Update on Crime

Something old, something new,
something borrowed, something blue

(Bridal rhyme)

One reason I don't often do anthology reviews is because I'm never able to fit all the tags I want to use within the character limit. So if I do an anthology review, it's likely of a relatively short one.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. I didn't vote for the stories this year though (or for any year since I became a member.... I read far too few new releases each year...)
 

The Honkaku Mystery Award is awarded every year to the best mystery novel published in the year as chosen by the members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. One of the qualifications to be eligible for the award is that the story must have been published as an individual, standalone release, which is of course seldom the case with short stories and essays, which are usually first published in magazines or other publications (short story collections are exceptions of course). That is why the top-rated short stories and essay of the year are usually collected in a special anthology edited by the the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. Until 2018, this annual anthology was titled Best Honkaku Mystery [Year], and contained up to ten different stories, as well as one essay on mystery fiction. However, the format was changed for 2019, and with that, the title too. Honkaku Ou 2019 ("The King of Honkaku 2019") is not only published in the muuuuuch handier, but smaller pocket format, it loses the essay and is also somewhat shorter than the previous releases, but its goal is still the same: to collect the best-rated mystery short stories of the year within one anthology.

Golgotha by Amemura Kou starts with the arrival of a letter by Akihiro's uncle Nakamitsu Eiichi, who says he'll be travelling for a while and he wants Akihiro to baby-sit his house for a while. Akihiro has only just arrived at this house out in a small village, when the phone rings. The man on the other side seems surprised by the fact Akihiro's answering the phone, and asks some questions about who he is and where his uncle is. The man also drops some names that don't ring a bell with Akihiro, but the man says he'll swing by right away. The man has a curious conversation with Akihiro, apparently hinting at something without really pushing the matter, and eventually leaves Akihiro with a present: a mystery novel titled Labyrinth By The Sea by Horinaga Saiun. A note was wedged between the pages, which says "Doorplate". Akihiro learns his uncle's house used to belong to the author Horinaga Saiun and starts digging in the life of the writer, slowly uncovering the trail the mysterious man has been laying out for Akihiro. Golgotha is more a thriller than a puzzle plot mystery: the mysterious visitor keeps feeding Akihiro small hints that seem to point towards something, but it's not like the reader is challenged to solve the puzzle themselves based on these hints. It's an okay thriller story, but perhaps not the story I had expected as the opening story of this anthology.

Gyakuen no Gogo ("Gyaku-en in the Afternoon") is part of Nagaoka Hiroki's 119, a series on firefighters (119 is the emergency number for fire and ambulance services). The "Gyaku-en" in the title refers to the sad happening when children die before their parents and the parents have to arrange for the funerals of their own kids. That is exactly what Yoshikuni Satoshi has to do, as his twenty-four year old son Yuuki died in the line of duty. Both men were firefighters and knew the risk of their profession, but Satoshi couldn't have imagined his son would fall off the fifth floor of a building while attempting to save a woman in her apartment. The story is set at Yuuki's funeral service, where Satoshi tells the people gathered (mostly collegues) about what kind of child Yuuki was and how proud he is of him. However, as Satoshi's speech continues, he starts focusing on the incident that took his son's life, and by the time he's showing pictures of the apartment of the woman who Yuuki failed to save, the reader is fully aware something's wrong with Yuuki's death. A very nicely clewed story, with clues that are hidden very naturally in the text, but which really take on a different meaning once you arrive at the conclusion. The main hint that sets things off is rather mundane if taken fully on its own, but it works surprisingly well as a 'jumpstarter'  for the rest of the reveals. I do find it kinda hard to believe that one character would do that in such an impulsive manner, but okay, I guess it was also kinda hinted at.

Tomoi Hitsuji's Biwa no Tane ("Loquat Seeds") stars Tsutabayashi, a young man with violent deaths hiding in his past, who still seeks redemption and hopes to find forgiveness from the people hurt. While Tsutabayashi tries to keep quiet about himself, his rare family name often often rings some bells with people, and he has been forced to quit his job more than a few times because his "colleagues" started to shun or harass him after finding out. That is also the reason Tsutabayashi at first didn't feel like informing the police when he discovered the body of a murdered high school student, a new victim of the serial killer who has been terrorizing the city. He does do his civic duty however, and to his surprise, he finds him invited by the division manager of his job. The man learned about Tsutabayashi's past due to an acquaintance at the police, but does not seem to be planning to ask him to quit his job. His son was a classmate of the victim found by Tsutabayashi, so they have a talk too, but while everything seems to end peacefully here, Tsutabayashi's past ends up exposed to his workplace, and he's forced to quit anyway. It's at this point Tsutabayashi decides he should try solve the murder on the student, as a way of redemption. The story was originally written for an anthology with "twist endings" as its theme, though I have to say the twist ending was kinda telegraphed too obvious. The rest of the story is also rather straightforward: some of the clues are literally "the killer dropped their personal belongings at the scene of the crime", so that's not really surprising. The underlying themes of the story are good though, and perhaps this story is best enjoyed for that.

Toda Yoshinaga's Negaisasa ("Wish Tree") is set at the end of the Edo period and stars a patrolman called Toda Souzaemon. His prey, a notorious swindler, leads Souzaemon to Maruya, one of the better known "establishments" in the entertainment district. The swindler had been using his earnings to spend several nights with Peony, the top girl of Maruya, but of course, he never should've stayed for so long at one place, as that's how Souzaemon managed to catch him. Souzaemon becomes interested in Peony himself, not as an object of lust, but as an adversary in the game of Igo, so he too starts visiting the girl. Maruya itself has been in financial problems lately due to the useless spendings of Tomizou, who married into the family of O-Sen to become master of Maruya. Tomizou became obsessed with Shiroinugami, a deified form of a white dog from England which died near Mt. Fuji and whose deaths Tomizou happened to witness. Since then, Tomizou has been using all his money on dog idols and import from the West like sofas, tables and coffee. O-Sen plans to kill her husband, but wants to make it seem like it was Shiroinugami's curse that did it and sends a fake threatening letter. On Tanabata (July 7), the day the dog was born, her husband conducts a strange dancing ritual to appease Shiroinugami. Souzaemon is asked to watch Tomizou. Tomizou is surrounded on three sides by four-part panels, while Souzaemon sits in front of the open side. Souzaemon doses off slightly due to the long ritual, but then Tomizou suddenly falls down, having been stabbed by a sharp instrument. But how could that have happened: Tomizou was surrounded by the three panels (which are undamaged), and Souzaemon was sitting in front of the open side, and while he was drowsy, he surely would've seen someone carrying a weapon appear right in front of him. The way this impossible murder was committed can be guessed quite easily, but it fits really well with the historical setting of the story, making it quite memorable. It's definitely a good example of how a good background story/setting can elevate a plot idea.

