When Thieves Fall Out

"When Peter suddenly asked him the question he decided all at once to do the meanest and most spiteful thing he could think of. He decided to let Lucy down.”

"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"

When I went to study in Japan for a longer period for the first time, I was still relatively early in my language studies, but I ended up in a program for international students with a noticable difference in the level of Japanese proficiency of the students, some having clearly much more experience with the language than I had at that stage. One friend in particular was very advanced and was even using his time to find a job in Japan. In Japan, there is the mechanism of "periodic recruiting of new graduates": companies hiring the newly graduated around the same period of the year. Companies have a preference for newly graduated, so basically all students start doing job interviews in their third years because otherwise, it'll be too late. Often, they have to pass several rounds of tests and interviews, and if you make it all to the end, you will be offered a naitei or promise of employment for the following year, if you actually graduate in your fourth and final year at university. So students in their final year often already know at the start of the academic year in April where they'll be working next April, and they'll start together with other newly graduated. Anyway, my friend actually did try out dozens of companies, doing tests and interviews and everything, and did actually get employed in Japan during his enrollment in our language program, which was pretty amazing in my eyes: we might have been put in the same program and been doing the same classes, but at that stage I certainly wasn't proficient enough in Japanese to even pass the first test round, let alone actually be offered a job!

And of course, the recruitment sessions of big, famous companies attract the largest numbers of students, and it's usually also very difficult to make it to the next round with these companies. So the six students who made it to the final round of the recruitment process of the pioneering IT company Spiralink are absolutely thrilled to be here, and of course all of them hope to be offered a job. While students hunting for a job have usually trained for tjhe different kinds of tests and interviews they might undergo during the recruitment processes of various companies however, these six students had not expected the form of their final test: a group discussion. The six are informed they have a month to learn to work as a team, and they'll be holding a group discussion one month later. The decision on who will be hired depends on their performance at the group discussion, but it's even possible that all six of them will be hired if they all do well. As everyone had expected a direct interview with a recruiter as the final round, the six are somewhat surprised, but given the free culture of Spiralink, they see the merits of this form and they decide to have a few get-togethers to get to learn each other and to prepare for the group discussion, as the six hope that all of them will be hired by Spiralink. The six are all quite different people, some the typical moodmaker, others more suitable as the leading type, but they get along surprisingly well and they all seem convinced they can all make it through this last round together. Until shortly before the discussion, they receive a mail from Spiralink saying that due to the economical situation, they can only recruit one person this year and the new assignment is that they have to decide together in a group discussion which of the six is the best candidate. 

The sudden assignment change makes the six students now six rivals, all wanting the one job at Spiralink. On the fateful day, the six gather in a meeting room. The candidates are left alone here, free to discuss which of them should have the job, while HR is viewing observing this discussion through cameras. The six students decide to hold several voting rounds, giving everyone a fair chance to argue their own case, but early on, the find a mysterious envelope in the room. When they open the envelope, they find six other envelopes inside, one addressed to each of the six students When they open one, they are shocked to find a note that accuses one of them of being a murderer, complete with newspaper articles and photographs about an incident the student had never mentioned to the others. It's at that moment they realize: these envelopes hold dirt on all of them, and somebody must have done to this to improve their own chances at getting the job at Spiralink. Asakura Akinari's Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei ("Six Lying Students" 2021) presents a rather original mystery: which one of these six students is trying to screw over their fellow recruit candidates?

With all that talk about harmony being a virtue in Japanese culture and how the individual has to adapt to the group, there's a lot of competition going in Japanese culture, with entrance exams to get into the best high schools and universities and of course students basically fighting, through their performance at tests and interviews, for a limited number of jobs at the best companies. Having a mystery about a recruitment process is therefore perhaps not incredibily surprising or out of nowhere, but I sure hadn't read a mystery novel about this before, so Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei does win a lot of points with me for that, because it's such an integral part of Japanese culture now, but it's not used very often as a focal point in mystery fiction. With all that competition and rivalry going on around age 20 to basically secure a job that may very well influence how the rest of your remaining life will go, you can definitely imagine some people willing to act rather desperately to make sure they'll be the one with a job at the end of the day. It's a great setting that will resonate with a lot of readers that are familiar with how recruitment works in Japan, but I think that if you aren't really familiar yet with the concept. Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei will provide for an entertaining, and informative read.

For the most part, Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei will not feel like any "normal" mystery novel due to its unique setting and problem, as there's no clear crime or really a mystery going on. Somebody has collected dirt on all of them and placed the evidence/accusations in envelopes in the meeting room, but the focus of the story revolves for the most part on the human drama, on seeing people you thought you knew being exposed as being something different. I think the marketing of this book also focuses partially on it being a work of entertainment, and you can easily imagine this being adapted as a television show or film (in fact, there is already a manga and I think there's also a stage play). The questions of who did it, why and how they are going to find out are obviously not "clearly defined" mysteries like you'll see in conventional mystery stories, with people investigating alibis or how the murderer could hold of a special weapon or something like that. In fact, early parts of the story might feel a bit repetitive, as it's just accusations going back and forth ("you must have done this, you knew you'd never stand a chance!"), without any real evidence.

The merits of this book as a mystery story however come at play in the second half of the book, set some years later after the group discussion, and when all six of them have moved on in their lives. One of the six (former) students decides to look into the incident again, as new discoveries have led them to believe things weren't as they believed they were at the time and it is at this point, revelations are finally made that clearly make this a detective novel. Little comments or actions that occured during the group discussion years ago suddenly take on a completely different meaning, and there are quite some moments that are really satisfying: there's surprisingly enough quite some misdirection going on in the group discussion segment of the book, even though the story seems really straightforward at first, and one has to give it to author Asakura for hiding some really nice surprises in that scene. Innocent remarks turn out to be pretty clevered foreshadowing, and apparent contradictions are revealed to have perfectly innocent explanations. Some of these mysteries are not really for the reader themselves to solve though, I feel and ultimately, I think the way they finally arrive at the "culprit" and their motive is a bit more straightforward than I would have wanted: considering all the various lines of misdirection and foreshadowing going on in this book, I had expected a few more "stages" in the line of reasoning pointing to the culprit, but overall, I think Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei is an entertaining piece of mystery fiction that probably has more to offer to the mystery fan than you'd initially expect. And the book does really delve into the theme of periodic recruiting of new graduates, connecting all strands of its storylines to this main topic.

Rokunin no Usotsukina Daigakusei will not immediately satisfy those looking for a tightly-plotted puzzle mystery where you have to figure out how a locked room was created or where you have to follow a clue to its logical conclusion in twenty steps, but as a work of fiction, it has a very wide appeal that goes beyond the mystery-reading audience, while actually providing quite some interesting elements for the devoted mystery reader too. There's some clever foreshadowing and clewing going on, and the setting of the recruitment interviews as a "crime scene" is quite inspired, resulting in a very suspenseful read that is likely to be remembered due to its unique angle.

Original Japanese title(s): 浅倉秋成 『人の嘘つきな大学生』

Murder Digs Deep

「事件は会議室で起きてるんじゃない！ 現場で起きてるんだ！！ 」

『踊る大捜査線 THE MOVIE』

 

"The case isn't happening in your conference rooms!! It's happening down here, at the scene!!"

