The Shot in the Dark

'What is truth?' Sheringham said mockingly. 'Is it what might have happened, is it what was meant to happen, is it what ought to have happened, or is it only what prosaically did happen? That's one of the things we've got to tresh out this morning'

"The Second Shot"

I seldom read what a book is about for authors/series I already know, so I often have totally different expectations for books based on their titles. I thought that Roger Sheringham and The Vane Mystery would involve weather vanes. And of today's book, I was expecting golf. Also: I still think Langtail Press’ covers are absolutely horrible.

While Anthony Berkeley's Roger Sheringham series often plays with the conventions of detective fiction, the characters of the story are usually not as meta-concious as the framework that forms their world. For if the party gathered at Minton Deeps Farm had known they were inside a detective story, they would have never thought of the idea of performing a murder play, nor would they had chosen Eric Scott-Davies (who was the source and target of a lot of negative thoughts) to play the murder victim. Two shots in the forest announced the real death of Mr. Eric, who had been alone in the forest after having fulfilled his role as fake body and now turned into a genuine one. While it seemed an accident at first, police suspicions quickly focus on Cyril Pinkerton, who seeks the help of his friend and succesful amateur detective (*cough*), Roger Sheringham. Can our Roger help Cyril in The Second Shot?

The Second Shot (1930) was published one year after The Poisoned Chocolates Case and is in presentation the complete opposite. Whereas we followed a variety of detectives in The Poisoned Chocolates Case, each with their own style of telling a story explaining their deductions, The Second Shot takes on the form of a manuscript written in the first person by Cyril Pinkerton. We follow his notes as he arrives on Minton Deeps Farm, slowly develops feelings for a guest of the opposite sex, we see how clouds of darkness gather around Eric Scott-Davies and then the deed. After the murder, Cyril finds out that not only the police, but even his hosts and fellow guests think he's the murderer! As a story to be read, The Second Shot is just enjoyable as Trial and Error, as we see how events unfold, but also because Berkeley's at his funniest when the story's about a flawed man with romantic touches caught in a plot of mystery.

Series detective Roger Sheringham is called in not to solve the case (as Cyril believes the victim deserved to die), but only to save Cyril from being arrested. Because of this goal, the main investigations parts of this book aren't about finding whodunnit, but are more focused on the direction of Cyrildinnot. Such a theme is seen more often in courtroom mysteries, but it's also slightly reminiscent of how Roger fixed evidence in Jumping Jenny to make Mrs. Stratton's death seem a suicide. As for comparisons to other series: Van Madoy's Revoir series usually features intellectual tennis rallies between the defense and prosecution about whether the defendant is guilty or not, with both sides constantly coming up with new theories and evidence as the trial continues.

As for the main mystery plot itself; like often with Berkeley's plots, the main premise is very simple and the whole thing only seems complex because everyone is covering for someone else. But I might have become used to his plots, or this one was particularly easy, but I got everything of The Second Shot quite some time before the finish line. Then again, I don't read Berkeley for puzzle plots, I just want to see how he explores the role of the detective in fiction.

Though again, I have to say, The Second Shot is not particularly surprising or witty there. Mind you, it's a good story and if you have never read Berkeley before, it will have some surprises, but compared to The Poisoned Chocolates Case and Jumping Jenny, The Second Shot feels a bit underwhelming.

The Second Shot is not Roger Sheringham's best, nor that of Anthony Berkeley, but it is an okay effort. But I still have a lot of Roger Sheringham stories to go through, so I hope that this was just a slight dip in an otherwise highly amusing series.

Detective's Diary

 Don't judge a book by its cover

Occasionally animals appear in one form or another in detective novels: be it as an actual character within the story, or just a theme or in a title. For some reason though, cats seem the most common of detective animals, at least in detective fiction discussed on this blog.

