Rosy Waltz

近づいてくる至福の時は

痛みを伴いながら足音をたてる

「夏の幻」（Garnet Crow）

The approaching time of bliss

makes footsteps while accompanied by pain

"A Summer's Illusion" (Garnet Crow)

Okay, I don't have the book with this cover, but when I searched for images, I found this was the most interesting one in the sense that it still does feature a staircase, but not as the focal point of the design (most of them did feature staircases as the centerpiece, and there was an odd one that didn't feature a stairscase at all).

Sir John Judge was born in the Netherlands as Jan Rechter, but managed to make a name in the UK as a succesful entrepreneur and a philantropist, earning him his title and a new nationality. Recently, he has also shown to have a keen interest in politics, especially in fascism, but that has also garnered him some enemies, who seem to be after his blood: it started with letters that warned him for 'accidents', but there have even been incidents with people shooting at him, and he certainly would've been a goner already if it hadn't been for his childhood friend Tjako. John Judge, his wife Anja and their entourage are now back in the Netherlands for the late summer, but Anja is still very worried for her husband's safety, and asks for the police to keep an eye out on him. The man on the job is Inspector Lund, a young police detective who has made a name for himself after solving the Mondschein Sonate murder. Lund however is not able to prevent the murder on Sir John Judge, which occurs one day under impossible circumstances: the victim was found shot in his study, but the door was locked from the inside (the key in the keyhole) and the windows too were bolted on the inside. Other evidence shows it could not have been a suicide, and other events seem to muddle this locked room murder case like sleepwalkers, sightings of a mysterious man with crooked shoulders and the unaccounted noise of footsteps on the stairs in Willy Corsari's Voetstappen op de trap ("Footsteps on the Stairs", 1937).

Willy Corsari (real name: Wilhelmina Angela Douwes-Schmidt) was a Dutch female author who wrote children's novels and mystery stories. She debuted in 1927 as a writer, and was especially popular in the fifties and several of her mystery novels have also been translated in several European languages. Her detective character Inspector Lund made his debut in 1934's Het Mysterie van de Mondscheinsonate ("The Mystery of the Mondschein Sonata"), which has also been adapted into a succesful Dutch film. Voetstappen op de trap is I believe the second book in the series and is a way, exactly what you'd imagine if I asked you to expect the stereotypical Golden Age mystery novel.

Well-to-do, respected citizens residing in their summer country house, friends staying over for extended periods, everyone has some secret to hide, hidden pasts that come back to haunt those in the present, the police finding out the victim was not as loved first believed: if anything, Willy Corsari knew very well how to write classical Golden Age mystery novel and there's certainly no cultural shock when reading this Dutch mystery novel. If someone had said this had been translated (localized) from English and not an original Dutch novel, I'd definitely been fooled.

Which might be the reason that while Voetstappen op de trap is, on the whole, a decent mystery novel, it's also not really a novel that'll lead that much an impression, as little of the novel feels unique enough. Most of what you'll read will be familiar in one way or another and even the one or two twists thrown in the plot after the midway point won't be as surprising as actually intended, I think. The locked room mystery for example is built around a concept that is very common, and as it is done now, it's far too easy for the readers to guess what has happened simply because it's such a basic idea when it comes to locked room mysteries. There are some other, minor incidents that are involved with the locked room murder, but with half of them relying on coincidences and the other half too obvious in the way they're connected to the solution, my overall impression is that Voetstappen op de trap is a competently constructed mystery, with (most of the time) fair clewing and build-up, but it lacks something that actually sets its apart. Even the attempt at going for the least-likely suspect doesn't really work because they're not really the least likely suspect considering everything that was going on.

ADDENDUM: One day after writing this review, I also read the third Inspector Lund novel, Een expres stopte ("An Express Stopped", 1938). I really don't feel like writing a full review about it, as it's not really that good a novel, so I figured I'll just write a few notes about it here. The story is about the murder on a mister Kampen, who had been stabbed to death in his own attic, at a time nobody else was at home. What makes this a tedious novel is that everyone in the novel only acts as suspiciously as possible to make things difficult for the police and the reader, and everything would've gone much smoother if they wouldn't act so ridiculously overdramatic about small things. Also: Corsari attempts to go for the "least-likely-suspect" again in this novel, but to accomplish in her goals, she comes up with a rather ridiculous murderer. Finally, the title is.... weird? Sure, a train did stop... in a scene of the very first chapter. And that stop had no direct connection with the main plot of the story!  It'd be like calling A Study in Scarlet, Two Men Have Lunch.