"Bayside Shakedown"

The Nintendo DS was in many ways an amazing game device, but one of its greatest successes was the way in which it managed to attract a large audience, reaching people beyond "traditional" gamers. This was of course due to the broad of genres offered on the system. Even many "traditional" gamers will likely have had their first experience with Japanese adventure games and novel games through some of the system's sleeper hits like the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney series and Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, and other puzzle-focused games like the Professor Layton games. For people who mostly read mystery fiction, the Nintendo DS had a lot to offer to armchair detectives, from the aforementioned games to Cing's output like Another Code and Hotel Dusk, but also think of the many licensed games: the Nintendo DS had a huuuuuuge audience and developing for the system was also less expensive compared to its console counterparts, so you also had a lot of licensed mystery games like for the CSI series, or for example Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders.

Unsolved Crimes, released in 2008 on the Nintendo DS, has a rather plain title and most publications back at release seemed to treat it as a budget mystery adventure title, riding on the waves of the bigger mystery games on the Nintendo DS. And in a way, that's not wrong, but I think there's a lot more to Unsolved Crimes than you'd initially suspect, even if it's far from a hidden gem. Still, I think fans of mystery fans should take a look at it, especially as in 2022, you can find this game for next to nothing. While developed by Japanese studio Now Production, a studio I have seen often as a sub-contractor on bigger projects, this game is actually only published in the West and does not have a Japanese release. Set in 70s New York, you play the role of a rookie detective of the Homicide Division of the NYPD. Together with your veteran partner Marcy, the two of you investigate crime scenes and report to your boss Captain Abbot. And when I say you investigate crime scenes and not crime cases, I mean that. In all the major cases presented in Unsolved Crimes, the player and Marcy are responsible for going over the crime scenes again: initial investigation and interrogating suspects is always done by your co-workers, and all you get are reports on those findings. Marcy and the player are always just going up and down the crime scene and Captain Abbot's office. Each case, you go over the initial reports and then search the crime scene: perhaps there's a clue the first responders missed or perhaps you notice a contradiction between the testimonies of the suspects/witnesses and the actual crime scene. The cases can vary from a seemingly simple robbery-gone-wrong, to a deadly incident between friends to even cases involving serial killers and a locked room murder. Meanwhile, there's also an overarching storyline that involves the abduction of Marcy's model sister, though the tasks that involve that case are more like mini-games, compared to the more focused main mystery game.

Let me start with just saying that presentation-wise, yes, Unsolved Crimes looks very grey and boring. I think they were going for a 70s crime drama vibe, and some parts of the presentation like the one single music track they play constantly do a better job at conveying this theme, but the characters designs are pretty boring, and that's made worse by the fact you only see Abbot and Marcy "in person" in this game: all the other characters mentioned are just mugshots that adorn testimony reports. I can definitely see people looking at screenshots of this game on the back of the box and deciding it just isn't worth it, which, again, I think wouldn't be exactly right.

Unsolved Crimes utilizes the touch screen of the DS (ha, do you remember the time when people thought touch screens were just a gimmick!?) to present 3D crime scenes as well as evidence, which you can investigate from various angles. 3D graphics on the Nintendo DS were seldom really breath-taking, but I'd say the crime scenes look decent enough on the system and surprisingly, in most cases the 3D-aspect of the game is actually relevant. Most cases demand some spatial awareness if you want to solve the crime, and the way this integrates the story/puzzle-solving of this game with the presentation is clever. Some mysteries can only be solved by being at the crime scene and looking at things from a certain angle, allowing you to guess why a witness said a certain thing for example, while in other cases, being able to physically walk around at the crime scene just makes it a lot clearer how events must have happened. this is one aspect where mystery adventure games can really pull things off "normal" mystery fiction (books) can't (see also this editorial) and I think that while Unsolved Crimes does nothing mind-blowing, I think it's a good, not too complex showcase and perfect for people who normally don't play games and would want to "ease into" playing mystery games and see what they can offer when it comes to the mystery genre.

The mystery-solving gameplay of Unsolved Crimes however isn't perfect, even though I completely agree with the spirit behind it and I do wish more games would take cues from it, even if the execution here is definitely not perfect. Basically, every time you find some important clues or learn important facts, Marcy will fire questions at you: answer her multiple-choice questions correctly and present the correct proof to back your claim up, and lo, you have made progress in your investigation! Often, you'll need to answer a few important questions about the scene and report Captain Abbot, which will lead to new developments in the case (usually asking the suspects/witnesses for more testimony), allowing you investigate the case even further. Marcy's questions make Unsolved Crimes both an interesting, and yet at the same time quite boring game. Marcy's questions (usually about 15 per case) are really a way to guide the player into solving the crime, and very methodically build on each other: she starts off with very obvious questions, but after a while the questions start building off answers to previous questions, and before you know it, her questions have allowed you to solve that seemingly impossible locked room murder. But at the same time, Marcy's questions are too methodical, they really go through each and every single step and she fires these questions at you constantly, so the player isn't allowed to think for themselves too much. Each case only takes somewhere between twenty minutes to an hour at most, and that's because Marcy's always just leading you to the correct conclusions. While you'll end up with worse end-of-case ratings if you mess up Marcy's questions, it's unlikely you'll do so (often), as she really moves step by step and you can easily see how each questions builds on the previous answer. And I do have to say, i really liked how her questions really made seemingly complex cases very approachable. Yeah, sure, the locked room murder may seem daunting at first, but Unsolved Crimes does a good job at breaking a difficult problem down into smaller problems (questions) which you can solve, and shows how by building on previously made logical conclusions, you can present complex mysteries and really show the player how to tackle them. The way you solve each case is very methodological, and never does a revelation or deduction come out of nowhere. Some of the questions aren't even just multiple choice, but require you to for example pinpoint locations on a map (the spatial awareness I mentioned earlier) or to point out contradictions between testimony and crime scene and those really make good use of the game medium. So I truly like the idea of the leading questions as the major gameplay mechanic of Unsolved Crimes, as it does a good job at translating the "mystery solving" aspect of a mystery story, but at the same time the game is just too linear and hand-holdy because of that.

And that with the aforementioned sobre presentation does really mean Unsolved Crimes looks very boring: if you're not investigating a 3D crime scene, then you're just answering questions from Marcy or perhaps Captain Abbot. Even when you solve the case, all you get are reports about what happened next, and never do you get to meet any of the other characters in person. Action (touch screen mini-games) are found in the mini-missions that concern the kidnapping of Marcy's sister, like a car chase or even a shoot-out, but those aren't really presenting a mystery story or gameplay, and the finale to this overarching storyline is pretty disappointing as you really don't do much of the mystery-solving you do in the rest of the game.

But coming back to what I said earlier: I don't think this is a bad mystery game, and considering you can find a used copy for very little nowadays, I think it's a neat to check out if you still have a Nintendo DS (or 3DS) and have already played most of the major mystery adventure games on that system. Unsolved Crimes is one that you are likely to have missed, or just ignored when it first released in 2008, and while it's certainly not a masterpiece by any means, I think fans of the mystery genre will be able to find things to like about this game. I for one certainly wouldn't mind seeing more games that build on some of the better elements from Unsolved Crimes.

Dead Justice

Where do we go from here?  

When does the end appear?

