The Invisible Intruder

What can I do, I ask? 

There's nothing left to say 

Why am I here? 

Why am I lost? 

"Spirit Dreams Inside" (L'Arc~en~Ciel)

Hmmm, this review is probably far longer than it should be. My reviews for Mitsuda's work always end up so talkative, even though I usually aim at something slightly shorter. Also: for some reason I always get fewer comments on my reviews whenever it's about a Western novel instead of a Japanese novel. It's not like I expect people to comment each and every time, but I expected more people to comment on Murder off Miami considering the gimmick and the fact it's actually available in English. Oh well.

Ever since I read Mitsuda Shinzou's Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono last year, I became a great fan of his Toujou Genya series. The series mixes brilliantly complex mystery plots with deep insights in local folklore, religions and history together with a distintive horror tone, resulting in absolutely amazing novels, and all four novels I've read until now were almost ridiculously good. In the reviews, I also mentioned that the novels were all relatively long, though they do make good use of their length. That said, I was curious whether this series could also work in a shorter form. Ikidama no Gotoki Daburu Mono ("Those Who Turn Double Like The Eidola", 2011) is the second short story collection of the series. Second? Yeah, I never read things in order. And it appears the series itself is also jumping in time. In the novels I've read until now, Toujou Genya is a horror/occult writer in the early fifties, who travels across Japan to research folklore, especially in the form of yokai, ghosts and other supernatural beings. This short story collection however is set several years before he started his professional writing career. In the five stories of this volume, which are set more-or-less one after another, Toujou Genya is still a college student not long after World War II, studying folklore in Tokyo under the guidance of professor Kimura Yumio. Genya has a 'gift' for running into mysterious, often seemingly impossible crime situations, occassionally due to the meddling of Abukumagawa Karasu, an immensely arrogant senior student who considers Genya his "disciple". Genya himself doesn't like getting into trouble of course and even when confronted with murder, he'd prefer let the police to their job, but sometimes the people around learn the fact that his father is in fact Toujou Gajou, the greatest detective of Japan whom even the police relies on in the most baffling of cases. While he and his father don't get along, it seems Genya has certainly inherited some of his father's mind, as the young student is quite capable of making sense of the numerous impossible murders and disappearances commited within the pages of this book.

In case you were wondering: yes, this book is still quite long, despite being a short story collection. Each of the stories is relatively long for a short story, so you end up with a book that isn't any shorter than the usual novels in this series. Despite their (relatively) reasonable length, the short stories are of course still quite different from the full novels, but they still follow a similar set-up, with at the heart usually a impossible situation as the main mystery plot, which usually ties up to some folklore or ghost story. The insane synergy between the various elements like you find the novels is of course not as pronounced in these shorter entries, but structure-wise, most of these stories are still very well-designed mystery stories, featuring all the tropes you'd want from a Toujou Genya story, including clever ways in which the background ghost/folklore story tying to the actual mystery and of course the multiple solutions.

The book starts with Shiryou no Gotoki Aruku Mono ("Those Who Walk Like The Dead Spirits"), which is set around New Year. Genya is the guest of Motomiya Takeshi, a professor in anthropology, specializing in African masks. Genya's teacher Kimura introduced Genya to this authority in anthropology. Genya isn't the only guest, as Motomiya also has four acadamics from various universities staying at his home during the New Year. Genya soon realizes that all four men are also interested in the daughter of Motomiya. One night, the scholars are exchanging scary stories, and Isaka Atsunori (an assistant-professor in spirit religions at Jounan University) tells about an experience he had with the Sugsho Tribe, where he was witness to a seance: during the seance he heard footsteps beneath their hut, which was supposedly the spirit walking beneath them. Afterwards, he indeed found footprints there, but while he at first thought somebody must've snuck below their hut, he realized later were no footprints going to or away from that spot, meaning no man could've left them there.

The four permanent guests of Motomiya live in a special annex building, The Four Quarters. As its name suggests, the building consists of four seperate quarters and one main hall with a tower: the four quarters form a square together encircling the inner court, while the main hall is situated between the rooms on the lower left and right corner when looked at the building from the sky. Covered passages connect these quarters (and the main hall), but curiously enough, the passages only connect to the closest quarter, so to get from the eastern passage to the southern passage, one must go inside the south-east quarter and take the other door out to the southern passage. The four scholars using the quarters have all set-up their interiors so bookcases shield off the two doors from the rest of the room, so unless you have business with the master of the room, it's the custom to just do a courtesy knock and then quickly slip in out and of the room. The day after the scary stories, Genya visits Inoda Fujio in his quarters, but Genya becomes witness to two baffling scenes. First he sees a pair of sandals walking on their own near the entrance to the snow-covered inner court, and when he looks out there, he notices Isaka lying in the pavillion in the court. The man has been poisoned by a poison of the Sugsho Tribe, but what makes this murder kooky is that there is only one set of footprints left in the snow that indicate how the murderer must've gotten away from the pavillion, but they don't make any sense:they walk away from Isaka, turn around once, and then back to go inside the main hall. But with a witness in the main hall, and Genya's own eyewitness of the walking sandals, it seems the only one who could've struck Isaka with a poisoned weapon, and then walked back into the main hall on sandals across the snow was an invisible spirit.

Sorry for the tediously long summary. To keep the rest short: this is an excellent footprints-in-the-snow story. Like the novels, the story revolves around a background folklore story with some supernatural elements, which then occurs in real-life (in this case, an invisible spirit that leaves footprints). There's a lot going on in this story, but what's impressive is that this one of those stories where suddenly everything falls in place once you realize what is going on. The clewing is really good in this story too, though it does help if you have some knowledge about Japanese culture (there is a kind of negative clue here, that really gives away everything once you know what it is, but it might be hard arriving at this if you have never heard of this custom).

In Tenma no Gotoki Tobu Mono ("Those Who Fly Like The Demons"), Abukumagawa Karasu tells Genya about the Mitsukuri family, which has a unique family kami they have deified. Outside their home is a small bamboo grove, which ends at a cliff. Long ago, Mitsukuri Muna'aki disappeared in the small bamboo grove even though his grandchildren were watching him and he was only out of their sight for a second due to the bamboo trees. Later, Muna'aki's son Munatoshi learned that in the past, a demon was supposed to live in the grove, so he decided to pacify both his disappeared father and the demon with a small shrine. The disappearances didn't stop there however, for during the war, a child too disappeared from the backyard of the Mitsukuris: a boy had crept inside to steal, but was found and tried to run away. Eventually, they found his footsteps running in the direction of the grove, but mysteriously, the footsteps stopped suddenly, as if the boy had been pulled right into the sky. There was no sign of the boy anywhere inside the grove. Later, the body of the boy was found beneath the cliff. Abukumagawa and Genya travel to the Mitsukuri home hoping to be able to study the Mitsukuri family deities, and their timing is almost mysteriously perfect. They learn a girl (the younger sister of the boy who died) was lurking around the house too, and to their horrible surprise, they find her footprints near the grove, but like her brother's, they too stopped mid-track, with no trace of the girl herself.

