Radio Suspect

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon 

Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned? 

Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?

"Colors of the Wind" (Judy Kuhn)

One of the traditions of the Kyoto University Mystery Club is the whodunnit story, where a member will write a two-part mystery story (the problem and the solution) and challenge the other members to solve the problem part based on the clues in the story. This game is usually done in a physical format, i.e. the session leader hands out a printed copy to every person participating. With everyone having access to a computer, printer and photocopier (either at home or campus) nowadays, this is of course very easily done, but this wasn't the case when the Mystery Club first started. The earliest Mystery Club whodunnit stories were done, well, basically manually: members wrote their stories by hand (because even word processors weren't available then) and usually, the leader had to read the story out loud themselves, with everyone in the room just listening carefully to the story. It's a thing that's always interested me, because I like mystery fiction in all kinds of media, yet I haven't experienced much mystery media that was specifically created for as an experience to listen to. Sure, I have listened to audio dramas etc., but few of them were original audio dramas, and even fewer actually feature a mystery plot that makes use of the audio format.

So I had been curious to the game Unheard - Voices of Crime (Steam/Switch) for some time now, as it was a mystery game that focuses a lot on audio. In Unheard, you play an "Acoustic Detective" who is tasked to look into a few past cases, but from a sound-based angle. As the Acoustic Detective, you can review a case by listening in on conversations of all the related parties of a case, taking place during a period of  of 5 ~ 15 minutes long. You are also provided with a tablet with a floorplan, where you can see where everybody was at a certain point of time. As the detective, you need to solve the mystery of each case, ranging from theft, bombings and murder, by eavesdropping on everyone, figuring what everyone's doing and thinking at what time, and finally figure out, whodunnit, all based on audio clues only.

Well, that's not entirely true, as the floorplan (a visual clue) for each case is also very important.

 

Anyway, Unheard - Voices of Crime is a very short game, but it's pretty interesting, and certainly has an original angle. In essence, Unheard - Voices of Crime is quite close to other deduction-focused mystery games like Return of the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol: you are shown a certain scene playing out (in the case of Unheard, you mostly listen to a scene), and from the clues picked up in that scene, you are asked to deduce certain facts, like who is who. In the case of Unheard, you'll be handling a few cases which are all about something quite different, from a theft to a bombing, but you are usually given two major tasks: one is to identify every person you hear in the case, and secondly, figure out who did it (and usually a few sub-questions). Each new case you'll be given a list of names, but you don't know which names belong to what voice. On the floorplan you'll see indications where a certain speaking voice is coming from (the sound source), but you don't know who this person is initially. So it's up to you to deduce the identities of everyone who plays a (speaking) role in the game. Sometimes, it's as easy as simply overhearing a conversation where the two persons address each other by names, but in other instances you'll have to do a bit more thinking yourself, like deducing a name by eliminating the other possibilities (by assigning the names to others). As the Acoustic Detective, you can only overhear conversations (or people talking to themselves) if you move your icon to the same room, near the person(s) speaking at the right time, meaning that if you are listening to character A talking in one room, you might be missing out on an important conversation going on in a different room. Fortunately, you can always rewind (or fast-forward) in time, and by eventually listening to everyone speaking, you can connect all the dots and figure out who is who through all the clues dropped in those conversations. The audio makes some use of binaural audio by the way, so it's recommended listening to the game with headphones. The game was originally Chinese, but has full English and Japanese localizations, so the audio is also in those respective languages, which must have been a rather big task for a relatively small scale game.

Identifiying each character however isn't enough, as each case is... about a case. A case that needs solving. This second part of each case is the trickier part of the game, because you are tasked to solve for example a bombing just by listening to everyone, but it's not like there's a character who says out loud "I am the bomber, I am now pushing the button to set the bomb off!" You thus have to listen to all the conversations going on, and try to pick up clues to indicate what exactly happened. I described this as tricky, because all you have are sounds, which leads to some interesting mystery solving segments. For example, you can't see two persons passing objects to another, you can only see sound sources on the floorplan approaching each other and them greeting each other. So the game does require you to think a bit differently than you're likely used to in most mystery games. It's definitely what makes Unheard a unique experience, because this kind of focus on audio is basically never seen in mystery fiction, even though it has so much potential.

