Ghost of a Chance

Affirmati non neganti incumbit probatio

 

The burden of proof lies upon him who asserts, not upon him who denies

While the title of today's book sounds weird without the context, it works excellent as a memorable catchphrase in this book!

Fifteen years ago, when Rize was only six or seven, her mother joined the cult Apolutrosis, a doomsday cult that combined both Christian and Shinto concepts. The two moved to the small community of the leader of Apolutrosis and his followers, a village with exactly thirty-three inhabitants located in a kind of valley, surrounded by high cliffs and only accessible through a tunnel through said cliffs. The people of the cult had mostly distanced themselves from the outside world, their livelihood dependent on the simple farm they had, the waterfall and river that crossed their village and the occasional trade with nearby villages. Life was tough of course, but not horrible, and Rize also had one friend in the village: Douni, a teenage boy, and the two were the only children in the village and dreamed of escaping together one day. One fateful day, an earthquake stopped the waterfall's run, resulting in a dried-up river. The cult leader saw this as a sign of upcoming doom, and after blowing up the tunnel (the only exit out of the village) with explosives and a long ceremony, he called his followers to the house of prayer. The followers were to close their eyes and pray, but when Rize took a peek, she witnessed a horrible sight: the leader was chopping everybody's head off with an axe! Rize, who had injured her leg during the earthquake, was quickly carried away by Douni, who locked the house of prayer from the outside. Rize passed out during the escape, but when she came by, she was confronted with something even more horrifying: the chopped-of head of Douni, lying next to his body! Rize was lying in the shrine in a cave near the waterfall, but she has no idea what had happened to her and Douni after she fainted. It took more than a week after the horrible mass suicide for help from outside to arrive, but when the authorities investigated the case, they realized this was no ordinary case.

For inside the house of prayer, which was locked from the outside by Douni during their escape, they came across 31 dead bodies. Adding Douni and Rize means all the villagers were accounted for, but if the leader killed thirty people inside the house and then himself, who was the person who murdered Douni? As Rize was the only living person outside the locked house of prayer, but inside the village, it appears she must've been the murderer, but that scenario too is impossible: Douni was decapitated with the guillotine blade they used on their stock, but not only did she not have any reason to kill her only friend, the young Rize could not possibly have used that to kill Douni: either she'd have needed to carry the blade to the murder scene to cut Douni's head off on the spot, or she would have needed to carry Douni's decapitated head and body to the cave after cutting it off, but considering her age and build, it would've been physically impossible for her to do either of those things, and that's not even considering her injured leg at the time. Any of the adults could've killed Douni, but there were all locked inside the house, and no outsider could've come inside the village unseen due to the security measures set around the cliffs. 15 years later, Rize still doesn't know why and how Douni was murdered after their escape. She decides to visit the private detective Ueoro Jou and his "business partner" Fulin, an underworld money shark who still has to collect a lot from Ueoro. She wants Ueoro to find out what happened, but also confides in them that she vaguely remembers she was carrying a head while they escaped from the house of worship, and the only explanation she can think off is that Douni must've already been decapitated when they were escaping from the house of worship, and that he only died after making locking the rest up in the house and making sure Rize was safe. This sound quite unbelievable of course, because that would be nothing less than a miracle, and yet that's exactly what Ueoro Jou hopes the answer will be: for he actually believes in miracles. But the only way to prove that an incident is a miracle, is by proving that all possible logical theories can't provide a satisfying explanation to all events: the impossible can only be proven by the denial of all thinkable possibilities. In Inoue Magi's Sono Kanousei wa Sude ni Kangaeta ("That Possibility Has Already Been Considered" 2015), the detective's quest is not find the truth, but to prove that some things on this world can only be explained as a miracle!

A book with an amazing premise: Ueoro desperately wants to find a genuine miracle, an event that can not be explained according to human knowledge and his method thus involves considering each possible solution and prove that they are wrong. Interestingly, this happens very quickly and off-screen: the next time we see Ueoro after he is hired by Rize, he has already compiled a bookwork that explains how every possible explanation can be ruled out, and that therefore her experience is a true miracle. It's at this point that Ueoro and Fulin are visited by some familiar faces from their pasts, who seem intent on showing that Ueoro is in fact wrong, and that there are still possibilities left unexplored by Ueoro. Each of these visitors come up with outrageous theories that make the events in the village seemingly and theoretically possible and it's up to Ueoro (and occasionally Fulin) to prove that even those possibilities are actually impossible.

The result is a story that is truly unlike any other mystery novel, because the goal of this book is not to arrive at the single truth at the end of the book, but deny all possible solutions. This results in a very different approach to the detective story. The various solutions proposed by the visitors for example are never meant to be theories that actually explain what happened in the village, and everyone is aware of that. Some of them paint Rize as the murderer of course, even though the proposers themselves don't actually believe she did it. But as long as the possibility that the theory can be correct exists, Ueoro has to find a way to refute them. While the theories proposed have to be based on the known facts, that still allows a lot of room for theories that might sound a bit far-fetched, but which are undeniably possible. The theories are very entertaining, each focusing on a different aspect of the mystery (for example: a brilliant idea to show how the blade could have been moved) and they very cleverly use everything presented in the introduction to weave a completely plausible possibility of how everyone besides Rize ended up dead. Each of these solutions would've worked perfectly as a memorable solution on their own (the first one is amazing) and it's absolutely baffling how author Inoue managed to come up with three radically different, and surprising solutions based on the same basic setting. Equally impressive is the fact that Ueoro uses the same facts to not just prove that these theories are not what happened, he proves that they're simply impossible, denying the possibility of them entirely. Little facts here and there are put together that make it clear that the premise of each of those theories doesn't work, but it's always only after Ueoro points those facts out that you realize those theories wouldn't have worked in the first place and that the evidence had been staring at you all the time.

Your mileage may vary on the characters that appear though. It has a bit of a hardboiled action film vibe, with Fulin as some kind of expert on Chinese torture methods, and people from the underworld popping up here and there to challenge Ueoro and Fulin in deduction battles and what not. The book plays this pretty seriously, which in turn made it for me very hard to take it seriously, because it was just so weird and I never did really get attached to the characters, but perhaps another reader might like them better.