"Once More With Feeling" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

The focus of this blog is mystery fiction in the broad sense of the word, so I also look at media beyond just books. Most people are of course also familiar with television or film, but of outside of books, the most-often featured media here tend to be manga and video games, because I generally consume a lot of those forms of entertainment, also outside the mystery genre. In the many years since I started this blog, I've written about a lot of mystery fiction, but the musical tag has one that's always been rather rare here: there just aren't that much mystery musicals, and even fewer that don't actually you to go to the theatre yourself, as few of them are actually made available as home video or streaming after the theatrical run.

The two mystery musicals I have discussed in the past were adaptations of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney game franchise, produced by the famous Takarazuka Revue: the Takarazuka Revue is an all-female musical theatre based in the city of Takarazuka which has been around since 1913 and is a household name in Japan. The Revue's shows are extravagant, fabulous shows that bring its audience to an other world where everyone looks like they stepped out of a classic shojo manga and sings and dances every few minutes. Besides original pieces, the Takarazuka Revue also does adaptations existing IPs like the aforementioned Gyakuten Saiban musicals, but they also have done musicals of famous action manga like City Hunter and Rurouni Kenshin (and in the anime, Kenshin is voiced by a former Takarazuka actress!). For the mystery fan, the Takarazuka Revue also has interesting titles in its repertoire, like a Sherlock Holmes musical.

Yuurei Deka ~ Sayonara suru, sono mae ni ("The Ghost Detective - Before We Say Farewell") is a Takarazuka musical which was originally performed in March 2021 and based on the 2000 novel Yuurei Deka ("The Ghost Detective") by Arisugawa Alice (disclosure: I translated Arisugawa Alice's The Moai Island Puzzle. ). Note that I haven't read the original work, so I can't say how close this adaptation is to the source material, though I am going to guess the elaborate dance and singing scenes are not found in the novel. The story starts at a local police station, where all the detectives are working hard on the case of the murder of a co-worker: a lot of time has passed since the police detective was killed, but they still have no leads. Kanzaki Tatsuya is one of the detectives working on the case, when one night, he's approached by his superior Kyoudou who suddenly apologizes and.... promptly kills him with a pistol. Oddly enough, Tatsuya becomes a ghost, capable of going everywhere but not able to physically interact with other people or objects in the world. He learns from a fellow ghost that he's probably still hanging around as a ghost as he has unfinished business, though in time, he'll move on to the afterlife anyway. Tatsuya tries to warn his fiancee Sumako, who always works at the police station, that his boss is the killer, but she's not able to hear him. Unlike Hayakawa, an old friend who has recently been reposted here. For some reason, probably because he hails from a family with spirit mediums, Hayakawa is able to see and speak with the ghost of Tatsuya, who explains all that has happened to him. Hayakawa agrees to work together to catch Tatsuya's killer, but their investigation has only started when Kyoudou is found shot dead inside an interrogation room at the police station, but no pistol is found at the scene and a witness outside the room states nobody left the interrogation room after she heard the shot, so who shot Kyoudou? A ghost? 

You know, this is an interesting impossible murder situation! Here we have a world with actual ghosts, and a mysterious death that appears to be the doing of a ghost at first sight due to the weapon being spirited away and no murderer found at the crime scene, and yet it's still impossible because we know ghosts in this world can't interact with objects like pistols! Add to that the mystery of Tatsuya not knowing why Kyoudou was killed or even why Kyoudou killed him at the start of the story, and you have a fairly entertaining story. Despite the depressing idea of the protagonist being killed at the very start of the story, there's a distinct comedic tone to the whole musical (probably partially because that fits the style of Takarazuka, I surmise based on the few musicals I saw), with a lot of comedy arising from his co-workers constantly Hayakawa talking out loud by himself, because they can't see the ghost of Tatsuya. And then there are of course the songs and dances strung in between which all gives the story a flashy feeling, with characters singing their own character introductions or a witness dancing to her own testimony. It's a fun watch, though a bit long (though that's perhaps I watched the home video release and I'd experience it differently in the actual theatre).

As mentioned above, I haven't read the original novel, so I can't say how much of this musical is actually taken directly from the novel, how much of the plot might be musical-original or whether important elements from the novel were cut, but on the whole, I think Yuurei Deka ~ Sayonara suru, sono mae ni offers a surprisingly robust mystery story, that even without the musical angle, is worth a watch. In essence, Yuurei Deka's plot consists of multiple ideas and concepts that might be simple on their own, but they are interwoven in clever and thoughtful manners, making the mystery seem more complex than the individual parts are. It's a technique often seen in Detective Conan, where multiple relatively simple ideas that might just be "okay" are strung together to construct a story that is more than its seperate parts added together. So in the case of Yuurei Deka, there are definitely some ideas that seem a bit weak on their own: the direct cause for Kyoudou's death in the interrogation room is just silly and the ultimate reason why Tatsuya was murdered by his boss is also a bit weak, though the set-up (clewing) for both concepts is okay.The way the locked room was constructed was also rather underwhelming, but I think that the underlying fundamentals behind that part of the mystery do tie nicely back to the (admittedly silly) reason why Kyoudou died. There are some really clever smaller parts of the mystery though, with one in particular which I really worked well in musical form: while I can imagine how it was done in the original novel and can see how it'd be pretty tricky too there, the presentation in the musical makes it both easier and harder to spot, and that's quite memorable. Add to that that the story does at point make meaningful use of the whole concept of Tatsuya being a ghost (like him eavesdroppping on people) in terms of mystery, and overall, I think that Yuurei Deka is a good mystery story even if not every single part is as strong.

 

I don't think there are moments where I thought that the musical form (i.e. with song and dance) was essential for this story to work, but that didn't really bother me anyway, and as expected of a Takarazuka Revue story, there was also an emphasis on the romantic subplot (Tatsuya being dead and Sumako grieving for him), but still, this can be enjoyed as a straight mystery story.

I can't make any comparisons with the original novel, perhaps that one is better, or perhaps not, but at the very least, the Takarazuka Revue's Yuurei Deka ~ Sayonara suru, sono mae ni is an entertaining musical that tells an entertaining and well-constructed puzzle plot mystery and unless you're really bothered by the fact the characters suddenly start singing or that everyone's being played by women, I'd say this will probably satisfy the people looking for the rare beast that is a murder mystery musical.

Original Japanese title(s): 有栖川有栖（原作）『幽霊刑事(デカ)~サヨナラする、その前に~』

Death Casts a Spell

"It's midnight."

"Cinderella"

I watched a lot of the classic Disney feature-length animated films when I was little, but Cinderella is one of the few I never saw...

The Thompson family was once a prominent family in the Kingdom of Illusion, but those days are a thing of the past now. Mother Catherine is still hoping that one day, the family will return to its former glory and her hopes are settled on her two daughters Giovanna and Layla. Cinderella, the child of her second husband who died a few years ago, is of course not part of Catherine's plans, and Cinderella is mostly just doing the odd jobs around the house. While Catherine, Giovanna and Layla are not as mean to Cinderella as you might have heard from certain fairly tales, it's still no surprise that Catherina plans to only take Giovanna and Layla to the 18th birthday party of Prince Olivier, hoping that the future king of the kingdom will fall in love with one of her daughters. Cinderella is to stay alone at the house, but is suddenly visited by a wizard, who conjures up a nice dress for Cinderella, as well as a pumpkin coach and a mouse-turned-human-coachman. The wizard also gives Cinderella a pair of specially made glass slippers that surprisingly aren't the product of magic. Cinderella really doesnt want to go to the castle party, because it was the perfect night to do some reading, but the wizard sends the stunningly-looking, but grumbling woman off, and a few moments later, Cinderella finds herself wandering at the ball under an alias, hoping Catherine and her step-sisters won't notice her. 

