The Witch Tree Symbol

Deep into that darkness peering

"The Raven" 

Yes, this is an awesome cover.

Since Ishioka started writing down his adventures with his roommate Mitarai Kiyoshi, he's been making a name for himself as a mystery author, and it's through one of his fans he becomes involved with the mysterious death of Fujinami Surugu. The man was found dead the day after a storm on the roof of his parental home. There were no distinct clues indicating a murder, but why was he found on the roof? Suguru and his wife were living near Suguru's parental home, on the same block, in an apartment building owned by his mother Yachiyo. These buildings stand on Darkness Hill somewhere in Yokohama. In the Edo period, men were being decapitated here and it is said the gigantic true on the block of the Fujinami buildings grew that large because of the blood of the punished. Several decades ago, Yachiyo was married with the British man James Payne, who ran a school here. He was the father of three children, Suguru, Yuzuru and Reona, but when most of them had grown up, he just disappeared to return to Great Britain, leaving his family behind. Since then, Yachiyo and her children have remained here, but now her oldest son has died, and it's certainly not the first tragedy to happen on this block. The gigantic tree standing in front of the house is not only rumored to drink blood, but in the past, dead bodies have in fact been found hanging from the tree, and nobody ever figured out how those bodies ended up there. Mitarai Kiyoshi of course suspects there's more to this than just a cursed tree, so he and Ishioka investigate the case in Shimada Souji's 1990 novel Kurayamizaka no Hitokui no Ki ("The Man-Eating Tree of Darkness Hill").

Shimada made his debut in 1981 with Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken (AKA The Tokyo Zodiac Murders), which also introduced the world to his astrologist-turned-detective Mitarai Kiyoshi and his chronicler Ishioka. Kurayamizaka no Hitokui no Ki is the fourth novel in the series following Naname Yashiki no Hanzai (AKA Murder in the Crooked House) and Ihou no Kishi. This novel also marked a shift in tone, though the previous one already started that, though less ambitious. Kurayamizaka no Hitokui no Ki shares a lot with the novels that followed it: like books like Suishou no Pyramid, Atopos and Nejishiki Zazetsuki, this book is quite long (a so-called brick book) and it features Mitarai involved in a bigger adventure, even going abroad for some time to do some extra investigation. Also, these books take on a a different storytelling style, incorporating more themes like horror, and narratives-within-narratives where Shimada delves into topics that happen to be interesting him at the time of writing. These books are quite different from the two Mitarai Kiyoshi novels currently available in English, but are actually more "typical" of the series than those two, as Shimada stuck to this mode for much longer.

Because I don't really read these books in order, I already knew Shimada would eventually shift to this style, and in a way, Kurayamizaka no Hitokui no Ki is very predictable because of that. Structure-wise, it is quite familiar in the sense I knew we'd be sidetracking a lot while Mitarai and Ishioka are investigating the death of Suguru on the roof. Initially, the mystery revolves around how Suguru ended up on the roof in the first place, whether it was by his own choice or whether someone else arranged for that. Strangely enough, the reason why the two got involved in this case is quickly forgotten and ignored, but as they investigate the case, the reader is also taken along a trip in history, as Mitarai starts to develop an interest in the history of the school that used to stand at this place, and in the family history of the Fujinamis and their father James Payne. In the meanwhile, more mysterious deaths occur, which are clearly centred around the ominous tree standing near the Fujinami parental house and people start to fear it's really a curse that's doing all of this. 

Personally, I am not really a fan of the slower pace of the Shimada bricks, where Mitarai obviously has some idea of what is going on already, but he wants to delve deeper in the topic, and thus we get narratives-within-narratives detailing creepy histories or other stories. Some might appreciate the creepy atmosphere of the novel, and especially of the tree, better than I did, but I found the story to be slower than it needed to be, which after a while starts to become tiring. Ultimately, there are few "clear" mysteries that occur (like a death) even though this is a long book, and I didn't think the vague "but something feels off..." atmosphere the book was going for was strong enough to keep the plot engaging enough for the page count.

It didn't help my reading experience that even though there are few 'clear/focal' mysteries in the story, the solution to the mysterious deaths isn't... really surprising. Most of them can be seen as a variant on ideas Shimada uses quite often in his work, and therefore can be easily guessed if you have read a few works by him. This book was hardly surprising seen in a Shimada context in that regard. Of course, I don't read his work in order, so that may have "reverse-spoiled" me, but even so, I do feel the solution to the mysteries is a bit weak considering the length of the book, I would have wanted something a bit more intricately planned. While I guess there's also the bigger mystery of how all the incidents are connected to each other, including those that happened in the past like the dead girl found in the tree long ago and even smaller incidents that happened at the school decades ago, I felt that the merits of this narrative were more in its horror-esque implications, rather than as a detective story. Again, I know that is what Shimada was moving towards starting with this book, but his mode of trying to tie a lot of incidents taken place across a long period of time often ends up feeling rather forced and reliant on coincidences, and while the story can feel quite tenseful, it sometimes has trouble feeling like a proper logical puzzle, being more focused on the "feeling" of the mystery rather than the explanation.

There is a short part that is set abroad, which has its own mini puzzle revolving an odd building: I liked the idea behind that mystery, but it felt really detached from the rest of the book, and I would have perhaps liked it better if it had been its own story, instead of a kind of narrative-within-a-narrative.

Kurayamizaka no Hitokui no Ki was thus not really my favorite Mitarai novel. I do think there will be readers who can appreciate this book better than I, as there are distinct horror elements to the story that will perhaps appeal better to others than to me, and when seen as a series work, this book is also important as it marked the shift to a different story style and it also introduces a certain recurring character who you'll often in other books, so some might want to read this in order exactly so they don't get spoiled on who will survive this book to return in subsequent works, but I personally wasn't too big a fan of this one.

Original Japanese title(s): 島田荘司『暗闇坂の人喰いの木』

Requiem of the Golden Witch

The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.

"The Black Cat"

FOMO, FOMO...

After losing his parents in an accident, 13-year old Takuma moves to his mother's home town. She was the oldest daughter of the Daimon family, one of the influentual families in the small, isolated community, but she kept mostly away from her family, and Takuma himself had never visited the family on his mother's side. But now his parents are dead, he's been taken in by his youngest aunt Rei and his grandmother Matsu: Takuma's grandfather Taizou passed away some months ago, and because Takuma's two middle aunts Noriko and Yuuri are married into other families, taking the names of their husbands, the Daimon clan is on the verge of extinction. By having Rei, who had been married previously but is now divorced, adopt her nephew Takuma as her own son, Matsu hopes the Daimon family will continue through Takuma as the last male successor of the bloodline. Takuma, who had always lived in Tokyo, finds his new home extremely hard to adapt to. The town is an eerily closed community, perhaps best symbolized by the fact the local justice authority isn't actually a police officer: the "patrol officer" is a private person (Takuma's uncle), who acts as the local troubleshooter. While the 'patrol officer' will call for the real police if necessary, many smaller problems are handled by himself, and he can even sweep minor deaths under the rug if wished by the persons involved agree they prefer that over contacting the proper authorities. 

