Mischievous Scientist

Once we were a race of beings roaming the universe on the search for answers and knowledge, but only found more questions and misery. Eons have passed before the first member of our people realised that there was a deeper structured process behind the common reality we were able to see and live. 

"Mystery of Time and Space"

A non-fiction book for a change!

While Detective Conan is at the core a fair-play mystery manga, it remains a series that also has a lot of unrealistic elements that are a part of the series identity: the core premise of high school student detective Kudo Shinichi being turned into a child due to an experimental drug is of course the prime example, but because the rom-com and action genres are also a fundamental part of Conan, we also see characters sometimes pull off things that would be completely impossible in a "realistic" setting, and if their feats were part of the mysteries, it'd definitely feel unfair, but usually, these superhuman scenes only occur after the core mystery has been solved. That said. sometimes it's fun to think a bit more about these superhuman feats. Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon ("The Fictional Science Reader") is a long-running series by Yanagida Rikao that explores the science in anime/manga/tokusatsu/games etcetera. Can our current knowledge of science explain how a certain scene in an anime played out? Or how much strength would be needed for someone to pull off that one memorable scene? Earlier this year, Yanagida released a special crossover volume with Detective Conan: Meitantei Conan Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon ("Detective Conan: The Fictional Science Reader" 2024) looks at the long-running mystery manga with a wink, exploring questions like "How does the drug that shrunk Conan's body work?", "How many murder cases *does* Conan encounter on average?" and "How hard can Ran kick people?".

Many years ago, I wrote a short piece about how I wanted to see more reference/guidebooks on established mystery series: I referred to a Conan guide among others, that had short summaries for each case, including a focus on the important clues/trick/murder weapon, and a Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney guide that had timelines for each case, showing what everyone was doing at what time. I haven't seen many interesting guides released since then, sadly enough. But while Detective Conan: Meitantei Conan Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon isn't exactly what I was talking about at the time, I think this was a pretty funny book for fans of the series, though not really for general mystery fans.

In the book, Yanagida explores several memorable scenes and pivotal moments from the Detective Conan series, focusing specifically on the manga until volume 105. He then uses science to muse about these scenes: a funny example is from one of the earliest chapters in the series, when Ran kicks a kidnapper and he flies a few meters until he lands on the ground. Obviously, it would be impossible in real-life for her to kick a grown adult so far: if she *could* be so strong, it'd mean other people in this world could also be so strong and use their strength to pull off what appear to be "impossible" crimes for us. But as I mentioned earlier, Ran's "super strength" (and that of other characters) is only seen after the core mystery plot has been resolved, so it's not really jarring, as you can easily see this is just "comics reality". Which is why it's so funny when Yanagida starts calculating how much force it'd require for Ran to kick that man the way she did, and ending up with the conclusion she has the kick strength of nearly 600 kickboxers.

There are some other interesting statistical analyses that are more mystery-related. It turns out that over the course of the first 105 volumes, there were "just" 202 murder cases,  a number which surprised me a bit, but I guess with the anime and other media around, you just get the idea there are more. As in-universe, not even a full year has passed since the first volume, Yanagida then uses that to compare Conan's "murder encounter" rate to that of the average Japanese civilian and to that of homicide detectives in Tokyo, which... of course makes it too clear Conan is really a death magnet. And if you count all the non-murder (but criminal) cases, it turns out Conan even averages over 1 incident per day. Something you kinda expect when reading the series of course, but it's more amusing by seeing the scientific support for the gut feeling. Life in Beika City is also shown to be a real dystopia, considering the murder rate in one single city...

Other funny musings are about the efficiency of Conan's tranquilizer wristwatch and his other gadgets like his turbo skateboard and ball-dispensing belt, the speed required for Kyougoku Makoto to dodge a shotgun shot at point-blank range, how painful would it really be to have a bag full of gold fall on you from a meter or ten (spoiler: very painful). Most of the scenes picked will be very familiar to Conan fans, and seeing them "nitpicked" like this is more than entertaining.