I don't know if Voetstappen op de trap is one of those novels that has been translated already, but if it not: I don't think this is necessary per se, because on its own merits it simply has too little unique to offer, but it's a decent enough locked room murder mystery if you happen to come across the book. Een expres stopte on the other hand is one you can skip without any hesitation, as there's far too little redeeming material there.

The Case of the Artful Crime

"Yes," said Father Brown, "I always like a dog, so long as he isn't spelt backwards."  

"The Oracle of the Dog"

It was only halfway through this novel when I remembered I had seen the movie adaptation already....

Dilettante-detective Philo Vance finds him helping D.A. Markham with a mysterious locked room murder. Archer Coe was by life a notorious collector of Chinese ceramics and, of course, hated by everyone in the house including his brother Brisbane, their niece Hilda and the suspicious Chinese cook, but could any one of them have committed an impossible murder? Archer was found with a bullet in his head and a pistol in his hand inside his bedroom, which was bolted from the inside, but there are several problems with assuming simple suicide, for example because the man was wearing his shoes even though he had already gotten dressed for bed above and it seems he had been writing letters mere moments before supposedly shot himself. The discovery of a wounded Scottish Terrier inside the house (of which the inhabitants all share a dislike for dogs) makes manners even more mysterious. It's Vance's knowledge of Chinese pottery and breeding dogs that allows him to solve S.S. Van Dine's The Kennel Murder Case (1933).

The Philo Vance series is one of the few series I have actually read in order, but I now see I never wrote a review for the fifth novel, The Scarab Murder Case, even though I am sure I read it like one or two years ago. Guess it didn't really leave an impression. That is not to say that I liked Vance's sixth outing that much either....

As the sixth novel in the series, The Kennel Murder Case does everything you'd expect from a Philo Vance novel: District Attorney Markham wants Vance to help with a case handled by Sergeant Keath, narrator Van Dine has absolutely no added value in the story as he's basically never involved with any action but to observe Vance, with Markham and Heath working as better Watsons than Van Dine ever is, Vance spots all kinds of obscure clues based on the encyclopedic knowledge he has of topics like art, and then you have the murderer. The Kennel Murder Case does nothing new, and sadly enough, it also show the worst of Vance.

For half of the deductions Philo Vance makes throughout the novel are either unfair, or based on ridiculous psychological analyses. For example, there are quite a few deductions Vance makes based on stereotypical physical and cultural assumptions like "He looks like a person who doesn't like dogs, which means~" or "the Chinese are always sneaky, so if he's not sneaky, he's trying to be not sneaky on purpose to hide the fact he's being sneaky". Of course, the story eventually will prove Vance to be completely correct, but yeah, for someone who went so far as to make up twenty silly rules that don't really do much to help a detective story being fair in essence, S.S. Van Dine was pretty good at writing not very fair mystery stories. Another good share of the deductions made by Vance are based on facts that are either not mentioned to the reader until Vance suddenly mentions them, or based on facts related to art or other less common fields of interest that may or may not be completely made up by S.S. Van Dine, or at the very least not common knowledge shared by the average reader of mystery fiction, so I can't really feel impressed if Vance triumphantly declares a certain piece of art is a fake based on the thickness of the porcelain or something like that.

As a mystery novel, The Kennel Murder Case has a few good ideas, but by far most of the plot consists of unlikely coincidences strung together all just so we can have that initial locked room murder situation. The Scottish Terrier, which lends its name to the title The Kennel Murder Case for example, is a clue that feels incredibly contrived to "prove" the actions and psychology of the murderer. It is not a clue that is either inserted naturally in the plot, nor one that came forth out the setting thought out for the murder: it is a clue that feels out-of-place and artificial and you could use the exact same clue in any mystery novel you know: it'd feel as out place there as it does here. Like I said, there are a few, minor ideas in the novel that are nice, but they're completely drowned out by all the forceful fitting and glueing S.S. Van Dine did to construct the plot of this novel. It's one unlikely happening after another or even simultaneously. Most of the ideas aren't completely original either by the way. The mechanics behind how the locked room was created for example are of the kind that only have you shrug "Okay, sure, that works." and some of the attempts of the murderer to avert suspicion also seem rather silly and only done so we could have more contrived clues (In what way would hiding the ***** in the **** point the finger to that person???).

