Dress Reversal

"The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic"

"The Blue Cross"

Due to frequent shuffling with my posting schedule, this review got delayed a lot. I can't even remember how often it got bumped down, but also up the list. In fact, at one time, this review was supposed to be posted soon after another Ashibe review, early in the year, but shuffling around means this review is posted first, and we're several months later than first planned.

High school student Remi is one day attacked on her way back from school, with her sudden assailant leaving a scar on her face with a razor blade. This attack alone left quite the impression on the girl, but it wasn't the only event to befall her family: her uncle had a motorcycle accident, and her little cousin was kidnapped and had been missing for a few days already. Curious as all these happenings may be, Remi didn't think too much of them together, until she meets a mysterious figure at a costume party, who tells her the Murder Comedy King is behind all these incidents, and that while Remi's family already had their turn, the figure warns Remi that more will follow, and those targets won't get off with just a scratch on their face. Scared by this warning, Remi decides to seek help from the attorney Morie Shunsaku, who has made a name as an amateur detective. That the fiend's warning was more than just words, is soon proven to be true when horrible murders occur one after another, like a man being murdered by having his spine cracked on the dial of a clock tower, or a woman who is drowned alive in her own cellar. Meanwhile, it seems the Murder Comedy King has more than one enemy on his trail, as the great detective Hanagatami Joutarou and his boy assistant Ariake Masahiko too seems on the case, and that's actually really odd, as Hanagatami is supposed to be a fictional detective! Can Morie and Hanagatami stop the monstrous serial killer Murder Comedy King in Ashibe Taku's Kaijin tai Meitantei ("The Fiend versus The Great Detectives", 2000)?

Many authors have different characters for different kind of stories, but Ashibe is someone who has somehow managed to use his series detective Morie Shunsaku in an incredibly diverse story selection. Morie Shunsaku is an attorney, so you'd expect a courtroom drama, right? Sure, Saibanin Houtei is even almost social school, as it was written to coincide with the introduction of the Lay Judge System in Japan. But then you also have the stories where Morie's like those old master detectives solving crimes in creepy mansions with weird gimmicks like hidden passages, like in Wadokei no Yakata no Satsujin. Historical and bibliophilic mysteries? Yep, got that one too. And what about a science-fiction detective story about parallel dimensions? Morie has covered that one too.... Every other Morie Shunsaku novel I read feels completely different from the previous one, as Ashibe will use him for whatever story he wants to write, and yep, Kaijin tai Meitantei adds another flavor.

Fiends, great detectives, you might've guessed already, but Kaijin tai Meitantei is a homage to the classic pulp thrillers by Edogawa Rampo from the 30s-40s, where Rampo's great detective Akechi Kogorou battles criminal masterminds with silly names like the Magician, the Golden Mask, the Dwarf, the Black Lizard, and of course the Fiend with Twenty Faces. While Kaijin tai Meitantei is set in contemporary times (the 2000s), the story reads as if we're still in the 1930s Japan with criminals dressing up as creepy figures to scare their targets and in the 1930s, it's also a lot easier to just kidnap people from the street without anyone ever noticing just by spraying sleeping gas and carrying your victim away with you or something like that (seriously: I never think about it much, but I can accept kidnappings much easier from 1930 pulp thrillers than stories set in modern days, because it's actually quite difficult to carry a body away from somewhere). The fanciful manners in which each of the targets of the Murder Comedy King is killed off are also clearly inspired by Rampo's work. Voyeurism is also a big theme in Rampo's work, as is exposition, and the gruesome murders in this novel could've fitted well in Rampo's novels, as yes, a man being tied to both the hour and minute hand of a clock tower so he'll get bent in middle is really icky, as is the murder where a girl is hanged from a balloon. Like in Rampo's work, the narration will often to the point of view of the victim here, leading to some real horror moments. Ashibe is having a lot of fun with these Rampo homages, and the book is brimming with references. In fact, each of the chapter titles in this novel is also a reference on its own to another chapter titles from Rampo's oeuvre and just figuring out where each title came from is a fun game for Rampo fans. Still, it's weird seeing Morie involved with a case like this, because the story is intentionally written to invoke the atmosphere of Rampo's novels, which is firmly set in 1920s-1940s modernizing Japan, while you know it's actually set in the 2000s.
 