The last third of the novel starts off with a surprising and very memorable point made about Ueoro's methods which seem to nullify everything he has done until that point, but afterwards the discussion becomes more a meta-discussion and the focus shifts away from the actual mystery of the village, so it depends on the reader whether you'll like this part. If you like discussions on the Proof of the Devil like in Umineko no Naku Koro ni, you might like this last part of the book better than I did, because it's a bit like the discussions in those games in spirit, but like the book itself later points out, ultimately it's not that big of a deal. The ending of the book was also a bit disappointing: considering the set-up of the book, it was quite likely this would be the way the story would eventually wrap up, but it does make a lot of the story feel rather futile, despite the earlier battles of the wits being quite amusing.

Because of its unique angle, Sono Kanousei wa Sude ni Kangaeta might not be the kind of detective story that'll appeal to everyone: the plot will meander a lot, and because the goal of the story is to not arrive at the solution, a lot of what happens will just seem useless in hindsight. If you like Ellery Queen-style mysteries and the long chains of deductions that occur there though, this is a great book! It has battles of the wits, impressively built lines of reasoning built on brilliant interpretations of the known facts and evidence and likewise memorable and meticulously built-up rebukes of those theories. The book might get a bit philosophical near the end, but still, a fantastic read for those who're into this stuff.

Original Japanese title(s): 井上真偽『その可能性はすでに考えた』

A Figure in Hiding

"It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!"

"Frankenstein"

I have seen a real Japanese karakuri puppet/automaton up close once at an exhibition here. They look really cool, especially as the mechanisms are mostly hidden from sight. It was pretty funny to see the automaton placed next to a Pepper too.

Tokyo Ad Planning Service (TAPS) is in charge of the marketing campaign of an upcoming exhibition on Japanese automata (karakuri puppets), which is why Sawako of TAPS finds herself working with Yamato Haruka, a famous British-Japanese visual designer whose real name is actually Yamato Harker. Yamato gladly takes the job to design some posters for the exhibition, but as he knows very little about Japanese automata, Sawako arranges for them to meet with Professor Kagura, an expert on Japanese automata. Yuria, the professor's assistant and adopted daughter, decides to bring Sawako and Yamato to a temple in Shinjuku with an automatic fountain designed by Benkichi, the famous nineteenth century inventor and karakuri puppet creator. Yuria's brother Romao plays in the rock band Android and also happens to be holding a concert at the temple that evening. Yamata and Sawako are also invited to the afterparty of the concert, where they meet Romao, his girlfriend Kiriko, her wealthy father Kashima Daiji and Daiji's mistress Ukita Mihiro, a well-known actress. Being an automaton collector himself, Daiji invites Sawako and Yamato to his home to view some pieces, but when they try out the automaton that can write on a piece of paper, they find that the paper says "Benkichi Won't Allow That". The bad prank seems to have some effect on Daiji, even though the other people present can't imagine what the message could ever mean. When however Kiriko later dies in a traffic accident which apparently wasn't just an accident and another threatening surfaces which mentions a Automaton House, Yamato decides to put on his amateur-detective cap on and investigate the case thoroughly in Takahashi Katsuhiko's Karakurikan no Satsujin ("The Automaton House Murders, 1990).

While his The Case of the Sharaku Murders is available in English, I do believe this is the very first time I picked up a book by Takahashi Katsuhiko. The title however did already give me an idea of what I could expect from this book: ever since The Decagon House Murders, there've been countless of mystery novels that follow the exact same[something]-kan no satsujin title pattern and all similarly feature stories set in unique buildings as the backdrop for the murder mystery plot. Some play the trope very straight, like Atsukawa Tatsumi's Gurenkan no Satsujin, others are a bit more tongue-in-cheek, like the novels in Aosaki Yuugo's Urazome Tenma series, which are not set in curiously designed manors or country houses, but public buildings like a library and a gymnasium. Still, the books that follow this title pattern usually do have a lot in common, being that the stories are often closed circle murder mysteries, set in the cramped space of one confined location that has a very specific theme (often reflected in the architecture/layout/interior), with the backstory or architecture of the specific location often playing a significant role in the actual mystery plot. Given that Karakurikan no Satsujin was named after the famous Japanese automata, I was looking forward to a plot that'd make use of these primitive robots.

And I was let down hard. Because very few of the things you'd expect based on the title alone come true in this novel. To give the most obvious example: while the titular Automaton House is mentioned briefly in the prologue, the main narrative doesn't arrive at the actual location until three-quarters into the book.  So no closed circle murder mystery plot here, no creepy scenes of a house filled with automata that might've committed the murders, none of that. Instead, the novel takes a long time to set-up the late visit to the Automaton House, with an investigation that isn't that interesting to be honest. For while the death of Kiriko occurs relatively soon in the novel, as do the threatening notes signed by Benkichi, the plot seems mostly concerned with speculation that is ultimetely based on very little hard information, so the first three-quarters of the plot just feel too vague. Kiriko's death isn't even a clear murder, but perhaps just an unlucky accident, and while Yamato and Sawako (and the motley crew made up by Yamato's local friends) do speculate a lot about her death and the tie it has to the threatening letters to her father, there's just too little to really keep the reader engaged with the plot at this point: there might be a murder, but there might also not be, and while the hypotheses Yamato and Sawako have regarding Daiji and why's afraid of the name Benkichi are interesting, these discussions are based on so little it's basically pure imagination, which tends to be bad plot fuel in a detective plot.

By the time we do get to the Automaton House (which is named so because of its exterior appearance), there's just so little time left we barely get to see it, and it never really manages to make an impression. Even a late murder does little to really get the plot going, and by the time you're done with the book, it just feels too little happened that allowed the detectives to really do anything of significance. A lot of what they end up doing is based on nearly baseless speculation and when the dust has settled and everything is explained, it still feels like a) the presence of the detectives amounted to nothing and b) ultimately, the plot feels slightly arbitrary, because the solution revolves mainly about the motive of the murderer, but that's only mentioned in the very end, so it kinda feels like anyone could've been the murderer if the author had made up a motive for them. There's no real moment during the last act where it all clicks in hindsight, which is usually what makes a mystery novel work.

There's a lot of historical context mentioned in this novel regarding Benkichi and his business partner Zeniya Gohei, which is certainly interesting. As a mystery novel with a historical subplot, Karakurikan no Satsujin touches upon a theme that's pretty interesting for Japanese readers, as the idea of automatoa and primitive robots has a lot in common with concepts of trick art, secret hallways and doors like you see in a lot of other mystery fiction that follow the aforementioned title pattern and it's quite fun to learn more about the history of automata in Japan. The story does focus more on Benkichi and Zeniya as actual historical persons and their personal lifes, rather than their creations: sadly enough this book isn't about some killer automaton created centuries ago or something like that. Personally, I would have preferred to have seen the Japanese automata themselves featured more prominently in the plot, not the historical context surrounding them, but for those with an interest in history, this book definitely has something to offer. If you're familiar with the (fictional) historical person Kichiemon from Detective Conan, you probably have an idea of what kind of person Benkichi was and what he worked on.