While Takuma has found a few friends, and even love interests, by entering the school's Occult Club, he also has made enemies, for no other reason than being Daimon Taizou's grandson. He is in particular being harrassed by the mayor's son and his goonies, who accuse him of being possessed by a devil: apparently, Taizou had been experimenting with summoning devils before his mysterious death. Taizou had been running for mayor too, and rumors say he summoned a devil to kill the mayor's wife and two daughters, who had been walking out on a snowy day, on a path flanked on both sides by a wall of snow. Another person was walking the same way, and saw the three turn a corner, but when this witness did the same, he found the three women decapitated, but with no sign of the murderer nearby. The mayor's son thus blames Taizou, and now Takuma for the mysterious death of his mother and sisters. Meanwhile, Takuma learns the Daimon family holds a curious place in the town's society, as they are also the ones who can perform a local exorcism ceremony, applied when the townsmen think someone is possessed. While Takuma is being accused of being possessed by a devil, he himself slowly sees how the townsmen themselves turn into inhuman devils as mysterious event after event occurs after his arrival, from a fire burning down an important hut for the community, attempts being made on Takuma's life and to a grisly new murder in Takuma's own house. But why is all of this happening and what is the connection between all these incidents? Is it the work of the devil? That is the big question in Asukabe Katsunori's Datenshi Goumonkei ("Torture of the Fallen Angels" 2008).

Datenshi Goumonkei was a book originally published in 2008, but late 2023, the out-of-print book got a limited facsimile reprint via Shosen and the bookstore Horindo in cooperation with the original publisher Kadokawa, which is actually a very rare thing to happen. The original release went for crazy prices, but I assume Kadokawa itself had no intention of re-releasing the book themselves for the moment, so now we have not exactly a private reprint, but it's still not a major re-release of the book. And of course fear-of-missing-out kinda played a role in me getting this book now, though references to John Dickson Carr on the obi, and the fact the book was about impossible crimes, and devils and (fallen) angels did sound very appealing. The facsimile reprint version also comes with a small booklet with an unrelated short story also by Asukabe, whose work I had not ever read before by the way.

What this book really excels at, is atmosphere. The town where Takuma ends up at is really creepy, and with that, I mean the people there. It's a small, isolated town, though still large enough to have a normal town centre with stores, restaurants, gift shops and everything, so not really a mountain village type of isolated place, but the people there do live in a very isolated manner, with their own local customs and beliefs. The fact the place doesn't have an actual police station, and Takuma's uncle simply acts as an appointed "troubleshooter" who at times can even cover up mysterious deaths by making sure the town doctor and everyone else are all on the same page is already a sign of how weirdly the town works, but Takuma himself also notices how incredibly closed-off the people are, always looking at him as the outsider and teachers completely ignoring blatant acts of harrassment towards Takuma. People also don't really tell Takuma about a lot of the town traditions and beliefs until they think it's time, leading to Takuma constantly feeling like a fish out of water, like he's been sent to a town of madmen as the one sane person. The first time Takuma witnesses how his aunt/new mother Rei for example exorcises a woman is horrifying, but the townsmen all pretend like it's normal and even rejoice about the sickening deed. There's something "off" about the people here, almost like they're all cultists or something, and the more time Takuma spends here, the more unsettling it all gets. This culminates in the climax, when half the town appears to go absolutely mad, almost transforming into actual devils as they drive Takuma, who is still trying to solve the mysterious murders that have occured in the meantime, into a desperate corner. As a horror story, Datenshi Goumonkei might not feel completely original, and even in the mystery genre, I'd say something like Yatsu Haka Mura ("The Village of Eight Graves") feels quite similar with its idea of an outsider arriving in an isolated community and things going very wrong, but this book certainly does this very effectively, and at times, it even comes close to feeling like something like Umineko no Naku Koro ni, even though it starts so relatively normal!

I have to say that while I did enjoy the book overall, Datenshi Goumonkei feels a bit disjointed as a mystery novel. The book is brimming with mysterious or curious events and incidents, but a lot of these parts don't really have much synergy with each other, other than "being mysterious and curious". It's not a series of events that occur in this book, but a lot of discrete occurances that all seem mysterious, and... most of them are properly explained, but in hindsight, you do feel a lot of just happened just to scare Takuma and the reader, and there's not really much of a connection between event A and event B. Perhaps the coincidence at play is the work of the devil, but it does make the plot feel a bit overwhelming for the wrong reasons. Takuma at first also isn't that strongly involved in the mysteries, so while you hear about impossible murders and such, Takuma doesn't really actively investigate them at first, so that results in a slow start of the narrative. That said, there are many interesting occurences, from the sudden decapitation of three women five years ago, the mystery of Daimon Taizou's odd museum built like an inverted pyramid in the depths of the forest, to Daimon Taizou passing away recently in his locked study, where he was found with all his bones crushed, to smaller incidents, like an act of arson, Takuma's cousins disappearing closer to the end, and a mysterious empty retirement home found in the forest where a mysterious woman in red is seen by Takuma. Some of these elements are proper mystery plots, while other elements are closer to horror tropes, and some are just there because the author liked it, I guess (the longest chapter in the whole book is an essay on modern horror fiction written by Takuma's friend Fujio for Takuma, and it's really detailed, but also not really relevant to the plot). 

Some parts are honestly only there to be cool, but don't really make sense in the context of a mystery novel. The catastrophic climax of the book for example has some insane (in a good way) scenes that work extremely well for the mood of the book at that point, but when it tries to explain these events later on in a rational way, well, it's barely acceptable (okay.... so that thing is just there...?). And some persons really make weird decisions here... I liked most of the murders though, and while the hinting was usually not really physical clue/action-based, but more based on "in hindsight, I could've guessed X was actually Y" types of revelations/interpretations, the way the murders were clewed did fit the overall atmosphere of the book, with a lot being based on Takuma's own direct experiences. Some of them also have short, but memorable false solutions proposed for them, with one major one being so over-the-top I almost wish it was the real one, because it would really have made this a unique kind of mystery. Still, don't come here hoping for a mind-bending locked room trick or something like that: the focus of the book lies more in somehow trying to tie these events together into a coherent series of incidents (and even then, the book has to almost cheat at times for that to work). Some of the minor mysteries are probably easier to solve: I did like the mystery revolving around the museum a lot, perhaps because I guessed it rather early on, but at the same time, it felt so seperated from the rest of the story, I didn't really understand why it was there. That is the main gripe I have with the book I think when it comes to the mystery, with some mysteries just being there but not really being related to the main plot in any way, as if Asukabe just had several ideas he really wanted to throw in the book, but couldn't really figure out how to make them all relevant.

The book is also touted as a romantic boy-meets-girl-type of story, and in that sense, Datenshi Goumonkei does a good job: Takuma may have trouble adapting to his new home, but he does find himself attracted to a few of the girls at school, and part of why the book feels so creepy is definitely because Takuma is honestly trying to live a normal life in his new home town, despite him being treated as an outsider by so many and all the weird occurences happening around him, and often somehow involving him, making an event like a date, wedged between events where Takuma almost dies, feel very alienating, further giving the whole book a very unsettling atmosphere. This boy-meets-girl plot is a very fundamental element to the book, almost surprisingly so, but it does not "burden" the book at all from a mystery POV.

Overall, I did enjoy Datenshi Goumonkei a lot. It feels a lot like a passion project due to how much is thrown into it, and I think it could easily have been tightened up a bit, but the overall atmosphere of the town slowly showing its true colors is done really good, and it certainly had me hooked from start to finish, even if I found some elements not very strong when viewed on their own. It's certainly a unique read, with a rather slow start, once the modern-day murders occur, things move a lot faster. The book certainly made me curious to reading more of Asukabe's work, and I do hope they have a similar vibe.

Original Japanese title(s): 飛鳥部勝則『堕天使拷問刑』

Secret at Mystic Lake

 "Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water"

"Be Water, My Friend"

First one of the new year!

