Death of a Butterfly

 ゴキゲンな蝶になってきらめく風に乗って

今すぐ キミに会いに行こう

「Butter-Fly」（和田光司）

 

I'll become a happy butterfly, and glide on the glittering wind

To come see you right away

"Butter-Fly" (Wada Kouji)

Oh man, I have a backlog of more than ten unwritten review posts now. I really should get started on them and not play videogames...

Buddy Collection is an ongoing episodic otome-lite mystery videogame developed by Narutrick, which can be played for free on browsers and smartphones. The overarching story is about Nagisa, a student of a detective high school with the curriculum not only including theory classes on various topics of use for detectives, but also practice classes where the students get to work on real cases for study credits. The school also utilizes a 'buddy' system, with two students always working together. Nagisa and her buddy belonged in the top A Class of the school, but during one of their investigations, Nagisa's buddy went missing and she lost her memory. During her recovery, she's put in the lowest E Class, which consists of three students who have trouble finding a right buddy due to personal problems. Each episode in this series has Nagisa working with three possible E Class buddies on different cases, while she also slowly uncovers more about why she lost her memories and where her own buddy has gone to.

In 2018, an enhanced version of the first episode was released on Switch with the title Buddy Collection if - Shukumei no Akai Ito- ("Buddy Collection If -The Red String of Fate-") and while it was a short and simple game, I did find it entertaining and was looking forward to more of this series be released. As I am writing this post, three episodes are already playable for free on PC/smartphone, but it seems developer Narutrick has some problems getting these regular episodes out on Switch. That's why they created a completely original Buddy Collection entry exclusively for the Switch, as a side-story occurring somewhere during the events of the main episodes. Buddy Collection Extra - Kochousou no Kimyou na Gonin ("Buddy Collection Extra - The Curious Five Persons at the Butterfly House") starts with Nagisa being sent off on a case with a buddy of her choice, but to the duo's surprise the case is solved almost immediately. They make their way back to the train station, but all trains have stopped running due to the storm, and it's impossible for the two to find a hotel. Luckily for them, their client contacts them: with the storm going on, it's too dangerous to ask them to come back to their place to stay for the night because it's too far, but she arranges for Nagisa and her buddy to stay at the place of someone she knows who lives near the station. The two high school detectives are picked up by Outarou, a somewhat shifty man who lives in the Butterfly House, indeed not far from the train station by car, but still located right in the middle of a lonely forest. He tells his two new guests that he has three other guests staying at his house that evening too: friends of his sister Ageha who died exactly one year ago. She committed suicide one year ago by setting fire to her room, but while her brother arrived before the fire really got going on, she had already passed away due to the smoke. During the evening, Nagisa and her buddy notice that there's some tension in the room and that there's more to this gathering of Outarou and Ageha's three friends, but the two detectives couldn't have known that the following morning, they'd find one of them would be murdered. Due to the storm and the very sturdy exterior lock, it's unlikely the murderer is an outsider, so who of the remaining people in the Butterfly House is the murderer and why?

The Buddy Collection games are a combination between novel games (digital Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games) and otome games (story-driven videogames targeted towards women that usually focus on a protagonist developing a romantic relationship with one of the eligible characters): in the first episode, picking a certain buddy meant you'd spend more time with them, learn more about their backstory and even slightly alter the mystery plot because each of the buddies had different talents. Buddy Collection Extra builds on this idea in an even more entertaining manner: at the start of the game, you get to pick who your buddy will be, and each buddy actually leads to a completely different murder mystery set at the Butterfly House: all the scenarios feature different murder victims, they're killed in very different circumstances and the clues leading up to the confrontation are also all different. So you're basically getting three different stories that happen to be using the same basic setting. I started the game with Haruka as my buddy for example, and the victim in that scenario was someone who lived in the two other scenarios. The different scenarios also make good use of the various talents/characteristics of the various buddies: Shingo for example has an instinct to just make correct guesses and while that puts him on the trail of the murderer of his scenario very soon, he has trouble finding actual evidence to support what his gut feeling is telling him, while Haruka has trouble getting things done because he can't physically stand seeing blood.

Also: you know something is going to happen in the Butterfly House because for some reason all the rooms lock automatically. Why would anyone have autolock in their own home?!

So basically, you're presented three different murder mysteries in this game. None of them are really long (an hour or so), and the plots and gameplay are therefore not that complex (a few story-changing choices that either lead to the next chapter or a game over, but you can redo them immediately), but they are fun enough and while the three stories do use the same basic setting and characters (the personalities/backstories of all the characters remain the same throughout the three different story variations), the mysteries are different enough to not make it feel like you're just playing through color variations of the same idea. The Butterfly House is named so because both Outarou and Ageha loved butterflies, and there are also butterflies and butterfly models kept throughout the house and the three scenarios all utilize this theme of butterflies in different ways. What's also interesting is that each scenario will reveal bits and pieces of the common back story regarding Ageha's death, but not everything. For example, my first playthrough with Haruka eventually revealed how certain members of the cast really though of each other, but that relationship is not explained in the other routes and left vague. It's only by playing all the scenarios that you'll truly get a good idea of what really played between Outarou, Ageha and her three friends. This is also seen in the manner in which the game collects clues for you: some clues are put in a route-specific menu, other information is put in commonly shared data pool, as those clues pertain to the backstory all routes share. 

When you have played all three seperate routes, you'll unlock one final route where you visit the Butterfly House not with one buddy, but all three of them! It's the grand finale to the game, finally revealing what really happened a year ago with Ageha, but I like how the game works on a meta-level too: a lot of information pertinent to the case is known to the player, because they have played the game with three seperate buddies and uncovered a lot of information through those routes. The final route expects of the player of course that they have that knowledge now, but that wouldn't make sense for the in-game characters who visit the Butterfly House for the first time. However, the story does a good job at changing the events just ever so slightly due to the presence of three buddies, explaining how the characters learn the information the player had already learned through previous playthroughs. The final story is a good ending that brings the three seperate routes together in a nice way.