Chibiman to Jumbo ("Chibiman and Jumbo") by Shirai Tomoyuki is the nastiest story of the anthology. Susumu is the poor slave of the three fat speed-eater brothers Mogura, Moguri and Moguru, who in order to maintain their speed-eating empire Munch Land, are willing to torture and kill people on a whim (actually, they enjoy killing and eating them too just for fun). But what they don't need is exposure. Some days ago, Munch Land held a Sea Roach Speed-Eating Contest between Moguru (stage name Jumbo SP) and Chibiman, a female speed-eater. They had to eat a bucket full of sea roaches (with some "Throw-Up Pauses" planned in between). The contest seemed to be going in Chibiman's favor, but then she suddenly started to convulse, and dropped her head in the bucket of sea roaches. To the audience, they lied that Chibiman was just feeling bad, but in fact she had died. The three brothers first agreed to kill off Susumu and make it seem like he had cannabalistic tendencies by stuffing Chibiman's remains in his stomach, but Susumu pleads for his life, saying that Chibiman was clearly poisoned and that the poisoner might be after the brothers too. Susumu is given one day to find out who killed Chibiman, but he has quite a problem to solve: why was only Chibiman's bucket of roaches poisoned, was she really the intended victim and what was the motive for this murder? This is a really weird, distasteful story with gangster speed-eating brothers who are apparently in a habit of killing and eating people, and Susumu himself is hardly a hero, making filthy jokes and kicking women in the stomach so hard they have to throw up too. It makes it really hard to care about any of the characters in this story. The core mystery plot is fairly complex though: the motive for poisoning the sea roaches is really original and probably the best part of the story, but I thought the way Susumu suddenly realizes who the murderer was, was a bit too sudden without much build-up.

Tantei Daihon ("Detective Script") was written by Ooyama Seiichirou as a homage to Abiko Takemaru's Tantei Eiga and follows the same basic idea: Playwright Kasuga Sousuke barely survived a fire in his home, and while he's in the hospital, the members of his theater troupe are left with the little that remains of their upcoming murder play. The policeman who rescued Kasuga from the fire only found a partially burned scenario, so the actors have a start of a murder mystery that happens on a remote island, but not the solution. As they discuss the story, each of the actors comes up with a solution that indicates their own character as the murderer. Madoy's FGO Mystery: The Meihousou Murders I reviewed earlier this year was also clearly inspired by Abiko's novel by the way. It's by far the shortest story in the anthology, but Tantei Daihon is still a surprisingly tightly-plotted story with several fake solutions. The final solution is clever: if you just follow the clues "straight", you're likely to run into a wall, but once you figure out the true meaning of a certain passage in the screenplay, everything is turned upside down, allowing you to arrive at the correct solution. I love this type of whodunnit setups, where you can cross out most of the suspects if you simply carefully follow each clue, but there's one final clue that asks for a bit more imagination in interpretation, which can turn everything around. Short, but satsifying.

To be honest, I have the feeling previous Best Honkaku Mystery anthologies were not only beefier, but also more satisfying as puzzle plot anthologies. Honkaku Ou 2019 in comparison is not only shorter in page count, but fewer of the stories really fitted with my own personal interest: stories like Golgotha and Biwa no Tane are for example thematically strong examples, but seen purely as puzzle plot stories I find them on the whole somewhat disappointing. Nagaoka Hiroki's series on firefighters seems interesting though. As the short story form is still going strong in Japan, I think having these anthologies that collect stories from different magazines is really great and some of the previous Best Honkaku Mystery anthologies I read had some fantastic stories, but the selection for this year was not exactly what I had been expecting.

Original Japanese title(s):  本格ミステリ作家クラブ（編）『本格王2019』: 飴村行「ゴルゴダ」/ 長岡弘樹「逆縁の午後」/ 友井羊「枇杷の種」/ 戸田義長「願い笹」/白井智之「ちびまんとジャンボ」/ 大山誠一郎「探偵台本」

Le Cercle rouge

One of the tropes most commonly associated with mystery fiction, and one I personally love, is the closed circle situation. For some reason though, I often see it confused with 'an impossible crime' or even 'locked room mystery' even though they are very different concept (they can be used together however). Closed circle situations are also often referred to as the 'island in a storm' or 'mountain villa during a snow storm' tropes, which might make the concept clearer: it refers to a situation when a certain, clearly defined location is cut off from the outside world (in a broad sense of the word), making it impossible to enter or exit said location. This also often includes communication going in or out. Dorothy L. Sayers for example wrote in her '34 review of Christie's Murder on the Orient Express for the Sunday Times "Moreover, the problem is of the perfect “closed circle” type, the entire action being confined within the limits of a single coach on the “Orient Express”, with a snowdrift to cut out interference from the outside world." The term itself seems to be used less in the West nowadays than in Japan though, where it's quite common among mystery aficionados to use the term, which might be a reason why people sometimes think a locked room mystery is a closed circle situation.

The merits of a closed circle situation, from a reader/writer's point of view are various. For example, one of the most important reasons is that it effectively defines the range and setting of the mystery. The reader is presented a specific setting with a certain number of identified characters, and no extra characters can enter this location, nor can anyone leave (alive that is). This helps the intellectual game of detective fiction, as the reader doesn't have to worry about secret assassins coming from the outside world to commit the murder and leave, or evidence being shipped away to Duckburg. Often, the reason why the setting was cut-off from the outside world becomes a factor in the game of mystery: the arrival time of the boat, or the exact time of when the snow storm started etc. all give the reader a better idea of where their deductions should focus on (specific periods of time). Being cut-off from the outside world often also means the police can't come, or in the case a police officer is already on the scene, back-up in the form of more officers or for example forensics is made impossible, which often sets things up for a more pure puzzle plot mystery.