The cover of today's book says it's Tsuzuki Michio's Neko no Shita ni Kugi wo Ute ("Put A Nail In The Cat's Tongue"), but when you open the book, you discover that the book is actually the diary of the mystery writer Awaji Eiichi: he once received a mock cover model of Tsuzuki's book and is now using the empty pages inside as his secret diary. Why he needs to keep a secret diary? Awaji is in a rather dangerous position: he is the murderer, detective and victim in a poisoning case! Roleplaying as a poisoner, Awaji had slipped some cold medicine (pretending it to be poison) in the drink of his neighbor at a bar. Who then died. Awaji had only wanted to pretend to kill the man, but has now become a real murderer. Awaji had gotten the medicine from Yukiko, the girl he loves, and he realizes that someone must have been trying to kill Yukiko with the medicine he 'borrowed', and that that person will try again once he realizes his plan has failed. Thus the murderer Awaji must detect the person who planted the poison and if he's not careful, he might fall victim too to the real murderer. The diary hidden within the covers of Neko no Shita ni Kugi wo Ute (i.e. what the reader is holding in his hands) is just in case Awaji doesn't make it out alive.

Tsuzuki Michio was a fairly famous writer, specializing in science-fiction and mystery. This was the first time I read something by Tsuzuki by the way and I liked most of Neko no Shita ni Kugi wo Ute. Most, because there are some parts I found hard to get through.

But to start with the good points: Tsuzuki makes fantastic use of the medium of a book, as the contents of the book is actually Awaji's diary, instead of Tsuzuki's Neko no Shita ni Kugi wo Ute (the title therefore has nothing to do with the contents). It's not even just a gimmick, as the mystery of this story is built at a meta-level and it is indeed important to always remember that you're reading Awaji's diary hidden within a different book. Detective stories that implement the form in which they are published (i.e. a book) in the mystery are rare (though I have reviewed some of them here), but I always love it when an author thinks not only of a story, but also about the circumstances in which a person will read the book. For that, Neko no Shita ni Kugi wo Ute gets full points.

The concept of the narrator = murderer, detective and victim is also pretty neat, and the beginning chapters where Awaji explains to the reader how he came to be in such a peculiar position are great, as well as the final chapters where Awaji finally reveals the true murderer. As said, the mystery also makes good use of the fact that it pretends to be a diary hidden within the covers of a different book and the main ideas and tricks behind Neko no Shita ni Kugi wo Ute really shine within the first and last parts of the book.

But the middle part is actually kinda boring. Even though Awaji explains how dangerous the situation is and how he must work fast to save his love, the plot goes absolutely nowhere for 70% of the book. You'd think that he'd be a bit more pro-active in his detective role, but nothing of the sort: the plot just meanders, mostly focusing on Awaji's work and his efforts at getting closer to Yukiko (who sadly enough is already married to someone else). Okay, I guess that this is a diary and one would write about things like that, but... let's be honest: all readers know that this is a detective novel and that you're supposed to find the (real) murderer. The moment Awaji starts saying he is the murderer, detective and victim of this case, you know that this is a puzzle-type detective and that the author is playing around with genre conventions. So why pretend it's something else? Why move so far away from the mystery plot? Had it really helped the plot, okay, I'd be all for it, but I found it quite tiresome to go through the book as it just kept going around and around and around to nowhere. Sure, hints are placed within these parts, but the middle part could have been a lot more concise without giving up on plot or atmosphere. In fact, I think the whole mystery plot of Neko no Shita ni Kugi wo Ute, including the meta-level tricks, could have been pulled off much more effective in novelette form, rather than as a full novel.

Tsuzuki Michio's Neko no Shita ni Kugi wo Ute is an interesting detective novel: I always love me some meta-level detection and the idea of playing with character roles of detective, murderer and victim is fun. But I thought the middle part to be a bit too diary-like and had trouble getting through this muddy part. Not without its problems, but a good book overall.

Original Japanese title(s): 都筑道夫　『猫の舌に釘をうて』

Read or Die

I do try to write other articles besides reviews occasionally, but I always give up halfway through...  Warning: this post might be a bit boring unless you're interested in the link between mystery fiction, Japanese language and translation.

