Lady in Waiting

星のかがやきよずっと僕らを照らして

失くしたくない少年の日の夢よ・・・

「星のかがやきよ」 （Zard）

Oh starlight, always shine upon us

On the childhood dreams I don't want to lose..

"Oh Starlight" (Zard)

Today a writer of whom I've read almost all his published works without me even realizing it.

A visit from the college student Aya means the end to the lack of clients for private detective Jinguuji Saburou. Aya is looking for her boyfriend who disappeared a couple of weeks ago. The only clue she has is a phone call she got after his disappearance, saying he was alright, but that he was being chased by some dangerous people. Fearing for her boyfriend's safety, but also wanting to protect his plea of not calling in the police, Aya decides to hire Jinguuji to find him. Jinguuji quickly discovers that the boyfriend was caught up in some kind of drugs racket, selling the stuff in secret as an extra to his part-time job in a club. The detective also finds out (the painful way) that a group of foreigners is also hunting for the boyfriend and realizes that he must work fast if he wants to bring the boyfriend back to Aya alive in Kodaka Kazutaka's Tantei Jinguuji Saburou - Kagayakashii Mirai ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou - A Bright Future", 2007).

Tantei Jinguuji Saburou is a long-running videogame series I've written about quite often on this blog. Since the first game in 1987, private detective Jinguuji Saburou has been solving cases mostly around Shinjuku, Tokyo on a myriad of game systems, always accompanied by a pack of cigarettes and jazz music. Kagayakashii Mirai is one of a handful of novels based on the series, originally published in 2007. Writer Kodaka Kazutaka is nowadays mostly known as the scenario writer for the Danganronpa game series, but he was also the scenario writer for the Detective Conan & The Young Kindaichi Case Files DS video game and several of the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou mobile phone games (some of the best, actually). Kayakashii Mirai is Kodaka's second attempt as a novel writer: he had written another Tantei Jinguuji Saburou novel one year earlier. Kodaka is mainly a video game scenario writer, which explains why all of his novels are based on video game series (two Tantei Jinguuji Saburou novels and Danganronpa/Zero).

As a detective novel, Kagayakashii Mirai is nothing special, but it also does nothing really wrong. It is really just what you'd expect from a Tantei Jinguuji Saburou story: a case that starts out simple but is soon revealed to be much more sinister. Like in many of the games, the case is linked with yakuza groups and the foreigners-in-Japan angle is also one occasionally seen in the games. I'd say that this is also what makes and breaks this novel: for the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou fan, it's quite fun to see the familiar settings and the familiar faces in this new and reasonably amusing Tantei Jinguuji Saburou adventure. It feels like a genuine Tantei Jinguuji Saburou story and I can easily imagine how this story would have been as a game. For readers who have not played any of the games and go in this novel without any kind of attachment to the series however, Kagayakashii Mirai is just an okay, maybe even boring mystery novel with little to offer. The original characters of the novel are passable, but little is shown about the recurring characters and that the reader might feel that they miss something. Kagayakashii Mirai does very little to attract new readers.

From a purely mystery plot angle, there is little remarkable about Kagayakashii Mirai. It's focused completely on the hunt for the missing boyfriend and I noticed a bit late that Jinguuji Saburou's presence in the plot is actually not that vital: he finally does something really important at the end, but for most of the investigation, he's actually not even needed as the plot would go the way it goes even without his interference! I was kinda disappointed that the plot was all about the search and there was little detecting or puzzle solving: the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou games that Kodaka wrote often featured puzzle plot mysteries and tropes like locked rooms and I had hoped that Kagayakashii Mirai would also be like that, but alas.

Something that bugged me was the third person narration. The games are always narrated in the first person. Occassionally you get to control someone different from Jinguuji, but it's always in the first person. Kayakashii Mirai however is written in the third person and it just feels wrong. The story also jumps between Jinguuji and the boyfriend, which also feels strange, for this never happens in the games (even if you get to control a different person, it's always someone on the investigating side). Of course, Kagayakashii Mirai is a novel so Kodaka can do differently from the presentation in the games, but still, I wish that he had at least wrote the novel in the first person, for that really adds to the whole Jinguuji Saburou atmosphere.

Overall, I think that Tantei Jinguuji Saburou - Kagayakashii Mirai is an okay Tantei Jinguuji Saburou novel, that for the most part manages to emulate the atmosphere of the games quite well, but I doubt it would really impress people who have never touched the games, nor will it convince them to try the games. But speaking as someone who has played basically all of the games, I can say I thought it was an amusing read.

Original Japanese title(s): 小高和剛　『探偵神宮寺三郎　輝かしいミライ』

A Clue for Scooby-Doo

Warning: I wrote this post pretty much without any planning, so it might sound a bit chaotic. I probably should stick to 'safe' reviews.

What is a mystery story? I've always been partial to Edogawa Rampo's definition. "A mystery story is a type of literature that focuses on the amusement derived from solving a complex mystery (usually of the criminal kind) step by step, in a logical way". This definition addresses all the points I find important: the story must feature some kind of mystery to be solved, it is solved in a logical manner and it is fun. The definition also leaves room for variation: like Van Dine I'm always in for a body or two, but if the mystery itself is interesting enough, a lack of dead people certainly doesn't ruin my enjoyment of a mystery story. Logic is also relative and as long as the reasoning is sound within the confines of the story, elements like magic and unknown technology can still result in very good mystery fiction. As you can guess from this definition, I am a fan of puzzle plot mystery stories: "orthodox" mystery stories about giving the reader an intellectual Challenge to solve.

