The Unseen Door

 "My thanks! I find the dead no acquisition, And never cared to have them in my keeping."

"Faust" (Bayard Taylor tr.)

I read this book in December, but the book is set during a heated summer, which by the time this review is posted, should be approaching...

Yabusaka Ichirou had a birth defect that manifested in his childhood, affecting the use of his fingers. He however did not give up, and overcame his defect and became the well-known illusionist the Mephisto on Stage. When the condition of his fingers worsened again, he had to give up the mantle and he left Japan for many years, but he managed to recover once again, and is now ready for his great comeback. Young Mikikaze and his older sister Mikiko have become family friends of the Yabusakas in the period since Ichirou, his wife and child have returned to their family home to prepare for his comeback: Mikiko, a writer for the local town magazine, happens to be friends with Ichirou's assistant and sister-in-law Haruka, while Mikikaze, a teenage boy with a very weak heart, is one of the best students at Ichirou's magic school. The Minami siblings are of course invited to the big comeback show of The Mephisto on Stage in a hall in Sapporo, but the great magician has an extra surprise for a small group within the audience: fifty guests are randomly picked based on their ticket numbers to come to the special second half of the magic show, held at Yabusaka's own home, which has a special stage hall. Furthermore, he will show off an incredible piece of escape magic on their way. The Mephisto on Stage has one of his special guests tie his back, another guest has to sign a piece of (frail) Japanese paper tied to the rope, and then he is put inside a coffin, which is locked with a padlock on the outside, with the key being given to another guest. This guest is to hold on to the key, while the guests are brought in a tour bus to the Yabusaka manor, while the tied-up and locked-up Mephisto will be driven to the home by his assistants. He has a microphone on him allowing him to do some small talk while they're being brought to his home, and of course, the idea is that he'll escape from the coffin when the second half of the show starts. 

Mikikaze and Mikiko are among the lucky ones to get invited to the show, and like the other guests they arrive a bit earlier at the house. The other guests are entertained by Mephisto's assistants in the garden, while Mikikaze and Mikiko, as family friends, wait with the rest of the family in the parlor, while the coffin with Mephisto in it is brought to the stage hall in the manor, where he is left alone for the final part of this escape act. The house is also brimming with reporters who are going to write about the big comeback of Mephisto, hanging around in the hallways that surround the stage hall. Speakers are placed in various rooms in the house, allowing everyone to hear Mephisto talking to everyone via his microphone. At first, his escape act seems to go as planned as he chats along, but suddenly, he cries out and then there's no sound anymore. When the family realizes this is not a part of the show, they run to the show hall, but find the double doors locked from the inside, as are the side door and the backstage door. When they eventually break inside, they find an empty stage hall with not a living soul inside. For in the center of the room, stands the coffin, but for some reason, the coffin is now locked from the inside with the padlock. When they open it, they find Yabusaka Ichirou, stabbed in the chest with a stake. The big comeback of the Mephisto on Stage has become the death of the Mephisto on Stage, but it doesn't take long for everyone to realize the whole situation is impossible: the victim was found in a coffin locked from the inside, the stage hall doors were also all locked from the inside, and there were reporters walking around the hallways around the stage hall, so how did the murderer get away without anyone seeing them? This alone seems quite baffling, but it doesn't take long for more locked room mysteries to occur within the Yabusaka manor. Mikikaze is intent on solving the murder of his magic mentor, but will his heart hold in Tsukatou Hajime's Misshitsu Kingdom (2007), which also has the English title Kingdom of the Locked Room on the cover?

Misshitsu Kingdom is a book I had wanted to read for ages, and it was the book that made me really aware of Tsukatou's name in the first place. This book was mentioned in a mook edited by Arisugawa on locked room murder mysteries, and the title and description sounded interesting, but by the time I learned of its existence, the book was already out of print. Besides a random short story, my 'real' start with reading Tsukatou was only two years ago, with Aru Egypt Juujika no Nazo ("An Egyptian Cross Mystery", 2019), followed by the John Dickson Carr-inspired John Dickson Carr no Saishuu Teiri (John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem, 2020). Some of Tsukatou's earlier novels had also been made available as e-books at the time, but his most famous books, like Misshitsu Kingdom, were not available for some reason. But late December 2022, those books were finally put on digital storefronts, so I picked up Misshitsu Kingdom immediately. At the time, I didn't know that this book also stars Mikikaze by the way. Mikikaze stars in Tsukatou's novels with Ellery Queen-inspired titles (Aru Egypt Juujika no Nazo ("An Egyptian Cross Mystery"), Aru Girishia Hitsugi no Nazo ("A Greek Coffin Mystery") and Aru America-Juu no Nazo ("An American Gun Mystery"), but he's older there, having had a heart operation and working as a freelance photographer. In Misshitsu Kingdom, we have a much younger Mikikaze, who still has a very weak heart, meaning he often has to rest between events and his older sister Mikiko always keeping an eye on him, because her young brother's heart could stop beating any second.  

