The Three Coffins

「うるさい、密室のないミステリなんて、クリームのコーヒーみたいなもんだ」

「 懐かしい密室」

"Shaddup, a mystery without a locked room, that's like coffee without cream."

"A Nostalgic Locked Room"

Kinda weird the cover doesn't actually feature coffins.

While most titles usually give you some idea about the contents of the book, few titles are as informative as Orihara Ichi's Nanatsu no Hitsugi - Misshitsu Satsujin ga Oosugiru ("The Seven Coffins  - Too Many Locked Room Murders", 1992). Just a glance at this title allows you to guess a lot about this short story collection. For example, it shouldn't come as a surprise that this book is about locked room murders, considering the subtitle. Or that there are seven stories collected here. And doesn't this title sound a bit familiar? So the reader can also make a safe (and correct) guess that this short story collection has a minor parody angle/is inspired by famous locked room murder mysteries and writers of the sub-genre, like of course John Dickson Carr. The seven stories in this collection all "star" Inspector Kurohoshi, a middle-aged police detective who was once in the career fast track, but he was transferred to rural Shirooka because he was too much a fan of detective novels and locked room mysteries: he always tried to make his own cases appear more complex than they actually were. Kurohoshi's only hopes of returning to the capital is by solving a big case here, but nothing ever happens here... or perhaps they do? In this collection, Inspector Kurohoshi is put on seven different locked room murders that occur in Shirooka, but perhaps it's about time someone told him that he's not the detective character in these stories...

In 1985 author Orihara Ichi reached the final round of the All Yomimono New Mystery Writers' Prize with his short story Osekkai na Misshitsu ("A Busy-body Locked Room"), but lost there. But he was offered a new chance later, and in 1988, he made his debut as a professional writer with the short story collection titled Itsutsu no Hitsugi ("The Five Coffins"), which included Osekkai na Misshitsu. In 1992, Nanatsu no Hitsugi - Misshitsu Satsujin ga Oosugiru was released as the revised version of this book, adding two stories (hence the title change). I hadn't read anything by Orihara before by the way, though I had known about this collection for like forever, as it's a pretty well-known book. As mentioned above, this collection has some parody-like qualities, as most of the stories in this collection are named after other stories and there are also plenty of references to famous locked room mysteries. The stories all have a light, comedic tone to them, also by always having everyone but Inspector Kurohoshi solve the case.

The book opens with Misshitsu no Ouja ("The King of The Locked Room"), which also has the alternate English title No Smoking in the Locked Room. The Japanese title is a pun on the Japanese translation of Knox' Solved by Inspection. Inspector Kurohoshi is put on the case of a dead amateur sumo wrestler in the local community gymnasium. The night before, the local shopping arcades had their annual festival, with a sumo tournament as its finale. For the last few years, the finalists have been the same two people: Tokitou Kenichi of the East Exit Shopping Arcade, and Satou Hiroshi of the West Exit Shopping Arcade. While Satou had been on a winning streak the last few years, Tokitou won this year and naturally, the victory was celebrated with his friends and a lot of liquor, while Satou had to lick his wounds. Tokitou and his gang eventually ended up drinking in the local community gymnasium after borrowing the key, and fearing the neighbors would complain or that Satou and his gang would cause trouble, they had locked themselves inside the gymnasium, covering the windows and taping the doors down. Kurohoshi and his subordinate Takeuchi are sent to the gymnasium when someone says he saw Satou and his gang trying to get inside, and that when that person returned later, he wasn't getting any replies from the people inside in the gymnasium, which made him worried. When they break inside, they find that everyone is dead drunk, save for Tokitou himself, as he's rather dead. The circumstances suggest that Tokitou had been wrestling with someone, who threw him on the floor to break his neck, but who else but Satou could even stand a chance against this amateur sumo wrestler? While the set-up with the taped doors is promising, the solution is a bit easy to guess: it's a bit weird that this possibility is ignored by the narrative at first, as the actual solution seems, to me, to be a lot easier to swallow and even easier to think of than some fancy locked room murder trick. I think something like this can work depending on how good the misdirection is, but I at least thought the solution was a lot more obvious than the narrative tried to paint it.

Dickson Carr wo Yonda Otokotachi ("The Men Who Read Dickson Carr") has the alternate title The Locked Room Without Key, but the Japanese title is of course a reference to William Brittain's The Man Who Read... series. Inspector Kurohoshi is asked to come to the house of the wealthy recluse Kazami Akira, who lives there with his grandson. Kazami Tomoko, Akira's niece and last living relative, has been studying in the United States for the last four years, but when she returned here, it appeared like the house hadn't been lived in for years. She could not find anyone inside, but her uncle's study was locked from the inside. When Kurohoshi has the door opened, he finds two skeletons in the room, as well as the key to the door, and several murder weapons like a rifle, a bat and knife lying around the floor. What happened here? This is a fun little story, with each of the four sections focusing on a different character, slowly revealing what exactly happened in this locked room. There are lot of little questions that float around when you first read about the locked room, like why the key of the door was inside the room, or why there are so many murder weapons there, and those elements really make this an entertaining read. The answer to why this turned into a locked room is pretty funny and while the story does rely a bit on coincidence/luck, I really enjoyed this one.

In Yakuza na Misshitsu ("A Yakuza Locked Room"), also known as The Locked Room Is Dead, Inspector Kurohoshi has to protect a yakuza gang leader in a gang war. Miwa used to be a high-ranking captain in the Yamada-Gumi, but when the previous head of the Yamada-Gumi died, he decided to start his own group, resulting in a gang war between the new Miwa-Kai and Yamada-Gumi. While the widow of Yamada is trying curses and other occult ways to kill Miwa, the men of the Yamada-Gumi have bought rockets from Hawaii to take out Miwa himself. Because the Yamada-Gumi has openly declared at what day and time Miwa will meet his maker, the Miwa-Kai prepares against the rocket attack by buying a cheap survival shelter container to protect their leader. While the shelter seems to withstand the tremendous rocket attack on the Miwa mansion, the police and the men of the Miwa-Kai are surprised to learn that Miwa still died even though he was safely inside the shelter. Was it widow Yamada's curse which finished the gang leader off inside his container? This is again a story where I think the actual solution is a lot more obvious than the story pretends it to be, so a lot of the time you're wondering why a certain point isn't raised. There's a lot of clever misdirection going regarding how the shelter was used though, so while I think the trick behind the locked room wasn't surprising, I think this is a well-plotted tale.

Natsukashii Misshitsu ("A Nostalgic Locked Room") is also called The Third Locked Room and is about the mystery author Tsujii Yasuo and his Misshitsu no Fugou Keibu, a parody on Tsutsui Yasukata and his Fugou Keiji series. The best-selling Tsujii disappeared three years ago from his cottage, saying he wanted to travel to recharge again. His disappearance was an utter mystery to his editors at the time, for Tsujii disappeared from the study in his cottage, while the three editors were waiting for him in the room outside his study. The men had been waiting for Tsujii to finish his manuscripts for them that day, but he managed to leave his study, even though the windows were locked from the inside and the only door was observed by the editors. Now three years later, the men are invited to the cottage again as Tsujii has announced his return. The editors arrive early, as Tsujii isn't in his study yet, but after some time, the men get suspicious again, and when they check the study once more, they find a decapitated Tsujii inside, even though the study door had been under their observation!  A very tricky story because it revolves around both an impossible disappearance in the past and the introduction of a body inside a locked room. It's definitely a well-plotted story, with a lot of steps to make the miracle reality. Perhaps even a bit too complex, as there's a lot going on here. There's even a Story-Within-A-Story narrative about a very similar locked room disappearance/murder in a serialized story by Tsujii (hence the alternate English title The Third Locked Room), so we're talking about a lot of content here. Plot-wise, an impressive story, though it does rely a lot on coincidence or hoping that people react in a certain way.