Fair play is often mentioned together with orthodox mystery stories. Fans of the genre have probably heard about Ronald Knox' Decalogue and Van Dine's Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories; sets of rules that are intended to make sure any mystery story is actually fair to the reader (i.e. it can be expected from a person with average to above average intellect they can solve the cases based on the clues in the story). Personally, I've never been really convinced by Knox and Van Dine. The only rule that should matter for a puzzle plot mystery story is whether it is fair, and while that is a very subjective criteria, I don't think a hard quotum on twins or hidden passages will help make a mystery story more fair intrinsically.

It is for this reason that for me, Ellery Queen is the pinnacle of the fair play mystery story. His early books features Challenges to the Readers: he would simply stop at a certain point in the story, address the reader directly and state that at that point, all the necessary clues to logically deduce the identity of the murderer were given to the reader. This action alone was more important to making detective stories fair than the Thirty Rules above. Here was an author who made it clear that all the puzzle pieces were in place at that point and that the reader wouldn't need to worry anymore about important clues dropping down from the sky at the last second. The reader could turn back the pages and go over everything again just to make sure. The Challenge to the Reader gave the reader a defined range and all the puzzle pieces and that relief of mind appears to me to be of more importance than knowing no Chinaman would appear.

But I think that Queen's Challenge to the Reader on its own wouldn't have been nearly as impressive without the types of clues and hints Queen utilized in his novels and I think that's a topic seldom addressed. His types of clues were perfect for the fair play model, because at the core, it was basic logic and inference. With Carr and Christie, you often need sudden genius insights or psychological analysis, both means which are not particularly 'fair'. With Queen however, the mystery stories are constructed as fair puzzles and if necessary, it's actually possible to solve them with simple determination, rather than a genius mind.

In early Queen novels, solving the crime = identifying the culprit usually boiled down to two basic questions:
1) What are the attributes of the culprit?
2) Who of the suspects answers to all of those attributes?
Sounds simple, and it is actually. Suppose you have a corpse who has been strangled to death by a pair of big hands, and all suspects but one are armless, you have a pretty good idea who the murderer is. Suppose two of them have arms, but you also know the murderer must have entered the crime scene through the little window in the bathroom, you know it was the midget and not the giant man. This method of determining the murderer is very simple in design and absolutely fair. No fantastical ideas or deep psychological analysis. You can just cross off a list of attributes.

Obviously, the trick behind the Queen novels is that is not that easy to figure out what the criminal's attributes are. Let us suppose for this text, that "a clue" is something that came to because of an action, or in-action of the criminal. "Something" is taken in the broad sense of the word, so it can be a phsyical object, but also a state or situation. There's tons of Locked Room Lectures out there, and I've even read essays on all types of mystery stories or typologies of motives in mystery stories, but I still have to read one on clues. So I sorta had to come up with one by myself  just now (probably full of gaps, but it'll do for the moment). Clues can roughly be categorized in these four groups:

The clue can be the result of an action, or in-action of the culprit. And these clues were left either intentionally, or unintentionally by the culprit (for convience's sake, we also assume the culprit acts logically and has a sense of self-preservation). Let's try to build on the example above (with the arms) to see how these clues lead to the murderer. Say the ringmaster of a circus was killed in his office room on the second floor of their sleeping/working quarters. Also, because of security measurues we know the murderer must be someone connected to the circus (because that's a lot more convenient).

1) Action/Intentionally: The handmarks left on the neck of the victim. The action is obviously the strangling and in this example, the murderer left the marks as is. We can assume the murderer left the clue=marks as were intentionally: if they really wanted to mask the fact the ringmaster was strangled, they could have cut the neck off and even if suppose there was nothing to cut the head off with at the crime scene, we can assume the murderer was aware of the fact marks were left on the neck and thus left it so knowingly so (even if under different circumstances, they might've cut the head off).

2) Action/Unintentionally: Let's use Holmes' curious incident of the dog in night-time. The ring master kept a dog in his office that hardly does anything dog-like, except for barking at everyone except a select few. The dog was still on the crime scene when the murder was discovered. Nobody heard the dog bark during the time of the murder. Thus the action of the culprit entering the room, plus the fact the dog did not bark, means the dog was on friendly terms with the assailant.

3) Inaction/Intentionally: A button was found lying next to the body, and it did not come from the victim's clothes. The location of the buttom makes it very unlikely the murderer missed it on the way out, so it was left intentionally. Apparently, it is a button from the jackets performers of the circus troupe wear and because of their line of work, it's actually quite common for them to lose buttons all the time. In fact, police investigation showed that everyone with a jacket was missing at least one button (and some of them recent). In this case, the murderer figured that leaving a button wouldn't be enough to identify the murderer (I ignore the possibility of it being a fake clue for convenience's sake).

4) Inaction/Unintentionally: Investigation showed the murderer didn't enter and leave simply through the office door, but through the bathroom door. Which in hind-sight, was a good move, because it just happens that that day a security camera was installed in the corridor. But only a select group of people knew it was being installed. So by avoiding the camera, the culprit also let us know he was in possession of that certain piece of knowledge.

So in our practice case, we've now got four clues that tell us about the attributes of the culprit. 1) The murderer had hands. 2) The murderer must have been on friendly terms with the dog. 3) The murderer was one of the performers (with a jacket). 4) The murderer must have known about the security camera to have acted like that. Note that 1, 2 and 3 are about physical and typical attributes of the murderer. 4 on the other hand is about knowledge of the murderer. In our case, it happens that there were only seven performers with a jacket on the circus site around the time of the murder. Only four of them were on friendly terms with the dog. Only two of them knew about the camera. And only one of those final two had arms. Ergo, the midget was the murderer!