Another impossible footprints story, though this one is a bit easier to solve, I think. The mystery lies in how the person leaving the footprints could've suddenly disappeared, with no third party close by, nor anywhere where they could've gone. The basic idea behind the solution isn't hard to arrive at, but  it does rely partially on something which seems... well, not impossible perhaps, but perhaps a bit unlikely? There's a second mystery in the very last act of the story, where Genya is convinced something is hidden within a room but can't find it. The clue pointing to the actual location is integrated really well in the story, but the actual location itself seems rather farfetched too. I actually think this story, while not bad, is actually in terms of structuring and clewing than the actual solution revealed.

Shirou no Gotoki Shitataru Mono ("Those Who Drip Like Corpse Wax") is the third and last story about impossible footprints in this collection. After the events of the opening story, Professor Motomiya learns that Genya is an aspiring horror writer, and decides to reveals to Genya that his friend Professor Tsuchibuchi of Jounan University is actually the famous horror writer Inoki Miroku and offers to introduce him to the professor, knowing that there is one other thing at the Tsuchibuchi manor which will interest Genya. Tsuchibuchi's father Shouzou had started his own Miroku (Maitreya) sect and eventually decided to practice sokushinbutsu. This is a practice where the goal is to mummify one's own body while alive, by meditating in a hole in the ground without taking food or water, as so to "turn into a Buddha instantly." Obviously, Shouzou died while doing this. After Shouzou's death, rumors went his mummy haunted three of his former followers, who had betrayed him, but in fact the mummy is buried on the small island in the middle of the large pond in the garden of Tsuchuchi manor. Genya is introduced to Professor Tsuchibuchi and his family and is offered a bed that night, but near the morning, he is awakened by the call of the professor outside. The body of a woman (one of the people renting a room in the large manor) is lying dead on the island in the pond and Genya also notices there are only two sets of footprints in the snow on both the bridge and in the garden: those of the victim herself, and those of the professor himself as he walked up to the body. The professor has an alibi for the night, so how was the woman killed on the island if nobody else left any footprints?

Oh man, this is one densely structured impossible crime story, with a lot of fake solutions. False solutions are a major trope in the Toujou Genya stories, but whereas it's easy to imagine how Mitsuda can work with them in a long novel, it's amazing to see how he can bring the same complexity to a story that it's only a fifth of the lenght of his regular novels! Each of the false solutions doesn't come out of nowhere, but is properly clewed, and the way they are eventually dismissed is of course also founded upon actual clews presented to you in a fair way, or dismissed on perfectly logical grounds. The final solution is great too: what makes this one especially memorable is how a seemingly supernatural event mentioned by a young witness suddenly makes perfect sense, making the supernatural suddenly extremely realistic.

The title story Ikidama no Gotoki Daburu Mono ("Those Who Turn Double Like The Eidola") is not about footprints, but about ikidama or eidola, or doppelganger spirits. Yachio Ryuunosuke is a student who hopes to pick Genya's mind on a certain family matter. It was only during the war when he was still a child, that Ryuunosuke realized the man who used to visit him and his mother once a month was actually his father and that his mother was his mistress. During the war however, Ryuunosuke's mother sent her son to Yachio Takeru's home to be faraway from the bombs falling on Tokyo, though she herself didn't go because of her pride, and she eventually perished in the war. At Takeru's home, Ryuunosuke learned he was Takeru's third son. Takeru's official wife had already passed away, leaving only their eldest son Kumanosuke. Tomoko, another mistress of Takeru, is the mother of Takeru's second son Toranosuke. Tomoko is staying at Takeru's home too, as Toranosuke had gone off to the battlefield as a brave soldier, while Kumanosuke, born with a weak body, had not been drafted. During his stay, Ryuunosuke realizes Tomoko is hoping to become Takeru's new wife and have Toranosuke become Takeru's new heir, but the war changes everything. His bad health eventually kills Kumanosuke and Toranasuke too is declared dead by the authorities at the end of the war. However it turns he's not dead and he does return from the war with horrible injuries to his face, and partial amnesia. Two years later however, another person appears who claims he's Toranosuke and not even his mother can tell which one of them is the real. This leaves the Yachios with a big problem, for who of the two is to become Takeru's heir?

The main problem reminds of Yokomizo Seishi The Inugami Clan, with an heir coming back from the battlefield with horrible injuries to the face, making it impossible to know whether they are really the person they claim to be (a theme that you'll find in other works by Yokomizo). In this story, Genya is asked to figure out which of the two is real, and things take an unexpected turn when one of the Toranosukes apparently commits suicide. While this story does not feature a situation that is as clearly defined as the previous 'footprints in the snow' theme (it is hard to imagine how Genya will figure out who the real Toranosuke is), this story is actually incredibly well-plotted and clewed. I praised the previous story for its complexity with fake solutions: this one builds even further on that theme, with Genya proposing like half a dozen hypotheses about who the real Toranasuke would be, who the fake Toranosuke would be and several different motives. It's amazing how many hints and clues Mitsuda has managed to stuff into this story, but every hypothesis is properly supported by all the foreshadowing and never feels like it's suddenly dropped on you. The way each hypothesis eventually leads into each other, ending with Genya's surprising final conclusion is absolutely fantastic, and reminds of the way Genya does his thing in the longer novels too.

In the final story, Kaonashi no Gotoki Sarau Mono ("Those Who Abduct Like The Faceless"), Genya invites himself to a small gathering of students who hang around to tell each other scary stories. One of them, Hirata, tells about how when he was a child, he saw a kid disappear. He used to live in a nagaya 'row house', with several residences housed in one long building. One of his friends was Yuuki, who was of one of the better-to-do families in the nagaya neigborhood (at least, his family thought so). Around New Year, travelling perfomers would come to the neigborhood and do their act, but that year, Yuuki said he realized that one of those performers was a burglar, and that he had recognized him. He said he'd confront the performer, so he went alone into the small secluded corner of the nagaya block, where the performers were. That particular spot is basically a cul-de-sac: most of that little spot is blocked off by the nagaya houses and the east side is completely blocked by the river (and a high fence). There are only two entrances to the place: either just by going through the front passing by the nagaya houses and turning the corner, or taking the gate at the northern part of that spot, but that gate is usually locked, with the key in the possession of those who move out the human waste. Hirata was waiting for Yuuki to return, but eventually, the performers all left that spot one by one and when Hirata took a look, he found Yuuki had disappeared. Yuuki had obviously not left with the performers, nor was there any other exit by which he could've left without Hirata, or some other passerby notice him, so how did Yuuki disappear? The solution can be guessed pretty easily, though you'll have to make sure you're not going for the false solution, as there are plenty of them once again. What makes this story memorable however is how Mitsuda eventually shifts the focus of the problem to the practical how: while the basic idea of how it was done seems simple enough, the problem of actually arranging and executing it is actually far more complex, and the explanation Genya gives of how it was done is chillingly horrible. It's more of a psychological explanation at heart, but Mitsuda does go the effort to hint this through another part of the story, and it works mostly.

