Where There's a Will

That's one small step for [a] man

Neil Armstrong

Last year, I reviewed the not very memorable Moord in de Ridderzaal by Theo Joekes, a novel I had picked up in the town's free library, where you can exchange novels and books for free: you can simply leave a book you'd like someone else to read behind, and readers can take a book with them for free. Moord in de Ridderzaal by the way, was swiftly returned.

A loooooong while back (this review was pushed back a lot), I was scanning titles again in the free library, when my eyes fell on a familiar name. At least, the name of the author was familiar to me: the Dutch title of the book didn't immediately ring a bell. For I have read a couple of Christianna Brand novels already, and most of them were excellent mystery stories, though the Dutch title Het geheim van de voetstappen ("The Secret of the Footsteps") didn't sound familiar to me. A look inside however told me this was the Dutch translation of Suddenly At His Residence (1947), a book I had heard about, but hadn't read yet, so the book was promptly pulled out from the shelf. Sir Richard Marsh, an eccentric elderly man, has a family gathering at his stately manor Swanswater every year in memory of his late first wife Serafita, despite being his second wife still being alive and well. Due to the unfortunate deaths of his own children during the war, only his four grandchildren attend to this gathering (three grandchildren of Serafita, one of his second wife Bella). Peta (daughter of the oldest son) is the favorite of Richard, but he doesn't really understand her modern ways. Philip (son of second son) is married with Ellen and they have a child, but he has fallen in love with Claire (daughter of third son), and wishes to divorce Ellen. Edward (grandson of Bella) is neurotic and spoiled, and is prone to 'space out', though even he himself doesn't quite know whether he's playing the role, or actually neurotic. Richard has always felt a generational gap between him and his grandchildren, but when he learns of the affair of Philip and Claire, and how everyone thinks so lightly of everything, he decides to disown the grandchildren, leaving everything to his second wife Bella (and Edward). As always on Serafita's day, he retreats to her beloved garden house to spend the night there, and this year, he decides to use his time there to alter his will. The following morning however, the old man is discovered dead in the garden house, and not only has his new will disappeared, it also seems his death was foul play. Inspector Cockrill, as an old acquaintance of the family is asked to investigate the matter, and Cockrill, and the family members soon realize that the crux of the case revolves around the one path leading to the garden house (rose bushes block any other way): fresh sand had been laid on the path after Sir Richard had retreated in the garden house, but the only footprints left on the path were of the people who discovered the body, so when had the murderer visited the man?

I kinda like this cover art by the way, it's in a style you don't often see.

Anyway, Suddenly At His Residence is most definitely A Mystery Story By Brand. Well, I haven't read that much Christianna Brand to be completely honest, but if there's one thing that all the novels I have read have in common, it's that everyone in her novels is very eager to offer false solutions, reasonable hypotheses and well-considered suspicions on everyone else. Seriously, everyone in her novels will at one point or another accuse another character of having committed the deed, and it's never just an accusation, no, it's always an accusation that's quite plausible! Suddenly At His Residence basically has two seemingly impossible situations. The murder of Sir Richard is the main problem of course, and the numerous false solutions can be roughly split in two variations:  either the murderer went to the garden house before the fresh sand was laid on the path, or after. The latter variation is of course a familiar trope in mystery fiction, often recognized as the 'footsteps in the snow' trope. If the murderer did go after the sand had been laid, how did they enter and leave without leaving footsteps? On the other hand, it can also be assumed the murderer went before the sand was laid, but here we are still confronted with several impossibilities, as the people known to have gone to the garden house at that time were for example in company of other witnesses, or seen not to carry anything with them with which they could've commited the murder.

This split in two kinds of impossibilities is quite interesting, as it really keeps the reader on their toes, as they are being "forced" to choose between one of these paths (before or after), and even then, they still have to figure out how it was exactly done. And Brand makes sure to toy around with the reader, as she'll name quite a few possibilities the reader will also consider, but yeah, it's very likely you're on the wrong track if one of the characters already voices your ideas with the same reasoning with still more than seventy pages left. There is a second death later in the book, and while that is an impossible situation though, with no footsteps left in the dust, this one is easier to guess and not directly connected to the first murder in terms of method (they are two distinctly different situations).

When I finally arrived at the part where the solution to Sir Richard's death is explained however, I realized I had already heard of this solution before. Mind you, I didn't realize this until after it had been revealed, and I hadn't even thought of this solution myself while I was reading the novel, so it didn't really influence my reading experience, but I believe it's one that's reasonably famous for this type of problem. The solution works well here, even if the clewing is a bit sparse, though I did have the feeling it felt a bit arbitrary due to all the false solutions preceding the final solution. That is to say, the previous false solutions were all discarded for several reasons, but never did you really feel a connection between those false solutions. They were just treated as false, but crossing them off your list didn't mean it'd get you closer to the final solution. Earlier this year, I read Mitsuda Shinzou's Mizuchi no Gotoki Shizumu Mono, which had a lot of false solutions too, but there the false solutions were all actually necessary steps, as elements from each false solution would prove to be important to mark the road to the true solution. In comparison, all the false solutions in Suddenly At His Residence felt as discrete instances, with no real consequences to the final solution. It's a completely different approach to the false solutions device, but at the end of Suddenly At His Residence, you feel like the novel could also have ended in the first few pages had Cockrill simply stumbled upon that solution first, as the other hypotheses had nothing to do with the real solution anyway.

Not that I think Suddenly At His Residence is a bad mystery novel though. Quite the contrary, it's a very amusing, and deep mystery novel that isn't afraid to be a real detective story, focusing on logical reasoning by offering so many plausible solutions to the problem, but still whipping up a surprise at the end, and a good example of how a Brand-brand mystery novel overall. And I am grateful that someone actually left a copy of the book in the free library. But the book did get me thinking about what I like about false solutions in mystery novels and what their function should be, and in that sense, I do have to say Suddenly At His Residence is, well, not disappointing perhaps, but I did make me long for a Brand where the false solution device is used in a more constructive way for her mystery plots. And to end this story: this book was returned to the free library, so someone else may also enjoy Brand!

A Murder of Ravens

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.

"The Raven" (Edgar Allan Poe)

In Japan, the term funiki gee (lit: "atmospheric game") is used to describe games that may not be impressive from a gameplay point of view per se, but which present the player with a unique, enjoyable atmosphere that manages to pull in the player. Usually, it's a mixture of the art, the music and the underlying world that helps create this ambiance, providing a whole package that is at least enjoyable due to how the game feels despite minor or more major flaws regarding how the game actually plays.