Note that attributes of the other characters aren't clues an sich. Some might be called some form of foreshadowing, but the fact that the midget has arms isn't a clue on its own. It only becomes a clue in combination with the realization that the murderer must have had arms. Note that sometimes, it takes several more logical deductions from the initial clue to reach the correct attribute of the murderer (i.e. a dying message left by the victim could be an Inaction/Unintentionally clue, but you'd need to solve the dying message before it becomes a clue pointing to an attribute).

And the above was a simple example of how clueing and deductions work in Queen(-inspired) novels. There are thus two distinct phases: one is identifying the attributes the culprit must have. The second one is comparing those attributes to those of the suspects and eliminating the suspects until the murderer is left. Note that most of the time, clues tell the reader something concrete about the murderer. The murderer was left-handed! The murderer was color-blind! Or also very popular: the murderer must have known certain facts! The latter in particular is in my opinion a very rewarding type of clue. It usually takes another extra step to deduce the knowledge the murderer must have based on their actions, so when you do realize the murderer must have known about X because they did, or did not, do action Y, it feels very satisfying.

For me, Queen's method especially works because at the core, it's such a simple concept. You don't need Papa Poirot's insight in human psychology. You don't need the genius insight capable of figuring out two impossible crime situations and the identity of a Hollow Man. You just need to determination and a piece of paper to write a little list on. What did the culprit do? What does that tell you about the murderer? Who else has the exact same characteristics? Compare lists, cross off people who don't fit the profile and you're done. You know the murderer is left-handed? Go back through the story and make a note of all the characters to see who is left-handed. The culprit must have been at least two meters high? Check what is noted about the height of each of the characters. In my opinion, these kinds of clues (and method of mystery solving) are about as fair as you can get, as it mostly about combining facts in steps, and doesn't ask for leaps in thinking from the reader.

The thing about Queen novels (and of other people in the Queen school, like Arisugawa Alice and Norizuki Rintarou) is that to determine the culprit, you usually have to combine a lot of these attributes together in order to solve the case, resulting in long chains of deduction. You can guess that with each extra attribute, a story becomes more complex (and boy, these authors can come up with complex plots!), but the building stones of these deduction chains are always of the same variety and while it thus can ask a lot of patience of the reader, these puzzle plots can definitely be solved by going through it one step at a time. A clue of the sort of the slip-of-the-tongue ("Only the murderer would know that!") might be a lot more easier to comprehend, but is not nearly as satisfying as when you managed to combine facts A, B and C to infer X, Y and Z and in extension, the identity of the murderer. To me, this is an extremely fair way to do a whodunit story, because it's essentially a variation of the most basic whodunit possible: One person was killed by a left-handed person. A is left-handed. B is right-handed. There's no discussion about strength of motive here, or about whether someone has the 'mindset' to kill. Just means and opportunity.

On the blog I've often written about the whodunit / guess-the-criminal games at the Kyoto University Mystery Club (where many contemporary Japanese mystery writers originate from). Readers are given the first part of a whodunnit mystery story which ends with a Challenge to the Reader. Participants are challenged to find out who the culprit is before the time limit (usually an hour) and have to explain how they arrived at their answer logically. Most often, these whodunnit scripts follow the method as explained above, for the simple reason it is a very fair way to do a mystery story. Usually, you go through the text hunting for clues the murderer left behind intentionally or not, deduce the set of attributes the murderer must have and then compare that list to the attributes of each of the suspects. While it might sound a bit repetitive, the model has more than enough room for variations and there's nothing that beats that feeling when you've correctly identified all the attributes of the murderer and can logically declare that only X could be the murderer and nobody else.

Obviously, this method of clueing doesn't work well with all mystery stories. Impossible crime stories in particular often ask a bit of daring imagination of the reader, while in the clueing method above, imagination isn't nearly as important as simply being careful in noticing all the attributes. Though it is certainly not impossible to combine the two. Arisugawa's Sweden Kan no Nazo for example features an impossible crime, which is solved by the clueing method above. However, it is a rare example.

Recently, I've been thinking about The Decagon House Murders (for obvious reasons), which is modeled after Christie's And Then There Were None. The latter is a masterpiece of mystery fiction, but is it completely fair? The epilogue refers to three hints, but I'd say that at least two of the three are at the best very vague hints, while the remaining one would still ask of some (uncertain) imagination of the reader. Similarly I've seen people comment that The Decagon House Murders too might be not fairly hinted. True, I too was not sure whether it was completely fair when I first read the book, and unlike And Then There Were None, The Decagon House Murders does not end with a recap of all the important hints. But as I was translating the book, I realized it's probably a lot more carefully hinted than most people (including myself) would suspect at first. Sure, there are no obvious hints like handkerchiefs with initials or deflated balloons lying around, nor are there people who make a fatal slip-of-the-tongue, but The Decagon House Murders's main mystery can be solved by applying the deduction method explained above. By focusing on the actions the murderer took and the knowledge they showed they have, it's absolutely possible to solve the case, as the story is almost surprisingly detailed in its clues (as expected from author Ayatsuji, who wrote a lot of whodunit stories at the Kyoto University Mystery Club). The Decagon House Murders does not follow the method 100% and does ask of a bit of audicity in thinking at one certain point in the deduction chain, but you'd surprised at how much of the truth can be logically deduced by combining and comparing the attributes the murderer must have. The thing is; this is never mentioned within the story itself, so readers are very likely to miss it.