For a short story collection that is only five stories long, this review has been incredibly long I think, so I'll get to the conclusion right away. Ikidama no Gotoki Daburu Mono is an excellent short story collection that is mostly focused on impossible situations, and almost miraculously, it also managed to utilize the complex plot structures of the (very) long novels in these shorter stories. Folklore serving as a background story and clue to the main mystery plot, devilishly constructed false solutions and so many subtle clues: everything you'd expect from a Toujou Genya story is to be found here too. This series has yet to disappoint, and I very doubt it will ever, considering the crazy quality of each of the entries I've read until now.

Original Japanese title(s):  三津田信三『生霊の如き重るもの』:「死霊の如き歩くもの」/「天魔の如き跳ぶもの」/「屍蝋の如き滴るもの」/「生霊の如き重るもの」/「顔無の如き攫うもの」

Who Took the Book?

"Don't judge a book by its cover"

Idiom

Last year, I reviewed Ashibe Taku's Double Mystery, which had an interesting set-up as a physical product: the book consisted of two seperate narratives, each starting at a different end of the book. You could start reading from either side, and in the middle (where the two narratives meet), there was a sealed section, which you had to cut open to find out the solution to the two mysteries presented. ....And next I was going to write that somebody in the comment section there dropped the name Dennis Wheatley in regards to me writing about sealed pages in mystery fiction and how you'd sometimes see them in relatively modern Japanese publications, but.... there's no such comment. Huh. So err, I totally forgot where I first learned of the name Dennis Wheatley. Anyway, Wheatley was an English writer and in the 1930s, he came up with a series of mystery fiction not presented in a novel (story) form, but as actual case files. Inside the folder-like productions, you'd find official police reports, photographs, telegrams, handwritten letters and other physical pieces of evidence like strands of hair and matches. The idea was that you'd get to examine all the facts and evidence yourself. At the end of the booklet, you find a section with sealed pages, and by cutting them open, you could find out whether your solution to the mystery presented was correct.

A while ago, I happened to come across a complete copy of the first of the four Crime Dossiers Dennis Wheatley and writing partner J.G. Links published, titled Murder Off Miami (1934). When you open the folder, you first find a telegram sent from the yacht the Golden Gull, which had left Miami earlier that evening. One of the guests on board of the Golden Gull, the British soap magnate Bolitho Blane, had apparently committed suicide during its trip, prompting the immediate return of the Gull. The next document you find is an internal police memo where Police Captain Schwab puts Inspector Kettering on the case. The Golden Gull is the property of Carlton Rocksavage, a rival soap magnate who lately had been in a very fierce product war with Blane, leaving both of them close to self-destruction. Blane had been invited for the yacht trip, among some other guests of Rocksavage and his daughter, to see if they could work something out that would be less harmful to both of them. Before dinner however, Blane disappeared from the yacht, and in his place a suicide note was found. At first, the case seems simple, but some marks in the carpet indicating a body had been pulled across it then appear to suggest Blane didn't jump out of the window of his cabin on his own. What follows are all the police reports (with the testimonies of all the witnesses and suspects) and the evidence found by Kettering addressed to Schwab. At the end, it seems Kettering is completely baffled by the events, but Schwab manages to solve the whole case based solely on everything Kettering himself had gathered.

I have not played any real Escape Room games myself yet, but I had to think of them constantly as I was going through Murder Off Miami, for the basic concept is the same: within a very minimalistic approach to narrative, "you" (the reader/player) use "real" evidence and reports to solve the crime yourself. It is a game set-up in a sense, but modern mystery videogames are narratively speaking far, far deeper than what Murder Off Miami offers. The whole "narrative" of Murder Off Miami is solely presented through official documents and piece of evidence, so as a tale it's rather bare-bones. You won't be here for the deep characterization, the witty author's voice or for some quotable prose. The exact intention might not be the same, and there is of course the limitations in technology back then, but an actual videogame nowadays usually offers everything Murder Off Miami has (you basically always collect evidence and testimonies in mystery games), but usually presented with an actual story and characters, rather than getting to know everybody through police testimonies. Again, presenting a prose story is not the intention of Wheatly and Links here, but I think it is worth noting that Murder Off Miami will remind of modern mystery videogames, but is at the heart also very different.

The goal is to put yourself in the place of Captain Schwab, and figure out what happened to Blane aboard the Golden Gull based solely on the information obtained from the dossier. As you go through the five different reports of Kettering, you get to know the cast of suspects, among them a wealthy widow who's whole fortune depends on Rocksavage making it through, a Japanese negiotiator who hopes to get a soap deal for his government and a sly society man who is more than meets the eye. But you'll also find a wealth of other evidence: photographs taken from the suspects during their police interviews, a lot of handwritten letters (even on in Japanese!), telegrams, diagrams of the Golden Gull. Heck, even strands of hair retrieved from a comb and a match are included in the dossier!

Given you get all these kinds of documents and pieces of evidence, you of course expect the mystery plot to make use of this fantastic gimmick, right? And in a way, it does. And in a way, it does not. First of all, I think the main mystery is perfectly solvable without even looking at the physical evidence like the hairs and photographs. It's pretty easy to figure out who did it (even if the motive is a bit... undeveloped) based solely on the police interviews. In fact, I pretty much guessed who'd it was in the very first report, even before I got to the photographs and stuff, and all the subsequent reports by Kettering only support my theory. And once you figured out who did it, all the rest is just bonus points. That said, the physical evidence collected in the dossier does help further support the solution, though some of these clues can be a bit hard to figure out (the printing isn't really good and some of the clues I shrugged off as "I totally thought that was how things were in the 30s). I would guess that most people who are able to solve this mystery, figure it out based on the police interviews. Once you think you're done, you have to cut open the seal of the last few pages, in which Schwab explains to Kettering who the murderer is and how he figured it out. My copy was already unsealed of course, but if you happen to have a copy too, you could just seal it yourself with some tape before you start with it, of course.

When these dossiers were first published, there were of course worries about whether they would sell, as they took on a very curious form. In fact, it's insane how they did these books. Everything is printed in different kinds of paper in different formats (the telegram is small on cheap paper, the police reports are on typing paper, a letter is written on good quality paper), there's a sealed section in the back, there's friggin' hair and a match in a little plastic bag... No normal publisher could just print and bind the thing, so it must've taken a lot of labor to put these things together. The whole package reminds more of a board game than a book. Apparently, Murder Off Miami managed to sell 120,000 copies within six months (and it is even said Queen Mary bought six copies on release date), so it definitely did hit it off with this concept, but was it really necessary to publish Murder Off Miami in this manner, in the sense that the mystery plot actually demanded this? No. Not really. They could have just printed the whole thing like a normal book, with photographs of the evidence and it'd still work exactly the same. Of course, it's more fun the way they did, but practical, it certainly was not. Apparently, they later made cheaper versions of the four Crime Dossiers without the physical evidence, sealed pages and the ten types of paper and ink and stuff, and at least for Murder Off Miami, I can't see it hurting the mystery plot in any manner. Funnily enough, it appears there's an actual videogame based of Murder Off Miami too.