I do have to say though, that the potential is also not really fully explored in this particular game. It's really short with just a handful of cases (of which two are basically tutorials), and most of the mystery of each case can really be solved by just... listening at least once to every conversation made. A lot of the initial mystery of each case just comes from the fact you haven't listened to anything yet, but once you have heard all the conversations playing out across the floorplan, you'll already have figured out 75% of all the problems you need to solve each case. There's not really a change in gameplay or clever ways to make the puzzle-solving more challenging: it's basically just each case becoming more difficult because there are more characters who talk more across a longer period of time, meaning there's just more to do each time. The 'explanations' of each case once you've solved it are also very meagre, basically only repeating a few key lines, and fleshing out the explanations/the proof might have given each case just a little bit more impact.

But on the whole, Unheard - Voices of Crime was a pretty fun game, and because I picked up during a sale, I definitely think it was worth the price of admission, if not only for the very unique experience for a detective game. I hope we see more of these kinds of games, because there's so much potential for audio-based mystery fiction (with plots that actually make use of audio as clues/tricks etc.) and while I always thought the audio drama would make the most sense for that, Unheard shows that a game format is also very capable of using audio to present a fun, puzzle-focused mystery.

Uncivil War

"Avengers... assemble."

"Avenger: End Game"

So I will never forget that when I watched Avengers: End Game in theaters, just before Captain America said the line, a kid in the audience cried "Assemble!" just before Captain America could, kinda drowning him out...

Official crossovers between different mystery series from different authors are not non-existent, but they are certainly not common. And most of the time, you can guess that these crossovers will follow the familiar comic crossover pattern, which even people who don't read comics will be familiar with due to its usage in for example the Marvel Cinematic Universe: heroes first have a confrontation with each other due to a misunderstanding or shenanigans cooked up by the villain, and eventually the heroes work together to take the villain down together. But what if you had a crossover with various detectives who aren't series detectives? What if you had detectives with different powers (deduction methods) who would compete. Who would be the best one? That is the question in Nitadori Kei's Suiri Taisen ("The Great Deduction War", 2021), which also has the less interesting English title of Who is the Best One?. The grandfather of the two cousins Yamato and Meguru (the narrator) was a big fan of mystery fiction, and when he obtained a Christian relic, he saw his chance. He contacted several churches across the world and invited them to participate in a special game of wits, in which the winner would be awarded the relic. Yamato and Meguru were to help out with the game, but their grandfather passed away just before the game starts, meaning now they have to lead it together with the family attorney. What they had not expected however, was that the various churches across the world would send almost superhuman (or even non-human!) detectives to represent them in the big war for the relic. Yamato and Meguru had perhaps at best hoped for a Father Brown-esque person to participate in the mystery game their grandfather came up with, but instead, we have a detective who can detect lies just by listening to someone speaking, a detective with super-heightened senses who can see, smell, taste, hear and feel the smallest details, a detective who can "clock up" his brain to consider every possibility within seconds and there's even a detective AI! Who will be the greatest detective of them all when the game starts!?

Okay, this is one of those books that I basically bought based on the title alone, and a quick look at the blurb. Having detectives with different work methods duke it out sounds like an amazing premise, and whereas in series, you often end up with a foil detective who obviously isn't going to beat the series detective, or you have the crossover where "everybody has to win" at the end, having a single (standalone) work with different detectives, and giving them all a reason to want to win the game individually (because they are all hired to win the relic), sounds exciting, right? I had only read one other work by Nitadori before this one, Jojutsu Trick Tanpenshuu, which was a comedic book where each story featured a feat of narrative trickery, but with a much moodier cover and a more "serious" set-up, I was curious to see what Nitadori would do with the idea of a "war" between the detectives.

