Obituary for a Dead Anchor

If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection. 

"A Descent into the Maelström"

I honestly don't like writing posts about books I didn't really like. Which is also the reason why reviews on my blog tend to be relatively positive: if I really didn't like something, I probably didn't finish it, or I didn't want to spend more time on it by also writing a post.

The S.S. Meganaut is en route from New York to Cherbourg. Every night, an auction is held in the smoking room, when guests can bid on numbers, which correspond to the number of nautical niles they think the ship will be able to traverse the coming day (so, it's gambling). One of the passengers on board is the wealthy Victor Timothy Smith, accompanied by his daughter Coralie. He and his entourage seem to have quite some fun bidding against, and winning from the lawyer Saul de Brasto, who has not been able to even buy one number because Smith constantly uses his immense fortune to outbid de Brasto. The lights in the smoking room suddenly go out however, followed by a pistol shot. When the lights go back on again, Smith is lying dead on the floor, daughter Coralie has passed out and Saul de Brasto is holding a smoking gun in his hand. Not surprisingly, de Brasto is immediately detained by the ship detectives for the murder on Smith, but he denies having shot Smith, claiming he shot his pistol at someone else in the room, a hitman who was trying to shoot him! However, an examination of the crime scene soon proves de Brasto right: Smith was shot by two bullets one after another, while de Brasto only shot once, and his bullet is found buried in a table in the other direction than where Smith was. The detectives are baffled as to who the murderer then is, especially as the case becomes even grimmer with Coralie dying from the sheer shock of what occured, but it happens four psychologists on their way to London develop an interest in the case too, and they each think they can explain who the murderer really is in C. Daly King's Obelists at Sea (1932).

A few years ago, I read King's Obelists Fly High, a book that was certainly not perfect, but which I did think was a fun read due to some interesting points, most notably the Clue-Finder: an appendix at the very end of the book, a list of all the hints complete with page and line reference, sorted by category (clues to how, who, motive etc.). It was a very daring way to prove to the reader the game was being played in a fair manner, and I had always wanted to read the other Obelists books too, to see whether the other books could perhaps improve on the points I did find less impressive about Fly High.

Obelists at Sea is not that book. Oh well, there's always En Route...

Obelists at Sea is a book that has many of the same elements of Fly High, elements that can provide for an interesting mystery story. We have the murder happening in a closed circle situation (a luxury liner), a story built around multiple solutions, as provided by the four psychologists, a mystery surrounding someone being able to shoot twice at Smith in the dark and of course the promise of a Clue-Finder, a multi-page proof to show King has indeed provided enough clues for you to solve the murder. The book even features multiple very detailed floorplans of the S.S. Meganaut. Memorable are the punny names of most of the characters (Victim = Victor Timothy) too.

But all of this goes nowhere good. The floorplans for example? Basically just there for fluff, because they don't actually serve any role mystery-wise. There's plenty of interesting moments and points of mystery throughout the novel, like a corpse disappearing from the doctor's quarters and the mystery of the two bullets in the victim, but the actual solutions for these events are basically shrugged over, quickly explained in like two or three sentences without giving those moments any weight. The book focuses much, muuuuch more on the idea of having four different psychologists, who each champion a different school, offer different theories for the murder (of course all pointing at different people, based on different evidence). Of course, we have seen other books utilize such structures too, from The Poisoned Chocolates Case, which too has multiple detectives proposing different theories, similar to a lot of Brand's work, but also something like Ellery Queen, where sometimes you'll see Ellery himself proposing multiple solutions. But Obelists At Sea doesn't work for me, because the theories are all so based on pscyhology (King was a psychologist), I just can't take them really seriously in a mystery novel. In a way, I do get King attempted to portray psychology from a slightly ironic angle, making fun of the four psychologists (who are basically caricatures, embodiments of their respective schools) and their theories that aren't really based on anything but "X has shown indications they are of a certain character type, so they would have done Y", but this gets tiring very fast, especically as the majority of the book is written around this gimmick. The theories presented here feel like they would be spouted by a random character and immediately brushed off in a Queen-style, evidence-and-logic-based mystery novel, not the types you can structure a whole novel around. What doesn't help either is that while the book kinda wants to say "see, psychology doesn't work" by showing these psychologists arriving at very different solutions simply because they adhere to different schools, the final solution and the clues found in the Clue-Finder are still mostly built around psychological clues! So I don't really get what King was going for. The final solution does have elements I like for a final solution (the whodunnit etc.), but by that time, I didn't really care anymore, and I think the route towards this solution could've been so much more interesting and satisfying.

The book also has a rather noticable anti-semetic tone throughout. The book never, ever forgets to remind you the main suspect Saul de Brasto is a Jew. The book starting with Victor Smith harrassing de Brasto by outbidding him every time can still be seen as a form of anti-semitism commited by one character alone, but even after he's dead, everyone from the ship's detectives to the captain keep referring to de Brasto as the Jew or the Hebrew (note that no other character in the book is referred to constantly by their background), which isn't helped when they also learn he's a lawyer, because of course he'd be a crooked lawyer (because he's a....). Even after the initial supsicion on de Brasto should be cleared, the man is treated as as if they had preferred to have jailed him anyway. It gets very tiring very quickly.

Obelists At Sea just didn't do it for me. While on the surface, it has elements that seemed promising, or at least, elements that I have seen used in plenty of mystery novels that were fun, beneath the water level, it just ended up as a book I didn't enjoy. The main structure just doesn't work for me because I am not interested in solutions based solely on psychological analyses of characters, the more interesting elements mystery-wise for some reason are underplayed because of that and the Clue-Finder gimmick is still focused on psychological clues, something I had hoped it would have done differently from Obelists Fly High. I bought a Japanese translation of Obelists En Route (translated by Ayukawa Tetsuya!) a while back, so I'll probably get to that eventually!

Enemy Match

"A good fight should be like a small play, but played seriously. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract. When he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits all by itself."

"Enter the Dragon"

I do really hate how the English in this cover is cut off halfway... Just add those last few letters on the front side...

