Trouble in Triplicate

"The thief," said G., is the Minister D--, who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man. The method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold. The document in question --a letter, to be frank --had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the royal boudoir.

"The Purloined Letter"

In case you haven't seen it yet: the Ellery Queen television series is really good!

The Karazawa family is an upper-class family in the provincial town of Hagi in the Yamaguchi Prefecture, consisting of father Mitsumasa (a local banker), his wife Sumie and their three beautiful daughters Reiko, Noriko and Keiko. One day, they are visited by a distant relative: Robert "Bob" Fujikura is the grandson of Mitsumasa's older sister living in the United States. Bob is travelling across Japan to further his studies in Asian History. Bob is welcomed into the family, and is offered to stay in the furnished home originally built for Noriko and her to-be husband Toshiyuki. Noriko had been engaged with this bank employee of Mitsumasa, but he suddenly went away three years ago, leaving Noriko an emotional wreck. Soon after Bob's arrival, Toshiyuki re-appears again in town, and while the rest of the family is naturally quite angry with Toshiyuki, Noriko is thrilled to have him back in her life again. The two swiftly decide they still love each other and that they should marry at once. After a honeymoon in Europe, the two move into the house originally built for them (Bob is offered a room in the main house). One day however, Noriko comes across three undelivered letters written by Toshiyuki, hidden away inside a book, and the contents greatly startle her. When Keiko and Bob take a look too, they realize the letters seem to hint at some plot by Toshiyuki to murder his wife. The two can hardly believe it, but they decide to keep an eye all the same, but despite their precautions, the cousins are unable to prevent a deadly poisoning during a party in the 1979 film Haitatsu Sarenai Santsuu no Tegami ("The Three Undelivered Letters").

And if this summary sounds familiar despite the names, you have probably read Ellery Queen's novel Calamity Town, as this movie is indeed an official film adaptation of the Queen novel, directed by Nomura Yoshitarou, who did many mystery novel-to-film adaptations back then (I myself have only seen his Suna no Utsuwa and the 1977 film adaptation of Yatsu Haka Mura). Like I mentioned in my review of the novel, Calamity Town is considered to rank among the best Queen has written in some circles, though personally, I disagree greatly. As a mystery story, I think it's far too limited, simple and unimaginative compared to the other (earlier) output of Queen and while it does a good job at presenting the fictional locale of Wrightsville as a true living town, that's hardly enough to make it an interesting tale of detection. But I did note in the same review that "there is a Japanese film based on this book (...) which is supposedly quite good, though I haven't seen it yet. Considering that Nomura has done a ton of mystery films emphasizing human drama with a larger society backdrop (a lot of Matsumoto Seichou film adaptations for example), the choice for Calamity Town is an understandable one though."

Ultimately, I'd say Haitatsu Sarenai Santsuu no Tegami is a very competent, and faithful adaptation of the source material. Sure, there's the major change in background setting, with the whole story being set in the provincial town of Hagi and the writer Ellery being replaced by Bob who speaks ridiculously accented Japanese, but the core mystery plot is left completely intact. I'd say the truly major difference between the original novel and this film is that the film shows very little of the town and its people: while not surprising, the movie decides to focus completely on the core Karazawa family and its members to emphasize the human drama there, rather than spending the film's limited runtime to showing how the people around them react. This is also the difference between the characters of Ellery, who came as an outsider to the Wright family, and Bob, who may be an outsider, but is (mostly) treated as a family member. Noriko is at the center of the drama, who starts out as emotionally dead, becomes thrilled and alive again when Toshiyuki returns, but turns terrified once she's found the letters, and her ever-changing state of mind also has its effect on Keiko and Bob, who work together in secret to help Noriko.

I said most of what I wanted to say about the core plot in my review of the book, so I'd recommend you to take a look there, but I do have to say the film can be very slow due to the source material. I mean, the movie is just over two hours long, but I believe it takes around ninety minutes before the deadly incident occurs. So a lot of time is spent on characterization and fleshing out the human drama and setting up the incident. Sure, a detective story does need set-up and foreshadowing and things like that, but if you want a mystery film that focuses on a detective plot, this is not the place for you. In that respect, Haitatsu Sarenai Santsuu no Tegami is really a lot like the original novel. Many praise the novel for its characterization, especially in comparison to Queen's earlier output, but personally, I find the scale of the core mystery plot too small, and that's something you also notice in this movie. In the novel, it took Ellery months to realize something about the death which seemed very out of character. Fortunately, we don't have series detectives in this movie, and the timeline of the movie is also compressed a lot (it doesn't span months), so things do feel a bit more natural? or less contrived as it seemed so unlikely in the original novel nobody would ever think of that one slip-up they made in such a long time.

Haitatsu Sarenai Santsuu no Tegami is thus a faithful and well-made adaptation of the source material. However personally I was not a fan of the original novel, and obviously, this film didn't change much about my opinion of it. If you're a fan of Calamity Town however, I can definitely recommend this movie, as it's pretty good. I do know there's also a Japanese television drama adaptation of The Tragedy of Y, which may be a lot more interesting than this film

Original Japanese title(s): 『配達されない三通の手紙』

The Adventure of the Unspeakable Story

修羅場を演じる時代劇のど真ん中に立ってるみたいだ

「2012Spark」（ポルノグラフィティ）

I feel like I'm right in the middle of a fight scene of a historical drama

 "2012Spark" (Porno Graffiti)

Perhaps I should also reread the Gyakuten Kenji manga...

If you look around on this blog, you'll find a lot of posts that cover the Gyakuten Saiban ("Turnabout Trial") videogame series. While it started a low-key zany Columbo-inspired courtroom drama mystery game on the GameBoy Advance back in 2001, Gyakuten Saiban, better known outside of Japan under its localized title Ace Attorney, is now nearing its twentieth birthday as a multimedia franchise. I have reviewed the various videogames in this series, but also other media outings like novels, serialized short stories, guidebooks on the actual Japanese justice system, musicals, stage plays, theatrical films and probably more. Nowadays you also have events like real life Ace Attorney Escape Rooms, but I vividly remember that the series really started to develop as a multimedia franchise after the release of the 2005 Nintendo DS title Gyakuten Saiban; Yomigaeru Gyakuten, which was also the first game in the series to be released outside Japan with the title Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. This was an enhanced port of the original 2001 videogame, but after this release, it was also announced that the fourth game in the series was in development. It was the marketing surrounding the release of the Nintendo DS game Gyakuten Saiban 4 (AKA Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney) that really made the franchise grow into something much more than videogames.

The serialized manga Gyakuten Saiban ("Turnabout Trial") by Kuroda Kenji (story) and Maekawa Kazuo (art) was probably one of the more remarkable moments that helped the series' development. This limited series was serialized irregularly between 2006 and 2008 in Young Magazine and ultimately collected in five volumes. While it was based on the videogames, basically no prior knowledge is necessary to read this series. All you have to know is that this is a comedic mystery series about the attorney Naruhodou. Each story revolves around a trial, where he and his client face absolutely hopeless situations, but by slowly pointing out contradictions in the prosecution's story and pulling a Columbo, Naruhodou always manages to turn the case completely around and find out who the real murderer is. The stories featured are completely original creations by the mystery author Kuroda and the recurring characters from the videogame that do appear, are properly introduced for first-time readers/players.