So no, The Kennel Murder Case was not a novel I liked at all, as it's basically all the less fun parts of the Philo Vance series concentrated into one novel. It is a novel that tries far too hard to be clever, resulting in a book that feels not only very contrived and artificial, but also simply not fun. It's a mish-mash of so many ideas that don't mesh well together, and the result is a mess of coincidences that exists only to create a case only Vance could solve, and that never feels satisfying nor clever.

The Middle Temple Murder

What goes up must come down

(English proverb)

With a noticable draught in new Detective Conan releases last year, I resorted to checking out some of the anime episodes which were not based on the Detective Conan comic source material, but original stories created especially for the anime series. I picked out a few episodoes which are often praised as good mystery stories. Stories like Dracula-Sou Satsujin Jiken and Meikyuu he no Iriguchi - Kyodai Shinzou no Ikari were indeed better than the usual anime original episode, but the special Noroi no Kamen wa Tsumetaku Warau and the three-parter Koureikai W Misshitsu Jiken were far more than that and easily made it into my list of favorite mystery fiction of the year, being excellently locked room mysteries and more importantly, master classes in how to properly plot a mystery plot with synergy between the story and the core mechanics of the mystery.

I still occassionally watch an anime original episode of Detective Conan, but often, I just don't feel the urge to write something on a particular episode. Not all anime original episodes are bad, but they are often kinda nondescript and not particularly memorable, and while the twenty minutes it took to watch the episode were perhaps not wasted, I seldom feel the need to also spend extra time writing down my thoughts on them. With an introduction like this you might be temped to think that the episodes 159-160, Kaiki Gojuutou Densetsu (The Legend of the Mysterious Five-Storied Pagoda) form a real masterpiece for me to be writing about it, but that's not exactly the case. This two-parter originally broadcast in September 1999 however, is a good example of a reasonably entertaining anime original, which similar to Meikyuu he no Iriguchi - Kyodai Shinzou no Ikari, has an interesting core mystery plot, even if the execution might be a bit sloppy at times.

Ran has won a sightseeing tour to Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture by solving a puzzle in a magazine (actually, Conan was the one to solve it), so now she, her father Kogorou and Conan are enjoying the nature there. In the mountains near their ODA Hotel stands the 400-year old Genkaiji Temple and the three learn of several legends involving the temple. For example, there's a dried-up well in the back that supposedly dried up suddenly when in the Edo period, a woman with love grief cried her eyes out in front of it for three whole days and nights. Another legend involves the five-storied pagoda on the temple grounds. In the past, an abbot-in-training tried to elope with someone in the village, but he was swept away by an eagle and he was found hanging from his neck from the pagoda. Another abbot sold valuables from the temple, but he too was found hanging from the top floor of the pagoda after several days of disappearance. It is thus thought people who defy the temple are subject to divine punishment, which the current abbot of the temple, Tankai, believes will also occur to Oda Hideaki, head of ODA Tourism. According to the abbot, Oda swindled him out of the property rights of the land of the temple, and now Oda plans to  use the extra ground to build a theme park. Back at the hotel, Kogorou is invited to join Oda Hideaki for dinner, as having the famous Sleeping Detective stay at the hotel means great marketing, but the following day, Kogorou is shocked to learn that Oda was found hanging from a rope from the highest floor of the five-storied pagoda. With quite a few enemies in his life, it is first suspected this is murder, but both Kogorou and the police soon stumble upon a major obstacle. Oda was quite a portly man, and nobody could've carried his body, alive or dead, five stories up without messing up his clothes or leaving any distinctive marks on either the man himself or the pagoda. It thus seems Oda must've hung himself out of his own will, but that too seems unlikely psychologically, so the only explanation left is... divine punishment?

Nah, Conan has a far more rational solution ready, of course. The suicide theory is also soon proven to be unlikely, as the rope hanging from the eaves of the pagoda wasn't long enough to allow Oda to stand on the balustrade to hang himself, but the problem still remains that it's equally impossible to get Oda up to the highest floor of the pagoda alive to hang him there, especially not without leaving any tracks. The theme of this story is likely to remind of the story in volume 11, which also featured an impossible crime in a Buddhist temple. I reckon that the core idea of how Oda's body was brought up to the top of the pagoda can be guessed pretty easily, even if some of the details might be a bit trickier (there's an interesting part with that involves the rope with which Oda was hanged, but it leaves less of an impression compared to the main trick). It's an impossible crime trick that works quite well in this particular format, even if it's also a bit silly, but it's also so straightforward, it doesn't really needs two episodes. And that is definitely one of the problems of this story: had this story been featured in the manga, it would've taken three chapters and been turned into a single episode. Now it's spread really thinly across two episodes which feel slower than they should be. The mise-en-place of the clues and suspects is functionable, but it's certainly not a classic like Noroi no Kamen wa Tsumetaku Warau.