For me as a reader, the fact that a closed circle basically says 'the crime happened here, these were the characters present at that time, go figure out whodunnit' makes it a welcome trope. If a mystery story is a game in which the author challenges the reader to solve the mystery, and this is to be done in a fair manner, one of the more basic things to do is of course to explain the limits of the game. You don't want to hear at the end that a character who was never mentioned or hinted at turns out to be the murderer, but a closed circle situation makes that impossible, as the murderer must've been within the closed circle during the act. The closed circle situation also works great with the impossible alibi story: if there are only X number of characters at the location, and all of them have an alibi for the murder, than nobody could've done it. The closed circle also ensures objects (weapons or other tools) can't be conjured out of nowhere (the outside world), thus making it clear to the reader that everything they should know, exists in the pocket universe of the closed circle. Of course, there are also stories that play with this, for example by making it seem like a closec circle situation when there is in fact a means of escape: some might find this cheap, but as long it's properly hinted at, I'd say using a closed circle situation as a piece of misdirection is perfectly fair game.

In-universe, a closed circle situation can occur due to various reasons. In general, I guess you could categorize them in Artificial Closed Circles, Natural Closed Circles and Others. Artificial Closed Circled are of course when a human hand causes the creation of a closed circle situation. Burning down the one bridge that leads to the mountain villa or setting the only boat on the island adrift. It's often, though not always, the murderer who creates the closed circle, for example to ensure their prey, be it specific person(s) or all people, can't escape. For the reader, it's a source of thrills, as you basically have the Jason-at-the-camp situation, not knowing who will die and knowing there's no way of escape. Natural Closed Circles are of those caused by the forces of nature: heavy snow making it impossible to go outside or for a train to proceed, a storm preventing boats from going or leaving the island, mountain tunnels being buried after an earthquake, the standard examples. Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery has a forest fire preventing the Queens from leaving house, while in an early Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney episode, strong winds had made a statue break, blocking off a road and effectively creating a closed circle situation. Sometimes, the murderer played the probabilities in hopes of a natural disaster to help out their crime, sometimes it's just pure coincidence and the murderer decided to go ahead despite the storm outside. This often becomes a focal point in the investigation: why did the murderer commit the murder despite this situation? In the category Others, I'd sort the closed circle situations that aren't strictly physically impossible to leave or enter, but where 'other' reasons keep people bound, for example because a mistake or crime in the past will be exposed unless they stay. In the Scooby Doo, Where Are You! episode A Night of Fright is No Delight for example, the potential heirs of Colonel Beauregard Sanders (one of them Scooby) have to stay on a creepy island for one night in order to inherit. In Arisugawa Alice's Jooukoku no Shiro, a murder occurs on the grounds of the headquarters of a suspicious new religion, and Alice and the others are held captive there, and the whole headquarters is locked down because top management fears news of a murder there would hurt their reputation, while they do want to know who the murderer is, making it a self-inflicted closed circle.

Anyway, what I wanted to ask was, what are some of the more memorable closed cirle situations you have come across. Err, as a reader, I guess. Perhaps it was a unique way to create such a situation, or it led to interesting scenes or deductions? To name a few of mine in no particular order:

- Arisugawa Alice's Gekkou Game ("Moonlight Game") had Alice and the other members of the Mystery Club camping on Mt. Yabuki, a dormant volcano which then decided to erupt, cutting them and a few other students on the camp ground from the outside world. It's such a weird and over-the-top way to create a closed circle situation and I'd even say it feels unnatural, but okay, at least you can be sure your cast is seperated from the outside world! If you have read The Moai Island Puzzle ((C) Shameless Self-Promotion), you know Arisugawa loves his closed circle situations for the Student Alice series.

- The South-Korean 2009 movie 4 Gyosi Churiyǒngyǒk ("4th Period Mystery") was set a school, where two students discovered the body of a classmate in a classroom at the end of the third period. Because these mammoth schools are built to keep all students inside during school hours (security cameras, gates, checking who's absent etc.), and outsiders, err, outside the school, the whole school building effectively acted as a closed circle, as nobody could've in or out in the middle of the school day without attracing attention. It wasn't that great a movie though.

- Imamura Masahiro's Shijinsou no Satsujin ("The Murders in the Villa of the Dead" 2017) and Magan no Hako no Satsujin ("The Murders In the Box of The Devil Eye", 2019) were fantastic novels that used the supernatural to create insane closed circles. Shijinsou no Satsujin had the cast locked up in a mountain villa that was under attack by... a sea of zombies, as a zombie outbreak had occured nearby. The novel will see a live-action movie adaptation and a manga adaptation this year by the way, and I am sure it will make its way to the English-language market in some format or another. The sequel had a few villagers creating a closed circle situation on purpose, locking the cast in the village of Magan, because it was prophesied that murders would occur in Magan: in the hopes of keeping themselves safe from the prophesy, they created a closed circle that locked the cast up in Magan.

- In the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo ("The Young Kindaichi Case Files") story Majutsu Ressha Satsujin Jiken ("The Magic Express Murder Case"), something incredibly funny happens, as pointed out in the parody spin-of series. Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Gaiden - Hannintachi no Jikenbo ("The Young Kindaichi Case Files Side Story: The Case Files of the Culprits") retells the classic stories from the POV of the culprits, with a comedic tone. At one point, Hajime triumphiantly declares they're facing a closed circle situation and that murderer must've been be one of the persons inside the theater: the castle-like building is surrounded by a moat, but by pure coincidence Hajime had broken the drawbridge earlier, making it impossible for the people inside to leave the theater. The scene in the parody re-telling where the murderer is cursing Hajime all kinds of names in their mind is hilarious because it was Hajime himself who lucked out by creating the closed circle situation he happily talks about in the first place!

But I'd love to hear what your favorite closed circle situations are!

The Twin Dilemma

「もう全部あいつ一人でいいんじゃないかな」

『時空英雄仮面ライダー』

"Man, he can probably do everything all by himself."

"Heroes of Time and Space Kamen Rider"

When the releases of the Detective Conan manga slowed down last year, I decided to look at a few of the episodes written exclusively for the anime series (so not based on the manga by Aoyama Goushou). I haven't written reviews on all the episodes I've seen, which in turns means that the episodes I did write about, were stories worth writing about. Noroi no Kamen wa Tsumetaku Warau and Koureikai W Misshitsu Jiken in particular were absolutely fantastic pieces of mystery fiction, among the best visual mystery stories I had ever seen. Both these stories were written by Ochi Hirohito, who is also credited at times as Ochi Koujin and Uonji Chiko for his work on Conan. Ochi is an important figure for the animated Detective Conan series, as he has multiple roles. Storyboarder, artist, episode director and screenplay writer: he's done it all (and for some episodes, simultaneously). With both volume 97 of the manga and the home video release of the 23rd theatrical movie Detective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire scheduled for somewhere in October or perhaps even later, I decided to watch a few more episodes with screenplays by Ochi while I wait for the fall releases.