So the manga Gyakuten Saiban wasn't a comic made exclusively for existing fans, but it was written to introduce new readers to the world of Ace Attorney, to entice the readers to purchase and play Gyakuten Saiban 4, which was released soon after the serialization of this series started. You'll find no obscure references to in-game events or a story steeped too deep in the lore of multiple videogames: this is simply a highly enjoyable mystery comic that made great use of the characters and setting of the original videogames. This comic was also published outside Japan, and to be honest, at times I do think this series may be better to introduce mystery readers to mystery manga than for example Detective Conan or Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, because it's a fairly compact series at only five volumes, while still featuring a few interesting locked room murders and other types of tales (and the English version features localized names, making it easier to follow for people who can't memorize Japanese names). So I'd definitely recommend this series even if you haven't played any of the videogames or ever read any mystery manga.

This was an interesting re-read for me by the way. I hadn't quite seriously started studying Japanese yet when this series started, and I bought the recently released first two volumes during my first visit to Japan. My Japanese studies started after that and reading Gyakuten Saiban really made it clear how much I was learning. I could hardly read any words when I started with the first volume, but by the time the fifth volume was released, I was already preparing for my first extended study exchange in Japan... And now of course, I can race through these five volumes in the same time it took me to read one chapter in the first volume when I first started. The 2007 prose short story Turnabout Bridge, which I reviewed in 2016, was also written by Kuroda Kenji by the way, so you consider that 'part' of the manga series.

In the opening story Kaze to Tomo ni Gyakuten ("Turnabout in The Wind"), Naruhodou has to defend his childhood friend Yahari, who has a real knack of getting into trouble, and causing trouble for others. He is the suspect in the murder case of Shinjou Hikaru, a middle-aged married man who had an affair with Yahari's girlfriend Suzune. She broke up with Shinjou after finding out he was married, but even though she was dating Yahari now, Shinjou kept bugging her. On the night of Shinjou's murder, Yahari had made a rather threatening call to the victim, and Shinjou was found not long after Yahari's call, stabbed in the abdomen. Making Yahari the perfect suspect. While it's not hard to guess who the real murderer is, I think this story is an excellent showcase of how the mystery plotting of the videogames go, and it works also perfectly in this manga. The reader is thrown into the trial right at once and basically backed into a corner immediately with all the evidence the prosecution has, but you'll slowly uncover small contradictions that string together into an actual line of reasoning. The clues are really good: some make clever use of the visual medium, some require you to also make deductions and conclusions yourself based on previously presented information. There's a really nice flow to the story: you're not waiting until the very end of the story to see things unfold, but you move there step by step, clearing up smaller contradictions one at a time. The way the evidence of the prosecution is turned around in the defense' favor is also great, and if you'd plot all the clues/foreshadowing on a graph and how they sometimes return later in the story, you'd see that despite the simple and short set-up of this tale, it's a very well crafted and fair tale. For example, there's one aspect of the story that requires knowledge that is a bit specialistic, but Kuroda's clever plotting and clewing allows the reader to deduce that piece of knowledge on their own, so even if you didn't know that, you can make an educated guess based solely on the information given to you within this story. So the game is played very fairly.

Naruhodou and his assistant Mayoi are invited to the manor of IT company CEO Komori Akamune in the second story, Gyakuten no Shikeidai ("Turnabout Gallows"). Two weeks ago, his arrogant, but talented employee Kimura Jirou committed suicide by falling off a platform in the park and Akamune fears he may be arrested for Jirou's death. On the night of Jirou's murder, Akamune had invited Jirou to his manor to discuss his attitude, but when Jirou left the house, he was in an extremely agitated state and ultimately made a fatal fall. When Naruhodou and Mayoi talk to Akamune's daughter Sara and Jirou's older brother Hatsurou however, they realize that Akamune had probably murdered Jirou, by making use of Jirou's fear for spiders. Akamune's younger brother Sasao lives in an annex building with his huge collection of spiders, and Hatsurou suspects Akamune tortured his younger brother with those spiders. Later that night, Akamune is knocked out by an unknown figure, and he wakes up to findhimself tied up to a chair in the Spider Mansion. To his great shock, he sees a spider-man walking on the ceiling. His wife, daughter, Hatsurou, Naruhodou and Mayoi had been looking for Akamune in the main manor, and when they use the intercom to contact the Spider Mansion, Akamune explains he's being held captive in the Spider Mansion and that's there's a spider-man roaming around. But then Akamune's killed by a knock on the head and the Spider Mansion goes up in flames. The suspect in the murder case is Akamune's younger brother Sasao, as he was the only one absent during the intercom call to the Spider Mansion from the main manor.

Again a case that makes good use of the theme of a "turnabout" and visual clues. The visual clues are really clever and nicely incorporated in the background, and it really gives you a good chance at figuring out what happened and how the real culprit managed to fake their alibi. It's pretty easy to guess who probably did it, but I really like how you also need find the logical argument to prove that the real murderer did it, and it's here again where the trope of re-using earlier presented clues/evidence in new context really shines. In the videogames, most evidence pieces are used multiple times in various context, and that is replicated perfectly here, with utterances and clues being used in one way in deductions presented earlier in the trial, coming back in a completely different way at the end. The trick behind the murder is really original, though to be completely honest, it's a bit hard to swallow anyone could've prepared all of that within that short time period. It's a lot of work. Still, it's a really interesting case.

Gyakuten no Showtime ("Turnabout Showtime") is a much shorter case, but still interesting. Narohodou and Mayoi are visiting the entertainment park Kira Kira Land, but during the Kirarin Show with the three mascotte figures Kirarin, Pikakorin and Dekarin, one of the actors collapsed on stage. When they realize he's so bleeding heavily it's seeping out of the suit, they try to get the actor, Ichinomiya, out of it but the zipper in the back has been glued tight. It's already too late when they finally get him out, but to everyone's great surprise, Ichinomiya had been stabbed in his stomach. As the three suit actors can't zip themselves up (the zipper is in the back, but it's impossible with the suits' arms and hands to even attempt to zip up yourself), suspicion of the murder falls on the actress Juri, as she is the only one of the group who doesn't wear a big fluffy suit and could thus unzip Ichinomiya, stab him, and zip him up again. Everyone has a few moments backstage during the show, so the police suspects Juri stabbed Ichinomiya while they happened to be backstage together. Assuming that Juri's innocent though, it means Ichinomiya died inside a locked room: he was inside a mascotte suit that had no exterior damage at all (so the knife did not pierce through the costume), yet all the other suspects were zipped up and none of those two could unzip themselves or Ichinomiya in a swift manner to stab him in the stomach. I love this story: the setting of a murder during a mascotte costume show is really original as is the notion of the "smallest locked room murder" as Naruhodou calls it. You're constantly presented with information that at first seems to be in your favor, then dismissed in a logical manner by the prosecution, only to come back again later in the trial in surprising manners. The theme of "turnabout" (the situation being exactly the opposite of what you assumed) is used fantastically here too.