Prince Olivier does notice Cinderella though, and while she tries to decline a dance with the prince pointing to her glass slippers, the prince offers to lend Cinderella a proper pair of shoes from his collection and brings Cinderella to his private room. At first, Cinderella fears the prince might try some funny business, but it's really just a pair of shoes he offers her. They return to the ball, but after a while Cinderella decides it's time to return home, so she and the prince return to his room again to retrieve her glass slippers. Cinderella waits inside the room near the entrance while the prince goes behind a corner to get the slippers, but he takes an awfully long time to get them, and when Cinderella goes deeper inside the room to see what's keeping the prince, she stumbles upon the dead body of Prince Oliver lying on the floor. The guard standing outside the prince's room barges inside upon Cinderella's cry, and Cinderella is immediately arrested. Cinderella of course denies the accusation, even though on the surface, she's the only viable suspect: a guard was standing outside the prince's quarters all this time, and the only persons to go inside were the prince and Cinderella, and only one of these two is alive now. While Cinderella is given a minute to confide with Layla about her presence here, Cinderella is immediately put on trial for the murder on the beloved prince. While Cinderella is a fast talker and manages to stall a seemingly inevitable guilty sentence, time is ticking in Konno Tenryuu's Cinderella-jou no Satsujin ("The Cinderella Castle Murder" 2021), as the magic will fade at midnight revealing her true identity as Cinderella, child of the Thompson family and if she's found guilty, it will probably mean the death of Catherine, Giovanna and Layla too.

The last three, four years, I've been enjoying a lot of these mystery stories that are basically parodies of well-known children's stories, fables or other folk tales. These stories are patterned after these well-known tales, but transform them into magical locked room murders, devious murders where the murderer has a perfect alibi or a surprising whodunnit. Examples would be Kobayashi Yasumi's Märchen Murder series for example, which is based on well-known children's literature like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, or Aoyagi Aito's Once Upon A Time series, where he re-tells well known fairy tales from both Japan and the West as puzzle plot mystery stories. I absolutely love how these stories use tales we all know up to some degree, but transform them into detective stories that are both recognizable and new, and they also often utilize supernatural elements (magic) in clever ways. We all grew up on these stories and "know" the magic used in these tales, so it's really fun to see these elements most of us have known most of our lives used in mystery stories. Cinderella-jou no Satsujin was published last year and written by Konno Tenryuu, of which I have also read his Alchemist series, (it's basically Fullmetal Alchemist as a detective series), so I knew I could at least something decent from this book.

Making a comparison with a different work when discussing a certain book isn't the most elegant way of writing a review. In a way, it's pretty lazy, stating that A is similar to B, hoping the reader knows enough about "B" to understand what you are meaning. It's also something I do a lot in my reviews, because I am not really a really good reviewer. But honestly, I can't help but say this out loud: Cinderella-jou no Satsujin is exactly like a Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney story. There really is no other way to describe this book. And I don't even mean it in a negative way! In fact, I quite enjoyed reading Cinderella-jou no Satsujin, but if you have ever played any of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games, you can almost perfectly predict how the plot will unfold, because this book really follows the story pattern seen in those video games exactly. After the murder is discovered, Cinderella is immediately put on trial because the implications of the murder on Prince Oliver are just so big, even though the investigation at the crime scene hasn't even really ended yet! Almost everyone is already convinced Cinderella killed the prince as the trial commences, and even the judge doesn't sound really impartial as he makes the opening speech, but fortunately, if there's one thing Cinderella can do, it's think fast, and talk even faster, and it doesn't take long for Cinderella to pick up on little contradictions in the statements of the witnesses and attack those weak points, slowly proving that she was not the only one who could have murdered the prince even though initially it seems like an open-and-shut case.

And it's from this point on, Cinderella-jou no Satsujin unfolds almost as if it had originally been written as an episode in one of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games. Witnesses with quirky character traits appear at the witness stand with testimonies that initially seem to prove Cinderella's guilt, but Cinderella points out little contradictions each time, exposing these witnesses as either liars, or at least as someone who is under an misapprehension, and when pushed, it turns out their testimonies don't point unilaterally at Cinderella at all, and even open up opportunities for Cinderella to point at other suspects or prove how the apparent locked room murder of the prince is in fact not a locked room murder. The cycle of testimony -> contradictions -> new testimony or new witness -> contradictions is the bread and butter of the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games, which in turn took inspiration from Columbo, but the whole courtroom setting combined with the way all the witnesses have some weird quirks or how they "transform" (drastically change mood/tone) when contradictions are pointed come straight out of the famous video game series. The book even has an extra investigation segment between two trial parts, where Cinderella is allowed to do some extra investigations at the crime scene, follows the story flow of any given Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney episode. 

The reader is therefore also kept entertained from start to finish, as Cinderella constantly solves little mysteries throughout the tale by pointing out the contradictions in the testimonies. The reader is also given a fair chance at noticing these contradictions themselves too, making this an engaging read because each time, you really want to notice the contradictions before Cinderella does. And whether you manage to point out these contradictions yourself first or not, there's always the extra question of why a certain contradiction exists. Did that witness just intentionally lie to hide something that would reveal Cinderella's innocence? Or were they deceived into assuming something, and why would that be the case? As the story continues, Cinderella of course also points out the possibility of magic having been used to kill Prince Oliver in the locked room. With Cinderella being given a magic dress and a pumpkin coach and more at the start of the tale, the reader is already mentally prepared for the implications of magic on the mystery plot, and Kanno does a good job at setting out the limitations of magic for this plot, similar to how alchemy plays an important role in his Alchemist series, but where it's not just a magic answer to everything. Magic perpaps plays not as prominently a role in Cinderella-jou no Satsujin as alchemy in the Alchemist series, but it's quite satisfying to see all the magic with a Cinderella motif put to good use in this mystery novel. Ultimately, I think the solution to the locked room murder on Prince Oliver is not really complex or surprising when examined as a singular plot idea (so if you'd only look at how the locked room murder came to be), but the journey to the solution is really entertaining and I enjoyed the ride to midnight.

I don't know if there are more mystery stories that are patterned after Cinderella, I assume there are, but Cinderella-jou no Satsujin at least is a fun one! While the basics of the fairy tale are still intact, the wise-cracking Cinderella and the other figures are funny original takes and additions to the tale, and as a mystery story, Cinderella-jou no Satsujin is a well-plotted mystery story that is especially fun if the reader tries to identify the contradictions themselves too, trying to solve the mystery before Cinderella does. I wouldn't mind if Konno would turn this into a series!

Original Japanese title(s):  紺野天龍『シンデレラ城の殺人』

Ask a Policeman

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do 

"One" (Three Dog Night)

Aibou ("Partners") is a very succesful police drama in Japan that's been running since 2000, with season 20 probably nearing its end by the time this review is published. The series is about the Special Orders Unit, a two-man unit within the Metropolitan Police Department that is basically only there to keep Sugishita Ukyou there: while Sugishita is one of the most brilliant men to be found within the police force, his sense of justice often clashes with the decisions of administration. The people at the top know Sugishita is indispensible, that if they need him they really need him, but at the same time, they like to keep him locked up in a box until that time, and that's basically what the Special Orders Unit: he is to do nothing, unless there's a special order. Of course, Sugishita likes to poke into his business that aren't his, so more often than not, he decides to look into homicide cases, figuring that he's allowed to do this, unless there are special orders that tell him otherwise. In the series, Sugishita is always accompanied by a younger subordinate, his titular partner, who forms a contrast with the cool-minded Sugishita. While Sugishita has been a constant in the television show since it started in 2000 however, he has seen partners come and go, with his current partner in Season 21, Kaburagi, being his fourth formal partner in the SOU. I occassionally watch an episode or special of the show, but I haven't really been following this series lately, even though I did watch the whole run of Kaito (the third partner) in season 11 - 13, as well as the first seasons with Kaburagi. 