The one thing I do hate about writing about Japanese translations of Chinese mystery novels is how I always have to look up the readings of each single name in Chinese and how to transliterate them into pinyin, as obviously, in the Japanese translations, they usually simply use the original Chinese characters and transliterate into Japanese pronouncations. It's not a lot of work, but I always have to get that out of the way before I can actually get started on the post...

In the suburbs of Shanghai lies the manor of the Lu family. Their spacious house used to be a state library and is located inside a former park, with a large lake next to the house. While the park and the lake had originally been left open the public when the former family patriarch bought everything, they eventually closed it off. After the patriarch's death, his widow (and second wife) Wu Miao remained the de-facto head of the clan. The sons Lu Ren (son of the first wife) and Lu Yi and Lu Li went their own directions, and still live in the same house with their own families too. Lu Ren in particular was well-known in society, as he was a philanthropist acting as the representative of the Lu family. One chilly winter morning, Lu Ren's grandson found a strange object near the semi-basement storehouse outside. When his father Lu Wenlong realizes his son was playing with an umbilical cord, he immediately goes to the storehouse. However, the entrance to the semi-basement storehouse is below ground level, and the stairs that lead down have been flooded due to the heavy rain the last couple of days. As the stairs lead two meters down and there's tonnes of water blocking the door right now, it has been impossible to open the door the last two days. But wanting to know what is going on, Lu Wenlong borrows a water pump to get all the water away, and when he enters the storehouse, he finds his father lying dead on the dry floor! He's been suffocated, and his mobile phone lies broken on the floor. As you can't suffocate yourself, it's obvious this is a murder, but the odd thing is that Lu Ren's estimated time of death is just one day earlier, so after the stairs had been flooded. Even supposing Lu Ren had gone inside the storehouse himself before the door was blocked by rain water, how did the murderer then get inside to kill Lu Ren, and get outside again? 

When later another member of the Lu clan is murdered in a locked room and another umbilical cord is found, the voice actress Zhongke, who rents a room in the Lu house, becomes terrified and wants to leave Shanghai and quit her job, but that fortunately for her, she is also personally chosen by the popular manga artist Anzhen to become the main voice actress in the upcoming animated adaptation of his most popular work. Anzhen also happens to work for the police as a sketch artist, and has in the past helped solve crimes. Not wanting to lose her, Anzhen declares he will solve the series of murders in the Lu household to relieve Zhongke of her fears. But will it really be so easy to solve this mystery in Sun Qinwen's Lindongzhiguan (2018)?

Sun Qinwen is a Chinese mystery novelist born in Shanghai, who is known as the Chinese king of the locked room mystery. Originally debuting in 2008 with a short story, he continued specializing in the short story format, publishing with the pen name Jiding. It wouldn't be until 2018 when he would publish his first full-length novel with Lindongzhiguan, under his real name Sun Qinwen. I had heard his name mentioned before in the comments of this blog, so I had been interested in his work for some time, but his work was not available in a language I could read (except for one short story translated to Japanese, but only via Kindle). Fortunately, 2023 finally brought us a Japanese translation of this novel: Gentou no Hitsugi ("Coffins in the Cold Winter") was translated by Ai Kousaku, and marks the first time Sun Qinwen got a major release in Japan. And I sure hope more follows.

One thing I immediately noticed was that this was a very straightforward mystery novel, with "obvious" mysteries in the form of locked room murders. You might think this is a strange thing to notice, considering everything I read for this blog is... mystery. However, the last few years, I have read a handful of mystery novels that were originally written in the Chinese language (usually as Japanese translations), and oddly enough, few of them were actually clasically-structured mystery novels. Part of it might be because I had read a few of the Taiwanese Soji Shimada Mystery Award winners: those novels played more with mysteries that were built on intertwining narratives/consciousness/memories of events. That is a reflection of Shimada Souji's own preference, I suppose, as he acts as the final judge for that award and he himself too soon moved away from classically structured puzzle plot mysteries and started focusing a lot more on memory/narrative-focused mysteries. Lu Qiucha's Yuan Nian Chun Zhi Ji was awesome, but very deeply imbedded in classical Chinese philosophy while Chan Ho-Kei's The Borrowed (13.67) was great too, but could differ in tone greatly depending on the story, so Lindongzhiguan in comparison felt very refreshing as a Chinese mystery that really just did nothing but be a classic puzzle plot mystery, focusing on a clear impossible crime. And it was a good one too!

The first murder, in the semi-basement storehouse, is defnitely the most memorable one. The premise of a room that is sealed by water is really cool. And yes, it is a huge design flaw if you have a storehouse to keep food safe so you can survive in times of (natural) crises, but the stairs can get flooded, blocking the door of said storehouse. But anyway, as normal and essential water is for our usual life, it's probably hard to imagine right away how much water is needed to flood a stairs that go two meters down ground level, and the sheer weight that body of water has. But as the storehouse was found dry when Lu Wenlong discovered his father's body, it is also clear the murderer didn't just open the door and let the stairs flood again after committing the murder. The phone that was broken by throwing it on the floor also indicates the murderer had actually been in the storehouse, so how did they get in, and out? The solution could've been hinted at better I think: basically the detectives find something while looking for something else, and that something is a major clue to solving the water locked room. I like the solution though! It is a bit silly, but the right kind of silly because a locked room murder isn't realistic in the first place, and just visualizing it is really funny. Practically speaking, I am not completely sure how feasible this is, but I don't care, this is the kind of imagination I like to see in mystery fiction!

A second murder occuring inside the house, in a bedroom, is relatively simple. Someone is murdered inside their bedroom, while someone else had been sitting in the hallway in front of that room. After a loud cry, the door is unlocked from the inside, and when the witness goes inside the room, they find the victim lying dead beneath the bed, but sees nobody else in the room. The solution is an interesting variation of a trick I have seen somewhere else, but in a completely different context, and used for a completely different purpose. I quite like the idea here, but at the same time, I don't think it works quite well here: the location of a bedroom simply doesn't seem convincing enough for this trick to work, it'd need a different kind of room to really be convincing, I think. I do wonder if Sun Qinwen came upon the idea by reading that one comic I was thinking of, for I do think this is a great example of how to completely transform a trick. Visually, it reminds of that comic, but it leads to a completely different purpose and execution. Like, I can imagine how reading the comic could've jogged Sun's mind to arrive at this different conclusion. 

The third murder is absolutely horrifying when you realize how it was done. Or perhaps, the murder itself is already horrifying, as it involves a decapitated corpse. Outside in the park, next to the lake, were three suspended cabins with glass floors. They were suspended above the lake, to give the feeling of floating above the freezing water and were originally open for rental when the park was still open to the public: most of them were removed after they closed the park, leaving only three for private use. One of these cabins had been dropped into the freezing lake by burning the metal suspension wires with acid. Inside the cabin however, a decapitated man was found. The cabin itself however had been locked with a padlock by someone else, and she swears the victim had been alive and well when she left him there (as part of their SM play), and that she had the key with her all the time. So how could the murderer have gone inside the cabin to murder the victim, and why did they also drop the cabin into the lake? Some of the logistics of this murder seem a bit iffy, but man, I love the main idea of this murder, and specifically, the reason why the victim ended up without his head. Imagining the scene is just terrifying, and incredibly memorable. Again not really a fan of how Sun Qinwen drops hints regarding the howdunnit however, he has cool ideas for locked room murder tricks, but the way he clewes the path to the solution to them often feel like the clues come out of nowhere, or Anzhen asks the police to check something very specific simply because he just happens to think of it, without a real prompt.