Wakihonjin Satsujin Jiken ("The Secondary Honjin Murder Case"), AKA The Perfect Locked Room is obviously inspired by Yokomizo Seishi's Honjin Satsujin Jiken, featuring a lot of familiar elements. We follow the retired teacher Okuyama Kyousuke writing about the horrible murder that occured in the manor of the Ipponyanagi family. The manor used to be a waki-honjin, a secondary inn reserved for travelling daimyo in the Edo period. While the Ipponyanagi's used to be an important family, the family grew impoverished, and now thirty-seven year old Hiroko (an old student of Okuyama) lives there alone with her sick mother and one old servant. Their financial situation is the reason why Miyaji Takeshi, a former servant of the Ipponyanagi's, returns to his old master. The uncouth middle-aged man made a fortune in the black market, got hold of some of the debts of the Ichiyanagis and now demands to marry the beautiful Hiroko unless they want to lose the house. Ipponyanagi Hiroko eventually agrees to marry Miyaji to protect her mother. They marry on a cold winter day, and in the evening, the couple retreats to the annex to spend their first night as a married couple. The following morning however, the servant finds Miyaji dead in the annex bedroom. For some reason, he had taped the door and windows of the bedroom shut, while heavy closets had been also been pushed in front of the bedroom door from the outside, effectively locking the door from both sides. Hiroko was nowhere to be found, but there were no footprints in the snow between the main building and the annex and for some reason, a bloody handprint of a man with four fingers was found outside the annex... People who have read Honjin Satsujin Jiken will definitely recognize a lot of the elements, but the solution to this problem is completely different. Like most of the stories in this collection, the mystery is mostly constructed because of the independent actions of various characters coming together in a rather 'fortunate' manner, creating an utterly impossible situation. The same holds here, with coincidence playing a big role in creating the mystery. I really like the reason why the victim had taped the door shut from the inside though and the set-up of that part of the mystery, but it's hard to ignore the fact that a lot of coincidences had to occur in a relatively short period of time to create this locked room mystery.

Futoumei na Misshitsu ("An Opaque Locked Room") has the alternate title Invisible Man and has a Chestertonian problem. The owner of a construction company suspected of corruption is found in his locked office in his house, and the suspect is a rival owner of a construction company who was lurking around the neighborhood around the time of the murder, but nobody saw him actually go in the house and commit the crime, even though a lot of the victim's employees were hanging around the house and the victim was actually a well-trained martial artist. A short story, with a surprisingly interesting variation on the concept of the invisible man as seen in Chesterton's Father Brown stories. The clewing of how this crime was committed was really cleverly done, though this story may be hard to solve if you're not very familiar with certain elements of Japanese culture.

I mentioned Osekkai na Misshitsu in my introduction of this book, but that story was retitled to Tengai Shoushitsu Jiken ("The Case of the Disappearance of the Face of the Earth") and also given the alternate English title The Locked Room In the Air. The Japanese title is based on the Japanese title for Clayton Rawson's short story Off the Face of the Earth and similarly deals with a disappearance of a person from a very small space, in this case, the disappearance of a murderer from a moving cabin of a ropeway. The Mt. Shirooka ropeway has been newly opened, but one day, a woman is found stabbed to death in one of the cabins arriving at the ground station. Soon after, witnesses appear who had been in the cabins moving up the ropeway while the victims' cabin was going down. They swear they saw the woman being assaulted by a man, but how did that man disappear from a suspended railway cabin that can only be opened from the outside in mere minutes? Man, I can easily imagine this as a Detective Conan episode for some reason. While the disappearance from the cabin is obviously an impossible situation, there's also a light focus on the times of when the cabin was spotted by the witnesses and the time it takes for the ropeway to move/characters to move around, which kinda reminds of a railway mystery, but overall, this is again a story that is cleverly constructured, but that does rely on various characters just happening to see or do something at a certain moment, all of that resulting in a seemingly impossible situation, rather than it actually being planned as such. I'm not against that per se, but most of the stories follow this pattern, which does make it a bit more obvious how hard Lady Luck must've been working in the background for this volume.

I might sound a tad negative about Nanatsu no Hitsugi - Misshitsu Satsujin ga Oosugiru, but I do think the seven stories collected in this volume are clever and well-plotted locked room murder mysteries on their own. Taken together however, some of the underlying mechanics with which Orihara constructs his mysteries become a bit obvious, even if the settings of the stories themselves are quite varied. Still, you can do a lot worse than this volume if you're looking for a good short story collection about locked room mysteries. A safe, and ultimately rewarding read if you want some impossibilities.

Original Japanese title(s): 折原一『七つの棺　密室殺人が多すぎる』：「密室の王者」 / 「ディクスン・カーを読んだ男たち」 / 「やくざな密室」/ 「懐かしい密室」 / 「脇本陣殺人事件」 / 「不透明な密室」 / 「天外消失事件」

Lack of Evidence

"I walk in eternity."

"Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars"

Umineko no Naku Koro ni Saku on Switch and PlayStation 4 will be released in January 2021! Let's hope I'll be able to finish the game and write a review by December 2021...

Videogames can provide a unique experience in the mystery genre, as it's an active genre: in most mystery games, the story won't proceed unless you (the player) actively interact with the story and characetrs and solve puzzles, as opposed to mystery plots in novels or films, which will go on regardless of how involved  the reader/viewer is with the plot. Of course, the other side of this story is that in novels or films, you at least don't get stuck in the story simply because you don't know what to do next...

While crime might not be rare in Washington D.C., the murder of Walter Edwards near the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame was one that caught the attention of everyone. Edwards was not only the chief of the Liberty Town police, he was also in D.C. conducting a secret investigation in cooperation with the FBI. Secret documents pertaining to this investigation, believed to be in Edwards' possession, also disappeared after his death, so initially the police suspects Edwards' death has to do with his assignment, which is also why everyone was shocked to learn that the pistol thought to have killed Edwards was found in the apartment of his eldest son Frederick, who goes to college in Washington D.C. The local police is satisfied that they have found their man with Frederick, who apparently had a fight with his father earlier that day. Many people who know Edwards and his family personally aren't quite convinced though and the Liberty Town Police Station decides to send their man J.B. Harold to Washington to investigate the death of their deceased boss. Not only is J.B. personally acquainted with Edwards and his wife, J.B. also knows Washington D.C. well because he studied here ten years ago and as he starts poking around in the city, he finds he still has some old college friends in the city who are willing to help him with his investigation in the videogame D.C. Connection, originally released in 1989 for PC-98 systems, but it was later ported to other systems like i-mode feature phones. The most "current" version of D.C. Connection is the 2011 iOS version, which is the version I played.