Great books deserve to be read and to be talked about, but obviously, one of the biggest hurdles on the road to world-wide domination of any book is the language hurdle. The fall of the Tower of Babel is basically one of the reasons this blog exists, as I try to promote Japanese mystery fiction in the English-language world, even if the effects are very small. And as I know that learning a language costs a lot of time and effort, you'll usually hear me cry out that book X or Y should be translated, rather than cry out people should just learn Japanese. And yet, I am very well aware that some books I've read in the last few years, some very amazing books even, have very little chance to be ever translated in English. And I'm not talking about the economics of the whole business. Right now, I'm purely talking about the topic from a linguistic point of view.

I've often mentioned on the blog that I absolutely love Japanese sociolinguistics, a field of study that focuses on the relation between society (culture, norms, etc) and language. Words have certain meanings in certain social contexts, and certain social contexts invite for the use of certain words. Sociolinguistics on Japanese is in particular interesting, because Japanese is a so-called 'high-context' culture: speech styles cater to 'in-groups', people in the same 'context'. That means that in high-context cultures, utterances can leave out a lot of linguistic units, as the speaker and the receiver are both active participants in the dialogue, so left-out units are tacitly understood or inferences are drawn. For example, when the speaker is telling a story about his day out, he doesn't need to say that the subject is "I" in every sentence, as the receiver can derive that informatiom from the context. While languages like Japanese and Korean are considered high-context languages, languages like English and Dutch are considered low-context languages: linguistic units are not left out leading to low-context messages (i.e. you do need to mention the subject of every sentence etc).

Of particular interest to me is the concept of "role language" in the Japanese language. The authority on Japanese role language, Kinsui, defines it as:

“Role language refers to a certain speech style ( vocabulary, expression, phrasing, intonation et cetera) that makes one think of a stereotype (age, gender, work, class, generation, appearance/features, character et cetera). Or vice versa, the speech style that comes to mind when presented with a stereotype.” (Kinsui 2003, 205)

Easy-to-understand examples are accents and dialects. Imagine an English-language speaker with an Italian accent, and you might think of an Italian gang member. In Japanese for example, the Kansai dialect might invoke stereotypical images of fast talkers with a sharp sense of comedy, while Kyushu dialect is often associated with manly men being manly. But in Japanese, there are also specific role languages for men, women and even a group like elderly, sholarly men. These speech styles have certain key words, like specific personal pronouns or interactional particles, that invoke the stereotype. Often, role language is used in fiction because it invokes these stereotypical images. An elderly professor sounds a lot like the role when he uses proper 'old men's language', while a woman sounds a lot more feminine if she uses 'women's language'. Note that in reality, role language is mostly a thing used in fiction In the real world, you'll hear few men exclusively use male language, just like that not all people from Kansai are comedians. It's just a stereotypical image, used mostly popular culture. Role language too is strongly connected to context, as a receiver is expected to pick up on the specific keywords of the speech styles and think of the right stereotypes.

So where does this linguistics class bring us? Well, basically, there are a lot of mystery novels that make use of these characteristics of the Japanese language. Obviously, these are most often stories with a narrative trick aimed at the reader. An easy example is the gender-switch. Suppose you come across character X in a story who uses the personal pronoun atashi, leaves out the copula at the end of the sentence and uses the interactional particle wa. These are all elements usually associated with 'female language', so the context invites the reader to think X=female. And here lies the trap, because it is very possible that X is in fact male and the writer only wanted you to think X = female. Note that the author never lies to the reader in this case: it's an assumption made by the reader based on cultural and linguistic assumptions, but the author has done nothing unfair here (as he never stated that X=female). And because Japanese is a high-context language (also because of other characteristics of Japanese), you never ever have to refer to X with a gender-specific word (for example, 'she' or 'her')  throughout a story.

There are of course other tricks possible that make use of the expection of the reader's linguistic assumption. In Japanese, it is common to leave the subject or object of a sentence away for example, if already mentioned earlier in a dialogue, but this too leaves opportunities for the author to play with the reader's expectations. Because of the high-context culture, the reader will always fill in the blanks by himself , but the author can steer that process with certain sociolinguistic misdirections, leading to tricks played at the meta-level. The reader thus has to pay attention not just to the situations described in the story, but even the very words used to describe those situations.