And the whodunit aspect of this story... well, it's there. But the clues to their identity are far too obviously inserted in the story and almost feel like an afterthought, as if the whole impossible crime part came first, and then the scriptwriter realized he should probably also add some clues that point to the culprit too, and not just to how the crime was committed.

Kaiki Gojuutou Densetsu is perhaps not one of the best anime original episodes, but the core impossible crime is kinda amusing to watch and compared to other anime originals, this is still a fairly decent one that is strictly focused on its mystery plot. While I think two episodes is far too generous, there are some minor twists regarding the details of the crime that give the viewer still something to think about even if it's likely they'll (partially) guess what went on. If you have already seen the same anime originals I saw last year, I think these two episodes follow in the same spirit, even if they are also clearly not as phenomenal.

Original Japanese titles: 『名探偵コナン』159-160話「怪奇五重塔伝説」

Long Shot

一射入魂

(四字熟語）

One's whole soul into one shot

(Japanese idiom)

Disclosure: I translated Abiko Takemaru's The 8 Mansion Murders. Also: the cover of today's book is amazing (the angle!).

Shinozaki Rin is a high school student who has been practicing the art of kyudo, or Japanese archery, since junior high. She's quite good at the martial art too, but as of late, she feels she might've hit a ceiling in her development cycle. While she trains several times a week in the school's archery club together with the other club members, she has also arranged she can visit the home of the retired teacher Tanahashi for some extra training. Tanahashi, who is an excellent archer herself and who used to be in charge of the school club, has a small private archery dojo built inside her own garden, and while she does not coach Rin anymore, she has allowed Rin to make use of the dojo for an hour or so in the weekend. One day however, Rin arrives at her old teacher's home only to find her path blocked by the police. A man was found dead with an arrow in his chest inside Tanahashi's archery dojo, and it is suspected that Rin's old teacher accidently shot the man when he walked into the dojo from the back door. Rin's knowledge of all the customs of Japanese archery allows her to poke a hole in the police's story and point the finger in the direction of the real murderer, and Rin unwittingly becomes famous a her school as the attractive prodigy archer detective. To Rin however, that's just more noise in her head as she tries to become better at archery in Abiko Takemaru's short story collection Rin no Tsurune ("The Sound of Rin's Bowstring", 2018).

I definitely have a weakness for mystery stories that involve specific fields or professions, and of course utilize those fields to come up with unique mystery plots. Come to think of it, I haven't read many stories that really utilize specific sports in the plot, save for the semi-frequent ones in Detective Conan (which can be both fun and educational). Anyway, I certainly knew very little about kyudo/Japanese archery and I can't think of any mystery story that's really built on that theme, so in any case, Rin no Tsurune wins points with its original subject matter. The specifics of kyudo are explained pretty well in this novel, emphasizing the fact that kyudo isn't 'just about shooting an arrow in the target', but also a highly ceremonial martial art where the spiritual/meditative aspect of the sport is at least as important as being able to aim and shoot.

Rin no Tsurune is both a mystery story and a YA novel, and perhaps it's best mentioned right away that while the book starts off with a fairly strong mystery vibe, this becomes less and less as you progress in the book. The first few stories feature some "classic" mystery situations that involve archery: the first story is about the murder at Tanahashi's home, but there's also a story for example about an expensive bamboo bow which has disappeared from the school dojo even though everyone was there training and the exit was being watched. The solutions to all these "conventional" mysteries involve specifics to kyudo, but it's a shame Abiko's not always playing fair: some deductions are based on facts about kyudo or the circumstances which aren't disclosed to the reader in advance, but only when Rin explains what has happened. So it's unlikely the reader, even if they had the knowledge about Japanese archery, would be able to completely solve these cases, and most of the time, you'll just go "Alright, that makes sense given the information you have just given me but not before". The way Rin deduces in the first story why it's at least unlikely the victim was shot by accident makes absolute sense for example in a logical way, but you'll never be able to guess it if you don't have knowledge about Japanese archery, and even then it's not really solvable, as the physical clue on which the deduction is based isn't explicitly mentioned until Rin does in her explanation.