D.C Connection is the fourth J.B. Harold game published by the late Riverhillsoft, a Japanese company which specialized in mystery-themed adventure games for the PC in the late 80s-early 90s. While it follows Murder Club, Manhattan Requiem and Kiss of Murder, it's considered the third numbered entry in the series, because Kiss of Murder is considered a parallel world version of the second entry, Manhattan Requiem. In terms of gameplay, D.C. Connection is very similar to the previous Riverhillsoft adventure games (which also includes Kohaku no Yuigon), so when I started this game, my intentions were to complete it in just a few hours, a perfect way to spend my Sunday afternoon. I mean, I already knew very well how Suzuki Rika designed these games, so I could hardly be that far off with my estimate of how long it would take me, right? In the end though, it took me at least double the time I had anticipated, and I had to spread it across three days...

As always in this series, D.C. Connection starts in a non-linear manner: after the short prologue, the player (J.B.) has the freedom to visit more than a dozen different locations spread across Washington D.C., where you'll find suspects, witnesses and other persons willing or unwilling to assist you with your investigation. You can decide the order in which you tackle these persons yourself and you progress, you'll uncover more locations and people to see, and in the end, you may have to interact with over 20-30 different locations and persons. Speaking with these people on various topics like other characters or their alibis will provide you with information and ultimately, the J.B. Harold games are about collecting information: by collecting all available information on a character or a certain topic, you can induce characters to give you new information, for example because you noticed a contradiction in the statement of Character A after you collected the statements of everyone else. This new piece of information allows you to press everyone again on old and new topics, and rinse and repeat to progress in the story. These games are about collecting a lot of information on a lot of topics (I'd estimate about 50 different topics) in a non-linear manner: this is what gives these games a unique vibe, as they are really focused on bringing you the experience of a cop who does his job by going over the crime scenes dozens of time and repeating procedural questionings of witnesses, but it can definitely be a boring experience too, and at times very frustrating too.

I have the feeling the story of D.C. Connection is a bit longer than previous games, but what really made my playthrough of this game take so long was I got stuck a lot. In the original PC-98 version of the game, it was possible to get actually stuck in a way you could never proceed again (a bug), but while it's technically not possible to arrive at a state where it's genuinely impossible to proceed anymore in the iOS version, it can be veeeeeeery difficult finding that one piece of statement you missed that allows you proceed in the story. With approximately 30 characters who at any time have about 20-30 topics to talk about, and other locations you can check, it's pretty easy to miss that little piece of dialogue that is necessary to move the plot forward, especially if it's a very insignificant message. In D.C. Connection, the plot can move forward if you have collected all information about a certain character or topic, or when you reach certain percentages of the total game progression (there's a bar that shows how far you are in the game). Sometimes, you're just stuck because a story event will only happen at 46,6% of the game, while you're at 46,5% and accidentally skipped that one single piece of dialogue with that one character who obviously has nothing to do with the crime, telling you how they have nothing to do with the crime, but which will still add that 0,1% to the bar... It happened more than a few times I really didn't know what I had missed, so then I was forced to talk with every character about every topic once again just to see what I had missed. And this takes ages of just sifting through dialogue you have seen already. And despite the age we live in, there's strangely enough no full walkthrough/guide or even a full Let's Play of D.C. Connection available anywhere, so whenever I got stuck I had to do with that hint book came with the original PC-98 release and only explains specific parts of the game (and naturally, I always got stuck on the parts not explained in that hint book). D.C. Connection really feels like an old PC adventure game: looking for that necessary piece of dialogue is at least as vexing as old-fashioned pixel hunting and it's always something small you missed.

Despite these frustations though, I think D.C. Connection is one of the better J.B. Harold games. Like I said, I have the feeling the story is a bit grander in scale this time and we also have a new mechanic in this game where you can make allies out of certain characters who can help you in different ways: the taxi driver Nelson for example can shadow suspects for you and find out where they were going, adding new locations on your map (Is the fish market ever used in this game by the way?). Story-wise, D.C. Connection is also plotted more tightly than previous games, with a plot that keeps you guessing who murdered Edwards and for what reason. There are also some major plot developments halfway through the game that keep you on your toes. The plot also involves J.B.'s own past a bit, as he meets old college friends and reminisces about days past (certain parts were already mentioned in Manhattan Requiem). If I hadn't get stuck so often in D.C. Connection on very minor obstacles, I have no doubts this would've been my favorite entry in the series.

Despite a few minor innovations, D.C. Connection follows the same formula as the previous J.B. Harold games and thus offers a very sober, down-to-earth mystery adventure where you, as the player, simply have to digest a lot of information through conversations with other characters. There's not much genuine puzzle solving to be done by the player themselves, but it can be very difficult finding the right triggers that allow the story to move forward, more so than in previous games I think. Definitely wouldn't recommend anyone to start playing these Riverhillsoft adventure games with this one, but for fans of the series, D.C. Connection is certainly an entry you shouldn't miss as it's perhaps the most polished one in terms of story and characters.

Original Japanese title(s): 『D.C.コネクション』

I Just Didn't Do It

‘We were thirteen. Some fellow failed at the last minute. We never noticed till just the end of dinner.’

"Lord Edgware Dies"

Anyone seen the movie I Just Didn't Do It? (Soredemo Boku wa Yatteinai). I remember we watched it in class while I was studying in Japan, which was... ages ago.

While there are certainly also merits to analyzing works of fiction as being pieces of art on their own, as completely independent, standalone creations, I always read mystery fiction with the awareness that a certain work is just one part of a larger context, with, ideally, more recent works building on, and going beyond what previous works in the genre have done. The mystery fiction genre has always been a very meta-conscious one, so if you're just going to copy an idea from G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown series for your mystery story in 2020, readers will be aware of that, and will likely take that with them in their final thoughts on the work. Of course, it's impossible for anyone to know all stories that have ever been written, so it's quite possible that a best-selling puzzle plot detective story published in English in 2020 turns out to have the exact plot as a story originally written in Tibet in 1920, only that the latter never manages to gain as much attention due to lack of translations/lack of readers etc. But in general, whenever I read a mystery story, I do tend to compare it to all the stories I have read previously: sometimes elements are used exactly the same, sometimes a story does something surprisingly different with the same basic elements, etc. Especially with popular tropes like the locked room mystery etc., you're usually inclined to see connections between the work in question and other stories. But context also means time: when was a book first published and what was "the normal" back then, and in what way is that utilized in the story? For example, Queen's The Tragedy of X has a pretty famous dying message that probably made more sense back then, but people nowadays are not likely to guess the meaning of that.