Like I said, Aibou is huge in Japan, with the franchise being much more than just the core television show. There have been theatrical releases, spin-off movies, video games, and of course novels. Most of the novels are, not surprisingly, simply novelizations of the episodes, but there is also a sub-series of novels that feature completely original adventures of Sugishita. The novel series is also referred to as the Sugishita Ukyou series, as it focuses on him alone, rather than on "partners." These books, written by Ikari Uhito (a pen name of Torikai Hiu), usually have Sugishita operating alone, for example during a holiday or are set in the periods between partners leaving and coming. Other familar faces in the series do appear in these stories, but these stories do feel a bit different from the television show because Sugishita acts alone here. Sugishita Ukyou no Misshitsu (2013), which also has the English title The Locked Room Mysteries of Ukyo Sugishita, is the third book in the series and consist of two novellas. I decided to read this one, because chronologically, it felt the most "familiar" to me: these stories are set in the period after Sugishita's second partner Kanbe left the show in season 10, but before he met his third parter Kaito in Hong Kong in the pilot special of season 11, which is when I started to really watch whole seasons, so starting with this book also felt the most natural to me. I don't think you need to have any prior knowledge to enjoy this book as a mystery book by the way, and it's written in a very simple manner so it might even be perfect for people starting to read mystery stories in Japanese, but it will probably feel a bit bland, because the stories do assume you know the recurring characters well enough and it barely bothers to explain anything about them.

The first story, Daifugou no Chousenjou ("A Challenge from a Billionaire") in the book opens with Sugishita receiving a letter from an old college friend. Takamatsu Hirofumi belonged to the contract bridge club at university, while Sugishita of course belonged to the chess club, and it's througn these games that the two first met. They had not kept in touch however, which is why Sugishita is quite surprised to receive this letter. After college, Takamatsu started a venture business in semiconductors, which eventually grew into the major company Semicon Z. Recently, he announced he'd retreat as the head of the company however. He plans to retreat to his new house on Kubura Island, an island in Okinawa he has bought for himself and his wife. In his letter, Takamatsu invites Sugishita to a small party to commemorate this new phase of his life, but in a special post-scriptum accompanying the invitation, he says he's planning to hold a special detective game during the party, and he hopes Sugishita will come. Intrigued by this letter, Sugishita decides to go to Kubura Island, where he learns the other guests are all people who work at Semicon Z, as well as the architect of the splendid house Takamatsu had built. The house is built against the cliff, and there's an elevator that goes down into the cliff, leading to a special room below sea level with a glass wall that serves as a private aquarium, looking out right into the sea!

Before the party starts, Takamatsu confides to his old friend that he fears someone's after his life, and that's why he gave up his position at Semicon Z: curious incidents that could've ended very differently for him have occured recently, and he doubts they were accidents Takamatsu suspects this is related to a case of a leak of confidential business information that happened at Semicon Z, and a bugging device he found in his office. The other guests at the party are in fact all suspects in the eyes of Takamatsu, and he has a "detective game" in mind during dinner to smoke out the spy. That evening, Takamatsu disappears during dinner, but is then shown on a television screen to his guests. Sitting in the aquarium room, he announces they are going to play a detective game. The "made-up" case is about a company spy, a bugging device, and the summing up of suspects who all have a reason to betray the company, and of course, the "story" told by Takamatsu basically applies to what really happened, and the persons present at the party. Takamatsu then says that he challenges his guests to guess who the spy is: they have twelve hours to figure out which of them is the traitor, with Takamatsu also claiming he has found a fingerprint on the bug he discovered in his office, and that combined with the fingerprints he will retrieve from the tableware used during dinner, they'll know for sure who the spy is (a bluff). Takamatsu even challenges the murderer to come to the aquarium room, as he and the evidence will be waiting there the coming twelve hours. Sugishita wants to stop this game and urges the spy to come clean, but is immediately knocked out by the servant. By the time he wakes up, it's basically twelve hours later, but there's no announcement by Takamatsu. When they go downstairs in the aquarium room, they find Takamatsu stabbed to death in the aquarium room, as well as one of the guests, but time-wise it doesn't seem he could've killed Takamatsu and what's even more puzzling: the door of the aquarium room can't be opened from the inside and Takamatsu had been acting as bait to trap the spy inside this room. But if so, how did the real murderer escape the room after killing Takamatsu?

An interesting story, also because it doesn't feel at all like a story you'd see in the normal Aibou series, at least, not in this form. A closed circle mystery on a remote island in Okinawa, with an underwater room being the setting of a locked room murder mystery: while Aibou episodes do provide puzzle plot msyteries at time, they seldom have all these tropes in one single story! The mystery revolves around how the murderer could've commited the crime inside a room designed as a trap, as a space that would seal itself once they set foot inside. The trick behind how this was all done has elements that will feel familiar perhaps, but the manner in which the stories lays out its clues and leads the reader (and Sugishita) to the answer is pretty good. It's definitely a concept you will likely not see in the main Aibou television series and it clearly leans much more into the fantastical ideas and tricks you see in mystery novels, rather than on television. So it gets points for that. It's a simple concept that's easy to visualize, though I have an inkling that readers of mystery fiction will soon think of it, though regular viewers of Aibou might find this much more surprising. I do think the story does feature a lot of coincidences that are designed solely to act as misdirection, and a lot of the latter part of the story consists more of brushing away all these red herrings rather than focusing on the core mystery. Of course, most mysteries do feature a red herring or two, but a lot of the elements here feel like they feel added arbitrarily, functioning solely as a standalone red herring and it can feel tiring to constantly learn that something wasn't relevant to the actual murder anyway. 

The second story, Kabe ("Wall") starts with the discovery of the half-decayed body of Watari Junichirou, president of the outdoor sports equipment business Outdoor Dream by his secretary. Watari was believed to have left for the States a week ago and while he was gone, the vice-president wanted to try out the special climbing wall they had built on top of the building of Outdoor Dream. Watari had a special tower made on the roof of the building, with climbing walls on the inside. While "technically" it was for all employees, only the president used it regularly. But the vice-president wanted to have some exercise too, so he decided to ask Watari's secretary to unlock the tower, so he could try it out too during Watari's trip in the US. But it appears Watari never left for the US, and that he had been lying dead in the climbing tower since the day before he was supposed to go on his business trip. At first it's believed the man may have fallen to his death during climbing, but when Sugishita points out the man has no chalk in his hands, suspicion of murder arises, especially when the police learns the man was a notorious womanizer who had been harrassing women at work too. But the tower was locked until the secretary opened the tower eight days after his supposed death, and she saw nobody inside the tower, nor could anyone have escaped from the tower or roof during the time she got help and notified the police. So how was this murder committed?