I did enjoy Murder Off Miami as an experience: it's really fun going through all the police reports and looking with your own eyes, and even holding all the evidence that is usually just described in a few sentences in a story. As a mystery story however, Murder Off Miami is a bit simple, and it's not a story that is made possible because of the concept, but more a story that also makes use of the concept. So that was a bit disappointing, because I was expecting san experience that could only be presented in this way. As complete, good condition copies of the actual dossiers aren't really cheap, I think that if I were to return to this series, I'll try to find the cheaper reprinted versions.

Circle of Blood

潔くカッコよく生きていこう・・・

たとえ2人離ればなれになっても・・・

take my revolution 

「輪舞 - Revolution」（奥井雅美)

Let's live on bravely and heroically...

Even if the two of us will be seperated...

take my revolution

"Rondo - Revolution" (Okui Masami)

I tried to delay writing this review a couple of times: I just have so little to say about it. I really dislike writing reviews about books I feel somewhat indifferent about. With books I don't like, I can at least point out what I don't like and make comparisons with better examples with similar ideas. With great indifference comes... a great distinct lack of writing hooks. At least in my case.

Getting in the special crimes division had been rookie detective Kominato Shinsuke's wish, so there was much joy when he was appointed there as the subordinate of the veteran Umikata Fusanari. At least, that was until he learned that Umikata was an extremely lazy detective and that Kominato was mainly appointed to him to keep an eye on his boss. So he cherished his free days when he was released from babysitting Umikata, but his day at the horse races turned into a normal working day nonetheless. The man standing behind Kominato in the crowd was stabbed, falling on top of him, making him the first person to "find" the victim. When Umikata arrives at the scene, the veteran quickly recognizes the murder as the handiwork of Tsutsumi, a local gangster he knows. While not a professional assassin, Tsutsumi has committed several murders for his gang and Umikata says there's no need for the police to look for him: the orders for these kind of men are not just to kill their target, but also to confess to the murder with some fake, private motive and do the time for them so the gang won't face any trouble from this. The news that Tsutsumi himself was killed right after the first murder therefore came as a surprise to Umikata, but they quickly figure out who Tsutsumi's murderer is. But then this person is killed too... What lies behind this chain of murders in Awasaka Tsumao's Shisha no Rinbu ("Rondo of the Dead", 1985)?

This is the first of Awasaka's two novels starring the duo of police inspectors Umikata and Kominato, which now I think about it is pretty interesting, as practically all the books I've read by Awasaka up until now featured amateur detectives (EDIT: Yeah, I read this book and wrote this review long before I read Youtou S79-Gou. I shuffled a lot with this review) Well, A Tomoichirou was technically a secret agent of the Tokugawa Shogunate so something like a police officer, but his descendant A Aiichirou is a photographer, and other books featured for example magicians as detectives, or an ex-boxer-turned-financial-detective... I was kinda surprised to see a normal police detective duo as the protagonists. But once you see the banter between Umikata and Kominato, you're quickly reminded that you are indeed reading an Awasaka novel, as the comedic tone is instantly recognizable. In this novel, most of the comedy is derived from the very lazy inspector Umikata and the way he uses his subordinate Kominato. Umikata is actually a fairly competent detective when he puts his mind to it, being capable to make sharp deductions based on the smallest of hints, but he usually prefers the easy way out of things, and would rather have things sort themselves out than having to interfere himself.

We are not presented with an impossible crime or something similar this time, but an enigmatic problem that is featured in both the title of the novel, as well as revealed quite early in the narrative: there is some kind of murder relay going on, with the murderers of one case turning into the victims of the next one. This theory is proposed by Umikata very early on, and most of the novel is therefore not really spent on figuring whodunnit, or even howdunnit, but finding out why this is happening, and how they can stop it. One gripe I have with this novel is that the device of a murder relay is made clear very early on in this book, but there's little extra added to the plot from that point on. Most of the book is seeing how the relay further unfolds with the police as mere onlookers after the fact, so for a very long time, it feels you're reading about events you already knew were coming. As a mystery novel, I think the idea is that the appeal comes from guessing how this relay will eventually end, and Awasaka does play with the conclusion of this game, but on the whole, I'd say Shisha no Rinbu is a better in idea than execution. Whereas his debut novel 11 Mai no Trump was a tour-de-force in clewing, Shisha no Rinbu's clewing is pragmatic at best, as it's boring and hastily done, without properly going through the process of foreshadowing ~ pay-off.

"Simply going through the motions" is not the right way to explain it, but Shisha no Rinbu's plot feels so...bare compared to other Awasaka's novels. The initial idea of the murder relay is definitely alluring, but then it just... happens and there is little there to turn the idea into a real experience. The comedy between Umikata and Kominato is okay, but never as fun as in the A Aiichirou series. The captivating insight into special fields of interests like stage magic or toys as seen in other novels isn't here either. The expect and subtle clewing and foreshadowing that made other novels a delight is nowhere to be seen here. There's just too little in addition to the first idea, and while I wouldn't say Shisha no Rinbu is a bad novel, I have read enough Awasaka by now to know he could do much, much better than here.

And because the overall plot is fairly light, there's little I can add to what I've already said by now. Shisha no Rinbu has a great starting point with a murder relay as the focus, but it does not try to go far beyond this initial idea, resulting in a novel that feels a bit barren. The conclusion too will not come as a total surprise, and yet you feel it could've been pulled off better if we had seen more of Awasaka's A game here. So a missed chance here.

Original Japanese title(s): 泡坂妻夫　『死者の輪舞』

Game of Shadows

「今回の犯人は、常にフェアプレイを好むスポーツマンです。人を殺したという以外は、実に公明正大な人物です。 そして、アメリカ大リーグで活躍する、ある日本人野球選手と全く同じ名前で、顔もそっくりです。しかし、別人です。お間違えのないように」

『古畑任三郎：フェアな殺人者』

"This episode's culprit is a sportsman who enjoys a fair game. Save for the fact he killed a man, he's actually a spendid, upright person. He shares his name with a certain Japanese baseball player who's active in the American Major League and he also looks exactly the same. But they are not the same person. Don't confuse them."

"Furuhata Ninzaburou: The Fair Murderer"

Earlier this week, the Japanese news reported heavily on the announcement by baseball player Suzuki Ichirou, better known as simply Ichiro, that he was retiring. The mass attention for this announcement was not surprising. I myself know nothing about baseball, but Ichiro is known as one of the most famous athletes of Japan ever, and is a popular sportsman in both the American Major League and his home country. But to mystery fans, he is perhaps better known as that one murderer.

For Ichiro once starred in an episode of the television drama Furuhata Ninzaburou. In fact, it was only through Furuhata Ninzaburou that I first heard of him and because it has been a while, I decided to pop the DVD in again last night. The inverted mystery show Furuhata Ninzaburou, conceived by playwright Mitani Kouki, ran for three seasons and one final special season between 1994-2006 and was heavily inspired by Columbo. The show starred the somewhat eccentric, peculiar and very petty Lieutenant Furuhata of the Tokyo police, assisted by his bumbling subordinate Imaizumi and later the capable, but close-minded Saionji as they tackled cases in which we, the viewer, already knew who committed the crime and how and where like in Columbo, the fun was in seeing how Furuhata was going to solve the case. One unique characteristic of the show was that Furuhata talked directly to the viewer twice: in the avant-title, he'd start with a random story or observation which usually turns out to have something to do with the main story, whereas in the latter half of the episode, he'd always challenge the viewer directly when he figured the whole thing out, asking the viewer whether they got the answer too.