As a mystery novel however, Kaijin tai Meitantei can not avoid falling in the same pitfall a lot of Rampo's novels also experience, though that might not have been Ashibe's goal in the first place. Anyway, there's a lot of gruesome deaths and scenes with the Murder Comedy King challenging his victims and the detectives, but there's not much to solve for the reader or Morie. The murders just happen and there's nothing particular to solve about them save for catching the killer. There's a kind of reveal about the Murder Comedy King at the end, but that's telegraphed rather obviously, but I'm not sure whether I should take it as a genuine reveal, or a "haha, Rampo's novels weren't that surprising in reality, so I'm going with a not-so-shocking reveal myself too" type of reveal. Sure, it feels like a Rampo novel with an ending like this, but I would've appreciated something that would've gone beyond that too. Ashibe also plays with meta-fiction in this novel, which is a theme he often utilises. Throughout the novel, you also learn that the great detective Hanagatami Joutarou is also working on the case, but he's a fictional detective by "Ashibe Taku," a personal friend of Morie, so how can a fictional figure also be working on a real case? There are some more segments that seem to blur the world of "reality" and "fiction" (within the setting of the story). There's an in-universe explanation for all of this, but it's more intended as a playful gesture to confuse the reader by Ashibe (the actual author).

Long story short, Kaijin tai Meitantei is exactly like one of those Rampo pulp thrillers, both in atmosphere and in execution. It's a very faithful homage to Rampo's work and his world, and as a fan of Rampo, I definitely had fun seeing these Rampo-esque situations. That said, I would never recommend Kaijin tai Meitantei as a first read in the Morie Shunsaku series, as its one purpose is just to revel in Rampo love. It's not really a Morie novel, and I also doubt readers can really appreciate the sheer silliness of this work without any understanding of Rampo's pulps.

Original Japanese title(s): 芦辺拓『怪人対名探偵』

The Clue in the Camera

"And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven."

"Genesis 28:12"

Huh, I seldom do a double review nowadays, and now I have two of them in a row...

Last year, I reviewed a few volumes of Katou Motohiro's manga Q.E.D. iff Shoumei Shuuryou ("Q.E.D. iff Quod Erat Demonstrandum"), which is a sequel series to the original series Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou. You will remember I have written very little about Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou in general: my first encounter with the series was long before I started this blog and I never stuck with it, so unlike Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen, I never did reviews of the latest volume as they were released. I've always experienced the adventures of Touma Sou, a teenage prodigy and MIT-alumnus who has returned to Japan to experience a normal high school life, and the athletic and impulsive Mizuhara Kana as reasonably entertaining mystery stories, but never reaching the heights and scale of the other two, more famous series. Anyway, a while back I came across a free multi-volume bundling the first five volumes of the original Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou, so today I'll be doing a double review of volumes 4 and 5 of the original series (not iff). The first three volumes I already read in a faraway past and I don't really feel like reviewing them now, so I decided to jump right into volumes 4 and 5, both originally released in 1999.

Last year, Touma was awarded the first prize by the international April Fools Club for his grand prank, which is also the reason why he's not really looking forward to 1st, April, 1999: he doesn't feel like coming with something this year, but as the defending champion it's expected of him to make a proper effort. As he's thinking about what to do, Touma runs into an old friend from his time in the States: Baum comes from the small developing country the Kingdom of Clavius, where he made it to the honorable position of Foreign Vice-Minister. The Kingdom of Clavius however is in a crisis: the Japanese government has offered development aid funds for economic projects with a tender, and a Japanese company won the bid to provide the technology for a fish farm. By the time Baum realized this company cheated through inside connections to win the bid, it was already too late: the Kingdom of Clavius was duped into buying far too expensive, and too advanced technology, meaning each time there's a problem with the machinery, the local engineers can't fix it themselves and with slow 'support' from the Japanese home company, the fish farm has been producing a lot of dead fish lately. Meanwhile, the development aid is in essence a loan from the Japanese government, so that has to be paid back too despite the not-running fish farm. Baum has now come to Japan a desperate man, as he needs not only force the company to improve their support, but also make them sign a contract for a new mining project. Baum knows the company will try to dupe him and his country again, but is willing to go far to save the future of his country, even 'cheat' by luring his opponents with a 'magnetic monopole'.