Misshitsu Kingdom is also a very long book, clocking in at 1200+ pages, while most of the Japanese novels I usually read here, have a page count between 300-500, so that's somewhere between at least two-four times as long! And don't worry, that's not 1200 pages spent solely on the triple locked room situation explained above, as there are a lot more locked room mysteries that occur throughout the book, though not all are murders. Though that brings me immediately to what I thought was the interesting part of the story, and definitely the thing that made me love this book. This book is undeniably about locked room mysteries, but also not, and it's the latter part I love. Sounds confusing, so I should explain. To start with the first part of that sentence: this book has a distinct occult atmosphere, with a murder happening inside the house of a magician, a triple locked room murder no less, and the sheer impossibility of this bizarre scene, of a man dressed as Mephisto staked inside a coffin, reminds me of the earlier books with Nikaidou Ranko, with the gothic/occult vibe. This is also seen in some of the other locked room situations, with the murderer seemingly disappearing in an impossible manner from rooms within seconds and it doesn't even take long for Mikikaze to refer to the murderer as the Anti-Mephisto on Stage, as the whole thing feels like theatrical, like a magic act, but used in a way to kill the real Mephisto. How did the Anti-Mephisto on Stage manage to pull of these acts? Well, the funny part is, that isn't really the focus of this book. At least, not the how. Sure, there are segments where we examine the physical evidence, and this allows Mikikaze to solve the various locked room mysteries, and like I have seen in other impossible crime-focused Tsukatou works like John Dickson Carr no Saishuu Teiri and Kiseki Shinmonkan Arthur - Kami no Te no Fukanou Satsujin ("Miracle Inquisitor Arthur - The Impossible Murders By The Hand of God"), his locked room mysteries tend to rely on fairly mechanical tricks. It's a shame the book doesn't feature many diagrams, for I feel some locked rooms would have felt more fair with a better presentation of the situation. But still, for a book that is titled Kingdom of the Locked Room, you'd perhaps be surprised how simple some of the locked rooms are, and I think only two, maybe a third one, are really memorable, and that's often not even because of the technical merits. The way they are hinted, I think most of them are pretty hard to really solve yourself (though again, diagrams would've helped!) and personally, I'm not a really big fan of these mechanical tricks, though I have to say the third locked room mystery has some really good mechanical ideas: there are a lot of moving parts in that situation, but they all serve a specific purpose, and the way they work together is really clever, especially when it comes to the matter of a certain witness.

But what is there to like about the book then? Well, while the locked room mysteries themselves invoke Nikaidou or for example Carr, the segments in between are surprisingly much more like an Ellery Queen story! In a way, this book allowed me to make a connection in my mind between the aforementioned 'impossible crime' focused Tsukatou books I had read, and the three books with Ellery Queen-styled titles with Mikikaze, because Misshitsu Kingdom sits right in the middle, with its focus on locked room mysteries, but also large investigation scenes and discussions that play out like an Ellery Queen novel. Long ago, I reviewed Ooyama Seiichirou's Misshitsu Shuushuuka ("The Locked Room Collector"), a really cool short story collection where Ooyama employed Queenian-type deductions to solve locked room murders. Misshitsu Kingdom does this in a very different manner, where the solving of the locked room murders themselves is still very "technical" similar to Carr or Kitayama Takekuni's work, and while Mikikaze often manages to solve (large parts of) the how of the locked rooms fairly quickly, the investigation then moves to the why. Why did the murderer create a locked room situation in the first place? Why go through all the trouble to create one, and why use this specific trick, and not for example a different one? What merit has choosing this option over the other one, or were there other factors that forced the murderer's hand? The triple locked room murder for example is, in hindsight, surprisingly simple and I can even imagine some people really disliking this solution, but I really like it because the build-up with discussions regarding the why (this was done) are really good, justifying the simple solution. There are also other very Queenian aspects to the mystery: the stage hall of the first murder for example wasn't just a locked room, but for some reason the furniture had been moved and all glass objects in the room had been removed. But why? This is of course the type of mystery you often see in Queenian mysteries (the crime scene with something strange done by the murderer with an unknown reason), but it is certainly not the only Queenian element you will feel throughout the book. There is even the matter or Later Queen Period problems, where Mikikaze starts to suspect the murderer counts on the police figuring certain things about the various locked room mysteries, which makes it almost impossible to guess whether they have found a real clue, or whether the murderer had already counted on the police on finding it. But I love all these Queenian aspects of the book, as it allows for the type of deductions a reader is more likely to make themselves (like I wrote about in this editorial), compared to the 'figure how this thread and needle were used to lock this door from the outside' type of mystery. And of course, these type of deductions are also more interesting in the way they tie to the whodunnit question, as often, Mikikaze will notice things that allow him about the choices the murderer made or the actions they took, to zero in slowly but surely on the murderer.

The Ellery Queen-type of novel, I very much associate with the pure whodunnit, using a chain of deductions to allow you to eliminate the suspects one by one, and identify the one and only murderer. As a whodunnit, I think Misshitsu Kingdom is very much like what I said about the first locked room murder: at first sight, the identity of the murderer is almost ridiculously simple, and again, I can guarantee some people will not like this solution, but I can't help but admire some of the hints laid out to point to whodunnit. I probably missed all of them, but some are really cleverly hidden, though some are really not worth mentioning. For example, the final act of the book basically tells you straightout who the murderer is with the police basically coming across the equivalent of finding camera footage of the murderer buying the murder weapon and smiling at the camera, and that's pretty disappointing, but then Mikikaze starts pointing out other clues we came across throughout the narrative, and a lot of those are really good, hints that seem so obvious in hindsight but which you don't notice beforehand. That said, I don't think the identity of the murderer is hard to guess, but to actually find the corresponding hints Tsukatou laid out is a lot more difficult, though unlike the early Queen novels or for example the Student Alice novels, this isn't really a super long chain of reasoning that allows you to eliminate suspects of a list until you get to the last one, but more like different kind of clues spread across various events that happen to indicate a certain person.

And while the book is really very long, I myself didn't find myself bored with it. Sure, the crime scene focused investigations and the subsequent discussions about why each locked room exists can be a bit slow, but they are always on topic, and never feel dragging, at least, not if you're used to these Queen-esque novels. And because it's quite lengthy, it manages to do quite some interesting things like also addressing the aforementioned Later Queen Period problems, or even fleshing out a backstory for the whole Yabusaka family that eventually becomes relevant to the case and more. For if this book had not been so long, it certainly wouldn't have been able to give as much attention too to the locked room mysteries themselves. For they are presented in full detail, and where for example a book like Misshitsu Ougon Jidai no Satsujin  - Yuki no Yakata to Muttsu no Trick or The Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms - The House of Snow and the Six Tricks may have had six locked room murders, things were really hasty in general, basically just throwing the locked room situation on the table immediately followed by the solution. The extra page count of Misshitsu Kingdom is definitely used well to flesh out most of the important aspects of the book (though some characters seem to have little page-time), so both the mechanical aspects behind the locked room as well as the whydunnit behind it are satisfying reads.

By the way, the book is book-ended by two parts where an older Mikikaze happens to meet one of the characters again, and they mention how the whole crime was like a Showa-era crime. Which is one of the reasons why I mentioned the book felt, at least in terms of appearance, a lot like a Nikaidou Ranko novel, because those books are also inspired by Edogawa Rampo-esque novels, with fiends with names like Golden Mask, the Black Lizard and the Fiend with Twenty Faces who do battle against a young detective. Only those novels were seldom as intricately plotted as Misshitsu Kingdom!