Karakurikan no Satsujin wasn't quite my cup-of-tea-made-by-an-automaton: while the historical context of automata and Benkichi is interesting, the core murder plot itself feels a bit empty, and while a lot of the historical exposition is captivating, you sometimes just wonder why it's mentioned at that moment because now the characters aren't even theorizing or making hypotheses, they're purely imagining things, which makes this mini-lectures feel rather forced at times. Holding my expectations based solely on the title against this book isn't fair either of course, but even setting those thoughts aside, I think Karakurikan no Satsujin's plot doesn't quite match the potential of the automaton theme.

Original Japanese title(s): 高橋克彦『偶人館の殺人』

Dungeons & Detectives

"I'm Dungeon Master, your guide in the realm of Dungeons and Dragons."

"Dungeons and Dragons"

I do like playing JRPGs, but they tend to take so long I usually only end up playing one or two of them a year....

Several years ago, the existence of ESP was proven beyond any doubt. However, the research field of ESP is still very young, partially because few people actually possess the innate skill to harness these special powers, which can manifest in various forms, ranging from psychokinesis and levitation to healing powers, foresight and more. What is apparent however is that younger people are more likely to show signs of being an esper, which is why the government-backed ESP Laboratory, headed by the very young, but undeniable top-class esper Tokino Imawa, does school tours to educate teenagers about ESP and to see if they can find new espers among these children. Imawa and her entourage visit the high school of Kenzaki, once a gifted practioner of kendo, but who gave up the sword after failing to save a friend. After the initial speech to all the students in the gymnasium, Imawa and her party are supposed to do smaller class demonstrations, but Imawa excuses herself for a moment. The next time people see her however, she's dead: her body's found lying on the school's baseball field, but strangely enough there are no foot tracks left on the wet field. They have no time to consider this strange murder scene however, for suddenly the whole school is completely enveloped by black walls, seperating it from the rest of the world and horrible monsters appear in and outside the school. 

One monster instantly kills one of the people who discovered Imawa's body and the rest barely make it back inside the school. Classes have barricaded themselves inside their classrooms when a voice suddenly resonates throughout the school. The voice identifies himself as the Demon King and says that the school is now under his control, placed it its own pocket dimension where nobody from outside can reach it. The monsters are of course his doing and he challenges the students at the school, saying that the only way to escape from the school is defeat him. However, in order to find his hiding place inside the school, the students have to gather map pieces, which lie scattered across the school or held by the roaming monsters. But the students aren't helpless: during this challenge, the powers of every person in the school is heightened and everyone can use their own field of expertise or hobby in highly-powered offensive and defensive manners to defeat the monsters. Kenzaki for example can pick up any stick-like object which changes it into an actual sword, making him a master swordsman, a classmate who pitches for the baseball team can throw energy baseballs at the monsters, while others with some ESP affinity can now use their powers in more concrete manners. Like a Japanese RPG, students can level up and become stronger by defeating the monsters and learn new skills. Thus the students are forced to explore the school and fight the monsters, but Kenzaki teams up with Mira, one of the espers in Imawa's party, to investigate Imawa's death and find it out what that has to do with the current situation in Hayasaka Yabusaka's 2015 novel RPG School.

I've been quite open about my love for mystery fiction with supernatural settings, and RPG School is just a splendid example of how both silly and utterly exciting these books can be! Last year, I reviewed the Nintendo DS game Sigma Harmonics, a Japanese RPG which told a murder mystery story. RPG School is the opposite basically, being a murder mystery novel (with a YA theme) which takes on the form and structure of  classic Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. It doesn't take long for the story to introduce the RPG plot, which turns a normal high school into a giant quest map for the students, with very high leveled monsters roaming outside, while 'beginner level' monsters are making the corridors and classrooms unsafe. There are also little neat moments like all smartphones having been modified to act as a Pokédex/Monster Encylopedia, which allows the user to read up on the power levels and skills of any enemy they defeated (it only registers the name if you encounter an enemy, but not defeat it). Students also become stronger with every monster they defeat, allowing them to learn new skills to combat the foes. Any gamer will soon recognize the tropes and it's pretty funny to see a familiar setting like a school turned into the world of an RPG.

Last year, I happened to review Kadono Kouhei's Satsuryuu Jiken - A Case of Dragonslayer, which I described as "a fantasy novel, where the heroes happen to be dealing with a seemingly impossible murder case, rather than mystery story that happens to involve fantasy elements." I would say however that RPG School manages to stay more firmly within the realms of the mystery genre and despite the fantasy game-like background of the story, it's ultimately a cleverly-plotted tale of mystery, even if about three-quarters of the book initially only seems to be about the students exploring the school, fighting monsters and trying to locate the Demon King. The quest for the map pieces seems to take center position at first, with scenes detailing how Kenzaki, Mira and their allies fight the monsters, but there are also 'typical' sidequests and other intriques that spice up the narrative with some mysterious flavor, like an unknown masked figure popping up now and then who seems to have a completely other agenda than just finding map pieces or Kenzaki having to backtrack through the school to find certain witnesses while he's investigating Imawa's murder. This investigation is made difficult by the fact that Imawa's body lies outside on the baseball field of course, with high-level monsters wandering around who can't be defeated just yet by Kenzaki and Mira at first (so they have to level up first), so the reader might find this a weird detective novel to read, as a lot of what's normal in a mystery story can't be done here due to fantasy monsters roaming around.

Nonetheless, RPG School makes sure you remember that you're reading a detective novel at all times and that it's actually about an impossible crime, of some sorts. For while Imawa's body was found on a wet field without any footsteps around (the no-footsteps-in-the-snow pattern), the fact that there are espers around the school who can use psychokinesis to move objects and also a genuine Demon King and fantastical monsters in the school changes the kind of deductions you usually make in such detective stories. For why would you move Imawa's body there, leaving no footprints on the field? Who could give Imawa a lethal blow in the first place, as she's the most powerful esper in the country? While offensive ESP like combustion and psychokinesis do exist in this world, they have fairly well defined limits and it's unlikely anyone could've used that to attack Imawa, so while at first sight, you'd think that the existence of ESP and monsters would simplify the problem, it actually adds another dimension to a very familiar trope of the genre, making RPG School a fun read. 