In Gyakuten no Yogensho ("Turnabout Prophecy"), Naruhodou and Mayoi visit the fortune tellers' corner at the local department store, where they also meet with Kaede, a high school student with a love for the occult. The corner houses five different fortune tellers, and because of the immense popularity, visitors are put in time slots and scheduled for three fortune tellers. Naruhodou is having his palms read when he hears a woman's cry from the room of Oracle Reika, a fortune teller who is considered the real deal. They break the locked door open to find a shocked Kaede inside. Reika however has been brutally murdered with the Deathscythe which usually decorated the wall. Because the two doors to the room (one connecting to the plaza in front, the other to the backyard) were locked from the inside, it appears only Kaede was capable of slaying Reika, but Kaeda swears she couldn't have done so, as Reika had instructed the girl to put her arm through the Hell's Gate and that a demon on the other side held her hand until moments before she herself found Reika's body.

Are fortune tellers corners a thing in Japan? It seems so extraordinary, but I've seen the same setting (a courtyard with various fortune tellers with different specialties) used in series like Puzzle Game ☆ High School and 33pun Tantei now... I think it's a shame these stories always feature such a small cast, because you can usually guess who the murderer is (not very imporant) and as a result, make an educated guess about what happened (I find this more disappointing). In this case, I think it becomes pretty obvious soon in the story how the locked room of Oracle Reika could be penetrated, but I do think the explanation of how that trick was done and why everything was arranged like that was really good: the foreshadowing for that reveal is excellent.

Tengoku kara no Gyakuten ("Turnabout From Heaven") is the most minimalistic story featured in this series, and has no impossibility/perfect alibi angle whatsever. The story revolves around the death of Kanenari Nihachi, the elderly owner of a famous buckwheat manufacturer. Ironically, the man had developed a buckwheat allergy recently, and someone had swapped his medicine for buckwheat, which obviously killed him. The suspect is his daughter Tsukimi, who was the only other person at home that night. She however claims it must have been her mother who killed her father. Tsukimi's mother died 16 years ago, but lately, Tsukimi has been seeing her a lot in her dreams, especially in the dreams about when she was kidnapped for a few days when she was young. She was saved by her mother then, and she believes her mother's ghost killed her father, as he had been abusing Tsukimi. The story seems to revolve around who could've swapped the medicine with buckwheat, but then turns into a very different story as Naruhodou has to prove the motive of the killer. I love the theme of turnabout here, and this story offers a very weird experience you don't even really see in the games. It's very different from the more technical murder mysteries in this series, but I think it's a welcome change of pace.

Gyakuten Kuishinbou ("Turnabout Gourmet") is about the televised food fighter competition The Strongest Gourmet King Competition. Naruhodou, Mayoi and her cousin Harumi are watching because their local ramen food stall will be offering the meal that will be used in the finals: whoever finishes the Yatabuki Special Super Spicy Miso Ramen Muscle (Super-Sized) the fastest, will be the new Gourmet King. Justice Masayoshi manages to beat his rivals Muscle Taketora and Eko Risa, but he's halfway through his victory speech when he falls down dead. The announcer becomes the defendant in the murder case, as he was the only one who could poison Justice's bowl of ramen, but was it really a case of a targeted murder? Perhaps the most disappointing case in the series, even if it's fairly entertaining on its own. The murderer's plot consists of hoping a lot that characters will do exactly as planned, which is plausible for one single action, but not if multiple characters have to do various things at various stages. I think the case does make good use of the visual medium, and the way Naruhodou deduces something had been going on behind his back is pretty good, ultimately, this is definitely the story that stands out the least in this series.

The final story in this series is titled Gyakutenryoku VS Jinzuuriki ("Turnabout Power VS Supernatural Power"), which reunites Naruhodou and Mayoi with Kaede from the fourth story. She's been interested in the shady sect The Great Tengu Association, a group which worships the Heavenly Tengu. Naruhodo had been calling Kaede everyday during her stay, but when she stopped answering his calls, he became worried and decided to visit the Association together with Mayoi. When they arrive at the cult's five-storeyed pagoda in the middle of nowhere, they find that the Association is also being harrassed by a private detective, who is determined to prove the sect and its founder Hime Tengu to be a fraud. Naruhodou and Mayoi find a safe Kaede, who has become a true believer of the Tengu. After a discussion with the founder, the detective takes the elevator down to the ground floor, an act witnessed by every member of the sect, Naruhodou and Mayoi, but when the elevator arrives on the ground floor, Kaede (the only person at the reception desk), swears the elevator is empty. The sect fears the detective is still snooping around the premises, so they search the pagoda going from bottom to top, but can't find any trace of the man. When the group is about to give up and decide to take the elevator downstairs again, they find the detective's body lying in the elevator! As Kaede was the only one who had been alone at the time, prosecution thinks she killed the detective, hid his body and later put it back in the elevator, but Naruhodou is of course sure Kaede wasn't the murderer.

A disappearance from a moving elevator! I love the trick behind it, and the clewing is really good too. There's plenty of visual clewing going on, some of them directly related to the actions of the murderer, but also a lot of clewing and foreshadowing that is utilized during the trial segments, when the defense and prosecution go back and forth with their arguments to prove or disprove Kaede's involvement in the case. Because these stories are not only about uncovering how and whodunnit, but also about making a logical argument during a trial that moves from the question of whether Kaede's guilty or not, to building a case to accuse the actual murderer, the plots in this series are usually really packed with all kinds of smaller mysteries/contradictions, and this is another great example of that leading to a story that is engaging start to finish. There's always something happening, the reader is always put in position where they're able to deduce things themselves and in the end, this is without a doubt a highly entertaining mystery story with an original impossible angle.

This post has become rather long as I decided to discuss all seven cases in this five-volume series, but as I said: Gyakuten Saiban is a really good mystery manga that is also recommended to people who don't know anything about the videogames it's based on. The stories Kuroda wrote for this series feature really original plots, most of them featuring some kind of impossible or locked room mystery, but they also do a great job at playing with the "turnabout" theme of the videogames, with the deduction battles between prosecution and defense going back and forth. The way the series makes use of the visual medium is also great and considering the series is only five volumes long, I truly think this is an excellent entry point for those who want to try out mystery manga.

Original Japanese title(s): カプコン（監修）、黒田研二（脚本）、前川かずお（漫画）『逆転裁判』第1-5巻

The Strange Message in the Parchment

Caveat lector

Oh man, that Lost Winner mentioned two weeks ago in the comments sounds amazing...

Last year, I discussed Murder Off Miami (1934), the first in the Crime Dossier series by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Link. These Crime Dossiers were not ordinary mystery novels, but instead presented the reader with a folder containing all the relevant documents and physical pieces of evidence regarding a crime that "really" happened. The story was solely told through hand-written letters, typed telegrams, newspaper clippings etc., while further clues were also provided in the form of photographs, pieces of hair and broken matches, all included physically inside the folder (so seperately printed telegrams, matches kept in little pockets etc.) At the end of the book, the reader would find a sealed section, in which the true solution to the crime was revealed. While one could argue that this was more gimmick than truly a game-changer for mystery fiction, I have to say I did like "playing" the first Crime Dossier. It reminded me of Escape Room games, where a story is told minimalistically through objects with which the player/reader can interact and that coupled with a Challenge to the Reader, made Murder Off Miami a unique experience, even if the fundamental mystery plot was fairly simple.