Imoriya Mato is a high school student who at first sight might appear to be a somewhat self-absorbed girl who's good at playing cute in front of the (male) senior students, but looks deceive, and that is why she is chosen by her classmates to be their representative in the Fool's Smoke Game, a tradition at Hoojiro High School. Each year, all the classes and clubs fight to get the best possible location for the school festival, being the roof: if the weather is good, you have the largest space here, with a nice view and most people will eventually arrive there, ensuring great visitor numbers (and thus earnings from whatever stand or stall the class or club will operate). To ensure everyone has a fair chance at getting the roof spot, the Fool's Smoke Games are held: the representatives of all the parties who want the roof compete in special one-on-one games, and the winner moves up in the tournament chart. Mato, accompanied by her friend and "witness" Kouda, soon has her first major game with someone of the Student Council, the organization that up until now was managed to secure the rooftop for themselves via the games. The game they play is Glico with Landmines, a variation on the weighted Rock Paper Scissors game. Her opponent however is perhaps as intelligent as Mato, resulting in a game where both sides constantly try to outsmart the other via various strategies. The outcome of the game results in Mato gaining the respect of the student council and she soon becomes known at the school for being good at these games, which of course gets Mato involved in more games with major stakes, from a club being at risk of being banned from a cafe unless Mato wins, to games involving a lot of money with other schools. Can Mato outsmart everyone in these variations of children's games in Aosaki Yuugo's Jirai Glico ("Glico with Landmines", 2023)?

Long ago, I wrote a review of the (live action) Liar Game series, based on the same-titled manga. It's a series I think is a prime example showing a mystery story does not need to be about crime, locked room murders, ingenious alibi tricks or anything remotely close to what most people would usually associate with the mystery genre, as mentioned in my post on what I think a "mystery" can be in mystery fiction. Liar Game focuses on a series of games (with very high stakes), but these games are not games of chance: they can be won by logical reasoning, by rigging the games while playing the game "fairly" (finding loopholes in the rules given) and often, the fun was that it was the protagonist who somehow rigged these games in their advantage, making them the "culprit", but also presenting a howdunnit mystery of how they could've rigged the game, without violating the rules. Liar Game however was indeed a fair mystery at the same, giving the viewer all the necessary clues/set-up that allowed them to arrive at the same conclusion as the protagonist too in a logical manner, meaning "you" too could have found a fool-proof way to win a game which seems to be one of chance. The series also focused a lot on strategies and counter-strategies of the various players, and the "if you think I think you think I am planning to do this..." element will also be very recognizable to readers of logic game mysteries like Death Note and Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning.

Jirai Glico is a connected short story collection that follows the same tradition as Liar Game by Aosaki Yuugo. He made his debut with Taiikukan no Satsujin ("The Gymnasium Murder") and was touted by the publisher as the Heisei-era Ellery Queen. Jirai Glico is published by a different company and while this book isn't directly inspired by Ellery Queen, one could say his style of writing mystery fits perfectly in the logical game subgenre: Queen-esque deduction chains often focus on "who knows what at what time and what influence does that have on their logical decision taking?", which is exactly what the meat of the stories in Jirai Glico is: we see five different familiar games transformed with additional rules, and we focus on the various, evolving strategies of the participants as they try to outsmart each other. And yes, part of what makes Jirai Glico so interesting is that the five stories all focus on existing games most of us will know, but with a few added rules that completely transform these familiar games into highly strategic matches. The result is a book that has been received very well critically as well, as it recently won the 24th Honkaku Mystery Award.

The title story Jirai Glico ("Glico with Landmines") for example is based on Glico, a weighted Rock Paper Scissors game, where the winner of each single match is allowed to take a number of steps on a staircase. Winning with rock means you can move three steps (Gu-ri-ko/Glico), scissors nets you six steps (Chi-yo-ko-re-i-to/Chocolate), as does paper (Pa-i-na-tsu-pu-ru/Pineapple). The first one to reach the top of the fifty step high staircase is the winner. The variation however is that at the start of the game, both Mato and her opponent are allowed to hide three landmines on any of the steps of the fifty-step staircase: whoever lands on a step with a landmine, will be sent down ten steps. What starts out as a simple game of chance with Rock Paper Scissors, however soon becomes a fascinating game of strategy, with both parties trying to logically deduce where the other placed their mines on the steps, and trying to figure out how to avoid those steps by tactically choosing which hand to play. Aosaki has a lot of fun letting his complex style of plotting loose on this game, and you could say the conclusion of the game is perhaps a bit predictable if you're familiar with these kinds of stories, the climb to the conclusion alone is definitely worth it, as you get to follow two geniuses trying to outsmart each other over... Rock Paper Scissors.

Bouzu Suijaku ("Monk Memory") has Mato helping out the school's karuta club: the members got into a row with the owner of a cafe they often frequented, and now they got banned completely. The student council, fearing the ban will hurt the school's reputation, hopes to smooth things over with the owner, but he refuses, until Mato challenges him in a game. He accepts, and proposes they play a game of memory/pairs with Japanese poem cards. Japanese poem cards have different illustrations on them, and can be roughly divided in three categories: princesses, men or monks. The extra rules involve these illustrations: finding a pair of men means you add that pair to your own pile and you get one new attempt at finding a pair. Pulling a monk pair however means you not only lose the turn, but all the cards currently in your possession go to the discard pile. A princess pair in turn is the best hand, as you not only keep the pair and get another attempt, you also obtain the complete discard pile at that point. They agree the person with the most cards in their possession at the end of the game will be the winner, with Mato's win condition being that for every ten cards he has, one member is allowed back, meaning she'd have to win all the cards in order to lift the ban on all the members. Mato starts this game of what seems to be just memory with more rules, but she soon realizes her opponent is cheating somehow. How is she going to win this game against a cheater? Well... by playing the game fairly... or does she? Bouzu Suijaku is a fun story, as we see Mato manipulating the game in a way to not exactly cheat, but to in a way to bend the rules a bit to fend off the cheater opposite her, and that coupled with a game that looks simple at first sight, but once again is deceptively deep, makes this a rather engaging tale of strategy.

Having caught the attention of the student council president, Mato is approached by her in Jiyuuritsu Janken ("Free-style Rock Paper Scissors"). Recognizing Mato's talents, the president hopes to get Mato under her control, and she challenges Mato to a game of free-style Rock Paper Scissors: if she wins, Mato will become a member of the council and thus has to do the president's bidding, while she promises Mato to locate a certain friend she lost contact with for her. free-style Rock Paper Scissors is in essence a very simple game, being the normal rock paper scissors, only both players are allowed to add one extra move each. They have to show each other the "form" of the move beforehand, but the effect (which other moves lose to it/beat it) is only known to the judge. Thus the two players must play Rock Paper Scissors with five moves, of which one move they themselves created, but the other remains unknown. What results is the story I perhaps liked best, because the president isn't fooled by Mato's act of playing cute, and both go in with guns blazing right from the start, trying to figure out what the effect is of the move the opponent created. The result is a fantastic battle of the wits, as both are willing to "sacrifice" wins in order to deduce the precise effects of the other's hand, while also making sure not to lose the whole game themselves. What is also fun is that this game involves a physical element like we see in competitive karuta, where people try to peak at their opponents' hand beforehand to predict what move they will use, making it much easier to visualize this as a very dynamic game.