But as I said, this is really just for Conan fans, and not for mystery fans in general. But! I was thinking, it would be cool if there was a mystery-focused volume of Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon, just not focusing on one specific IP, but exploring several famous mystery novels. Sure, it'd be full of spoilers, but imagine Yanagida going over the science behind the locked room murder trick in Honjin Satsujin Jiken/The Honjin Murders or all of those Kitayama Takekuni locked room murders. Going over the physics behind physical locked room tricks would of course be the major attraction, but I could also imagine a shorter column going over how poisons are shown to work in the novels and checking whether they really work like that. 

Anyway, Meitantei Conan Kuusou Kagaku Dokuhon is a fun coffee table-type of book for Detective Conan fans, with just the right about of "seriousness" about silly subjects. Because it's mostly about really specific scenes, I can't recommend it to anyone else, but it does show a lot of potential for a more "general mystery" entry in this series, and I hope that in the future, such a volume will be released!

Original Japanese title(s): 柳田理科雄『名探偵コナン空想科学読本』

Against the Rules

Thou shalt not kill.

"Exodus" (King James Version)

It took me longer than I like to admit to realize this cover was an island in the sea.

Oomuro Rie was quite fond of her uncle Shuuzou. Shuuzou started out with great successes on the stock market, and used his fortune to invest in other businesses that only resulted even more money. The small island he owned, was one of the ways in which he managed to use the money he had at his disposal.The island holds a larger two-story house, and five smaller bungalows, and when she was small, Shuuzou would invite her parents and their children to stay there on the island for holiday. The last few years however, she hadn't really seen her uncle, so the news her uncle had died in a traffic accident came as a shock. As he had no other relatives, Rie's father inherited from his older brother, though the size of the inheritance wasn't as big as it once had been. The island was of course also part of the inheritance, but when the president of a small leisure company contacted Rie's father about wanting to buy the island to develop into a resort, her father was quite positive to the offer, as it's kinda inconvenient to own a small island. They agree to have a look at the current state of the island and the buildings there together, as even Shuuzou himself hadn't visited the place the last five years. The president of the leisure company was friends with Shuuzou, and coincidentally, Shuuzou also knew presidents of a real estate agent and constructing company, who also want in on developing this project, so they and their assistants come too. Rie too wants to come along, as this might be the last time she can see the island of her memories, and as she didn't make it into college this year, she still has time now as she studies for her entrance exams. Ultimately, nine people make their way to the small private island, which can only be accessed via a small pier. When they arrive at the island, they find the buildings to be in pretty good shape, but to their surprise, they find that one shack is filled with explosives, hooked up to a system communicating with a smartphone. The bungalows are all locked, but also seem to be holding bombs. It seems someone has been on the island making these bombs for some reason, but because Rie's father can't be sure his brother is not involved at all, he wants to sleep over it one night before they call the police.

The following morning however, one of them is found dead down the cliff of the island, but more importantly, there is a note addressing all surviving eight of them: in it the murderer says they have taken the smartphone that controls the explosives on the island, and that they will detonate the island, killing everyone, unless the rest will follow the ten rules stated in the note. The ten rules range from everyone having to hand in their smartphone and keep them together in a sealed bag to not contacting the police or the outside world, extending their stay to a full three days and most importantly: they are to not even try to figure out who the murderer is, or they will all die. Can the eight survive their stay on this island while following these hard rules in Yuuki Haruo's Jikkai ("The Ten Commandments", 2023)?

Hakobune ("The Ark", 2022) was the first time I ever read anything by Yuuki and it was easily one of my favorite reads of 2023, so when I learned that soon after reading that book, Yuuki released another book with a similar, Bible-inspired title, I of course was more than interested in the book. I wonder what the next book will be! Revelations? The Tower of Babel? Resurrection? The Parting of the Sea? The potential! Besides the title, Jikkai is not connected story-wise to Hakobune by the way, so you can read them in any order.