This post has become way too long as is, even though there's still a lot I could talk about: from the way this method of hinting/solving a crime works as a rough guide to mystery story writing to the significance of the 'fake/planted' clue; but I might do that another time. Anyway, clues, good. Any types of clues you particularly like or clues that made an impression on you?

Q.E.D.

Glory spent many hours with crosswords, Double-Crostics, anagrams, and detective stories (the classic bafflers of the field--she had no use of the sex-and-violence or psychological mysteries that began to clog the paperback racks after World War II)

"Face to Face"

It's been many, many years, but I've finally worked myself through all of the Ellery Queen novels. Well, there's still the non-series Cop Out, the real crime based The Woman in the Case and the critical works left, but my primary interests have always been the writer Ellery and Drury Lane series, so now I'm done! Today, no less than three Queen novels in one post!

In Ellery Queen's Face to Face (1967), Ellery and the Scottish private detective Harry Burke have just returned from Europe when they are contacted by Roberta, a pretty girl who says she was once the lover of the infamous womanizer 'count' Carlos Armando, current husband of the famous retired singer Gloria Guild. Or to be exact: ex-husband, for Gloria Guild was murdered that evening. Roberta tells the two that half a year ago, Armando had made her an offer: she would kill Gloria (for Armando, as the prime suspect, needed an alibi) and the two of them could share the inheritance. Roberta refused, but now that Gloria has indeed been murdered, she is convinced that Armando found another silly girl that fell for the count's charms and commited the murder for him. Ellery and Burke try to find out who the mysterious aide of Armando was, helped by a dying message by Guild in the form of four simple letters: f a c e.

I have to admit that I didn't have very high expectations for these last couple of left-over Queens, for the simple reason that I had been going through them in order of interest and opportunity: I hadn't read these Queens only because they didn't look too interesting and I just happened to never come across them. But I concede, Face to Face was actually quite enjoyable. I do think that is partly because so many elements feel almost eerily familiar and whether you consider this good or bad: Face to Face is a rearrangement of previously seen plots developments and other elements. For we have already seen the dying message (oh so often with Queen), the love-stricken private detective helping Ellery (Terry and Beau), the dangerous womanizer, shenanigans with last wills, the mysterious person from the past popping up. Even the overly dramatic ending seems lifted from an older Queen.

But on the other hand, these elements do work fairly well together in Face to Face and there is a good pace throughout the story. Also, while the dying message 'f a c e' returns in the title and it is fairly important to the plot, it luckily is not the only element carrying the mystery plot: dying messages just don't do very well as cornerstones of novel-length mystery stories. On the other hand, the most vital clue to the solution is classic Queen and I quite love it. It is fair, it's almost in your face and yet so easy to overlook. The chain from hint to solution is a bit short and thin, but overall, Face to Face is more than decent.

The Last Woman in His Life (1970) is set just after Face to Face, with Ellery in need of a vacation. He and his old man go to good old Wrightsville, taking on the offer to stay in one of two holiday houses of John Levering Benedict, wealthy jetsetter and proud owner of no less than three ex-wives. Benedict, his laywer (and his secretary) and the ex-wives all gather in the other Wrightsville hideout, talking inheritance businesses. That night, Ellery is called by a dying Benedict, who leaves him the dying message 'home'. At the crime scene, the police discovers a dead Benedict and no less than three crucial clues: the wig of one ex-wife, the dress of another ex-wife and the evening gloves of the last ex-wife. But why these clues and what did Benedict mean when he said earlier that he had decided on 'the last woman in his life'?

Another Wrightsville story (by now Ellery should be denied access to the town), another dying message story and also one that shows that dying message stories don't lend them too well for longer stories. Stuff happens, discoveries are made, but ultimately everything can, and is revealed through Benedict's dying words. So a good part of the book feels like padding. The hint is too ingenious for its own good. There is absolutely no way that that particular sitation could have led to that particular dying message, despite Ellery's very very detailed explanation and his answers to all of the old man's (very natural) questions. The reasoning appears to be sound, but if you realize the utterance was made by a man dying with little time left, than it kinda falls apart. Also, the motive also makes the book feel quite dated. Good stuff is done with the wig, dress and gloves (reminding of an early Queen novel), but overall, I think The Last Woman in His Life would have worked much better as a simpler short story.

Middle-aged millionaire Ashton McKell, his wife Lutecia and their writer-son Dane may seem like the typical well-off family, but the three also form a triangle surrounding Sheila Grey,  the famous haute couture designer and self-made woman who occupies the penthouse in the same luxury apartment building where the McKells live. Sheila is Ashton's mistress, Lutecia is aware of her husband's infidelity with Sheila and Dane tries to steal Sheila way so his father returns to his mother. This sitation is of course already quite unsightly, but the consequent murder on Sheila Grey naturally does little to help it: investigation by the police quickly puts the initial spotlight on Ashton, but further developments make it hard to determine which side of the McKell triangle was reponsible for the murder in The Fourth Side of the Triangle (1965).