Funiki gee is the word I had in my mind as I played the mystery point & click adventure game The Raven Remastered (2019, PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One), a remastered version of 2013's The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief. I played the original release back in 2013 (when it was released in three distinct episodes instead of one package), but had forgotten most of the details of the story, I realized as I revisited the remastered version. I did remember that this was truly a funiki game: it had an excellent atmosphere and feel, even if as a game, and even as a mystery story, it had it share of flaws. What most people will think of when they first start playing this game is one name: Agatha Christie. Christie was undeniably an enormous influence on this game, and everything feels like it could've been featured in a Christie novel. Even the opening setting is familiar: the Orient Express. This game is set in 1964, five years after Inspector Legrand shot and caught the legendary thief The Raven. But now five years later, a new thief rears its beak: the "Heir of the Raven", as people are wont to call the newcomer, has succeeded in stealing one of the two "Eyes of the Sphinx" jewels from a museum in London, though with much more violence than the old Raven ever used. The remaining Eye is now being transported to Cairo for an exhibition. The great Inspector Legrand is to accompany the Eye to its destination to protect it from further attempts of theft and he even suspects that he's not dealing with the "Heir", but the real Raven, and that the man he caught five years ago was not the real Raven. The Eye is to travel by the Orient Express to Venice, where it will be shipped further to Cairo. In Switzerland, the elderly police constable Anton Zellner is put on the Express to assist Legrand, despite the inspector's reservations about what help the old man could possibly offer. Zellner, seeing this as his last opportunity to show off what he's capable off, however proves himself to be a very capable police detective when the Raven sets off a bomb on the train, which convinces Zellner to stick around to protect the jewel until it's safely exhibited in Cairo.

A story set on the Orient Express, aboard a steamer making a voyage across the Mediterranean Sea and inside a museum for Egyptian art, with an international, always somewhat suspicious cast including a Jewish baroness, a jetsetting American heir, a travelling German medical doctor and famous British writer and her companion: yep, this feels a lot like a Christie story. In fact, one of the characters in the game, Lady Clarissa Westmacott, is a famous writer of mystery stories starring a certain Partout and has a personal interest in Archaeology: the name and background of this character sound rather familiar to people who know Agatha Christie. The primary protagonist Anton Zellner too reminds of old Poirot, with his constable roots and a moustache. The Raven Remastered oozes atmosphere, and is sure to entertain people who like British Golden Age detective fiction. 

Like I said, when one uses the term 'atmospheric game', it's usually meant as a word to praise the game despite minor or major flaws and while I did have fun with my second playthrough, The Raven Remastered also reminded me that as a mystery game, it has little in common with Christie's writing. It's not horrible, mind you, but it's definitely not a cleverly, but fairly-clewed mystery tale, and there is a distinct gap between the mystery story and the tasks you have to perform as a player. It's this disjoint that makes The Raven Remastered a game that is not nearly as clever as the atmosphere is good. Gameplay consists mostly of inventory puzzles, and going through key dialogues by talking with all the characters. For example, very early on in the game a traveler in the Orient Express is locked outside his compartment and asks Zellner for some help. You then control Zellner, speaking with people on the train and looking for tools to use and eventually you find a way to pry open the door. Classic point & click adventure formula. However, all these inventory puzzles and the like are not integrally related to the story itself. The core mystery of who the Raven is and what they are going to do are not addressed directly in these puzzles, they just stand in the way of actually investigating what is going on. And that's often the case with mystery point & click adventure games: the puzzles themselves do not ask of you to think of the main mystery, in fact they distract from what should be the main mystery. You're constantly doing small menial tasks (collecting inventory items so you fix a door or something like that) just to be able to finally proceed with the mystery story. 

And that's very dissatisfying: what you want is that each puzzle you solve, does bring you closer to the truth, like in the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games, where you solve mini-puzzles (finding a contradiction in a testimony) one after another, and each solved contradiction will lead you closer to unraveling the whole mystery. The disjoint between what you want to do in The Raven Remastered (investigate who the Raven is) and what you are mostly doing (collecting items here and there to solve an artificial block in the way in solving the mystery) is somewhat frustrating. It's only part in the middle section where you truly feel like you're working on an investigation, as you actually collect pieces of evidence in a murder case that occurs on a boat and have to analyze them. Which incidentally is a locked room murder, but not a particularly original, or inspiring one. But this is just a small part, and most of the time you feel like you're busy solving puzzles that aren't related to the main story directly.

As for the mystery plot itself... it's not Christie by any means. The story was originally released back in 2013 in three installments, with one or two months between each release. When I first played it, I figured some of the problems I had with the story simply derived from the fact there were a few months between each episode and I had probably forgotten the details in the gap between the releases, but now I have played it in one go, I see The Raven Remastered is simply somewhat flawed in terms of the overall story. Some minor plotlines seem to be forgotten or ignored as you move from one episode to another, some characters that serve as red herrings barely have something to say and then suddenly disappear. I think the worst part is when at a certain point, you are suddenly threatened by the Raven and you have to guess who the person with the gun behind you is: when I first played this game, I really don't know, but even this second playthrough, knowing fully well who The Raven was, I'd still say the game showed next to no hints that set-up this reveal. You just have to guess who the Raven is, not based on any hints or clues shown in the narrative up to that point (and no, "he or she acted suspicious" is not a clue). It's here where that disjoint in solving minor inventory puzzles, and solving the mystery really feels largest: all the time you're busy finding ways to open doors or distracting someone or things like that, but when the game actually needs you to think and solve a plot-related mystery, it decides to forget about proper set-up. Opening doors and finding tools and other objects brought you not one step closer in the deductive process of solving the underlying mystery.

What is interesting to the game is that The Raven Remastered changes its protagonist half-way through: after going through the adventure with old Zellner, the narrative jumps back to tell the story from the beginning again, but from the point of view of another character. Some parts that seemed vague or unsolved in Zellner's part of the story are explained here, and that's pretty funny and interesting. In theory, showing the same events from two distinct POV can lead to an interesting mystery story, but there are still parts that feel somewhat undeveloped in general, even if this mult-layered style of storytelling is fun. But again, it'd have been more fun if you could already actually deduce what had happened in Zellner's part based on actual hinting and clewing, and that the game would then show you you were right as you played through the second half from the other point of view. This sadly is not really done well here.

So my second playthrough of The Raven Remastered doesn't differ much from how I experienced the original The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief back in 2013. In terms of atmosphere, it's quite enjoyable: the setting, the characters and the music all invoke a distinct ambiance that reminds of Christie's work. It actually feels more Christie than a lot of other games that are actually officially licensed Agatha Christie game adaptations. But most of the tasks you as the player have to perform, are not directly related to the main mystery plot, and in fact, the game gives you very little space to truly think over the (fairly disappointing) clues yourself. If you really want to feel like a detective yourself, this might not be the game for you, but as a game to enjoy a mystery tale, and allows you to focus on smaller tasks at hand as you go through the story, The Raven Remastered is an okay game.