* September 2024 edit: Okay, so I read Jikkai last year, and also wrote this review then, but I had a long queue of reviews waiting so the post got delayed until today... but earlier this year, I also reviewed Yuuki's (excellent) Salome's Guillotine: I read it soon after its release date, so I decided to push that review up ahead. While that book also has a title from an episode of the Bible, it is in fact part of a different series.

While Jikkai s basically a closed circle mystery in a very familiar form (an island!), the concept of the "ten commandments" laid upon the survivors is interesting, in theory. The final rule, that forbids them from trying to investigate the murder and learn who the murderer is, makes for a catchy marketing slogan, but the rest of the rules are far more practical, like not allowing them to use their phones unless observed by everyone else, or the rule where nobody is allowed to be with someone else for longer than thirty minutes, after which a five minute cooldown period must follow where you need to be alone. It is clear from the way the rules are laid down, the murderer must be one of the surviving eight: the rules only benefit if the murderer is among them, allowing them to control the rest and not have them solve the mystery, without having to reveal to the rest who they are. They also soon realize the murderer has probably set the explosives to go off unless they reset the counter every thirty minutes, meaning the five minute cool-down period is used to reset that counter, making it more difficult for the rest to do anything to counter the murderer. Due to these rules, the first half of the book might feel more like a suspense novel than a detective novel, as obviously, Rie and the other innocent survivors don't dare to do anything that goes against the ten commandments, and so they can't investigate the body or even ask about each other's alibis, something that would usually be done right away in a novel with a similar setting.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed when the rules were actually introduced, because just based on the marketing slogan, I had expected something else. I guess I had expected something more game-like. The rules are very practical, but at the same time, because we know the murderer has to be one of the eight survivors on the island, they seem a bit inconvenient. How is one person going to keep track of the other seven innocent people on the island as they roam about and occasionally talk with each other? The rules don't forbid that, and it's not like the murderer has tracking tech or anything. Rules like "don't be in each other's vicinity for longer than thirty minutes" make more sense in a setting with more technology present. I was honestly first expecting something more Battle Royale-esque, or something like the Future arc of Danganronpa 3, where everyone had bombs attached to themselves, which would detonate if they violated a personal forbidden rule which was different for everyone. Here many of the rules were just so specific "Place this here, put that away", instead of rules that would be important to remember the whole time, which made the whole concept feel less impressive than it could've been. Ultimately, the only rule that mattered really was the one of not trying to find out who the murderer is, with the rest just being offshoots of that to ensure they wouldn't.

As the survivors wonder why the murderer told them to wait for three days, after which they are allowed to contact the police, the days pass by, but more people are killed. The murderer leaves more notes, telling the others that the new victims were only killed because they violated the rules and that the rest don't need to worry if they obey the rules, but of course, the others aren't really able to enjoy the holiday feeling on the island now. Because they are not allowed to investigate or basically even discuss the deaths, in fear of being bombed, the story offers, ostensibly, only minimal clues to solving the mystery, which is course also what makes the story interesting mystery-wise. That said, it's not like the story is completely devoid of clues, and there are a few things discussed shortly that serve as clues, before they are shut down in fear of the killer, but some notes, like the question why the murderer doesn't just command the others to destroy all clues for the murderer or else they will be blown up, is a very fair one. Of course, a lot of these minor questions would normally be developed more in discussion, but that's not possible here, so the questions linger a bit longer until they are picked up at the end again.

And as a mystery novel that tries to give you very little clues while being fair and giving a justification for why there are so few clues, Jikkai is surprisingly fun. Some things that are done here, were already done in Hakobune and I also think they were done better there, but the type of deductions presented here are still quite enjoyable: as in Hakobune, the deductions revolve around Queen-esque logic, focusing on the state of physical clues and the actions performed by the murderer as seen by the state of the scene of the crime, and there's a segment surrounding foot marks that is very interesting: regarding a late murder, the killer finally does order the rest to erase the tracks left by the murderer on a wet field, but for some reason, the murderer already did that for the victim. Why did they erase the victim's tracks themselves, but didn't erase their own? The deductions here are fun, and certainly also part of what I liked so much abotu Hakobune. In terms of the identity of the murderer, and also the whole motivation for why the murders were committed, and also the (barely existant) backstory to the explosives, I have to admit I felt less convinced. A lot of these aspects are barely justified in the narrative, and you keep wondering whether there wasn't some other way (some less convoluted way) to get things done...