A much shorter, and more simple story. The idea of a climbing tower as a locked room space is interesting: spatially speaking, it's actually very large (and high), with the extended roof being part of the setting too, but as the only two keys to the tower were either inside the tower, or kept by the secretary during those eight days, it's still a proper locked room mystery. The manner in which the story introduces the culprit and involves them in the core puzzle-solving plot feels a bit forced, but the clues that ultimately point out how the murderer did manage to escape the locked room are good, as are the clues indicating the identity of the murderer. The motive too feels closer to something you'd usually see in the series, which is also strengthened by the appearances of more familiar faces in the series, as we do see people like the forensic investigator Yonezawa despite Sugishita's partner Kanbe having left the series already at this point.

On the whole, I think Sugishita Ukyou no Misshitsu is a pretty decent read for fans of the series. The two stories featured here are definitely more focused on a fair play puzzle plot than the stories you usually see in the television series, which tend to focus more on social school themes, so especially those who do like the world of Aibou, who occassionally wants to see more "classic" mystery set-ups, this book is the way to go. There's nothing mind-blowing here, nor truly original ideas, but the stories are competently written and provide at least the level of entertainment I'd expect from an original Aibou story. I for one am definitely planning to read more of this series. But while these books are written in a very accessible way and take little time to get through them, I do hesitate a little to recommend them to people who don't know Aibou, as these stories do very little to actually introduce the reader to the world and characters. While the mystery plots do work as standalone stories, they do feel a bit underdeveloped without prior knowledge of the series. So this book is best read as a companion to the series, even if theoretically, you can read them without knowing the television show.

Original Japanese title(s): 碇卯人『杉下右京の密室』:「大富豪の挑戦状」/「壁」

RePainTrick

君の笑顔ひとつで救われたんだ magic of the smile

"Magic" (愛内里菜)

 

I was saved by a single smile of you

Magic of the smile 

"Magic" (Aiuchi Rina)

Today: a book I should have read a different time.

Most knowledge on magic had been lost after the medieval witch hunts, but about a century ago, people started studying magic again. While many types of magic once known to the world are now still "lost tasks" (forgotten arts), magic has been developing as a genuine academic field of science and there are universities across the world that have a magic faculty. Mind you, this is no Harry Potter. One has to be born with the ability to perform magic and at the moment, there are only six known magicians on the world, who are all put under the supervision of the Order of Zenith (OZ), a governing agency located in the UK. However, "normal" people can still study the workings of magic and do research on it, similarly to how not all Literature students actually write literature. Japan has been one of the slowest countries to become accepting of magic and it was only this academic year that a university opened the very first Magic Faculty in Japan. Jousui University had more big news however: they managed to get Shiina Sakyou, one of the six magicians on this world, on board as one of their teachers. Some months have passed since their promising first adventure at the start of the academic year involving Shiina and his seminar class, and it's become summer. Shiina invites his class to a two-day outing to a university research facility in the mountains, though only Amane (the narrator) and Ririko are able to make it. Shiina will be going there to meet fellow magician and friend Simon L. SmithKlyne. Simon is the youngest known magician, whose powers first manifested after a horrible plane accident in which his parents died. His younger sister Juno was about to die too, but Simon miraculously managed to use healing magic to save her, even though healing magic is a Lost Task and nobody has managed to recreate that old art. Since then, Simon and Juno have been put in the custody of OZ, with Simon specializing in alchemy magic. Through a mutual friend, Simon has obtained a formula that might allow him to use resurrection alchemy, but the magic requires the powers of at least two magicians, which is why he has travelled all the way to Japan to Shiina, under the supervision of OZ guards. 

The experiment is to be held at the Jousui University research facility, which is also where Amane and Ririko first meet Simon and Juno. Simon's lost the use of his legs after the plane accident, and his sister Juno has been taking care of him, while also being an accomplished magic researcher herself, and while they are considered authorities in the field, they are actually still young and turn out to be really nice to both Amane and Ririko. The experiment is held in the basement of the facility, with Shiina and Simon moving into a special closed off booth to protect others from possible magical rebounds. At first, things seem to go as planned, but the experiment suddenly backfires and ends in a complete failure. Simon is obviously both shocked and disappointed in the results nd stays in the lab to find out what went wrong. The next morning, Juno is in a panic because she can't find Simon, and eventually, they discover that the cellar lab is locked from the inside, and the only key is gone, because Simon had been carrying it with him. Shiina manages to open the lock using alchemy. Inside, they find that Simon has hung himside inside the booth, apparently in despair after his failed experiment. The key to the lab is also found with him, seemingly cementing this as a suicide. Juno however refuses to believe her brother committed suicide and she becomes enraged when she learns that the guards of OZ are trying to take away Simon's remains immediately back to the UK, as OZ considers the remains of a magician to important. The local police of course refuse to just let the people of OZ do whatever they want, but the problem is that it doesn't seem possible anyone could've murdered Simon, considering he was found inside a locked room. Of course, there was one other person at the facility who could have used alchemy to open and lock the door again, a thing easy enough to prove as there were only two magicians in Japan at the time. But Shiina isn't the murderer of course, and while the local police and OZ struggle with each other, another murder occurs in Kuzumi Shiki's Tricksters L (2005). 

Tricksters L is the second novel in Kuzumi's Tricksters series, but the third one I have read. Because, yep, I don't read things in order. Both the first Tricksters and Tricksters D (the third novel) were quite fun, so it was just a matter of time before I'd read more of this series, though I have to admit right now: I probably should have read this in order. Not because of spoilers or anything, but my timing of reading this book was just horrible, and it didn't help the experience at all. And there wasn't much this book could have done about that: it was just unlucky. Had I read this book months before, I would have liked the book much better.

About a month before I read Tricksters L, I happened to have read Konno Tenryuu's Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu (2020), which also has the English title Alchemist in Locked Room. Which was a detective novel set in a world where alchemy exist. Okay, not a problem per se, though I hadn't expected this overlap in theme between the two books. Tricksters was about magic, and the first book introduced minor magic arts like locating people, but Tricksters L decided to focus on alchemy as a specific branch of magic, and little of the magic spells (and their specific rules/limitations) introduced in the first book returned in this book, as D was about alchemy. Fair. But then Tricksters D presented the plot of a mysterious death of an magician/alchemist in an underground lab, a locked underground lab to be exact, and a lot of the book revolving around the fact that only a fellow magician could have committed the murder inside a locked room, and of course, that our hero turns out to be that one person who could've been the murderer. Which is basically the same plot as Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu, so you could imagine me being a bit disappointed reading these two books only two, three weeks apart. And what certainly didn't help was that ultimately, a lot of the ideas and concepts that make up the solution of both books are very similar. Strangely enough, despite mystery fiction often building on existing tropes and me practically only reading mystery, I don't experiece something like this often, and certainly not to the degree as this time.