The Girl Who Couldn't Remember

Memento mori

The last few years, all my encounters with Kitayama Takekuni were through Danganronpa, whether it being through his spin-off novel series Danganronpa Kirigiri or through his advisory role for New Danganronpa V3. Today, I go back to his Castle series, which is how I was first introduced to him in 2011.

Castle series
'Clock Castle' Murder Case (2002)
'Lapis Lazuli Castle' Murder Case (2002)
'Castle Alice Mirror' Murder Case (2003)
'Guillotine Castle' Murder Case (2005)

Rurijou Satsujin Jiken ("'Lapis Lazuli Castle' Murder Case", 2002) starts in 1989, inside the so-called The Library At The End of the World, a small private library situated outside town on the northern-most tip of the northern Japanese island Hokkaido. One of the few frequent visitors of the library is the eighteen year old Kimiyo, who unfortunately due to a brain tumor only has about a half year of life left. She spends her days here in the library, accompanied by her friends: the two librarians Kirisame and Utamika, and the student Miki. One day, Kimiyo is suddenly spoken to by a new visitor, a man calling himself Kito. He has a rather odd story: he claims Kimiyo and he have already met in a previous life. In fact, he says that they have come across each other countless of times, destined to find each other with each new reincarnation. He claims this is the Curse of the Six Daggers, which each time will attract them to one of the daggers (and indeed, the library has one of those daggers in the storage). Kito says that each new life, Kimiyo and he become lovers, but in the end, one of them always ends up killing the other with one of the cursed daggers. The curse is supposed to originate from the thirteenth century, with their "original" souls being a French lady and her knight. Kimiyo obviously doesn't believe much of the story initially, neither do her friends, but the whole thing escalates in the worst possible manner, when one morning, Kirisame arrives in the library to find Kimiyo lying in a pentagram made out of books, with the decapitated heads of Utamika and Miki hanging in the room. But not only was the room completely locked from the inside, what makes this really baffling is that Kirisame swears Kimiyo wasn't stabbed yet when he saw her lying from outside the room, but she was stabbed by the cursed dagger when he finally made her way to her. Kirisame has no idea what's going on here, until a mysterious androgenous person calling themselves Snowy appears on the scene and declares they will solve this mystery.

Meanwhile, the reader is also introduced to two other time periods visited by this Snowy. In 1916's Germany, a French Second Lieutenant is fighting in the trenches, when one day, he hears of a story of German soldiers suddenly losing their head. He later finds an underground room in the trenches where four decapitated soldiers lie, but after a short fight, he finds all four bodies have disappeared completely from that room, even though there were soldiers on guard in all the passages leading away from that room. Snowy is also a visitor in 1243's France, home of the Lapis Lazuli Castle, inhabitated by Geoffroy on the orders of the House of Toulouse. Geoffroy's daughter, Marie is in love with Rayne, one of the "Six Knights for Marie", a special unit Geoffroy appointed to his daughter. Her mother disappeared several years ago without any trace from the castle, and she has confided in Rayne to investigate it. However, Marie's knights have only started when one night, all six knights disappear mysteriously from the heavily guarded castle too. Eventually, the six decapitated bodies of the knights are found near an upstream lake. But what is odd is that the knights were discovered there the morning after their disappearance, but it takes several days to travel that far upstream. Marie is desperate when Snowy appears to explain how Rayne and the other knights managed to disappear.

Rurijou Satsujin Jiken is the second book in Kitayama's Castle series and the last one I hadn't read yet, but if you go through the other reviews, you might notice that the books do not form one narrative or even share the same world. They are all standalone stories, each set in rather unique worlds with some supernatural elements, with the main connecting tissue being that they all feature castles or manors as their main decor. So you can read them completely independently from each other, in any order. There are some small references shared between them, but nothing major. For example, there is mention of a tale of six decapitated knights too in Guillotine Jou Satsujin Jiken and the titular Clock Castle's official name is actually Geoffroy's Manor. The major similarities between the stories are the castle settings, the emphasis on impossible murders (often featuring some grand mechanical trick behind them) and fantasy/science-fiction elements playing a role in the background. For example, reincarnation in Rurijou Satsujin Jiken is actually real, and yes, Marie from thirteenth century France is really Kimiyo in twentieth century Japan. You have to roll with these ideas in this series, but more about this later.

First: the mysteries. We are presented with three different situations this time, all set in different time periods and quite different, even if they have some thematic similiarities (decapitated bodies). One problem all three situations have is that the set-up for each of them is rather short: Snowy basically appears immediately afer the mystery is presented, and they start deducing right away. The 1989 library murder for example has few good ideas about how the room was actually locked, but you barely get any time to think about it. What is important to note however is that this trick is... really hard to imagine just by reading the explanation. I had to read the text a few times and still didn't really get, but one look at the diagram that followed was enough for me to finally comprehend it, even without the textual explanation. Kitayama's pretty infamous for his rather technical, and mechanically sound construction of locked room mysteries, but I often do need a visual aid to really get it. The trick behind how Kimiyo was stabbed in an instant is a bit shakey, but it's nicely camouflaged and relatively easy to imagine. But still, everything feels a bit hasty.

The 1916's disappearance of the four soldiers from the trenches is the least interesting mystery presented in the novel. The solution itself is a bit mundane, and it doesn't really help that the prose didn't do much to really support the presentation of the mystery: some parts are rather vague, so when the whole thing is explained, you just shrug and think, 'Okay, that could happen if it was like that, but it wasn't really clear in the text.' The disappearance from the knights from the Lapis Lazuli Castle is likely the one to leave the most impression. The concept behind how the bodies actually ended up so far within half a day is basically one of those 'if you happen to know this piece of trivia, you're good and else you're out of luck' which don't do much for me. How the knights actually disappeared from the castle is incredibly obvious once a certain prop is introduced in the story, but it's so wonderfully silly and grand, reminiscent of those early Shimada Souji stories, that I can't help but have a weak spot for it. It's insane, in a good way, and that's actually when this series is at its best.

Back to the reincarnation topic though. While reincarnation is treated as real in this story, and it's also used to spring some surprises on the reader, one might be surprised that it's not really part of the mystery plot proper. Some of the reveals Snowy makes about how reincarnation works and how it influences the plot of this novel come almost out of nowhere, and while they make internally sense, you are never really expected to figure how things work for yourself. Kitayama does use the reincarnation theme for a small, but clever event late in the book, but it almost feels like an extra. For the most part, you just roll with the reincarnation thing, and accept that some events work out this or that way, because of how it is explained within the novel (mostly by Snowy), rather than working the thing out in advance yourself.