It's during the endgame that you really realize that this story did really tell a proper puzzle plot mystery through the form of a JRPG, and that you were not just reading a fantasy adventure story, which also happened to include a murder investigation subplot. In the finale, it's shown that a lot of the adventures Kenzaki and Mira experienced in the school, also act as viable clues to figure out who the murderer of Imawa is and how the crime was committed. The RPG-touches like battles with monsters, Pokédex entries and the exploration of the school all turn out to be very important information in order to logically solve the murder, and it's a great feat of Hayasaka. Sigma Harmonics had some nice ideas to link up the murder mystery plot to the mechanics of the RPG: RPG School does a great job at using RPG tropes and mechanics to present a puzzle plot murder mystery.

If there's one 'gripe' I have with the book is that ultimately, the reason for why the school suddenly turned into an RPG is a bit handwavey. It's just an excuse to actually introduce the RPG element into the story, and while it does work well with the underlying YA theme of this novel, you really shouldn't consider the 'why are they now suddenly in an RPG setting?" as part of the main mystery to be solved. 

But overall, I enjoyed RPG School greatly, as a mystery story that cleverly utilizes the JRPG game genre to tell a very unique, but also satisfying impossible crime detective story. I'd love to see an anime series based on this though! It has the isekai-themery going on of course, and some other themes would've worked better if the story had more time to provide depth (it's a fairly short novel) to the characters and the RPG-structure of the tale of course lends it well for a series that slowly works towards a big confrontation with the Demon King. Anyway, definitely worth a read if you're into detective stories and RPGs, or just into original mystery stories.

Original Japanese title(s): 早坂吝『RPGスクール』

The Good Old Days

 Please Set Disk Card 

(Famicom Disk System boot-up screen)

Remasters, reboots and remakes are quite common now in visual media, ranging from every other movie released nowadays being a reboot or remake and videogames often getting a 'remastered' rerelease just a few years after the original release, and reboots/remakes aren't anything near rare either when it comes to that interactive medium. I don't think it's common in literature though, at least, I honestly can't really think of any good examples right now. It's not like we get a reboot or remake of an existing, well-known series of mystery novels every few years... 

If you have been following this blog since about earlier this year, you might have noticed me mentioning how much I was looking forward to the Nintendo Switch remakes of the first two Famicom Detective Club videogames. The original Famicom Detective Club was released in 1988 on the Famicom (The Japanese version of the NES), the sequel a year later and it was one of the earliest console mystery adventure games. While some might not immediately associate Nintendo with murder mystery, these two games brought classical murder mystery plots, where you played a teenage detective-in-training solving bloody murders in a remote village with a creepy legend about people rising from their graves (Part I) or investigating a murder on a schoolgirl and the victim's connection to the school's urban legend (Part II). The second game, Famicom Detective Club Part II The Girl Who Stands Behind, was remade as an (excellent!!) Super Famicom (SNES) game in 1998 and that was actually one of the first Japanese adventure games I ever played, so I have always had a soft spot for the series. That is also why I wrote a short article on the whole series ten years ago and more recently, I also discussed the two (fun!) choose-your-own-adventure books based on the first and second game in the series. 

When it was announced in 2019 that Nintendo would be making remakes of the first two games, I was absolutely thrilled, because the series had been dormant since 1998 and to be honest, I hadn't really expected them revisit the series again even though for the last ten years, each time Nintendo had one of their Nintendo Direct announcements, I was hoping for something, anything. Naturally, I was a bit disappointed when the games didn't make their original 2020 release, but I was there to pick the Collector's Edition of the two games when they were finally released in May 2021. Interestingly, this was also the very first time these games were made available outside of Japan, introducing a whole new audience to the (nameless) protagonist, fellow assistant Ayumi and the Utsugi Detective Agency. 

So I got the games in May, completed them pretty much right away... and then kept postponing writing a review about them. Given that I had been talking about looking forward to the remakes all this time, so readers of the blog may have been surprised I didn't write about them. Was it because the remakes were bad? No, that wasn't it. The reason was something very simple: I didn't know what to write about. Like mentioned before, I had already written about these games once ten years ago, and it was just a few years ago I read and reviewed the choose-your-own-adventure books, and they too followed the same plots. What could I write about the new releases of Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind what I hadn't mentioned before? That's one problem with remakes, if you have already discussed the original and there's a fairly faithful remake, there's not really much you can talk about besides making direct comparisons, but that's only interesting for the few people who are interested in both the original and the remake. So for a while, I was considering skipping the review completely.

As you can guess by now, the Switch remakes of Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind are, all in all, quite faithful to the original games. Yes, the graphics are completely new, fantastic newly arranged soundtrack based on the original and every single line is voiced, even the monologues (Minaguchi Yuuko returns as Ayumi!). So in terms of visuals and audio, the remakes look and sound like modern games, but the plots of the two games, and even most of the game design is still the same as the late eighties originals. Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir starts with the protagonist waking up at a beach with amnesia, only to slowly piece together he's the assistant of the private detective Utsugi and that he had been investigating the death of Ayashiro Kiku, the matriarch of the Ayashiro Clan living in the small village of Myoujin. Her butler isn't quite sure whether her death was natural, and as there's much ado about her will, which has provisions for her three nephews/niece, but mostly benefits her missing daughter who ran away many years ago, the protagonist was asked to look into Kiku's death. During the investigation, we learn of a local legend that says the Ayashiros are cursed and there are even villagers who claim to have seen Kiku rise from her grave. When one of Kiku's nephews is killed however, it's clear something foul is at play. Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind is set a few years before the first game, and has the protagonist investigating the murder on a female high school student, whose body had been dumped in the river. The protagonist is sent to her Ushimitsu High School to investigate her final movements, which puts him on the trail of a ghost story: the victim Shinobu and her friend Ayumi formed a detective club, where they investigated all kinds of stories. In the days before her murder, Shinobu had been investigating the school's ghost story about a bloody female student suddenly appearing behind people, and it's believed this is somehow connected to Shinobu's murder.