Mystery fiction with narrative tricks can thus be very difficult to translate to English (or other low-context languages), because they function not in the "in-universe" level, but on a linguistic level outside the story. Obviously, this is a case-by-case thing and I am definitely not saying that all stories with narrative tricks are impossible to translate. But sometimes, the incompatability between the source and target language can form a considerable, if not unsurmountable hurdle for these kind of mystery stories. Korean and Japanese in comparison for example are linguistically relatively close to each other (closer to English, anyway), meaning that it's a lot easier to translate these kinds of narrative tricks (in fact, I've seen several Japanese novels with narrative tricks translated to Korean).

In a way, the Japanese mystery story that actually uses the Japanese language as part of its performance might be considered the Japanese story. But because of that, these kind of stories can also prove to be difficult to bring to other lanauges. I for one can name several titles I wish more people had read, but are just difficult to render in languages like English and Dutch.

Literature:
金水敏　（２００３年）　『ヴァーチャル日本語　役割語の謎』　岩波書店

White Reflection

絶望(かなしみ)も傷痕(いたみ)も振り切るように羽ばたく

 あなたがくれた勇気(つばさ)を　この胸に広げて… 

「White Reflection」 （Two-Mix）

I flap my wings and shake off my sadness and pain

In my heart I spread the wings of courage you have given me...

"White Reflection" (Two-Mix)

Hm, the last books reviewed on the blog are all from the same publisher. And I wrote these three reviews all on the same day.

Matt Cobb is one of the vice-presidents of a television network (simply called The Network) and part of Special Projects: the department responsible for handling troublesome cases that 'normal' departments like Public Relations and Security can't handle. In short, Cobb is The Network's own little single-man A-Team. This time, Cobb joins the negotiation team of The Network with millionaire Gabby Drost, who wants to buy the television network. Anonymous letters suggest that Drost is not a sane man and that it is unwise to do business with him: Cobb is to investigate the case and see if The Network is in any danger. The negotations are held in Drost's mansion, which for convencience's sake is inconveniently located on a mountain which according the Laws of Mystery, is of course visited by a snow storm, cutting the mansion off from the outside world during the negotations. The first night ends rather uneventful (relatively), but the morning brings death: the millionaire host's body is found outside on the rocks, with a field of virgin snow between the mansion and the body. How did the murderer escape from the crime scene without leaving footprints, that is the main question in William L. DeAndrea Killed on the Rocks (1990).

I don't look for them especially, but I'm pretty sure that every year, I read at least one detective story with the no-footprints-in-the-snow scenario. Not that I mind, far from it, but it does show that it is a very popular theme among impossible crime writers and that also means that there's a lot of competition in terms of solutions. The moment you publish a story with an often used trope, you're not just challenging the reader, but also all those who tackled the problem before you, and after you.

Killed on the Rocks' take on the familiar problem is not exceptionally inspiring though. It seems to me that the solution seems rather obvious... I don't mean that in a 'hah, look at how smart I am' way of speaking, but more in the sense of 'but surely that is about the first thing you think, so it has to be a fake solution!'. I genuinely had the final solution as my very first thought when confronted with the crime scene, figuring that would be the most easy and obvious way of pulling of the trick (i.e. if I was a murderer who would have wanted to create such a crime scene, I would have done it like that). Then again, I have read a lot of stories that do a similar thing, so maybe Killed on the Rocks just had the bad luck of having me as a reader. Ignoring the lack of surprise for me, the mystery is a fairly clued and adequately constructed one.

But Killed on the Rocks isn't just the no-footprints-in-the-snow, and there's enough in the book to entertain the reader. I for one quite enjoyed the story overall, because... well: 1) isolated mansion, 2) closed circle, 3) impossible crime, 4) people starting to suspect each other are usually elements that make me a happy little reader and it was no different here. If I had mostly been reading English novels, I might have noted on the fact that it is quite interesting that these classic tropes were still used in 1990, but then again, I am spoiled with the boom in New Orthodox detective novels that started just a few years before in Japan. But certainly doesn't make Killed on the Rocks any less fun and I can recommended this to all readers.