The whodunnit aspect becomes more prominent at the end of the book, and it's a mixed bag. Style-wise, Sun Qinwen does seem to follow the Queen school, with a lot of emphasis on deductions surrounding the actions the murderer took at the crime scene, and comparing those conclusions to the pool of suspects. Some of these conclusions are ones we see fairly often in this style of mysteries, so you might already recognize them as "oh, this is going to be used to identify the murderer" as soon as the element is introduced in the story. Not really a big fan of the ones we see more often, though there was a more interesting at the very end, though I like it more for the idea than the actual execution. I think the idea is really cool, but it needed much more robust clewing to feel fair in hindsight. As I read it now, I can kinda see how Sun Qinwen thought he had indicated that clue enough, but even then, it still doesn't feel convincing enough to feel "fair" in hindsight. I also don't think the identity of the murderer works completely. Ultimately, a lot of the plot also depends on luck, especially of having certain characters act in that particular way at that certain time, and the exact dynamics behind some of the locked room murders (the exact things and order the killer did to accomplish the murder) and while I can wave that away one time, each of these murders had a lot of these aspects, so it feels like the plot is constantly giving the murderer lucky brakes just so the mystery could work, rather than the murderer actually planning out an... executable plan with little room for failure. So there is stuff I like when it comes to how the plotting does allow for Queen-like deductions, but not all of it really works, and the identity of the murderer seems to raise a few more questions than answers when it actually comes to the matter of executability.

The book works quite well as an introduction to Sun Qinwen's works by the way. There are some minor references to his other works (thanks, translator's notes!), and we also learn bits and pieces of Anzhen's own past, and how he might be involved in a bigger mystery himself too, it is a great first work to read. The story that ties into the umbilical cords is also pretty awesome, somewhat reminsicent of Mitsuda Shinzou's work in the way it ties into old family ceromonies and things like that, with a touch of horror, though I think it was very underplayed here. It should have been used far more strongly, as it has so much potential!

So on the whole, I did really like Lindongzhiguan. The locked room mysteries shown in this book have exciting elements, which at least do convey to me why Sun Qinwen would be seen as a major locked room murder specialist in China. While I don't think his whodunnit angle in this book works completely, it too has elements that are inspired, so I do hope to read more his work in the future. A short story collection in particular would be very, very welcome!  

Original Chinese title(s): 沁文 "凛冬之棺"

Turnabout Memories - Part 13

"I have to go over everything that's happened. I have to remember" 

Another Code R: Journey into Lost Memories

Here on this blog, it's a tradition to look back at the reviews and other posts that were published ths year and highlight a few of them. I usually post this list around Christmas, but as my weekly update day is Wednesday, I figured it'd just post it on the usual day then as it's so close... I'm always months ahead with writing posts, but this particular post I always write in December, because sometimes I schedule in extra posts (like Detective Conan: Black Iron Submarine) and sometimes I end up shuffling the post schedule, so I usually am not sure about what posts I can refer to in this end-of-year post until.... it's the end of the year.  Of course, some of the eligible posts I wrote way back in 2022 already... This year, I managed to read a few out-of-print authors and works I had been eyeing for some time now, so that was fun. I usually don't really plan what to read in a specific year, so even to me, it's a surprise how a year will end for me, sometimes I basically only read books by authors I already now, sometimes I see a rather noticable influx of authors I had never read before. I'm already in the second half of 2024 when it comes to scheduled posts, and I can already tell you there's gold among some of the posts there! I hope you'll all have a fantastic new year and see you back in 2024!

 

The Best Project Outside The Blog! In 2023!

The Mill House Murders 

 

Yes, this is just the self-promotion category! The very first novel I translated was The Decagon House Murders back in 2015, and now, quite some few years later, I finally got the opportunity to work on its sequel, The Mill House Murders. While The Decagon House Murders was originally published by Locked Room International, it is now currently being published by Pushkin Press, so to be honest, I had no idea at first whether they were interested in continuing the series, and whether I'd be in the equation, but fortunately, Ayatsuji himself also wanted me back on board, and I of course loved to come back to the series, resulting in a release by Pushkin Press earlier this year. Last year, I worked on Imamura's Death Within the Evil Eye, which was the first time I got to work on a sequel to a book I also worked on, but The Mill House Murders still remains a bit special, due to its connection to my first translated novel! The translation of the third book in the series, The Labyrinth House Murders, has already been announced, and once again, I had the pleasure and honor of working on it, so I hope readers here will pick it up too next year!

I'd also of course like to point readers here to the Honkaku Discord Server. It's been running for just over a year now, and it's become a nice place to chat about mystery fiction (not just Japanese). Of course, that's not my accomplishment, but that of the members in the server. It's a pretty easy-going server too, so if that sounds like fun, come have a look: https://discord.gg/z3HMSmf8qd

 

Most Interesting Non-Fiction Book! Of 2023!

Misshitsu Mystery Guide

Okay, I haven't read any other non-fiction mystery-related books besides this one, so this isn't really fair, but still, Iiki Yuusan's guide on the locked room mystery is really a must-read for fans of the locked room and impossible crime sub-genre, I think. In the book, the Ellery Queen scholar presents 50 mystery stories (30 Japanese, 20 foreign) that in his mind showcase the diversity that exists within the sub-genre. The book includes very cool diagrams of the crime scenes for each of the stories (so even for stories that originally didn't feature any diagrams), but what is more interesting, is the fact the book consists of two parts. In the first part, Iiki only introoduces the broad outline of the story in question and explains briefly why he thinks the book should be highlighted, but in the second half, he also spoils the solution of each story, and that allows him to freedom to pick entries based on their solution (and not just the trick), and that allows for some really unique picks for this book, like stories that aren't really impossible crimes until you consider the solution, or going with very experimental locked room mysteries. It's a fantastic book that really deserves a read.

Most Interesting Mystery Game Played In 2023! But Probably Older!

The Case of the Golden Idol

 

I've played a fair amount of mystery games this year. Detective Pikachu Returns was highly anticipated by me because I played the original back in 2016(!) already and had been waiting all this time to get closure on the story. A game like Tantei Bokumetsu (AKA Process of Elimination) was a game I had been wanting to play for a long time, due to its unique premise of a mystery game in the format of a SRPG and I finally got around to it because I wanted to play it before the English version was released. Rain Code was of course a game I had been looking forward to, as it was created by the same people behind Danganronpa. These were all games I liked playing in general, but always had points I found frustrating, or at the very least, they had obvious points that could've been improved. In that regard, I'd have to say Unheard was a very nice surprise, as I had very little knowledge about the game when I started with it, but it was a short, but memorable experience. Ultimately, I do think the most interesting mystery game I played this year was The Case of the Golden Idol, which offers deduction-focused gameplay combined with a rather surprising epic story. And yes, I had to quickly write the review of the game last week so I could feature it in this post!

 

Silliest Clue! Seen in 2023!

Morikawa Goten no Inbou ("Intrigue at the Morikawa Manor") (Detective Conan episodes 1050-1051)

 

Sometimes, you just want something silly. Morikawa Goten no Inbou is a two-parter in the animated series of Detective Conan, penned by Yamatoya Akatsuki. Once you see his name, alarm bells should ring, for while he has written an excellent Tantei Gakuen Q anime original with a locked room set in a sunken ship, his output for Detective Conan has been nothing but insane. The dear man also writes for Gintama, which should give you an idea of how silly he can be. In 2020, I choose his Glamping Kaijiken ("The Curious Glamping Incident") as the silliest mystery I had seen that year, and while on the whole Morikawa Goten no Inbou is not nearly as silly, I would say the final clue Conan presents to the culprit when he explains how he figured out that person was the culprit, has to be one of the most insane, and also outright insulting clues ever. No sane person would ever think to use that as a clue in a mystery story, but Yamatoya does. It's something you'd never expect to come, and it's brilliant.