The Fourth Side of the Triangle was one of the ghost-written Queen novels: it was written by Avram Davidson based on an extended outline by, and also edited by the Queen cousins. It was also turned into the pilot film Too Many Suspects of the excellent Ellery Queen TV series starring Jim Hutton. In fact, I like the Too Many Suspects version better than the original novel version. Both versions are not particularly inspiring stories, but there are quite some setting changes between the two. The ending of the original novel however is just disappointing: a deus-ex-machina just pages before the ending leads to the solution and basically everything you've read feels like a waste of time because if a decisive clue is coming falling out of the sky anyway, at least do it right away after the murder and don't try to fill up time with plot developments that prove to be useless. This is luckily changed in Too Many Suspects and while still a bit shakey on the question if it's completely fair, it's doing a lot better than the novel and looking at the whole of things (for example, the new solution ties in wonderfully with the TV/radio setting often utilized in the Ellery Queen TV shows), I think Too Many Suspects is the superior version.

I knew from the start that I wouldn't find The Greek Coffin Mystery-quality mystery novels in these remaining three Queens, but I have to say, I was quite surprised by Face to Face. The rest isn't really must-read material, unless you're trying to go through all of Queen. Anyway, that was it for today and so long Queen, thanks for all the fish.

Nostalgia Station

オレンジ色した極楽特急に乗り込んで　彼に会いに行くよ

すごいスピードで駅をとばし

あの小さな部屋へ

心がここにない私にね　何言ってもムダだよ 

「恋の極楽特急」 (小島麻由美）

I jump in the orange Heaven's Express of love to go see him

I fly across stations with tremendous speed

to that little room

It's no use talking to me, my mind isn't here anymore

"Heaven's Express to Love" (Kojima Mayumi)

Each time I read an alibi deconstruction story, I chuckle, thinking how horribly impossible it would be to pull one off perfectly with the Dutch railways.

Nishinohata Gousuke, owner of the Touwa Spinning Company, may have won the battle against the labor union and their strike, but he lost something more important: his life. The body of the much-hated C.E.O. was found on the tracks of a train and after blood was discovered on top of a train carriage, the police managed to figure out that the man was shot and thrown off a bridge, on top of a riding train. The case starts easy enough, but the police soon finds out that Nishinohata had more to fear than just the labor union: the Shaman, a shady new religion, was also after his head. But even though there are a lot of suspects and an abundance of significant clues, perfect alibis and dead ends forces the investigation into a wall. That is, until Inspector Onitsura is set on the case in Ayukawa Tetsuya's Kuroi Hakuchou ("Black Swan", 1960).

This year is rather heavy on alibi deconstruction stories, it seems: there was that little Crofts boom I had early in the year, and Matsumoto Seichou's Jikan no Shuuzoku a couple of months ago. Ayukawa Tetsuya was also famous for his alibi deconstruction stories (as well as impossible crimes and guess-the-criminal stories... I guess he did everything). Three years ago, I reviewed Kuroi Trunk ("The Black Trunk"), which was also an Inspector Onitsura case and a great, but perhaps too complex an alibi cracking story involving the movements of a black trunk containing a dead body across Japan. In Kuroi Hakuchou, the movements of a dead body by train once again forms the focus of the investigation, but the atmosphere is completely different from Kuroi Trunk. The investigation itself does bring Onitsura to Kyoto and Fukuoka (Kashii!), and I am starting to suspect that famous Japanese alibi deconstruction stories have a rule about featuring both Tokyo and Fukuoka (Ten to Sen, Jikan no Shuuzoku and Kuroi Trunk).

And the change is sometimes good, sometimes not as good. For example, Kuroi Trunk was way too focused on just the movements of the titular trunk, and it resulted in an investigation where the police would try to determine the exact location of the trunk down to the minute, across a space of Tokyo-Fukuoka (for those who don't know: it's a very large distance in time and space). It was at times too specific, too detailed and too focused. Kuroi Hakuchou on the other hand features a much more varied investigation, with lots of clues in different directions and even a much more dynamic way of presentation: in the course of the book, no less than three parties contribute to the hunt for the murderer, with series detective Onitsura only making his late first appearance in the second half of the story. The flow of the story thus does more to attract the reader: oh, this clue leads to a dead end? Let's go in this direction then? Oh, this gave us a new suspect, let's go in that direction for a bit, etc. On the other hand, especially in the first half of the novel I had the feeling the story wasn't moving forward at all, only sideways, which I thought a bit tiring and boring. The jumping between investigating parties was also part of that; especially as I had to wait half the book for Onitsura to appear.

I remember that in most of the Crofts I read, Inspector French also arrived late on the scene, but the story set-up was also quite different from Kuroi Hakuchou. Most of them were inverted mystery stories, so it was all lead-up to the murder and painting the scene. In Kuroi Hakuchou however, the murder happens very early in the book and it starts almost right-away with an investigation; it's just that Onitsura isn't called for until in the second half.

Which reminds me, I knew this was an alibi deconstructing story when I bought it (that was all I knew about it), but I loved how Ayukawa Tetsuya still presented Kuroi Hakuchou as a full-fledged whodunnit story. A lot of alibi-cracking stories give you an obvious murderer and focus completely on deconstructing his/her alibi, but in this story, you'd vagely guess that there was an alibi trick pulled off somewhere by someone, but the when and who were equal parts of the mystery besides the how. I'll be honest and say I was first looking at the wrong suspect, as he was the first to have a perfect alibi in the story, and well, considering all I knew about the book was that it was an alibi deconstruction story, it was natural for me to suspect him, right? Of course, this was completely my mistake, but I love it when mystery stories try to present themselves as one type of mystery story, when they are in fact another (i.e. making one trick appear to be another). There are some great ones there (which I can't name by title because it would spoil the fun), but playing with expectations at a meta-level is something I always appreciate.