Overall, I think Jikkai is a fun, and exciting mystery novel: it is suspenseful, it is mystery-wise interesting because it actively gives you a reason why there are few clues, and thus also challenging you to get as far as you can with the few clues you do have, but some elements are rather rushed, and ultimately, I think a lot of what Jikkai does, was done better in Hakobune. In fact, I would have totally expected these two books being released in reverse order, as Hakobune feels like the upgraded version of Jikkai. Anyway, I do hope Yuuki will continue with this Bible-themed series, as even if this book wasn't as good as Hakobune (which I thought was exceptionally good), I still had fun with it.

Original Japanese title(s): 夕木春央,『十戒』

Seven Days A Week

Seven days a week now
Seven days a week
You've even got me talking in my sleep
Seven days a week

"Seven Days A Week" (George A. Robertson Jr.)

I usually have a lot of posts scheduled months ahead, so whenever I read a newly released book and decide to push a review early to keep it timely, it messes up the whole schedule...

It is a late July day when Kuroba Uyuu wakes up in a hospital room, looking down at a somewhat familiar person lying in a bed in the ICU. He recognizes the face.... as his own, and when he sees he's floating and he himself is in a semi-transparent state, he starts to realize that he is in fact a ghost. He realizes the nurse can't see him either, and follows her as she reports to the doctor that her patient (Kuroba) has stabilized after a cardiac arrest earlier this morning, but that he's still in a coma. It's then that Kuroba slowly remembers what happened to him. Four months ago, on White Day (March 14), he was out on the roof of his apartment building, when someone pushed him from behind. Kuroba ended shish-kebabed on the statue of a dog holding a toothbrush high up in the sky beneath the building. It is then he recalls he had an appointment for that evening to meet a prospective client and the realization he never made it there annoys him a bit, as trust is an important factor in his line of work. For Kuroba was going to meet his client as The Perfect Crime Contractor: Kuroba has been active in the underworld for almost a decade as someone whom people can turn to if the justice system fails them. He exacts revenge for his clients, usually in a manner that mirrors the way the criminals hurt their victims, like swindling swindlers or putting the police on the trail of the serial Topsy-Turvey Killer and cornering him into a certain death. The Perfect Crime Contractor of course executes his revenge in a way that safeguards both himself and his clients, hence his nickname, and while the police knows of him, they never have been able to prove for example his involvement in certain suspicious deadly "accidents" that happened to some murderers.

Having nothing to do as a ghost, Kuroba floats to the place where he was supposed to meet his clients four months ago: an abandoned house in the outskirts of the city. When he arrives there, he is suddenly attacked by a young girl, or at least, she attempts to, but she walks right through him. It turns out the girl can actually see ghosts and has seen a few before in her life. The girl is Otoha, and she is the daughter of the clients Kuroba was supposed to meet on the fourteenth of March. However, they were found killed in gruesome manners in this abandoned house the following morning: both her father and mother had been poisoned, and her father was then hanged upside-down from the ceiling. However, it was a snowy day, and there were only the footprints of her parents leading into the house, and none out (of the killer), meaning it was a double locked room murder: this is why Otoha has been coming every night to the house, as she learned her parents were going to meet the Perfect Crime Contractor here that night and she believes he killed them with a perfect crime. After Kuroba explains he's the Perfect Crime Contractor, Otoha realizes he can't be the killer of her parents: Kuroba being stabbed on the statue had of course been all over the news, and his fall occured hours before her parent's deaths. Kuroba's fall has been filed as an accident by the police, but Kuroba can't believe his fall, and the murders on Otoha's parents are disconnected as they happened just within hours of each other. Otoha pleads with Kuroba to help her exact revenge on the murderer of her parents, as that's probably also the person who pushed Kuroba off the roof. As a ghost, Kuroba can't directly interact with the physical world, and he also learns from Otoha ghosts can only roam for a maximum of seven days before they fade away completely and reluctantly, Kuroba agrees to help Otoha in tracking the killer and mentoring her so she can take her revenge, but in a way that will keep herself out of harm's way. Can this unlikely duo accomplish their revenge before Kuroba's ghost will disappear in seven days in Houjou Kie's 2024 novel Shoujo ni wa Mukanai Kanzen Hanzai ("An Unsuitable Perfect Crime for a Girl").