Ashibe Taku's Juusanbanme no Baishinin ("The 13th Juror", 1998) is a novel that was ahead of its time, even too much perhaps, in a way: so many elements seem less surprising or innovative now, but it must've been an incredibly original mystery novel when it was first published in 1998. After a short prologue that talks about an unforeseen disaster at a nuclear reactor (yep, long before 2011's Fukushima disaster), the reader is introduced to Takami Ryouichi, a young man without much luck in his life. One day, he's approached by an acquaintance in the publishing world with a very curious offer. This Funai is working on a series of non-fiction documentary novels supervised by none other than the legendary journalist/non-fiction writer Kohinata Akira and they want Ryouichi, aspiring writer himself, to be their writer for their project on miscarriages of justice. They'll fabricate a murder case and frame Ryouichi for the fictional crime. The expectation is that the police and Ministry of Justice will jump on the flimsy falsified evidence pointing to Ryouichi, and when the time's ripe, they'll release the evidence to show how Ryouichi had been framed by the authorities for a crime that never even happened. Ryouichi will then write the book based on his own experiences as a murder suspect. Ryouichi agrees, and undergoes a special medical procedure that will allow them to even fool the police's DNA examination. The "murder" is played out by arranging to have a certain house to be under observation by a third party. They'll make it seem like a woman enters the house, followed by Ryouichi. He'll make a lot of ruckus and leave evidence suggesting a murder and then flee the house. The plan is executed as such and soon after, Ryouichi is paid a visit by the police. But to his great surprise, he's not only being investigated for the fabricated murder, but also for the rape and murder of a woman several months ago: not only did the M.O. of the fabricated murder correspond to the actual murder earlier, Ryouichi's DNA also matched that of the culprit in the rape murder. Ryouichi's utterly confused by this turn of events, as his plans to be falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit, turn to an actual case of being falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit. Luckily for him, the attorney Morie Shunsaku, who happened to be one of the people who had been observing the house, takes an interest in this case and intends to save his client in the courtroom. But Morie must not forget that this trial is different from others: it's also the very first trial with jurors in the region, which means he must play the game differently this time.

Ashibe Taku has a tendency to use his series detective Morie Shunsaku for a variety of story types. You have stories where Morie's like those old master detectives solving crimes in creepy manorsin the middle of nowhere with weird gimmicks like hidden passages, like in Wadokei no Yakata no Satsujin. Young and upcoming reporter/amateur detectives solving impossible crimes? Done that. Historical and bibliomysteries? Yep, got that covered. Great detective versus the great criminal? Yes. Science-fiction mysteries about parallel dimensions? Morie has been there... You'd almost forget that Morie Shunsaku is supposed to be an attorney. In the fifth novel in the series, Morie is finally back to doing his actual job, but in a setting that was ahead of its time. For while Morie's involved in a jury trial in this book, there were no jury trials in Japan in 1998. Japan would introduce the lay judge system in 2009, with the legislation for that being signed in 2004, so it's interesting to see how Ashibe's invention for this novel would come true later on. Note that Ashibe's version of the Juror system is based heavily on the American model, so the workings portrayed in this novel are very different from how they are in real-life now. Ashibe would later write another book where Morie tackles cases involving the real lay ludge system in Japan (Saibanin Houtei) and comparing the system as imagined by Ashibe in today's book, and then how it turned out to be in Saibanin Houtei can be interesting. In this book for example, we have twelve jurors and one professional judge (in the Lay Judge system, it's six lay judges and three professional judges), and the layout of the courtroom as imagined here is also quite different from how it turned out to be.

By the way, the introduction of the Lay Judge system in Japan did lead to an increase of mystery fiction involving jury trials. Besides Ashibe's Saibanin Houtei, I've also discussed the game Yuuzai X Muzai and the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney spin-off novel/guidebook Gyakuten Houtei (and the 2007 game Gyakuten Saiban 4 also handled the Lay Judge system), all published around the same period. By now, mystery stories that do involve jury trials are therefore not rare anymore, but that's what makes Juusanbanme no Baishinin so special, as it was in a way pioneering, with a detective plot that involved jury trials in Japan back in 1998. Like with Ashibe's own Saibanin Houtei but also game Yuuzai X Muzai, there's a strong social school voice to be heard in this work. It's obvious that the author sees trial by jury as an important tool for a working democracy and a necessity to protect the public from political games. 

Anyway, the novel is split in two parts, the first part is where we see Ryouichi prepare for the falsified crime and eventually being prosecuted for an actual crime, while in the second half we have a good old-fashioned courtroom drama with Morie and the prosecutor battling in the courtroom to convince the jury of their respective stances and where of course most of the mystery-solving occurs. The mystery is set-up in such a way that over the course of the various sessions, Morie is able to address several unclear points in the prosecution's view of the events in succession. Some of these parts are perfectly solvable for the reader in classic puzzler fashion, like explaining how the woman vanished from the house under observation, while they did see Ryouichi go in and out of the house. The solution is simple, but fairly clewed. Other parts are a bit too ambitious: as you may guess, Ryouichi's involved with a pretty large conspiracy in order to be in his current situation (a falsified falsified crime) and the scale of the background story reminds more of those social school mystery stories of Matsumoto Seichou with high-ranking government officials scheming things and stuff like that. These elements seldom make for good puzzle plot mysteries: this book is no expection.

And then you get to the part about how Ryouichi's DNA turns out to match a rapist-murderer from a case several months earlier and how the real culprit managed to fool the scientific investigation, and that part is... unsolvable unless you happen to know the trick. Which strangely enough, I did. For you see, I have read two other mystery stories that revolve around the same, fairly obscure, underlying idea, though those stories are more recent than this 1998 book. I assume that in 1998, this was a more surprising, exactly because it explains how DNA investigation also has pitfalls despite its pros, but this critique of DNA investigation is of course less surprising to the modern reader, and in my case, I had already seen the same in other stories, even if they are dated after this book. Still, this part of the mystery remains unfair to the reader, as there's simply no way they are going to guess that based on the little clewing/explanation in the novel: it just requires too much specialistic knowledge. It may be surprising if you haven't come across the underlying idea before (it's not that common, I just happened to have come across it a few times), but it's not like you'll think this was brilliant plotting (though I admit the plotting to support the main idea was okay.

Is Juusanbanme no Baishinin a puzzle plot mystery though? I think that it isn't for a large part, though the aforementioned disappearance from the house definitely is, as well as the conclusion of the trial. Morie's job is of course to save his client from a miscarriage of justice and the clever manner which allows him to do that, is ultimately found within the workings of the juror system as envisioned by Ashibe (so different from the actual Lay Judge system). The clewing is a bit vague, but it works and it does give a good reason for Juusanbanme no Baishinin to actually be a mystery novel about jury trials, rather than a normal courtroom drama based on the actual systems at the time.

Perhaps it's because I read them out of order, but the Morie Shunsaku novels tend to go all kinds of directions in terms of story types, and in Juusanbanme no Baishinin's case, it even has a rather eerie prophetic vibe going on with its criticisms on DNA profiling in police investigations, the introduction of jury trials and even a background event like the nuclear meltdown. It's a novel with a clear vision by the author, but as a mystery story, it's also a bit unfair at times. But as usual with this author's works, there's always something to chew on mentally and as a courtroom drama mystery, it's fairly entertaining.

Original Japanese title(s): 芦辺拓『十三番目の陪審員』

Maze of Mysteries

And now for something completely different.