Detective Conan episodes with scenarios by Ochi Hirohito:
88-89: Dracula-Sou Satsujin Jiken ("The Villa Dracula Murder Case")
184: Noroi no Kamen wa Tsumetaku Warau ("The Cursed Masks Laugh Coldly")
379-380: Hitou Yukiyami Furisode Jiken ("The Case of the Furisode of the Hot Spring Hidden In The Snow Darkness")
603-605: Koureikai W Misshitsu Jiken ("The Case of the Séance's Double Locked Room")
905-906: Nananengo no Mokugekishougen ("Eyewitness Testimony, Seven Years Later")

Episodes 379-380 form the two-parter Hitou Yukiyami Furisode Jiken ("The Case of the Furisode of the Hot Spring Hidden In The Snow Darkness"), originally broadcast on November 22 and 29, 2004. Conan, Ran and Kogorou have a little family trip to the Kotoya Inn, a traditional Japanese inn in the mountains with hot springs. Following the local tradition, all the rooms of the inn are decorated by splendid furisode (long-sleeved kimono). Legend has it that many centuries ago, a woman in the village called O-Hana helped an injured samurai, who gave O-Hana beautiful furisode as a gift. The jealous daughters of the village chief however coveted these furisode, and succeeded in arranging for O-Hana's execution through slander. Thus they manage to steal O-Hana's furisode, but they weren't able to enjoy them for long: one night, both daughters were found dead, wrapped in and covered by the furisode they stole. Fearing it was a curse, the village people decided to worship O-Hana as Furisode-sama to watch over the village, though she also has a vengeful side as a diety as Furisode-Hannya. The village still has a large shrine dedicated to Furisode-sama, but the Kotoya Inn has a small Furisode-sama shrine in the garden too.

At the Kotoya Inn, Kogorou runs into a producer of Nichiuri Television (Kogorou often appears in their programs) and the producer reveals to the gang that they are working on a drama adaptation of a story by the romance novelist Akechi Eri. The producer, Akechi and her publisher's editor have a small meeting here at the inn, together with the three actresses who are to star in the movie: the succesful model Shibasaki Asuka, award-winning artist Anzai Ema and upcoming singer-songwriter Fukatsu Harumi, who all graduated from the same university. Harumi wants a private conversation with Kogorou, and reveals that a friend of her was once accused of drugs dealing and that she committed suicide. However, it appears she was framed and that the real dealers were in fact her two new co-actors in the upcoming drama. She wants Kogorou to investigate the case, but fate strikes first: that night, both Asuka and Ema are murdered under impossible circumstances: Ema is found stabbed lying on furisode in the garden shrine of Furisode-sama, but the only footprints in the snow leading to the shrine are those of Ema herself. The murder weapon meanwhile is found in the hot spring below, together with the body of Asuka, floating in the water surrounded by furisode. In order to enter the hot spring however, one has to pass by the recreation room, which was occupied by Conan and the gang, meaning an invisible murderer must've killed Ema first, left the shrine without leaving footprints in the snow, somehow made it past Conan unseen, and enter the hot spring to kill Asuka, but how's that possible?

While not as strong as Noroi no Kamen wa Tsumetaku Warau and Koureikai W Misshitsu Jiken, this case is pretty good, though I have to say I liked it a lot better the second time I watched these two episodes. As with most episodes by Ochi, the whodunnit aspect is somewhat weak, more like an afterthought with some lucky clue that points directly to the culprit, but the main problem is almost always an impossible one. Two in fact this time: the footprints-in-the-snow problem of Ema's murder in the shrine, and how the murderer managed to get past Conan, Ran and Kogorou to enter the hot spring to murder Asuka. I'm going to use my pet phrase 'synergy' again from my review of Koureikai W Misshitsu Jiken, because that's what Ochi's doing here once again. We have to two distinct situations, but he manages to tie the underlying solution to both problems to one, central idea and use that in several ways to strengthen both impossible situations. Once again, we have two impossible murders that are possible because there are two of them, because both of these situations exist. It's a notion that so very few mystery authors to manage to do right, but Ochi's done quite a few of them by now for Detective Conan. The main idea that ties these problems is at the core very simple and seems even unoriginal at first, but the way Ochi uses it to really integrate the solution to the two impossible situations with the overall story and atmosphere is fantastic, resulting one of the better plotted anime original stories.

Ochi Hirohito wrote another two-parter last year with episodes 905-906, originally broadcast on June 23 and 30, 2018. Nananengo no Mokugekishougen ("Eyewitness Testimony, Seven Years Later") bring Conan, Ran and Kogorou to the Dove Flute Lodge, a small guest house that lately has become popular thanks to the recommendation by the "Beer Prince" Minakitaya Ootarou, an entertainer with an extraordinary love for beer. The unique selection of beer offered by the Dove Flute Lodge makes it a paradise for beer lovers like Kogorou and it's no wonder they aren't the only guests there and the Beer Prince himself happens to be one of the other guests that day. During a conversation with fellow lodgers, an old sentai show called Masked Comet Byun is mentioned. Seven years ago, the show became news when two robbers wearing masks of characters from the show killed a man.

After dinner, the lodge is visited by the police, who found a corpse earlier that day down the river that passes behind the lodge. It is unclear whether the man died because of an accident or by the hands of another party, but he carried a card with Masked Comet Byun, and when shown a picture of the victim, Minakitaya identifies the man as Shuujirou, his old comedy partner before they dissolved their duo three years ago. Shuujirou was working as a shady entertainment reporter nowadays and had visited the lodge too, asking about Minakitaya. Later that night, the lounge room of the lodge is ransacked by someone. The commotion wakes everyone but Minakitaya, so they all go to his room. When they finally break the bolted door open, they find the corpse of Minakitaya lying on the floor, surrounded by empty beer bottles and bottle caps. While he might've simply slipped and fallen on his head, the drawing he made on the floor with his blood, reminsicent of the logo of Masked Comet Byun, suggests foul play. But how could the murderer have bolted the room from the inside, and what has Minakitaya's death to do with the death of his former partner Shuujirou?