Yes, as a Houjou Kie fan since her debut, I of course read her latest book the moment this was released (it was released last week). After debuting via, and writing three excellent novels for publisher Tokyo Sogensha, writing the exciting short story collection Amulet Hotel at Koubunsha, we now have Houjou Kie's first novel via publisher Kodansha (you may remember a few weeks ago I did review a short story she did via Kodansha's Mephisto Readers Club). So a different publisher, but as always, we see Houjou do what she's best at: presenting densily plotted mystery novels featuring a special background setting, in this case, we have the existence of ghosts. Which is funny, because I only read one story by Houjou from when she was still a member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, which also featured a ghost. Also interesting to note is that the editor of the book was also a former editor-in-chief of the club.

As I am writing this, I have to admit I find it difficult to sort my thoughts on this book. Not because it's a chaotic book, but I think I can best explain it by first pointing out that based on her social media, it does appear Houjou very much likes television drama and films and in a way, Shoujo ni wa Mukanai Kanzen Hanzai feels very much like a full season of a mystery drama series. A lot happens in this book, and basically each chapter turns things around or focuses on a different main problem, even if everything is surprisingly neatly connected. We start out with an impossible crime: the murder on Otoha's parents in a house with no footprints in the snow leading to the entrance, but Kuroba and Otoha's investigation lead them to more mysterious crime scenes and events: some might be "classic" crime scenes like the one mentioned above, or a more open crime scene like the rooftop from which Kuroba was pushed, while others focus on other mysteries like an impossible situation where a person manages to conjure a weapon out of nowhere despite security precautions, or "impossible situations" where the young Otoha needs to escape a trap without being detected. The book is crammed full with mysteries upon mysteries, but they all flow into each other in a very natural manner, as part of the duo's investigation, and because of that, it really feels like a complete series, rather than a single novel.

This is also because of the insanely densily-clewed plot. While the story has you following many different situations one after another, Houjou somehow manages to hide all her clues and foreshadowing across the whole novel, rather than compartmentalizing all the clues together with the stiuation they correspond too (as in [part 1 + clues of part 1] -> [part 2 + clues of part 2] etc.). The result is a very satisfying mystery novel, where everything you read can turn out to be a clue that might be relevant to a situation you have already read about.... or about that might still come, and those situations themselves might be completely different mysteries. I can't even imagine how difficult it must have been to keep track of all the clues during the writing process, keeping an eye on when and where each clue was employed or when foreshadowing would be necessary. Houjou has always been a very dense writer when it comes to clues, but due to the set-up of Shoujo ni wa Mukanai Kanzen Hanzai, with a series of mysteries set in motion by different actors occuring across city, rather than a series of murders by the hand of one murderer happening in an isolated setting like in the Ryuuzen series, you become even more aware what an amazing plotter she is, as clewing all of these situations and intertwining all these threads must be hell as a writer.