Though it takes a while before we get to the war! For the first half of the book is used to introduce the various detectives from the different countries, with all but one of the participants getting their own chapter/short story where we see them solve a case in their home country, using their own unique powers. The opening chapter for example introduces us to Charlotte, the "operator" of the AI Detective Judas, which can solve cases with its computing power, of course if and only if the correct and relevant data is entered in the program. Her case involves a rather interesting decapitation case inside a room which only one person had the key to, but it doesn't appear he is really the murderer, so how does this work out? This is a pretty clever locked room mystery, but it's not really realistic. I think the trick is brilliant actually, and like it a lot, but I hadn't really expected this trick in this book, and especially not as the opening story. I can imagine myself accepting it easier if this had been presented in a comic format or something like that, because I'm not sure whether this really works like this physically, and 'reading' the trick somehow feels less convincing than seeing it. The other introducing chapters are all relatively short, and usually revolve around a one-trick idea that is used to show off the different powers of the detectives. The Ukrainian detective Bogdan Korniyenko for example has "Clock Up" (no, he's not a Kamen Rider), meaning he can speed up his thought process and consider countless of theories and possibilities within a second (though this takes a physical and mental toll, of course). This not only means he can solve cases relatively fast, but he can also do things that normally would take hours and even smaller actions, like stumbling over something, could be avoided if he starts Clock Up to take the best actions "during" the fall. Maria from Japan has heightened senses, which is not super interesting because it basically only means she can find small clues normal people usually can't, while Brazilian Mattheus can detect someone lying with a 100% accuracy by listening to them. Each of their cases of course introduces an element that requires their specific powers to find certain clues or to make certain logical deductions, but I think that as a standalone story, the first one (AI Detective) is the most memorable, and the others are more "functional" than really memorable, so I'll not write more about them.

In the second half of the story, the detectives arrive in Hokkaido, where they are to participate in the game to win the relic, with the cousins Yamato and Meguru, and the attorney Yamakawa organizing the 'war for the relic', even though Yamato and Meguru don't really know what the game was their grandfather planned before his unexpected death: they only know the idea is that there'll be a battle of the wits between the detectives and that the winner will receive the relic. The detectives and the organizers are all staying in cottages in a snow-covered camp, divided in two sides by a river, but the snowfall is pretty heavy, covering large parts of the camp. The first day is just the arrival, but the following day, they find the attorney Yamakawa murdered in his room. It appears this is the game of wits, and the detectives are all eager to solve the murder of Yamakawa and obtain the relic for their employers. What follows is an entertaining back-and-forth of different theories about who the killer is and how the murderer managed to kill Yamakawa without leaving clear clues (like footprints in the snow). Each detective is intent on winning the relic, and because they all have different powers and don't work together, they all obtain different clues, which allows them to come up with different theories which of course point at different people. It reminded me a bit of Yamaguchi Masaya's The 13th Detective, which was originally a game book and at the start of the story, you can choose one out of three different partner detectives, who will lead you down a different path and allow you to find different clues (disclosure: I translated Yamaguchi Masaya's Death of the Living Dead). Here too you have different detectives competing, each holding on on clues only they have, with for example Mattheus being able to detect any person lying but of course not willing to share that information, or the AI Detective being able to make certain calculations no person can. Because the crime scene is on one side of a river, with an observed bridge, and some people staying in cottages on one side of the river and others on the other, there's also a nice "is it an impossible crime?" angle to it: if the murderer is one of the people staying on the side of the crime scene, how did they come up with an alibi (an impossible alibi [time] angle), and if the murderer was on the other side of the river, how did they make their way to the crime scene unseen (an impossible alibi [space] angle). This whole set-up is defnitely the best part of the book, with one case offering many solutions because everyone tackles it from a different angle, and while some solutions are a bit too simple, others are quite interesting and could've been used as "real" solutions too. And because we got the introductions of the abilities of the various detectives earlier, it also feels 'fair' in the sense we don't hear about Mattheus' lie detector ability midway.

Though I have to say, I was a bit disappointed not all the detectives' abilities are equal. An ability like having better senses, or have an AI do complicated calculations are still on the realistic side of things, and even a person being able to think faster is okay, but Mattheus can literally just sense people lying as if it were a mutant power, and a fifth detective introduced in the second half of the story has a power that is really far beyond anything realistic, so the balance is kinda off. The book is set in an, on the whole, realistic world, so having supernatural powers, rather than slightly better than normal human powers, felt a bit weird. The tone of the book is also a bit weird at times: it is not as blatantly funny as the other book by Nitadori I read (Jojutsu Trick Tanpenshuu), and most of the time definitely more serious, but there's also a lot of light-hearted banter, pop culture references and other comedic touches like the cheeky attitude the AI Detective has towards Charlotte, but it's not always funny, so like the detective powers, it sometimes felt like Nitadori didn't know exactly what the exact tone or setting of the story was supposed to be.