Best Locked Room Epic! Of 2023!

Misshitsu Kingdom (Kingdom of the Locked Room)

 

I am not specifically a fan of the locked room mystery, but this year, I did happen to read three books that all aimed to be an enormous locked room mystery epic. Of the three, Kamosaki Danro's Misshitsu Kyouran Jidai no Satsujin - Zekkai no Kotou to Nanatsu no Trick (The Murder in the Age of Frenzy of Locked Rooms: The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks) has a unique premise, set in a world where murderers know that by using locked room murders, they can't be convicted in a court of law unless the police figure out how they did it (because unless the police can prove how the defendant did it, the impossibility of the crime itself becomes an alibi for every single person) and in this book, we have no less than seven different locked room murders. However, the book is also fairly short, so each room barely gets any time. Kagami Masayuki's second novel Kangokutou ("Prison Island") is a John Dickson Carr-inspired epic of about 1200 pages long, with a series of impossible crimes happening on a prison island isolated from the outside world due to a storm. The extended page count allows Kagami to come up with a very robust setting for most of the locked rooms, and it results in a very epic conclusion where series detective Bertrand explains all the mysteries in hundreds of pages! However, on the whole, I found Tsukatou Hajime's Misshitsu Kingdom the better party. In terms of page count, it's similar to Kangokutou at about 1200 pages, but while Kagami's epic was very closely modeled after John Dickson Carr, Tsukatou uses very Carr-esque impossible crime situations, but at the same time, utilizes Ellery Queen-esque chains of reasonings to drive the plot, and this fusion of these two schools is what really makes Misshitsu Kingdom special in my opinion.

Best Post I Accidentally Deleted And Had To Rewrite Completely!

Kangokutou ("Prison Island")

Kangokutou didn't win in the previous category, but it sure wins here. In over ten years of blogging, never had I accidentally deleted a post I had finished already. I originally read Kangokutou in March of this year, and wrote my rather lengthy review of it soon after that and had the post scheduled for August, but the week before the post would go up, I wanted to change something, and a few wrong keyboard shortcut inputs later, I had accidentally deleted the contents of the post, and allowed the empty post to be saved. Which mean I had to rewrite the whole post from scratch, months after I had read the book in question. And I still think the original version of the post was better, going into more detail into the various crimes that occur in that locked room epic, but alas, we all have to just to be content with the current version of the post.

Best Premise! Of 2023!

Hen na Ie ("A Curious House")

I've read a few books this year with memorable premises. Some were straightforward, but ambitious premises, like the epic locked room mysteries mentioned two categories ago. Some had just inspired settings for the book. Take for example Houjou Kie's Amulet Hotel, a book set at a hotel catering to criminals, allowing for rather unique stories as it's not the usual police doing detective work here, but a hotel detective working for an organization which rather prefers to "clean up" a hotel guest themselves if the guest has violated a house rule to keep things quiet. There are also more fantastical premises I found memorable: In Yonezawa Honobu's The Broken Keel, we have a small kingdom off the coast of Britain that deals with the murder on their king while under attack by immortal Danes, in Kinnikuman Yojigen Sappou Satsujin Jiken ("Kinnikuman: The Four-Dimensional Murder Art Murder Case"), the famous Kinnikuman franchise tackles on the mystery genre by having the superhuman wrestlers entangled in murder cases, and Nitadori Kei's Suiri Taisen ("The Great Deduction War") is basically The Avengers, with detectives with various superpowers gathering to tackle one case. Other memorable reads tackle form: Shirodaira Kyou's Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning 2: The Locked Room of the Steel Gang Boss and its spiritual successor Kannagi Uromu Saigo no Jiken ("The Last Case of Kannagi Uromu") by Konno Tenryuu revolve around presenting multiple solutions based on a past murder (in the latter case, a mystery novel with no clear solution), something Komori Kentarou also does with his incredibly fun Comiket Satsujin Jiken, being about a series of murders happening at Comiket among membeers of a doujin circle, with their latest release being a collection of short stories with their intended solutions to a murder in the fictional series Lunatic Dreamers. But in the end, I think Uketsu's Hen na Ie is still the one that managed to surprise me the most with its premise. Floorplans and diagrams are often an important element in a mystery story (see the also aforementioned Misshitsu Mystery Guide), but never had I seen a mystery story that uses floorplans exclusively to tell its story. While the first chapter is by far the best of the whole book, the idea of making the floorplan the star of the story, instead of a supporting role, was inspired, and the result is a very unique book that despite some flaws is very, very entertaining and memorable.

The Just-Ten-In-No-Particular-Order-No-Comments List

- Amulet Hotel (Houjou Kie)

- Comiket Satsujin Jiken ("The Comiket Murder Case") (Komori Kentarou)

- Hakobune ("The Ark") (Yuuki Haruo)

- Semi-Otoko ("The Cicada-Man") (Nemoto Shou)

- Misshitsu Kingdom ("Kingdom of the Locked Room") (Tsukatou Hajime)

- Sougetsujou no Sangeki ("The Tragedy at the Twin Moon Castle") (Kagami Masayuki)

- Hen na Ie ("A Curious House") (Uketsu)

- Misshitsu Mystery Guide ("Locked Room Mystery Guide") (Iiki Yuusan)

- Meitantei no Ikenie - Jinminkyou Satsujin Jiken ("The Sacrifice of the Great Detective: The Peoples Church Murder Case" AKA The Detective Massacre) (Shirai Tomoyuki)

- Tinker-Bell Goroshi ("The Murder of Tinker-Bell") (Kobayashi Yasumi)

Law of the Jungle

「 お前を信じる俺を信じろ」

『天元突破グレンラガン』

 

 "Believe in the me who believes in you!"

"Guren Lagann"

Final review of the year, but it's about a great book!

Ootoya Takashi was always content being a minor private detective, always observing cheating spouses and that kind of work, so at first, he didn't quite understand why the student Ririko wanted to be his assistant, and when she explained, he refused her at first. Ririko's mother, during her lifetime, had been a member of a cult, which had swindled her out of her money, leading to Ririko's father kicking her, and Ririko out of the house. After Ririko's mother's death, she learned the truth about the cult, and wanted to expose their tricks under the cover of a detective agency. Ootoya eventually gave in, and together with Ririko, he exposed a gigantic scam conspiracy. Soon, Ootoya himself became a well-known detective too, but the truth was that while Ootoya did indeed solve a lot of cases himself, it was actually Ririko who was often one step ahead of him, even though she was his "assistant." When one day, in November 1978, Ririko disappears, Ootoya becomes worried about her because they have made enemies in the past, but he learns quickly she has gone to the South American country of Guyana, to the community called Jordentown.