And that's why Misshitsu Kingdom will probably end up on my list of favorites of the year. It manages to mix a lot of elements in a surprisingly good manner and while not every aspect of the story is perfect as a mystery novel, I can't help but admire how well Tsukatou managed to have a book so much about mysterious locked room mysteries and other impossible crimes work so well with a very Queenian set-up and execution. I haven't read that many Tsukatou novels, but I have a feeling this will be the one I will always be thinking of whenever I read one again.

Original Japanese title(s): 柄刀一『密室キングダム』

Revelations of a Lady Detective

"Rationality, that was it. No esoteric mumbo jumbo could fool that fellow. Lord, no! His two feet were planted solidly on God's good earth"

"The Lamp of God"

I'm not writing this review a year after I read it, but by the time this review is posted, it's definitely been more than a year!

The St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy is a mission school run by the Vatican in Japan. No technically, the school isn't even in Japan, for the three inter-connected artificial islands near Aichi are owned by the Vatican and people do have to show their passports when to enter or leave the islands. The academy is a prestigious school not only due to its special background, but also because it is unique as a secondary school focusing on the art of detection. The detective is a protected, and very important job in today's society and requires certain qualifications.  In Japan, you usually start studying to become a detective starting at the college level and can afterwards obtain the necessary qualifications, but the St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy already teaches its girl students to become a detective at the secondary level. 

Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii are all second year students who thus still have a year to go, but Miho and Nobuko, as third year students, have been in a fierce competition for forever to become the highest ranking student upon graduation. Graduating as the top student isn't just to show off, but has practical perks allowing you to become a detective earlier than usual, so both contenders have been aiming for the top, but it is clear Miho will end up highest. However, as the current number 1 and 2 on the rankings, the two of them are allowed to participate in a special test, that will also be reflected in their ranking, so both Miho and Nobuko participate. This winter test involves the twin bell towers of St. Arisugawa Girl's Academy, about seventy metres high. Miho and Nobuko are each brought to one of the towers, to a special room near the top. There they are locked inside, and are told that the one to win this test, is the one who will "approach the Lord the closest." Kyouko is asked to be a witness to the test: from the main building, she's to make sure both Miho and Nobuko will use their flashlight from their respective rooms to signal back to the main building to show they are willing to proceed with the test. The following morning however, a horrible sight is discovered: Miho and Nobuko are both hanging from the crosses on the top of the twin bell towers, and for some reason, Miho is completely naked. But what is equally enigmatic is the fact the two girls have 'switched places': Miho is crucified on the tower where Nobuko was staying, and the reverse holds for Nobuko. Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii are determined to find out what happened to Miho and Nobuko, and while none of them can solve this on their own, they are certainly capable of working together and combine their powers in Furuno Mahoro's Sailor-Fuku to Mokushiroku ("Sailor Uniforms and the Apocolypse", 2012).

First time I ever read anything by Furuno. I think it was the cover, combined with the title that first attracted me, as it suggested kind of Gothic horror novel with some Biblical Apocalypse themes which seemed interesting, but perhaps I should have done a bit more research. For allow me to say this right from the start: this is just part of a larger story, and as a book on its own, Sailor-Fuku to Mokushiroku feels quite uneven and incomplete. The first half of this book is in fact just world-building, explaining about the school, about its ties to the Vatican, about the role of detectives in this world, followed by a slice-of-life-esque section focusing on our protagonists as they experience their daily school life on the island at this unique school. If you're mainly reading this for the mystery, you have to be prepared for a very slow beginning that isn't immediately connected to the main mystery and what is even worse, a lot regarding the mystery isn't even explained in this book. Yes, we identify a murderer and know how they did it and why, or at least, we learn the "direct" reason for the murders, but we don't really understand why, and the book ends with a foreshadowing segment that hints at more adventures for our three heroines and suggesting we'll understand more about these specific murders as we learn more about St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy in subsequent books, but reading this on its own is not very satisfying, as you really feel like you only read the first part of a larger story and are missing things you should know. There are hints about how the Vatican is doing *something* at St. Arisugawa Girls' Academy, but we don't get much beyond the 'hinting' so the book leaves you with a rather unsatisfied feeling.

So the impossible crime of the two students leaving their locked rooms, swapping towers and ending up crucified on the crosses on top of other's tower only makes up for about half of the book and to be more exact, the set-up of this unique and alluring situation is in fact just a very, very small part of the complete book, because soon after we learn about this situation, we're already moving towards the solving of this mystery, though in a way that is quite interesting. For Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii all turn out to specialize in very different aspects of a crime: Kyouko focuses on the whodunit, Mizuki on the howdunnit and Marii on the whydunnit. What is even more unique is that at least in this book, the three aren't really working together to solve the crime, but they decide to look at the impossible murder from their own angles in three seperate groups (each of them finding a different ally to discuss the case with), so we get three seperate "solution" chapters where each of the three girls approaches the problem from a very different angle, but interestingly enough, the three of them do all end up implicating the same person. These three chapters, titled Scuderia Motivo, Scuderia Metodo and Scuderia Criminale make up most of the second half of the book and are surprisingly robust examinations of the impossible crime from their respective angles. Marii's whydunnit for example has a mini-motive-lecture, while Kyouko's whodunnit chapter has her listing all the viable suspects and examining one by one who could be responsible or not. But because the book moves very quickly from the "presentation" of the murders to the three chapters of Whodunnit, Howdunnit and Whydunnit, the reader isn't given much time to think about the case themselves, so the focus seems to lie more on watching the three detectives do their work, rather than really challenging the reader to solve it.