Mind you, Tricksters L was released in 2005, and Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu in 2020, so Tricksters D is of course the older one, and it's not like the solutions to both novels are exactly the same, but they do share a lot of similar ideas and that's why I already guessed what was going on very early in the book, for I still had the solution to Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu in my mind. And if you know what happens in that book, it's very easy to apply some of the ideas seen there and see how they fit in Tricksters L and you'll realize that the two books are very similar, like a parallel world version. The idea on its own is still good, and ultimately, Tricksters L takes the idea to a different terminal station, and tells a very different kind of story based on the same idea, but still, it's easy to recognize that both books built upon the very same idea. As expected, the concept of alchemy does of course play an important role in this story, and while I think the "rules" of alchemy are not explored as much as the magic spells were in the first Tricksters, nor explained as detailed compared to the alchemy we see in Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu, Tricksters L still manages to present a good, fair-play mystery set in a world with magic and alchemy. I do have to say that for a moment, I thought I was on the wrong track when a false solution was introduced which was to be completely honest, very memorable. Sure, the solution is proven to be wrong and if you take like a second to think about it, you realize very quickly why that particular idea to explain how the locked room was creeated wouldn't work, but the base dynamics/the foundation of that idea is wonderfully silly, really the kind of idea you only see in mystery novels, and the sort of idea you want to see in mystery novels. I would love to read a detective story that takes this solution and, with some tweaks, makes it the actual solution to a locked room mystery!

False solutions in general are a staple of the series by the way, which is partially why the series is called Tricksters: there's a lot of misdirection going in general, with false solutions being proposed by Shiina, Amane and others, and other misdirection going throughout the story that is only revealed at the end, and while these books are all very short, they usually manage to feel quite satisfying for puzzle plot lovers, as there's a lot of clewing and unraveling going on. While this second book doesn't go as far as the first book, which started with a sort of Challenge to the Reader announcing the reader will be fooled in seven different ways in the following chapters, it's still fun to see how in the end, Shiina and Amane reveal there was probably more misdirection going on than you might've expected at first.

Tricksters L had the unbelievable bad luck I happened to have read the one book on the world that is probably most similar to it just a few weeks before I started on Tricksters L. With similar motifs and even solutions that are at the care basically the same, you can understand why I felt a bit disappointed reading this book, even though it was not really the work's fault. Taken on its own, it's a perfectly enjoyable mystery novel, a bit short perhaps, but still fun and people who liked the first book certainly won't be disappointed by Tricksters L. The only tip I can give is really to not read this book and Renkinjutsushi no Misshitsu closely after another: there are just too many parallels and if you know the solution to one of them, it's really not hard to make the conversion and figure out what is going on in the other. Normally, I'd try to avoid spoiling this for other readers, but these two are just so incredibly similar and I really wouldn't want someone to have the same experience as I had. Let some time pass between the two books until you've forgotten the details.

Original Japanese title(s): 久住四季『トリックスターズL』

Old Habits Die Hard

"Extra, extra, read all about it!"

Huh, I am really using the anthology tag only once a year...

Disclosure: I am a member of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. However, I didn't vote for the stories this year though. Or any year to be honest.... I just never read short stories published in magazines, making it impossible for me to vote in the first place...

We've made it halfway through the year 2022, so here it is: Honkaku-Ou 2022 ("The King of Honkaku 2022"). This annual summer anthology collects the best honkaku short stories published the previous year, as selected by the members of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan. It is basically a counterpart to the Honkaku Mystery Award, which is awarded to the best published book each year. Short stories are usually published in magazines or online, which occasionally can make them difficult to track down several months later, so that is why each year, this anthology is published, to ensure these stories can be easily found. I've been reading this collection since they started the current format in 2019, and while it's not like I love every single story each time, the anthologies do give a good idea of what's going on each year in the mystery scene of Japan. Last year's volume for example had a #StayHome themed story because of a certain pandemic, so I was curious to see whether that would still find its way into this volume one way or another. But while each year can be quite different, the last two entries featured some stories that were really strong and some even ended up on my favorite reads of the respective year, so it's always worth it to at least take a look at these books.

Nemuranai Keiji to Inu ("The Detectives and Dogs That Don't Sleep") by Michio Shuusuke and Island Kitchen by Ashizawa You are the stories by the two novelists I had never read before, and to be really honest, these were also the two stories in this volume I liked least. I can easily explain why though, as both stories feature a somewhat vaguely defined problem/case, so it takes a long time for the story to get to a point where you really feel you are reading a mystery story, rather than something else. Both do start out with a seemingly "straightforward" case though. Nemuranai Keiji to Inu for example has a police detective hiring a... pet detective to find a missing dog. The dog's owners were murdered in their home, and their dog went missing on the same night, so it is assumed the dog is involved in one way or another with the case. The pet detective in question is Ezoe Masami, a pet detective who has an incredibly good track record, but the narrator, a female police detective knows Ezoe isn't always honest to his clients, occasionally finding pets early and keeping them hidden so they'll hire him for a longer period. She hires Ezoe to find the missing dog behind her superior's back and thus the two go looking for the dog together. What follows is a story that works pretty good as a character study, where parallels are drawn between the two detectives and dogs, but the reveal about how the dog is ultimately connected to the murder feels a bit... underwhelming, because most of the page count seems to be more focused on the characterization than the puzzle. Which is a matter of personal taste of course, but I feel like even with the same puzzle elements, this story could have been a tricker, and more amusing detective story had the emphasis on the themes been shifted a bit. The same holds for Island Kitchen, which starts with a retired police detective visiting a real estate agent, hoping to find a home with a garden for him and his wife. He spots an apartment building among the listings where he once investigated a deadly fall and he starts reminiscing. The case involved a woman living in the building falling to her death, but it was unclear whether it was an accident, suicide or murder. The woman had been stalked by someone for a long time, but the police hadn't done anything to help her, so suicide due to despair, or murder both seemed quite possible. As the former detective thinks back to the case, he realizes not everything was as it was, and personally, I think the *idea of the twist* is pretty good. But the "set-up" to the twist is so long and involves so many elements that ultimately aren't relevant to the twist specifically, it kind falls flat for me, because now it's almost like you're reading two seperate stories that are only linked in a very, very minor manner. I really do like the twist itself though, so I kinda wish it had a different story as the set-up.

Ooyama Seiichirou's work is always a joy to read, and he mostly writes short stories, so he fits here really well. Karamazov no Doku ("The Poison of the Karamazovs") is of course a story inspired by The Brothers Karamazov and is part of a series about Kayou Daisuke, an actor specializing in villain roles, but who is actually a gifted armchair detective. This time he is consulted by the elderly Yamazono Marue, who in her younger years as a housekeeper for an agency. She recounts the time she was involved in a murder case. At the time, she had been assigned by her agency to work at the house of the wealthy Karamura Tatsuo. On her first day, she met with the man, and his three sons, and they soon reminded her of The Brothers Karamov and the characters of Fyodor and his sons Dmitri, Ivan and Alexei. She has only just arrived when she is asked to pour in tea for everyone, and she quickly returns from the kitchen with the refreshments. But the moment Tatsuo has his drink, he starts coughing and gagging. An ambulance is called, but it is too late, and the man ends up dead. The police learn he was poisoned, but can't figure out how: the young maid had never met the man before and had just arrived on her first day here, while her three sons each had a motive to kill the man for his money, but couldn't have tampered with the drinks the maid had prepared. It's a very short story, so I think the actual explanation of how this seemingly impossible poisoning was done will not be incredibly surprising, but I do like the initial one or two clues that put the reader on the trail. I think that even when the actual "how" of an impossibility in Ooyama's work is simple at the core, he always does a good job at actually laying out a trail of clues for the reader to follow in order to arrive at that how logically (instead of just guessing), so in that sense, his stories never disappoint.