Overall, this story is not nearly as intricately plotted as the previously discussed one. There's quite a bit of coincidence working in the background, as unsurprisingly, almost all the characters present are revealed to have some connection to the deadly robbery seven years ago and they just happen to be here at the lodge at the same time. The death of Shuujirou isn't really important, only acting as a motive. The main problem, the murder of Minakitaya in the locked room, is okay: it has a neat solution that is hidden from the viewer through nicely thought-out misdirection, while the hints that point in the direction of how it was done (the direct means and the clues that originate from the way this means was obtained) are somewhat standard in spirit, they work well and give the viewer more than enough of a chance to solve it themselves. It's also a locked room trick that works well in the visual format. The identity culprit is unsurprising however, and as often with Ochi's stories, the clue chain that leads to the murderer is a line separate from the howdunnit line, which is something I find really disappointing considering the care Ochi shows when doing the howdunnit angle. In comparison, his whodunnit reasoning chains always seem like an afterthought, like "oh, better make sure the culprit also makes this one unneccesary mistake after pulling off a super complex plan, a mistake that points directly at them or else Conan can't solve it". The dying message too is rather rough.

Of the two stories discussed today, Hitou Yukiyami Furisode Jiken is definitely the better one. While not as strong as Ochi's best two efforts (Noroi no Kamen wa Tsumetaku Warau and Koureikai W Misshitsu Jiken), this two-parter still provides a well-plotted impossible murder mystery that once again sets an example of how to do multiple mysteries within one story to create synergy. Nananengo no Mokugekishougen is not as strong, but is entertaining enough if you just want to see an anime original story.  As far as I know I have seen all episodes with screenplays by Ochi by the way, though I haven't reviewed all of them. Episode 22 (TV Drama Roke Satsujin Jiken / "The Television Drama On Location Murder Case"), episode 596 (Tenraku no Tenraku / "The Alibi for the Fall") and episode 665 (Giwaku no Initial K / "The Suspicious Initial K") are a lot simpler and smaller in scale compared to the other Ochi stories I reviewed, but for those interested in Ochi's writing, it might be worth checking those episodes out too.

Original Japanese title(s): 『名探偵コナン』379-380話「秘湯雪闇振袖事件」, 905-906話「七年後の目撃証言」

Strike-Out Scare

過ぎ行く春を惜しみながら

僕らの幕開けたあの夏

「心絵」(Road of Major)

While lamenting the passing of Spring

Our curtains were raised in that Summer

"Picture of the Heart" (Road of Major)

Huh, who'd have thought I'd be doing another Tantei Jinguuji Saburou ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou") review this year? The long-running detective adventure videogame series had two releases in 2018: Prism of Eyes was the eighteenth entry in the main series, while Daedalus: The Awakening of Golden Jazz was a new prologue spin-off, about a young Jinguuji as he set his first steps in becoming the hardboiled private detective we know from the main series. Neither game was perfect, but as a fan of the series, I'm always happy to see a new entry, as while the brand name is fairly well-known due being around for over thirty years now, none of the games are tremendous sellers or anything like that, so you never quite know for sure whether the series will continue or not.

The Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series started out on game consoles and handhelds and that's still where the main entries are released, but in 2003, a secondary series was introduced with the mobile applications, games designed for garakei feature phones in Japan.  If one were to call the main entries "novels", these Tantei Jinguuji Saburou mobile apps were definitely the short stories: far smaller in scale and bringing a linear experience that told hardboiled detective story of about two hours in four acts. This mobile application series was fairly popular: they released twenty-four of them between 2003 and 2010, following their own numbering seperate of the main series. While as "games", these applications were quite limited, the stories they told are usually quite entertaining as human drama-based hardboiled detective stories and there are even some big industry names connected to it: Nojima Kazushige of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X fame for example wrote a few scenarios for this series, and Kodaka Kazutaka, who would later create the Danganronpa game series, more or less started out his career as a game scenario writer with the Jinguuji Saburou application series. These mobile applications were also later included with the DS and 3DS entries of the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series, and Prism of Eyes actually consisted mainly out of HD-remakes of these mobile applications. The last of them (Yurameku Hitotose) was released in 2010, so they basically stopped making these games when use of smartphones became widespread.

So I was quite surprised when I learned that the mobile application series would continue on iOS and Android this summer. The new app Tantei Jinguuji Saburou New Order ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou New Order", 2019) was released on the last day of July to provide a main hub in which the new stories are distributed, and of course, the first game was also relased on the same day. It's been nearly ten years since the last Jinguuji Saburou mobile game, but when you play Giwaku no Ace ("The Suspicious Ace", 2019), it's like no time has passed. It follows the familar four-act set-up of the short stories and the development team behind the game also consists of familar names (including a veteran Jinguuji Saburou writer who also wrote Ghost of the Dusk, and character designer Junny). One evening private detective Jinguuji Saburou happens to become acquainted with Hayasaka Masumi on the streets of Shinjuku. Masumi is not only an employee of the baseball club Blue Kicks here in Shinjuku, she's also the (secret) girlfriend of Majima Naotaka, a starter of the team. Majima was praised as an ace two years ago, but since then fallen into a slump. He has been acting suspiciously lately, so Masumi wants Jinguuji to tail Majima to see what is going on. Jinguuji learns that Majima has been seeing Fuwa lately, a former team mate who had to quit baseball after an injury. Fuwa kinda disappeared after his early retirement, so Jinguuji is not only surprised to learn Fuwa is still around, but he also realizes Fuwa has a tie with Katagiri of the Matsuishi Group, a yakuza organization that specializes in illegal gambling. Meanwhile, an anonymous letter has also accused someone in the Blue Kicks of doping, which brings another light on Majima's suspicious activities.

Like I said earlier, these mobile application games are quite limited in scale in terms of story, so there's not very much to write about without spoiling everything. The experience is quite linear and passive compared to the (old) main series entries and the player is mostly just choosing discussion topics or selecting where to go next. The most 'thinking' you'll do is figuring out a PIN code twice. That said, I did enjoy Giwaku no Ace as an accessible, short hardboiled mystery story that uses its four-act set-up in a good manner. New events and clues keep popping up at a steady rate that keep the reader, well not guessing, as the story is fairly simple, but it's definitely enticing. You just wanna know what's really going on at the Blue Kicks, and the story does a good job at keeping your attention for the hour-and-half, two hours you'll be playing this, with each act bringing some new clues and questions. It's certainly nothing more than the old mobile application games brought, but nothing less either. If you're wanting for an old-fashioned Tantei Jinguuji Saburou experience, Giwaku no Ace is exactly what you're looking for.

