Gregory Hood feel like the Queen radio plays, considering Boucher worked on that show. This is hardly a bad thing though, as Queen's show was great. Gregory Hood thus also offer fair-play mysteries with all the classic staples of the genre and is generally also very rewarding to read/listen. Plotwise, we have adventures that feature some great mysteries: a woman who comes back to life (The Red Capsule), a psychic who can predict the future (The Derringer Society), a locked room murder with our hero as the main suspect (Gregory Hood, Suspect). And to top it off, a clown gets killed (The Sad Clown). There is no shortage to interesting settings. In true Queen-style, these mysteries are solved by Hood by carefully examining the clues and coming with a logical answer a listener / reader could have deduced himself. In this sense, The Casebook of Gregory Hood is an entertaining read.

Yet I do not find Gregory's adventures as interesting as Queen's adventures. Maybe it's the characters of Gregory (playboy/connoisseur of everything/importer) and Sandy (lawyer), whom feel a bit too much like Philo Vance / Markham duo. At any rate, the stories 'feel' less memorable than the ones in Queen's The Adventures of the Murdered Moths and Other Radio Mysteries, which might be an unfair comparison. 'Cause most of the stories collected in The Casebook of Gregory Hood are good and fun. It's just that the other book, from the same publisher, in the same format, featuring similar stories is just better. Both books are good, but they are too much alike to escape the comparison in my mind.

I had forgotten though, how much fun reading a radio-script is. Writing a complete story in mostly direct quotes (conversation) is pretty difficult, but when it's done well, it results in a very pleasant read. Having read mostly Japanese novels lately, this more conversation-focused method of telling a story feels much more natural to me.

Overall, The Casebook of Gregory Hood is an amusing collection of good old fashioned fair-play radio mysteries that is good. There is a better one out there, but this book is still a very, very solid silver medalist.
 
Oh, and why I didn't write something on every single story like I usually do? I'm just too lazy. You wouldn't believe how many transformations this review went through before I ended up with this. It first started as a radio script-styled review.

"You know my methods. Apply them"

"'It has been a duel between you and me, Mr. Holmes. You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in the dock. You hope to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me. If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.'

'You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty,' said I. 'Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.'"

"The Final Problem"

It had been years since I last went to the movie theaters here, but I guess it's normal to play with your cellphone during the movie, rest your feet against the seat in front of you and leave your garbage at your seat / on the floor / throw popcorn on the floor? Hmmm.....

As a friend worded so deftly, it's a Sherlockian winter. New Year will bring us the long-awaited second season of BBC's Sherlock, but our Victorian master-detective also makes an appearance at the theaters just in time for Christmas. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is the sequel to 2009's Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law and while the first movie was not without its flaws, it was certainly an entertaining action movie with an original take on the characters (though opinions on whether that was good or not differ widely). Downey Jr. played himself, and while I liked the basic concept of his Holmes, he at times felt too eccentric. I loved Law's Watson though and the bickering between the two was really one of the better points of the movie. At any rate, I filed it under the 'it was entertaining enough' files in my head, but I had somehow missed that the sequel (with Moriarty!) was to be released this winter (luckily a friend told me). So with 'it's probably entertaining enough' expectations, I went to the theater. I was also geeky enough to read The Final Problem on my way to the theater and afterwards listened to BBC Radio's audio adaption of it on my way back from the movie.

The story of the movie is very loosy based on The Final Problem, chronicling the battle of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. Having deduced the existence of the Napoleon of Crime and identified him with Moriarty, Holmes tries to find the evidence to get him hanged, but you'd hardly be a Napeleon of Crime if you'd just wait for Holmes to accomplish his task. As his organisation (led by Colonel Sebastian Moran), try to eliminate Holmes (and Watson and his wife, because Now It's Personal makes the stakes seem even higher), the dynamic duo discover the diabolical deviations of the dastardly....dangerous... man.

D...?

My 'it's probably entertaining enough' expectations changed to 'this is quite horrible' thoughts right after the movie started. Because it was quite horrible. Gone was the charm of the first movie and in return we got a chaotic mess of bits and pieces of plot and forced humor. The first part was to introduce some characters like Mycroft (who only got a very short introduction by the way), to establish that It's Personal and to plant some clues for later parts of the movie, but the way this was done was just awful.

And then Holmes and Watson get on a train and everything becomes awesome.

Once the story gets past the first one-third, pacing, structuring, the humor, the action, everything becomes better (except for an abudance of explosions past the half-way point) and becomes one thrilling ride all the way to a very impressive interpretation of the Reichenbach Falls incident. The ride towards the end is really entertaining and that might be because this movie is at its core quite quite different from the first movie. The first movie was essentially a classic detective plot, with the ressurected Lord Blackwood and the serial murders being the main mystery for Holmes to solve. In A Game of Shadows, it's more about the cat-and-mouse game between Holmes and Moriarty, resulting in several skirmishes between the two parties spread across the movie. If the first movie was about one big mystery, then its sequel is about several mysteries that solved one after another, but these mysteries are definitely linked. The hints for these mysteries are done better than in the first movie, in the sense that we actually get a good look at them, but the way these hints are conveyed to the viewer are almost painfully obvious. Oh, there we have a full close-up shot of a seemingly unimportant item for more than a second. Subtle, it is not. In fact, one hint for the very last surprise of the movie is inserted in the movie so clumsily, that it feels like an after-thought.

Like I said, the interpretation of the last confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls is pretty impressive and definitely my favorite part of the movie. It is a scene that does justice to the original story, without losing the particular, more action-oriented flavor of this movie series. I'd even go as far as to say that this might be my favorite Holmes - Moriarty, or even more broadly, master-detetive vs. master-criminal confrontation scene ever. It also helps that Harris' Moriarty is awesome.

For the viewer familiar with Holmes, there were quite a lot of little nods to the canon. Some lines are straight quotations, while the inclusion of Colonel Sebastion Moran as a sniper-Dragon to Moriarty in this story is a very logical choice. But there are also less obvious nods, Holmes' final trump for example builds heavily on a little reference in The Final Problem and a story-device used in another Holmes story. The movie also actually wonderfully tries to mess with your mind halfway through the movie by recreating a certain scene from The Final Problem. I don't think most viewers would have picked up on it, but it certainly had me doubting for a second!

Oh, and Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is once again great.

All in all, I had quite some fun with this movie. The beginning is bad, but when the plot hits its stride, it's really entertaining. It does not differ greatly from the formula set in the first movie, so it's safe to say that anyone who liked the first movie is sure to like A Game of Shadows.