Furuhata Ninzaburou Final was broadcast in 2006 and consisted of three long specials and in the second episode, The Fair Murderer, we are introduced to the famous baseball player Ichiro who plays in the MLB in the States. In the avant-title, Furuhata assures us by the way that the Ichiro in this episode just happens to share his name with a certain famous Japanese MLB player and who also just happens to look exactly like that other man. Ichiro is back in Japan for a charity event for children. On the day of his arrival, Furuhata and his subordinates Imaizumi and Saijonji visit the hotel where Ichiro is staying, to visit their old friend and former colleague Mukoujima. Mukoujima recently quit his job as a police constable to work at this hotel as a security guard. To their great surprise, they see Ichiro himself coming down to the guards' office to have a chat with Mukoujima whining about wanting to get out for a quick snack, and it's only afterwards that they learn that Ichiro is in fact Mukoujima's younger half-brother. What they do not learn however is that Mukoujima's been blackmailed for some time now by a sleazy reporter with the name Kooriyama, who has not only found out a minor slip-up Mukoujima made when he was a police officer, but the man also knows he's the brother of Ichiro. Fearing his own slip-up will ruin Ichiro's sports career, Mukoujima plans to kill Kooriyama, but realizing his older brother will never be able to pull such a scheme succesfully Ichiro decides to murder the man himself to save his brother. After the body of Kooriyama is discovered in the underground parking lot of the hotel, Furuhata quickly realizes he's dealing with a strange murderer this time, because the killer has left clues on purpose, as if they are hoping for a fair game with the police...

What makes this episode so memorable is of course that Ichiro is really just playing himself. Apparently, the character in this episode was originally planned to be called "Hachiro", but Ichiro himself proposed to use his real name, and it results in a very strange experience where reality and fiction is mixed. This had happened before in this series by the way, when the five members of the boy band SMAP played themselves in a story where SMAP killed a blackmailer during their concert. What's also surprising about the Ichiro episode however is that... Ichiro's actually pretty good at acting. I mean, I guess playing yourself helps, but he really didn't feel out of his league compared to the other professional actors in the episode.

The core mystery plot of the episode is a bit simple, though that has an in-universe explanation, as Ichiro only took over from his brother at the last moment, and most importantly, Ichiro is portrayed as a sportsman who enjoys the game. Throughout the episode, he states he likes to play fair and square, which is why he left one clue at the crime scene so the police'd have a chance at getting to him, and throughout the episode, he never lies to the police to protect himself. In fact, Furuhata soon realizes what is going on, and even suggests that if he were to ask Ichiro on the spot whether he was the murderer, he was sure Ichiro'd sooner admit to the fact honestly rather than lie. This idea of a 'fair-play' murderer who tries to get away while not coming up with elaborate alibi tricks and similar idas definitely helps the otherwise simple mystery plot, really changing it into a game of wits, as Furuhata himself is too proud too to get Ichiro in a simple manner, and wants the sportsman to admit defeat on his own. The way Ichiro is finally caught is incredibly common in inverted mystery fiction, so it's not really shocking, but there are a few scenes that are memorable from a mystery point of view, for example the unique way in which Ichiro decides to get rid of a damning piece of evidence (only possible because he's Ichiro) and the initial deduction of Furuhata which first set him on Ichiro's trail.

If you have the occasion to watch this episode of Furuhata Ninzaburou, I can definitely recommend it. It's incredibly fun to see Ichiro playing himself as a murderer, and while the core plot might seem a bit too familiar at times, the little things in the script that help cement the idea that it's really Ichiro who committed the murder do really help set this episode apart in a series which is already full with memorable murderers.

Original Japanese title(s): 『フェアな殺人者』

The Secret of the Old Clock

TIME TO LIVE TIME TO LIE 

TIME TO CRY TIME TO DIE

『Confused Memories』（円谷憂子）

Time to live, time to lie

Time to cry, time to die

"Confused Memories" (Tsuburaya Yuuko)

I have a tendency to read mystery series, I noticed lately. Of the writers I regularly read and review, I don't think there's even one where I'm solely reading non-series. I just enjoy having a framework and recurring characters, I think, as you kinda know what to expect when you read a certain series in terms of style of plotting etcetera.

(Disclosure: I translated Norizuki Rintarou's short story The Lure of the Green Door)

So while I have read quite a few of short story collections by Norizuki Rintarou, Shiramitsushi no Tokei (2008) is actually the first time I read a non-series book written by him, as all the other books I've read by Norizuki were part of his Norizuki Rintarou series, which is about the same-named mystery author who solves crimes with his father Inspector Norizuki in a totally Ellery Queen-inspired set-up. The ten stories collected in this volume however here are not part of any series, save for the last story, which is an early version of what would later be rewritten to a series novel. The ten stories were originally published between 1998 and 2008 in various magazines, and range from suspense thrillers and pastiches to not-really-mysteries.

To start with the conclusion: don't expect the pure puzzle plot mysteries like the ones we know and love from the Rintarou short story collections. The stories where Norizuki really shows off his love for Ellery Queen and for logical reasoning, for classic mystery tropes as the locked room mystery, the true whodunnit and other brilliant and surprising ideas, as well as engaging and funny short stories are to be found in those short story collections. Shiramitsubushi no Tokei features a variety of styles I myself hadn't seen Norizuki utilize before, and I know the reception of this volume is fairly good because there's variety in here, but save for the title story and maybe two or three other stories, few of them are what I would consider "typically" Norizuki. Which isn't a bad thing per se, but I certainly don't think this volume is indicative of Norizuki's plotting talent. It's, to borrow Monthy Python's words, something completely different. It's like only reading Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot short stories, and then reading Witness for the Prosecution for the first time. It's just different, and perhaps not what you attracted you to the author in the first place.

Shiyouchuu ("Occupied") is inspired by Stanley Ellin's short story The Moment of Decision, and features a locked room situation, though it is not a locked room mystery. I can't write too much about it, as the story is basically building up to a punchline, but it involves an arrogant writer, his rather hopeless editor and a vengeful waitress at the cafe where the writer and his editor are meeting. Again, it's not really a mystery story, just a playful story that plays with the notion/concept of what a locked room murder is.

Double Play is a story I had already read some years ago, as it was included in the lackluster anthology Futoumei na Satsujin. It deals with a murder exchange, with our protagonist having just about enough of his wife when another man pops up at the batting center, asking our protagonist whether he wouldn't want to kill his uncle for him, offering to kill the protagonist's wife instead. This is a suspense story that is admittedly well-written, but it's a shame it wasn't written as a true puzzler, as a bit more build-up to the ending (more clues/foreshadowing) would've made this story better in my opinion.