Oh, by the way, I kinda liked how just like in Kuroi Trunk, this book is based on the actual train time tables at the time and that the time tables are also included in the book. Maybe it was just Matsumoto Seichou and Ayukawa Tetsuya, but it's interesting to note that the tricks in their stories were actually based on the actual time tables and could all actually be pulled off back when they wrote the stories (the one in Matsumoto's Ten to Sen in particular is very famous, but that one became impossible I think quite soon after publication). Not sure actually whether I've seen that with Western writers, now I think about it.

At the very end of the story, a minor hint is revealed to Onitsura (and the reader), which I actually quite love, but it's almost impossible to pull off good in the form of a novel. Really a shame, because the hint itself is good and deliciously hard to spot, but fair, but it just doesn't really work here. It almost feels like Ayukawa just used the hint because he liked it, rather than that it really added to the story, but it is the one element in the book that really made me wish there was an adaptation of this book for screen/big screen/radio/whatever.

I quite enjoyed Kuroi Hakuchou as a very competently written alibi-deconstructing whodunni. I do think I like Kuroi Trunk more, but I think that for most readers, Kuroi Hakuchou is probably the better one because it is much more varied and simply more enjoyable to read as a story.

Original Japanese title(s): 鮎川哲也 『黒い白鳥』

The Adventure of the Unbreakable Speckled Band

"I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection."

"The Sign of Four"

In the late Victorian era, it might have taken two months or so, but nowadays, it doesn't take long for a parcel from Japan to arrive in Europe. Of course, unless there's a labor strike with the mailmen. Then a simple game might take three weeks to get delivered, instead of less than a week.

The turn of the 19th century. In the several decades since the Meiji Restoration, Japan has been making giant steps in the course of modernity. One of the big legal reforms is the 1893s Advocat Law, which legalized the existence of defense attorneys who would act in the interestｓ of their defendant clients. The English language major student Naruhodou Ryuunosuke is one of the first people to "enjoy" this new reform, when he is accused of a murder on an British gentleman in the Japanese capital. He somehow manages to prove his innocence, but circumstances bring him all the way from the Far East to the British Empire, where he is to study law as an exchange student. Ryuunosuke learns that friendship is universal, as he gets acquainted with a certain consulting detective called Sherlock Holmes. But at London's Old Bailey, Ryuunosuke also realizes that no matter where on the world, defendants will always need help in the courtroom. Especially if the trials are as zany and complex as in the Nintendo 3DS game Dai Gyakuten Saiban - Naruhodou Ryuunosuke no Bouken ("The Grand Turnabout Trial - The Adventures of Naruhodou Ryuunosuke", 2015).

Dai Gyakuten Saiban is the latest entry in the long-running Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney series of courtroom mystery games. The series was originally conceived by Takumi Shuu (and created with a team of just seven people!), but by now it's grown out to one of developer Capcom's biggest franchices, with spin-off games, comic books, a live-action film, theater plays and even a musical. Three actually. The original games are set in the nearby future, with lawyer Naruhodou Ryuuichi (known outside Japan as Phoenix Wright) defending his clients and unmasking murderers in exciting, but also hilarious courtroom trials. Personally, I think the series is responsible for some of the best mystery videogames of all time and I'm a big fan of Takumi's writing. Takumi Shuu was not involved with 2013's Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney 5, as he himself was heading a new project of his own as the director/writer: Dai Gyakuten Saiban is intended to be the first in a completely new spin-off series, set around the turn of the 19th century. While the game's protagonist is the forefather of the protagonist of the main series, Dai Gyakuten Saiban can be played without any knowledge of the rest of the series.

The heart of the series has always been solid mystery plots with a good touch of comedy, set in the courtroom and built around a contradiction sytem: the player, in the role of defense attorney Ryuunosuke, needs to point out contradictions between witness testimony and evidence. Finding a contradiction leads to new testimony, which in turn leads to new contradictions and by slowly unraveling the thread like a True Columbo, the player eventually figures out the identity of the true murderer. Dai Gyakuten Saiban borrows some systems from Professor Layton VS Gyakuten Saiban (also penned by Takumi Shuu), for example having multiple witnesses on the stand at the same time and them reacting to each other. At the same time, it introduces a new Jury Trials system, where Ryuunosuke gets one final chance to convince the six lay judges in changing their guilty vote in a not guilty one by pointing out contradictions between the ideas of the various judges. Think 12 Angry Men. This latter system is not completely new, as it is still built around contradictions, but it is definitely a welcome addition: it visualizes the 'flow' of the trial, as at set times the jury members cast their votes, making it more obvious whether you're winning or losing the trial (and it feels great when you manage to change six guilty votes into not guilty votes).

While it is still a courtroom mystery game at heart, the new setting in the rather old late Victorian era gives the series a fresh boost. Takumi already experimented with the theme in Professor Layton VS Gyakuten Saiban, which had a medieval fantasy theme. Dai Gyakuten Saiban's London manages to provide surprising ideas to the player, as the city is both a familiar and 'strange' setting: most people will know about 19th century London, but there are still unfamiliar elements that feel refreshing to the modern mystery reader (gamer). The concept of Dai Gyakuten Saiban is interesting not just as a courtroom drama set one century ago, it's also one of the few games that is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche/parody (with a more goofy Holmes than most people are used to), as opposed to the many, many videogames featuring a 'faithful' Sherlock Holmes.