Oh wait, this was the first time I read a Matt Cobb novel, but this is a fairly late one in the series and it actually spoils the identity of the murderers of some of the earlier novels (or they were making really detailed references to an event not featured in the novels, but I don't think so...). I'll probably forget about these details in some weeks or so, knowing my memory, but some people might wanna read the books in order to make sure they don't get spoiled. But as a standalone mystery novel, Killed on the Rocks is great.

This was my second DeAndrea novel and I enjoyed it greatly, even if the impossible crime was kinda easy to solve. The character of Matt Cobb and his work is quite interesting too, so I'll probably try some more books in the series (and hope I'll have forgotten the spoilers by then).

Silky Lady

生憎の雨だけど予定通り出かけましょう

せっかくのDress upも あなたには見えてないし

「As The Dew」 （Garnet Crow）

It's raining unfortunately, but let's still go out as we planned

It's not like you had even noticed I'm all dressed up for this

"As The Dew" (Garnet Crow)

My post and introducing quotes titles are always mystery-related, but lately, it's been more like music-from-mystery-shows-and-games related...

Fancy dress shop Cristophe et Cie is not the only home to the material dreams of women, it's also a focal point in the lives of the gossip girls who work there. It is also not a very peaceful place, with propretier Bevan having too much interest in his female employees, an emotionally unstable designer Cecil (who is probably 'we-can't-really-call-him-gay-but-he-sure-is') and a battle by the women for a position in the new branch store in Deauville. But you'd think this would at the worst result in a scratched faces and pulled hair, right? But for some reason Miss Doon (one of the top candidates for the Deauvill position) ends up dead due to ingestion of oxalic acid. Was it an accident, suicide or murder? Young Inspector Charlesworth, who feels genuine, true love for almost every girl he meets is set on the case, which is much more confusing than it seems at first in Christianna Brand's Death in High Heels (1941).

I haven't read much Brand, but the two books and one movie I've seen all starred her Inspector Cockrill. Death of Jezebel also had Inspector Charlesworth making an appearance, and I was quite surprised at that at the time because I hadn't known that Charlesworth was another of Brand's series characters. Death in High Heels was both Charlesworth and Brand's own debut novel and this novel was written based on Brand's own working experience in a dress shop, which she apparently didn't like really much. One problem I had with this book was that a lot of the female characters kinda resembled each other, and while they may have felt all distinct to Brand (I think the girls were based on her co-workers), it was quite hard to keep all the girls apart, as they act so alike (still not as bad as Arisugawa Alice's Gekkou Game, which featured like seventeen students).

I mentioned in my review of Death of Jezebel that Brand's mysteries seem to feature two points: fake solutions and a crime commited under observation. These two elements are featured up to some extent in her debut novel, but nowhere was good as in her later work. Oxalic acid appears very early on stage, but even though the poison moves from one person to another several times, enough witnesses remain who all claim that none of the poison could have been stolen for use on the victim. A lot of attention is given to the observed movements of the poison, but the way it is presented to the reader is quite bad: it's hard to follow and it is difficult to visualize what Brand really meant. It could, and really should have been described and presented much better (with little diagrams or something like that). Also, character momevent is also fairly important and it would have helped my enjoyment of the book a lot if it had included a map of Cristophe et Cie, for it really helps figuring out the mystery, but it is hard to decipher the layout of the store just based on the prose. Then again, I usually think that maps can improve any mystery story.

Death in High Heels does not really feature fake solutions in the sense of carefully constructed alternative hypotheses, as much as just 'we don't have enough evidence to rule things out, so we have enough room for a myriad of possible solutions'. The plot meanders quite a bit actually and can get quite boring as little progress is made in the investigations for a long time. The plot also involves a lot of stacked coincidences, which can work to make a mystery more interesting, but here it makes a rather minimalist plot drag even more. The final answer features an okay hint, but it appears so late in the story that it feels rather artificial, as the incubation time of the hint and the revelant information is just too short.

The book has a certain Christie-esque vibe to it, by the way. From the women to the poison-centered story and even the final hint, I can't help but thinking Brand was inspired by Christie here and I wonder what Christie would have done with the same plot.

Death in High Heels is an okay detective story, but I didn't enjoy it as much as her later novels. It all feels less polished, less readable, less entertaining than later books and I definitely recommend those books over this one.