Jim Jorden claimed he could heal any illnesses and injuries, and started his own, Christianity-based cult. He gathered quite some followers in the United States, but also enemies: many people who have also left the cult, portraying Jim Jorden as a fraud and eventually, even politicians started to take a better look at him. Jim Jorden swiftly left the United States to found his own community in the jungles of Guyana, and he was followed there by about a thousand followers from the US and other parts of the world. The people of Jordentown mostly keep to themselves, led by Jim Jorden and his upper management members, but lately, US politicans have been putting political pressure on them, and Jim Jorden wants to move his community to the Soviet Union, with the help of a prominent US businessman with ties to the Soviets. This businessman however wants to know whether Jim Jorden really has powers to heal people, and after some negotations, Jim Jorden agreed to invite a team who will investigate whether his powers are real, and to observe the living conditions in Jordentown. Ririko had been chosen as one of these people thanks to her experience with exposing a fake cult, and she is joined by Jodie Randy, famous for exposing fake psychics on television, Yi Ha-jun, a Seoul University student who exposed a sexual abuse affair by the Christian church, and former FBI agent Alfred Dent, who has actually managed to go undercover, acting as an attorney for Jim Jorden. Ririko and the others however didn't return to their respective countries even though they were only to stay there for a few days, so suspecting they might be being kept captive by Jim Jorden, or worse, Ootoya himself travels to Jordentown with the help of a reporter childhood friend. When they arrive there, they learn Ririko and the others were held captive, because they didn't believe Jim Jorden's "miracles", so Jim decided to have his "guests" stay longer so he could convince them of his powers and report back to the businessman so he and his flock can go to the Soviet Union. As the people in Jordentown all believe in Jim Jorden as their "god" who can heal them, and some of them are such fanatic believers they are willing to kill for him (and the community is armed!), they have no choice but to stay there for a while, but they are fairly sure they won't be hurt because that would definitely mean no trip to the Soviet Union. The following day however, Dent is found stabbed to death in his room, and the room was locked from the inside. Was this an impossible murder? But in Jordentown, there is a man who can perform miracles, so is he the murderer? While Ootoya and Ririko try to solve the murder despite the unique circumstances, more impossible murders occur, but will they be able to uncover the truth, and get away safely? That is the question in Shirai Tomoyuki's Meitantei no Ikenie - Jinminkyou Satsujin Jiken ("The Sacrifice of the Great Detective: The Peoples Church Murder Case" 2022), which also has the alternative English title The Detective Massacre. 

The first time I read anything by Shirai Tomoyuki, was the short story Chibiman to Jumbo, which was beyond nasty, with a lot of gore. And I don't mean "decapitated people" gore, but a lot of vomiting and eating sea roaches and stuff like that. I was told "nasty" was something Shirai wrote a lot about, so I was kinda avoiding him, despite hearing also positive things about his mystery stories in terms of... mystery. So when I saw The Detective Massacre won the '23 Honkaku Mystery Award and ranked in first place in the Honkaku Best 10 2023, and I heard this one didn't have the gore, I picked this book up as my first Shirai novel, and I am so glad I did, as this is easily one of the best books I've read this year, and I can definitely see why it'd end up high on people's rankings!

It's of course clear right away this book was inspired by the real story of Jonestown in a lot of ways, and that is also the defining feature of this book: a story set in a very unique place, a closed-off town in the jungle, for a cult built around one single man, who rules the whole community and who is beloved by everyone as a god with healing powers. For Ootoya and Ririko, this is effectively a closed circle, as they can't just leave Jordentown alone and you definitely need a car to make it through the jungle to a landing strip, and of course you also need a plane to get away there. Due to the beliefs of the cult members, about a thousand of them in all ages (children go to school during the day, while the adults work on the fields to farm food), the impossible crimes also are not considered to be as grave or serious by them, as by the outsiders: impossible murders aren't strictly impossible for the cult members, especially not if those who are killed were punished by the heavens for opposing Jim Jorden and his followers. The result is a book with a fantastic, suspenseful and tense atmosphere, where you know any false move by Ootoya could perhaps lead to them being punished by the cult members right away for going against their rules and yet they do want to solve the murders.

On the other hand, the cult members aren't like brainwashed Kali cult members, but often ordinary people from the US with their own personal traumas, which they finally learned to cope with thanks to their life in Jordentown and the teachings of Jim Jorden. While they believe in Jorden, they are also, on the whole, peace-loving people who just want a place for themselves to live without being judged by others, and while initially cautious for the strangers, they do welcome Ririko and the others to Jordentown and are eager to show how great their community is and how they'd like to move to the Soviet Union in order to continue this life. It's under these circumstance we have these murders, and we clearly see how people on one hand know murder has occured, but also try to give these deaths a certain meaning that fits with their lives and their beliefs, again resulting in a very unique atmosphere that really makes this a one-of-a-kind mystery novel.

Over the course of this novel, several murders occur during their stay in Jordentown, that are in principle simple, yet impossible. A man murdered in his bedroom, but with the key inside the room, a woman who was poisoned during a tea party, but the other women are all fine, things like that. The situations themselves are fairly small-scale and taken on their own, they might not be super impressive. However, The Detective Massacre manages to use these seemingly "small" murder situations in conjunction with the unique setting that is Jordentown to present an absolutely phenomenal mystery novel. That is in part already hinted at by the text on the obi of this novel, which tells the reader the solution part of this book is 150 pages long (close to 40% of the book!). Mechanically, these impossible crimes might seem simple, but because they are in such an odd place, where people literally believe in miracles and thus impossible occurings, the detectives have to go a long way to not only logically explain how things happened and the reason for that, they also have to explain why these murders aren't impossible, while at the same time, the explanation needs to accept the existence of miracles, because the people here believe in them. So the solutions often have to go a roundabout way to explain things, because the detectives have to incorporate the "common sense" that exist in Jordentown, while also arriving at a logical explanation acceptable for them. This leads to some brilliant pieces of deduction that only work in Jordentown and no other mystery novel. The book is also full of false solutions, as it takes a while for the detectives to arrive at the actual truth, but it's amazing how Shirai structured this book. The same situation allows for several false solutions, but they are all properly hinted at, and while not all of them are as clever and you quickly realize these must be false, it's still impressive how he managed to properly hint all of the false solutions as well as place the clues for the counter-argument to the false solutions, and also have a final solution ready. Fans of the works of Brand, Berkeley and Queen, with deeply structured false solutions that build on each other and stuff like that will definitely like this book too.

The placing of clues and foreshadowing in The Detective Massacre also deserves a special mention. Shirai does a fantastic job at placing all kinds of hints that come back much later for these false solutions, not only in the form of actual physical evidence being referred to later, but also situations or moments that seemingly have nothing to do with the murders, but that are mirrored in surprising and clever manners to become relevant to those murders. Some segments really just sound like nothing more than small characterization snippets used for a cheap chuckle, but then turn out to be applicable to the murder mysteries too by looking at those stiuations from a very different angle. It might be because of the weird location that is Jordentown, but it's easy to look at Jordentown as its own thing, so it's extra surprising when you see moments "outside of Jordentown" suddenly being used in a clever way to set things up that happen inside Jordentown.

The two detective characters of Ootoya and Ririko are also used in a really good way. The two detectives (technically, Ririko is Ootoya's assistant) have very different approaches when it comes to the question of what a detective is, and what they do, and that also results in them going for approaching the people of Jordentown very differently, and also trying to explain the murders in very different ways (hence there are not only false solutions, but actually different strands of solutions, where they work from different angles precisely because Ririko and Ootoya look at the people of Jordentown, and what they believe in, very differently). The ending, which puts Ririko and Ootoya at very completely sides in terms of "what being a detective is about" is amazing, as it really gives meaning to why we have two different detective characters. Some of the set-up to the final stretch of the book doesn't feel as strong as other parts of the book, but ultimately, it's a book that'll stick in your mind for a while, and the ending will play an important role in that.