The remakes of these two games are on the whole very faithful remakes of the originals, with most of the dialogue lines completely the same as the original (the remake of Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind is based on the 1998 Super Famicom remake by the way, which added some extra features: these are also intact in the Switch remake). There are a few minor scenes changed a bit, but you can basically use a walkthrough for the original Famicom versions and still navigate your way through the remake without any real problems. The gameplay is also rather familar and traditional: you use commands to guide your character to for example talk with someone about certain topics, or to show them evidence you have obtained, and by for example talking about topic X to witness Y, you're able to move to location A to talk with Z about topic X, which leads to another story development, etc. Famicom Detective Club was one of the earliest games to use this format for adventure games and it's been a staple since, so no surprises here. In the original games, finding the right commands to proceed in the story could be a bit frustrating because sometimes you have to ask a person the same question multiple times or sometimes a story flag is activated by finishing an action that seems completely unrelated, but fortunately, the QOL change from the Super Famicom remake of Part II can be found in both Switch remakes, which highlight some commands if something significant has changed. So while the stories are still the same as the originals, these remakes are definitely easier/less frustrating to play (this holds especially for Part I). The games aren't long though, each game probably won't take even ten hours.

As specifically mystery games though, these games are more about atmosphere than really making the player solve a mystery themselves. You're just brought from one story development to another and the best the games do to "challenge" your mental skills is basically just to ask you a question once in a while to check whether you have been paying attention. So don't expect to be actually solving the case yourself by going over the evidence, you're just there to enjoy the ride. Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir is interestingly strongly and obviously influenced by Yokomizo Seishi's work: the story set in a remote village, about a missing heir, convoluted wills, a cursed clan and a legend of corpses rising from their graves doesn't even try to hide its inspiration. So if you like the Kindaichi stories, this might be a fun game to try out as there are few videogames available in English that go for the same vibe (Higurashi: When They Cry I guess...). Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind is interesting now I think about it as it's a murder mystery set at a high school, but the original game was released long before Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and Detective Conan made the setting popular. So as a school mystery, it predates the big titles with 3, 4 years. But if you like those titles, you'll be right at home with Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind. I'd say The Girl Who Stands Behind is by far the best game of the two, with a story that is also presented with more confidence than the first one, but The Missing Heir definitely has its charms too due to the unique setting and a better set-up to the final confrontation with the murderer.

Just speaking of these games as remakes, I have to say I like the effort poured into them to preserve the original spirit. The V-tuber-esque characters can look a bit weird, especially when compared to the phenomonal sprite artwork in the Super Famicom version of Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind, but the overall design is good. The original games were set in the period of release (the late eighties). This is of course reflected in the story, where nobody has a mobile and you have A LOT of scenes where people use the phones of whomever they are visiting or that people have to tell others where they can be reached. But the artwork of the backgrounds also do a fantastic job at invoking this eighties vibe (the shopping streets especially!) and I'm glad these games still like games from the eighties, even though they are made thirty years later. The remakes also have a very welcome option to use the old soundtracks (so Famicom music for The Missing Heir, and both Famicom and Super Famicom soundtracks for The Girl Who Stands Behind). If they had also included the actual original games too in these remakes, it would have been perfect, but that's perhaps too much to ask.

So as a fan of the original games, I did enjoy the Switch remakes of Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind, but I can't really call them surprising. They are really just 'what if we gave the original games a new coat of paint' remakes, and in terms of story and gameplay are almost identical to the originals down to the scene and line. For a lot of people this will be the first time they get to play these games though, and they might be a bit disappointed in learning how eighties they really are, and I do think it's best to be aware that as remakes, it's mostly the visuals and audio that changed and that the core is still an old-fashioned, eighties adventure game. I for one hope that these remakes pave the way for more Famicom Detective Club, be it a remake of BS Detective Club or a brand-new sequel, but regardless of what may or may not follow, I had fun with these two games.

Sunken Moment

波の上漂う海月（くらげ）をみるのが好きで

「君という光」（Garnet Crow)

 

I like looking at the jellyfish floating in the sea

"The Light That Is You" (Garnet Crow)

Don't you just hate it when they suddenly switch cover styles for a series you've been following for years and the new covers are better than the old ones? It's not like I'm going to buy the re-releases of the older books for their covers, but it still bugs me a bit.

It's been almost ten years since I first read Kishi Yuusuke's The Glass Hammer, which introduced me to the attorney Aoto Junko, who has become well-known as the person you want to retain if you're confronted with a locked room murder. In truth, it's not Junko who solves these cases, but the security consultant Enomoto Kei, whom Junko sees as an neccessary evil and she's often reluctant to call in his services. For while Enomoto's expertise on all things security are undeniably first-rate, she has the very very very strong suspicion that Enomoto is actually a burglar himself and that his talent to break down locked room mysteries is also used to actually break into other people's houses. I've enjoyed the other books in the series a lot, as well as the (excellent!) live-action drama Kagi no Kakatta Heya ("The Locked Room"), which was titled after the third book in the series. In 2017, the fourth book titled Mystery Clock in the series was published, collecting four stories. I usually buy the pocket re-releases which commonly follow a few years after the initial release, so I didn't pick the book up back in 2017. The pocket release finally came late 2020, but in a form I had not expected. Usually when a book is re-released in the bunko pocket form in Japan, it's the 'extended' version despite the smaller format. Besides text revisions, pockets often feature a commentary essay by a mystery writer/critic on the book, and some pocket releases even feature bonus stories not included in the original release. Interestingly, they decided to split up 2017's Mystery Clock into two seperate volumes for the 2020 pocket release. This is a practice that often happens with novels that are too long  (part 1, part 2, etc), but I had never seen this done to a short story/novelette collection, and in this case, the two volumes aren't even called part 1 and 2, but each feature their own distinct title, making them complete seperate releases. Which is why I will also discuss them as seperate books in seperate posts now, even though they originally formed one single book.

Colossus no Kagizume also has the English title The Colossus' Claws and features two novelettes, one of which I already knew quite well. Kagami no Kuni no Satsujin ("The Mirror Land Murder") was part of the source material used for the 2014 television special of the Kagi no Kakatta Heya drama series, and that story definitely left an impression on me back then. The story starts with a visit by Inspector Kouno to Junko, who confides in her that Enomoto will probably soon become a suspect in a murder case. A gallery director was murdered in his office and it just so happens that a burglar who seems very similar to Enomoto was caught on a hidden security camera as he made his way inside the building. While there were a few other people inside the gallery working on an Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found on the Other Side-inspired trick art exposition too that night, security footage show none of them approached the director's office. Enomoto contacts Junko, 'assuring' her that he was hired by the director to test the gallery's security measures, and swears he didn't kill the director. Which in turn means that one of the three people working on the trick art exposition has to be the murderer.