On the whole, I'm a bit torn on the solution to the otherwise awesome-sounding mystery. There are parts of the solution and mystery I find really interesting, and other parts feeling very underwhelming, like for example the victims having to act like complete idiots for this to even remotely work, even though they are the top-ranking students of their year! The howdunnit behind the mystery of the victims swapping towers for example is rather disappointing, with a solution that is so practical it takes away all the allure of the original mystery and the clewing for that part isn't that great. The way the Howdunnit and Whodunnit chapters slowly focus in on the (correct) motive and suspect is good, though it at times relies on a few shortcuts and taking a few things for granted that could've been debated more. I think that ultimately, the idea behind why this crime was committed and regarding some elements, how this was done can be quite interesting, and it certainly piques your interest to how the story will develop in later volumes, but the way it is done in this book, I can't help but feeling compelled to add a "but" after starting with "it has some good ideas, but....". 

So I'm torn on Sailor-Fuku to Mokushiroku. There are elements I like about it, like the Vatican conspiracy-angle which somehow involves the Apocalypse and a girls' academy in Japan that originally made me curious about the series, and the idea of having the three heroines each focusing on different aspects of a crime, that still allows them to arrive at the same answer is pretty awesome. The miraculous murder of the two victims somehow swapping towers and being crucified on top of them also has interesting points, which ties back to the way the mystery is solved in three different ways, but as a whole, there are just too many elements of the mystery I don't think work really well, or feel a bit too forced to be convincing.  I believe this series is now four volumes long, and there's a fifth volume that acts as a crossover with another Furuno series, but I am still not sure whether I'll read more of it. If the following books can skip on setting up the world like this first volume did and go straightforward to the adventures of Kyouko, Mizuki and Marii, then this could become something more interesting.

Original Japanese title(s): 古野まほろ『セーラー服と黙示録』

Telltale Face

The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, screamed “Off with her head! Off—” 

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Here's your semi-regular "hey, there's a Honkaku Discord server" message!

Oh, so I read this book 14 months before writing this review...

The Uegemis were once a wealthy family of merchants living on their own private island near Yokohama, but they had lost much of their fortune by the Meiji period. The elderly Kazuichou realizes how his own son Kazui had no talent for business, which worsened after the death of Kazui's wife as his attention turned to drinking and smoking. Worried about the future of the Uegami clan, Kazuichirou decided to marry a younger new wife Reika, but before a second child could be conceived, the man died. His will however stipulates it won't be opened until two years after his death. And so the widow Reika, her 'son' Kazui and Kazui's daughter Karen lives "happily" together on the island while waiting these two years, remaining polite to each other until they know who will inherit the Uegami money. After a long period of illness, Karen lost a lot of her memories, and is now recovering. A powerful related family sends the housekeeper Shizuka, a Mary Poppins-esque super competent, but somewhat cold woman of Russian descent, to the house to care for Karen, but also to keep an eye on things to see what will happen to the Uegamis. Another guest at the house is Gorou, Karen's cousin. Karen still has trouble remembering things, but she feels something is amiss in the house and suspects her family is hiding something from her. Her suspicions are aimed at the courtyard of the house, a large open space to which the door is always kept locked, and where something is being kept. One evening, widow Reika is late for dinner even though they are to have dinner together. She's often late though, so at first nobody thinks too much about it, but when they try to call for her, they find her door locked and no reply coming from inside. Breaking the door open, they find her decapitated body. For some reason however, Kazui seems very reluctant to call the police. But when more victims fall who also lose their heads, Shizuka acts to protect her mistress, and she's willing to go far to accomplish that in Tsukihara Wataru's Kubinashiyakata no Satsujin ("The Murders in the House of the Headless", 2018).

Kubinashiyakata no Satsujin is the second book in the Maid Detective Shizuka series, but the third time I'm discussing this series because I don't read things in order. The stories are set in the Meiji period and feature Shizuka as the series detective: a mysterious woman of Russian descent who seems to be a cold, but efficient and effective housekeeper, but who can have a rather sharp tongue when pushed and she's in possession of an even sharper mind. She works for a different family in each story, so you can basically start with any book, as there's not really a chronology or direct connections between stories. What is interesting about these books is that they are quite short, but each of them focus on very specific themes, like the mitate satsujin (murders patterned after something, like nursery rhymes) in the first book, or locked rooms/impossible crimes in the third. Each of these books approached these themes from both a "straightforward" angle, as well as a more meta-angle, like in the first book Shizuka planning to destroy all the paintings all the murders there were mirroring, because then the murderer had nothing to mirror.

The headless corpse is of course a very common trope in mystery fiction, and if you have two or three of them, you of course start asking the usual questions like "Does the body really belong to the believed victim, as there's no face to verify?" But as this book is titled after the trope, and considering other books in this series have approached familiar mystery themes from a meta-angle, I wasn't too worried about this aspect, as I was sure Tsukihara would still manage to present an interesting twist to it. Mind you, I don't think the two books by Tsukihara I read previously were perfect in their execution, sometimes with some dodgy tricks, but at the very least, each of the books gave me food for thought as they tackled the familar tropes in interesting ways, so yeah, I can forgive them for stumbling a bitand in general, I still think they can be fun reads.

In a way, Kubinashiyakata no Satsujin is quite similar to the previous two books I read and as I'm writing this review some time after I read it, I do have to admit I had to check a few times because some scenes are just so similar and I wasn't sure in what book they occured. This book is perhaps the best at the horror aspect though. You follow Karen awakening with partial loss of memory and slowly sees her suspecting her family is keeping something secret from her, and while we the reader know Shizuka is the detective, it does feel like those Gothic horror novels where you can't trust anybody, especially as this is set in an old house on a private island. The one big question is of course the courtyard: the house itself consists of four wings, connected to each other with corridors so you have a large square courtyard in the middle, but only one door in the North Wing leads into the courtyard and it's usually kept locked. At the centre of the courtyard is a mysterious building with seemingly no exits, and of course, you can guess this place will play a big role in the mystery. It's a shame the book is pretty unclear when it comes to the actual floorplan of this building, and a diagram would've helped so much in solving this mystery, for some elements of the mystery can only be solved if you happened to remember the textual description of where the rooms are etc., even though a proper diagram would've helped so much. Now I think about it, the third novel was also a bit vague in explaining the floorplan of the building there, so that was an issue Tsukihara didn't improve upon. Nonetheless, the house itself is pretty creepy, and this book is perhaps the best at atmosphere of the ones I've read.