Mato ends up having to follow the president's orders, which means she now has to play a game against students of Seietsu High, and a lot of money is at stake now in Daruma-san ga Kazoeta ("Daruma Counted"), as they are playing for Scholarship Chips, which are worth a lot of money at Seietsu High School, and winning enough will easily put you through college. Mato finds herself playing a variation of Daruma-san ga koronda (known as statues/red light green light/fairy footsteps and many more names), where the two participants are dubbed the killer and marker, with Mato becoming the killer. The two are standing at opposite ends of a park, and as in the normal game, the marker has to turn their back to the killer and count. The killer tries to approach the marker during this count, but it's game over if the marker stops counting, turns around and observes the killer moving. The killer has to take each step on each count of the marker. The variant rules for this game have the two players inform the judge beforehand about what they will do the next turn: the marker has to decide on how much they will count, after which they will turn around. The killer similarly has to decide on how many steps they will take beforehand, but is required to take all steps they decided upon, even if it's fewer than the marker's count: this will mean an instant game over. The killer has to reach the marker within a certain number of turns to win, while the marker has to count at least a specific number within X turns. While there is some strategic discussion on, this story is definitely the simplest of them all, and I found this was the easiest story to guess Mato's strategy. It's mostly intended to be a funny story to set-up the finale of the collection though, so I guess it works in that way.

After winning the previous game, Mato finds herself facing her greatest foe yet in the final game Four Room Poker. In this poker game the players have to bet their chips on each round, and of course the strongest hand wins. The hands in this game consists of three cards, but what makes this game of poker special is that every player can pick their own hand. After dealing the first hand of three cards to both players, players can choose to discard up to three of their cards. They are then given five minutes to enter three of four rooms in any order, where the rest of the cards of the deck have been laid out face down on tables. Inside these rooms, unseen by the other player, they can pick any card they want (but are only allowed to touch the number of cards they have to draw). The cards have been laid out according an undisclosed rule, and that's where this game becomes tricky: the only way the players can learn how the cards have been laid out, is to discard cards and drawing new cards each round, and hoping they can figure out how the cards are laid out by seeing what card they drew, but both players will draw, which will disturb the initial layout and making it harder to deduce what card lies where, and as the game proceeds, less and less cards remain, making it harder to create the hand you want. The result is the story that is definitely the most complex to grasp, as the physical aspect, where the players have to go in the rooms each time, adds a whole new dimension to the game of poker. It allows for some game shenanigans you also see in Liar Game that are somewhat unfair to the reader, as you could argue that one of them is cheating, even if the story doesn't consider it as such. So it is harder for the reader to predict how the game will go because of sometimes loose interpretation of the rules, but the way the two players try to outwit each other and react to each other's strategems is a delight to read!

What's more to say about the book? Jirai Glico is an enormously entertaining book that will show that you don't need murders or even anything remotely criminal to present an outrageously fun detective novel, that at the same time will offer you more logical reasoning and deductive chains you'll see in most mystery stories. Definitely worth the read!

Original Japanese title(s):青崎有吾『地雷グリコ』: 「地雷グリコ」/「坊主衰弱」「自由律ジャンケン」/「だるまさんがかぞえた」/「フォールーム・ポーカー」

The Way Up to Hades

"I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me."

"The Call of Cthulhu"

There are good covers, there are great covers, and there are absolutely amazing covers.

When Amy Griffith was young, she used to play with fairies at the prehistoric standing stone monument in her home town. She was caught on photograph talking to a mysterious light by a newspaper reporter, and briefly became known as the Fairy Girl, but later the adults assumed she must have lied or just imagined things. But about a decade later, the Empire has been caught up by a spiritualist rage, and having moved to the capital to make some money for her family, Amy is now known as the Fairy Lady.... but in actuality, she's just a charlatan, using cheap parlor tricks to spice up her seance sessions. When she is visited by Darren Dunglas, a professional assessor of the Imperial Spiritualist Institution, the man immediately sees through her tricks, but for some reason he does seem to think that she can actually talk to fairies, and thus he can not understand why she's relying on parlor tricks. Both of them happen to be invited by the famous mystery writer Lenard Thorndyke to visit the infamous Blasphemy Mansion, which the author recently required. The house stands in a marshland and had been in the possession of the Davenport clan. Two hunderd years ago, Bradley Davenport was head of a secret club that worshipped the devil, and they did everything blasphemous in the house, from black magic ceremonies to orgies. Artists were also given a free hand, resulting in the house not only housing satanistic imagery like a statue of the Sabbatic Goat,  a gigantic Wicker Man in the back garden, but also rather erotic frescos and statues. The secret club is even said to have opened a hole to hell itself two hunderd years ago, which is why the courtyard is now completely sealed off: every door and window originally leading or looking into the courtyard has been bricked up. Bradley was eventually executed, though the house remained in Davenport hands, but last year, the last heir of the Davenports, Seraphina, disappeared, and Lenard quickly bought the house, as he is very interested in both spirits, as well as the treasure of the Davenports which is supposed to be hidden in the house.

For that reason, he has invited a group of spiritualists (as well as Darren) to stay for a few days at the Blasphemy House, with the idea being each spiritualist will head a seance to communicate with the spirits. The invitees include spiritualists with powers like taking ghost pictures, automatic writing, channeling spirits and giving them form with ectoplasm and communicating with spirits via rapping, though Amy is quite sure everyone is a phony, just like herself. Which is why she is very shocked to see on the very first night the first spiritualist Miranda Crandon really managing to give a ghost a material form by oozing ectoplasm out of her nose. The ghost points them to a crack in the bricked up door in the main hall, which leads into the courtyard which had been sealed for two-hundred years. They find a cross with pre-Church imagery at the center, and beneath the cross, they find the remains of a woman, which are still well-preserved, suggesting the woman has only been here for at longest a year, even though the courtyard has been closed off for two centuries! A servant is sent off to call for the police, even though the trip will be perilous due to a very heavy snow storm. The following day however, somebody has set fire to the Wicker Man, having placed the body they found inside, and then someone is killed inside the chapel, even though Amy and Darren were the last to leave the victim in that room and they had been in the drawing room ever since, and anyone going to the chapel needs to pass through the drawing room. With the snow storm going on outside, they don't even know whether the police has been notified, but as the spiritualists start to use their powers to communicate with the ghosts in the house to learn what is going on, they find out something sinister is on its way. But is the murder also the result of the supernatural, or did a living person commit this crime in Teshirogi Shoutarou's Tokushinkan Satsujin Jiken ("The Murder Case in the Blasphemy Mansion" 2023)?