I have to admit though that when the battle for the relic has been fought and the war is over... the ending is not nearly as satisfying as the preceding parts. Of course, with all these detectives competing for the relic, the book needs to work towards a conclusion that gives everyone *something* and still resolve the matter of who gets the relic, but the final solution presented to the reader is not nearly as clever as some of the solutions presented earlier, and on the whole, it's not a solution I like in general. Sure, there were clues, but I have seen Nitadori use the same type of clues in this book and Jojutsu Trick Tanpenshuu in more convincing ways, so it was a bit disappointing to see a less impressing example used for the final solution. It's of course difficult to come up with different solutions for the different detectives, and a final solution to surpass those ones too, but the way it suddenly shifted towards this final solution was just too abrupt, and feels less polished compared to the much better build-up to this moment.

But despite a somewhat disappointing ending, I do like Suiri Taisen, as the parts introducing the detectives and having them compete each other is really fun. It's a book that worked because it was a standalone book though, because you really can't guess who will win and how, but I wouldn't mind seeing for example Bogdan Korniyenko return in his own book. Not all parts of the book are as good, so it's not a book I love unconditionally, but certainly worth a read!

Original Japanese title(s):  似鳥鶏『推理大戦』

Once Upon a Thriller

"The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat."

"The Masque of the Red Death"

There's something comforting about reading a book by someone you used to read a lot, but haven't in a while.

Oh, wow, my last review of a Higashino Keigo work dates from 2014? It's been a while! Higashino is an author I read a lot in the earlier days of the blog, and I am still of the opinion he's a great choice for those studying Japanese and who want to try to read their first books completely in Japanese, because his writing is really smooth and easy to understand (somewhat like Agatha Christie in English). But yeah, I haven't read very much of him lately, which can be attributed to two factors, I guess. One is that Higashino, especially nowadays, as a mystery author, is definitely more a 'broad entertainment' writer. Which isn't a bad thing per se, considering his huge success both in Japan and abroad, but Higashino's mystery stories are often written for a much broader audience than 'just' readers of mystery fiction, and his books are often written more as mainstream entertainment stories. Great material that lends themselves for countless of adaptations and the focus on human drama in his books are of course an element that have made him popular, but I have to admit I generally don't enjoy those stories as much, because I am a very boring reader who is content with just a puzzle plot and don't per se need human drama. Of course, I don't think all his earlier work is perfect and his later work rubbish, because I really don't (I love The Devotion of Suspect X!), but there's definitely a general shift towards the type of story I'm not looking for, so I hadn't really been reading his books the last few years. Which brings me to a second reason: only a handful of his works are available as e-books and he's one of the few authors still in print (and selling really well) whose works are basically almost only exclusively available on paper. So then comes the matter whether I really want to add one of his books to a physical book order, and often his books just end up lower on the priority list.

Anyway, so I finally got around to reading a book by him again. Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken ("The Masquerade Mountain Villa Murder Case") from 1990 is one of Higashino Keigo's earlier mystery novels and while the period setting definitely feels like late eighties/early nineties, in terms of style it feels quite modern, in the sense I could definitely imagine if Higashino had written this book with the idea of it getting adapted for the small or silver screen eventually. Of course, this book was written long before he became the super popular author he is now, so that's of course not the case, but you can definitely recognize how even among his earlier works, you can find mystery novels that were really written for a much broader audience than those who exclusively read detectives, being much closer to a thriller or a suspense novel, with a good dash of human drama. The book is set a few months after Takayuki lost his fiancee Tomomi, whom he first met when she caused a car accident that ultimately injured her more than her 'victim' Takayuki. They got to know each other after the accident, growing closer and getting engaged. The plan was to hold their wedding in the mountain villa of Tomomi's parents, a place they visited each year, but one day, after making arrangements near the villa for her wedding, Tomomi had a deadly car accident, driving her car of a cliff-side road. Several months later, Takayuki is invited by his parents-in-law to come to the mountain villa, as they intend to stay there a few days as they do every year, and the couple Nobuhiko and Atsuko would be honored if their son-in-law would come too. Other guests include Tomomi's brother Toshiaka, Tomomi's cousin Yukie, Tomomi's friend and mystery novelist Keiko, and Nobuhiko's secretary and physician. 