But the big theme of the book is of course decapitations, and fun things are done here! Shizuka of course immediately ponders about the question the moment they find the decapitated body of Reika, and even challenges the murderer to show them the victim's head, or else she's not going to believe the body is Reika's. Shizuka does more of these meta-attacks on the murderer, like threatening to injure everyone's faces so they don't have faces anymore, meaning there'd be no reason to decapitate any victims anymore if the reason is to obscure their identity. I love these pro-active suggestions Shizuka makes to counter these familiar mystery tropes and that's what makes these books worth a read. Shizuka is the type of detective you either like or don't, I think, as she can be cooooold, but I really love how she's always willing to do the drastic to mess up the murderer's intentions. And yep, the fun part is seeing how the murderer reacts to Shizuka's challenges of course, and ultimately, we are actually presented with an interesting explanation why the murderer in this book is decapitating their victims, and it's pretty surprising one! It was not at all what I had expected, so it wins points there, and while the idea itself is actually one of the more "logical" ones, it's the application to this particular story that works really well for me.

In fact, I think that of the three Shizuka novels I've read now, I enjoyed Kubinashiyakata no Satsujin the best overall. It is a smooth read due to the Gothic horror-esque approach with an amnestic narrator and while the tricks in this book are less "grand" compared to for example the next book, I find it's a more balanced story, improving a bit on the very hasty first book and not being as crammed as the third book. Given the books are not really connected strongly to each other, one could decide to start with this one first. One thing though, I still don't really understand the Meiji period setting and Yokohama specifically, as each of these books feature closed circle situations somewhere outside Yokohama, so you very seldom actually get a sense of time beyond "sure, they don't have phones yet". I hope later books do more with the time period.

Original Japanese title(s): 月原渉『首無館の殺人』

Thicker Than Water

"Red... White... Blue..."

"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney"

Chin Shunshin was a Taiwanese-Japanese novelist who was born in Kobe, Japan in 1924 and moved to his family's home country of Taiwan after World War II. While he later became a citizen of mainland China, he became a full Japanese national following his criticism regarding the Tiananmen Square deaths. Due to his unique background, he has worked as both a translator and novelist, and many of his novels, both mystery and historical, deal with Chinese or Asian history. He wrote many novels in Japanese, and won several awards with his mystery novels like Edogawa Rampo Award and the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, as well as "general" literature awards like the Naoki Prize and the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize. The man lived a long life by the way, passing away as recent as 2015, but an English translation of 1976 novel Murder in a Peking Studio was released in 1986, but I don't think that many of his works have been translated in general, certainly not his mystery output.

Sanshoku no Ie ("The Tri-Color Building") is a 1962 novel which, if Chin Shunshin Japanese Wikipedia page is complete, should be his second mystery novel. The book starts in 1933, when Tao Zhanwen, a Chinese international student studying law in Japan (who also starred in Chin's debut novel), receives a letter from his former roommate Qiao Shixiu, who some time back moved back to Kobe to his father's marine produce factory and shop. In the letter, Shixiu pleads with Tao Zhanwhen to visit him before he'll return to China, because he's facing a dilemma. His father recently passed away making him the owner of the Tongshuntai Company, but before his father passed away, he took in a young man who was supposed to be Shixiu and his younger sister's older brother. According to his father, he actually had a wife and son whom he left behind when he crossed the sea to Japan, and for some reason, he has welcomed this son to Japan now. Shixiu's 'older brother' of course remained "home" even after their father died, but Shixiu has severe doubts about this man's identity, as his father told him his brother should've grown up in the countryside on a small farm, but from time to time he notices this man isn't the simpleton he pretends to be. And to Shixiu's frustration, he notices his younger sister is quite fond of their new brother. Shixiu wants Tao Zhanwhen, a gifted amateur detective, to visit him in Kobe not only to say farewell before Zhanwhen returns to China, but to figure out whether this man is really his brother. Tao Zhanwhen accepts his friend's invitation to stay for some time at the Tongshuntai Company: a three-storey building with brick walls in different three colors, giving it the name of the Tri-Color Building. The two upper floors are occupied by the living quarters of the Qiao family and the office spaces, but the ground floor is occupied by the marine produce shop and there are also warehouses and open spaces nearby to sun-dry and pack their marine produce to ship away. The neighbours are also marine-related factories and workplaces run by people from Chinese origin, making this a small Chinese part near the Kobe shore, and the various factories/workplaces all share a common backyard.

While Tao Zhanwhen starts familiarizing himself with the family, the employees at the Tongshuntai Company and the neighbors, the head cook of the the Tongshuntai Company goes out on the large rooftop terrace on the third floor (= rooftop of the wider second floor) of the head building, which is usually used to sun-dry all kinds of marine produce. The man was the confidante of Shixiu's father, having been with him since the very beginning, and every day, he loafes around on the terrace or takes a nap there as he only needs to start his work around dusk. During the time the cook's hanging out on the rooftop terrace Tao Zhanwhen and other people hear some noise coming from above, but they don't think much of it, but when later a help goes up to call the cook down, he finds the cook murdered on the rooftop terrace However, as the police investigation develops, it seems there were people hanging around the two entrances to the terrace around the time of the murder, being the door leading back to the third floor into the main bullding, as well as a ladder leading from the rooftop down to the shared backyard, where people had been working. So how did the murderer enter and leave the crime scene unseen? And why was the cook killed and has this something to do with Shixiu's brother?

Yes, there's basically a locked room murder situation here, as the cook was found dead at a spot where witnesses happened to be near the two entrances (exits) of the rooftop terrace. While this is definitely the main mystery of the book, there are other minor mysteries that play a role, like of course the matter of who the brother of Shixiu really is, and there's also some mystery regarding the cook's history with Shixiu's father from before they made it to Japan. Yet, I'd say that as a mystery novel, I wouldn't say Sanshoku no Ie is a must-read. Ultimately, the locked room mystery is a rather recognizable variation on ideas you'll have seen with other authors, even if you hardly read mystery, because there are some really well-known mainstream mystery authors who have used basically the same idea. I wouldn't say Chin Shunshin uses the idea better or worse, but it is very likely you'll have come across the same concept somewhere long before you ever thought of reading Sanshoku no Ie and I myself kinda feared from the start it would go a certain way once the main impossible situation was presented, and unfortunately, my "I hope it's not that because that's a very commonplace trick' ended up as the right one. Perhaps the less cerebral mysteries regarding the brother and the history of the cook and father may be interesting to some, but those parts of the story are more played from a suspense angle.