After the first three stories or so however, the emphasis of the book definitely shifts towards the more conventional young adult novel, with some minor everyday life mysteries. Rin learns how other people see kyudo, she has her own teenager problems with what to do in the future and how she'll give kyodo in place in her life, and we also have semi-funny parts with Nakata of the school's newspaper club, who wants to make a movie about the "prodigy archer detective" Rin and the beautiful captain of the archery club Yuko (semi-funny, I say, because he's basically just stalking two girls with a camera). At this point however, the "mysteries" presented are hardly anything solvable to the reader however, and are more related to the psychology and motivation of the characters ("Why did they do that?"-type of mysteries). Some might enjoy this better than I did, but I was rather disappointed the "classic" type of mysteries were completely gone in this second half of the book.

As a YA sports novel, Rin no Tsurune can definitely entertain though. We follow Rin in her year as she slowly learns more about the sport she already thought she knew, and we see how all the characters all see kyudo in a different manner and want something else from the sport. We even have a tournament, because every sports story needs that!

Rin no Tsurune can perhaps better be described as a YA sports novel, that also has a few episodes featuring a mystery plot, than a mystery story with a sports element in it. I myself would've preferred the latter to be the case to be completely honest, but I did find the book entertaining as a sport comedy-type of story, especially as I knew next to nothing about kyudo before. But yeah, it's not as focused a mystery novel as you would first hope or expect and I wouldn't recommend this one if you're specifically looking for a puzzle plot mystery about Japanese archery.

Original Japanese title(s): 我孫子武丸『凛の弦音』

Fatal Venture

"Of course, if you’ve made up your mind about it, you’ll find an answer to everything."

"A Murder Is Announced"

Some old, same old. Every time we have a new Agatha Christie adaptation, we have the discussion about the connection between the friction between being faithful to the original work, the freedom an adaptation should have and what makes a certain mystery plot or the characters work. As I am a reader who focuses mostly on the core mystery plot, I usually allow an adaptation a fair amount of freedom to mess around with the setting/characters, as long as I believe the core mystery plot is done justice. That is why I thought the Murder on the Orient Express adaptation by Mitani Kouki was quite enjoyable, even though it added a completely new section which retold the whole story from the point of view of the culprit. It actually worked out really well as an inverted mystery story, even if the most die-hard Christie fans might call it a blasphemy to change the work that drastically. And I didn't mind at all it featured a new cast, with a new setting in Japan. The 2017 TV adaptation of And Then There Were None too was daring in how it was set in contemporary times (with the visitors to the island even bringing their tablets and smartphones with them initially), but it also offered an excellent reason to do so in the second half of the story. This adaptation also turned the story into a whodunnit in the second half, as it added a completely original second episode after the events of the book, where the original character Inspector Shoukokuji investigated the case of the ten dead people on the island, with a fair-play set-up with new clues.

Inspector Shoukokuji returned in an okay-ish adaptation of The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side last year, where he replaced Miss Marple as the detective character (meanwhile the adaptation of 4.50 from Paddington too featured an original Miss Marple replacement). Last week, the same production team brought us a new Agatha Christie adaptation featuring Inspector Shoukokuji as the stand-in Miss Marple. Yokoku Satsujin, based on the 1950 novel A Murder Is Announced, is essence quite faithful to the original novel, even if the story is now set in contemporary Japan. One morning, everyone in the village is surprised to find an announcement in the newspaper, which says that evening, a murder will be committed in Little Paddocks, the home of Kuroiwa Reiri, a woman who despite not being a born local is beloved by her fellow villagers and the lodgers that also stay in her house. Everyone assumes it's a joke or perhaps some covert invitation for a murder game, so Reiri's friends all come to her home, expecting some party. At the time detailed in the announcement however, the lights are suddenly turned off. A man with a gun barges in the room, threatening them while he blinds the guests with his flashlight. Several gunshots follow, and to the guests' surprise, they find the intruder lying dead on the floor, with Reiri herself coming off relatively unscatched, with only her ear grazed by a bullet. Inspector Shoukokuji is to find out who the assailant is, and why Reiri's home was the stage for such an incident.

You can probably find more than enough reviews on Christie's original A Murder Is Announced, so I'm not going to spend too much time on that. In essence, the truth behind why the unknown assailant had come to Little Paddocks and how he ended up dead is an idea Christie herself has used often in her books and in the Miss Marple series alone, you'll also find other books that utilize the exact same basic premise as in this book. One can talk about misdirection and other themes, but in general, I find this particular idea a bit too lean to stand on its own, and while Christie has some other extra elements to flesh things out, I can't say A Murder Is Announced is one of my favorite Marples, though I have to admit I never were a big fan of her, especially considering the Poirots are far better, and more fun to read.