I'll gladly admit the only reason this book caught my attention was the cover art. When it was announced first, I just knew I had to read this book. Of course, a cover doesn't seem much about a book's content, but assuming the cover had something to do with the story itself, the idea of the Sabbatic Goat playing some kind of role in a mystery story was interesting enough. I had never read anything by Teshirogi before, so it was a bit of a gamble, but to start with the conclusion, I was quite pleasantly surprised by the book.

At first I thought the book was going to be like Trick, with a fake psychic/spiritualist teaming up with a more science-based male partner, going up against other fake psychics. Only, that assumption was very soon discarded, as the book makes it clear fairly early on ghosts do actually exists in this world, and yes, there are also real spiritualists who can communicate with the ghosts one way or another. We do see that these ghosts generally can't directly influence the real world: some might sense the presence of ghosts and perhaps hear voices or see ghosts, but we don't actually see ghosts attacking people or moving objects on their own, so the mystery of this book fundamentally still works, as it is clear the answer to the locked room murder isn't just "ghosts did it." Even though it is surprising to see how "normal" ghosts are in this world, though it helps we see things through the eyes of Amy: she alone is the phony psychic here, and she doesn't really believe in ghosts or even fairies anymore, so like the reader, she too is quite surprised to learn at first spirits do exist.

And yes, the fact ghosts exist in this world do lead to some interesting situations mystery-wise. At one point, we even have a set of creepy twin mediums who communicate via rapping with ghosts, and they just decide to have a chat with the victim who just got killed to ask him who killed him. Of course, the mystery doesn't get resolved so easily, but we have several people with different spiritual powers, from ghost pictures to materializing ghosts with ectoplasm to a woman who can actually "time-shift" to the past and witness events that happened centuries ago. Some of these powers are used really cleverly for misdirection, and in a way that only works in this book, because we know the powers are real. In other novels, you might think there's some kind of trick behind them, but here you know you don't have to worry about that, and can focus completely on figuring out the meaning of the various seance sessions in relation to the grander mystery.  There is a a secondary plotline, where the characters try to learn more about the history of the Blasphemy Mansion, and the time when the secret club were having their orgies and doing all their black magic ceremonies, and I really like some of the misdirection that was used here in relation to the seances.

More impossible crimes occur throughout the book, like a woman's decapitated body appearing in a theater of which Amy alone held the key, but I do have to say the actual murders themselves are relatively easy to solve: while the supernatural parts are used very cleverly in terms of design to facilitate these murders, the tricks behind them are ultimately fairly familiar, so you might recognize them early on despite the, otherwise really well-done, dressing with the supernatural. But despite that, I think this book still is a very fun read, as the imagery and atmosphere are really good and you can really feel how the supernatural elements really work with these murders. The ending by the way really moves into cosmic horror avenues, and while some parts are not as strong as other parts of the book I think, like the grander motive behind the murders, it's not something I really mind as it all fits the vibe of the book.

But yeah, I really enjoyed Tokushinkan Satsujin Jiken overall. If you look at it purely as a mystery novel, it might not be as strong as you might hope despite it having some clever uses of its supernatural themes, but as a book that tries to be equal parts mystery and (cosmic) horror, it's a great success I think and I wouldn't be surprised if this one ends up on my favorite list of this year.

Original Japanese title(s): 手代木正太郎『涜神館殺人事件』

The Haunted Monastery

"Our readers are children! Millions of bloodthirsty little kids, and we give them what they want!"
"Ellery Queen: The Adventure of the Comic Book Crusader"

This might the first time since I started doing reviews of both the Detective Conan manga and films that I managed to get the film review out before the corresponding manga volume...

Detective Conan volume 105 was released in April 2024, timed together with the release of the 2024 film Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram and it also serves as the very first volume released as part of this anniversary year, as the manga of Detective Conan started its serialization 30 years ago, back in 1994. While the stories included in the volume themselves don't have any special "anniversary" themes, the physical volume itself does come in two variations: a normal one and a special edition one, which features an alternate cover that mirrors the cover of volume 1, as well as extra booklet with character sketches from when the series was still in the planning phase. Small note for collectors: the detective character introduced in the encyclopedia at the end of the volume is actually different in the special edition from the normal edition. Anyway, the contents of volume 105 itself are your standard fare for the series, so no big anniversary story. The volume opens with the remainder of Why He Became Her Butler, which started in the previous volume. Conan and Ran are travelling with Hattori and Kazuha in the express train, and it happens Hattori's self-proclaimed fiance Momiji is there too, accompanied by her butler Iori. During the trip, Iori is approached by a man, who forces the butler to cooperate, or else Momiji will be hurt. Via his phone, Iori is told to go to a certain seat in the train, where he finds a dead man, and he is ordered to find a USB memory stick this dead man has hidden somewhere. While Iori tries to deduce where the stick is, he also tries to remember where he knows the voice of the man threatening them from, which brings up memories of his time when he was a police officer with Public Security. Meanwhile, Conan and Hattori also notice Iori's acting strange...

A very, very mediocre story. The "where could the USB memory stick be hidden" mystery is just a device to tell the flashback story of Iori and Momiji meeting for the first time, fleshing out the perfect butler's background, but as a mystery, it's incredibly minimalistic and most of it is resolved before the reader gets any chance to even think about it. So a very character-focused story, which might entertain people who have become fans of Momiji and Iori ever since they were introduced around 2016, but not if you're just hoping to read a cool mystery once every five months...

So when I write my reviews of the Conan manga, I get the story titles from the official Shonen Sunday website for the series: the titles of the stories often will be used as the titles for the episodes when they are later adapted for the television anime, but sometimes they are changed, with the manga story titles retroactively changed to the anime story titles. Usually, this site is updated when the new volume releases, but for some reason, the site has not added volume 105 yet, meaning I don't really know the "official" titles for the following two stories.

Anyway, the second story is clearly one meant to tie in with the 2024 film The Million-Dollar Pentagram and set before the film, as Hattori is still planning to confess his love to Kazuha at a spot with a great scenery, and Ran, having learned Hattori's plans, has found the perfect spot: Mt. Washio, which offers a great sunset view. So Ran, her father, Conan, Hattori and Kazua go mountain hiking, but a sudden rain forces them to find shelter at a Buddhist temple on the mountain. Luckily for Hattori, Ran learns there's a great view from the temple too, so they stay here until the rain stops. During their stay, they learn about a monk who disappears some time ago, and that there are rumors of will-o'-wisp sightings here. The gang takes a look at the room where the monk had disappeared from, which is accessed via a small staircase. Later however, the gang witnesses the will-o'-wisp themselves as the fire moves up the staircase, and it is then they realize Mouri himself has also disappeared. What is happening at this temple? Not much interesting here, I'm afraid. What appears to be a potential interesting locked room mystery, provides you with the most unsatisfying solution ever, and while there are other mysterious events at the temple which are connected in the end, the events unfolding at the temple just don't really interest me, while at the same time, you know the Hattori plotline is going to be carried over to The Million-Dollar Pentagram, so none of this story feels even remotely engaging.