Like all the other books in the Castle series, I think I ultimately do like them, but they are also always rather hard to just recommend to people. The science-fiction/fantasy settings can be a bit disorientating for some readers, especially as each novel has a completely different setting and you often feel like you're only reading part of a story, as if you're missing context regarding the rest of the world. This is also true for Rurijou Satsujin Jiken, though I have to say it's perhaps the best at presenting a complete, standalone world compared to the other novels in series. The three impossible situations are a bit hit or miss though as each time, the process set-up-discovery-solution is rather short. Unique however, this book certainly is and overall, I am definitely glad I now read all of Kitayama's Castle books.

Original Japanese title(s):  北山猛邦『「瑠璃城」殺人事件』

Question!

I am a fan of the Challenge to the Reader (Viewer/Listener/Player/etc.) in mystery fiction. Yes, it's awfully artificial and meta to suddenly stop the story to directly address the reader to say that at that point in the story  all the clues have now been presented and that if they're an attentive thinker, they're now perfectly able to solve the mystery themselves now, but if one considers detective fiction to be an intellectual game, breaking the fourth wall at such a time is perfectly fine in my opinion. Whether it's Queen suddenly interrupting Ellery's investigation in the novels or Ellery himself addressing the viewer in the excellent television show, whether it's Furuhata Ninzaburou beneath the spotlight, or perhaps even the author Arisugawa Alice himself who declares Egami now knows whodunnit, I love the declaration that now all the pieces are in set in place and that I should be able to figure the mystery out. Series like Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and Tantei Gakuen Q have similar moments, when the protagonists cry out they have now solved the mystery, implicitly suggesting that the reader should also have done so by now.

On one hand, it's of course the thrill of being addressed directly with a challenge to solve the mystery, but lately, I have grown more appreciative of a different angle to the Challenge to the Reader, namely how it works as an aid in constructing a good mystery plot. Let's say that the average mystery story is divided in 1) The discovery of the mystery, 2) The investigation and 3) The mystery is explained. I want to focus on the phase between 2) and 3): the moment that the mystery is solved by the detective. Mind you, I am not talking about the scene where the detective has gathered all the suspects in the parlor to accuse someone. That is after the detective solved the mystery, they only haven't explained it yet. I am talking about the exact moment when all the puzzle pieces fall in place, when all the hints and clues have been gathered and been identified for their role in the mystery. It's at this moment when all the random clues, hints and witnesses come together to form a Rube Goldberg machine or The Incredible Machine where everything interlocks in a meaningful manner to lead to one undeniable conclusion.

What is important for a good mystery story is that there should be a reason why the detective couldn't figure it out until that specific moment. Ideally, a mystery story should be plotted so each hint and clue presented in the story will bring the detective and reader closer to the truth, but there should also be one final, conclusive clue that allows them to make that last leap. Without that last clue, both the detective and reader should be stuck, unable to declare with full conviction that they solved it. Some years ago, I wrote a piece on clues in mystery fiction, especially as seen in Queen school mystery fiction, and it's especially in these type of stories where this is done well. Usually, the reader is able to identify multiple attributes of the murderer that allows them to strike off most names on the suspect list, but they need one final hint that allows them to eliminate one of the final remaining two names. When the story then reveals a clue that shows the murderer was right-handed and you know one of the remaining names was left-handed, you understand not only the importance of the clue, but also why the detective was not able to solve the mystery until that specific moment. It's like having already built most of The Incredible Machine, but still missing that bowling ball to drop on the cat to get the thing going.

A good Challenge to the Reader should of course included right after this liberating moment. It's a bit of self-promotion, but I find the Challenge to the Reader in Arisugawa's The Moai Island Puzzle an excellent example of how to do a Challenge. It's placed right after the scene where Egami learns of a certain fact that finally allows him identify the murderer, even though a lot of the facts surrounding the mystery could already be solved by them. It was really that last little bit that he needed to be truly able to figure out who the murderer was, and that is why it's immediately followed by the Challenge. Both the Ellery Queen and Furuhata Ninzaburou television shows usually do an excellent job here too, with the respective Challenge to the Viewers following right after (and actually within the same scene of) finding out the final, decisive clue. A good mystery story, with or without a Challenge, should really have this moment that justifies a mystery not being solved until that moment.

Stories with multiple (false) solutions also often perform well on this aspect (see also my article on false solutions and the foil detective). Usually, a false solution is presented because it's based on incomplete information, because there are still vital clues missing in the process. Mitsuda Shinzou's Toujou Genya series in particular uses this to great effect: Genya's method of deduction actually involves him simply coming up with fanciful deductions based on the facts he has at that moment. Often, they are shot down by new facts and clues presented by the people listening to him and dismissing his theories. But then Genya uses those new facts to build a new theory, etc. until he gets the final, conclusive clue that truly allows him to reveal the truth.

What I sometimes see in mystery fiction however is that a detective doesn't manage to figure the mystery out yet at a certan point of the story, even though seen from a story-structure point of view, all the relevant clues have already been presented to them. Usually, they brood on the clues for a while, and then they suddenly see it because the story wants it to be so, or they're given an extra, but not vital hint to push them towards the solution. Christie's Three Act Tragedy for example has Poirot only realizing what is going on due to a chance remark of one of the characters, but that remark is not a vital clue on its own. From a pure logical point of view, Poirot could've solved the mystery earlier without ever having heard that remark, because it was not a clue pertaining to the logical process of solving the mystery. To go back to The Incredible Machine analogy: Poirot was not missing a vital piece of the machine, he already had everything. He just needed someone to say "Hey, what if you put that thing here?' And as much as I adore the Detective Conan special Noroi no Kamen wa Tsumetaku Warau ("The Cursed Masks Laugh Coldly"), that too has Conan only realizing what was going on after seeing something that nudged him in the right direction, even though he already had possession of all the relevant clues before that moment. And I usually don't find this really satisfying in a mystery novel, because when you look at the story in an abstract way, like plotting every clue and hint in a flowchart, you'll see that the essential clues were already presented, and that the thing that finally helps the detective (if such a hint is given at all), is usually minor and not directly related to the mystery, meaning they could've solved it earlier and there's no direct reason to stall the "I figured it out!" moment until later.

So to come back to why I like Challenges to the Reader: I have the feeling they help mystery authors think more about plotting their story, how the logical process of solving their mystery should be structured and what the implications of each and every clue should be. Of course, most stories work perfectly fine without a Challenge to the Reader and the Challenge is not directly responsible for making a good "I figured it out!" moment. But I do feel more writers should really think about legitimizing why a mystery is solved at a certain point in a story from a logical point of view and a Challenge can be a helpful tool.