番外編： The Decagon House Murders Released

Hmm, in hindsight, I kinda wrote all I wanted to write on the topic in the announcement of this announcement, so maybe you should read that post too.

I already announced the release of the first English translation of AYATSUJI Yukito's debut novel back in May, but today I can announce the book is finally available (both paper and e-book, I think)! Locked Room International's release of The Decagon House Murders (Jukkakukan no Satsujin) was translated by me and is a brilliant homage to And Then There Were None where a group of students (and members of the local university mystery fiction club) are killed one by one during a little camp on a little island with a strange ten-sided building. It would be the first novel of the so-called shin honkaku (new orthodox) movement in Japan, which called for a return to smart, puzzle plot mysteries. Many writers would follow in the wake of The Decagon House Murders, making it one of the most important novels in recent detective fiction history in Japan. This English release includes an introduction by SHIMADA Souji (of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders) and a (short) postface by me.

Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review and selected the book as one of their Best Summer Books 2015. My own review of the Japanese version is here and other opinions of my fellow Japanese mystery bloggers about the original Japanese version can be found at My Japanese bookshelf and In the Threshold of Chaos.

And I'd of course love it if you would read the book, not just as the translator, but even more so as someone who really became a fan of Ayatsuji's works after reading this book and even went to study in Kyoto and like Ayatsuji, became a member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club.

And to finish with a quote from myself, made in 2011 in my review of the Japanese version:

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

Why isn't this translated in English?

I have to admit that I am a bit surprised how that turned out! I should cry out for more English translations and see what happens!

EDIT: Oh, totally forgot that Publishers Weekly also did an interview with Ayatsuji in connection to the book. You can read it here. (Actually, the 'final' product was slightly rewritten, I see, but I was the one who translated the interview.)

EDIT2: The Decagon House Murders was also reviewed by the Washington Post in 'The Decagon House Murders' invokes Agatha Christie - in Japan.

Playback

Memento mori

Every time I write a game review, I hope more mystery-focused blogs will discuss mystery videogames one day. Games are fiction too!

Most videogames end with your death, but the videogame Ghost Trick (2010) starts with your death. Protagonist Sissel awakens, looking down at his dead body, only to realize that he is 1) dead and a ghost now and 2) he has no recollections at all of his life... when he was alive. Right next to his dead body, a confrontation between a girl and a hitman results in the murder of the girl, and Sissel surmises his death is connected to that incident too. Sissel then finds out he's got strange ghostly powers now: his ghost can move around by jumping between, and possessing items and even cause them to move ("trick"). What's even more important: by 'possessing' dead bodies, he can jump back in time until four minutes before the time of demise of the body, and by using his new "trick" powers, he can actually prevent the deaths and thus alter time. Realizing the key to finding out why he's dead is the girl who just got herself killed, Sissel saves her life and decides to use his new ghostly powers to find out what is going on that night, why he's dead and most importantly, who he was when he was alive.

(Screenshots are from the iOS version, because they were much easier to find)

Most names tagged on this blog are mystery novelists, but Takumi Shuu is a very special exception. While he is definitely a writer of mystery stories, he works in the game industry and thus his creations are videogames and not novels. There are plently of writers whose works are adapted into videogames, but Takumi Shuu is one of the few people who writes mystery stories that are designed to be videogames from the outset. He made his name as the creator/director/scriptwriter of the Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney videogames, a quirky courtroom comedy-mystery series that succeeded very well in translating the mystery-solving qualities of a detective story to a videogame mechanic that asked the player to actually participate in thinking along (see also this essay by Takumi about mystery videogames). Ghost Trick, originally released in 2010 on the Nintendo DS, was a completely original IP by Takumi, that was nothing at all like Ace Attorney as a game, but still strongly rooted in the mystery genre Takumi so loves. I played the game when it was originally released, but hadn't touched it since then, so I thought it was a good time to revisit the game now on its fifth anniversary (to the day!).