This book also appears to be part of a series which follows the title convention of "Meitantei no..." ("The Detective...") but I don't know how strongly connected these books are, if at all, in terms of story. Story-wise, The Detective Massacre feels fairly self-contained, but there are a few references and characters who might be series characters? I guess there's one way to find out...

But as Stan Lee also wrote, 'Nuff said. Meitantei no Ikenie - Jinminkyou Satsujin Jiken or The Detective Massacre is a fantastic mystery novel, which uses a unique setting to tell the kind of detective story fans of Brand, Berkeley and Queen are likely to love with its many (properly built-up) solutions, but it's also a great book on its own as it uses the setting of Jordentown to present a mystery story you really won't be seeing anywhere else. Even something like Queen's And on The Eight Day doesn't quite come close to this. One of my favorites of this year, and I hope to read more of Shirai's work in the future.

Original Japanese title(s):白井智之『名探偵のいけにえ: 人民教会殺人事件』

The Stone Idol

"That belongs in a museum."

"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

Most of the mystery games I play, place an emphasis on the story, and use game mechanics to allow the player to advance in the story. Most of them are of course adventure games where you closely follow the development of a tale of mystery, and the story is allowing the player to interact with the mystery by presenting them these puzzles in the form of questions, to see if you managed to solve them. Often, these games also offer an 'inventory' system in the form of a clue system, where you accumulate clues which you can use to for example answer the aforementioned puzzles ('showing evidence'). A game like Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney for example in fact mainly revolves around the exact same puzzle being fed to the player constantly, be it a highly context-senstive one (a contradiction between the evidence you gathered and a statement made by a witness), while other games like Detective Pikachu Returns might just present varying questions depending on the specific story part, ranging from "who is the culprit and what is the evidence that points to them" to "do we have some clues that could tell us how we could get past that guard?" or something like that. Still, most of the adventure games I play basically ask you context-specific questions that pertain to that specific part/scene of the story.

2018's Return of the Obra Dinn was a huge surprise as a mystery game, as it focused much more on one core deduction-focused game mechanic, and it basically only asked you the same question again and again, without much change in the actual underlying context of the question. Investigating the body-filled ship the Obra Dinn which mysteriously returned to the harbor, your task is to 1) identify each dead body and 2) identify the cause of death (and culprit if applicable). This task remains the same from start to finish, and you could theoretically just fill in the crew list, connecting each name with a portrait and their cause of death right from the beginning. Of course, the game wasn't that easy, as identifying each corpse depended on reliving their final moments via a magical watch, and it was necessary to have a very keen eye for contextual details to deduce from each death scene what name belonged to each face: a man being called by his name is of course a very easy clue, but most of them weren't that easy, and had to be deduced from seeing in them in multiple scenes and connecting various clues together. That said, the core tasks remained the same, and in my review, I described Return of the Obra Dinn as in essence being "a gigantic sudoku puzzle: you know each face and each name, and now you have to determine what names and faces can or can not belong together by crossing off all the possibilities. If for example you know this person is either the carpenter or the carpenter's assistant, but you also heard somewhere that the assistant dies before the carpenter, than you can identify both once you know in what order the two nameless faces died." Because each person can only have one name, face and cause of death, and names and faces of course are not shared among multiple people, it really felt to me like sudoku, determining the characteristics for each "sudoku puzzle" and knowing how faces/names/ranks/etc. had a finite number of uses. Strangely enough, I've had multiple surprised reactions when I described Obra Dinn's gameplay as sudoku, even though in my mind it seemed not only so obvious, but I couldn't even imagine it was an original thought in any way. Earlier this year, I played Unheard, which had a similar feel (but audio-based) and it was quite fun!

When The Case of the Golden Idol released in 2022, I heard it had gameplay similar to Return of the Obra Dinn, and I also played the demo when it was released, which I enjoyed a lot. But for one reason or another, I didn't pick up the full game right away, but now we're more than a year later, and I finally played the game. * When you start up the game, you are immediately presented with a ghastly scene: one man pushes the other off a cliff. The problem? You don't know what the heck is going on. Who is the murderer? Who is the victim? Why is he murdering the other? Where are they? As you click around, you gather key terms (names, verbs, locations, etc.), and you slowly start to piece together the story behind this scene: set in the 18th century, we are looking at the two men  who obtained the titular golden idol during an expedition, and apparently one is killing the other in order to keep the idol for himself. But who is who? You find letters with names in their rucksacks, so you know the two men must be Albert Cloudsley and Oberon Geller, but who is the pusher, and who is the pushed? 

It's here we are treated to the gameplay similar to Return of the Obra Dinn: to get anywhere in this game, you must first use the names you have gathered, and assign them to the faces you see on the screen. At first, this is fairly easy, like seeing one character addressing the other by name, or for example you can guess by their uniforms, but later scenes are much trickier. Because Golden Idol's gameplay focuses mostly on determining who and what everything is on the scene, the murders you'll be solving are fairly straightforward: the focus is not on the how, but on figuring out the whole underlying context. While a lot of the scenes might seem rather baffling at first, that's often simply because you're dropped in a scene that is unfolding right now, and usually after collecting the first few key words, you'll quickly grasp the broad outline of the case, after which you can concentrate on figuring out who everyone exactly is and the order of events leading up to the murder. Unlike Return of the Obra Dinn however, The Case of the Golden Idol will also ask you other questions about the scene to answer, again using the key terms you have accumulated from the scene. You might be asked to determine whom certain letters you found on the scene belong to, or you find a floor diagram and must also determine who stays in what room. Once you figure out these secondary clues, you are usually tasked with one final mission: to determine exactly what happened. This is done by completing a short summary of the scene, which has a lot of blanks. You fill this summary in using all the key terms you found. You might for example see Character A killing Character B with something in their hand in a  unknown location. So first you have to use the clues to determine A is in fact Colonel Mustard, a name you found in a letter in the luggage in one of the rooms and you remember one character calling A by his title, and then based on the books in the background of the location you determine the room is in fact the library and not the kitchen, and finally, you can fill in the blanks in the summary by saying [Colonel Mustard] walked into the [library] and used the [candlestick] to kill [Miss Scarlet].

While not as difficult as Return of the Obra Dinn, The Case of the Golden Idol is certainly a detective game that will challenge your mind, as while the first few scenes you investigate are fairly small and straightforward, later scenes might involve several screens with a lot more going on. The story is surprisingly epic, spanning several decades and each "level" is a specific scene (usually moments after a mysterious violent death) revolving around the titular golden idol. You follow the golden idol's journey as men crave its powers, but because each scene is presented without any introduction, it's up to the player to guess how this scene might connect to the previous one, even if it might be a few decades since the last scene and it's set at a completely different location with perhaps only one face or name you recognize from a previous scene. That is one part I really enjoyed The Case of the Golden idol over Return of the Obra Dinn, as the latter was a great deduction game, but the story you uncovered behind the crew's mysterious deaths was not that one of deductive mystery. The Case of the Golden Idol however does present one and realizing how each scene is connected to the next is part of the mystery the player also needs to unravel in order to beat the game. At first though, the scenes might feel very disconnected and that might feel a bit disappointing, as you move from one confused state to another, but it does come together quite nicely once you're past a certain point, when more of the plot is revealed.  

I quite enjoyed the overall story too, though I do think some of the secondary puzzles you are required to solve in each level had too much of a "logic puzzle" sense to them. One of the later stages for example had you figure out something out to a degree that wasn't really relevant to the case at hand (do you really need to know those exact numbers?) and those parts I didn't enjoy. I liked Obra Dinn a lot because it used the same basic puzzle of face + name (+ cause), but some of the secondary puzzles in Golden Idol feel very contrived as puzzles (sometimes, it almost feels like people are for example only calling other people by codenames or nicknames just so the player can be presented with a puzzle).