The Vanishing Game

 「死体の入れ物といえば、これに勝るものはない」

『ここに死体を捨てないでください！」

"There was nothing better than that to put a dead body in."

"Don't Dump Your Bodies Here Please!"

Oh, wow, it's been this long since I last read a book in Higashigawa Tokuya's Ikagawashi series? Man, at one time I was reading at least one of these books a year....

Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! ("Don't Dump Your Bodies Here Please!" 2009) opens with a a phone call from Kaori's younger sister Haruka, which turned Kaori's day complete upside down. It was still early in the day when an unknown woman suddenly barged into Haruka's apartment, and in her sheer surprise and fear, Haruka accidently stabbed the woman with her fruit knife. Unwisely, Haruka fled her room, leaving the body behind. By the time she had come to her senses, she found herself in another prefecture and called to her sister for help. Figuring that the police isn't likely to believe her younger sister's story, especially as she fled the scene of the crime, Kaori declares she'll take care of everything for her younger sister. Kaori learns her sister did really tell her the truth, as the dead body is still lying in Haruka's kitchen. Going through the victim's wallet, she learns the victim was called Yamada Keiko, a woman who had no connections whatsover to Haruka. Kaori decides she needs to move the body away from Haruka's room, and dupes the young man Tetsuo into helping her. Tetsuo drives a truck collecting large recyclable trash, and they decide to use the old contrabass case he collected to hide Keiko's body in. They drive off in Keiko's car, and after wandering around the edges of town to find a place to dump the body, they decide to drive the car, with Keiko inside, into the allegedly bottomless Moon Crescent Lake on Bonkura Mountain outside Ikagawashi City. It's only after they've sunk the car the two realize they're now stuck on the mountain without a car and after a long, long time of being lost, they find refuge in an inn with hot springs on the mountain. What should've been the end of a long night however is just the beginning, as it just so happens a certain private detective, his asssistant and their landlord have also arrived at the same inn, as they are looking for a client who never showed up for her appointment: a certain Yamada Keiko.

Like I said, I read a lot of the Ikagawashi series in the earlier days of this blog, but my last review related to this series dates from 2014, when I reviewed the TV drama Watashi no Kirai na Tantei ("The Detective I Don't Like"), based on the books of this series. Like most of Higashigawa Tokuya's series, the Ikagawashi series is a humorous detective series, which combines snappy dialogues and slapstick comedy with proper puzzle mystery plots. This series is particularly unique in that it basically has no fixed main detective character, and the series is therefore titled after the city where these cases take place. The overly self-confident private detective Ukai Morio, his slow-witted assistant Ryuuhei and their landlord Akemi (who doesn't like poking around as a detective, but simply needs to make sure Ukai pays his rent) are often at the center of things, but usually Inspectors Sunagawa and Shiki also end up as focus characters, and any of these characters is able to solve (part of) the mystery at hand.

Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! too has three perspectives for the reader. First we have Kaori and Tetsuo, who dumped the body and are then treated to several surprises at the inn. First they find that a weird middle-aged man (Ukai Morio) is asking around about Yamada Keiko, and with time, Kaori and Tetsuo even start to suspect Ukai, Ryuuhei and Akemi killed the woman in Haruka's room, not knowing that at the exact same time Ukai and Akemi arrive at the conclusion that Kaori and Tetsuo must've done killed their client who never showed up! And then there's the police, who have their own suspicions too. A lot of the comedy is derived from seeing the same situation from various perspectives, but that's of course also the way the reader will eventually solve the puzzle. Several other incidents occur in this novel besides the mysterous death of Yamada Keiko: the following day, the owner of the inn they're all staying is found dead, ostenstibly drowned after he fell into the river during a midnight fishing session. There are also suspicions of foul play, but it seems that most of the viable suspects have a perfect alibi, as they were watching a live soccer game of the national team together, making it impossible for most of them to go all the way to the man's fishing spot and back in time. Kaori and Tetsuo are also confronted with another surprise: they happen to come to Moon Crescent Lake the following day again, but not only learn it isn't even remotely 'bottomless', they are unable to find the car they dumped despite the super clean and clear water of the lake! But why did somebody remove the car with Keiko's body from the lake and how?

Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! keeps the reader from start to finish entertained by juggling between these various characters and showing everything from various perspectives, and this structure definitely helps out the underlying mystery plot, as it'd be a bit simple if left on its own. Some of the elements are somewhat easy to guess, for example the matter what Yamada Keiko was doing in Haruka's apartment anyway, though the death of the owner of the inn, and the disappearance of the dumped car are linked in an interesting manner with a somewhat original solution, though I do have trouble imagining how practical this trick would actually be. There are some neat, but obvious clues left here and there and overall, this is a very fair mystery novel that isn't too hard and can be quite satisyfying to read.

Oh, and a small note, but don't you just hate it when they suddenly change the style of covers suddenly? The earlier pocket releases of this series featured a very different style, but at some point they changed it to have these comic characters, and republished the older novels too with the new covers. The thing is: I think these new covers are really fun. So now I have the four older pockets in the old style, and only this novel in the new but better style...

Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! is also the last novel in the series for the moment by the way. It is followed by three short story collections, but I am not sure when I'm going to read those books. Parts of them were already used for the drama adaptation, so I am already familiar with almost half of them. Koko ni Shitai wo Sutenaide Kudasai! for me however was a safe, familiar return to a place I know well. It's perhaps not the best novel in this series (it isn't), but it's a consistent and funny mystery novel that does everything you'd expect from a novel in this series.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉 『ここに死体を捨てないでください！』

The Clocks

Last year, I wrote an article on glasses in mystery fiction, looking at the various ways in which spectacles could be used in a mystery plot. I ended the article with a note that "I doubt this post will turn into a series about all kinds of objects (...)" but now one year later, I think it's about time to write about another object often seen in mystery fiction: clocks, watches and other timepieces.

To first quote myself from the glasses article:

Objects are often important to a mystery story. If a murder is committed, the culprit is likely to utilize an object, that is, a murder weapon, to accomplish their goal. A button left at the crime scene could prove as evidence to the identity of the murderer. Or perhaps the disappearance of an object that should be there will become the focus of an investigation, leading the question of why a certain object was so important it had to be removed. An object is thus usually a clue, something that links it to the solution of the mystery (which could be a murder, but it could be any enigmatic happening).  An object might tell you who committed a certain crime, or how it was done, or perhaps why it was done.