So no, Tantei Jinguuji Saburou New Order: Giwaku no Ace is nothing special. This is the twenty-fifth entry in the mobile application series and they have always been following the same pattern, so no surprises here. That said, I found the two hours I spent on the game amusing, and it's certainly a worthy entry in this series in terms of storytelling. Giwaku no Ace's baseball setting is a fairly original one for the series (they had one about professional wrestling once) and while the application series has always been more focused on human drama than the main series, I think this entry has one of the more relatable casts of this series. I do hope that in the future, they'll release all of the New Order stories in one package on the Nintendo Switch or something like that, because it's really weird they decided to publish New Order in an episodic format after doing exclusively handheld/console releases since 2012!

Original Japanese title(s): 『探偵神宮寺三郎 New Order』「疑惑のエース」

Till Death Do Us Part

"I'll bet this is the first time anyone's been buried twice in the same grave."

"Batman: Lord Death Man"

Okay, I'll admit, I'm writing this review almost two months after I read the book. So, yes, the details are a bit vague, and yes, I have little interesting to say about this book.

Ross Harte, PR-man, author and journalist, has made an enemy in millionaire Dudley Wolff, by exposing a scandal that even has the Senate interested and luck has it that the girl he intends to marry happens to be Kathryn Wolff. Dudley uses every trick in the book to make sure Ross won't marry Kathryn. Despite these machinations however, Dudley does not lose sight of his primary goal in life: to examine death, and more importantly, figure a way to postpone the inevitable. He's open to everything, which is why he finances both an experimental biologist who tries to cheat death in a scientific manner, and spirit mediums who attempt the job in a supernatural way. Lately however, some odd incidents have been happening in the house and renowned stage magician The Great Merlini is asked to make sense out of it all (and it just so happens Ross is Merlini's assistant...). The mystery involves a man who has apparently will not stay dead and can appear and disappear from rooms at will, a spirit photograph, the murder on Dudley, a disappearing murder weapon and even an attempt on Ross' life. It's up the Great Merlini to explain the trickery behind all this magic in Clayton Rawson's No Coffin for the Corpse (1942).

I have reviewed Rawson's The Footprints on the Ceiling and The Headless Lady earlier this year (and the short stories in 2015), but No Coffin for the Corpse is the final novel of The Great Merlini series (I have not reviewed the first novel, Death from a Top Hat and don't know if I will because I already saw the film many years back). The basics of No Coffin for the Corpse are very similar to other The Great Merlini stories, with Merlini being asked to determine whether an ostensibly supernatural phenomenon is in fact supernatural, or just a result of human trickery (and often, the supernatural option is preferred). There's an abundance of suspicious characters like pseudo-scientists, mediums and of course parlor magicians who of course also act as suspiciously as possible, and Rawson is sure to use his own background as a stage magician to come up with all kinds of little events and set pieces to entertain the reader.

But I can't help but feel that No Coffin for the Corpse is kinda underwhelming. The main plot, which revolves around the 'man who can't die' and the trickery he performs, including a disappearing weapon, does make up for a tale that manages to pique the reader's interest, and Rawson certainly is able to constantly add new events to keep the tension up. However, ultimately most of the tricks played by the culprit are extremely obvious to see through, exactly because Rawson uses magic tricks and other concepts from the business to create his mystery plots. Of course, that's what he always does, but this time the smokescreen is far too thin. The part with the disappearing murder weapon is signalled far too obviously, especially combined with the crude clewing in this novel and even then, it's not even signalled well, because the logical chain still expects you to make a jump yourself that is founded on nothing but a baseless guess ("character X can probably do action Y that is needed to accomplish act Z, because that would solve the mystery in a clean way"). The mystery of the man who won't die is another of those tricks which might've worked better in any other book, but in a Rawson book, in a novel that is filled with spirit mediums, circus artists and more of those performance artists, it's far too easy to guess what's going on, and there's not much of a mystery, and the mystery that is here, doesn't feel really satisfying, as at times, it almost feels like Rawson's just saying "Oh, and by the way, they know a magic trick so they could definitely do that."

That said, I liked a second, minor murder in the latter half of the novel much better. Merlini has to determine whether a car accident was indeed just an accident, but the clewing here is really good and this super-short part is far better plotted as a mystery I think that most of the rest of the book.

Like I mentioned in the introduction, this has been a rather short review, though I don't think I'd have been able to write much about No Coffin for the Corpse even if I had written this post right after reading the book. Perhaps I shouldn't have read these books relatively close to each other (yes, 'months' is relatively close in my reading diet), but I found No Coffin for the Corpse simply underwhelming, with tricks and ideas that seemed rather obvious, especially if you know you're reading a Great Merlini novel with a certain type of setting and characters. Had the clewing been better, I might've been more impressed, but that too was not exceptionally inspired.

The Triple Hoax

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.” 

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Hm, it's been some years since I last did a short short post, when I want to do discuss several mystery-related media without having to write a full-length review.

First off, a small preview of The Beautiful Kyoto Flower Arrangement Practioners Murder Case, the newest story of Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Kindaichi, Age 37"). The first half of this story is collected in the recently released fourth volume, which makes it impossible to write a full review on the story, though I can already reveal I kinda like the main problem. Kindaichi is sent to Kyoto by his PR company to work out a new package tour for foreign tourists, where they'll have the chance to visit a famous family of ikebana practictioners, the traditional art of Japanese flower arrangement and attend a course. The Kyougoku family is the head of the Akaike-style of ikebana, and previous collaboration projects already made it clear the head of the family's infamously hard to work with, a fact Kindaichi and his assistant Hayama also find out the moment they arrive in the Kyougoku home in Kyoto. The current head of the family is actually not a gifted ikebana pracitioner himself, and only became the head of the family after the death of his brother. His twin nieces Kaoruko and Sakurako are the talents of the family, although Sakurako left the house to become a modern flower artist (though she's back now to help out). Kindaichi and Hayama stay for one night at the house, but in the middle of the night, Kindaichi discovers the dead body of Sakurako lying in the rock garden. The carefully raked pattern in the gravel (which takes up to 6 hours to do) only show Sakurako's own footprints as she walked to the middle of the rock garden to apparently commit suicide on top of the rocks, and she has a motive too as revenge porn pictures of her were posted on social media some weeks earlier. It's hard to say where this story will bring us at the moment: more murders follow, but there's surprisingly little investigation conducted into this neat variant of the footprints-in-the-snow at this stage of the story. I do hope that volume five will contain the conclusion to this story (though I can't imagine it won't).