It's been while since I last read something by Morikawa Tomoki... Wa-wait! It's been 8 years!? The last one I read was back in 2014?? Anyway, Whodunnit Reception is a pretty interesting story that is foremost a puzzle. The story starts when Masatsugu and his classmate friend Yumiko sneak into the room of Masatsugu's brother Masakazu, a young mystery writer. Masatsugu is just looking for some files he knows are in the room that'll come in handy for a school project, but Yumiko accidentally knocks over some coffee over some hand-written documents, which turn out to be a finished, but unpublished manuscript, being the solution to a mystery story that's being serialized right now! Masatsugu knows his brother doesn't use computers and hardly keeps any copies, so he realizes in how much trouble they are right away as the coffee has erased a lot of the text. Masatsugu and Yumiko eventually manage to reconstruct most of the documents, but there are still spots that were tainted too much by the coffee, making it impossible to see what was originally written there, and it turns out they are the most important part of the story, where the detective explains how they figured it out and who the culprit is. Yumiko, a budding writer herself, however comes up with a plan: they are going to guess what is supposed to go in the blank spots based on the context of the surrounding passages, reconstrucing the solution of the story! A very interesting story, as it turns the solution of a mystery story into a mystery! There are 17 blank spots, and the reader, Masatsugu and Yumiko have to deduce what goes in each blank spot based on the surrounding context of the detective's explanation of the case (they do not have the first part of the story). It's very puzzle-like: you first fill in the spots that are very obvious based on the context, and that allows you to fill in other spots too because of the implications of the previously filled in spots etc. The story surprisingly has a few twists too while you fill in these blank spots, and it's pretty fun to read, but it does very "puzzle-like" because you are really filling blank spots, and some readers might find it a bit too "artificial." I myself enjoyed the whole concept though of a solution part of a mystery story being a mystery itself and have you deduce the solution of a mystery story of which you don't even know the first part!

Houjou Kie has been a personal favorite since she made her debut of course and I loved her short story Amulet Hotel last year, so I was really looking forward to her short story Kage wo Kuu Mono ("Shadow Eater"). And of course, this story features supernatural elements: the narrator is out camping deep in the woods with a friend and his dog. The narrator wakes up in the middle of night and happens to spot a Shadow Fish, a kind of yokai (supernatural being) that feeds on the shadows of living beings. The Shadow Fish can only move in shadows, jumping from one shadow to another, and it preys on the shadows of living beings. Once they have jumped into the shadow of their victim, they remain in their shadow (even if the person/animal wakes up) and feeds on the shadow until the shadow is gone, which kills the person/animal in question. The narrator sees how the Shadow Fish jumps out to the shadow of a dead fox and in the direction of his two sleeping companions and by the time he has waken both of them, he realizes it's too late: the Shadow Fish is in the shadow of either his dog or his friend, but they can't tell which of them. They happen to have a very powerful drug that can kill the Shadow Fish, but they have only one tablet, and the drug is so powerful it will kill a person/animal if they take it without a Shadow Fish being their shadow. With little time left until the Shadow Fish is done feeding on its prey, the narrator and his friend have to quickly deduce where the Shadow Fish is, based on the shadows at the time the Fish was spotted. Houjou once again brings a new kind of mystery story by using supernatural elements: this is almost like a "whodunnit", only you are looking for the "culprit" hiding inside a different person. You can also tell Houjou is a gamer (like with her third book), as there are (segments in) games where you have to move from shadow to shadow as a gameplay mechanic and this story of course feels very similar to that. While there is an emphasis on deducing where the Shadow Fish went based on "rules" (the Shadow Fish can only jump a certain distance, it will always go for the nearest sleeping target etc.), the way the story is also very focused on visuals do form an obstacle for this story, I think. A lot of the story hinges on how far each shadow of everything in their camp reached at the time the narrator spotted the Shadow Fish, and while this story has diagrams, you do have to consider multiple "moments" of where each shadow was, so I think this story, ironically, would have worked better as a game, allowing you quickly "scroll" between the various moments. It's a good mystery story though that as always shows detective stories don't need to be realistic to present interesting mysteries.

Asakura Akinari's Ito no Hito wo Sagashite ("Looking for the Person of My Thread") is tied as my favorite in this volume with Kage wo Kuu Mono and is in a way the polar opposite, as it pertains to a very "realistic" occassion: a goukon or group blind date. The narrator, Kawase, is an unremarkable university student who never had a girlfriend, which is why he didn't really believe his friend Yoshimi told him his girlfriend knew a girl who was interested in Kawase. The girl is rather shy however and doesn't dare to approach Kawase without "any cause", so the idea is having both of them appear at the same group date, with five men and five women. That would give the girl an opportunity to strike up a conversation with Kawase and see how things'll go from there. Kawase has never been in a group blind date before, so when Kawase first arrives at the restaurant, he's quite nervous, but the first girl to arrive immediatey says she knows Kawase from classes, so the plan to find the person on the other end of the red thread of fate seems to work... until the second girl also says she knows Kawase. And the third, fourth and fifth too! Kawase remembers he was never told what the other girl's name was or how she looked like, and now all five girls seem somewhat interested in him (to the chagrin of the other four men). At first, Kawase thinks that it shouldn't really mattter with what girl he ends up with: his friends may have  intended him to meet a certain girl and arranged for both them to attend this group date, but they can hardly critizie him if he happened to get along better with someone else, right? But then he receives information that tell him he has to be very, very careful, as there's "something dangerous" about each of the other girls: one of them for example is actually a married woman cheating on her husband, while another girl is the daughter of a boss of a crime syndicate, and another is an underground idol with very fanatic fans who are willing to kill if they learn their idol is dating someone... So can Kawase deduce which of the five girls in front of him is the girl he was supposed to meet? Okay, so the setting of this story is a bit silly, as apparently people around Kawase do recognize some of the women in their group date and know they are "dangerous" one way or another, but at the same time they don't actually know which woman they are or don't tell Kawase. The way the puzzle is constructed feels a bit forced, but you know, I can live with it, because this is just a fun story. It has a distinct, comedic tone where Kawase keeps falling in love with basically every girl all over again every time he thinks they are "safe". At the same time, this is a well constructed detective story, where you have to use the few hints Kawase did learn about each girl and try to deduce the identify of each girl. Some of the hints are a bit too obvious I think, or in some instances the "time" between a certain clue and the revelation which girl is who is a bit too short, giving you too little time to think for yourself. But overall, this is a very memorable story, because it is basically a "whodunnit" only now you're just trying to figure out which girl Kawase is supposed to be dating. So as mentioned earlier, this story is strangely enough very different, and similar to Kage wo Kuu Mono, as both are original takes on a "whodunnit" concept, but in very different manners.

Like the 2021 edition, Honkaku-Ou 2022 is a pretty solid anthology, with a few really strong puzzle plot stories. Personal favorites are the entries by Houjou Kie, Asakura Akinari and Morikawa Tomiki, but none of the six stories are truly bad, and while these volumes usually only have five, six stories, they tend to be fairly consistent in quality exactly because they have been selected by a whole group, rather than just one single editor. This is the fourth volume in this format, but I have really grown to appreciate reading this anthology once a year, just to see what is going on in the short story format. Hopefully we'll have a solid volume next year too!

Original Japanese title(s): 『本格王2022』: 道尾秀介「眠らない刑事と犬」/ 大山誠一郎「カラマーゾフの毒」/ 芦沢央「アイランドキッチン」 / 方丈貴恵「影を喰うもの」 / 浅倉秋成「糸の人を探して」 / 森川智喜「フーダニット・リセプション」