So is there nothing interesting about Sanshoku no Ie? Well, that's not the case. I do have to admit that the setting was quite unique. As mentioned above, Chin Shunshin himself was born in Kobe, explaining why this book was set in that harbor city, and of course, this whole book is about the Chinese immigrant community in Kobe. And that is quite unique. You'll probably not very often read (Japanese) mystery novels set in Japan, but with a minority as the main cast and as Chin Shunchin grew up in such an environment, you can sense his own experiences growing up in Japan with a non-Japanese background, and these minorities sticking together a lot, like having all these Chinese workshops and factories together and everything helping each other out. I had to think of Ayukawa Tetsuya's debut novel Petrov Jiken (disclosure: I translated Ayukawa's short story collection The Red Locked Room.) because that was set in Dalian in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, a place that doesn't exist anymore, but which did serve as a really unique backdrop for a mystery story.  This book is defnitely about the Chinese community in Kobe, focusing a lot on the character's backgrounds (like how and why they ended up in Japan) and of course how their culture works within the context of the Japanese society they are living in.

So yeah, I'm not super enthusiastic about Sanshoku no Ie. If you're interested in this book because you heard it features a locked room murder mystery, it'd be best to temper those expectations. The book is quite short, and as I mentioned above, the focus on the Chinese immigrant community in a pre-war Japanese society does result in a unique setting and if you're interested in that, the book is certainly worth a read, but don't be too focused on this book on its mystery merits alone. I have a copy of Murder in a Peking Studio too, but I'll probably save that for whenever when I'm the right mood.

Original Japanese title(s): 陳舜臣『三色の家』

Missing a Body?

「どすこい」

『ストリートファイターII』

"Dosukoi"
"Street Fighter II"

I don't know much about sumo, but I remember one time in Fukuoka when there was going to be one of those big annual sumo events there and it became noticably crowdier...

Sometimes you can tell what must've been a driving force in writing a certain work. For example, when a locked room murder trick is so ridiculous and over-the-top, you just know the idea must've come first to the author, and they decided to write it down as a story to have it published. Or an author developed an interest in a certain topic, like a specific period in history, or a certain profession, and decides to write a mystery novel set in that time or setting. Komori Kentarou's Oozumo Satsujin Jiken ("The Grand Sumo Murders") is a 2008 short story collection with interconnected stories, and I can almost imagine how Komori would have been chuckling to himself while writing this novel, as it's basically a parody of the mystery novel, and of sumo wrestling. It makes fun of both mystery fiction and sumo from start to finish, and while I'm sure he likes both topics, he also sure likes to tease the two themes very much and the result is a book that is a bit hard to recommend to "serious" mystery fans, because none of this is really meant to be serious and some of the stories and murder tricks employed here are beyond nonsensical, but it's a short, and often funny read. The opening story introduces us to Mark Hideaway, an American young man who one day appears in Tokyo hoping to enroll in a Japanese university to learn about Japanese culture. But because he doesn't actually know much Japanese, he ends up enrolling into the Chiyoraku sumo wrestling stable by accident (thinking it's a university). While eventually, the misunderstanding is cleared, Mark remains at the small, but famous stable with a long history, because he is actually built for the sport and because he's late for the actual university enrollment period anyway, so he might as well earn some money while waiting for the next period. Satoko, the teenage daughter of the master of the stable, is the only one in the stable who can speak "some" English, so she's appointed as his interpreter for the time being, but Mark's arrival at the Chiyoraku stable is the start of bloody period in the history of sumo wrestling, with sumo wrestlers exploding in the ring, wrestlers being decapitated and cut up in pieces and even an insane serial murder case with over a dozen of sumo wrestlers killed.

While the base idea of an American joining a sumo wrestling stable and him ending up solving cases with a teenager as his sidekick could easily have been used for a "serious" book, it is obvious Oozumo Satsujin Jiken is written as a parody, starting with Mark's very loose Japanese and English leading to him joining the Chiyoraku stable, and then absolutely ridiculous murders occuring from that point on. The first story for example literally has two sumo wrestlers who have an important match explode on live television, one of them belonging to the Chiyoraku stable. The solution is very straightforward and thus it doesn't really make an impact as a mystery story on its own, but the idea of people just suddenly exploding in a sumo ring is just so outrageous, I'm sure at least the set-up of this story will be remembered by many. And I think that is the case for most of the six stories in this book: as mystery stories they are very simple and the solutions often feel very absurd, but the most of them have somewhat memorable set-ups. There's a lot of information on sumo wrestling and the workings of a sumo stable to be learned between the lines which can be interesting, but this book is definitely a parody first, so it should not ever be taken too seriously.

Because these stories just tend to be so short and also not really meant to be super original mystery stories, but more about making fun of the weird premise and just coming up with more and more ways to kill sumo wrestlers, I won't write in length about all the stories included in this collection, as a lot of them feel the same, but to highlight a few: the second story revolves around the discovery of a decapitated wrestler in the bath room of the Chiyoraku stable, with the wrestler who was keeping the fire going for the bath being pointed at as the obvious suspect, as the crime would've been impossible for the others. The solution is one you probably have seen in some form or another elsewhere, though I guess that of all the stories in this book, at least the motive was kinda understandable... Which is less the case with the third story, which is when Mark is starting to get a good series of wins going as Makunotora, but not because of his own doing. For some reason, the wrestlers he's going to fight in the ring all get killed, giving him an automatic win and allowing him to rise in the rankings. Which of course makes him a suspect. The story is absolutely nuts, with Mark's reaction about his scheduled opponents getting killed off in different manners just "Oh, so I am the winner?" and a motive that comes out of nowhere, but I guess it's that crazy set-up that makes this one memorable. There are also stories inspired by Shimada's debut novel The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, involving an "Azoth" of sumo wrestler parts and another inspired by Kokushikan Satsujin Jiken, but these are all more about the shocking and weird story set-ups and of course many dead wrestlers, rather than about really presenting original mystery takes.