However, during the first night, two armed men manage to sneak inside the mountain villa and they take everyone hostage. The two men are bank robbers, and they had actually planned to stay in this villa for a day until their boss could pick them up. The mountain villas in this neighborhood are just holiday houses and often nobody's staying there, so the bank robbers hadn't expected to find any people in this villa when they picked it as their temporary hide-out a few days ago and made their own false keys. The two men decide to just stick to the plan and hold everyone hostage inside the house, keeping them all in the living room, while observing them from second floor balustrade. But as the stress starts to build among the hostages and they hope to find a way out, they start to realize that some of them don't think that Tomomi died in an accident, but that her death was orchestrated, and furthermore, those people think that the person behind Tomomi's death is right here! The two bank robbers are quite interested in this story as they have nothing to do anyway while waiting for their pick-up, but the following morning, after everyone was allowed to stay in their own room (one bank robber remaining in the hallway to watch all doors), one of the guests is found murdered in their room! At first it seems only the bank robbers could have commited the murder, but why, and nobody really believes they did it, so who of the house guests is wearing a mask and the real murderer, and how did they do it because they were all locked up in their rooms?

Ongoing hostage situation, mystery revolving around Tomomi's death and an actual murder occuring under semi-impossible circumstances? Yep, there's plenty of thrills going on in this book, and that's probably its best part. It doesn't take long for the two bank robbers to show up in the villa and take everyone hostage, and while the hostages are being held captive, one of the bank robbers gets really interested in the story of Tomomi's death, and how Keiko, Tomomi's best friend, suspects her friend didn't *just* drive off a cliff, but that somehow someone arranged for that to happen, and that it's likely that this person is someone Tomomi trusted, meaning one of the house guests. This is of course not really helping the team spirit, especially as more curious things are going on. The hostages, while being watched by the robbers, have some freedom, and some of them try to cook up plans to warn the police: two policemen have already come round the house, inquiring very obviously whether the people here had spotted the two bank robbers on the run, though obviously, the robbers held them under gunshot and made them lie about that. Still, they realize there might be someway to escape the villa and warn the police, but curiously enough, they find some of their attempts to warn the outside world, like a message written in the sand outside, erased by someone. Because none of the bank robber mention anything about their attempts, it seems they didn't discover the message, but who did? When the second night, one of the house guests is murdered in their room, the bank robbers swear they didn't do it, and after some debating, it does seem unlikely the victim would've let any of the robbers in their room during the night without making any noise and one of the hostages was also kept in the hallway, with the bank robbers, as an extra insurance, but she too says she didn't see the robbers go the room, so how was the murder committed and is the murderer then one of the other house guests? The story basically never lets you, or the hostages, rest, as there is always *something* going on, and that's why I mentioned earlier how this would be perfect as a television film.

How does the book fare as a mystery novel? Well, it's a bit uneven. There are some interesting parts, like Tomomi's death, or the semi-impossible murder in the villa, but a lot of those elements don't feel very satisfying as a mystery novel, because the clue-to-solution time is often rather short, so you don't really get that "Aha, so that's how it was!" feeling due to the short build-up time. The facts regarding Tomomi's death for example are given you in small bursts throughout the book, but the really important facts come relatively late. The focus of the book is more on the suspense angle, but I also feel like small things, like spreading the hints out more, or like a little diagram of the villa itself, would have helped the book a lot. The way the hostage situation with the bank robbers, and their involvement in the murder is eventually resolved is more interesting, though again, while certainly guessable, it's not like there were really well-spread hints or clues regarding the climax. Funnily enough, the bunko pocket release of the book includes a commentary essay by Orihara Ichi, who considers Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken to rank among Higashino Keigo's best three books, but he also hates the book. Why? It happened to feature the exact same trick Orihara himself had used in a manuscript he had been working on! Orihara tells how he bought the book on release and halfway through started to fear the worst, and it came true, and as Higashino's book was already released and all, he had to abandon his own book. Interesting to hear how two authors arrived at the same idea in a similar time period and you can tell how frustrated Orihara was when he knew the thing he had been working on had already been done just a bit earlier by Higashino.

I have the bunko pocket release, a format which generally comes with a slipcover like most Japanese books, but for some reason my copy came with a second slipcover. And the art on it is actually very nice and in terms of style, I prefer it to the actual cover, only.... I don't know how this cover is related to Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken. The girl on the cover is far too young to be any of the women in this boo, and the room itself is not like any of the rooms in the mountain villa described in the book. I mean, this room doesn't invoke any notions of a mountain villa or a hostage situation or anything like that, right? I guess the mask is the one thing that comes from the title of the book,  but that's like a really tiny, tiny connection. I know that a few other Higashino pockets came with second slipcovers in the same style if you bought them at Tsutaya, but this book wasn't bought there, so I don't really understand this second cover....