Objects and items are usually created with a certain purpose in mind: sometimes it's for decorative purposes, more often it's for more practical needs, and sometimes it's a bit of both. The primary purpose of clocks, wristwatches and similar objects is of course to tell, or measure time. And time is oh-so-important in mystery fiction. When the investigator is looking for the person whodunnit, they always look at means, motive and opportunity, and opportunity is related to time: who was physically capable of committing the crime, being at a certain spot at a certain time? The alibi in mystery fiction is a concept of time: the proof of being present at certain location at a certain time. But also think of locked room mysteries: it's no coincidence that many of the locked room lectures include categorizations/possible solutions that say that the real time the murder occured is either earlier or later than assumed. Time is an integral part of mystery fiction, and you need clocks to tell time.

The first thing you think of when I say clocks in mystery fiction, is probably the image of a damaged wrist or pocket watch, the time stopped at the exact time the time-keeper was broken. The watch of the victim has stopped at 22:00, so he must have been struggling with his murderer then, and broke his watch when he fell on the floor, meaning the murder happened at ten! Of course, no reader of mystery fiction is going to believe this as is. Nowadays, in-universe characters and readers alike are savvy enough to know that the "broken watch" can be easily faked by the murderer to make it seem like the crime was commited at a different time. The notion that clocks indicate the time, but don't actually measure time as independent element is of course the crux of the dilemma. You can measure the outside temperature, and then convert it to different measurement units. Time itself isn't measured by a watch, it does not measure "time" first to convert it to a second/minute/hour scale. A clock just runs at a certain rhythm, allowing us to create a time unit for us to use. So clocks are often used to fake alibis, and often the mystery of course shifts away from "clocks" to "how was the trickery with time" done. That said, clocks can still be an important part of such a mystery story. Let's say a witness saw a certain act happening at a certain time, having checked on their own watch. A trick could be that the murderer managed to changed the time on that watch, making the witness think they saw the act happening then. An excellent example of this idea is Ayukawa Tetsuya's short story Itsutsu no Tokei (The Five Clocks, 1957) where the alibi of a suspect seems iron-clad, as a witness spent the whole evening with the suspect and having checked the time on five different clocks over the course of that evening.

To give another example of clocks fulfilling a role as indicators of time in mystery fiction: the fifth novel in Ayatsuji Yukito's series on Houses is about the Clock House, which includes a wing with a collection of 108 watches. A group of people is locked inside this wing and of course murders happen. Considering the setting of the Clock House, you can safely guess that time has something to do with how the murders were committed, but the trick done here is brilliant, in your sight but oh-so-easy to miss. And it makes great use of the notion of clocks as indicators of time. Norizuki Rintarou's short story Shiramitsubushi no Tokei (Leave No Clock Unturned) goes even further: the protagonist of the story finds themselves in a windowless room with 1440 different running clocks, each indicating a different time down to the minute (12:00, 12:01, 12:02 etc.).  Their task: to find the one single clock in the room that is indicating the current time (as they are running!) It seems an impossible task, but Norizuki shows how this puzzle can be solved by pure logic and dedication.

In the above examples, I'm talking about mostly analog clocks, but man, if I were to go into the topic of digital clocks (especially those on security camera footage), I could be here writing all day. I guess that if I were to mention one single example, it'd be Ooyama Seiichirou's Tokeiya Tantei to Download no Alibi, a short story about an alibi of the main suspect being built around the fact he downloaded a certain song that was only available for download for one day, with digital time-stamps and a receipt proving his alibi.

Talking this much about time almost makes you forget that a clock or timepiece is on its own a physical object too. And yep, that also means that you can use a clock in other ways than just read time. A clock can of course be used as a murder weapon for example, though people who have played the videogame Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo - Hoshimitou - Kanashimi no Fukushuuki (The Case Files of Young Kindaichi - Stargazing Isle - The Sad Monsters of Revenge, 1998) will know to be careful with this. In this game, you play the murderer and have to avoid making mistakes or Hajime is instantly on your trail and if you choose to kill that one victim by bashing his head in, it's wiser to use the ornamental duck than the clock which will break and indicate the time of death... Grandfather clocks might be easier to crush a victim under. But there are other uses for clocks as physical objects in mystery fiction. In Yokomizo Seishi's Inugamike no Ichizoku (The Inugami Clan, 1951), some people doubt whether the war-injured Sukekiyo is really Sukekiyo, as his face is covered completely in bandages. One of the characters cleverly has Sukekiyo pick up her pocket watch: his fingerprints are preserved nicely on the glass inside the pocket watch. More 'general' uses for watches in mystery fiction are for example watches as personal items: the scene where Sherlock Holmes deduces about the owner of a certain pocket watch is quite famous. But a culprit for example might have dropped their own watch on the crime scene, or broken it there, leaving pieces of glasses on the floor which they must hide (similar to what I mentioned in the glasses article).

More unique uses of a clock as something else but a time indicator are to be found in for example Detective Conan (where Conan's wearing a stun-gun wristwatch which allows him to shoot a small needle with a strong sedative to knock someone out) or in Death Note, where a watch is revealed to be hiding a certain other object in one of the better known scenes of the series. In these instances, the watch is a disguise for something else. Clocks featured in some Christie novels like, obviously, The Clocks and The Seven Dials Mystery, but I thought they were more props there than actually related to the core plot.

One of the more memorable uses of a clock in mystery fiction is probably the clock as a location. Edogawa Rampo's Yuureitou (The Phantom Tower, 1937) was based on Kuroiwa Ruikou's same-titled Yuureitou (1899-1900), in turn based on A Woman in Grey, a 1898 novel by Alice Muriel Williamson. Part of Rampo's story is set in a creepy clock tower with secret passages etc. This would later inspire a young Miyazaki Hayao (of Studio Ghibli fame) to have the climax of his first animated theatrical feature, Lupin III: The Castle of Caglistro (1979) also set at a clock tower. His climax scene also formed an inspiration for the final scene in Disney's 1989 animated feature The Great Mouse Detective (and in turn also the climax in the Batman: The Animated Series episode The Clock King). While a location might not always be directly connected with the core mystery plot, the clock tower as a setting for a treasure hunt-type story works quite well in my mind.

Anyway, I have written more than enough about clocks in mystery fiction today. I didn't really think too much about the topic, so it's not really going in-depth on all the ways clocks could be used in mystery fiction, but the article should work as an introduction to the topic. My glasses article was more interesting, I personally think, so take a look at that time if you hadn't yet. Anyway, always happy to hear about the examples you might think of regarding the theme of clocks in mystery fiction.

Gates of Gloom

Deep into that darkness peering, 

long I stood there, wondering, fearing

"The Raven" (Edgar Allan Poe)

 
You know, I think I'll even manage to sneak in a fourth Toujou Genya review before the end of the year.