"Monty Python's Flying Circus"

It's no secret that I mainly focus on puzzle plot mystery fiction on this blog. Note the emphasis on plot: in a mystery story, the plot usually has to become the puzzle, challenging the reader to solve whatever the main problem is, ranging from whodunnit, howdunnit to whatthehell. Puzzles on their own are different story,  though I have discussed mystery fiction that include puzzles before: earlier this year I reviewed the puzzle-filled comic Clue: Candlestick for example, based on the famous boardgame Cluedo/Clue. The Professor Layton franchise too is of course all about puzzles popping up everywhere and I once also discussed a jigsaw puzzle that came with a mystery story, or a mystery story that came with a jigsaw puzzle, depending on your point of view. But in general, 'normal' puzzles aren't discussed here often.

But I wanted to do a short write-up on the wonderful illustrated book Pierre the Maze Detective - The Mystery of the Empire Maze Tower (2017) created by Japan-based Hiro Kamigaki & IC4DESIGN anyway. The title doesn't do much to hide the fact that this large hardcover volume is filled with brilliantly drawn mazes to get lost in, similar to the Where's Wally/Waldo books. While this is the second book in this series of maze books, it shouldn't surprise you that they all follow the same format. The Mystery of the Empire Maze Tower starts with the news that the Phantom Thief Mr. X is going to steal the energy source of New Maze City, located all the way on the top of the Empire Maze Tower. Pierre the Maze Detective, his girlfriend Carmen, her dog and a whole party of other famous detectives start chasing after Mr. X as he makes his way towards the Empire Maze Tower. Each illustration of this book is set at a fabulously looking location, like a cruiseship, or the entertainment park or museum inside the Empire Maze Tower and the reader not only has to find a way through the mazes that these locations provide in pursuit of Mr. X, but are also challenged to find other important objects hidden in these beautifully drawn mazes that are filled with little details.

The book offers a memorable journey through absolutely breathtaking illustrations that are immensely lively and great fun to look at. There's a lot of variety too in the mazes: the chase after Mr. X will bring you to places like a harbor, the park in front of the Empire Maze Tower, the hotel rooms and the theater of the Tower and even all the way up in the penthouse pool. These locations serve as fantastic-looking and intricately-designed mazes that bring you across the whole illustration.

And even after solving the initial maze, you can just spend ages looking at all the details here. Each illustration has its own set of unique challenges (usually to find certain characters or objects hidden in the maze), but there are also many running gags, like a polar bear who's also chilling somewhere or a ninja appearing at the oddest places. There's no 'background' here: everything is a joy to look at. The atmoshere in these illustrations is really nice: it reminds me a bit of the cozy, anachronistic vibe of the Professor Layton series.

There's no mystery plot in this book though, so all that's getting tested here is your eye for detail and how good you are at mazes. Okay, the book is made for children, so adults shouldn't have too much trouble with the mazes and the challenges here, but it's definitely a book adults can also enjoy because the book is just so full of personality (for those worrying about their eyesight: the actual book is pretty big).

As this is a pure puzzle book and not really the kind of book I usually discuss here, I'll just keep it short, but I really enjoyed Pierre the Maze Detective - The Mystery of the Empire Maze Tower as a detective-themed maze book, and if you're looking for a fun puzzle illustrated book similar to Where's Wally for kids and adults, I can recommend this wholeheartedly. The book has been published in many countries and I believe a third volume is to be published soon worldwide too.

The Dutch Shoe Mystery

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe

She had so many children, she didn't know what to do

She gave them some broth without any bread

Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed

I have these cloth book covers I use whenever I read Japanese bunko-format pockets: it keeps the books clean and these cloth covers are more pleasant to hold in your hands while reading. While bunko pockets should have the exact same dimensions, meaning you can use the covers for all bunko pockets, the bunko pockets from Kobunsha tend to be like one single millimeter too high for my cloth covers, so I can't use them. Which is really annoying.

We return to Parallel Britain in Yamaguchi Masaya's 1995 short story collection Kidd Pistols no Manshin ("The Self-Conceit of Kidd Pistols", 1995). The introduction of Edward's Law in Parallel Britain changed the history of criminal investigation: the right to investigation was given to the members of the Master of Detective Assocation, which in change turned Scotland Yard into mere errand boys for these detectives, the main reason why Scotland Yard is now mainly manned by young punk hooligans just trying to earn an easy pay check. Kidd Pistols and his girlfriend Pink Belladonna too appear more like members of a punk band than police officers, but these two form Scotland Yard's National Unbelievable Troubles Section (NUTS), which is usually assigned to the detectives who have to handle the kooky cases like locked room murders or other odd incidents. While Kidd and Pink get to work with the best detectives in Britain, like Dr. Bull (disciple of Dr. Fell) and the famous Swiss detective Mercule Boirot, it turns out that Kidd isn't just a punk: being able to think out of the box, not being constrained by the rules allows him to solve the cases that baffle even the best detectives. In the third short story collection, we follow Kidd and Pink in several cases patterned after Mother Goose rhymes set both in the present as well as the duo's past.

All the stories in this series feature an official English title, so the title page of Kidd Pistols no Manshin - Kidd Saisho no Jiken also says The Self-Conceit of Kidd Pistols - The Kidd Pistols' First Case. This is a fairly short story, that is more about fleshing out the characters than really providing an interesting mystery plot. In the first part, we have Kidd Pistols himself narrate the story, telling us how he grew up in the slums of London as the son of a good-for-nothing Irishman and a somewhat too enthusiastic London housekeeper. By seventeen, Kidd has already left his home and was working part-time at the punk/B&D fashion shop Monde, where he also met Pink (whom he first described as looking like "a Dutch wife"). It was a bad neighborhood, but it was home to both of them, so the fact that there had been a mysterious series of suicides around here bothered them. Curiously enough, the people who died followed the pattern of the nursery rhyme tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man. But when Kidd's own father too dies under circumstances that seem to suggest suicide, he's not convinced this is just a coincidental series of suicides and he starts to harbor suspicion towards the people from the World Church of Absolute Truth which has been active around this neighborhood lately. Buuuut, like I said, this is not really a mystery story. There is some kind of locked room mystery here, but Kidd's theory is never confirmed in any way, and the punchline of this tale basically makes this cynical modern horror story that explores the background of Kidd, rather than the puzzlers we usually see in this series.

This story forms a set with the last story of the volume, Pink Belladonna no Kaishin -  Bondage Satsujin Jiken or The Reform of Pink Belladonna - The Bondage Murder Case, but this one is like a much better version of the first. The first half is once again mostly monologue where Pink tells her background story, which isn't directly related to the mystery plot of the second half. Though for people who have read Yamaguchi's excellent Death of the Living Dead, there's an interesting revelation here about Pink that explains why I was always mixing up those two characters. Anyway, this story also explains why the PlayStation videogame Cat the Ripper, based on the Kidd Pistols novel The 13th Detective, had a hilariously confusing bad ending scene where the nameless protagonist is tortured by Pink in a SM mistress outfit: this story explains that Pink was being trained in Germany to become a high-class bondage mistress for a short period. After that, she ended up in the north of London in the punk/B&D shop Monde, where she became best friends not only with Kidd, but also the young prostitute Demi. Demi recently got a new client who was into SM and tonight she was going to meet with this client again. Pink would be going to a concert with Demi after Demi was done, but when Demi doesn't appear, Pink decides to go to Demi's work room where she stumbles upon a horrible sight: Demi's pimp was knocked out lying on the floor, but Demi herself had been tied up, her face horribly beaten up and her genital organs cut from her body. A bloody message on the walls by "Jack" invokes images of Jack the Ripper of course. Pink vowes to avenge her friend and find the 'client' who killed Demi. Guessing who did it is rather easy due to the limited number of suspects, but the story does a good job at tying the underlying plot to the Mother Goose song in question in terms of theme. It also makes use of the theme of bondage in a clever way to create a mystery plot that is not only well-clewed, but also gives a good reason why it was Pink who figures the case out. You don't need to have expert knowledge on bondage, but it does make sense that Pink would be the first to realize why that item was used like that.