Shirouto Gei ("Amateur Skill") is a fairly short story where a man accidently kills his wife after a row about her spending a fortune on ventriloquism lessons and a dummy. This wasn't the first time the two had a loud fight though, so this fatal fight alarmed the neighbor. As the husband realizes the neighbor isn't really put at rest just by him saying everything is alright and refusing to let the neighbor to see his wife, he quickly hurries to hide his wife's body as he's sure the neighbor will call the police. As he tries to fool the two detectives though, it seems the dummy has other plans for him.... A surprisingly funny short, but again not much of a puzzler, more a story that builds to a punchline.

Nusumareta Tegami ("The Purloined Letter") is not a pastiche of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin series, but of Jorge Luis Borges' Death and the Compass, starring the detective Erik Lönnrot. This story is set before Death and the Compass, and has Lönnrot trying to solve the puzzle how his nemesis Red Scharlach managed to steal an letter of indiscretion written by the wife of a general, to a man she had fallen in love with. The wife had taken lengths to protect her letter to the man, with her locking her letter inside a special box, which was locked by a padlock of her own. After receiving this package, her lover locked the box himself with his own padlock and sent the box (with two padlocks now) unopened back to the wife, who then unlocked her lock, and sent it back to her lover for him to finally open the box. Yet somehow Red Scharlach managed to get hold of the letter which was at all times protected by at least one lock. The solution is rather obvious though, especially with the opening quote, and it's actually the same idea as another story in this collection, only in another context.

In Memoriam and Neko no Junrei ("The Cat Pilgrimage") are both not mystery stories, but stories that feature curious and surprising settings. In Memoriam is a short short of just four pages, about a secret club of authors who, as a game, write obituaries for collegues who are still alive. Neko no Junrei is the almost fantasy-like tale about the "cat pilgrimage", a journey cats undertake when they reach a certain age to a cave near Mt. Fuji. Sometimes, the cats run away from home for a month or two to go on the pilgrimage, but sometimes, worried owners make use of guided cat pilgrimage tours to bring their own cat to their destination. The story is about a couple making up their mind whether they'll allow their cat to go or not.

Yonshoku Mondai ("The Four Color Problem") is a pastiche of Tsuzuki Michio's Taishoku Keiji ("The Retired Detective") series, of which I have read nothing, but it is apparently about a police detective who sometimes talks about some cases with his father, who is a retired policeman himself. This time, the son is working on the strange murder of an actress, who starred recently in the action superhero series Time Task Force ChronoRangers as Chrono Blue. Leaks of photographs secretly taken of her and the female co-star who played Chrono Pink undressing and using the shower have been going around, and while an assistant-director on the ChronoRangers team had to take the fall, it appears that was just a studio cover-up, and the actress suspected that one of the four male leads (who played Chrono Red, Chrono Green, Chrono Yellow and Chrono Black) was behind it all. It appears she had confronted the person she suspected, who then stabbed her in the stomach. However, the actress hadn't died immediately, and for some reason, she pulled the knife out of her body to carve an X in her arm, and she removed her watch and necklace too. But why? It's one of those dying message stories that depends on rather specific knowledge to make any sense, and while Norizuki tries to set-up the decisive clue, it still doesn't take away from the fact that you won't be able to solve this unless you happen to know about a certain piece of trivia.

Yuurei wo Yatotta Onna ("The Woman Who Hired A Ghost") is a pastiche of Tsuzuki Michio's Quart Gallon series, which in turn was a pastiche of Ed McBain's hardboiled mystery I'm Cannon - For Hire (credited as Curt Cannon). Gallon was once a private detective who nearly committed a double murder after finding his wife and his best friend in the same bed, and now he lives in the Bowery, deprived of his credentials. Which doesn't stop people from trying to hire him anyway. A woman hires Gallon to find out what's wrong with her husband. The husband has been lost in thought the last week, and even bought a gun 'for protection', even though nothing has happened in the artists' shop he runs. An okay hardboiled story, but the title gives the game away, I think.

Shiramitsubushi no Tokei ("Leave No Clock Unturned") is the title story and the masterpiece of this collection. "You" find yourself waking up in a small, round room completely encircled by a hall as part of a job interview for a leading think tank. There are no windows in these rooms and the temperature inside is completely computer-controlled. In the hallway, "you" find 1440 different running clocks, each indicating a different time down to the minute (12:00, 12:01, 12:02 etc.). "Your" assignment: figure out which of these 1440 clocks is indicating the correct time, within a time limit of six hours! This is a true puzzler, with a truly devilish conundrum, for how are you going to find out the correct time if there's a clock for every minute of the day, which are obviously all running as you're working on the problem, and you can't even look outside to guess what time it should be! Norizuki however shows a perfectly logical manner to find the correct clock among the 1440 clocks. Shiramitsubushi no Tokei does feel more like a logic puzzle or quiz rather than literature, I admit, but man, this is what you'd expect from a mystery writer who places so much emphasis on logical reasoning like Norizuki! 

Two Of Us has an interesting backstory: it was originally written for the Kyoto University Mystery Club's club anthology Souanoshiro, which is sold at the annual campus festival in November. I have actually seen the original version of this story myself in one of the old Souanoshiros while I was in Kyoto. The story does feature Norizuki's characters Rintarou and his father Inspector Norizuki, though the spelling of Rintarou's name is different, as Norizuki Rintarou changed the spelling of his name when he became a professional author (if you go through the old Mystery Club magazines, you'll only find the old spelling). Two of Us was eventually rewritten to a full novel in the Rintarou series titled Ni no Higeki. Neither the novel, nor this original short story version would count towards my favorite Norizuki's to be honest, as the emphasis in this novel lies far more on the human relations than the deductions of Rintarou. In fact, for the true logic puzzlers you're off much better with the Rintarou short stories, as save for some early entries, the novels never really manage to be as awesome as the short stories in terms of pure puzzle plots.

So personally, I can't say Shiramitsushi no Tokei was my favorite Norizuki short story collection, with a very simple reason: all the awesome puzzle plot short stories we saw in the Rintarou short story collections weren't to be found here. If you are not as puzzle-plot focused as I am, you might enjoy the sheer variety of this collection, and at any rate, the title story Shiramitsubushi no Tokei is really a masterpiece, but in general, I'd say try out Norizuki's other short story collections before coming here.

Original Japanese title(s): 法月綸太郎　『しらみつぶしの時計』：「使用中」/「ダブル・プレイ」/「素人芸」/「盗まれた手紙」/「イン・メモリアム」/「猫の巡礼」/「四色問題」/「幽霊をやとった女」/「しらみつぶしの時計」/「トゥ・オブ・アス」

Model Crime

「でも何ていうか、あなたはそうは見えなかったから」

「よく言われます」

『最後の一冊』

 

"But you see, you didn't look like you were the boss here."

"I'm often told that."