As these Crime Dossiers can be relatively expensive even on the used market, I wasn't planning to go after them, but a while back, I came across the second and third volumes in this series at a local used book store for a neat price, so I picked them up. Who Killed Robert Prentice? was released in 1937, followed by The Malinsay Massacre in 1938. In terms of presentation, both booklets don't differ too much from Murder Off Miami. The first book presented a rather classic closed circle situation, with a murder on a yacht out on sea, but Who Killed Robert Prentice? has a rather mundane crime in return. The titular Robert Prentice is a succesful businessman, who never had much luck with women until he met and fell in love with Cicely, a single mother with one boy. After their marriage, Cicely tried to get Robert into high society, but that also gave him more confidence, and to Cicely's great shock, he fell in love with his beautiful new secretary Suzanne L'Estrange. Hoping it would just be a whim, Cicely agreed to close her eyes for the affair for a short while so Robert could get it out of his system, but he was murdered before it was all over. One morning, Robert's body is found in a little cottage house he rented for his numerous rendezvous' with Miss L'Estrange. But it was not only Cicely who may have had a motive to kill her cheating husband: Cicely's son was also in love with Miss L'Estrange, so that love triangle could also be a motive. Cicely decides to write to Lieutenant Schwab, who is visiting the UK from the US and hopes he can solve the murder on Robert Prentice.

The core mystery plot is fairly simple, and follows a similar design to the first book. You'll be looking for contradictions between the narrative as you learn them from the various documents like personal letters (which may contain lies or not), newspaper articles and the physical evidence you also have, like photographs. Sometimes things said, don't comply with what you see in the photographs, and that's the starting point for your deductions, though as I said, the core plot is ultimately quite simple, so after you pick up on a few discrepencies, you'll quickly have an idea of what really happened. This second volume has some interesting pieces of evidence: there's a torn-up photograph, a train ticket stub and even a complete newspaper, which includes updates on the police investigation and the coroner's court. Going through all these things as you try to solve the mystery is still fun, and like Murder Off Miami, Who Killed Robert Prentice? can provide for an evening of detecting fun. Personally, I liked Murder Off Miami better as a story though.

The Malinsay Massacre has a promising title, but the reader will also quickly notice that this volume is less intricately designed compared to the first two Crime Dossiers. I assume there's a financial reason for this, but the change can also be detected in the narrative. The Malinsay Massacre refers to a series of murders that occured in 1899 and is not a case where Lieutenant Schwab has personally worked on as a police officer. The murders started with the death of the fifth Earl of Malinsay, Malinsay being a small island in Scotland housing Malinsay Castle, a small village of fishermen and some cottage that can be rented. George Malinsay's death had been odd, but further examination proved he had indeed been murdered. He had inhaled a poisonous gas, but strangely enough, it seems impossible anyone could've gone in his bedroom to make him inhale the gas that night, making it a locked room mystery. After George's death, his brother Henry became the next Earl, who is determined to find out who killed George. He not only has his own son come to the island, but he also writes to his nephew Colin, the brains of the family, hoping he might act as their armchair detective. For death seems to be lurking still on the island. Soon after Henry settles on the island, more of his family is murdered, resulting in a massacre of the Malinsay family. The case would remain unsolved, but when Schwab gains access to the old documents of the Malinsay family, he realizes that the murderer had been hiding in plain sight all along.

The Malinsay Massacre has less 'gimmicky stuff' than the previous two volumes. Most of the files includes are just type-written letters, accompanied by 'paper-based' evidence like the Malinsay family tree, a floorplan and a few photographs of the suspects. The only physical piece of evidence is a tablet laced with arsenic, with the helpful note Note to readers: The poison has been extracted from this tablet, in case you were planning to use the poison tablet you got with a book to murder someone. I liked how we got a completely different type of story this time, with a whole family being killed off on some remote island, but focusing solely on the core plot, it does disappoint at times. The locked room murder is not really clever, as there's basically no evidence to what happened and the story is basically just saying "what if you imagine this or that was there, then the murder would've been possible!" Yes, of course, but it's not a proper detective story if you don't properly hint or foreshadow that. The clewing to the solution of a mystery story should never be a digital manner of 1) Either you think of The One Solution or 2) You don't think of the One Solution. It should be clewed, there should be build-up, there should be hinting. I also didn't like how some of the hints to the identity of the murderer were supposed to be visible on the photographs, only not really due to the resolution of said photographs. Obviously, I understand that it's also a matter of the technology at the time of publishing and the previous books had similar issues too, but I think it's a bit more troublesome in this case, as The Malinsay Massacre's hinting is both not as extensive, as well as not as good as the other two books, so it really hurts the narrative when a clue turns out to be barely discernable.

On the whole, I'd say these two volumes share the same basic issues I also had with Murder Off Miami, being that the story can be really dry as there's no narrative voice, no characterization or quotable prose. The cheap paper and enigmatic way in which these books are bound are understandable, considering the contents, but when asked the question of whether these stories couldn't have been written as normal prose stories, I'd say it wouldn't be too hard to change a few clues to make that possible. So the necessity of these Crime Dossiers is definitely a possible topic of discussion. They are fun, gimmicky forms of mystery fiction, but not much more than that. In case you hadn't read the review of Murder Off Miami yet, please do. The three volumes are quite similar, so most of what I wrote there will apply here.

There is a fourth volume titled Herewith the Clues, but again, I am not actively chasing after it unless I happen to find one cheap. While funny anecdotes in the annals of mystery fiction, mystery games and interactive fiction, I don't think these Crime Dossiers are something you should pursue at all costs. If you can find them cheap though, try one out, as they provide an entertaining experience that shows off the possibilities of mystery fiction. If I had to choose one, I still think the first, Murder Off Miami, is the best. Who Killed Robert Prentice? is fairly similar to Murder Off Miami, so if you want to choose two, I'd say The Malinsay Massacre would prove to be the more interesting companion pick, as it's quite different in atmosphere due to the setting.

Light in the Darkness

「追いつきたい 突き止めたい その真相 最高機密」

「永遠の不在証明」（東京事変）

"The truth / I want to catch up to it / I want to figure it out / Top secret"

"The Scarlet Alibi" (Tokyo Incidents)

Ever since the 1997 film Detective Conan: The Time-Bombed Skyscraper, Detective Conan has seen a new theatrical release each year, which always releases mid-April, just in time to draw in viewers during Japan's Golden Week. The release schedule of the Detective Conan comics is also synchronized to the annual film, with a new volume releasing in the same week as the film's premiere. But that only works if everything goes as planned. In 2018, Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer was not accompanied by a new volume in the long-running series, as series creator Aoyama had been having health issues, which disrupted the schedule of the comic serialization, and volume 95 wouldn't be released until October. This year we have the reverse, as Detective Conan 98 (2020) was released in April as scheduled, but the release of the 2020 film Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet has been postponed for the moment due to COVID-19 and at this moment, there's still no new release date set. I always wait for the home video release around October/November, but I guess that the discs will be delayed too this year...