Toujou Genya series
1) Majimono no Gotoki Tsuku Mono ("Those Who Bewitch Like The Evil Spirits", 2006)
2) Magatori no Gotoki Imu Mono (2006)
3) Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono ("Those Who Cast A Curse Like The Headless", 2007) 
4) Yamanma no Gotoki Warau Mono ("Those Who Sneer Like The Mountain Fiend", 2008)
5) Himemuro no Gotoki Komoru Mono ("Those Who Stay Inside Like A Sealed Room", 2009)
6) Mizuchi no Gotoki Shizumu Mono ("Those Who Submerge Like The Water Spirit" 2009). 
7) Ikidama no Gotoki Daburu Mono ("Those Who Turn Double Like The Eidola", 2011)
8) Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono (2012)
9) Haedama no Gotoki Matsuru Mono (2018)

Earlier this year, I reviewed Ikidama no Gotoki Daburu Mono, which was the second short story collection in Mitsuda Shinzou's excellent Toujou Genya series. I apparently never read things in order, so this time, I'll be reviewing the first short story collection featuring the horror author/amateur detective Genya: Himemuro no Gotoki Komoru Mono ("Those Who Stay Inside Like A Sealed Room", 2009). Chronologically though, I'm completely vindicated with this choice: whereas Ikidama no Gotoki Daburu Mono (seventh entry in the series) was set in Genya's younger student days, the four stories collected in Himemuro no Gotoki Komoru Mono (fifth entry) are set after Genya became a professional writer and run parallel with the longer novels in this series (the second story in this collection for example is set just before the second novel). The style of the stories in this book is also slightly different from the second short story collection. In these stories, Genya usually arrives at the scene after everything has already happened and is asked to solve the case by the people involved, as opposed to being on the scene by coincidence, which is what usually happens in both the novels and the stories in the second short story collection. The stories usually therefore start a bit slow, focusing more on exposition and the horror elements of the plot, with Genya usually only appearing very late in the story. That said though, this is definitely a Toujou Genya book, so expect impossible crimes, deep insights into yokai and other supernatural folklore, many false solutions, and a nice touch of horror.

Kubikiri no Gotoki Saku Mono ("Those Who Cut Like The Cut-Throat") is set in Kubikoujichou, a little town in the outskirts of Tokyo where many former Kazoku (aristocracy) live. One year earlier, the peace in town was disturbed by a series of murders on women, who all had their throats slit by some mysterious figure. The murders all happened in a cul-de-sac alley between the manors of the Kote and Azumime families, with a small shrine at the end of the alley. Considering the social position of the people here, there was little gossiping among the people living there after the first murder and thus people underestimated the danger, leading to a second, third and even a fourth victim. Some witnesses even stated that there was nobody else in the alley when the murders were committed, as if a ghost had done it. By the time of the third victim already, the police was of course desperate to find the murderer and they had their eyes set on Kote Akitada, the grandson of Kote Akimitsu, who had fought in World War II and returned a broken man, wearing a mask to hide his hideous injuries. When the police confronted him, he fled and committed suicide in the same alley, slitting his own throat. Many months later, and Akitada's former fiancee Takako has two new admirers, even though she is still mourning for the loss of her life. Kurimori Atsushi is the son of an acquaintance of Takako's father,  who is staying as a house guest for the moment, while Kote Akiyoshi is the ne'ver-do-well younger brother of Akitada, who has fallen in love with Takako too. Takako however has not moved on, and is still bringing flowers and mourning the death of Akitada and the other four women in the alley each week. At first Akiyoshi tried to accost Takako during her visits there, but after some commotion involving the triangle of Takako - Akiyoshi and Atsushi, they agreed Takako would be left alone when in the alley. However, this didn't last too long. One day, Takako goes inside the alley, soon followed by Akiyoshi. Suddenly, both Atsushi and Miyo, a young girl living opposite the alley see a mask fly out of the alley, indicating all's not well. When they arrive in the alley, they find Takako dead -- her throat slit. The only other person in the alley is Akiyoshi, who however has no weapon on his body and a police investigation in the neighborhood show he couldn't have thrown into the gardens on the sides of the alley. The only explanation possible seems to be that a ghostly apparition must've done it, the same ghostly apparition Miyo saw several times earlier perhaps, of a white human spirit taking off into the sky from within the alley.

Miyo looks for advice from the famed writer-cum-amateur detective Toujou Genya (well, he's being duped into solving the case by his editor), who of course comes up with a solution to the case. At least, eventually, he does that, because as per series custom, he'll go through a lot of theories and hypotheses, which he rejects himself, before he arrives at the true solution.  The explanation of the impossible murder (there was only one other person in the alley, who couldn't have hidden his weapon while someone outside the alley couldn't murder Takako by slitting her throat) is... original and perhaps fair if you'd happen to know about a very specific tradition, but otherwise it's pretty hard to guess, even if Mitsuda tried to leave some other hints behind for the reader. It's an interesting trick to visualize, that's for sure, and it's indeed interesting to know it actually has a real-life basis, but very few readers will be able to make those connections and figure out how it was done in advance. Mitsuda does a great job at proposing plausible solutions, and immediately shooting them down again with again plausible explanations as always. Some readers might find it tiring to keep going through Genya's theories only for him to reject them immediately the following page (as do some characters in the stories), but Genya's method is always used in a way to properly eliminate the other possibilities before arriving at the proper solution, and elements from the fake solutions are always incorporated in the final solution, making these stories excellent study material to show how to properly write a reasoning-based puzzle plot mystery.

Maiyoga no Gotoki Ugoku Mono ("Those Who Move Like the Mayoiga") first introduces the friends Mie and Tomiko, two teenage girls who travel across the region peddling medicine and other wares. As per custom, these young medicine peddlers travel together for their own safety and for example to split the bill when they have to rent a room at an inn, but mind their own business when they're in a village. Two days ago, both the girls found a home each who'd put them up for the night, but Mie's benefactor kept her longer in the home than she had wished (the husband was out to take care of his parents, therefore the wife was happy with Mie's presence in the home). Eventually, the girls agreed that Tomiko would go on ahead early to the next village, Shimomatsu Village, as Mie didn't expect to make it until later that day and that they'd meet the day after in the temple grounds of  Oosugi Shrine in Shimomatsu Village. When they finally meet up and talk about the day they spent alone, they realize something very odd. To make your way from Uematsu Village to Shimomatsu Village, one has to pass by a peak characterized by two trees. One of them is called the "Tengu's Seat" by the people in the region. When Tomiko went across the peak in the morning yesterday, she saw nothing on the mountains beyond Tengu's Seat. Mie however said she distinctly saw a decrepit house on the mountains beyond Tengu's Seat. A third traveller then joins the girls' conversation, saying when he crossed the peak in the afternoon (after Mie had passed it), he saw no house there. This reminds the three of the folklore stories of the Mayoiga, a half-decrepit house that can appear out of nowhere and can either bring fortune or misfortune to its visitors.