The final complete story in this volume features phantom thief KID, who is also a major character in The Million-Dollar Pentagram, so no surprises about him being featured here. Suzuki Jiroukichi has once again set-up another trap using a big jewel as bait to catch the thief. This time, he has rigged a special small exhibition room on the Bell Tree Tower, like a small box attached to the side of the tower. Because of its size and it being suspended mid-air, it's seen as the perfect trap, especially as the only entrance to the room (from the tower) has security cameras aimed at it, as well as other security measures, with the idea that if KID does manage to get inside the room, it'll lock from the outside, making escape impossible. A special team specializing in security has been hired to set-up this system, and they finish up just before KID's announced time of the theft. Conan is of course here to stop KID, and when the time arrives, things start to happen that prompt Conan to run to the security room to confront the thief. When he gets inside the room however, he finds not only KID, but the dead head of security too. Has KID finally stooped to murder? Well, of course not, and Conan too believes the thief didn't kill the man, but the situation doesn't look good for KID, as he was the only other person in the room besides the corpse and cameras had been aimed at the exhibition room entrance all the time, meaning the corpse appeared out of nowhere, and KID is known to be able to conjure up things out of nowhere.... To win some time, KID decides to "disguise" himself as high school student detective Kudou Shinichi (it's not really a disguise, as the two look remarkably similar), pretending to be here at the scene to catch KID too. Together with Conan, he tries to figure out who committed the murder and tried to pin the crime on him, but the duo run into a little, big problem: KID's rival, Hakuba Saguru, has returned from the United Kingdom, and this detective soon starts to have suspicions about "Shinichi's" actions at the scene...

By far the best story of the volume, as it's both funny and has a more robust mystery compared to the previous two stories, though because of the very, very specialized set-up of the room, and the manner in which Conan and KID discovered the body, I have a feeling many will find it easy to at least make a general guess about how the murder was committed, even though cameras had been aimed at the door entrance and they didn't register a thing besides the time KID forced entry into the room. Conan reluctantly doing his investigation while "tolerating" KID as Shinichi is funny, and the mystery does get a bit fleshed out due to the inverted mystery-element of the story: KID and Conan are being detectives as they try to solve the murder, but they are also "the culprits", trying to hide the fact KID has disguised himself as Shinichi, with Hakuba Saguru acting as the detective in that storyline. So you have a two-pronged mystery plot that gives this story some depth. There are some story seeds sown here that get reaped in the film too, so as also shown with the Hattori story, you'd better read this volume before you watch the film.

Oh, by the way, I did read this volume too before I went to the theatre, I just postponed writing this review for some time... They had some neat promotional material in the bookshop by the way: they had a newspaper about the exploits of the phantom thief KID (setting up the story of the film), as well as the newspaper featuring Shinichi on the frontpage seen in the very first chapter of the manga, and always shown in the opening scenes of the animated films each year.

Detective Conan 105 is not a really interesting volume mystery-wise, to be honest, and that's continuing a trend that's been going on for some time now, so I do find it harder to become really enthusiastic now for each new release. It wouldn't be so bad if we had the older release schedule of a new volume every three months, but nowadays it's basically one volume every half year... The volume does have ties with the film, so you'd better read 105 before watching the film, as you'll see more clearly how author Aoyama does try to "hype things up" for the film in the manga itself too. Anyway, we'll have to wait months again for the next volume unfortunately, but considering this is the 30th anniversary year, I do hope the next volume features a more substantional mystery tale, one that doesn't need to tie in with ongoing storylines or feels the need to flesh out characters. Just a six chapter story solely dedicated to telling a large mystery story. Please?

Original Japanese title(s): 青山剛昌『名探偵コナン』105巻

The Hand of God

"The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."

"Salomé"

I have to admit, I had heard of the term "Dance of the Seven Veils" before, but never knew it came from Salome!

Set in the Taisho era (1912-1924), Yuuki Haruo's Salome no Guillotine ("Salome's Guillotine", 2024) starts with the Dutchman Cornelis van Riemsdijk receiving a letter from the Japanese painter Iguchi Sakuta. Van Riemsdijk hails from a prominent family in the Netherlands, but during his father's generation, the family had some financial problems, forcing them to sell some of the art they owned. An antique table clock Cornelis was fond of had been sold to Iguchi Chuujirou, a Japanese friend of Cornelis' father. Cornelis later became a succesful investor, and now many years later, hopes to buy the table clock back from Iguchi Sakuta, the grandson of Chuujirou. Iguchi doesn't own the clock himself anymore, but is able to contact the current owner and arranges for the clock to be sold back to Cornelis van Riemsdijk during a visit to Japan. To discuss things, Van Riemsdijk visits Iguchi, who has his friend (and reformed burglar) Hasuno interpret for him. During his visit, Van Riemsdijk asks to see some of Iguchi's own art, and stowed away in his atelier, Van Riemsdijk is surprised to see the painting of the back of a woman in an orange dress. To Iguchi's great surprise, Van Riemsdijk tells him he has seen a painting with the exact same composition in the United States recently. Iguchi has never publically revealed this painting, so he doesn't understand how this could be, until he learns the other painting was found among the belongings of Yanase, a wealthy art collector who disappeared to America a few months ago: while Iguchi wasn't too close to Yanase, a lot of the other artists in the artists' assocation Iguchi belongs to did know the man well, as Yanase often borrowed money to artists in need. Iguchi then remembers that while he had been working on his painting, he had one day invited the members of the artists' association to his home, and that was the only time anyone could've snuck inside his atelier to take a look at his painting and plagiarize it. But why would anyone do that? Another mystery is the fact that behind scandalous pictures of a woman were found hidden in the frame of the plagiarized painting in America. Van Riemsdijk does like the painting however, and says he'll buy the painting if Iguchi can prove his painting is the original, and that the other is the plagiarized one.

Iguchi thus suspects one of his fellow artists must have plagiarized his painting and starts poking around together with Hasuno and his niece Mineko, an indepedent girl growing in modern Japan. It is at this time, Iguchi learns some of the members of his artists' association are involved in the forgery of art pieces. Suspecting the plagiarizing painter might be one of the forgers too, he tries to learn who they are, but then the investigation into that of theft, changes to one into murder: first Mineko happens to witness the murder of a woman in an abandoned shack in the outskirts of Nakano, soon followed by the murder on one of the artists outed as a forger. What binds these two deaths together, is Oscar Wilde's Salome: the woman Mineko saw, was dressed as Salome and the murdered artist's body was positioned in a manner to invoke King Herod. While Iguchi and Hasuno continue their investigations, more murders occur, but how are the plagiarized painting and the murders all connected?