Sarawareta Yuurei or The Kidnaped Ghost, and Shitsuji no Chi or The Blood of the Butler are both very short stories that seem to invoke Agatha Christie's short stories. In the first story, Dr. Bull is asked by his old friend Brandon to help Ann Peebles, for whom he has acted as a loyal manservant for decades. Ann was a famous actress, whose infant son Jimmy was kidnapped twenty years ago. Even though she paid the ransom money, Jimmy was never returned and with that, she lost the only child she'd ever have. Jimmy remained on her mind since, and recently, a fraud spirit medium has been trying to close to Ann, which obviously worries Brandon. Dr. Bull swiftly sees through the medium's tricks, but then Ann gets a phone call by a voice who says they're Jimmy, singing a song only Jimmy and Ann would know. This is followed by a ransom note telling Ann to pay ransom money for Jimmy, exactly like the letter twenty years ago. But why would someone pretend to have kidnapped the ghost of Jimmy? In The Blood of the Butler, Mercule Boirot, Kidd and Pink run into car troubles in the middle of nowhere on the way back from solving a case, but they are offered a lift by Marshe, a journalist on his way to the manor of Henry Tarbot, Earl of Workshire. Marsche is writing a series of articles on that old British tradition, the butler, and he has it from good sources that Tarbot's faithful Langdon is the quintessential butler. Arriving at Tarbot Manor however, they find that Langdon is not all the butler they had expected him to be, and other minor incidents seem to bug both the detectives and Marsche. Ultimately, both The Kidnaped Ghost and The Blood of the Butler revolve around one major piece of misdirection, making the reader assume one thing while it's actually the opposite. Once you notice what that is, it's pretty easy to figure out what's really going on. So very like Christie's short stories.

Kutsu no Naka no Shitai - Christmas no Misshitsu or The Body in the Shoe - The Locked-Room at Christmas is by the far best story in the collection and and starts with a Christmas invitation for Dr. Bull, Kidd and Pink to the house of Tania Shoemaker, the wealthy old woman in charge of the famous shoe manufacturing company. The four prodigal sons of Tania have also returned for Christmas (to badger her for money), but last night, she noticed some of her jewelry had been stolen. She has called Dr. Bull here to scare the thief into confessing to the theft and says she'll be waiting for the thief to come clean and return her jewelry that night. Tania does not sleep in the main building of the house, but in the annex: the building in the shape of a shoe was once the very first shoe shop she ran in East End, but has been moved brick by brick to its new location as a reminder to Tania where it all started. That evening, snow falls and when everyone wakes up on Christmas Day, the detectives notice there's only one single trail of footsteps in the snow that walk from the main building towards the large shoe building outside: the footsteps of Tania when she retreated to the annex last night. The detectives and the secretary go to the annex to bring her breakfast, but they open the door only to find Tania hanging from the ceiling. At first, they think it's suicide, but the fact that Tania was stripped naked and whipped after death makes it clear it's murder. When they find youngest son George in the room next door, having died of an overdosis of sleeping medicine, they think that he killed his mother and then committed suicide, but the medical examination shows he died before his mother. But how did the murderer of Tania escape the shoe-house without leaving their footprints in the snow?

Interestingly, this story was adapted as an episode for the interactive television drama Tantei X Kara no Chousenjou! ("A Challenge from Detective X!"), which ran for three seasons between 2009 and 2011. Similar to programmes like Anraku Isu Tantei and Nazotoki Live, viewers were encouraged to participate and solve the mysteries themselves. Viewers could register to receive a new part of a mystery story daily via e-mail, which always ended with a Challenge to the Reader. Participants could then submit on a form who they thought the murderer was and why. Later the corresponding episode would air with a live-action drama enactment of said story, which would include the actual solution. The adaptation of The Body in the Shoe aired on May 20 2009 as the final episode of the first season, but interestingly, this was the only episode in the whole series to not feature a live-action adaptation, but an animated adaptation. It's pretty short, but it tells the story pretty well and I guess larger-than-life characters like Kidd and Pink work better in animation (with a distinct, American indie comic style) than with real-life actors. Anyway, like I said, this is the best story in the volume, and I think it's an excellent example to explain why I am more a fan of mystery stories that focus on the logical process of determining who it was, rather than the more howdunnit-focused approach you often see with locked room mysteries. While this story revolves around the no-footprints-in-the-snow variant of impossible crimes, the trick the murderer used is incredibly basic and not even remotely original. If you'd focus on this howdunnit part alone, this would've made for a very disappointing story, but what Yamaguchi does really well here is plot out the path that shows whodunnit. The plotting has some great plotting to show why the murderer acted like they did. By focusing on all the actions the murderer took, including the very basic no-footprints-in-the-snow trick, you can guess what the circumstances were that made the murderer act like they did, and by determining the motive/cause behind each and every action taken, you can determine the identity of the murderer, because all thoses causes/motives only hold for them. It's a great way to mix up the impossible crime trope (which often focus on howdunnit) with the reasoning-focused mystery stories as seen in Queen's work (and in more modern times, authors like Arisugawa, Ooyama, Aosaki and more). This is also why I think it works great for an interactive mystery show like Tantei X Kara no Chousenjou!, as ultimately, the story focuses more on the actual 1+1=2 logical processes behind explaining the crime, which works a lot better if you want people to write in (as it's easier to 'grade' the submissions).

While the previous volume seemed to focus a lot on one single theme, the stories in Kidd Pistols no Manshin are more varied. While the first volume has definitely been the most consistent volume until now, the third volume has been interesting offering stories that explore the protagonists' backgrounds more or some shorter tales (whereas those in the second volume were all really long). That said though, I think the "conventional" The Body in the Shoe is definitely the stand-out story of the volume and the only one in this book that really matches the line of quality set in the first volume and partially the second. While definitely not a bad mystery collection, Kidd Pistols no Manshin should not be considered the entry volume for this series, as a lot of it works because there have been two earlier volumes that featured different kind of stories/stories of different lengths. Then again, most people do tend to read things in order unlike me. Anyway, only two other collections left, and I'm definitely going to stick around to see what other kooky adventures Kidd and Pink will have.