Do I think Kamen Sansou Satsujin Jiken is one of Higashino's best three works? Probably not. Mind you, it's a short, but thrilling read from start to finish, and taken as a work of entertainment, it is a good work, offering a suspenseful story with a lot of story developments and mysteries both in the present and past. Looked at it as a mystery novel solely, it does feel like it could've been much more if the book had been a bit longer, as some of the better story elements of this book would've benefitted from more "runtime" allowing for more depth, It's not a book I would go out of my way for to recommend as one of Higashino's best, but if you're looking for something short, but fun to read between some 'bigger' mystery novels, this is a good palate cleanser. Nothing to ambitious, but basically a popcorn flick.

Original Japanese title(s): 東野圭吾『仮面山荘殺人事件』

The Lion's Smile

For every up, there's a down. For every square

- There's a round?

"The Sword in the Stone"

Wow, has it been three years since I last did a double Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen post?

As basically every year the last decade or so, the new Detective Conan film Kurogane no Submarine seems to be extremely well received, both by viewers in terms of the actual contents as well as financially, once again breaking the earnings record set by last year's film (The Bride of Halloween). I will have to wait for the home video release though, so as every year, I'll have to be content with the latest Detective Conan volume released simultaneously with the film. Detective Conan volume 103 was released mid-April and starts with the final two chapters of A Troublesome Triple Collaboration. Previously, Conan and the Detective Boys ended up at a family restaurant in the evening, where very coincidentally, three very unlikely pairs were having dinner too: for some reason Inspector Shiratori is joined by patrol officer Yumi, while Yumi's boyfriend is having dinner there too with patrol officer Naeko, while her boyfriend Chiba is joined by Inspector Shiratori's girlfriend Kobayashi. The discovery all three pairs are there, in secret, with a different partner obviously leads to a lot of angry faces, but during this, a murder occurs at the family restaurant: a group of four friend regularly meet up, and today they were at the family restaurant where one of them works. One of the women however is poisoned during their get together, but it seems impossible for anyone to have poisoned her specifically, as she picked her own food and several people handled the plate before her. As an impossible poisoning story, it's... nothing special. I like the basic idea of the how, though there's a bit of luck concerned when it comes to actually hiding the trick, and overall, it's just... too basic. Part of the story is dedicated to the mix-up between the couples, so that leaves little room for the mystery.

Oh, and let me tell you right now: this volume in general isn't really interesting, at least, not mystery-wise.

Which you wouldn't expect right away, considering the second story features Sera! The high school detective takes Conan back to the hotel she's staying, when they learn a new arriving guest on the same floor found a strange code on a sheet of paper in his room. It turns out the code is similar to the coded messages sent to two other hotels earlier: when the people at those hotels failed to solve the code in time, rooms in those hotels were blown up with explosives! Ran's mother Eri happens to be in the hotel too, as she's their corporate lawyer and she manages to arrange for Sera (and Conan) to work on the case in secret, as soon after the coded message is found, the hotel is called by someone who treatens to blow up a room here too unless they solve it. Even the sub-plot of Sera's "sister" pushing Sera to solve the case because she can't risk being seen if the hotel needs to be evacuated doesn't do much to change the fact this is just another code-solving story, and this one is really nothing remarkable. The identity of the bomber is also hilariously simple to guess, so there's just nothing memorable to this one.

In Two Attendants, the Detective Boys go to the beach with the assistant teacher Wakasa, with Okiya joining them too as he can drive there (and because Conan doesn't really trust Wakasa with Haibara). They enjoy the Kamen Yaiber sausage at a beach restaurant, but after the break, the owner of the restaurant is found strangled in the employees room, with one of his employees asleep in the same room. But why would the murderer go to sleep in the same room after strangling his boss? Part of the story also involves Okiya and Wakasa both trying to probe each other, but the core mystery is a bit disappointing, once again. I think I like the core idea of how the strangling was done, that certainly, but the story kinda tries to avoid focusing too much on it too early, making the first half of the mystery feel very slow and unfocused, as the mystery part ("what is the puzzle?") feels undeveloped. A shame, because I do like the "big" reveal in terms of how the murder was committed, as it's something that works best in the manga format.