In fact, the presence of Sherlock Holmes provides one of the new innovations in this game. In Dai Gyakuten Saiban, Sherlock Holmes is as brilliant as ever. Maybe even too brilliant. In the original novels, Holmes once said "From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other." Dai Gyakuten Saiban's Holmes certainly is capable of doing that, but the problem is that he is usually looking at the wrong thing, meaning his deductions go the completely wrong way (in a rather brilliant matter). Sherlock Holmes helps Ryuunosuke out in investigations outside the courtroom, but because Holmes' deductions have a tendency to be slightly misdirected, Ryuunosuke sometimes has to 'correct' the great detective. The new "Joint Deduction" system allows Ryuunosuke to find the flaws in Holmes' deductions and help 'bend' the flow of Holmes' deductions in the right direction by switching out keywords in Holmes' flow of deduction.

This new system is not difficult, but oh-so-fun. In a way, it reminds of mystery writers like Queen, Brand and Berkeley, who often show in their books that deductions can change very easily just by adding or removing one little piece in the deduction chain. And of course, helping the deduction of a great detective by nudging him in the right direction is something Conan does A LOT in Detective Conan (where he often has to correct "great detective" Mouri Kogorou's slightly askew deductions by little hints). In fact, I so hope there'll be a Detective Conan game someday with a similar system.

As for the mystery plots; there are some very interesting concept to be found in Dai Gyakuten Saiban. While most cases start out rather simple, the discovery of each new contradiction usually leads to new confusion, slowly making each case more and more complex with each new step. This is basically the opposite of Gyakuten Saiban 5 (not written by Takumi), which always started with 'big' baffling situations right from the start. The third episode, a locked room murder mystery in an omnibus (horse-bus), is probably the best in the game, also becauses it delves deeper into some themes touched upon in earlier games. Other episodes have very original motives, exciting new ways of using the visual medium in a detective story, or feature interesting ways of "legally" cornering the true culprit (as often seen in the best of legal myseries). There are also some ingenious parts where themes and tropes from an earlier episode are mirrored in a later episode in a sort meta-hint-fashion. Interesting is that most of the cases feature a locked room mystery, or more broadly said, an impossible crime angle.

With Sherlock Holmes appearing in Dai Gyakuten Saiban, you can bet there's also a fair share of Holmes references. Episode two in particular is heavily based on a very famous Holmes short story, but manages to add enough original material (and a lot of meta-comedy familiar to Holmesians) to keep it interesting. There are plenty of references to be found in other episodes, both obvious and less obvious ones, so that adds an extra layer of amusement for Holmesians. Until now, I've only read two Sherlock Holmes pastiches from Japan (Shimada Souji's Souseki to London Miira Satsujin Jiken and Yamada Fuutarou's Kiiroi Geshukunin, which both also featured a certain famous Japanese writer in the story. Funnily enough, Dai Gyakuten Saiban is now the third Japanese Holmes pastiche I know also featuring that person.)

As a game, Dai Gyakuten Saiban has attractive visuals as well as an absolutely amazing soundtrack. The one major drawback to the game however is that Dai Gyakuten Saiban is 'incomplete' as it is now. Several important plotpoints are not resolved within this game, with plenty of questions left unanswered and elements still wanting for much more attention. There are simply too many sequel hooks. Previous games were in principle always designed as standalone games, with no major question left unanswered. This is the first time in the series that so obviously anticipates a sequel and it really hurts the game, as finishing the game does not feel nearly as satisfying as with earlier games.

Dai Gyakuten Saiban is certainly one of the most interesting mystery of the last few years, with solid courtroom mystery plots in an original setting, a daring approach to translating detective stories to actual gameplay and an amusing take on Sherlock Holmes lore. Yet, I can't deny it feels incomplete, leaving you wanting for more for the wrong reasons.Still, it's overall a more than solid mystery game that should keep you hooked on the game screen for any hours.

Original Japanese title(s): 『大逆転裁判 -成歩堂龍ノ介の冒險』

『霧魔』

「ミミミミミミミミミ」

『かまいたちの夜２』

"Mimimimimimimi"

"Kamaitachi no Yoru 2"

A wild translation appeared! And for the first time on the blog, a translation of a Korean story!

Kim Nae-seong (1909-1957) is commonly seen as the father of the Korean detective story. Unfortunately, none of his works are available in English yet (as far as I know) and so his name is still a fairly obscure one in English-language mystery fiction spheres.

The Great Korean Empire had been annexed by Japan the year after Kim Nae-seong was born, which obviously had rather important political and cultural implications for the country. Kim Nae-seong studied at Japan's prestigious Waseda University and he also made his debut as a mystery writer in Japan, with 1935's short story Daenkei no Kagami ("The Elliptical Mirror"). He published a handful of stories in Japanese and had contact with writers like Edogawa Rampo, but after his graduation, Kim Nae-seong returned to the Korean peninsula in 1936, where he would keep on writing mystery stories, but this time in Korean (some of them were Korean translations of his Japanese stories). In the past I've reviewed Main (1939), one of the novels he wrote after his return to Korea, and I enjoyed it a lot as a Rampo/Leblanc-esque mystery-adventure.

Today I bring you an English translation of his short story Muma (The Fog Devil) (1939), one of his original Korean stories. This translation might thus actually be the first, or at least one of very few translations of Kim Nae-seong's work in English. Muma is not a puzzle plot story like the ones I usually translate, but I definitely enjoy the horror-esque tone of the story. Muma has a distinct Rampo-esque atmosphere, from the focus on two different kind of mystery writers (reminiscent of Rampo's Beast in the Shadows), a thinly disguised "Kim" (Kim Nae-seong) as the narrator, to the distinctly urban setting.