Original Japanese title(s): 山口雅也『キッド・ピストルズの慢心』:「キッド・ピストルズの慢心 -キッド最初の事件-」/「靴の中の死体 -クリスマスの密室-」/ 「さらわれた幽霊」/ 「執事の血」/ 「ピンク・ベラドンナの改心 -ボンデージ殺人事件-」

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

"Our chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear... fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope..."

"The Spanish Inquisition" (Monty Python sketch)

Several Japanese publishers and organizations publish an annual list of the best-rated mystery novels published that year. Each of these rankings do have their own focus and format. Most major rankings follow a Top 10 format, while the Honkaku Mystery Award for example has a shortlist of nominees wit and one single winner. In general, I find the titles (nominees and winners) picked for the Honkaku Mystery Award to be the closest to my own personal taste, focusing more on puzzle plot mysteries. Even so, none of these rankings really influence my to-be-read list in any significant manner: I sometimes glance at them whenever they are first announced and might take note of some titles, but it's not like I make it a habit of always reading the titles that rank in number one.

But sometimes, these lists do help pique my interest. I don't remember when it started exactly, but last year, I noticed a lot of people from Japan on my Twitter timeline mention Liu Cixin's science-fiction novel 2008 San Ti, available in English translation as The Three-Body Problem. Given the overlap between mystery and science-fiction readers in my timeline, it wasn't completely strange to see many people rejoice over the fact that novel finally got published in Japan, but then I noticed that a lot of people also talked about it as a mystery novel. Comments abouw how the novel, despite its hard science-fiction setting, could appeal to readers of the mystery genre too. And then earlier this year, I noticed that The Three-Body Problem had ranked in fourth place in the Bunshun Mystery Best 10 Ranking for 2019 in the Translated section. Of course, I know "Mystery" is used in the broad sense of the term like the "crime" genre, but still, I couldn't help but think of that hidden hard science-fiction mystery gem James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars, a book I only tried because of such rankings. So I decided to dive in.

The Three-Body Problem, the first novel of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, introduces the reader to to the nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao, who is asked by the military to help investigate a series of mysterious suicides committed by several scientists across the world. It appears most of these scientists had a link to the Frontiers of Science, a group of scientists who seek new innovative approaches to science: Wang Miao has been invited several times to join the group but had always declined. Wang Miao realizes that the world's governments are all working together to investigate these deaths and that they seem to be hiding something from him, but he eventually agrees to team up with the sleazy, but street-smart police detective Shi Qiang to see what he can find out. With some hints from Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics professor known for the hardships she had to endure during the Cultural Revolution, Wang Miao starts to suspect that the laws of physics as assumed by humankind might not be correct and that that may have driven those scientists to suicide. Meanwhile, Wang Miao also discovers that several of these scientists have been playing a VR game called 3Body, which depicts a strange world where the sun seems to follow no set pattern, resulting in Stable and Chaotic Eras: in Chaotic Eras, the sun can appear and disappear at random times, sometimes scorching the earth until everything is rendered to ashes or staying away for years until everything is frozen. The people of the world of 3Body can 'dehydrate' themselves and lie dormant during Chaotic Eras, and it's only during the rare Stable Eras can the people can develop as a civilization, but nobody knows how long these Stable Eras last, and the players of the game all try to work out a model to predict the sun's movements. At first, Wang's sessions always end with the civilization destroyed by the sun's whimsical actions, but as he slowly progresses in the game, he uncovers a plot that ties back to the suicide of the scientists.

Okay, let me start right away with saying that if you're not interested in (hard) science-fiction at all and only want to read a mystery novel, The Thee-Body Problem is not for you. While the story does make use of mystery-related tropes to tell its story (the investigation into the mysterious suicides), the focus lies on the science-fiction plot, and if you expect something close to Asimov's The Caves of Steel, or even something like Hogan's Inherit The Stars, you'll be disappointed as the focus definitely does not lie on a puzzle that needs to be solved based on clues and deduction. Seen as a crime thriller, The Three-Body Problem will definitely appeal to many readers despite its hard science-fiction background: this is basically a conspiracy science-fiction thriller. As Wang's investigations proceed, he learns that there are people he can trust, people he can't trust and that nothing is what it seems and at the very least, the mysterious events that cross his path do make you want to read on.

Seen solely as a mystery novel though, which is what I usually do here, The Three-Body Problem is fairy weak. A lot of the conspiracy is revealed 'just as is' to Wang/the reader without any real puzzle-solving element and let's face it: the "big reveal" isn't that surprising for a science-fiction novel, and the plot ultimately only serves as a set-up for the following two novels in the trilogy. The book can be fun, science-fiction entertainment (though definitely more "hard science-fiction" than just "regular" entertainment science-fiction), but a lot of the elements feel very, very familiar. The most interesting part of the novel when seen as a mystery novel is definitely the VR game 3Body. When Wang first wanders around this weird world, he learns that the people there are trying to learn the pattern governing the movements of the sun, because civilization can't develop if everything keeps on burning or freezing for years on. The mystery of what causes the unpredictability of the sun is on its own a pretty alluring science-fiction mystery: over the course of several playthroughs, Wang finally realizes what the cause is, based on the visual clues he saw in the game. Ultimately, this ties back to an actual scientific problem, so I assume physicists will have no trouble recognizing the problem and for the regular reader it'd be pretty hard to deduce what is going on based solely on what is shown inside the 3Body scenes, but personally, I do like these kinds of puzzles in my science-fiction and fantasy mystery, where the reader has to figure out the common link or the governing rules of the unique setting. Astra Lost in Space is in a way a very accessible variant of a similar approach to science-fiction mystery, where the crew has to learn what the unique properties are of the flora and fauna of each planet they visit.

I wasn't even sure whether I was going to discuss The Three-Body Problem here or not. While the novel definitely has mystery-elements to it, I think it's juuust beyond the scope of what I usually discuss here. There have been borderline cases on this blog before, but if there's a Venn diagram of people who like science-fiction and people who like mystery fiction and the overlapping part signifies people who will like The Three-Body Problem, I think I'm just outside the overlapping part, sitting safely in my mystery bubble. In the end, I decided to write this post because other people keeping an eye on the Japanese mystery community may have noticed the numerous mentions of The Three-Body Problem. I am content with the knowledge that this just isn't the book for me, and I don't plan to read the other two books in the trilogy.

Original Chinese title(s): 刘慈欣 "三体"

Bury Me Deep

「いやあ、探偵は謎を解くというか、謎を解いたと人を納得させる職業ですけど」

『異世界の名探偵 2 帰らずの地下迷宮』

"No, you see, a detective isn't an occupation where you solve mysteries. It's more about convincing people you have solved the mystery."

"The Great Detective of the Other World 2: The Underground Maze of No Return"

Man, this would make for a cool type of mystery videogame, now I think of it. There aren't really many detective games with fantasy settings. Professor Layton vs. Gyakuten Saiban is an obvious expection and even then, it doesn't really go deep into classic fantasy videogame tropes.