The sad thing is that volume 98 is one of the best examples of how good the timing process of the multimedia franchise that is Conan has been for the last decade or so. The main three stories in this volume all focus in one way or another on the four characters who form the focal point in the upcoming Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet, so it's clearly meant to push the film. I am happy to say that after a very disappointing volume 96, and a rather average volume 97, this volume was far more entertaining. The volume opens with the remaining chapters of The Antique Appraiser Murder Case. Previously, Dr. Agasa had brought an antique bowl he inherited from his uncle to the famous antique appraiser Nishitsu. Meanwhile Nishitsu had also been approached by three different clients, who all brought him the same antique Chinese decorative Phoenix plate. Only one of these three plates is the real thing of course. Nishitsu is fatally wounded by the owner of one of the forgeries, just as Dr. Agasa arrives at the house to get his own bowl back. In his dying moments, Nishitsu tells Agasa which of the plates is real, marking it with a smear of his own blood, but not knowing the murderer was still hiding inside the room, Dr. Agasa ran off to call for help. Nishitsu was then finished off for good by the culprit, who also made sure to replicate the smear on all three plates and to place the real plate in the container with their own name, with the intent of taking the plate back as their own of course.

The puzzle of figuring out which plate was real based on what Dr. Agasa saw isn't that difficult: the thing he overlooked was very elementary, though I like the follow-up better: after they figure out who did it, they still have to figure out who was the actual owner of the genuine plate, and the clewing there was both simple, yet cleverly hidden in the illustrations. The story however also acts as a set-up for future story developments, as Dr. Agasa, Conan and Haibara had extra company in the persons of Sera and Dr. Agasa's neighbor Okita. Sera has had her suspicions of both Conan and Haibara's real identities for some time now, so she's eager to get the truth out either of them, while Okita, in their first real interactions in this series, attempts to temper Sera's efforts. And even Conan seems to come to a surprising conclusion regarding Sera and her "sister from beyond the territory," a plotline which have been running for some time now.

The second story, The Deduction Race Between the High School Student Detectives, sees the return of Momiji, who is still intent on winning Hattori over. She organizes a kind of detective competition between Hattori and... Kudou Shinichi and if Hattori loses, he has to do whatever Momiji wants. Momiji has been approached by an acquaintance looking for help. The housekeeper of that family recently died, and she had sent four different coded messages to her four sons, whom had all been adopted by other families when they were young due to the father's death, which caused severe financial problems. The four brothers had not seen each other since, though the mother and the oldest brother Benzou did keep in touch with the others through e-mail. The mother had been bequested a treasure by her wealthy employer before her death, so it is assumed her coded messages, when put together by all four sons, will reveal where this treasure is. The brothers had been discussing the code over e-mail, but then the mails from oldest brother Benzou stopped. Fearing he might've gotten into some trouble while hunting for the treasure, Momiji wants Hattori to solve the code and figure out the location of the treasure. When they finally arrive at the location indicated however, they find a dead Benzou, surrounded by three men who claim to the other brothers, but as none of them had seen each other since childhood, nobody knows for sure whether these men are really the people they claim to be.

Interesting story! I think this is a good example of what makes a Conan story a typical, but good Conan story, mixing the rom-com drama featuring the regular characters with a story that has a few plot twists and good clewing that makes use of the visual format. It seems unlikely anyone is going to figure out the coded messages themselves, even if it's strangely similar in idea to the code featured in the Scarlet School Trip storyline. Once we get to the murder, we get a slim, but capably plotted who-of-three type of mystery story, where Aoyama shows how even with concepts that aren't that surprising taken on their own, he can still craft an enjoyable mystery story through good clewing. The story is also funny to read because in the background, you also have the plot of having a deduction battle between Hattori and Shinichi, as well as the romantic intriges plotted by Momiji to win Hattori's heart, so all in all a good Detective Conan story. The way the tale ties back into the current overarching plot is also interesting.

In The Shogi Player Serial Murder Case, Conan bumps into Shuukichi, boyfriend of patrol officer Yumi and expert shogi (Japanese chess) player as the current holder of the prestigious title Taikou Meijin. Shuukichi has been heading a small shogi study group for some time now, and Yumi and Conan are invited along to take a look (because Yumi assumed Shuukichi was cheating on her). The group always meet at an apartment room they rent together, but on the way, Shuukichi, Yumi and Conan bump into three of the four members outside: the four members had first come to the apartment together, and then three of them went out to buy snacks and drinks for the study group. The fourth member, Genda, is waiting in the apartment already, preparing some other snacks there. When the party arrives at the apartment however, they find the door unlocked, and a strangled Genda lying on the floor. Besides him lies a shogi table with two of the feet knocked off, tying this murder to the recently murdered shogi player Nishikido, who suddenly disappeared after suspicions of matchfixing rose, and who was later found murdered together with a shogi board with one of the feet removed.

Conan suspects one of the three members of the study group is the murderer, and that they only pretended to go out to buy their designated snacks/drinks, to kill Genda in that time period. The problem is that all three of them brought their food and drinks either warm (bread and coffee) or cold (ice cream), while the kitchen in the apartment didn't have gas nor a microwave, and the refrigerator was empty too when they left. So if their alibi is fake, how did they prepare their food to make it appear they just got it from the store? Strangely enough, Conan doesn't seem to really give any good reason why the murderer couldn't be some third party who planned to kill Genda while the others were out, making his suspicions a bit weird, as they only make sense for us, the reader, as we can safely guess that the murderer is, of course, one-of-the-three. I think that the trick the murderer used to fake their alibi is interesting in the sense that it's obvious from this story, but also many of these which-of-the-three type of stories, that Aoyama, his assistants and editors collect loads of ideas, factoids and trivia that can be used for a murder mystery in one way or another. While I hate mystery stories that rely on very specific pieces of knowledge that only experts know, many of these Conan stories are based on something practical you see and use in everyday life, like kitchen appliances, stationary and writing utensils, even the way cupboards are built. These ideas usually revolve around something very mundane, so I seldom feel cheated. Here too, I think the trick is a clever way to use what's there to create the fake alibi without feeling like it's based on something obscure, but with these stories, I always think, "Man, you guys really just write down everything you come across in the hopes of using it in this series at one time or another. And you actually succeed in that too!"

I like how this story focuses on Shuukichi though. He's been pushed to the main stage these last few volumes, but I never felt his stories were really... memorable? he always seemed like a minor secondary character, as he was always shown through his relation to Yumi (who has of course been part of the series universe for much longer). In this story he solves the murder basically instantly, with Conan trailing far behind him, and the story also does a better job at showing him as a character on his own, . And the action scene at the end... is nuts!

The volume ends with the first chapter of The Truth Of Poison and Medicine, where Ran, Sonoko, Sera and Conan attend the birthday party of their classmate Remi and her older sister Yumi, who is a famous actress now. Murder ensues (of course) at the party, while Sera's still trying to get the information she wants from Conan. I guess this will be build-up to the approaching climax to the current storylines.