As a mystery story, Ghost Trick is really well done and brimming with originality. Playing a ghost on a quest for his own identity? The story develops in a fantastic pace as you jump between scenes with wonderfully colorful characters who all seem to be connected somehow to Sissel's death and the way the mystery is unveiled as you dig deeper is something to remember. And while some sour mystery fans might cry out that things like ghosts possessing items or time-traveling aren't 'realistic', I can only say it's their loss if they ignore this game. In fact, because Ghost Trick is a game, these concepts are completely fair, as the rules of the game are made very clear right at the start! I love mystery stories where the author goes the extra mile to come up with special circumstances that 1) are fun for the reader and 2) are of importance to the plot and Ghost Trick is an excellent example of how to do fair-play mystery with supernatural elements. By the time you arrive at the last chapter, you'll be surprised how well hinted and structured Ghost Trick is, as you look back and you hit yourself when you realize that that line or that scene had those meanings, like you do with the best of mystery fiction.

I loved the game when I first played it five years ago, and I enjoyed it again this time, but it was only this second time I realized how detached the actual gameplay mechanics are from the story sometimes! In Ace Attorney, the main game mechanic (pointing out contradictions in testimonies) is an integral part of the story. In Ghost Trick however, the narrative and the gameplay feel a bit detached. When you actually control Sissel, you can only move by possessing items: you jump from one thing to another to get from A to B. The item Sissel is possessing can also be used, so when Sissel is possessing the remote control of a TV or a lightstand, he can also switch it on or off. Most often, you use these powers (together with your travel-back-to-four-minutes-before-death power) to prevent the death of somebody (Luck has it that a lot of people connected to Sissel's death die that night). For example, in the very first scene, Sissel manages to postpone the murder on the girl by the hitman a little by possessing a bicycle and distracting the hitman with its bell. Usually, you have to possess, and use a whole series of items within the four minute time limit to succesfully prevent a death, resulting in Rube Goldberg-esque scenarios. Slowly finding out what items to use in what order to create what effect is fun, and these puzzle sections are very reminiscent of the classic game The Incredible Machine. Possessing items and somehow changing destiny never bores and the game throws enough new things at you at set times to keep you on your toes.

But often, these (otherwise great) game sections feel somewhat detached from the main narrative. Sometimes the narrative about Sissel's past and other shady business going on that night is suddenly stopped rather artificially with another unlucky death which Sissel has to prevent, after which the narrative continues again. At one hand, you're solving the mystery of Sissel himself (the main plot), and then you have these gameplay sections, which are completely different (solving the problem of how to prevent a murder/ get from A to B). Not all prevent-the-death sections (or even just 'get from A to B' sections) feel essential to the plot (i.e. could have been left out with slight rewriting), and the inclusion of some game sections felt rather arbitrarily, as if just to fill a quotum. Ghost Trick is not a long game (nor does it need to be because the plot is strong), but I think the game could have been shorter and still just as fun. The integration of plot-game mechanic was much stronger in Ace Attorney (solving contradictions was 'part' of the game, as well as a way to move the plot forward) and while both plot and game mechanics are fun in Ghost Trick, the integration between the two is less strong. Don't get me wrong, the plot-game integration in Ghost Trick is still much and much stronger than most other games: it's just Takumi has done better in the past.

Ghost Trick has a very unique look with excellent animations by the way and as expected from Takumi, the plot and characters are written with a very distinct comedic touch. In fact, I find it disappointing that these kind of comedic, almost slapstick characters are so very rare in mystery fiction. Bold colors, smooth and theatrical animations, it might not be the first thing you think of when thinking of mystery fiction, but it certainly aren't mutually exclusive terms.

Anyway, Ghost Trick is a great game, with a fantastic story and simple, yet satisfying puzzle-solving game mechanics. Is it better than Takumi's own Ace Attorney series? No, I don't think so, because for me, Ace Attorney is simply better as an example of how to present the 'logical puzzle-solving' element of mystery fiction in game-form. Ghost Trick on the other hand is a mystery story, that focuses on mechanical puzzle-solving and in comparison, these game sections are not as tightly connected to the narrative as in the Ace Attorney series. But despite that, Ghost Trick is a fun game that shouldn't be missed by any fan of the mystery genre.