So in all in all,  Buddy Collection Extra - Kochousou no Kimyou na Gonin was fun to play. It's not a long game by any means, but it tells a nice story by making clever use of the concept of having three distinct buddies/scenarios to tell three different murder mystery stories, and also rewarding the player for playing through all three scenarios, as you learn more about the underlying story as you go through them one after another. I certainly hope that the main episodes of Buddy Collection will also be released on Switch in the future, as a side-story, this one did not disappoint at all.

Original Japanese title(s): 『Buddy Collection Extra －胡蝶荘の奇妙な五人－』

The Clue in the Old Album

「フェルマーの名にかけて！」 

「TRICK」

 

 "In the name of Fermat!" 

 "Trick"

I honestly first heard of Fermat and his last theorem from watching Trick.

Special events were organized in both the United States and the United Kingdom in 2006 to celebrate the centenary of the meastro of locked room murder mysteries John Dickson Carr, but Japanese fans were of course also thrilled to learn the special occassion wouldn't go unnoticed in their country too. One of the highlights of the special exhibition scheduled for Japan is Carr's own personal copy of Introduction to Unsolved Mysteries, a book gifted to him by the Carr Society. This journalistic work discusses several cases which were, at the time, unsolved because they seem utterly impossible. As a writer of impossible crime mysteries, Carr enjoyed reading this book, and he also loved trying his own hand at solving these real impossible mysteries himself. Whenever he was sure he got the right answer, he'd scribble some vague hints in the margins of the book. While Carr kept his answers mostly to himself, some of the cases discussed in Introduction to Unsolved Mysteries were actually solved with the help of Carr, who sometimes realized the truth was too important to keep hidden for the sake of the survivors. Four cases are known to have been solved with the help of Carr's notes: two during his lifetime, two after his death. But one case with Carr's notes remains unsolved to this day: while Carr knew the answer, the truth was taken with him to the grave and nobody has been able to decypher his cryptic notes yet, leaving the so-called 1938 East End Spontaneous Combustion Case still a mystery. Why did a notorious arsonist suddenly burst into flames and why was the carpet he had been standing on left completely unscathed? The cryptic hints Carr left behind are now known as John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem.

 

A group of seven has gathered in the holiday villa of the Tomosaka family, a major sponsor of the Carr exhibition in Japan. Son Yuuya himself is a great fan of John Dickson Carr and has persuaded the owners of Carr's Introduction to Unsolved Mysteries to lend them the book to study it for a day, before the exhibition starts. The study group is arranged as an officially college-sanctioned project, and Yuuya has invited a few of his study mates from the Science faculty, as well as Professor Taylor, an American who will help the students read the book and act as the supervisor. And of course, these people are all great John Dickson Carr fans. But tragedy strikes in the late afternoon, when everyone has a few hours for themselves: Yuuya is found dead in the Japanese garden in the inner court of the villa, and he's been shot to death with a harpoon. The harpoon was brought here by one of the students for when they would go diving. It appears Yuuya was shot by the murderer with the harpoon in the pool room, and because death had not been instant, Yuuya had tried to escape through the French windows into the garden, where he died. As the harpoon was found lying in the pool room, and no other footprints are seen in the pebble stone covering the garden, it's assumed the murderer just let Yuuya die in the court, but they soon learn this is impossible: workers had been busy in the hallway that afternoon due to a leak, and the two men swear nobody went in or out the corridor that led to the pool room while they were working there, meaning the murderer couldn't have escaped the pool room after killing Yuuya! John Dickson Carr may have solved several real-life crimes in Introduction to Unsolved Mysteries, but will his notes, and his Last Theorem also come in handy in solving their new crime in Tsukatou Hajime's 2020 novel John Dickson Carr no Saishuu Teiri, which also has the English title John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem?

 

Last year, I reviewed a short story collection by Tsukatou Hajime that was inspired by Ellery Queen: this time it's a novel inspired by John Dickson Carr. Though you may also have heard of the short story of the same name. Back in 2006, a special anthology was released in Japan to celebrate the centenery of John Dickson Carr, and Tsukatou Hajime wrote John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem for that book. Tsukatou extended that story into a full-fledged novel last year. I haven't read the original, but I assume the core ideas are the same.

 

Though I assume that a lot has been added, because this mystery novel is really packed, with no less than three impossible murders. Two of these are from Introduction to Unsolved Mysteries and were originally solved by Carr himself. The first involves a pistol which is said to slay only the wicked and that the bullet will always finds its target. One afternoon, the elderly owner of the pistol shot at her window, saying she couldn't resist the pistol's call anymore and that evil had to be killed. At the same time, the confidence trickster who tormented her husband and caused the familys financial ruin is found to have been shot to death while lying in the hospital. It is determined that the bullet did indeed come from the magic pistol, but the victim couldn't have be shot by this pistol: the hospital lies in the complete opposite direction from the window from which the widow shot, and you even have to cross the bridge across a river to get to the hospital. And the only window in the victim's hospital room wasn't even looking at in the direction of the widow's home. So how could she have shot him? The situation is alluringly complex, so it shouldn't surprise you that the solution also involves more than a few steps and I have to admit that personally, it felt a bit too contrived because of that, with too many 'moving parts' (which add more risk) all just to engineer the scene of a magic bullet for the reader. It's a clever, practical solution to the initial problem, but it can feel rather forced. I can also easily imagine lots of people loving this story though. Just don't count on using Carr's hints to solve this crime. They are far too vague, and even after reading this book and knowing what the hints are about, I still think it's impossible to infer the truth based on what Carr scribbled in the margins.

 

The scribbles that make up John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem are also not really handy if you want to solve the East End case yourself, as they are far too vague, but I do like the basic idea of this case. How come the victim was found lying on an intact carpet, even though some moments before, people saw him standing on that carpet while literally being in flames. The solution to this is surprisingly simple, but what makes this an interesting story is that a notion that features in the solution of this case, also applies to the current-day murder on Tomosaka Yuuya. So by solving John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem, you also gain an important clue to the real-time case. I'm personally a big fan of such ideas, with parallels between cases but not just simply 'hey, this murder was committed the same way as that other murder", but with more abstract mirroring of dynamics/concepts/etc. The same also holds in a way for the magic pistol tale, though not as strongly (I suspect the "first'" case was not part of the short story version of this novel).