Kaitou KID's Crown Magic is the last story in the volume, and starts mid-res, with Conan having cornered two Azusas from Cafe Poirot, with one of them obviously being the phantom thief KID in disguise. We then jump back in time a few hours, when we learn Suzuki Jiroukichi has made a new KID trap, with a jewel-embedded crown as the lure. Jiroukichi's trap is mainly built around a special corridor in front of the room where the crown is kept: the corridor is flanked by wind blowers and small enough so everyone has to crawl through it, rendering KID's usual tricks with his glider and cards useless. Of course, the crown does disappear after a sudden arrival by KID in the room, and it's up to Conan  to solve how he did it. Only... this has to be one of the least interesting acts of magic ever done by KID, because there's no way this trick could've fooled anyone for say longer than a minute. I can accept it working the initial moment, but the trick is so simple with so little misdirection going on, it should've been discovered immediately, or there should have been a secondary phase to the trick to flesh it out, but this shouldn't be the main and only mystery.

So overall, a rather disappointing volume, with none of the stories in any way memorable. I guess that's because the next volume seems to feature a very important story according to the preview, so this is the calm before the storm, but considering the slow pace nowadays, I guess this calm will last for like half a year before the storm finally arrives...

My last Kindaichi Shounen review also dates almost 8 months ago, when I discussed the first two volumes of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo 30th, or The Case File of Kindaichi 30th, a limited short series to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the franchise. And with short, I mean short, as the series was only four volumes long. The Oninohe - The Grave Lion Legend Murder Case starts with the 17-year old Hajime having no ideas for his summer project on Japanese folklore, so he joins Miyuki's project: she was planning to visit the village of Oninohe, where Tsumugi, a former elementary school classmate moved to. They have a rare local legend about a Grave Lion, holy beasts that calm the raging dead, and this year, Tsumugi is selected to perform the Lion Dance in a village ceremony. Miyuki and Hajime, and also Saki (2),  thus visit the small village and are invited to see Tsumugi perform the dance, but during the ceremony, which requires all villagers to be present, one of the few teenagers in the village is poisoned to death via a poisoned knife hidden in the back of his seat. Later, another teenager is also found murdered. Saki has recorded most of the ceremony and the surroundings with his trusty camcorder, but none of the suspects seems to have been able to arrange both murders. And what is the link between the victims, and a certain incident that happened some years ago?

A traditional Kindaichi Shounen story if there ever was one, with Hajime, Miyuki and Saki visiting a small village, an Old Friend of Hajime and Miyuki being there, an impossible mystery revolving around the suspects having an alibi for the time of the murder, Saki's video footage being a vital clue and of course An Incident of the Past. The series was of course always very much a 'by the numbers' series, and in that regards, this story is nothing special. I do think that mystery-wise, it's a bit too lean? I really the main trick of the story, where the murderer created an alibi for themselves during the ceremony, but that's basically only one impressive idea, and it's actually fairly small scale. A few more murders occur in the story, but those utilize fairly simple ideas and concepts, and ultimately, the story feels a bit dragging because the main idea is the only one that actually feels unique enough. Had this been a short story, with only the main trick, I would have loved this so much more, but not as much now, as a story that spans two volumes.

The final volume of Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo 30th , also contains a short two chapter story titled Greetings from the Gentleman Thief, which has old series regular the Gentleman Thief threatening to steal a painting. The main focus of this story is actually just fanservice, as a lot of familiar faces make a short appearance in the story, but there's also a short mystery with Hajime quickly deducing how the Gentleman Thief managed to steal the painting as announced, and the trick is pretty good, so that's a plus.

So overall, I can't say the latest volumes of Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen were really high points in either series. Of course, considering both series have been running for thirty years (Conan's 30th anniversary is next year!), I guess you can't expect all volumes to be absolute bangers, but still, I can't deny I'm disappointed this time. Conan's next volume at least seems to be important plot-wise, while Kindaichi will now return to the  Kindaichi 37-sai no Jikenbo ("The Case Files of Kindaichi, Age 37") series, so let's hope the upcoming volumes are more fun.

Original Japanese title(s):  青山剛昌 『名探偵コナン』第103巻

天樹征丸（原）、さとうふみや（画）『金田一少年の事件簿30th』第3, 4巻

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』