But to get back to the matter of adaptations of mystery stories. I think this is actually a story that didn't really work well exactly because it was moved to the contemporary times. Part of the underlying plot works in the original works because it was set soon after World War II, making certain actions at least somewhat feasible. But I say it's neigh impossible to do what the murderer did in the story in contemporary times, especially considering the kinds of technology and other things we have now. It simply doesn't seem plausible in this adaptation set in 2019. Whereas the And Then There Were None adaptation of the same team actually went the depths to make sure it all made sense in the new setting and more importantly, that it actually added some new original element to strengthen the core plot, Yokoku Satsujin suffers from the change in setting, and there are no new elements that actually make the mystery plot better. And no, adding more comedy by giving the always stoic Shoukokuji a childish infatuation with one of the characters really isn't helping the mystery plot.

The screenplay writer had a lot of fun with 'translating' the original English names to their Japanese counterparts though. Letitia Blacklock becomes Kuroiwa Reiri ("Black" corresponding with the "Kuro" part of her name). Letitia's companion Dora Bunner is now Tsuchida Torami, who has the nickname Dora. A Murder Is Announced features some interesting wordplay, and this adaptation does a good job at building on that, even if at times, the plot becomes a bit confusing as everyone is given some nickname like Leily and Dora and Rikka.

Even with the changed setting, Yokoku Satsujin is quite faithful in terms of mystery plot to the original novel. But in this case, these background changes still have negative implications for the mystery plot, and unlike earlier adaptations by this team, there were no new mystery elements introduced to help the plot in different ways or give the familiar plot a new twist that still meshed well with the original ideas. The result is an adaptation that despite good intentions, fails to impress and adds nothing to the original experience.

Original Japanese title(s): 『予告殺人』

A Race Against Time

"That belongs in a museum."

"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

The first time I ever heard of the Klein bottle was through developers' comments of the Ace Attorney game series actually, where the village of Kurain (Klein) was named after it.

The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book Uesugi had written for a publishing contest had exceeded the page limit, so Brain Syndrome was disqualified, but to his great surprise, he was contacted by a game company called Epsilon Project, which wanted to purchase the rights to make video game out of his gamebook. Uesugi is thrilled and immediately signs the contract, but months fly by without any real contact from Epsilon. When they finally do contact Uesugi however, he's in for a surprise. Epsilon Project's adaptation of Brain Syndrome wasn't "just" a game: it would be real revolution in game technology. Using unexplored virtual reality technology in the form of the machine K2, the player is submerged in a tank while playing the game, where both audiovisual and full-body feedback give the player the feeling they're really fully immersed in the game world. Uesugi is asked to test-play the game adaptation of Brain Syndrome, together with the part-timer Risa, and both not only find the virtual world of K2 amazing, they also slowly grow closer to each other. But one day, Risa suddenly disappears after a day of work, and then Uesugi slowly starts to harbor doubts about Epsilon Project, as in hindsight, it's a bit strange that he and Risa are driven in a blinded van every day to the secret location of K2 all just to test a videogame, not to mention the other over-the-top security measures taken. Uesugi decides to look for Risa, but the answers he finds are not the ones he had expected in Okajima Futari's Klein no Tsubo ("The Klein Bottle",1989).

Okajma Futari was the pen name of the duo Inoue Izumi and Tokuyama Junichi, who were active between 1981 and 1989. Last year, I reviewed Soshite Tobira ga Tozasareta, which I didn't like particularly, but they still had a few interesting titles in their bibliography I wanted to read. Klein no Tsubo was the last novel published under the Okajima Futari name, as they officially disbanded after the release of this novel, and most of the book was actually written by the Inoue half.

The historical lens is something you also often use when reading fiction, as ideas, tropes and customs all change with time, and what might be a brilliant concept at the original of release, might literally be old-fashioned in another time. The same with the mystery genre of course, where many ideas seen in the Father Brown stories seem rather unoriginal nowadays, but that's because everyone in the century after their release has been borrowing ideas from them. Concepts that were groundbreaking at one time are very likely to be commonplace some decades later. And that is definitely the case with Klein no Tsubo.

In 1989, I am sure that virtual reality and related fields were still quite original and not deeply explored yet in mystery fiction. But nowadays, even the smartphone in your pocket is capable to do some form of VR. Haptic feedback, super-realistic AI and words created in a digital realm: it's not uncommon anymore in this world. Movies about virtual worlds that seem realistic to the protagonists have been quite common since the 1990s, and especially since the 2000s we've seen countless of movies and series about people finding themselves in super-realistic virtual game worlds that seem almost real.