I have to admit I was surprised when I first learned of the title of this book. In 2022, Yuuki Haruo published the excellent Hakobune ("The Ark") and in 2023, he published another book with a biblical theme: Jikkai ("The Ten Commandments"). I had expected this year's book to be something like Revelations, so imagine how puzzled I was when I saw the third book was... based on a play based on an episode from the Bible. I read Jikkai last year by the way and already have the review written and scheduled to be published in a few months, but as Salome's Guillotine is a fairly recent release, I decided to post this review first. That doesn't really matter story-wise by the way: while the three books all have biblical inspirations, the stories themselves are not connected at all (Salome's Guillotine isn't even set in the modern day, like the other two books). 

Pre-publication edit: Oh, and between me finishing this book and this post being published, I also learned that Salome's Guillotine is in fact not even the first book starring the pair of Iguchi and Hasuno! After reading this book, I picked another book by Yuuki from the to-be-read pile, which to my surprise starred the painter and burglar too. Turns out Salome's Guillotine was the third one already. So once again, I managed to read a series out of order...

Both Hakobune and Jikkai had very clear and easily understandable story concepts, the first about a group of people trapped in an underground shelter, and the second about people trapped on an island and being controlled through a set of rules, but Salome's Guillotine is very different. I have to admit at first I wasn't too charmed by the somewhat chaotic way the plot unfolded: the initial mystery is "finding out who the plagiarizer" is, but then we learn about forgeries, and then we have a plotline about Mineko just wandering about and stumbling upon a murder scene: a lot happens in the story of Salome's Guillotine, but often scenes seem to come out of nowhere, and the connection between one scene and another sometimes seems non-existent, with some events feeling incredibly random (the Mineko part for example). Even the obi (the strip of paper Japanese book often have with some marketing slogans on it) has trouble presenting a clear story, saying the book is a tale of "The death of a brilliant artist, the secret of a stage actress, cases of plagiarism and forgery and mitate murders (murders made to resemble/themed after something)." Compared to the very focused storytelling of Hakobune and Jikkai which you could explain with one sentence, Salome's Guillotine just felt disjointed. That said, it did invoke the feeling of a Taisho/early Showa-era detective novel like Edogawa Rampo would write, with mysterious or adventurous events happening in rapid succession to tell a more sensational type of story and considering this book is set in that period, I assume this storytelling style was chosen intentionally, but depending on the reader, it might feel like it takes a long time before the story starts to really focus. At the same time, this story is far more open than Hakobune and Jikkai, being set in the city of Tokyo and spanning a far longer period, so it doesn't feel so claustrophobic, and I did like that a lot, as you see more characters going about doing their business.

What is interesting is that mainly Iguchi and Mineko do try to present a lot of deductions and theorizing throughout the novel despite the seemingly disjointed events, (Hasuno is more the "I'll tell you when I am sure" type). Because so much happens, their deductions often focus on specific events, allowing for different types of deductions. We have some segments that rely on physical evidence and Ellery Queen-style of deductions, focusing on questions how people would use certain objects. Other parts, we see the detectives focus more on matters like the alibi of each suspect, or in some cases, even the psychology of the suspects. None of these parts usually allow them to point at one specific suspect with absolutely certainty, which can make these reasoning parts feel a bit "useless", but overall, the book does a good job at keeping the mystery reader engaged as it does attempt to show the reader how each part could be a part of the (admittedly rather large) picture.

Halfway through the book, I felt Salome's Guillotine was really the kind of book that could stand or fall depending on the conclusion and how it'd tie everything together, but I was already relieved when I arrived at the start of the conclusion and realized based on the page count Yuuki was going to use almost twenty percent of the total page count to explain everything. And he really did manage to present a great conclusion to the story! Books with such long denouements often tend to be in the Ellery Queen school, as they go over every event, presenting long chains of deductions and showing how each event serves as a clue to the solution, and this process usually ends up being the main focus/the most impressive part, but that's surprisingly not exactly the case for Salome's Guillotine. While it still utilizes some of these Queenian chains, the most memorable aspect of this book is absolutely the motive for the murders, and the way the motive forms the connecting tissue to all the seemingly disjointed events that occured throughout the story. It is a brilliant motive that seems so obvious in hindsight as it is dangled right in front of you throughout the whole novel, but at the same time hidden expertly, making so much of the events feel random at first. What is also impressive is that the motive is proven through Queenian deductions, something you don't really often see. While I think the underlying cause for the motive of the murders does require some guessing on the part of the reader, overall, Yuuki did a really fantastic job of explaining everything through motive.

And it also makes the very end of the book feel even more gruesome. The book's title Salome's Guillotine gains a whole new meaning once you make it to the end...

Salome no Guillotine is definitely one of the more memorable reads of this year. While the story is not as straightforward as Hakobune and Jikkai, the book offers an interesting adventure set in artsy circles in the Taisho era. While the book feels a bit chaotic at time, it all comes together in a surprisingly, but extremely satisfying manner just in time before the blade of the guillotine comes crashing down. 

Original Japanese title(s): 夕木春央『サロメの断頭台』

The Secret of the Knight’s Sword

Meeting you with a view to a kill

Face to face in secret places, feel the chill

"A View to a Kill" (Duran Duran)

This is actually the first post I have written in over four months...

Detective Conan manga & movies:
Part 1: Volumes 1 ~ 10
Part 2: Volumes 11~20; The Timebombed Skyscraper (1) / The Fourteenth Target (2)
Part 3: Volumes 21~30; The Last Wizard of the Century (3) / Captured in Her Eyes (4)
Part 4: Volumes 31~40; Countdown to Heaven (5) / The Phantom of Baker Street (6)
Part 5: Volumes 41~50; Crossroad in the Ancient Capital (7) / Magician of the Silver Sky (8) / Strategy Above the Depths (9)
Part 6:  Volumes 51~60; Private Eyes' Requiem (10) / Jolly Roger in the Deep Azure (11)
Part 7: Volumes 61~70; Full Score of Fear (12) / The Raven Chaser (13) / Lost Ship in the Sky (14)
Part 8: Volumes 71~80; Quarter of Silence (15) / The Eleventh Striker (16) / Private Eye in the Distant Sea (17)
(You will find the links to the reviews of volumes 70, 72~76, 78, 82~104 and the films Quarter of Silence (15), The Eleventh Striker (16), Private Eye in the Distant Sea (17), Dimensional Sniper (18), Sunflowers of Inferno (19), The Darkest Nightmare (20), The Crimson Love Letter (21), Zero the Enforcer (22), The Fist of Blue Sapphire (23), The Scarlet Bullet (24), Bride of Halloween (25) and The Black Iron Submarine (26) in the library or via the Detective Conan tag)