"The Last Volume"

I don't remember when I first heard of mystery author Ookura Takahiro, but I know quite a few years passed between me first learning of him, and me actually getting to know something written by him.  Surprisingly through, my first experience with Ookura was through Detective Conan. Ookura was the scriptwriter for the 2017 Detective Conan theatrical feature The Crimson Love Letter, but in the lead-up to the release of the film, he also wrote the screenplay for episode 829, The Mysterious Boy, of the animated TV series, which was the first time I had seen anything created by Ookura. The Crimson Love Letter was an excellent mystery film (and the novel version written by Ookura was also okay), so I grew very interested in seeing more of Ookura's work, and what better way to start than with one of his more famous creations? And yes, I know he's also working on the 2019 Detective Conan: The Fist of the Blue Sapphire, but the trailer didn't really manage to hit the right places for me quite yet.

Fukuie is a small woman with short, black hair and a pair of frame-less glasses who is often mistaken for a college student, but she is in fact a lieutenant of the Metropolitan Police Department, in charge of homicide investigations. Despite her unassuming appearance and sometimes even careless habits (she often forgets her police badge), criminals are warned not to underestimate this woman, as she has a keen eye for details, and no matter how crafty a plan might be, you count on in it that Lieutenant Fukuie will not only figure everything out, she'll also be sure to come up with some way to actually arrest the criminal with proof. Whether you're a librarian trying to save the library from being sold off or an actress killing off her blackmailing rival, Lieutenant Fukuie will always find the weak spots in the criminal's plan and bring everything tumbling down in Ookura Takahiro's short story collection Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu ("The Greetings of Lieutenant Fukuie", 2006), which also carries the alternative English title of Enter Lieutenant Fukuie.

The Lieutenant Fukuie series is one of Ookura's best known series, especially as it has also seen TV adaptations. Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu is the first book in the still-running inverted detective series. As in the tradition of all great inverted mystery fiction, each story is told from the perspective of the culprit, who carries out their murderous plan. At first, their plans seem foolproof, but then the lieutenant appears, and starts picking out small contradictions left here and there. It might seem Lieutenant Fukuie is just guessing, but by the time the culprit realizes how crafty Fukuie really is, it's already too late and for the reader, the fun of the mystery lies in not guessing whodunit, but how Fukuie is going to figure out what really happened. The Lieutenant Fukuie series is obviously heavily inspired by Columbo, though something interesting has to be mentioned here. Ookura has penned several official novelizations of Columbo in the past and while Ookura was credited as "translator" for these novelizations, he was the person who actually wrote these novels (the prose) especially for the Japanese market. These novelizations were based on the original screenplays of existing episodes, or plot outlines for unfilmed stories, which Ookura then had to expand into a novel-form. For these books, people like Columbo creators Levinson & Link, or other screenplay writers were credited for the "original work", though technically, they didn't write the specific novel form of these stories, which were entirely Ookura's invention and don't exist outside Japan. In a way, it's no wonder Ookura would later write his own inverted mystery stories about a police lieutenant.

By the way, the animation sequence accompanying the fiftieth ending song of Detective Conan (La PomPon's cover of Zard's Unmei no Roulette Mawashite) has the regular cast dressed as characters from several famous police and detective TV dramas, and Ran is featured as Lieutenant Fukuie, looking in her bag for her police badge as always.

One thing I find difficult about writing about inverted mystery stories is figuring out how much I should write about the plot actually, as in most inverted stories, a lot is already revealed to the reader. In fact, the fun in these stories often lies in the fact that although the reader knows more about the facts of the case than the Lieutenant, she'll usually still out-think you. In order not to spoil too much, I'll keep my summaries for the four stories rather short. The volume opens with Saigo no Issatsu ("The Last Volume"), which stars Amamiya Sachiko, head librarian of the Enamito Library. Enamito Kousuke was during his life a true connoisseur of books and when he retired, he had his secretary Sachiko become head of his own library, but after his death, the library became the property of his son Hirohisa, a no-good bum who is keen on selling off everything as soon as he can to get some money. Sachiko plans to kill Hirohisa in order to save the library, and she dresses the scene so it looks like Hirohisa had snuck into the library himself in order to steal some rare books to sell. This first story is a not particularly baffling, but still entertaining mystery, with a few different points that attract the Lieutenant's attention which a careful reader will also notice. Some of these contradictions are presented quite open (fact A and fact B don't mesh), but some also require the reader to make another, logical assumption (if both fact A and fact B are true, that must mean fact C), and this also keeps the reader on their toes in this fairly short opening story.

In Occam no Kamisori ("Occam's Razor"), Lieuteant Fukuie is investigating the murder on associate professor Ikeuchi, who was seemingly killed by the same robber who has been roaming the neighborhood lately. The questions Fukuie has about the murder however lead her to Yanagida Yoshifumi, a university teacher who used to teach scientific investigation at the police academy, and who has actually taught Fukuie herself in her rookie days. What makes this story interesting is not only the fact we have an expert in crime investigation who commited the murder, the story is also written in a way so not everything about Yanagida's plan is explained right from the beginning, leaving also a few things for the reader to find out as they read on .For example, Yanagida steals a pack of cigarettes from the victim in their first scene, before the murder occurs, but the implication of that isn't explained until later. 

Aijou no Scenario ("A Scenario of Love") is about the actress Ogino Mariko, who's being blackmailed by her rival actress Kakinuma Emi to give up on a certain audition. Mariko kills Emi by feeding her sleeping pills, and then leaving Emi's car running in the garage so she'd suffocate. That way it'd seem Emi had simply taken her usual sleeping draught without switching her car off. A receipt of the things Emi bought at the convenience store gives Fukuie more than enough leeway to suspect this isn't just an accident. While the true motive of the murderer isn't really well-hinted at, I'd say that as a mystery, this short story works reasonably well with more than enough well-clewed parts that explain why Fukuie would start having her doubts about the whole case.

In the final story Tsuki no Shizuku ("Moon Tear"), Tanimoto Kichirou, owner of the Tanimoto Sake Brewery, kills his rival Satou of the Satou Brewery. The two had very different approaches when it came to sake: the Satou Brewery was producing in masses, but connoisseurs couldn't stand their awful sake, while the Tanimoto Sake Brewery did everything the old-fashioned way to maintain quality, but they could hardly produce enough to keep the company floating. Satou was trying to kill off Tanimoto Sake Brewery once and for all by adopting a cost leader strategy, which Tanimoto couldn't survive for long, so Tanimoto Kichirou killed Satou, making it seem like Satou had snuck into the Tanimoto Sake Brewery to spy on their sake and had fallen into one of the empty sake tanks. The decisive hint that shows Tanimoto killed Satou is quite brilliantly hidden within the text, and perfectly fitting for the story. Looking at this core mystery plot, I think this one is the best plotted one, with a really interesting situation for the reader to solve even though they should know more than Fukuie.

By the way, it's interesting how Lieutenant Fukuie is quite the nondescript character most of the time. While the spotlight's supposed to be on the culprit in Columbo, Columbo actually always has a presence on screen whenever he's in the scene. That doesn't really work with novels though. Mitani Kouki's novelization of his own Furuhata Ninzaburou series (also inspired by Columbo) shows this difference very well: while on the television screen, Furuhata has countless of quirky traits and commandeers every scene he's in, he's actually almost a traitless figure in the novel version, who appears only to put the pressure on the culprit. By putting as little emphasis on the detective character, the focus shifts almost completely to the psychology of the culprit and to how they view the detective. This is also more or less what happens in the Lieutenant Fukuie series, where Fukuie seldom becomes more than the woman with short black hair and frameless glasses who has an eerie smile on her face as she talks with the suspects.