1st, April, 1999 is the type of story you don't really see in Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen: the swindle story. Series like Liar Game and Kurosagi are all about stories told from the POV of the swindlers (I really should write something about the live-action Liar Game series one of these days...), where you enjoy the thrills of seeing whether the swindler will succeed in fooling their victim or not. In this story, we mostly follow Kana, who tries to help Baum in his effort in psychologically pressuring the Japanese company in signing the new contract by dangling a magnetic monopole in front of them. As we see the events mostly from her side, the reader has a pretty good idea of what is going on and how everyone is trying to fool each other, so really surprising, this story is not. A series like Liar Game is at its best when you know the protagonist is trying to fool everyone, but you don't have an exact grasp on how that's even possible, but it's less of a mystery here. The way the story juggles the pretty serious government-in-debt-and-corrupt-Japanese-industries theme with the light April Fools Club storyline is good though and the ending is pretty funny spy-action stuff.

Jacob's Ladder starts with an enormous chaos happening in Akihabara: something has caused all the traffic lights to jump to green, resulting in multiple heavy traffic accidents (no deaths, luckily) and all traffic in and out Akihabara being stopped to prevent further accidents. Soon after this incident, Touma is visited by his old friend Loki, who is being tailed by... none other than the CIA. Loki explains to Touma that their friend Eva is now being detained by the CIA, as it was determined that the AI she was developing caused the accidents in Akihabara in Japan. Eva works at MIT as a head researcher on artificial life, and she was running an AI that basically simulated life, following four simple principles (cells have to reproduce, cells will look for best location to reproduce, etc.) At first, her simulation of artificial life had reached an equilibrium state, with three cell tribes living in peace: a hunter tribe that followed orders from a leader cell looking for reproductive grounds, a herder tribe that followed a leader cell who themselves led the way in search of reproductive grounds and a farming tribe that gathered around a leader cell and reproduced in their own area. One day however, the hunter tribe attacked the other tribes, and when they tried to fix the AI program, it vanished from their servers. Touma now has to figure out why the AI suddenly broke the equilibrium state and how it ended up in Japan causing all those accidents in order to save Eva.

Err, yeah, this is a really weird type of mystery story. I could imagine it as a Detective Conan movie plot, but even, so it's really unlike what you'd see in Conan and Kindaichi Shounen. In principle, this is a story that should be based on the scientific field of logic, with Touma trying to figure out how the AI could've done what it had done based on the logic rules Eva had set upon the program as its guiding principles (somewhat like the Three Laws of Robotics in Asimov's novels). However, it doesn't really work in this story. Basically, the solution comes down to super-hacking powers and new elements being introduced that override the basic rules Eva set: so it's basically cheating, because apparently the rules can just be ignored. I've read a few of the sequel series to Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou (subtitled iff), and there I've read much better stories built on the premise of logic as a scientific field, where you combine several true rules or conditions to find a contradiction that allows you to logically deduce what happened). Jacob's Ladder has some interesting imagery going on (the titular Jacob's ladder), but as a mystery story, it hardly succeeds.