And as for the main reason for wanting to write a short short today: lately I've been into reading classical shoujo (girls) manga from the sixties-seventies. In my review of Takashina Ryouko's Piano Sonata Satsujin Jiken, I wrote:

(...) the puzzle plot mystery manga's roots could be traced to the uprise of female manga artists in the 70s who would leave an everlasting impression on the industry. The 70s provided a space for experimentation within the manga format, and it was especially daring female artists who did incredible things there. A while back, I reviewed the animated feature They Were Eleven! for example, based on a comic by industry legend Hagio Moto which incorporated mystery, science-fiction and human drama. The horror genre in the manga format has also been long associated with comics for female readers, as that too flourished in the 70s under the auspices of female manga artists. From there it's not hard to see how horror artists would work their way to mystery manga, as the two genres have much in common.

So I've exploring this period of mystery manga even more lately. One of the more interesting titles was Yamada Mineko's Alice series. Yamada's one of the members of the so-called Year 24 Group, a group of female manga artists who were groundbreaking in their genre-breaking approach to female-oriented comics in the 70s (see also Hagio Moto mentioned in the quote). The group is named after the fact most of them were born in or around the year of Showa 24, or 1949. Yamada is best known for her science fiction series Saishuu Sensou ("Final Wars"), but she also wrote horror and mystery stories. I believe that most of her mystery-related output is concentrated in her Alice series, which was published from 1974 until 1978 in various magazines. The first story, Run Alice, introduces us to the young girl Alice, whose rich parents (who were never around anyway) have recently died. Her uncle and aunt want to inherit the immense family fortune, and hire assassins to kill their niece. What follows is a comedic adventure with Alice ending up at an all-boys school and become friends with a boy there called Dick Tracy. At this point, it's hardly a mystery stories, but the second story, The Stolen Jewel, is definitely an orthodox mystery story, where at a school party, someone's jewel is stolen. The plot is borrowed from G.K. Chesterton (which Yamada herself explains in a note at the end of the story), but it's a first step into a more classical mystery series.

What makes this series interesting for the reader is that Yamada used the characters of Alice, Dick and their friends in a very diverse manner. Yamada wrote for multiple magazines with different target readers, but Yamada would constantly adapt her characters for whatever story she wanted to write for the magazine. The pilot story is a comedic, slapstick inspired adventure that is very cartoon-like, while the fourth story, Where Did Our Summer Go?, is a pretty deep psychological thriller completely unlike the pilot story. Each of the nine Alice stories is completely unique in terms of atmosphere and as Yamada's artstyle also changed drastically in these four years, most of the time the stories don't even look like they belong together. You have a few classic murder case stories, but also theft cases and a few more psychologically-oriented thrillers. Heck, the very last story is actually a crossover with the science fiction Saishuu Sensou series, resulting in a really weird series 'finale' (it's best read as a spin-off). Overall, the mystery plots of the Alice series are seldom really impressive, but as perhaps one of the earliest proper mystery manga series with recurring characters and setting, it's definitely an interesting title in terms of history. All the Alice stories are collected in the volume Alice to Sannin no Futago ("Alice and the Three Twins"), though I think there's an older volume with the exact same title (other cover) that may not feature everything (and you can also find the various stories spread across different collections, to further the confusion).

One series that has definitely made into the history books on manga is Patalliro! by Maya Mineo. This shoujo comedy series that has ben running since the late 70s is about a short, arrogant and money-grabbing guy called Patalliro, who also happens to be the king of the really wealthy kingdom of Malynera. The core of this series is slapstick comedy, revolving around the wacky adventures of Patalliro, his friends Bancoran (a MI6 agent), Maraich (handsome assassin who married Bancoran) and Patalliro's personal army of "Onions" (handsome men whose uniform/hairdo makes them look like onions). The series is immensely popular with over a hundred volumes, an anime adaptation and was even recently made into a live-action movie-musical (based on the musical that ran before the movie).

Like The Simpsons, Patalliro! can take on many genres: sometimes it's just comedy, sometimes it's science fiction, other times they have occult adventures and of course, there are quite a number of mystery stories. There are in fact so many mystery stories, they have exclusively mystery-themed volumes of Patalliro!. They were on sale a few weeks ago, so I picked a few of the mystery volumes. Considering that Patalliro! isn't mainly a mystery series and that these detective stories are more like And Now For Something Completely Different episodes, I have to say I was quite amused by them. Sometimes the stories take some time to really move beyond the slapstick prologue and get on with the plot, but the story gets going, you'll come across the classic tropes like impossible thefts, locked room murders and whodunnits. None of the stories are truly brilliant, but they're also better than they have any right to be considering that Patalliro! isn't even a mystery series at heart. The plots are admittedly often simple and the experienced mystery reader can definitely quickly pick them apart, but they're well-constructed and they're perfectly fine as a mystery plots in a non-mystery series. For those interested, I know that at the very least, volume 29, 35 and 45 of the bunko releases are touted as mystery-themed volumes and there may be more of them.

Anyway, that's it for this Short Short. I'm still busy exploring the world of 70s mystery and horror manga, so I might return to this topic in a more extensive post in the future, and as for Kindaichi, the next volume is scheduled for October (as is the home video release of Detective Conan: Fist of the Blue Sapphire by the way!), so I'll probably review the full story then.

Original Japanese title(s): 天樹征丸（原）、さとうふみや（画）『金田一37歳の事件簿』第4巻; 山田ミネコ　『アリスと３人のふたご』; 魔夜峰央　『パタリロ！』第29巻

Once Upon a Crime

"Be a detective and examine everything to unlock the doors of the mystery of time and space."

"MOTAS: Mystery of Time and Space"

Huh, apparently there are a handful of mystery novels in Japan about Escher...

After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan opened up its ports for trade after centuries of closure, but that didn't mean foreign traders were free to go anywhere they wanted. Foreign settlements were opened at select places across Japan, most notably in Yokohama and Kobe. The foreign settlement in Osaka was located in Kawaguchi, and it also provided the home for a certain Dutch civil engineer called George Arnold Esher (who has a son called M.C. Esher...), who was hired by the Japanese government as an advisor, overseeing hydraulic projects like the restoration of the Yodo river in Osaka. One night Escher returns to Osaka after overseeing the harbor in Mikuni, when he is kidnapped and stuffed in a hansom coach. The threats by his assailants make it clear they're actually not after him, but a tradesman called Hans Boemler, but attempts at clearing up the misunderstanding fail. The blinded hansom doesn't allow Escher to see much, but he notices that his kidnappers brought him to the Kawaguchi Foreign Settlement (which is where he was heading anyway), and he's brought into a room, where he finds... the body of Boemler, who apparently had already been found and killed by his kidnappers' boss. With a body on their hand, and a mistaken abductee, the fiends decide to burn the place down, but Escher is miraculously saved from the fire. But in the subsequent investigation, one problem arises: Boemler's body was never found. Escher and his comrades try to figure out what happened exactly that night, but none of their theories work, and Escher would eventually leave Japan.