The fourth story, The Locked Room Forbidden for Women is the story that actually first made me aware of this novel. In 2018, there was a real-world incident when a mayor making a speech on the sumo ring suddenly collapsed, and one of the people rushing to administer first aid to the man was a female doctor. The sumo judge however sent the doctor and other people wanting to help away, as women are considered "ritually unclean" to enter the "female" sumo ring, which understandably caused quite a commotion. It was during this commotion I happened to spot people referencing The Locked Room Forbidden for Women from this book. Satoko and a younger wrestler in her father's stable are visiting a newly built stadium with a sumo ring for 'reconnaissance' and run into the female governor debating with other women about the outdated, discriminatory stance regarding women in sumo, not even being allowed to stand in the ring. Later, a sumo judge is found murdered in the middle of the sumo ring in the stadium, which... is somehow a locked room murder, because the three female suspects aren't allowed to enter the ring according to the beliefs, meaning none of them "could" have entered this locked space. The idea of a psychological locked room (as in, it's physically possible to enter/leave but there are psychological/moral/societal limitations) is one that really appeals to me, and knowing they actually send female doctors away from the ring trying to save a man's life in real-life does make it an interesting problem. While the motive is strangely serious compared to most of the other stories, it's still a story that is more memorable based on its set-up rather than the actual solution.

On the whole though, I think Oozumo Satsujin Jiken is a book that is hard to recommend. If you're in the mood, it can be a funny parody of sumo wrestling using a mystery novel's structure, but the comedy is incredibly over the top and often involves... well, sumo wrestlers die left and right, so it's definitely not the book to pick up if you're looking for a logical puzzle-type of story. The stories all have memorable set-ups, but the solutions are never really truly surprising as they often end up variations of ideas you are likely to have seen elsewhere, or just going for a very straightforward explanation and while the book does portray an interesting world of sumo wrestlers and their stables, the parody style kinda undermines it too. So if you're in the mood for a really ridiculous, grotesque parody of the mystery novel and sumo wrestlers, this is the one you want to read and I have to admit, I read it between two "more serious" books so it worked perfectly as a change of breath for me, but I think that if you're not in the mood for this, you're really not going to like this.

Original Japanese title(s): 小森健太郎『大相撲殺人事件』

Twisted Tale

"Mr. Goshima, I find the spiral to be very mystical. It fills me with a deep fascination ...like nothing else in nature... No other shape... I'm sure you will understand how wonderful the spiral is!! It is perfect, the most sublime art!!"

"Uzumaki"

Disclosure: I translated Higashigawa Tokuya's Lending the Key to the Locked Room,

Juumonji Kazuomi was a brilliant constructor who singlehandedly developed his family firm Juumonji Constructions into one of the nation's big construction firms. He often worked on unique buildings, and this was reflected in his holiday home on the small island of Yokoshima in the Seto Inland Sea. This house had a hexagonal shape, with metallic finishes on the exterior and on top, there was a large dome which served as an observation roof deck, from which it could overlook the island and the surrounding sea. Due to its hexagonal shape, the rooms of the house were all situated in the six sides of the hexagon, with a gigantic spiral staircase in the middle of the building. It was at the foot of this staircase that one morning, Kazuomi was lying dead on the floor. At first it seemed like this had been an unfortunate accident of an elderly man falling down the steps of a long staircase, but the Okayama police surgeon arrived at a very surprising conclusion: yes, Kazuomi did die because of a fall, but not of a fall down the stairs: his injuries indicated a steep drop on the floor from at least three stories high. The little blood found at the scene also suggested Kazuomi hadn't met his demise on this spot, but the police could not find any place on the island where he could've fallen and brought to the staircase, especially as this house is by far the highest building on the tiny island. The police eventually had to give up, and ruled it an accident, despite not being able to find out where Kazuomi had actually fallen.

One of the Okayama detectives working on the case was the not-so-bright Souma Takayuki, who happened to be a faaaaaaaaar relative of Yasuko, the widow of Kazuomi. Some months after her husband's death, she has invited Souma and other people to stay during the summer holiday at the house on Yokoshima, something she does every year. Among the other guests are Nonomura Toshie and her daughter Nanae: they are old family friends and Toshie's husband was a politician who was supported by Kazuomi, but now both their husbands have died, Toshie has stepped into the political world, with Yoshiko as her supporter. Long ago, their husbands also expressed a wish to unite the families, and it has been decided the beautiful Nanae will marry one of Kazuomi's sons, the eldest sons Shinichirou and Masao being from a previous marriage and Saburou being Yoshiko's son. This of course despite Nanae not really being into the idea of an arranged marriage. When Souma arrives on the island, he immediately sees how both Shinichirou and Masao, both a bit older than Nanae, try to woo her, with Toshie obviously wanting to push Nanae into eldest son Shinichirou's arms. Meanwhile, Souma also meets with another guest: Kobayakawa Saki is like himself a relative of Yasuko, and she's a private detective. Both the police detective and the private detective see how especially Shinichirou and Masao seem very intent on winning Nanae's heart, but the following morning, the two of them seem to have vanished, until they find the door at the top of the spiral staircase, leading into the roof observation deck locked from the other side. Eventually it is opened from the other side by Masao, which is when they discover the door had been blocked by the dead body of Shinichirou leaning against the door. They search the four rooms on the observation deck, but only Masao was present there and as the door was blocked by the body, it means only Masao could've killed his brother. The police is called from the mainland, but they can't come due to a storm, and while they are waiting for reinforcements to come, more mysterious deaths occur, forcing Souma and Saki to work together to find out who did it in Higashigawa Tokuya's 2005 novel Yakatajima ("The Island of the House"), which also has the alternate English title The Island of the Silver Tower.