The demo I played one year ago of The Case of the Golden Idol is basically the same as the full product, so I can't say I was really surprised by the game now I have played it, but it is a very fun mystery game that really puts an emphasis on deductive thinking. If you liked Return of the Obra Dinn, you're certainly going to like this, and because of the shorter playtime and the slightly easier difficulty, I'd say The Case of the Golden Idol might even be the better introduction to this style of deductive reasoning games. I haven't gotten around to the DLC yet, though I have heard it's more challenging than the base game, so I'll probably eventually get around to playing those two too sooner or later! Preferably before the recently announced sequel comes!

The Body's Upstairs

Two little Soldier Boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one.

"And Then There Were None"

There is no reality where students would gladly say yes when their Philosphy professor invites them to their office to talk about Ellery Queen and the philosophical problems regarding mystery fiction...

Hikawa Tooru is a budding mystery author who has been trying to get published ever since graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy, but he hasn't had luck on his side. One day, he receives a call from Sumiyoshi Masaki, a former upperclassman of the faculty, who is a rising star in the world of philosophy, having published a popular book on the subject, and now teaching at the elite women's university Seishuuin in the city. Sumiyoshi has recently read Norizuki Rintarou's essay on the philosophic problems inherent to the earlier Ellery Queen novels, which would form the basis of the so-called Late Queen Problem, indicating a post-modern problem in mystery fiction. Sumiyoshi wants to pick Hikawa's brain, knowing he's trying to become a mystery author and that he's a Queen devotee, and they agree to have a chat in Sumiyoshi's office after class. They are first joined by a teaching assistant with an interest in mystery fiction, but then a trio of students also appear. One of them, Sanae, is a student of Sumiyoshi, but the other two, Naoko and Miho, are not. It turns out Naoko wants to discuss something in private with Sumiyoshi and asked Sanae to introduce her. The three join the discussion on the Late Queen Problem for a while, and when it becomes late, Sumiyoshi decides to invite everyone for some drinks, but not before he has a talk with Naoko. 

They leave the others in Sumiyoshi's office and walk to Seminar Room 1 on the same floor, which is unused at the moment. Just before they enter, a different professor wants to discuss something with Sumiyoshi, so Naoko enters the room first. As the two professors walk away, they notice a guard also entering Seminar Room 1. Meanwhile, Hikawa and the two girls who remained also loaf around a bit, going to the bathroom before they'll leave, but then a loud cry comes from Seminar Room 1. Everyone runs to the room, and they find... a dead guard lying in the room. But for some reason Naoko is not here. Around the same time, the police arrives at the campus, even though nobody here called for them yet, but it turns out someone else called because they saw something outside: the body of a woman was hanging from the roof of the building. This woman of course turns out to be Naoko, who was tied by her legs and thrown from the roof, hanging her upside down with her skirt hanging upside down. But when did Naoko leave the Seminar Room, why is there a dead guard there, and why was Naoko herself too killed? Hikawa, who has solved a few cases before, of course wants to know the truth, but it turns out Miho herself might be an even sharper detective than himself in Hikawa Tooru's 2001 novel Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu or The Penultimate Truth.

After Makkura no Yoake and Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle, it was very clear that Hikawa (the actual author) is a big fan of (early) Ellery Queen, writing in the same style, and of course,  Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu follows the same idea. However, I feel that after the more exciting second novel, which utilized a closed circle situation to keep the story tense, Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu was surprisingly boring to read, with an incredibly slow mid-section. As much as I love Queen-style detective stories, with an emphasis on longer chains of deductions based on physical evidence and the knowledge of what characters did or could have been aware of at what time, these kind of novels do rely a lot on presenting this kind of data to the reader, so the investigative portions of a story can feel a bit dragging. Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu is an example of a book where the mid-section indeed suffers from this mode of writing, because it's just slowly feeding you data, and in a very passive way. Like in the first novel, Hikawa soon gains the trust of the police detective in charge of the investigation, who then occasionally gives Hikawa confidential information, and Hikawa has a few talks with the suspects, but all of this moves very slowly.

I think Hikawa (the author) tried to battle this by introducing the rival character of Miho, similar to the character Komiyama in the previous novel: in the second novel, the editor Komiyama turned out to be a talented fan of the mystery genre who pro-actively wanted to solve the mystery, and Miho too turns out to be very sharp, capable at times of out-thinking Hikawa (the character). But their battles only really become meaningful near the end of the tale, as Hikawa has a kind of inferiority complex regarding Miho throughout the tale, meaning it's just Miho sometimes posing a (clever) theory and Hikawa just reacting in awe and admiration. Perhaps it's because I read Misshitsu wa Nemurenai Puzzle and Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu basically one after another, but the 'Hikawa feels inferior to rival' part of both stories felt very similar, so it was also not as exciting anymore (that, and you already know Hikawa's the series detective...)

Anyway, this time Hikawa is once again facing a situation that is not quite an impossible situation, but only nearly one. Nobody was constantly watching Seminar Room 1's door, but they can't figure out why the guard went in the room and ended up dead, while Naoko somehow ended up dead on the roof. Examining the timelines and noting the time the body of Naoko hanging from the roof was discovered by a taxi driver passing by the campus, they also realize Naoko must have left the room very early, creating only a small frame of time in which the murder could have happened. Meanwhile, there were only a handful of people left in this particular university building. In a way that's incredibly convenient for a detective story, it turns out the security company in charge of the building had secretly built an experimental system that logs the time and duration any time any door in the building is opened, which allows them to determine around which time Naoko slipped away out of the room, but again, this creates problems with the time needed to kill the guard in the room, and kill Naoko on the roof. Due to the system, the police also knows exactly how many people were in the building at the time, but not everyone with a connection to Naoko (mainly the people on the philosophy floor at the time of the murder) have a clear alibi.

As you can guess, the story becomes quite focused on deductions based on time, on figuring out where there's a gap in everyone's alibis which would allow them to commit the murder, and I have to admit, this can be quite boring. There's not much of physical evidence around, so you don't get much of those evidence based chains of deductions I tend to like, where you have to figure out why an object was used or what the use of a certain object tells you about the killer. Time table-based deductions can be interesting in combination with other elements, but on their own, or at least as the main focus, they tend to be very dry puzzles, and that's the same here, and part of the reason why this is definitely my least liked Hikawa novel of the three I have read now. Not that it is devoid of clever parts: the deductions regarding why Naoko was hung upside down from the roof are pretty interesting and exactly the kind of chains of reasoning I do like to read about, but it's definitely just a smaller element of a book that is more focused on time. The way the rivalry between Hikawa and Miho is also resolved in an interesting manner, that ties back in a meaningful manner to the discussion on Late Queen Problems mentioned earlier in the novel. Considering there's a second detective character, you know one of them will pose an incorrect solution at some time, but the way it's framed here, it doesn't feel like just filler or a fake, but it feels like an interesting thought based on the earlier philosophical discussion.

But on the whole, Saigo Kara Nibanme no Shinjitsu is certainly not my favorite of the Hikawa novels until now. While I appreciate the mode of the detection utilized in these novels, the way it is told now is a bit longwinded and I am in general not a super big fan of stories that require you to fill out time schedules for a dozen of characters and try to find a logical gap in them. Hopefully, the next will bring back some of the more focused mid-section like the second novel had. 

Original Japanese title(s): 氷川透『最後から二番めの真実』