The story is set in Seoul, or Keijou, as the capital was called under Japanese rule. Character and street names are written as they are pronounced in (modern) Korean.

Oh, and you might be thinking, is he doing translations of Korean mystery stories too now? I wish it was so! No, this English translation was based on a Japanese translation of the story by Dokuta posted at Asia Mystery League (permission was given for using his translation as the source text). Obviously, if you can read Japanese, I recommend reading Dokuta's translation over mine.

This will very likely be the only time I'll post a translation of a Korean mystery story here, but I hope you'll enjoy the story!

The Fog Devil (Muma, 1939)

Author: Kim Nae-seong

霧魔 (무마) (1939年)

著者: 김내성 （金來成）

Break

BREAK MY LIES 

瞳に揺れてる涙に気づいて…

SAVE MY HEART!! 

震える口唇口づけて…

今　RETURN TO LOVE... 

「Break」（TWO-MIX)

Break my lies

Notice the tears flowing from my eyes...

Save my heart!!

Kiss my trembling lips...

Now Return to Love

"Break" (Two-Mix)

One of the weirdest courses I've followed at a Japanese university was Ancient Greek. Why would I study another language while I was in Japan to study Japanese?! Then again, I also did a semester Chinese around the same time...

Yamabuki Satsuki, a Master student at C University, is having a little reunion at an old friend's place in the Hattori Apartment Mansion, which also turns out to be the location of a very peculiar murder. Exactly one floor above his friend's room, the body of a student is found, bound with his arms to the ceiling and with a silver knife sticking out of his chest. Two details make this a mysterious murder. One is that the room was locked from the inside: both keys had been found inside the apartment and the door had to be opened by Yamabuki with the caretaker's key. The second peculiarity is the fact that a camera had been set to film the inside of the room slightly before and until after the discovery of the body. Together with his friends Kabeya Megumi and Kurage Kyuusuke, Satsuki tries to solve the locked room mystery of Mori Hiroshi's φ wa Kowareta ne ("Phi Broke Down", 2004), which like a lot of Mori's books carries an alternative English title: Path Connected φ Broke.

φ wa Kowareta ne is the first book in Mori Hiroshi's G series, with the G standing for Greek, as all titles in the book feature a Greek letter. The G series is also connected to several of Mori's other series, among which his most famous series, the S&M series, which starred the student Nishinosono Moe and the assistant-professor Saikawa Souhei. The G series is set several years after the S&M series. Protagonist Yamabuki Satsuki is studying with assistant-professor Kunieda Momoko, who used to be Saikawa's assistant in the S&M series, and S&M's protagonist Moe (now following a Doctor's course) appears a lot as she is doing a joint research with Kunieda.

The G series also mirrors some of the character relations of the S&M series: Kabeya Megumi is like former protagonist Moe the energetic, curious girl who keeps getting interested in murder cases and tries her hand at solving them. Kurage Kyuusuke on the other hand mirrors the former detective-role of assistant-professor Saikawa as a taciturn man who's only interested in solving the case for himself. This said though, prior knowledge of the S&M series is not really needed to enjoy φ wa Kowareta ne and in fact, the overall tone of the books is quite different and much easier to read than the S&M series.

I haven't much exposure to Mori Hiroshi, but the things I have read/heard were always a bit 'heavy'. Subete ga F ni Naru (the first book in the S&M series) basically started the scientific mystery boom, and it had plot strongly connected to 'new' technology like computers, networks, internet and virtual reality, which had only just reached the general public (the book was released in 1994).There's also quite a bit of philosphy on identity there, which is also heavily featured in Mori's 100 Years series. So Mori Hiroshi books always had a heavy image for me.

But not so with φ wa Kowareta ne: the book is relatively short and it's really easy to read. The plot stays focused on the mystery plot from start to end and I really like how the plot develops mostly through the discussions between Yamabuki, Megumi and Kurage. Of course, that's just a personal preference, but I usually enjoy detective stories where the protagonists discuss their theories and bounce ideas off each other. It works good here, as the talks between the three always lead to something, be it a correct or wrong theory and with new information being given to them every now and then, the unfolding of the mystery never comes to a complete stop. I thought this book was a lot more readable than Subete ga F ni Naru.

The locked room mystery is a bit simple, but quite fair and it fits the smaller scale of the G series compared to the we-have-cameras-and-high-tech-security-equipment-and-computers-and-everything locked room mysteries of the S&M series. One of the major hints of this book is actually quite brilliant, because it works at a meta-level and it is extremely difficult to realize it is indeed a hint until it is pointed out to you. Oh, and I usually don't really complain about motives for murders, but I do wish it had been made a bit more clear here, because the murder took a lot of trouble and to have the motive stay so vague at the end... (though motives in Mori Hiroshi stories seem to be a bit vague quite often).

I quite enjoyed φ wa Kowareta ne as a to-the-point locked room mystery with a brilliant hint and fun characters. So I'm definitely going to read more of the G series. I can imagine it works great as starting point to Mori too; the book itself features a competent locked room mystery and is fun to read, but it also offers some links to Mori's other series, so those curious can work themselves 'up' in the Mori universe.

Original Japanese title(s): 森博嗣　『φ（ファイ）は壊れたね PATH CONNECTED φ BROKE』