Oh, I also read the sixth volume of  Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Kindaichi, Age 37"), which features most of the chapters of The New Murders At The Foreigners Hotel. Hajime has already started his explanation of the case by the last chapter of this volume, so I already know part of the solution, but I'd better wait with my review until I've read the full conclusion in volume 7. I do want to note already that this story is an interesting blast to the past. Hajime and his subordinate Marin are sent to the one place Hajime really didn't want to return to: the Foreigners Hotel in Hakodate. When he was seventeen, he solved the infamous murder case involving the Red-Bearded Santa here, but painful losses were also made. Now Hajime's boss has sent him here to supervise the premiere of the fantasy musical "Hakodate Wars", starring several popular male idol stars, two from the former group Skywalker and the three men in Desperado. Hajime runs into familiar faces like Saki (a professional photographer now) and Itsuki (still the freelance writer), but he crosses paths with Superintendent Yukimura for the first time, who has been investigating the death of an ex-member of Desperado. This subordinate of Akechi has gotten into his head that Hajime's probably some kind of serial killer who was active when he was seventeen, and who has now returned to his deadly games as a 37-old man. I guess we have a new rival character! We have some deadly incidents during the premiere and of course the ol' 'everyone has an alibi, so this is an impossible murder' angle, but I'll wait until the next volume to organize my thoughts about this story.

Anyway, Detective Conan 98 proved to be one of the volumes I enjoyed best overall these last two, maybe even three years. The mystery plots aren't that impressive, but Aoyama manages to cover for that with good writing/clewing and by tying these stories to the overall storyline. He has done this in the previous volumes too, but not as consistently as with the stories in this volume, I think. It's clear the chess pieces are moving towards a certain point, not only to provide the foundation for the 2020 film Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet, but also in the comic storyline. Volume 99 is scheduled for a Winter 2020 release, meaning volume 100 will probably follow in 2021: I think it's safe to say we may expect something big then. I might write a post reminiscing about how I first started with this series then... Update on the 37-old Kindaichi Hajime will follow when volume 7 releases in July!

Original Japanese title(s):  Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌　『名探偵コナン』第98巻

The Picture-Perfect Mystery

Natura Artis Magistra

Nature is the teacher of the arts

I think it was around this period last year I went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, to visit the All The Rembrandts exhibition. It was certainly something that played in my mind when I picked today's book.

Takano Fumio's Yokuryuukan no Housekishounin (2018), which also carries the English title of The Jewelry Dealer of the Winged Lizard House, takes us to the summer of 1662 when a spooky rumor spread across the international metropolis Amsterdam. Many believed that the ghost of the one-eyed Claudius Civilis roamed the City Hall (currently the Royal Palace of Amsterdam) and all were convinced the ghost had stepped out of the Dutch master Rembrandt's painting The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis hanging in City Hall. These rumors about Rembrandt's work were especially a source of worry for Titus van Rijn, owner of an art shop and son of Rembrandt. One evening, Rembrandt is summoned to the house of the famous jewelry dealer Nicolaes Hoogeveen, who lives in the Winged Lizard House, named after the gables which were designed after a legendary winged lizard (dragon) protecting diamonds in the Far East. Titus has no intention of sending his father there, so he decides to visit Hoogeveen himself. The man seems to be in a highly neurotic and paranoid state, as he has sent almost all of his servants out of the house for the night. Titus' meeting with the man doesn't last long however, and he too is sent away, but on his way out, Titus meets and greets Dr. Calkoen and another doctor as they enter the home. The following day, new rumors reach Titus: in the earliest hours of the day, someone who died of the plague was apparently buried outside the city walls, and to his great surprise, word is that it was Hoogeveen who died. Apparently, Dr. Calkoen's companion had been a plague doctor, who was was not able to save Hoogeveen. Puzzled by last night's events, but also worried about whether he himself isn't infected, Titus decides to pay the widow of Hoogeveen a visit, with the help of a new friend Fernando Russo, a sailor who has lost his memory. During his visit to the Winged Lizard House Titus hears something strange coming from the safe room of the deceased jeweler. As the only key to the safe was buried together with Hoogeveen, it takes quite some time to break the secured room open, but no amount of time could've prepared them for what they found inside: a weakly Hoogeveen lying unconscious in the room. Besides Hoogeveen lies a painting, seemingly a Rembrandt, but while people remember it was supposed to be a portrait, no human is present on the painting now. Has Hoogeveen too come back alive through one of Rembrandt's painting like Claudius Civilis?

Sometimes the premise of a novel can sound both incredibly alluring, and puzzling. Mysteries about art are not particularly rare, especially if you approach it from a historical angle, and focus often on questions on how a piece of art was made, the meaning (folkloristic purpose) of a piece of art or the topic of a painting. The idea of a mystery novel that wasn't about the works of Rembrandt, but one that featured himself and Titus as characters in a seventeenth century Amsterdam, therefore sounded quite interesting. The idea of people coming back to life through the paintings of Rembrandt, that was a pretty unexpected angle (I don't believe it's a 'real' anecdote from Rembrandt's life), so that did raise some questions with me as these kind of novels usually focus on a more fact-based history of the person, but I was willing to roll with it. The decision to make Titus the protagonist of the story worked out pretty well, focusing on the famous topic of many of Rembrandt's sketches. The young boy is a somewhat nervous, but dedicated lover of art and it's interesting to see Rembrandt the father, Rembrandt the artist and Rembrandt the employee all through Titus' eyes.

As a mystery about Rembrandt, The Jewelry Dealer of the Winged Lizard House does a captivating job intertwining Rembrandt's personal and professional life with the narrative. Some characters are taken from Rembrandt's work, though usually, with quite a lot of imagination added. The Doctor Calkoen in this story is for example supposed to the Dr. Calkoen seen in The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman, but also not really him as character-wise, it's obvious the author Takano went completely her own way with portraying this man. The novel features lots of references to Rembrandt's works, as well as to seventeenth century Amsterdam, which is pretty unique for a mystery novel.

And indeed, the core mystery plot is one that builds on the fact that this is in fact a historical mystery. The mystery of Hoogeveen's apparent resurrection is portrayed in a fairly chaotic way, mostly because of Titus' personality. His investigation is somewhat unfocused, and the reader is presented information in what is occasionally a pretty tiring manner, but at the core, the mystery is actually fairly simple. Most of Titus and Nando's investigation revolve around the question whether the person who died of the plague was Hoogeveen or not, and if not, whose corpse it was then (and how was it introduced into the house in the first place). Solving this mystery isn't that difficult, though the motive for the deed is fairly well-done: both the motive and the 'props' used to accomplish the mystery of the resurrection of Hoogeveen make perfect sense in the specific time period of this novel and make good use of the 'common sense' back then. None of the trickery would ever work in this time and age, but seventeenth century Amsterdam? Sure, I'll believe it and yep, I also thinks it works well, even if isn't epoch-making.

There is a secondary plotline about Nando trying to learn his past, and to be honest, I didn't like it that much. It does connect back to the main mystery of Hoogeveen's return to the living through the painting, but it's far, far too convenient for the plot. The Jewelry Dealer of the Winged Lizard House also has a minor, supernatural touch revealed at the end of the tale, which I am somewhat torn about. I think it does fit the mood of Rembrandt's work, but in this particular novel, allowing for that specific instance of the supernatural, does undermine the core mystery plot. If say, it had been a completely different type of the supernatural which does not infringe upon the integrity of the core mystery plot, I'd have been more open to its introduction.

Yokuryuukan no Housekishounin is perhaps no mystery masterpiece which will be remembered for centuries, but it is definitely an interesting story for those who have an interest in the famous Dutch painter. It tells a captivating tale set in a --for mystery novels-- highly original setting and the way the book plays with the 'real' life of Rembrandt to bring the mystery of the resurrected plague patient is also entertaining. If you like Rembrandt's paintings, this is a fun one to try out.