The Crooked Melody, the first story in volume 5, opens with the famous cellist Hirai Reiji in his country cabin, having just strangled the president of his sponsor company. The new president had been appointed by the bank to help the financially struggling company, and one of the first things the president wanted to do was stop sponsoring something as silly as music. After killing the president in a rage, Hirai quickly makes some calls, making it seem like the president had changed his mind about killing the sponsor contract and that he had left Hirai's cabin in peace. Just before he has time to hide the body outside however, Touma, Kana and her friends arrive at Hirai's cabin: one of Kana's classmates is a far relative of Hirai, and they had arranged to meet him here. The kids arrive and spend some time there with Hirai. Some days later, the president's body is found in his own house and as Hirai was the last one to have seem him alive, he's questioned, but the kids give him a perfect alibi for the time of the murder. The police suspects Hirai could've killed the president in the cabin, but the kids actually saw everything inside the small cabin during their visit: they had visited the bathroom and they had opened the refrigerator, cupboards and the cabinets, and they hadn't come across a dead body obviously.

Touma of course quickly figures out something's wrong, and the crux of the problem lies where Hirai could've hidden the body during the visit of the kids. Strangely enough, the story seems to ignore the fact Hirai could've simply hidden the body outside the cabin. The reader knows this can't be possible, because we see how Hirai's still dragging the body around in the living room when the kids are almost at the front door, but the police, nor Touma can ever know that, so yeah the body could've been hidden in a trash bin outside, and then all the statements of the kids of not having seen the body inside the cabin would've been completely worthless. Touma first points out some small mistakes Hirai made during the kids' visit, eventually arriving at the hiding spot of the body. It's a simple, but effective hiding spot that could've used a slightly better hint though: by changing the angle in a certain panel, you could at least show that that trick was possible, as not all [certain object used to hide the body] can work in that manner. It's a short, not particularly memorable story, but not bad either.

Afterimage of Light starts at a flea market, where Kana buys an old valuable camera for almost nothing. Touma and Kana find some old negatives with five photographs inside, and after developing them find they include some family pictures, so they trace the camera back to a small mountain village where it was initially sold to a pawn shop. They quickly find that the last photograph was taken at the pawn shop itself (when the camera was tested to see if it worked). They also find an old abandoned storage that was in one of the pictures, but as they explore the inside, they find a dead body was hidden inside the plastered walls. What's even more mysterious is that the body had the one and only key to the storage in their pocket, meaning they were plastered in the wall by someone who could not possibly have escaped the storage themselves, as there are no windows and the one door was locked by that one key (Touma, Kana and their companion broke the lock to get inside initially). They learn the storage used to belong to a girl with supernatural powers who could see through walls, though some thought she was nothing but a fraud. They also trace back the three children (now middle-aged adults) who were on the photographs, and Touma and Kana ask a bit about their family history and what their link is to the storage. Eventually, Touma figures out how the body ended up in the wall of a sealed storage and what they have to do with the photographs they found.

I haven't read much of this series yet, but this type of story too I recognize from the sequel series iff, where Touma comes across a story about some mysterious event in the past (the girl who can see through walls), that is also linked to a current incident (often a family tragedy) and him solving a historical mystery/crime based on old testimonies and evidence (in this case, the photographs). The mystery of how the girl managed to see through walls is based on a real phenomenon, so it can be easy to guess how it was done, though there's some really well-done misdirection there. The mystery of the man who was walled up in a locked storage is more interesting, and too has some really well-done misdirection there as to the exact order of events, but it does rely on a lot of coicidences. A bit more hinting as to how it was done would've made this story perhaps a bit more satisfying, especially as the photograph hint is nearly impossible to figure out (even if you figure out what the hint says, you will never figure out what it actually is).

I doubt that volumes 4 and 5 belong to the highlights of the Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou series: both volumes contain a story that is fairly entertaining, but not particularly memorable, and a story that is slightly less well-plotted. So I feel a bit indifferent about these two volumes in general .I noticed that they recently published special Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou volumes with editors like Arisugawa Alice picking their favorite stories, but I'd really appreciate it if someone here can offer some specific volume or story recommendations for either the original series or iff, as I really don't feel like going through all 50+ volumes, though I do want to read more of this series to see what heights it can reach.

Original Japanese title(s): 加藤元浩 『Q.E.D. -証明終了-』第4, 5巻

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』