Morie Shunsaku takes up the case of Mr. Shioji in 2001, who is accused of murdering Udou, a businessman who together with a few other men beat Shioji up at the golf course, after Shioji assaulted them first. Shioji used to be a police officer, but he was basically crippled by Udou and his friends back when they were students and participating in the student riots in the 70s, giving Shioji enough of a motive for murder. Udou had been strangled on the street at night, and with witnesses stating they saw Shioji tailing Udou, and even someone who saw the murder happen from across the street, Shioji's guilt seems clear, but he swears that he never touched the man and that Udou was assaulted by some invisible ghost, as he saw Udou suddenly struggling and falling down on the street even though there was nobody around. This alone sounds like an impossible crime, but Morie also learns that in 1970, Udou's circle of friends was involved with a mysterious murder. The friends had been drinking near the warehouse district, when Hikura headed back home. He made his way through Ajigawa Tunnel (a deep, long tunnel running beneath the Aji River) and at the other end of the tunnel, he discovered the body of Toomi, one of the friends he had been drinking with. While Hikura had not seen Toomi when he left (meaning Toomi could've come here before him), Hikura did see Udou and the others before he left and none of them could've overtaken him to arrive at the tunnel earlier and commit the murder, as there is only one single road to the tunnel. Morie has a nagging feeling that the Ajigawa Tunnel Murder has some similarities with the George Esher case he read about in a pamphlet, and he decides to try to solve these cases too in Ashibe Taku's Toki no Misshitsu ("A Locked Space in Time", 2001).

Toki no Misshitsu is the tenth entry in this series starring the defense attorney Morie Shunsaku, who more often than not ends up amateur sleuthing. And as you can gather from my feeble attempt at a summary, it's also a very ambitious work, that tries to do a lot. I do have to say that the title can be a bit misleading, as while they talk about sealed spaces and locked rooms all the time, most of the situations aren't really locked room mysteries. The 1876 Escher case for example is called a sealed space because the Kawaguchi Foreign Settlement is a "sealed space" (extraterrorial ground) from which Boemler's body disappeared. The Ajigawa Tunnel murder is considered a "locked room murder" because the suspects were all located at one side of the tunnel and none of them could've made it to the other side of the tunnel without being seen by the reliable witness (i.e. the area between the witness and the victim was "a locked space" for the suspects, but the murder was possible for anyone on the other side of the tunnel). There is another problem presented in the prologue, where Morie is riding on the Aqua-Liner aqua-bus with a certain package, but he can't figure out how his opponent is going to retrieve that package and escape from the police, as the canals and rivers of Osaka basically make any quick escape impossible. The only real impossible crime situation is that of the Udou murder, where the defendant says Udou was attacked by a ghost, and a witness says he saw the defendant assault the victim, but even then it's not really a locked room mystery. So the title is rather misleading.

To be honest, the four "sealed space" mysteries are not likely to make much of an impression if taken alone. The solutions for both the Aqualiner mystery and the Udou murder are fairly simple to guess and I wouldn't be surprised if you had seen similar answers elsewhere. The Escher and the Ajigawa Tunnel cases are more interesting, as their underlying trick is the same if the execution is different, and Morie manages to solve the Ajigawa Tunnel case only because he figured out the Escher case. It has to be noted that once again, their base idea is nothing particularly inspiring, but at least the synergy is here between these cases, and it is interesting to see how two completely different situations, set in very different times, are ultimately built around the same notion, and the way it ties back to M.C. Escher (who makes an appearance as a kid) is pretty neat. I actually thought this novel to be packed way too full (besides the four "sealed space" mysteries, there's even a code cracking section, and more), and personally, I think a novel only focused on the Esher and Ajigawa Tunnel cases would've worked better, as the other elements in Toki no Misshitsu feel far less integrated compared to these two parts. There is not that much synergy between the various parts, so at times the novel does feel like a collection of various mysterious events, rather than one cohesive story (especially as there's just so much going on in this novel across various time periods).

I've mentioned in earlier reviews of Ashibe's work that he loves weaving historical and literary research into his stories: the pastiche stories with famous fictional detectives in his The Exhibition of Great Detectives series (Part 1 and Part 2) are excellent examples of how Ashibe not only shows great understanding of the works he imitates, from writing style to publication history, but you also see how he does a tremendous amount of research in world history, as he also makes connections between his fictional tales, and real world events. His work is always brimming with historical references and explanations, which can also backfire a bit: I thought Satsujin Kigeki no Modern City  was going a bit overboard with its explanations of basically everything in 1930s Osaka. With a story set in the three distinct time periods (1876, 1970 and 2001), you're sure to find plenty of references and historical explanations in Toki no Misshitsu too, though I didn't find it as intrusive as with Satsujin Kigeki no Modern City. You are sure to learn a lot while reading this book, but the way Ashibe uses the historical A.G. Esher for his mystery for example is pretty neat and a good example of how to do a historical mystery. It's also clear that Ashibe loves the city of Osaka, and as always, you're always seeing a lot of the Water Capital in various forms. The amount of research in the city's history can sometimes a bit overwhelming and distract a bit from the main mystery plot, but readers into atmosphere will definitely love Toki no Misshitsu, and Ashibe's in general, I think.

I might not be the ideal reader of Toki no Misshitsu, as I freely admit I'm a reader who focuses more on the core mystery plot and less on "story". Personally, I think a tale focusing solely on the two most interesting situations, the Escher and Ajigawa Tunnel cases, would've worked better than the way it is now, with a lot going on. The idea of using Escher and the Kawaguchi Foreign Settlement is quite original though and the idea of a "sealed space" mystery with the tunnel is also interesting, even if the "locked room" moniker is a bit misleading. I do think that people who really like to read "an epic story" will like Toki no Misshitsu as Ashibe really went all-out here, with so much mysteries to be solved in the city of Osaka, spanning a period of more than a century.

Original Japanese title(s): 芦辺拓 『時の密室』