At this point, I haven't even really mentioned what makes this book truly amazing. So by now, we basically have a television drama season's worth of mysteries, all with intertwined threads of clues and foreshadowing as we follow the unlikely duo of a primary school child and a criminal ghost trying to find a killer and take revenge on them, but... this is also a book that focuses on multiple solutions, in the tradition of Christianna Brand, Ellery Queen and Anthony Berkeley. Otoha, as a young child, is being mentored by Kuroba's ghost and being taught the ropes of how to deduce, a skill extremely important when it comes to planning out perfect revenge plans and soon the two find themselves bouncing off deductions off each other about the various mysteries they encounter during their investigation. In some rare occcassions, we even have other character offer false solutions too, and what makes this so memorable is of course due to the fact I mentioned earlier about how insanely many clues are found throughout the book: all of the false solutions presented in the book, as well as the real solutions, are of course all properly clewed (and the false solutions of course feature clues that will ultimately prove them false). The realization Houjou had to keep track of all of this is honestly just stunning, and the result is an incredily fun mystery novel, as it always keep you guessing, by constantly shifting the mystery you're thinking about and by challenging the reader into finding the real solution among the many false solutions she planted. Some of the major mysteries, like the initial locked room mystery, even have like three or four different false solutions presented, so it's an extremely tricky story.

With so many mysteries going on, it's understandable that some mysteries are less memorable when taken on their own: there's a minor no-footprints-in-the-mud situation halfway through the book for example that has a rather basic solution, and while I like the concept behind the weapon appearing out of nowhere, I feel it needed one more clue to feel truly fair, but that's nitpicking, as the way all of these are put together is impressive enough, and I do really like the solution to the first no-footprints-in-the-snow situation, as well as the great way in which Kuroba and Otoha initially figure out a logical connection between Otoha's parents' murderer and Kuroba's assailant. I also think readers will appreciate the time Houjou allows the reader to spend with both Otoha and Kuroba: they are explored more deeply than any other character in Houjou's earlier work and that is probably also a reason why this book feels so much like a full season of stories, rather than a single installment. I do think personally that the ghost aspect of the story feels less intertwined with the mystery in this book, compared to how Houjou's earlier work utilized their supernatural/unusual elements: Kuroba can't interact with the physical world, so he mostly mentors Otoha and can act as an extra pair of eyes and ears, as well as provide information Otoha can't have, but there's less of the "make super clever use of the rules of this specific supernatural element" we have seen in her previous novels. Oh well, you can't have everything.

Because even with that minor point, I do think Shoujo ni wa Mukanai Kanzen Hanzai is one of the best mystery novels I have read this year, and easily so. It's a very satisfying read as it covers so much ground and throws Otoha, a young, indepedent cheeky girl, and Kuroba, a ghost with a chip on his shoulder, in so many mysterious situations and allows both of them to show both their best and their worst as they try to find the killer and formulate a way to exact revenge on them. A must-read of this year!

Original Japanese title(s): 方丈貴恵『少女には向かない完全犯罪』

Ghost of the Dusk

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

"Eleonora"

Disclosure: I translated Ayatsuji Yukito's The Decagon House Murders and The Mill House Murders. And yes, The Labyrinth House Murders is on its way!

Shouji seldom returned to his home town of Kurisu after he moved out to attend high school first and now university but when he returns to his apartment after a trip, his voice mail is full of messages by his mother telling his brother Shinichi died in an accident, urging him to come back. While he's already two weeks late, he of course travels back to the city that doesn't quite feel like his own home anymore. On his way to his parental home, the gossiping taxi driver mentions that some person recently committed suicide around here, and Shouji soon realizes the taxi driver was talking about his brother. His parents however insist it was an accident of his brother falling from the balcony while drunk. Shouji realizes his parents, who run a hospital and have powerful connections, may have reasons to make their son's death an unfortunate accident, rather than a chosen death and could've put pressure on the police to wrap the investigation up swiftly, but Shouji soon suspects his brother might not have died in an accident, or by suicide. Urabe, Shinichi's old tutor and friend, shares Shouji's suspicions, and they soon find indications something had been worrying Shinichi: someone had been calling him on the phone in the middle of the night, saying phrases like "Let's play..." and "You laughed...". These phrases slowly remind Shouji of something, an event that happened when he was very young, when he was playing with Shinichi and his friends in the twilight. While Shouji starts to remember the past as it slowly whispers to him, other childhood friends of Shinichi also die in what are very clearly murder cases. Why are these old friends being killed off, and who shall the last victim be? 