 

The current-day murder is the most fleshed-out case in the novel of course, and it's a very nice conundrum! You have the impossibility of how the murderer escaped even though the hallway was under observation and there were no footprints of the murderer in the pebble garden in the courtyard (and there's only one other exit from the courtyard anyway). There's also the powered-up harpoon as a unique murder weapon, results in the grotesque scene of the harpoon being plunged in the victim's body, but that it's still connected through a line to the shooting apparatus lying in the pool room. The mystery is set-up in a fairly large manner, which allows for a few characters to try and come up with their own theories about how the murder was committed. It results in some interesting discussions where theories are proposed and discarded and ultimately even fairly elaborate (false) solutions are presented. I'm a bit torn on the one "major" false solution: the starting point for this theory is good, and it's great how this contradiction actually does lead to the correct solution if taken into a different direction, but the false solution features a lot of elements that are rather shoddy ("and then he somehow managed to arrange for that to happen, and then..."), so it's hard to take it really serious. The final solution is fun though! Like I mentioned, it has some parallels with the unsolved cases from the past, but applied in very different manners and while imagining it makes it look a bit silly, it's actually very well thought-out, with especially the major contradiction that at first seemed to lead to the false solution being brilliantly turned around to explain what really happened in the garden. Definitely the highlight of the novel.

 

I have to say the motive for the current-day murder, and the way the book ends doesn't really work for me. A lot is left rather vague, which may have worked in the short story version, but now it feels underwhelming and almost cheap in the sense that it avoids giving you any clear answer about what next. Perhaps more fanatic Carr-readers might like the ambiguity of this ending, but I'd have preferred more closure to the tale.

 

But any John Dickson Carr fan will probably have a blast with John Dickson Carr no Saishuu Teiri. It's brimming with (actual accurate) references to the writer, as well as an interesting fictional backstory with the Last Theorem and other cases he supposedly solved and the main murder also serves as an interesting impossible locked room mystery. I have a feeling I might've preferred the short story version perhaps, but I think most will absolutely love the parade of impossible mysteries put on display here.

 

Original Japanese title(s): 柄刀一『ジョン・ディクスン・カーの最終定理』

Sabotage at Sports City

All that glisters is not gold

"The Merchant of Venice"

I've always had a weakness for murders mysteries where the crime occurs during a public event like a sports match, though I guess I haven't seen many where the crime occurs during the award ceremony...

Defense attorney Naruhodou Ryuuichi enters the Judicial Olympics as a contestant because his assistant Mayoi has set her eyes on the special tour of entertainment parks all around the world awarded to the gold medalist. The Judicial Olympics are organized by the International Judicial Federation to determine the ace attorney-at-law of the world. Naruhodou is surprised to see that his old opponent, the prosecutor Godot, is head director of the Judicial Olympics, but also to spot other familar faces among his fellow participants, like his rival Mitsurugi Reiji and the whip-carrying prosecutor Karuma Mei. Naruhodou learns from Mitsurugi that there have always been shady rumors about the International Judicial Federation and that he's making use of this special event to investigate the Federation. The contestants compete in several weird competitions like a rap courtroom battle and dance-offs, and after several days, the winner of the Judicial Olympics is finally determined. But right after the winner is given the gold medal, one of the contestants is murdered on the ceremonial stage. At first, it appears clear as day that the protestors against the IJC who jumped on stage with the knife in her hand committed the murder, but Naruhodou isn't quite convinced. The IJC too wants to play an open hand and it's agreed that the suspect's trial will be broadcast live on television, with Naruhodou as her attorney. Can he find out what really happened in the 2019 stage play Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal ("Turnabout Trial - Turnabout Gold Medal")?

If you read this blog often, it's impossible to not know the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney franchise, as it's featured a lot here. While it started out in 2001 as a comedic mystery adventure game series starring a defense attorney defying unsurmountable odds in crazy trial, it's grown to be a multimedia franchise, with spin-off games (like this and this one), an anime, manga,  musicals, novels, drama CDs, and stage plays. Three stage plays were performed between 2014-2016, being Gyakuten Saiban – Gyakuten no Spotlight (“Turnabout Trial - Turnabout Spotlight”), Gyakuten Saiban – Saraba Gyakuten (“Turnabout Trial – Farewell, My Turnabout”) and Gyakuten Kenji -  Gyakuten no Teleportation ("Turnabout Prosecutor - Turnabout Teleportation"): all three of these plays were produced by the same company and featured more-or-less the same cast. Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal however features a new cast and also feels quite different from the previous three plays.

With so much spin-off material available, it shouldn't surprise when I tell you that some of this material is designed to attract new audience, while other media is pure fanservice that'll mostly only appeal to existing fans. The live-action film and the manga for example are obviously designed to appeal to a wider audience, hoping to capture new viewers from a new medium and bringing them back to the original games, but the stage plays have always been produced with existing fans in mind, which is pretty logical considering the limited number of viewers a small stage play can attract. The stage plays were full of inside jokes, with familiar characters being put in new situations to entertain the viewers and motions or scenes made to invoke the feeling ofthe original games. But still, I'd say the previous stage plays were also workable as standalone mystery plays (especially the first and third one), with plots that were relatively focused on the core story and not just character interactions.

Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal however seems more focused on fanservice than the previous plays, resulting in a play that might be entertaining for existing fans of the genre, but it's not going to be that interesting for those who are primarily looking for a mystery stage play. The play is a bit over two hours long, but the first hour is basically just fanservice: the Judicial Olympics are just an excuse to see the familiar characters in situations you'd otherwise see them in, like a rap battle or a catwalk competition. While I'm a fan of the franchise, I've always been more interested in Gyakuten Saiban as a mystery franchise rather than as a character-focused drama, so while the idea of Naruhodo rapping might be fun, I was utterly bored for the first hour or so because basically nothing of importance occurs in regards to the mystery plot. One or two scenes might've been okay, but an hour long of 'hahaha, look at our characters in these wacky scenes!' is too much for me.