Original Japanese title(s): 高野史緒『翼竜館の宝石商人』

Blueprint for Murder

Like many of us now, I'm having a blast with the new Animal Crossing. While the game has always been about simulating life in a way, and given you a lot of furniture, clothes and other customization options to build whatever you want, it wasn't until Happy Home Designer (3DS), with its more robust interior options and the fact you could use whatever furniture you want, that I really got into recreating scenes in the game. With the new options to terraform in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I've got loads of plans to turn my island into a wonderful place, but I also still like to recreate well-known small locations or scenes within the game, like from the original film adaptation of Yokomizo Seishi's Inugamike no Ichizoku (The Inugami Clan).

Recreating these settings from well-known mystery stories do force you to really think about the layout of a certain location. With mystery stories in visual media, like films or comics, this is of course not really a problem, but unless your novel has some nifty diagrams or floorplans, you probably will have to read the descriptions in the text very carefully to get a good idea of the place, and even then you have to hope that the descriptions are detailed enough. Two years ago, I wrote a short article on some of the diagrams/floorplans in mystery novels I like, but stories featuring such diagrams are definitely the exception. There's a limit to how much a text can really convey the vision an author has of the setting, and sometimes the description only touches upon the minimum needed for the story. And sometimes, it can simply by a bit confusing. To stick with Yokomizo: Honjin Satsujin Jiken was recently released in English as The Honjin Murders. The story goes that  it was only when the first visual adaptations appeared, like the 1975 film adaption, that people truly understood how the locked room murder there had been done, because it's pretty complex, and it was only in the film people got a real sense of space, and where everything and everyone was located. It's a reason why Arisugawa Alice's An Illustrated Guide to the Locked Room 1891-1998 was so cool: it featured beautifully drawn diagrams for all the locked room mysteries discussed in this guide, even those originally don't have any floorplans/diagrams. It really helped convey how these rooms and other locations must look like, showing the relative locations of every significant object/person.

But going back to videogames, recreating that scene from Inugamike no Ichizoku made me think of two things. One: wouldn't it be great to have some sort of videogame where you could walk around yourself in recreations of locked room murder crime scenes and other iconic locations from famous mystery stories in a videogame? Like being to roam around on the island of the Decagon House? Or get lost in the corridors of the Labyrinth House? Witness the awe-inspiring Werewolf Castle yourself? See how the hotel in Shijinsou no Satsujin changes by the hour as they come closer and closer? Or just imagine being able to move the camera into that object in the Crooked Mansion and see the house from a completely different point of view! I had actually expected more reaction to my review of Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei ("The Alibis of the Ghosts") earlier this week, but wouldn't it be fun to go through that haunted classroom yourself? Of course, there are games like Minecraft where you can could do that yourself, and even in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I think something like The Honjin Murders should be doable, but it would be great to have an official game built around this, for example with an overarching plot of new murders being committed there or something like that. By the way, yes, I know there's a RPG based on Ayatsuji's House series. Has some fancy music too.

The other realization was that I had never really considered how mystery videogames have been so great at presenting floorplans and diagrams, and convey a sense of how every location relates to each other. Of course, this isn't some universal truth for all mystery videogames out there, but when it's utilized well, videogames can definitely go a bit further than novels in terms of making use of space in their mystery plots. In many games, you control the character directly yourself, or you at least choose the locations to go to via a map, which automatically means the developers have to think of how each room, or each location is connected to each other and this really gives the player a great awareness of space. A map is often used to navigate between the locations, so a player usually remembers the exact floorplan of a location much better than in a novel, which can just jump between scenes instantly, whereas in the game, you are usually doing some specific action to move between locations. And with that, you often get a better understanding of how each room in a mansion is connected for example, or how it lies in relation to another room on another floor. Or for example height differences! One of the fan-favorite cutscenes in Gyakuten Saiban 5 (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies) is sometimes discussed because of its comedic value, but what it really did was convey exactly where one location was relative to another location, including angle and height.

Of course, novels can also utilize ingenious murder tricks that use a three-dimensional space, but they are seldom as clear as in videogames. Mystery videogames can convey such spaces much more directly, and clearer to the player and by extension, also present more complex variants that make use of a three-dimensional space in a more natural manner. The Danganronpa videogames for example have several episodes that feature interesting murders that utilize space and location three-dimensionally, and these concepts work better because the player has been controlling the protagonist character themselves, walking between the various locations and learning how everything is connected. I won't spoil the exact episodes, but one episode in Super Danganronpa 2 for example does something fantastic with the player's sense of three-dimensional space, while New Danganronpa V3 has several episodes with murder plots that are good at showing how various locations are interlinked, and another episode that makes use of two-dimensional space in a way no novel can do. The recently reviewed PlayStation 2 game of Tantei Gakuen Q ("Detective Academy Q") too features one chapter that makes more sense if you can visualize everything three-dimensionally. Videogames can convey space in a perfectly natural manner to a player, so it's really satisfying when a plot makes use of that.

Anyway, that was enough rambling from me for today. Any mystery novels you know where you think a three-dimensional presentation of the crime scene/location would've done wonders? Stories that made an impresssion because of they utilized space? Or is there one particular location you'd love to explore yourself in a videogame?

Stop the Clock

"Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP , clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?"

"Ghostbusters"

One recurring motif I mostly know from anime and manga is the school festival. If I am to believe all the fiction I read, many high schools and universities have an annual festival where classes and clubs organize all kind of activities for both fellow students, and visitors from outside. Popular activities are running food stalls and cafeterias in classrooms, while clubs often organize events to show off their own activities, like music clubs performing on stage. I myself have only been to university festivals both as visitor and participant, but my experiences there were similar to how high school festivals are often depicted in fiction. I participated with Kyoto University's November Festival as a member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club for example, so we all worked on the annual booklet that is sold at the festival, and had to man a booth for several shifts etc., but you also have time to wander around yourself to see what the other clubs have done.

As a recurring event in everyone's school life, the school festival is also often featured in Japanese mystery fiction. For example, Detective Conan (volume 72: The Operation Room of Screams for example) and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo (several short stories like about a stolen Holmes collection and another one about a murdered cross-dressing maid) have all featured stories that were set during a school or campus festival. I think I remember the Q.E.D. live action drama also featured an episode about a school festival mystery (presumably based on the original manga). Meanwhile, the school festival is also seen in prose stories: the first three novels of the Classic Literature Club actually feature a whole story arc where the adventures all revolve around preparing for the school festival, while the second volume of Houkago wa Mystery to Tomo ni also features a story arc with several of the short stories included revolving around Ryou encountering mysteries as the school prepares for their festival. Heck, even Jinguuji Saburou has been called to solve a crime at a school festival in a bonus episode of the 3DS game Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Ghost of the Dusk.