Tasogare no Sasayaki (1993) or as the cover also says Whispering in the Twilight, is the third and final book in the Whispering series by Ayatsuji Yukito. The idea behind the first book, Hiiro no Sasayaki ("The Scarlet Whispering" 1988) was that Ayatsuji was thinking of fanning out to genres beyond the pure puzzle plot detective of his House series after writing the first three books in that series. The result was a slasher mystery that was greatly influenced by the famous Dario Argento giallo film Suspiria, but with a twist that reminded you that Ayatsuji was of course a mystery foremost. I generally don't read horror novels or watch horror films (sometimes manga) and while Hiiro no Sasayaki was certainly not a pure puzzler like the House books, it was an okay, even if not super remarkable, horror novel, and as both the series and the books are fairly short, I was always planning to read all of them. The books are not directly connected: in Tasogare no Sasayaki for example, we hear Shouji's family is very distantly related to the Munakata family which runs the girls' academy in the first book, but that's the most "connected" these books get in terms of story. What these books do share, are the titular whisperings: the main characters in each of the three books hear "whisperings from the past" as they very slowly start to remember some traumatic event that happened in their past that they have surpressed, first starting with "whispers" of single words, that slowly become phrases and eventually become whole flashbacks, and of course these events are always related to the murders that occur in each book.

Of the three books in the series though, this book feels the most like a conventional mystery story. Perhaps it's because this book is set in a city, rather than the creepy closed community that was the Seishin Girls Academy, or a large forest in a resort town. While the death of Shinichi is officially deemed an accident, the prologue reveals that Shinichi was in fact attacked by the murderer and that Shinichi, in an attempt to defend himself, fell off his balcony, so we know there's an actual murderer roaming around, but why is the killer after Shinichi and his other friends? Some clues, like an old coin left at the crime scene and the weird phrases mentioned on the phone serve as the only clue, as well as Shouji's vague memories of something that occured that ties the coin and those phrases with Shinichi and his friends.

That does make this book, if you want to read it solely as a detective novel, very... passive. While Urabe and Shouji try to learn more from Shinichi's childhood friends, they remain silent, so a lot of the book basically depends on Shouji slowly remembering what happened when they were young. A lot of their detecting work is really only necessary because Shouji can't remember exactly what happened, even though he knows he was there. His "whisperings from the past" start out as very vague images, and slowly become cleare. This wouldn't be a horror novel if his memories didn't start to return properly only at the very end of the book, but that's a story-telling technique that is probably easier to accept in a horror novel (because the horror is derived from the fact Shouji can't remember yet), but in a detective novel, this device feels cheap because Shouji is holding vital clues but simply can't remember because of narrative reasons, rather than them not being able to interpret clues or make correct deductions. 

As an entry in a horror series though, the focus this time is less pronounced on that aspect, which is why it does feel more like a normal detective novel: the death scenes are not as graphic and horrible like in the first book, nor do you have things like the super creepy twins trope (technically, they weren't twins) of the second book, It's basically just a murderer going around killing people in a city, and Urabe and Shouji trying to figure out why and who. Like in the previous two books however, there is a 'big' twist  near the end that makes you realize you had been looking at the facts in the wrong way and that the truth had been staring you in the face all that time: I absolutely love the big one in this book: it is a bit silly, but it works in this book (especially with the plot device of Shouji only having vague memories at first and the whisperings from the past), and it is surprisingly well hinted at, while also providing great misdirection at the same time. It is a twist that would fly just as well in a proper puzzle plot mystery, which is probably why I think Tasogare no Sasayaki is the most detective-y of the three books. The way events then unfold after this twist is a bit hasty and clearly done in a more horror-storytelling mode than a detective-mode, but on the whole it was a fun read. Like the previous two books, this book is also directly inspired by a horror film, though Ayatsuji refrains from mentioning the film explicitly in the afterword of this book, because apparently it would spoil the twist of the book itself, and it's a "if you know, you know" film.