The problem however is that in order to reach the crime scene, a person has to go through the whole Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found on the Other Side exposition and take the stairs at the end of the hall. The exposition is actually an elaborate mirror maze that makes use of trick art (optical illusions) with an Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass theme and while there are multiple routes through the maze, there are two points one has to pass, and there are security cameras here: the entrance is a big 3D sculpture of Humpty Dumpty which has to be moved to gain access to the maze, while there's also a security camera aimed at the see-through corridor at the end of the maze. Nobody is seen on the security footage of these cameras around the time of the murder, but if Enomoto is truly innocent, this means someone managed to go through the maze completely unseen. But how?

Looking back at my review of the drama adaptation, I think I have little much to add to that, because it was a fairly faithful adaptation and I still feel largely the same about the main ideas. The first part of the solution, in regards to how someone could've possibly gone through the Humpty Dumpty-blocked entrance even though the sculpture is never seen moving on camera nor anything else out of the ordinary, is really clever, but it works soooooo much better in a visual format. While you understand the explanation as you read it as prose, being actually shown what was done is not only more impressive, but also more convincing. Also, it's neigh impossible to think of this solution based on just the text, while in the visual format, the problem feels fairer. It's a trick you really have to visually see and I have to admit I was glad I had seen the drama version first. The second half of the explanation of how someone made it out of the maze unseen is clever in the sense that you can actually imagine it being done, but it does rely on the knowledge of the existence of something specific, and if you don't know about it, you're definitely not going to figure out for yourself how someone could've passed through a see-through corridor unseen. Ultimately, Kagami no Kuni no Satsujin has a few very clever tricks that allowed an invisible murderer to pass through the maze, but these ideas also undeniably more about the surprise of learning about some specific concept or piece of technology, and then seeing it applied to a mystery story. If you don't know about them, it's unlikely you'll ever solve the murder yourself.

The same basically holds for Colossus no Kagizume ("The Colossus' Claws"), which is about a mysterious death occuring in the ocean. The Neo Seatopia Project is headed by both the government and Ooyashima Maritime Development to develop new solutions for seabed mining. It operates from an experiments ship in the ocean, with divers doing experiments on the oceanbed. Hotei is the fiancé of Yuri (daughter of the CEO of Ooyashima Maritime Development) and made head of the operation, even though he's not really suited for the job and therefore not liked at all by his former colleagues. One night, Hotei went out for some night fishing, when suddenly his boat was flipped over amidst rising sea foam and when his body was finally found, there were odd scratches across his body. While there were plenty of people on the New Seatopia ship who didn't like Hotei, none of them could've actually reached his boat unseen: some people physically saw how Hotei's boat was suddenly swallowed by the foams with nothing in the vicinity, the sonar system of the experiment ship caught no other boats nearby and the only people "near" Hotei's boat were diving deep below, and because of the medical sensors on these divers as well as the dangers of decompression sickness, none of these divers could've physically gone up to the surface to attack Hotei and dive back again. The only explanation is that a Collosal Squid might've decided to attack Hotei, but fiancee Yuri isn't convinced of that and wants Junko to find out whether Hotei could've been killed by a human.

This is a weird story to rate. It basically falls in the same trap as the previous story, in the sense that it makes clever use of some kind of technology/specific piece of knowledge to make the impossible possible, in this case, allowing someone to approach the victim undetected in the ocean, but the story's hardly going to feel very satisfying if you didn't know about it before (and few people are likely to). It's almost like suddenly being told that flying pigs do exist, and that that allowed the murder to commit the crime. It's a shame, because like the story also points out, this particular trick does result in a very unique moment where it's shown that the person who was most unlikely to could've committed the murder, is shown to be the only person who could've committed the murder as the introduction of that specific piece of knowledge turns everything around.

On one hand, I do think the two stories in Colossus no Kagizume are interesting in the way they use new, modern technology to create solutions to locked room murder mysteries we hadn't seen before, but it feels like it's just too early for them: while the application is clever, as a reader, you feel slightly cheated because the stories keep bringing up concepts that aren't quite common knowledge yet. Kagami no Kuni no Satsujin is the better one of the two, but I'd recommend the drama adaptation over the original story because the trick simply works better in a visual format. The review on the accompanying book to this volume will follow soon.

Original Japanese title(s): 貴志祐介『コロッサスの鉤爪』:「鏡の国の殺人」/「コロッサスの鉤爪」

Another

Been a while since I wrote an editorial...

Last year, I wrote a post on a few original episodes of the animated series of Detective Conan, so episodes that are not based on the comic, but written especially for the anime. One episode I shortly talked about was episode 961 Glamping Kaijiken ("The Curious Glamping Incident"), which I wanted to discuss not because it was such a good mystery, but because it was absolutely insane. The story was written by Yamatoya Akatsuki, best known for his work for Gintama and this episode of Conan definitely was more focused on crazy comedy, with loads of story elements that didn't make any sense at all in the context, and just there to confuse/amuse the viewer. The animated series has been running almost non-stop since 1996, with over 1000 episodes now and while most of the episodes are in fact based on the manga, about a third of the episodes each year are anime original episodes, written by a variety of scenario writers. And these scenario writers usually have their own angles/gimmicks they like, like there was an early scenario writer who often wrote plots revolving around animals. So the anime original episodes often do feel very different from each other because of the different writers (even if they use the same basic setting/characters), so once in a while, you get an episode like episode 961 Glamping Kaijiken because they decided to go with a writer who aims to just write something completely silly.

Yesterday, on June 26th 2021, the newest episode of Detective Conan became trending on Japanese social media, because they had another of those batshit insane episodes. Episode 1010 Egao wo Keshita Idol ("The Idol Who Erased Her Smile") was written by Urasawa Yoshio, best known as chief writer for chaotic comedy series like Ranma 1/2 and Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo and renowned for his surreal, wacky stories. In fact, Urasawa was the mentor of Glamping Kaijiken's writer Yamatoya Akatsuki and the last few years, Urasawa has written a few Conan episodes and each time, they were considered "masterpieces" in the series because they were just so silly, making no sense at all and just being unlike a normal Conan episode in every way. I couldn't contain my curiosity, so I decided to watch all of the episodes of Urasawa just to see how insane they could be.