Obviously, you can guess by now that today's book is also about a school festival, the one of Youmou High School to be exact. This school, which for some reason has significantly more female than male students, always schedules its festival in a weekend in late September and this year, the students of Class 2-2 decided to turn their classroom in a haunted house. Inside the pitch-dark classroom, a zig-zagging pathway is created through the use of black curtains, which leads from the back entrance of the classroom to the front entrance. The children have of course prepared all kinds of scares for the visitors along the way, like a decapitated head, disappearing ghosts, zombies who suddenly close in on you and a dead body hanging from the ceiling which suddenly attacks any passerby. The attraction is a great succes and people, both students from the school as well as people from outside the school, are still lining up by the dozens on the Sunday (the last day of the festival) to get a good scare. The success also means everyone in Class 2-2 has to do their part: most of the students have to help out both with their class activity as well as their club activity, and obviously you want some time for yourself too, so the cast of ghouls work in shifts of about two hours. It's near the end of the day, when one of the "zombies" notices that the last few visitors have not reacted to one of the greatest scares in the haunted house: the dead girl hanging from the ceiling who attacks the visitors. He decides to take a quick look between visitors to see what's wrong with Ashitaba, the girl playing the body. To his surprise, he discovers that Ashitaba has been turned into a real corpse, as the poor girl's been strangled.

Narrator Kantera Nao, and Koumori Riruko, the gloomy, negatively-thinking girl of the class, decide to work together to solve this case: Nao because he was in love with Ashitaba, while Riruko hopes she'll finally attract praise and attention from her fellow students if she solves this case. But that's easier said than done, because in a way, this murder was impossible! For how could anyone strangle Ashitaba while she was an active part of the attraction? There was a constant stream of visitors inside the haunted house, her fellow cast members were also inside the room (though all holding their own spots along the route) and nobody could've just simply gotten inside the classroom without either the people outside the classroom, or those inside, noticing. In order to solve this mystery, it will become necessary to examine not only whodunit, but more importantly, whendunit in Tomonaga Rito's Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei ("The Alibis of the Ghosts", 2020).

Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei is the winner of the Excellence Award of the 18th Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! Award (2019) and was published in March 2020, marking the official debut of Tomonaga Rito, who has been very close to winning one of the annual mystery fiction awards in Japan for some time now. He made it to the last stage of the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award in both 2016 and 2017 for example (with other novels). Those awards were ultimately won by respectively Ichikawa Yuuto's The Jellyfish Doesn't Freeze (reviewed last week) and Imamura Masahiro's Shijinsou no Satsujin, which are prime examples of the genre, so it's no shame to lose against them. Yet, Tomonaga perservered, and now he's finally here too. His debut novel may not be perfect, but it's one I really like nonetheless.

Readers will have to be patient with this novel though, as it's really slow at the start. After a prologue where the discovery of the body is described, we jump back a few hours in time as we follow Nao in the last few minutes of his shift at the frontside of the haunted house, and are gradually introduced to all the characters as we see everyone slip in and out of the classroom to take over for the final shift. You go through a lot of descriptive passages (with repeated writing!), including a lengthy one where Nao and his energetic classmate Zakuroko go through the haunted house themselves. Obviously, the inside layout of the haunted house and how all of the scares inside work will become important later on, but be prepared for a lot of exposition. That also includes exposition about Nao's classmates, who are mostly girls (and for some reason, the few boys that do appear in the novel are basically thrown onto one heap and treated as one homogeneous entity). Like with Arisugawa Alice's debut novel Gekkou Game though, you're confronted with just too many schoolgirls who are, well, they are differentiated through their various backgrounds (different clubs etc.), but there are simply too many to remember. Some of them barely say something over the course of the story and each time you come across a name, you wonder whether it's someone you had already encountered before or not. What doesn't help at all is that Tomonaga came up with all kinds of odd names for the characters (these are not normal Japanese names). If only one of them had a special name, they'd be easy to remember, but everyone has a weird name and after a while it just becomes one big mess in your head.

Things go a lot faster after the murder though, and I have to repeat that I do like this book despite the mentioned points. The idea of the murder inside a very small, home-made haunted house is really neat, as obviously, a normal classroom is in reality a 'cozy' place, but it still has enough dead angles to make it seem plausible. It works really well with the semi-impossible angle of the tale, as it seems really difficult to figure out who could've committed this murder. Ultimately, the book revolves around one simple question: when was this murder committed? By focusing on this question, Riruko manages to identify the one person who could've killed Ashitaba. It's a fairly unique approach to the mystery story, as it's not a whodunnit, howdunnit or anything like that, but the whendunnit is done fairly well here. We start off with a very wide-ranging period in which the murder could've been committed (based on the medical examination), but Riruko then slowly shortens that period little by little by logically combining both known and newly deduced facts. The type of reasoning here belongs the logic school like featured in Queen, Arisugawa and Imamura's work and with each step, the reader is brought closer to the exact time in which the murder was committed. The final chapter in which Riruko explains all is really lengthy, like ninety pages long (a fifth of the whole), which shows how meticulous the reasoning is in this novel. Some may not like this, but I love this kind of mystery stories, where each logical step is explained and strung together to a long journey of reasoning. Granted, some parts of the mystery are fairly obvious to the reader: the many important clues and hints within the events that Nao experiences before and after the murder are barely hidden and the attentive reader will certainly be able to guess parts of the truth. Especially at the start of Riruko's trip of logic, you'll probably think "Oh, I know where this is going, that thing meant that in reality, X was actually this or that..." Yet, I doubt anyone will be able to combine all the facts together. It's only by getting a clear view of the whole picture that you'll be able to solve the mystery. And even then it'll be hard for the reader to repeat Riruko's greatest feat in this story: while we start with a possible period of death spanning several hours, she manages to pinpoint the exact time of the murder down to the very minute simply by following the trail of logical bread crumbs. The exact minute. It's a feat I've never seen in a mystery story before, and I absolutely love this idea.

Of course, I have read many mystery novels about perfect alibis or things like that do focus on time schedules a lot, and often a few minutes here or there do make a difference there. My to-go titles when mentioning very precise time schedules would be Ayukawa Tetsuya's Kuroi Trunk, Aosaki Yuugo's Suizokukan no Satsujin and C. Daly King's Obelists Fly High, which are all mystery novels where the fixation on the exact time any action is made can be a bit overbearing even if the novels are fun, but I felt it was less... tiring? in Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei. Though I would've appreciated it if the book would've featured a time schedule for the characters going in and out the classroom (there are no time schedules whatsoever in this book, so if you want one you have to make one yourself). With all the confusing characters and all, something like that would've been very helpful, without given the game away, as you need a lot more to work out the trick of when it was done (and by extension, who).

The motive for the murder is very much 'afterthought' material though and it's a bit of a shame, as it does tie in with one important factor of how the murder was committed, so that's again probably that will turn off some readers. Ultimately though, I think that Tomonaga's book works despite these obvious flaws.

As I am writing this, I have a feeling that at the end of the year, I will remember Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei as one of my best reads of this year. And that's despite some obvious flaws which some will even find fatal. Yep, I can easily imagine that contrary to myself, some readers will dislike this book because of those flaws. But if you ask me yes or no about this book, it's a very definite yes. The logical reasoning shown in the conclusion (and the Challenge to the Reader!), the setting of the haunted house inside a classroom, the chatter between the students: this is the kind of mystery fiction I love to read and Yuureitachi no Fuzai Shoumei works for me. I hope more adventures of Riruko will follow!

Original Japanese title(s): 朝永理人『幽霊たちの不在証明』