The murder finally happens during the award ceremony of the Judicial Olympics, but the mystery plot this time is not particularly interesting, to be honest. Gyakuten Saiban is at its best by pointing out little contradictions one after after, the argument slowly crawls towards a grand reveal. What made the games fun was that the contradictions were solvable by the player themselves using the evidence available to them and that that it showed how by even solving relatively easy contradictions, you could eventually reveal a greater picture. In Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal however, a lot of the deductive moments that could have been more memorable, fail to be really impressive, as often, the 'evidence' needed to contradict a point is either kept completely out of sight or tucked away in a tiny corner on the set, so when Naruhodou suddenly says that something's wrong and shows the evidence to back his story up, the viewer is not impressed by his deductions, but just wondering where the hell that evidence just came from because it surely hadn't been shown to the viewer yet. At other times, the story tries to be clever with 'in plain sight' clues that just fall flat because the logical jumps to them cover too much ground. Ultimately, when you look solely at the mystery of the man who got stabbed at the ceremony and the circumstances leading up to that, it's disappointingly minor and easy to see through.

A sequel to this play, with the same cast, was originally going to be performed in spring 2020 by the way, but it was put on hold due to the pandemic. For the moment, it seems they still plan to do it whenever it's possible, but the story introduction at least makes it sound they'll stick to the more fanservice-focused approach with that play too...

So unlike some of the previous stage plays in this franchise, I'd say Gyakuten Saiban: Gyakuten no Gold Medal is really just for the existing fans, and not worth watching if you're not familiar with the franchise and only looking for an interesting mystery play. As a detective story, there's just too little that manages to impress, with too much distractions going on that, resulting in something that's just so uninspired and contrived you're wondering why it also needed an hour of fanservice as a set-up. Your mileage may be very different if you're a fan of the characters of the series and want to see them thrown in all kinds of crazy situations, but even then it's hard to deny the core mystery plot feels like it's playing second fiddle to the fanservice

Original Japanese title(s): 『逆転裁判　逆転のGold Medal』

Open-Door Murder

The more the merrier! When the number of suspects is continually increasing, and the number of corpses remains constant, you get a sort of inflation. The value of your individual suspect, of course, becomes hopelessly depreciated.
"The Woman in the Wardrobe"

Hey! Hey! I finally got started on Umineko no Naku koro ni Saku. With a bit of luck, I'll have a review by the end of the year! Also: an old man crying out the same name over and over again is no way to start a game!

If possible, I usually prefer to read a mystery story in its original language. But this is not always a viable option, even if the book was originally released in a language I can read. The most obvious reason is of course when the original book is out of print and going for a hefty price on the used market, while a translated version is easily available and/or cheaper. Roger Scarlett's Murder Among the Angells was one of those books for me, which I first read in Japanase. It would take another five, six  years after I read that book, before it and other Scarlett books became easily available again in English.

The same almost happened with Peter Schaffer's The Woman in the Wardrobe (1951). I first read about this book in some Japanese publication about locked room murder mysteries and while the Japanese translation was still available then, it appeared that was not the case with the English editions. It kinda fell of my radar then, but last year, I noticed a somewhat familiar-looking name on the release list of the British Crime Library Classics. Somewhat, I say, because as far as I knew, the author was called Peter Anthony, not Shaffer. Turned out that Peter Shaffer originally published the book under the name Peter Anthony, and that this was indeed a brand new release of the book I had read about earlier. So I decided to pick this release up to see what it was all about. The story is set in seaside Amnestie, at the Charter Hotel, which has a somewhat dubious reputation due to the couples who come here to spend the weekend. Private detective Verity has a villa in Amnestie and one early morning, he goes out for a swim when he sees someone climbing out of a bedroom from the window, into another bedroom. Verity goes out to inform the hotel manager of this rather unusual way to exit one's room, but then that same man comes running down to the lobby, saying someone's been murdered. They make their way to the room indicated, but find that it has been locked from the inside. When they finally get in, they find the victim lying on the floor, shot twice in his back. But they also find that not only the door, but the windows had also been locked from the inside, meaning this was a locked room and furthermore, inside the wardrobe, they find the titular woman: the hotel waitress was loosely bound and stuffed inside the wardrobe. Inquiries quickly lead to the conclusion that the victim, a Maxwell, was a blackmailer and that everyone in the hotel had something to do with him, but how did the killer escape from a locked hotel room?

I have to admit I find it hard to express my thoughts on The Woman in the Wardrobe in a way that does justice to both the core ideas of the novel as well as my own experience of it. To start with the conclusion: I think it's a fun novel, with a memorable core idea for the locked room situation, but it's also incredibly stretched out despite its relatively short length, and the plot would've worked much better as a short story. If you're looking for a fun, breezy read, The Woman in the Wardrobe is what you want, as it's a short and pleasant read with a grander-than-life character in the detective Verity and most of the cast is quite colorful too (though the person who thinks he's the rightful heir to the Throne didn't seem to add that much to the plot). But despite how smooth the book reads, I couldn't help but feel like half of the book could've been easily ditched for a more satisfying mystery plot.

The core locked room murder situation has a few interesting points: why was the room locked from the inside after the witness had left the room to warn the people in the lobby? What was the waitress doing in a locked wardrobe? Why were multiple people seen climbing in and out of Maxwell's room? Why did nobody hear the gunshots in the early morning? Schaffer throws all these questions and a lot of red herrings at the reader, but it didn't really work for me, because most of the smokescreen is just abritrary, contrived writing. It's having everyone in the cast doing all kinds of things at the exact right time solely to make the investigation more complex for the reader: it's one coincidence after another, like one person deciding to go to a room just around the exact time another character decided to do that too, or having another person stroll by to witness that "by accident", or having a accidental witness for one event that realistically could've totally unnoticed while another incident should've been heard by everyone else in the hotel and yet it just happened only one person did.  After a while, you realize Schaffer is just stretching everyhing out with events that are just there to make things seem more complex, but they just feel like arbitrary additions to a core idea, with next to no synergy with that core plot. They're filler. 

And it's a shame, because I do like the core solution to the locked room. You can explain what happened in the locked room with one single sentence, and it's this core explanation that makes The Woman in the Wardrobe a memorable novel: it's a variation on a rather familiar trope in locked room mysteries, but it still manages to surprise here, and the implications of the trick are right in line with the funny tone of this novel. But that is also why I'd have preferred a short story version of this idea, that focused solely on bringing this solution: now the plot is just meandering for the sake of meandering and I also think it weakens the moment the truth is revealed, as so much of the novel feels just like one contrived event after another. 