 

High school student detective Hattori Heiji is attending a major kendo tournament in Hakodate, Hokkaido and he hopes to confess his love to his childhood friend Kazuha while they're in Hakodate, as Hokkaido features several spots with beautiful scenery, perfect for such an occassion. However, at the same time, the wealthy Onoe Takuzou, an Hakodate inhabitant, has received a notice from the notorious phantom thief KID, who declares he'll steal his two antique wakizashi swords, which were once gifted to Hishikata Toshizou of the Shingengumi. While wondering why KID is after the sword, as he usually only targets jewels, Hattori and Conan (high school student detective Kudou Shinichi who has been turned into a child and is hiding his identity) manage to fend off KID. However, Onoe's attorney's dead body is later found in the city, with a characteristic X-slash across his chest. Based on his belongings, the gang deduces the attorney had illegally brought another Japanese sword back from Dubai to Japan on orders of his employee, which now has been stolen. They eventually learn the swords were all made by swordmaker Higashikubo Eitatsu. Onoe Keizaburou (Takuzou's grandfather) had more sets of swords created during the war, as he was a high-ranking supplies official and rumors have it he hid a treasure somewhere in Hokkaido, with the swords serving as a clue to its whereabouts. Besides KID himself and the murderer, who is seen wearing a fox-mask, more parties appear on the scene who seem after the treasure, starting a race against the clock to see who can first obtain all the swords and find Onoe's treasure in the 2024 theatrical film Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram.

 

Wait... a Detective Conan film review... in this time of the year? Yes! This is the first time since 2012's The Eleventh Striker where I didn't need to wait for the home video release, but got to see it in the theatres again! First time I saw a Conan film in 4DX too by the way, and while I do complain about the recent films being so more much action-focused at the expense of the mystery plot, I do have to admit watching the modern films in 4DX is a lot of fun!

Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram is the 27th Detective Conan film and marks a return of mystery writer Ookura Takahiro as the screenwriter for the film. I wasn't too big a fan of the mystery plot of his Detective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire (2019), but I consider Detective Conan: The Crimson Love Letter (2017) as one of the best Conan films overall, especially mystery plot-wise, and at the very least, one can definitely say Ookura has an excellent grasp on the characters, often inserting very fun character interaction scenes throughout his films. Like The Crimson Love Letter, Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram focuses on the relationship between Hattori and Kazuha, with the film providing a conclusion to a storyline that has been running in the manga for some years now, with Hattori trying to confess his love to Kazuha at a memorable spot. For the character-focused fans of the franchise, The Million-Dollar Pentagram has a lot of great moments, from seeing Hattori finally confronting KID after their first clash in 2019, to the "big secret" of KID which the trailers have been talking about (Thought to be honest I.... don't like the reveal... I really don't) and some cool cameos. What I do appreciate about this film in general is that like The Crimson Love Letter, it's so much more accessible than some of the previous films, which built too strongly on the complicated character relations in the series. With so many character being (double) spies, having their own agendas and complicated pasts, some of the films would demand a lot of a viewer with nil knowledge of Conan, while this film keeps things relatively simple, with a murder mystery/treasure hunt plot, plus a simple rom-com plot of "boy wanting to confess love to girl", and not expecting you to remember that in volume XX, this and that character discussed this together. The previous two films (Black Iron Submarine and Bride of Halloween I both described as films that do "... things I hadn't expected a Detective Conan film to do, but also didn't do a lot of things I expect, or at least hope to get from a Detective Conan film." In that sense, I felt The Million-Dollar Pentagram was much more like a conventional Conan film, being universally easier to see for a wider audience.

As a mystery film however, The Million-Dollar Pentagram is really not especially memorable. While technically it is a murder mystery, the plot is mainly focused on the treasure hunt aspect, with all the parties trying to figure out 1) what Onoe's treasure was and 2) where the treasure is. While fortunately, the treasure hunt isn't reliant on one of those wordplay riddles you often see in the series, the actual puzzle-solving aspect of this film isn't really interesting, and you'll probably just be passively watching everything unfold, rather than really trying to solve any of this yourself. The mystery of the murderer is fairly simple too, partially due to a very small pool of viable suspects, and while there's a very minor piece of misdirection I feel is executed quite well on screen, I won't be recommending this film on its mystery merits. Fortunately, I was watching this in 4DX, so I did physically enjoy all the outrageous clashes between the various parties while chasing after the treasure!

Still, I do wish we have we get a more mystery plot-focused film soon again... I really loved The Crimson Love Letter, as I think it struck a great balance between the plot and the modern focus on action. As always, we already got a sneak preview/teaser of next year's film at the end of The Million-Dollar Pentagram, and while it honestly could go anyway, the teaser did suggest a focus on a set of characters that usually come with pretty robust mystery plots...

I happened to have been watching the 2008 Gegege no Kitarou animated film before this film, where they did a lot of local tourism PR by having Neko Musume visit various places briefly in the film, and I did think The Million-Dollar Pentagram felt a bit like a PR film at times. When the Conan films are set in Tokyo, they are usually set in fictional Beika, or use fictional landmarks like Touto Tower and the Bell Tree Tower instead of the Tokyo Tower and the Skytree. This film however features a lot of real Hakodate (and Hokkaido) landmarks, and with modern visuals, these sights are presented photo-realistically, as compared to the more drawn style we see in the earliest Conan films. Not really a bad thing per se, but seeing a hyper realistic Hakodate in this film did feel a bit weird as usually, real-life locations are drawn in a more stylized fashion in the television anime series.

Oh, and while not really related to this film, but I might as well mention it here: I did visit the special Detective Conan 30th Anniversary exhibition that's travelling across Japan now. Pretty interesting to see the original drawings and all of that. While it is understandably very character-focused, so not especially interesting for those who are only interested in Conan for the mystery stories, there were some fun displays for the mystery fans too, like this showcase of the various murder weapons used. Would be fun to see more of these mystery-focused exhibitions. Imagine how fun it'd be to visit sets of murder scenes of famous mystery stories!

Anyway, Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram is a film that is probably best enjoyed by long-time fans of the series, who want to see characters like Hattori and KID interact with each other (and the conclusion to Hattori's attempts at confessing his love to Kazuha), while also being somewhat involved in a murder mystery. The film is better enjoyed for its action scenes than the mystery, but at the very least, it's a lot more accessible than its immediate predecessors as it does work as a standalone rom-com too.  That said, I do hope next year's entry will be a bit more substantial mystery-wise.