In terms of hilarious surprises, they certainly didn't disappoint. By the end of episode 1010 Egao wo Keshita Idol ("The Idol Who Erased Her Smile"), you'll realize it's the most unnecessary story ever, but the way the story is brought and the countless of little jokes (the Akira bike!) sprinkled throughout the visuals just make it a weirdly captivating story, that manages to hold your attention better than an "average, nondescript Conan story" would. Explaining the story would be a fruitless action, because the story is honestly very, very forgettable and yet I kept watching the episode because I never knew what kind of silly joke it would throw at me next. The same holds for other episodes written by Urasawa. Episode 997 Smile no Sato no Inbou ("The Smile Village Conspiracy", original broadcast on February 13, 2021) has cartoon stock villains and a granny who flies away in a jetpack and a old lady with a veeeeeery creepy collection and it's just a parade of surreal gags and almost Monty Python-esque comedy. Episode 976 Tsuiseki! Tantei Taxi ("The Chase! The Detective Cab", July 18, 2020) comes closest to having an actual detective plot, but also features so many story elemenets that are never explained (like two brothers who sing all their lines for no reason at all!) and like most of Urasawa's episodes, it almost feels like they were originally written for another series, but reworked for Conan. There are more by Uraswa, but each one of them is nuts.

But that got me thinking. While these comedy episodes of Conan are very unlike the normal stories in Detective Conan, especially the ones based on the stories of the manga, they still work because the anime series has always had a variety of scenario writers who provide different kind of stories, even though they all still use the same basic characters. So while these episodes won't serve as a good introduction to Conan for newcomers, they can be quite fun for veteran viewers exactly because they are so different from the norm, providing a different angle to what's supposed to be a familiar setting and cast. So I was wondering, were there other examples I could think of with different authors working on a series/established cast created by someone else, and where these other writers managed to add something substantial not present in the work of the original writer (and of course something I liked)?

My first thought went out to the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney videogame series, which was originally created and written by Takumi Shuu, but later Yamazaki Takeshi was made director and writer of a spin-off series and eventually took over the main series (being head writer of Ace Attorney 5 and 6). Personally, I think Yamazaki and his team of writers managed to come up with much more solid mystery plots than Takumi, with plots written closer in the tradition of Queen with theories being built on the currently available evidence etc and turnabouts in theories based on new evidence introduced throughout a story. Yamazaki and his team brought the series much closer to puzzle plot mysteries of modern Japanese detective fiction, and I honestly feel they managed to bring a lot to the series that the original writer hadn't done.

I guess that the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney videogame series with varying teams working various entries, and Detective Conan as an ongoing animated series that has a history of featuring both stories based on the comic by Aoyama Goushou, and other scenario writers are a bit of an exception though. I guess when people think of "persons other than the original author tackling a mystery series" they are likely to think of either adaptations of pastiches. Which isn't exactly what I was thinking of at first, but for example, I remember I really liked how BBC's Sherlock 'translated' a lot of Sherlock Holmes staples into a modern day variant, or for example how the Ellery in the Ellery Queen television show was nothing like the Ellery from the novels but still presented an Ellery I could see working in the original novels. 

Anyway, what are some of the examples you can think of where other people get to work on an existing mystery franchise/established world/cast created by someone else, and they managed to add something or tackle the series from a completely different angle in a way that worked surprisingly well? Perhaps a different writer managed to write more interesting mystery plots with a certain premise of another author, or perhaps an adaptation that seems to surpass the original work? Or perhaps like the Conan episodes mentioned above, where someone manages to pull off something you had never expected of the franchise (positive or negative)?

Beyond the Law

 「冥界の星！冥王星を守護にもつ時空の戦士！セーラープルート！」

「美少女戦士セーラームーン」

 

"Star of the Underworld! Guardian of Time and Space protected by Pluto! Sailor Pluto!"

"Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon"

Anyone here who watched the Jikou Keisatsu drama series? They were among the first Japanese mystery dramas I ever watched, so I've always had a weak spot for them and was really surprised when it returned in 2019 for a new series.

The short story collection Daisan no Jikou ("The Third Deadline" 2003) is probably one of Yokoyama Hideo's best known works, perhaps partially because it also had no less than two seperate television drama adaptations. The six stories collected in this volume were originally published between 2001-2002 and are about the exploits of the feared and famed Homicide and Violent Crimes Division of F Prefecture Police Department. This division is famed throughout the country because of its very high rate of succesful arrests, but within the division, there's fierce rivalry between the three seperate sections that exist within. Section 1 is led by "the blue oni" Kuchiki, a veteran senior detective who carefully chases after his prey and step-by-step blocks off the escape routes of his target. Section 2 is led by the coldblooded and misogynistic Kusumi, a former Public Security police officer who specializes in setting up traps for his targets and catching them by surprise. Section 3's Murase is the inspired type, who instinctively senses what he should do in an investigation and almost miraculously manages to lead his team to a solved case. These three lead detectives are the brains who make the Homicide and Violent Crimes Division so effective, but the internal rivalry between these three, and the members of their teams aren't always what's best for the investigation and in the six stories in Daisan no Jikou, we follow a narrative that involves not only criminal investigation, but also internal politics.

Chinmoku no Alibi ("An Alibi of Silence") follows Kuchiki and his team, who after a long, long time finally managed to send their suspect off to the courtroom. Yumoto is suspected to be the accomplice in an armed robbery on a bank truck with deadly results: Ookuma, the brains of the operation, is still on the run, but they managed to capture Yumoto after tracking his purchase of some things they used in the robbery. At first Yumoto refused to say anything about the crime and he held out for a long time, but in the end he surrended and admitted that he and Ookuma hadn't planned to murder the driver and that they had agreed to lie low until the thing had blown over. With the confession in their pocket, the police send Yumoto off to the Prosecutor's Office for a trial. Kuchiki attends the trial of Yumoto, but to his great shock Yumoto suddenly pleads to the judge, saying he was forced by the police to confess to the crime and that he has a proper alibi for the robbery! It's difficult to explain how this story then changes into a mystery story without revealing too much about what will follow, but Kuchiki is quite convinced Yumoto is the accomplice in the robbery, so part of the mystery lies in the question of what good it will do Yumoto to go back on his words now. The stoy's an interesting crime thriller that plays with the well-known importance placed upon confessions in criminal cases in Japanese court and quite enjoyable, but it's not an orthodox puzzler.