Though I suspect most people will not have any problems with that, and enjoy The Woman in the Wardrobe for the entertaining novel it certainly is. Many readers will probably have no problem with the way the story is structured, as it's a fun book to read and I definitely wouldn't want to discourage people from reading novel. Missed potential or wasted potential are terms I would find too strong myself too, but even now as I'm writing this review, a few days after I finished the book, I can't help but feel that The Woman in the Wardrobe is an amusing mystery novel with a good locked room situation, but it could've been an even better short story.

Crime in the Cards

「麻雀なぞ知らんでも、麻雀まんがは描けるーる！！」

「サルでも描けるまんが教室」

"You don't have to know anything about mahjong to draw mahjong manga!" 

"Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga"

It's actually crazy how I managed to watch a whole series of Akagi without actually understanding mahjong...

After solving a crime that happened at her school, Kamino Suzuko is offered a special summer part-time job as a temporary police detective, giving her the authority to mingle with police investigations. The crimes she gets involved with however all happen to have one common theme: mahjong. For some resaon, she always finds herself at crime scenes that are connected to the famous board game, be it a mysterious poisoning in a mahjong parlor, a tragic death that occurs during a long evening of mahjong or even at the headquarters of one of the biggest mahjong clubs in the country. Suzuko, who's become more and more interested in the game after her first case, uses her knowledge of mahjong to solve each case in the four stories collected in Aoyama Hiromi's manga Chuuren Poutou Satsujin Jiken ("The Nine Lanterns Murder Case", 1997).

2018's Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar is still a treasure cove for me, as the extensive write-up on the history of mystery manga made me aware of a lot of mystery series I had never heard of. Anyone who decides to read mystery manga will definitely stumble upon Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, Detective Conan and Q.E.D. Shoumei Shuuryou, but most mystery manga won't even run for a tenth of the length of these series, so it can be difficult to track interesting titles without help. I for one have greatly enjoyed going after comics mentioned in Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar, and last year for example, I reviewed KYŌ, Puzzle Game ☆ High School and the Father Sakura series.

Chuuren Poutou Satsujin Jiken is definitely a title I would never have picked up if not for the mention in Honkaku Mystery Comics Seminar, as it's quite a unique title. Most manga I discuss here were originally serialized in major comic magazines like Shounen Sunday (Conan), which feature a wide variety of comics aimed a certain demographics. Aoyama Hiromi is an artist however who mainly draws gambling manga and the four stories starring Kamino Suzuko too were serialized in Kindai Mahjong Original: a magazine which obviously is about the gambling game of mahjong. Mahjong is very popular in Japan, both as an analog game as well as an online game, so yep, you can actually publish a magazine that's solely about the game and keep it running for decades. Besides text articles, Kindai Mahjong also features a lot of comics about mahjong, though they often involve other genres too: the Kamino Suzuko series is simply a mystery-themed mahjong series and author Aoyama even admits he had at best read ten mystery novels in his whole life when he started on the series, figuring the mahjong part would cover his weaknesses.

Oh, and as a little note, mahjong is also popular among members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club. Most nights, you'll find people in the club room spending all night playing the game and someone like Ayatsuji Yukito is actually quite accomplished as a mahjong player.

But I should probably mention first that I know extremely little of mahjong. While I have seen the whole live-action drama series of Akagi, I still don't know any of the playable hands in mahjong, and while I recognize Ron and Tsumo as play terms, I don't know when you're able to use them. The four Kamino Suzuko stories however were obviously written for people who do know mahjong well, as it ran in a magazine that was only about the game. So the biggest worry I had going in was that these comics would be incomprehensible to me. But I have to say, while I wouldn't call these comics must-read classics of the genre, they were fairly enjoyable even without a basic knowledge of the rules of mahjong. Each of the four stories is named after a hand in mahjong by the way.

Chuuren Poutou Satsujin Jiken ("The Nine Lanterns Murder Case") introduces the reader to Kamino Suzuko, who is brought in to assist with a poisoning case that occured in a mahjong parlor, during a game of four members of the Mystery Club of M University. The poison is found on the tile the victim picked up, but how could any of the other three students at the table manipulate the game in such a way to have the victim pick up that tile? While the story might be hard to solve on your own if you don't really know mahjong, the plotting is strong enough to keep you entertained: each possibility is slowly elimanted one by one, until it almost becomes an impossible poisoning and whenever the conditions of the game become relevant for the mystery solving, it's explained in a way that someone who hasn't once played the game will understand it. 

Taasuushi Satsujin Jiken ("The Four Great Blessings Murder Case") is just borderline related to mahjong: Suzuko has joined the Mystery Club and is invited by fellow member Tamae to her uncle's place, who runs a pension in a ski resort. Her aunt, a famous illustrator, is there to welcome the group, but after dinner she needs to leave for a meeting on an upcoming release. During the night, the four students and Tamae's uncle enjoy a feverish night of mahjong, but the following morning, they find Tamae's aunt lying frozen to death on the doorsteps. At first sight, it appears she returned to the pension late in the night, slipped on the steps and eventually froze to death without anyone inside noticing the tragedy, but Suzuko suspects something is going, even if the most likely suspect, her husband, had been playing mahjong with the gang all night. This time, the mystery is just barely related to the actual playing of mahjong, so it's fairly doable without any knowledge of the game. While some parts of the mystery seems a bit forced (wait, that was the only way to do that action?), the core plot of how the aunt was killed after everyone saw her off together is certainly not bad and there are even some really clever moments.