Reading Klein no Tsubo in 2019 (okay, I read this novel in 2018. It's only the review which is published in 2019) sadly enough offers far too few surprises. As a mystery thriller, it does absolutely nothing you haven't seen before if you have been around and consumed popular culture the last two, three decades. Mind you, Klein no Tsubo does nothing wrong at all and can be an entertaining read (don't expect a puzzle plot mystery though), but the times have already gone far beyond everything done or discussed in this novel. Some of the plot twists in Klein no Tsubo might genuinely have been shocking and creepy in 1989: but by now even something like a Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons will have not only used those same ideas, but gone beyond that. Nothing Klein no Tsubo as a thriller does, can possibly be a real surprise to someone now.

I think thematically,  Klein no Tsubo is a strong novel, and to repeat myself, it's a perfectly fine thriller that is competently written, but this is an example where you can really feel how time, and Zeitgeist, has made this novel not only outdated, but perhaps even obsolete, as the things the novel accomplishes, have become part of the bare basics of what a modern reader would expect from this specific theme, so you're left with a feeling of "Oh, was that everything? That wasn't just the set-up?".

Original Japanese title(s):  岡嶋二人 『クラインの壷』

The Stolen Kiss

「アナタは私のほんのイチブしか知らない」

「イチブとゼンブ」（B'z)

"You only know a small part of me"

"Parts and the Whole" (B'z)

It ain't April unless there's a new Detective Conan theatrical release, coupled with the release of a new volume of the manga. And yep, last year was really weird because of that, as Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer was released on its own, and there was only one lonely volume released in October for the whole of 2018. But now we're in 2019, and Detective Conan: The Fist of the Blue Sapphire has been released in theaters a few days ago. The screenplay is by Ookura Takahiro, writer of the Lieutenant Fukuie series and the excellent Detective Conan movie The Crimson Love Letter, so while the premise of the movie doesn't seem really interesting to me, I'll be sure to catch the home video release later this year in the hopes it'll actually turn out to be really awesome.

But this year, the release of the new movie was also accompanied by a new volume as per tradition. Detective Conan 96 (2019) is an incredibly weird volume though, and taken on its own, it's easily one of the worst volumes of the last decade or so. This is not because of the story contents per se, but has everything to do with the way the comic is serialized. Because each volume has the same amount of chapters, but stories don't always have the same number of chapters, most volumes usually don't end in a neat matter, but often the last story in a volume will continue in the next volume (and a volume therefore usually starts with the remaining chapters of the story that started in the previous volume). In Detective Conan 96, this ends up in the worse possible manner, as it basically only contains one single complete story: a good part of The Targeted Female Police Officers is collected in volume 95, while The Deadly TV Drama Shooting will be finished in volume 97 scheduled for this fall. So if you read this volume, you'll find more incomplete stories than complete ones!

I already briefly mentioned The Targeted Female Police Officers in my review of volume 95, but as the title suggests, this story is about a series of murders on a few female co-workers of Yumi and Sanae in the Metropolitan Police Department's Traffic Section. One night, Sanae has gone out to the karaoke bar with her co-workers Yagi Shiori and Momosaki Touko. Yagi brings Sanae back home after she had a few too many drinks, but on her way back alone, Momosaki is lured by a suspicious figure to a park and brutally killed there. The only clue to her murderer is that it appears she had been trying to point at something as she died, but the message isn't clear. While the police is investigating however, Yagi too is murdered, making this a serial cop killing. The police quickly concludes the suspects are among the three men who were fined and detained by Yagi and Momosaki last week, as all three men claimed they had an emergency and greatly resented being detained by the two officers. The problem however lies in the message both Momosaki and Yagi left behind as they died.This dying message can be split in two parts, and I do like the first part: it's unclear what the dying message exactly is at first, but the clewing here is pretty good and makes use of the visual format. But then comes the matter of interpretation, and well, it's not too farfetched, but yeah, it's one of those solutions where you shrug and say 'sure, that makes sense', but it's not a really satisfying one. And yes, it's a solution that also relies on language, but even then it's rather open for interpretation (the second dying message by Yagi on the other hand is way too straightforward).