Fukuie Keibuho no Aisatsu is on the whole a capable mystery story collection that really manages to scratch that itch for Columbo-esque inverted mystery stories. There's also surprising variety in these stories, so I am quite curious to see what other adventures Fukuie has in the following volumes and I'm sure I'll be seeing more of her soon here.

Original Japanese title(s): 大倉崇裕 『福家警部補の挨拶』:「最後の一冊」/「オッカムの剃刀」/「愛情のシナリオ」/「月の雫」

Sisters in Crime

「その昔名探偵と言われたジッチャンの名にかてーね！」

「金田一37歳の事件簿」

"In the name of my grandfather, who they called a great detective in "that ancient past" of yours."

"The Case Files of the 37-year Old Kindaichi"

Man, I really miss the old days when new Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen volumes would be released every three months like clockwork: with the earlier hiatuses in Conan's serialization and Hajime doings his cases on a biweekly format now, releases for both series have been incredibly slow and irregular these last two years.

The new series starring detective manga icon Kindaichi Hajime started last year, with the teenage detective now a 37-year old man, and his adventures serialized in the biweekly magazine Evening (instead of the weekly Shounen Magazine), aimed at a slightly older audience. The Tower Block Madam Murder Case is the story that takes up all of the third volume of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Kindaichi, Age 37"), and a bit more to be exact: you'll find the first chapter of this story in the previous volume and it also appears an 'aftermath' concluding chapter will follow in the fourth volume, but the main murder plot plays out within the pages of this volume, so I thought I might as well write a review now, instead of waiting until June. Kindaichi Hajime, 37 years old, takes a day off from his mind-numbing work at Otowa Black PR to help his neighbor Momoka (to be exact: his attractive neighbor who is also a single mother). Momoka runs a small catering service and she desperately needs an extra pair of hands to help out at a small party organized by Misaki, who in the past has helped Momoka out by introducing her to some good clients. Misaki's party is a small informal gathering with food and karaoke for her neighbors who all live in the same luxurious high rise residential complex. While ostentatiously, these women get along well as good neighbors, there's a certain 'caste' system in this mini eco-system with the women who live in the more expensive apartments on the top floors standing at the top of the hierarchy, and it's Misaki who rules from the very tip of the pyramid. Three women of the lower floors have more than enough of Misaki's passive-aggresive ordering around, flaunting with her money and other actons with which she asserts her superiority over them, and the trio decides to kill Misaki. The plan is to murder Misaki during the party and make it seem she committed suicide herself by jumping from her apartment up on the 38th floor. Props for their plan include a fake SNS message sent from Misaki's smartphone to her "friends" just before she "jumps" (is thrown from the building) and an elaborate scheme to create an alibi for the three conspirators during the party. Of course, these three couldn't have known that that middle-aged waiter at their party used to be feared as a brilliant teenage detective...

The first story in this series, The Utashima Resort Murder Case, was in essence a more than familiar sight for readers who have been following Hajime since his younger detecting days. A series of murders on a remote island (Utashima, no less!), semi-impossible settings due to perfect alibis for everyone, etc. The story managed to add in some great comedy in the moments when things didn't exactly go like in in Hajime's teenager days, but overall, the story was what you'd expect from the series, even if it takes places twenty years in Hajime's future (note that the story doesn't actually take place in the future: the stories in all the Kindaichi Shounen series take place kinda around the time of original publication). In that sense, I'd say The Tower Block Madam Murder Case has something more original to offer to the reader, even if the core mystery plot is a bit simple. The whole case takes places in a high class apartment complex, with camera surveillance in the elevators, special high-speed elevators for the top floors, German-made keycards that open the doors to the private apartments, and most importantly, a story that revolves around the grudge and jealousy women can harbor and a close look at the mini eco-system of the inhabitants of an apartment complex. Quite different from the usual faraway isolated crime scene Hajime used to visit and it actually kinda reminds of the novel Shiro to Kuro, an adventure of Hajime's grandfather Kindaichi Kousuke, which was also set in a very different setting from what you'd usually expect from his adventures.

Another point of interest is the fact that this is an inverted mystery story. Inverted stories are not incredibly rare in the various Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo series, but this format was usually reserved for the short stories. I think this is the first time we've seen an inverted long story in this series: most of the scheme of the three murderers is revealed to the reader long before Hajime even starts suspecting something is going on. You have an advantage over Hajime as the reader, so part of the fun now is also figuring out how Hajime's going to figure things out.

The core mystery plot however is rather simple: many of the hints that give the game away to Hajime will also seem obvious to the reader, especially as they have an inherent advantage over him, being shown both sides of the crime. Most of the hints that help Hajime figure out it was not a suicide, but a murder are easy to pick up and not particularly original, not even only seen from the context of this series. There is another aspect to the crime, that is bordering to an impossible situation: we know the murderers somehow schemed to make it seem Misaki had gone to her apartment on the 38th floor before the party, but the conspirators are never seen on the security cameras going up to the 38th floor, nor going back down to the party, so how did they pull this off? Part of how this is done is told to the reader directly through the inverted format. The way this side of the crime is solved by Hajime doesn't work quite well in comic format and had this been a normal detective story, this wouldn't be really fair, but in this case, the reader had absolute knowledge a priori anyway. The part to the elevator trick that isn't explained explicitly has to be solved by both Hajime and the reader themselves, but I can't imagine it would a very large obstacle: the hinting is almost too good, so it won't be difficult to figure out how it was done.

So the overall story is rather simple, though I have to say I did have fun with it. Like most of the inverted stories in this series, The Tower Block Madam Murder Case has a rather humoristic undertone: with Hajime constantly pointing out strange points to the "suicide", the three women who committed the murder try to come up with all kinds of excuses and other plans to make sure the police will let things slide swiftly, and this results in some funny, panic-stricken actions, like the scenes you see in the spin-off series Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Gaiden - Hannintachi no Jikenbo (which retells the old stories from the POV of the criminals as a parody series) The fact the murderers are still actively working on their plan as Hajime's trying to solve the crime, also adds an extra sense of thrill. Hajime's subordinate Hayama, who's helping out with the catering service too, serves as this series' Miyuki for the moment and delivers some light touches, while we also have a familiar face acting as Hajime's new connection in the Metropolitan Police Department (as his usual ally, Inspector Kenmochi, is already retired of course).

So Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo 3 is by no means an exceptional volume, but both the tone and setting serve as a nice change from the usual menu for this series, and it works as a simple, but entertaining enough mystery story. The next volume is scheduled for a June release, but I suspect it will not contain a complete story, so I will probably wait with my review until the whole story is released (which will probably be nearer the end of the year). 

Original Japanese title(s): 天樹征丸（原）、さとうふみや（画）『金田一37歳の事件簿』第3巻