Daisangen Satsujin Jiken ("The Three Great Dragons Murder Case") is set in Suzuko's past, showing how she solved her first murder case at her missionary school. A nun discovers Suzuko's friend Mizuho lying beneath the clock tower, apparently having fallen from above. The head nurse soon wants to wrap things up as an accident, but Suzuko thinks there's more to this case: some say Mizuho wanted to commit suicide because she was being bullied by her room mates, but Suzuko also heard Mizuho mutter "Oh, Maria..." as she looked up at the Maria statue in the clock tower while lying heavily wounded on the ground. Suzuko starts an investigation into the bullies of Mizuho, but they are being attacked one by one by a mysterious figure, who leaves mahjong tiles near their victims. One minor clue actually makes very clever use of mahjong, and I wonder if people who know the game would've been more prone to fall for that trap, but overall, this story was the least interesting in the volume, with a murderer with a rather hard-to-swallow plan and a more suspenseful story that however misses the finesse of the earlier stories.

Kokushi Musou Satsujin Jiken ("The Peerless Patriots Murder Case") have Suzuko and a friend visit a reception to celebrate the finishing of the headquarters of the mahjong club El Dorado. They accidentally find themselves in the private quarters of the director of the club, who's having an argument with a prominent member of the club about the future of the club. The two are eventually shoed away, but that same night, after the reception, the father of the club's director is found murdered in the office Suzuko and her friend also visited earlier that evening. While the director himself has a perfect alibi for the time of the murder as he was at the reception, the other man has vanished, and he's the main suspect, but Suzuko suspects there's more to it as an attempt on her life is made. The solution has basically nothing to do with mahjong, but is a clever and also fairly believable trick used by he murderer to make the impossible possible. I think that people used to reading mystery fiction are more likely to think of this trick, but the whole thing is worked out in a competent enough manner.

For a collection of stories by someone who was actually writing a mahjong manga, Chuuren Poutou Satsujin Jiken is a surprisingly competent mystery manga, even if it's never groundbreaking. If I'd actually known mahjong, I might've enjoyed the stories even better, but even without the necessary knowledge, the stories in this volume are plotted well enough to allow the reader to appreciate the mystery writing. I wouldn't say this series is anywhere near an absolute must-read, but keep the title in the back of your head and try it out sometime if you happen to want to read a slightly unique mystery manga.

 Original Japanese title(s):青山広美 『九蓮宝燈殺人事件』

A Treacherous Tide

夏を待つセイルのように

君のことをずーっと

ずっとずっと思っているよ

「夏を待つセイルのように」(Zard)

Like a sail waiting for summer

I'm always, always

always thinking of you

"Like a Sail Waiting For Summer" (Zard)

Think I've been on a sailing boat only once in my life.

Disclosure: I translated Osaka Keikichi's The Ginza Ghost.

Oosaka Keikichi was a talented master of the short puzzle mystery story, active in the thirties and forties of the previous century, but the second World War stopped his career abruptly: first state censorship didn't allow him to write the kind of detective stories he did earlier, and eventually, the poor man died on the battlefield. He became a forgotten author after the war, but was eventually rediscovered. In the past, publisher Tokyo Sogensha released two volumes that focused on Oosaka's output as a puzzle plot mystery writer: most of the stories in Locked Room International's English-language release The Ginza Ghost can also be found in these volumes. But in August 2020, this same publisher released a third collection of Oosaka's stories, but with a completely different angle. Shi no Kaisousen ("The Yacht of Death" 2020) collects more than a dozen stories originally published between 1934-1942, as well as some short essays/articles by Oosaka. The stories in this volume show a completely different side to Oosaka, focusing on his comedic (mostly non-imposssible) mystery stories, as well as stories with a stronger thriller or horror atmosphere.

I won't be discussing all the stories here as there are simply too many and some of them are really, really short stories. Nor will I be doing the (similarly short) essays/articles, though I have to say it's interesting to see the questionnaires included: these are the answers Oosaka gave to questionnaires in the magazines he was published in, answering questions like what books got him interested in writing and things like that. I'll just be picking out a few of the key stories in this volume. Also note that this volume includes the illustrations that accompanied this stories when they were first published in magazines: I like these typical magazine style sketches!

Shi no Kaisousen ("The Yacht of Death") is the tale most similar to the stories available in English and even includes a familiar face in Azumaya Saburou, maritime researcher and amateur sleuth. The narrator is a doctor who has been called to the manor of Captain Fukaya, a retired captain who built a house with the appearance of a ship on a cliff overlooking a bay. He lived in the house with his wife and his servants, but earlier this morning, the poor man died. He had the habit of going out sailing in the bay with his yacht, but this morning, the ship was found drifting with the captain's body floating in the water, tied to the yacht with a rope. Azumaya, who accompanied his friend to the house, soon finds signs that point to foul play and soon starts his investigation into finding out who killed the captain. This story feels similar to The Monster in the Lighthouse (incl. in The Ginza Ghost), not only because it features Azumaya, but also due to the seaside setting and Azumaya's focus on physical clues and a lot of measuring. Don't expect to be able to solve this one yourself, but for those who like those early Sherlock Holmes stories where you see Holmes come up with fancy deduction chains based on physical clues and measuring things, this is definitely a story in the same spirit. There are other Oosaka Keikichi short story collections from other publishers that have also used Shi no Kaisousen as the title story by the way,  so it's a really popular story.

It's important to note that as you read this book, you can really sense how the environment in Japan was changing as the war approached. It was a time in which it was made difficult for authors to write mystery stories about murder: with nationalistic sentiments growing in the build-up to the war, it was not deemed right to write stories about Japanese persons killing each other. Hyouga Baasan ("The Glacier Granny") isn't really a mystery story, but closer to a tale of the bizarre, about an elderly woman living near a glacier in Alaska. There's a distinct anti-American tone to the story and even ends with praise that Japan is going to invade the Aleutian Islands soon to save Alaska from the Americans. Suizokukan Ihen ("The Incident at the Aquarium") is a crime story with ero-guro-nonsense features, but stands especially out because there are quite a few sentences that have been censored, so those (segments of) sentences are just blanked out. There have been no uncensored versions of these stories, so they remained censored even in modern publications.