What does make this story somewhat memorable is how Aoyama also used the story to bring some new character development. The focus on Sanae naturally also means officer Chiba has a nice role to play in this story, but personally, I loved how that one scene from last year's Zero the Enforcer was now given context. In case you have seen the movie: there's a shot where a certain character has a line that is unspoken, but can only be 'lip-read'. Here we finally learn what that person actually said.

In The Man Who Wanted The Lips, Suzuki Jiroukichi has come up with another scheme to catch the phantom thief KID, this time using the precious pearl Fairy Lip. A chance meeting with Inspector Morofushi of the Nagano Prefectural Police (first introduced in volume 65) gave Jiroukichi a 'brilliant' idea: the pearl is frozen in an enormous block of ice, making it possible for the museum guests to actually see the pearl, but making it impossible for KID to steal it. Meanwhile, Conan and Hattori are also present, with Hattori's mind pre-occupied with the matter that has been worrying him for some volumes now (how to say to childhood friend Kazuha he likes her romantically?). With Conan, Hattori and Morofushi all present, KID sure has a tough night ahead, but despite all the security measures, KID first manages to lock himself inside the glass cage with the ice block and making it impossible to look inside by painting the glass walls with black ink. When they finally manage to get inside, they find that KID has left a card thanking them for the pearl, and also leaving Jiroukichi with a present: countless of pigment-colored Fairly Lips etched inside the ice block itself as ice art. Overall, I'd say this is a fairly weak KID story: it's quite easy to guess how KID managed to steal the pearl and while usually, these kind of stories revolve around who KID disguised himself as is also of importance, this time we're told right from the start who it is, and his secret identity is mostly used as a a gag from that point on.

Similar to the previous story however, this story is also used to further set-up future events for the main storyline. Like I mentioned in my review, the last volume seemed to be moving pieces around for Aoyama to work towards a story climax, or perhaps even the series finale, and this story does that too by revealing the relationship between several characters. By now, it's also kinda silly how many characters in the Detective Conan world turn out to have some relationship with another significant character, but I'm interested to see how this will work out in the future. I also believe this is the first story in the manga where both KID and Hattori appear. They have appeared in the same movies a couple of times, but even in those movies, never really met face-to-face (or at least, not without KID being in disguise). And was that a reference to The Last Wizard of the Century? Usually, the manga makes no direct references to the events that occur in the movies (while mostly seperate stories, some elements from the movies, like character backstories, are part of the Conan manga storyline), but this was a fairly direct reference...

The Deadly TV Drama Shooting starts with Ran, Conan, Sera, Sonoko and her boyfriend Kyougoku Makoto (who plays a lead role in the 2019 movie Detective Conan: The Fist of the Blue Sapphire) watching the latest hit movie Azengers (ft. Kamen Yaiba.). On their way back, Kyougoku (a karate champion) knocks a helmeted robber out, who turns out to be an actor for the TV drama Detective 48. Kyougoku is asked to take over the role (as he can do the stunts too), and actually does a very good job. During the shooting, the gang learns that Tokuzono Saiya, the lead actor of the drama, isn't really getting along with the other members of the cast and production team, especially due to his 'pranks' that actually caused an assistant-director to commit suicide some time earlier. Obviously, he's also the one to die in this story and he dies falling off the fourth floor of the abandoned school building they were shooting at, but the only other person on that floor when Tokuzono fell was none other than Kyougoku, who was preparing for his next stunt. If he wasn't the murderer, how did the real murderer then manage to cause Tokuzono to fall off the fourth floor? The answer... will have to wait until fall. At least, for those who read the collected volumes and avoid the serialized chapters.

I had to laugh out loud because of the Azengers part though, because earlier this week, a special cross-marketing campaign was revealed for Japan, featuring both Detective Conan: The Fist of the Blue Sapphire and Avengers: End Game. And yes, Detective Conan is really that big a phenomenon in Japan that it warrants for these kinds of promotions. Can you actually think of another detective franchise that made it this mainstream in modern pop culture?

But to come back to the main topic, Detective Conan 96 is on the whole a rather disappointing volume in terms of mystery plots. There is only one complete story included, which isn't really a high point anyway as a KID story, and The Targeted Female Police Officers too is at best an average story when compared to other who-of-the-three type of stories in this series. For longtime fans of the series (and I assume you are if you have read 96 volumes), we do get a few more puzzle pieces that relate to the main story, but on the whole, this volume has awfully little to offer, especially as it's been nearly half a year since the previous volume. Let's hope the next volume has something more substantial to offer.

Original Japanese title(s):  青山剛昌　『名探偵コナン』第96巻