Original Japanese title(s): 『名探偵コナン 100万ドルの五稜星』

The Pale Horse

All living things

Into the spiral

"Spiral" (Garnet Crow)

And that wraps up another series...

Over the course of about a year, I have reviewed the spinoff novels of Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna or Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning, a mystery(-themed) manga created by writer Shirodaira Kyou and artist Mizuno Eita which ran from 1999 until 2005. Each of the novels I had discussed until now followed the same structure: one novella, featuring a completely original adventure with series protagonist Ayumu, and two shorter stories which were originally published online, which focused on Ayumu's big brother Kiyotaka, who disappears at the start of the main series. These short stories were set in the past, and were about Kurumi, a sixteen year old heir to a wealthy and influential family. Her grandfather wants her to marry Kiyotaka, who at that time is known as a prodigy in the Tokyo police force, but Kurumi of course refuses, and declares she'll beat Kiyotaka in solving police cases to show she's better than him and can thus marry someone else. Of course, in the short stories we saw included in volumes 1 until 3 of this spin-off series, Kiyotaka was always the better detective. Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna 4: Koufuku no Owari, Owari no Koufuku ("Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning 4: Ending of the Happiness, Happiness of the Ending" 2004) is the final spin-off novel and unlike the previous books, focuses solely on this storyline revolving around Kurumi, wrapping her story up and setting the pieces ready for the start of the main series. 

Interestingly, this book also follows a different structure because it is the ending. In the previous three volumes, we had first the original novella with Ayumu, followed by two extra prequel stories with Kurumi and Kiyotaka. Which made sense, as they were just extras. These stories had also been posted online before. In this volume however, things are turned around: the book opens with the two stories which were posted online previously, but ends with the original novella.

The two short stories the reader first encounters are called Kinkyou Houkoku ("Update") and Kudan wo Korose ("Kill the Kudan") and are fairly short, and don't follow the same two-chapter structure of the previous short stories. In the first, we learn about a woman who has been killed, but in her stomach a handwritten note was found with the name "Kiyotaka" as well as Kiyotaka's phone number at the police station. While it is not likely he killed the woman and that she wanted to leave a clue to indicate her killer, Kiyotaka turns out to have a connection with the victim, as they used to date in college. But why did the victim have that note in her stomach? This is a fun The Nine Mile Walk-esque story where they speculate about why she'd have swallowed that note before being killed, and while the answer comes very soon after the introduction of the problem, it does fit with the humanistic angle this series sometimes takes. This story also has Kurumi meet with a younger Ayumu for the first time (he's still in elementary school in this story), who turns out to be quite clever like his big brother. In Kudan wo Korose ("Kill the Kudan"), Ayumu's old teacher confesses to killing her husband with a statue of a Kudan (a yokai with the head of a man and the body of a cow),because she believes the prophetic powers of a Kudan will only lead to misfortune. Ayumu however has information that seems to put the matter in a different light. Again, the story is very short, so you don't really get much time to think about this yourself too much, but it's an okay story considering the page count, and because of the yokai links and the type of deductions made, it does make you wonder whether Shirodaira was already playing with ideas for Kyokou Suiri/Invented Inference when he wrote this tale.

The main story is Koufuku no Owari, Owari no Koufuku ("Ending of the Happiness, Happiness of the Ending") which might also be the longest original novella of this four-volume series. It is also by far the best pure mystery story of the four, focusing on a clear murder mystery and using the extended page length to present a robust novella. Kurumi challenges Kiyotaka one last time, and this time, they are working on the murder of a wealthy man, who was very much into horse racing. Each Sunday, he'd bet on horses, but whenever he lost, he would write down the names of the two horses he lost to, and fold a very intricate origami model of a devil figure with head, arms, legs, fingers and wings, which takes hours to fold even if you know exactly how to do it. This Sunday, he was killed, but he had finished his origami model, meaning he had died some hours after losing his horse bet. During the race, his son, illegimate daughter and another son-in-law, who all had reasons for wanting to kill him for his money, were all with him at his house, but they all left after the race and had tea together, meaning they all have a perfect alibi for after the race, when the victim was working on his origami model. Because the names of the winners of that race were indeed written on that model, it means it couldn't have been prepared beforehand, because you can't know which two horses exactly would win that week. Ayumu helps Kurumi this time to see if they can beat Kiyotaka together.

As a problem, this is probably the most "normal" murder mystery we've seen in the novellas in this spin-off series, and it's a pretty good one. Nothing mind-blowing mind you, but it's a solid "which of the three suspects is the killer" type of story. They all seem to have solid alibis because they were together after the murder, but could any of them have somehow prepared the origami model beforehand, even though you could never guess which horses would win that week beforehand and prepare an origami model so complex it even takes a veteran hours to create? You can't prepare the model beforehand, fold it open, write names in and quickly fold it back, because the pen markings would be different writing on folded paper, and the model is so complex having folded paper would only make it more difficult to fold it back into the devil. The solution is close to the type of reasonings you'll find in Shirodaira's later Kyokou Suiri, in the sense that they very much focus on what a person would do to commit a murder, looking into hypotheses more than in actual physical evidence, though I'd say the foundation for the deductions is fairly sound here. I quite like the answer to the origami problem as a proof of alibi actually, being something I had not seen before, and the answer is just crazy enough to be fun, but also quite logical even from the POV of the murderer. 

I also think that for fans of the series, this volume is probably the most interesting. The previous novellas were all set extremely early in the main series (like, two chapters in), so they seldom felt like Spiral stories, while the short stories were about Kurumi (who doesn't appear in the main series), Kiyotaka (who barely appears in the main series) and Madoka (Kiyotaka's surbordinate/later wife), who fortunately does appear in the main series a lot. Still, they often didn't really feel like Spiral. Ayumu however appears in all three stories in this volume and interacts with the other characters, so give an interesting look in his younger years and the way he thinks, the way the other stories didn't do as well I think (especially when it comes to him and Kiyotaka's relation).

And that means I am done with the spin-off novels of Spiral. Not all of them were as good as others: The second one is memorable as it has a crazy story, but also because of how it works as a proto-Kyokou Suiri, focusing on deductions and not the truth per se. The final volume Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna 4: Koufuku no Owari, Owari no Koufuku has the best selection of stories when it comes to conventional murder mystery stories, and you could even read this without any knowledge of the main series and still think it's a coherent volume, whereas the other volumes are a bit more chaotic as they have stories set both in the present day of the main series, and the stories set in the past with Kurumi and Kiyotaka. Anyway, I'm glad I have read these now because I had been aware of them for many years, but never got around to them until last year.

Original Japanese title(s):城平京(著) 水野英多(イラスト) 『小説　スパイラル～推理の絆4　幸福の終わり、終わりの幸福」