The bulk of the volume is made up with short, humorous mystery stories, similar to The Hungry Letter-Box (incl. in The Ginza Ghost). I personally loved The Hungry Letter-Box, and there are a few here that offer a similar fun read. Kyuukon Koukoku ("Matrimonial Advertisement") is about the middle-aged Ishimaki Kintarou, owner of an eraser company, had never much interest in marriage when he was young, but now regrets that. Noticing that nowadays, many people also use the newspaper to look for a marriage partner, he decides to answer an advertisement which catches his attention due to the style in which it was written. He receives an answer, and invitation to visit the woman, a certain Mizuta Shizuko who teaches at a girls academy. When he arrives there though, the woman says she never placed such an advertisement in the newspaper. The explanation to this has its roots in a certain very well-known short mystery story, but it's adapted well to a non-criminal setting. I had already read Kousui Shinshi ("The Perfume Gentleman") in the past and this story was interestingly written for a girls magazine. The heroine of the story is the teenage girl Kurumi, who is going to visit her aunt and cousin Nobuko by train, as Nobuko will be marrying and leaving her home. In the train, Kurumi finds herself seated with a rather suspicious man who is probably hiding something, but what can Kurumi do about it? Very short, but cute piece for the younger readers.

Hitogui Furo ("The Man-Eating Bath") is very similar to The Hungry Letter-Box, featuring a barber in love who happens to encounter an odd happening. Our hapless hero Kin can only think of the daughter of the local public bathhouse, but something odd has happened there: one day, when the bath was about to close, they found an unclaimed set of clothes in the women's dressing rooms. Some guests say they remember they saw a woman they never saw before in this public bathhouse, to whom those clothes probably belong, but where did that woman go, as she couldn't have gone far without any clothes on! Given that every other guest obviously did get out properly dressed, people start to fear the woman had been eaten by the bath itself, but Kin can't quite believe it, especially as it would endanger the livelihood of the woman he loves. Not a difficult story, but funny enough to read. Kuuchuu no Sanposha ("Stroller in the Sky") is very different in tone and features the detective Yokokawa Teisuke, who is described as a nationalistic anti-espionage detective. Yes, it has to be mentioned he is nationalistic. When an ad balloon to promote government bonds is untied from the rooftop of a department store once again by a prankster, making it drift all across the city, most people didn't think too much of it, but for some reason, Yokokawa becomes very interested in the incident, but why would this attract the detective's attention? I love it when Oosaka uses these signs of modernity in his stories (ad balloons hanging from the department store) and the ad balloon makes for a nice focal point for this story that is clearly set in a nationalistic spy/anti-foreign environment.

San no Ji Ryokoukai ("The "3" Travel Organization") is one of the best stories in this volume and is about a Red Cap porter at Tokyo Station who notices how every day, a different woman gets out of the third compartment of the train which arrives at three, and that these women are always awaited by the same man who carries their suitcase, which has a special "3" sticker on them. He strikes up a conversation with the man, who explains that he's acting as a hired help for the "3" Travel Organization, a special group which finances trips to Tokyo for single women from more rural places. The porter and the man only have short time to chat each day and it's only little by little that the porter learns the truth behind this odd group and the fixation on the number "3". The truth behind this grou that is revealed in the end is really clever, and there's some good misdirection going here. Shoufuda Soudou ("Price Tag Commotion") is set at the furniture department of a department store, which has been the victim of a bad prank for some time now: someone has been switching price tags of some very expensive pieces of furniture with a much cheaper one, and several times now, saleslady #304 and her manager had to apologize deeply to a customer as they had to explain that the prize tag of the closet they wanted to buy was actually wrong and that it was least double the price. But why would someone do this? The solution is one you may recognize from a different famous Japanese short mystery story, but this story can definitely stand on its own, with a very original take on the basic concept and a comedic tone that really manages to draw you in.

As a collection, Shi no Kaisousen is not one I would recommend as an entry point to Oosaka's writings: it's especially compiled to show a contrast with earlier collections. The title story is the only one that fits the model of the pure puzzle plot stories that are usually mentioned as Oosaka's masterpieces. The other stories offer far lighter material, though there are still a few in this volume that are genuinely worth a read as comedic mystery stories with a puzzle plot core. The volume also offers variety by also including thriller stories and a period piece and is an interesting read in a larger context because you can definitely feel the influence of building nationalistic sentiments as the war approaches, but this volume is best read after experiencing Oosaka's more focused detective stories.

Original Japanese title(s): 大阪圭吉『死の快走船』:「死の快走船」/ なこうど名探偵」 /「塑像」/「人喰い風呂」/「水族館異変」/「求婚広告」/「三の字旅行会」/「愛情盗難」/「正札騒動」/「告知板の女」/「香水紳士」/「空中の散歩者」/「氷河婆さん」/「夏芝居四谷怪談」/「ちくてん奇談」

Two-Sided Affair

Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

"The Detective Story Decalogue"

Like last week's regular review, this novel too is set around New Year. Weird coincidence that I happened to read these two novels one after another, and if I hadn't bumped up another review to be my first of the year, these two reviews would have been posted in the first week of the new year.

The last time I bothered to check, Nishimura Kyoutarou had over 600 novels on his resume. Most of them are of course about train-related mysteries featuring Inspector Totsugawa: there's a reason why people in Japan instantly associate the train mystery and elaborate alibi tricks using ingenious use of railway schedules with Nishimura (see for example this Sandwichman sketch, where Nishimura's name is used as a punchline for a gag about railway schedules). But as you can guess, churning out three, four novels a month will have effect on the quality of the mystery plots, and the couple of Nishimura novels I read once he started to be this extremely prolific were not particularly enjoyable or inspiring. I did have fun with several of his earlier novels though, including the weird crossover series with Ellery Queen, Hercule Poirot, Akechi Kogorou and Inspector Maigret, and once in a while, I enjoy exploring his earlier output.