Eventually a fourth traveller also joins, and the four discuss the various legends of the Mayoiga, as well try to find an explanation to why some of them did see a house beyond Tengu's Seat yesterday, and some didn't. This story is truly unlike any other story in the series, focused mostly on discussing various legends and the disappearance of the house being a fairly 'vague' problem compared to women being killed in locked rooms or crime scenes without footsteps left in the snow, but this is a pretty ingeniously plotted story, with the clews sprinkled across the various elements of the story. The 'disappearing house' trope in mystery fiction often has either a psychological, or a technical solution to it ("they didn't see it" or "it was literally moved/destroyed"), but this is a nice example of a solution that combines both types and especially the psychological aspect of the solution is brilliant, as well as really well hinted at through the bantering of the girls.

Sukima no Gotoki Nozoku Mono ("Those Who Peek Like The Gap Fiend") introduces the reader to Kanou Takako, who has recently started as a teacher at the Goji-Chou Municipal Goji Elementary School. We learn that Takako is the latest in a family line where the women have a tendency to be haunted by the "Gap Fiend", a yokai which manifests itself whenever the Kanou women stare into the gaps/crevices when a door isn't properly shut. Through this opening, the women tend to see things they shouldn't or want to see, and little good has ever come from their powers (in her teens for example, Takako saw how her crush, and her best friend got hooked up in secret). As strictly taught by her grandmother, Takako has learned to always properly close the doors around her, but one night, when Takako's doing the late evening round at school, she inadvertently stares into the darkness of an door ajar again, and sees... the school head being chased by a figure dressed like a demon, both running around. When she snaps out of it, she tries to bring it up to the head guard of the school, and when he makes a call to the school head's home, they learn the man has been killed. As the school is somewhat close to the victim's home, the teachers who were at the school that night are also considered suspects, as everyone besides Takako seems to have a grudge against the now dead school head: the school head had actually beaten one of his pupils to death during the war (a friend of some of Takako's colleagues) and was of course part of the completely crooked, hypernationalistic school system during the war and recently, it appears the victim had actually been sexually abusing his pupils at this new school. Reasons enough for wanting him dead, but it just so happens that Takako can vouch for the alibis of each of her three colleagues and the guard, as she saw them that night at set times as she made her rounds. It should be no surprise that the true murderer is indeed among those with a perfect alibi, but the solution Genya proposes is so silly, it can't be taken seriously. In some contexts, this solution might work, but it seems very questionable in this particular situation.

The title story Himemuro no Gotoki Komoru Mono ("Those Who Stay Inside Like A Sealed Room") starts with the arrival of the mysterious woman Yoshiko at the Imari home. The women suffering from amnesia suddenly appeared in the back garden of the Imaris, bringing back the young Tsukishiro who had gotten lost there. Imari Iwao obviously felt a bond with Yoshiko, as his previous two wives too were called Yoshiko. The first Yoshiko gave birth to his first son Iwao, the second Yoshiko was the mother of Tsukishiro. At first father Iwao was only entertaining Yoshiko as a guest, who seemed to have a talent for kokkuri-san, a type of table-turning. Iwao's two brother-in-laws (brothers of the first and second Yoshiko) immediately suspected this third Yoshiko was nothing more than a charlatan, but despite their precautions during the seance (tying Yoshiko to her seat; the two brother-in-laws holding the writing utensil where kokkuri-san would manifest), the seance turns into a success, with an unknown force moving the writing utensil and writing short, but cohesive answers on paper to the questions asked from the spirits. Eventually, Iwao married the third Yoshiko as his third wife, who started a whole kokkuri-san business inside the two-storied storage of the house. One day, Toujou Genya appears at the house, hoping to learn about the mysterious red box of the Imaris, which is said to kill the women in the family. In fact, it is even believed Iwao's first two wives died because they opened the cursed box. Genya obviously is also interessed in kokkuri-san, but just as they are preparing for the seance, an expression of surprise takes over Yoshiko's face and she quickly shuts the door of the storage and locks herself up inside. While everybody is surprised to learn Yoshiko has thus locked everyone outside, they figure she might have some reason to do so, but the hours pass by and eventually a locksmith is called to open the old, but sturdy door of the storage (all the windows were also locked from the inside). Inside, Genya and husband Iwao find Yoshiko lying dead on the second floor; stabbed in the stomach by a knife which was kept here. As all the windows and door were locked from the inside, it seems no third party could've snuck inside to kill Yoshiko, but there are other clues that indicate this wasn't a suicide, with for example a second knife missing from the crime scene. Genya has to figure out how this death occured in this sealed storage, and why Yoshiko looked so surprised moments before she locked herself in.

By far the longest story of the whole collection: I think it's almost as long as the previous three stories together (it takes up about half of the book). Genya is confronted with two problems: how was the original kokkuri-san seance done, and how and more importantly, why did Yoshiko die in a locked storage? The seance itself is fairly easily debunked, though it has to be said that Genya never states Yoshiko was a fraud: he only points out to the possibility it could have been done in a certain way. Supernatural elements are not explicitly denied in this series and we often get hints that there are truly yokai, ghosts and fiends active in this world: they just aren't related to the murders at hand. The death of Yoshiko is probably not exactly what most readers would expect from it. Genya actually goes through the trouble of doing a locked room lecture (ha!) to examine all the ways in which their current situation can apply to the known variants and he at the end realizes it's none of the above, but his explanation is not really different from one of the formerly named variants. The how of the locked room mystery is infinitely less interesting than the why though. The explanation of why Yoshiko suddenly looked surprised coupled with how the rest of the story unfolded is not only emotionally impressive, it's really well-hinted at through the psychology and actions of the other characters. There might be few direct clues to the solution of this case, and it's really long, but the core is definitely impressive. Genya also throws around with false solutions like they're nothing, but again, they are necessary steps to arrive at the true solution.

Himemuro no Gotoki Komoru Mono is far from a dud, but perhaps the least interesting in the Toujou Genya series I've read until now. That says more about the exceptionally high quality of the series in general than something about this particular book though. The stories here are fairly good, and some really well-plotted with multiple (false) solutions, really sly clewing and even some surprising motives, but the other short story collection is definitely better. Had this been my first step into the series, I'd probably have been far more enthusiastic due to its tone and the depth of how the mystery plots are structured, but having read a lot more of this series I'd say it's an entertaining, if perhaps somewhat unbalanced book (with one very long story accompanied by three shorter stories, one of which somewhat silly).

Original Japanese title(s):  三津田信三『密室の如き籠るもの』:「首切の如き裂くもの」/「迷家の如き動くもの」/「隙魔の如き覗くもの」/「密室の如き籠るもの」