Higashigawa Tokuya is a name that appears very often on this blog, even before I translated his Lending the Key to the Locked Room, but most of the reviews about his work are about series, like the Ikagawa City series and Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de. I was originally going to write how Yakatajima is one of those few times I wasn't reading a Higashigawa series novel, but between me reading the novel and me writing this post and me posting this review, a semi-sequel was released in 2022 titled Shikakejima. I'm not sure whether it's directly related, but the titles are very similar, and both books are published by the same publisher and feature similar covers, so at least in terms of "branding" the two books are supposed to form a series. Higashigawa generally doesn't publish books through this publisher (Tokyo Sogen Suiri) by the way, and with a somewhat sobre cover, I was wondering whether this book would have his characteristic comedic tone.

And the answer is yes. It's perhaps not as slapstick comedy like the Ikagawa City series can sometimes get, but you still have somewhat over-the-top characters like Saki (who jumps on a car the first time we see her) and somewhat nonsensical conversations, and of course, as we should expect from Higashiawa, this comedy is also used to hide important clues in rather clever ways. I would say the comedy is toned down a little bit compared to his better known series, but you don't have to expect something that is completely different in style when it comes to storytelling. Comedic mystery is of course Higashigawa's bread and butter, and if you like his other works, Yakatajima will definitely manage to satisfy you there too. I do have the feeling that some parts of the motive fall a bit flat, like it could have worked better if it had been played either more comedic, or more serious, but now it doesn't quite work with me, but your mileage may vary there.

What was a bit different however is how Yakatajima moves away from the often urban settings of his stories, offering a true yakata-mystery, a mystery set in a weird manor or mansion. In fact, last year I read his Squid-sou no Satsujin ("The Squid House Murders", 2022) and I was actually expecting such a mystery based on the title but it turned out to be something quite different. Yakatajima however has a proper strange house, with a hexagonal shape and a gigantic spiral staircase, and of course the locked room on the observation deck roof. Add in the mystery of Kazuomi's "impossible" fall to death and you have the ingredients for a mystery that's quite enjoyable to read, as the book keeps hinting at various mysterious, and that coupled with Higashigawa's smooth writing and funny situations, you'll be through this book in no time.

A lot of the mysteries that occur in this book ultimately tie back to a common underlying idea, and while I like the idea on its own, I think that people who are familiar with these kinds of mystery novels might be able to guess fairly early on what is going on. Once you arrive at the idea, a lot of the problems just vanish right away, so that's a bit disappointing, though again, I like the base idea in general and it's quite memorable. What is perhaps better in execution however is the clewing: the trail of clues that lead to the killer is quite comprehensive and much of the clues are cleverly hidden within comedic conversations and happenings, and if you're used to reading Higashigawa, you're always trying to look through all comedic conversations which actually makes spotting the real clues a bit harder. But I was quite impressed with the Queen-esque clues left throughout the narrative, with the focus not only on physical clues, but very much on concepts of 'who knew what at what time to allow them to do this?". And that works pretty well with the concept of the aforementioned 'underlying idea', which is basically howdunnit, while the whodunnit threads are a bit more subtle and not as universal as the howdunnit idea, but it does add a lot of depth to the mystery.

But overall, I enjoyed Yakatajima as a standalone novel, and it's a competently written mystery that I can recommend any Higashigawa fan. I'm also curious to the semi-sequel Shikakejima, as it ranked in the 2023 Honkaku Mystery Best 10 list (which covers books published late 2021 - late 2022), so it should be quite entertaining too. So perhaps I'll read that book this year too!

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉『館島』

番外編：The Mill House Murders Released

Back in November, I announced Pushkin Press would be publishing my translation of AYATSUJI Yukito's The Mill House House Murders, at the time with a scheduled release date of late February. Sorry for the wait, as the release was eventually pushed back a month to March. Now!

Two years ago, Pushkin Press re-released The Decagon House Murders, a slightly brushed-up version of the translation I originally made for Locked Room International in 2015.  Fortunately, the re-release seems to have been received well, leading to plans to release the follow-up novel and I am also happy both author Ayatsuji and Pushkin Press wanted me on board again. The Mill House Murders was originally published in Japan as Suishakan no Satsujin in 1988, set once again in an architectural creation by the architect Seiji Nakamura, and yes, people die there. The Mill House is a castle-like structure, home of a wealthy recluse with a unique art collection, and his beautiful young wife. One year before the present, a horrible murder case happened at the Mill House while a small party of guests were visiting visited the house to view the art collection. Exactly one year later, most of the same people have once again gathered at the Mill House, and that is of course the go sign for more mysterious happenings that build towards a surprising conclusion.

The Mill House Murders is the second book in Ayatsuji's long-running series featuring Nakamura's buildings and he recently got started on the tenth book. This second volume can be read seperate from The Decagon House Murders, as basically the only spoiler is the series detective, but of course, those who have read the first book will get some of the minor references and call-backs. People who liked the first book will find a lot to love in The Mill House Murders, as the reader will once again explore an unsettling, closed-off location where curious, bloody murders occur and a surprising conclusion waiting at the end. The Mill House Murders is also a transitional book: The Decagon House Murders was written as a standalone book, inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, but its success led to it being turned into a series, and this book does feel like it opens up the world a bit, marking the transition to a series.

One personal memory I have of this book I already mentioned in my review of the Japanese book. I originally obtained a used copy of this book, and near the end, before the final chapter, I found a receipt stuck between the pages. At first I thought it was just something left accidentally there by the previous owner and missed by the employees of the used book shop, but when I turned it around, I found it had a message for me, the new owner: it was a Challenge to the Reader, from A Reader. The note mentions that the murderer would be revealed in the next part, and challenged the reader to try to solve it themselves first before reading the final chapter. It was such a fun, unique present of the previous owner and I still have the note.

Pushkin is based in the UK, which means The Mill House Murders is out this week there, with a US release scheduled for I believe in May. Anyway, if you liked The Decagon House Murders, please try The Mill House Murders too and if not.... try both? The Decagon House Murders was the first novel I got to work on, and when I first started this blog, I of course never had imagined I would be translating all those books I was writing about, so I'm more than thrilled I was able to also work on The Mill House Murders. And as for more books in this series? I guess positive reception is the most likely to ensure more translations follow (hopefully by me, haha), so it'd be great if you'd pick the book if you happen to be looking for a fun mystery novel.