The title of the book's err... title story Daisan no Jikou ("The Third Deadline") refers to the statute of limitations. Fifteen years have passed since Yukie had been assaulted and raped at home by her childhood friend Takeuchi. Her husband arrived home immediately after the horrific crime, and in the ensuing fight Takeuchi killed Yukie's husband, and he has been on the run since. The crime will expire soon, but the police still have one chance to catch him. Or perhaps two. While the deadline for the statute of limitations is fifteen years, this clock is 'paused' whenever the suspect leaves the country: the police have records to show Takeuchi had fled one week abroad soon after the crime, which means that the deadline is not on the day of the murder, but one week later. The men of Section 2 hope that Takeuchi will make contact with Yukie immediately after the deadline expires, as he had tried to contact her once before, as he suspects that Yukie's fourteen year old daughter Arisa is in fact his, and not her husband's. Two weeks before the first deadline, Section 2's men and women are on the look-out for Takeuchi: they have rented the apartment next door and can get inside Yukie's place through the balcony, the phone's tapped, a plainclothes always accompanies Arisa to and from school. When the first deadline expires on midnight, the team is disappointed Takeuchi doesn't call right away, but they hope he'll still call within the week. But as the second deadline approaches, the lead detective Kusumi seems to be pondering about the possibility of a third deadline, but what could that possibly be and will that allow them to catch Takeuchi? Great story, though again not a really a fair puzzler where you can solve all of the mystery without specific knowledge of something. But once more, this is a great thriller where the focus lies not solely on the trap for Takeuchi, but also the internal political struggles within the team and the effect it has on the investigation. Kusumi is not trusted by anyone because he didn't work his way from the regular police force, but was brought over from Public Security, which is a lot more 'devious' in its way of working, and it shows in how he handles this case. 

Shuujin no Dilemma ("Prisoner's Dilemma") is an interesting story because this time we don't follow any of the section leaders, but Tabata, head of Homicide and Violent Crimes. He's blessed, and cursed with his three talented subordinates and in this story, all three section leaders are busy with their own murder case, and Tabata has to juggle between keeping an eye on the three investigations, and keeping the press out of it. The story show how the three section leaders each approach their case in different ways, while Tabata has his own 'adventure' when he's approached by some members of the press who seem to know more than they should about the ongoing investigations, and he has to figure out how to keep a lid on things until the respective cases are resolved. Obviously, the titular prisoner's dilemma also plays a role in this story that is a neat showcase of the various characters in this world and the workings of the police force, not just at the crime scene investigation level, but also at the level above, with Tabata trying to manage three very different detectives. As a pure mystery story, it's a bit lacking, but it's a good procedural.

Misshitsu no Nukeana ("An Escape Exit From The Locked Room") is set inside an interrogation room in the police department with a deadly atmosphere. Last night, Section 3 (without the help of leader Murase, who had health problems) held a stake-out on a suspected murderer, who also has ties to the organized crime. The plan was to keep an eye on him once he got home and arrest him in the morning. Because of ties with a larger gang, Section 3 was also obliged to have a few detectives from the Organized Crime Division on site too, because if they had acted without saying anything, they'd have a big row later with their colleagues of Organized Crime. The detectives saw how the suspect drove home to the apartment complex, parked his car in the underground parking lot and later saw how the lights in his apartment high up in the building switched on. Outside, four teams held an eye on all possible exits from the complex. However, the following morning, when they went to arrest them, he was not in his room anymore and later the police even receive information that in the early hours of the day, he tried to secure a car by threatening a prostitute he knew. While the force is out on the look for him, a 'blaming' game is held, as how did the suspect manage to escape the apartment complex while every exit was supposedly watched? This is the best puzzle plot of the whole volume, dealing with the impossible disappearance of the suspect: all the exits out of the building were watched, he has no known allies in the same apartment building and most of all: how could he have known that he was going to be arrested in the morning: if he knew, he wouldn't have gone home in the first place, and if he didn't know, why did he disappear during the night? This leads to a fantastic, tense scene where the various teams involved in the stake-out where they all try to come up with a possible explanation for how the suspect manage to escape which will also to shift the blame to another team, though it's Murase's right hand who led the operation whose head is most likely to drop. Ultimately, they know that unlike their suspect, none of them will be able to leave this interrogation room until a guilty party is involved. The build-up to the final solution that explains how and why their suspect escaped is good and satisfying, and I definitely liked this story best of the whole volume.

Persona no Bishou ("A Persona's Smile") centers around the poisoning of a homeless man in Shizuoka Prefecture, which seems to have ties with an arsenic poisoning case that occured 13 years ago in F Prefecture. Two F detectives are sent to Shizuoka to learn more about the recent murder and they learn that a person similar to the facial composite drawing made 13 years ago was also seen just days before the homeless person's death. The story this time seems to have a much more personal note, as the main character is a rookie detective who had been used in a crime as a child too, and he sees some similarities between the old arsenic case and his own experience. I think this is the story I liked least of the whole collection, as it lacks the tense atmosphere the other stories have, and the core mystery too is also too much tied into past events, which makes it easier to guess how every thing is connected.

The final story, Monochrome no Hanten ("Monochrome Inversed") deals with the murder on the father, mother and young child of the Yumioka family. They were found dead in their home a day after they were killed, and the boy living next door remembers having seen a white car parked right next to his room around the time of the murder. Due to a scheduling mix-up, two teams have gone off to investigate the crime and both Section 1's Kuchiki nor Section 3's Murase have any intention of leaving the good stuff to their rival. The two teams both work to secure different places related to the crime, like the actual house or interviews with the neighbors, keeping the other team out. Because of this, both Kuchiki and Murase's team have to work using different leads, but will it lead to the same murderer? The idea of this story is good, having a more direct confrontation between the sections and it's interesting to see how they work off very different leads, but let's be honest: Kuchiki's lead is far more clever and interesting to follow, while Murase's lead is ultimately something the murderer could've avoided so easily and it kinda falls flat because the idea is definitely clever, but the murderer had to be so in a panic to actually do this, that it makes it appear as if it was only a matter of time the police would catch them, because if they'd do that, they were bound to be making more unnecessary mistakes.

Daisan no Jikou isn't precisely the type of mystery stories I usually read, with these stories being closer to police procedurals and there's also an emphasis on the internal politics of the organization, but I did enjoy the stories like a kind of palate cleanser. As a thrilling and gritty police procedural with tense, twisty plots and sometimes genuinely clever plot twists, Daisan no Jikou is great, and definitely worth a read.

Original Japanese title(s): 横山秀夫『第三の時効』:「沈黙のアリバイ」/「第三の時効」/「囚人のジレンマ」/「密室の抜け穴」/「ペルソナの微笑」/「モノクロームの反転」