Early this year, I reviewed the first volume of Isekai no Meitantei, which combined the classic puzzle plot detective story with isekai, the highly influential trope currently found in Japanese popular fiction like anime and light novels. It literally means "a different world" and refers to a sub-genre with parallels to works like Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia, usually featuring stories featuring protagonists from Earth who end up in a different world (commonly a fantasy world) by means of teleportation, reincarnation or some other manner. The genre often involves some kind of power fantasy, with the very ordinary human using their memories/knowledge from Earth to their advantage in their new situation/the other world to eventually become the legendary hero/evil overlord/whatever the story is about. The first volume of Katazato Kamome's Isekai no Meitantei didn't stray far from the template when it first showed us the death of an ex-cop with a love for mystery fiction, who then reincarnates as a baby in the fantasy world of Pangea, a world where magic exist. The memories of his life on Earth are retained by Van, who grows up to be a talented magician with a dream of becoming a State Detective. After solving the impossible decapitation case in the first volume, the newly graduated Van became nobility, was bestowed the family name Holmes and appointed to Vice-Captain of the Royal Detective Squad of the Kingdom of Sherck.

Isekai no Meitantei 2 - Kaerazu no Chika Meikyuu ("The Great Detective of the Other World 2: The Underground Maze of No Return") was released early 2020 and is set not too long after the first novel. While Van Holmes is now Vice-Captain of the Royal Detective Squad, his position is still somewhat ambiguous because of his lack of experience, so his captain Geralt the Silent decides to send Van on a special mission to allow him to make a name for himself. Vent Treasure is a self-made noble who made a fortune by providing services and trading with adventurers all around the world of Pangea. Now Vent is gathering a special party of highly skilled adventurers to accomplish a secret task involving a special dungeon. The world of Pangea is riddled with dungeons, mysterious massive structures that have been on the world as long as anyone can remember. Dungeons come in all sizes and forms and feature magic that nobody knows: nobody on Pangea is for example even capable of scratching the walls of any dungeon and most dungeons feature a special Stone of Return at the entrance, which allow people who are synchronized to them to instantly teleport back to the entrance just by thinking of the action (usually used when in danger). The deepest regions of these dungeons often hold great treasures or fabulous divine items with magic nobody in Pangea can replicate, but they are also filled with horrible monsters who attack anyone who dares to enter the dungeon.

Vent has recently become the owner of a dungeon with quite the reputation: it is said that no person has ever reached the deepest chambers of the Underground Maze of No Return, a dungeon which lies deep in the ground. The fact that even the entrance floor features high-level monsters suggests there's something great hidden at the end (monsters become stronger the closer they are to the end of the dungeon), but because the Stone of Return of this dungeon is broken, people can't simply escape if things go wrong several floors down. All people who have tried to clear the dungeon have failed, most of the challengers had to pay with their lives for it. Rumors even have it that there's a special monster in the dungeon called Shadow, who can even kill people inside locked rooms. The mission of the special party Vent has formed is to reach the deepest regions of the dungeon to show it is indeed beatable. The party forms a motley crew, with people like the berserker-type Blood, who once made it to the tenth floor, but couldn't figure out how to proceed, the fire magician Eni, Hunt Treasure (son of Vent) and of course Van, who is added because of his detecting skills. At first, the party seems to make good process, but things start go wrong when they get past the seventh underground floor. First Blood is killed inside his metal sleeping box (he's so paranoid, even of his party members, he sleeps inside a box to protect himself) and later, two other members are assaulted and spirited away even though they sealed themselves in a room for protection by erecting a magic wall. And as these impossible murders continue in the dungeon, the remaining party members start to distrust each other...

I love the premise of this book. The first novel of course established to the reader that the world of Pangea has real magic (and it also put limitations on what magic can do in Pangea) and in order to solve the locked room murder in the first book, you definitely needed to understand how magic worked there. Katazato could've easily written a second book again about a murder that utilizes magic in some clever manner, but he decided to go with a completely different setting that still fits perfectly with the world we have seen before. The dungeons as presented in this book are of course the dungeons we know from table-top RPGs as well as videogames, those magic-filled maze-like structures consisting of multiple floors with countless of monsters awaiting the player, where you solve puzzles and go deeper and deeper until you reach the last room which usually houses the boss of the dungeon as well as some great treasure (and optionally the long cut-scene to push the story forward). They even kill monsters in this novel for loot, which is as game-like as you can get. The dungeons also have gimmicks we know from games. Many videogames feature some object with similar functions like the Stone of Return (Escape ropes etc.) and one of the more interesting gimmicks in this novel are the one-direction-walls: these walls are transparent on one side and a person can pass through the transparent side to get to the other side of the wall, but it is a normal wall on the other side, meaning you can't go back. All of this results in a setting that is insanely unique for mystery fiction, and had me all giddy with delight.

Whereas the first novel focused on one single murder, the second novel features multiple killings (some of them under impossible circumstances), but I have to admit that not all of them are as good as the others. The first murder, of the highly suspicious Blood inside his own mini metal panic room, for example is pretty disappointing in terms of how it was done and the clewing is a bit crude. The murders that happen inside a sealed-off section of the dungeon when two members tried to protect themselves is far more interesting. The idea of a locked room murder, inside a monster-ridden dungeon is highly memorable and the trick behind it is original, making good use of the unique setting of this novel, and while the clewing is a bit shaky at times (the explanation why *that object* was *there* is a bit forced), I do really like how the misdirection was handled, making great use of the characters' understandable oversight. It's definitely an idea that I really can't imagine seeing in any 'conventional' mystery novel, set in the real world. Some later parts of the novel on the other hand feel a bit clichéd and almost unfair, making this overall an uneven experience. I do like the book as a whole, but there are some parts I really don't care for at all.

By the way, I do have to mention the fact that the author Katazato seems to have forgotten this second novel is also supposed to be part of an isekai series. In the first novel, the plot device that Van originated from 'our' world was at least used to ease the reader into the world of Pangea, explaining the rules and limitations of the magic used there and things like that. This ensured that the mystery plot was fair to the reader, as they, together with Van, learned how Pangea worked. Katazato does none of that in this novel. There are maybe two or three stray references when Van compares some object with something from our Earth, but this could easily have been a "normal" fantasy detective, without the backstory of Van being an reincarnation originating from Earth. The fact Van has memories of our world is of no consequence at all in this story, not even as character motivation like the first novel, where Van's love for puzzle plot mystery fiction drove him to become a detective in a world where detectives weren't really necessary and everybody just blamed magic spells that possibly didn't even exist.

Like the first volume of this series, Isekai no Meitantei 2 - Kaerazu no Chika Meikyuu has a very slow start, but when it finally gets to the murders, you're presented with a plot that cleverly mixes the puzzle plot detective with the fantasy genre. I do think the second volume is less consistent than the first volume: less effort is poured into fleshing out the world and its rules to the reader (I recommend starting with the first volume), not all of the murders are as cleverly plotted as the main one and some of the details of the crime seem glossed over and appear only to have introduced to make the crimes more alluring. But I can't deny I absolutely love the idea of a murder mystery set in a classic videogame dungeon setting, and I do think the main surprise sprung on the reader works. I do hope that for the next volume, whenever that will be, will make more use of the isekai plot device, giving purpose to the fact Van originates from our world. Because this second volume might as well be just a fantasy-detective novel with no ties at all to our Earth.

Original Japanese title(s): 片里鴎『異世界の名探偵 2 帰らずの地下迷宮』