Koroshi no Soukyokusen ("Hyperbola of Murder", 1971) is one of Nishimura's earlier novels and widely considered to be one of his best works, and it isn't even about Inspector Totsugawa or railway schedules! In fact, it's a very diferent type of story than we are used to with Nishimura, as it's a closed circle murder mystery that is written as a full-blown homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Though with a very interesting twist. For once you open the novel, you'll find a short preface by the author, where he tells you outright that the main trick of this novel revolves around twins! Figuring that Knox and S.S. Van Dine had certain strong opinions about the use of twins in mystery fiction, Nishimura simply decided to make it clear right away that Koroshi no Soukyokusen will make use of twins as a plot device, as you can hardly complain that the reader has not "been duly prepared for them" with such a warning! And indeed, the story starts off right away showing how a pair of twin brothers have been committing a series of curious robberies on small supermarkets and other stores in Tokyo at the end of the year.  Each of these stores was robbed by a man with a pistol, but for some reason, the robber did not wear a mask. Eventually, the police manages to find this man, and twice even! For apparently, the robber has a twin brother, but both of them deny having committed the robberies despite not being able to present any alibi, and with no other evidence but the visual identification by the victims, the police can't do anything: they know the brothers must be in cahoots, but as the robberies were ultimately only committed by one person, they can't arrest both brothers, as one of them is not guilty of any crime in the practical sense. The police also has trouble locating where the stolen money has gone too.

At the same time, the reader is introduced to Kyouko, a typist who works in Tokyo, but is now spending New Year at a small hotel in the Miyagi Prefecture. She and her fiancé are among the lucky six inhabitants of Tokyo who have been offered a ski holiday completely free of charge at the Snow-View Hotel as a form of promotion: the owner, who runs the whole hotel by himself, hopes these guests will help promote the hotel to friends and acquaintances in Tokyo after their stay. Among the other guests are a student of criminology, a taxi driver and a girl working in a not-so-legal massage parlor. The Snow-View Hotel is located deep in the snowy mountains and at this time of the year basically only accessible by snowcat or skis. It doesn't take long for one of the guests to be find hanging from the ceiling in his locked room though, accompanied by a card with a strange circle mark and the message "Thus The First Step Of My Revenge Is Completed." Coincidentally, they realize that one of the bowling pins in the entertainment room has been removed too. They try to phone for help, but the phone line has been cut and even the snowcat has been disabled, meaning they are all trapped in the hotel for now. More murders soon follow, and the remaining guests sart to suspect each other. Eventually, the survivors manage to call once for help, but by the time the police arrives at the hotel, it's already too late: they find seven bodies in and around the hotel. At first, the police suspects one of the victims here must have killed the others and then themselves, but then the police receive an anonymous letter connecting these murders with the robberies committed by the twins, but what could that connection be?

Well, you certainly can't accuse Nishimura of not being ambitious here. First you have the daring declaration of the usage of twins at the very start of the novel, and then we are introduced to a dual narrative structure, with the second storyline obviously being inspired by And Then There Were None. In fact, even the characters locked up in the hotel themselves realize their situation is very much like And Then There Were None (including the bowling pins that disappear each time someone is killed), though unlike And Then There Were None, the characters here don't really know why they are being killed: they have not been accused of crimes like And Then There Were None, and none of them know each other. They have nothing in common, so why were they chosen to be killed? Don't try too much thinking about this yourself though: there might be a minor clue pointing at what connects these people, but the exact reason for why these people are killed is not something you can properly deduce based on what is shown in the story, and you just have to wait for the reveal. It's kinda farfetched though, to see the killer go this far because of that reason. I've seen the same idea used in other mystery stories too, but I find this particular iteration the least convincing.  

Anyway, perhaps the most interesting part of this novel is how it's a homage to And Then There Were None, using a dual narrative structure. I won't be the only one to be reminded of works like The Decagon House Murders (disclosure: I translated the English version) or The Jellyfish Never Freezes, which tackle the same story format. The dual story structure is a bit crude here though compared to these examples. In both The Decagon House Murders and The Jellyfish Never Freezes, the connection to the two narratives is very clear to the reader: in the former, we follow a series of murders on an island, while we also follow an investigation into the background of those murders on the mainland, while in the latter, we see the murders occur in real time, but also follow a narrative that is set a few days after the murders. In Koroshi no Soukyokusen, this connection is not clear at all until the very end. Each chapter, you have a section about the robberies committed by the twins and a section set at the Snow-View Hotel, but you never understand why you are reading about these completely different storylines. It results in a disjointed reading experience, as the story keeps jumping between these completely different events. Obviously, the connection between them is explained in the conclusion, and there is both an in-universe and a more meta-explanation to it, but both reasons feel a bit weak: the in-universe reason is incredibly convoluted, with far too many steps to get the intended results. The meta-reason is... your mileage may vary. I understand why, but it doesn't really work very well, even I find it interesting Nishimura declared outright he'd be using twins for this novel.

The robber-twins narrative is entertaining though, focusing on the police inspectors who know the twins are working together to ensure the actual robber of the two isn't caught, but they can't figure out where the loot went or how to pin the evidence on the actual robber. Meanwhile, the Snow-View Hotel narrative is definitely a straight-up homage to And Then There Were None. And as you can guess: the mystery for the reader at the end revolves around how the killer managed to kill seven people in a hotel surrounded by snow, and escape without the police finding any trace of them. I personally find these And Then There Were None homages the most fun when they have a solution to how it was all done that can be explained simply with one sentence, that makes you think "Aha, so that what it was!' the moment you hear it. That's definitely the case here, but while I think the basic idea is okay, it's just never going to work in a practical sense. I am the last person to be looking for realism in my mystery fiction, but the culprit's scheme here depends a lot on factors they can not exactly control, and 9 out 10 times, this would've blown in their face immediately, and there's no retries here. In a story with a smaller scale, this idea might've worked better, but even when I figured out what happened, I still couldn't believe it any culprit would go through all this trouble only to have the most crucial part of the scheme depend on pure luck, and the odds here weren't even in their favor from the start: they'd be betting on things happening in a manner that usually wouldn't occur like that and it would be difficult to influence the events in a way to become more favorable. I think the seasoned genre reader won't have too much identifying who the culprit is and how it was done,

Koroshi no Soukyokusen is definitely one of the best-plotted Nishimura Kyoutarou novels I've read, and as an And Then There Were None homage, it's quite entertaining, but some parts of the plot do feel weak/not very convincing. It has interesting ideas like the twins declaration and the core And Then There Were None variation that make it stand out, but perhaps the plot is telegraphed a bit too obviously, especially near the end when the story moves into the final act. But still an amusing read if you want read a Nishimura Kyoutarou novel that is not like the Stereotypical Nishimira Kyoutarou Novel.

Original Japanese title(s): 西村京太郎『殺しの双曲線』