The Whispering novels are definitely closer to horror-thriller novels than the puzzle plot mysteries of Ayatsuji's own House series, and Tasogare no Sasayaki is no exception to that. While it is closer to a conventional detective novel, it is still very much rooted in the thriller mode, even if it has a fun, surprising twist at the end that would've fitted perfectly in any mystery novel. Overall, I don't think the Whispering series is a must-read, but they are very easy to read and quite short, so I have found them fun to read as a palate cleanser between the more traditional mystery novels I usually read. The first book, Hiiro no Sasayaki is probably the "tropiest" of the three, but I think I liked it the best as a slasher mystery, while Tasogare no Sasayaki is probably the best mystery-thriller of the trio.

Original Japanese title(s): 綾辻行人『黄昏の囁き』

Mystery on the Menu

"Only in England is the coffee so atrocious. On the Continent they understand how important it is for the digestion that it should be properly made."

"The Big Four"

I actually have a story to tell about this book, but now is not the time... yet. Probably! Maybe in the future!

Disclosure: I translated Higashigawa Tokuya's Lending the Key to the Locked Room. If you haven't read it yet... read it! 

Murasaki Renji, a writer for the magazine Future Weekly for the publisher Hodansha (do not confuse for Modern Weekly of Kodansha), is sitting on a big story, but his editor won't accept Renji's first draft of his article. Renji is mixed up with a genuine murder case, with a crucified victim no less. The victim is Renji's uncle professor Takafumi Midorikawa, who was found inside the annex in the garden, his lifeless body bound to two planks which formed a cross. The man had been strangled before he had been put on the cross and left inside the annex, which had been discovered with the door locked from the inside. Renji had been visiting his aunt and uncle that day, who live with another relative in a spacious home. The professor was actually having an affair with a student of his, and Renji's aunt had asked Renji to keep an eye on the professor while he was in the annex, to make sure he wouldn't slip away. The following morning, the professor still wouldn't come out of the annex, so Renji, his aunt and the other relative go and check up on the professor, only to see him lying on the floor, his body fixed to a cross. But how did the murderer get inside and out again, without being seen by Renji last night and locking the door from the inside? That is the answer Renji's editor also wants to know, as he doesn't care much for simply a personal, and yet sensationalistic account. While trying to come up with a possible answer to the impossible crime, Renji wanders around the streets of the ancient capital Kamakura, when he notices a sign saying "Ippukudou" standing in front what appears to be a private home, but it's in fact a quaint little café. Inside, he finds one of the customers is the police detective Akane, who is friends with Yoriko, the extremely shy proprietor of the café who can't speak with first-time customers because of how nervous she gets. Renji decides to confide his story to Akane, hoping she give him some pointers for a possible solution, but to his great surprise, it's not the veteran police detective, but that shy woman dressed in traditional Japanese clothing behind the counter who'll turn out to be the armchair detective in Higashigawa Tokuya's short story collection Junkissa Ippukudō no Shiki ("The Four Seasons of Café Ippukudou", 2014).

If you have been reading my blog for some while now, you'll probably be familiar with the name of Higashigawa. Not only because I translated his debut novel Lending the Key to the Locked Room, but because I very often discuss his work here. His trademark light-hearted style where he uses the slapstick comedy in his stories to ingenously hide clues for the mystery plot is something I'll never stop loving, and he writes consistently enough for every read to be worthwhile. Most of the work I discuss by Higashigawa belong to the same few series (Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de (The After-Dinner Mysteries), Koigakubo Academy and the Ikagawa City), though I have read a few of his other series or non-series work too. Junkissa Ippukudō no Shiki is also the first book in a series, all with an armchair detective setting (the second book is set in an izakaya, though I am not sure if it's the same Yoriko as in this book). Yoriko is a fun character: extremely shy when it comes to first-time customers, to the extent she can't even manage to ask the customer their order and she has next to no confidence in her coffee-making skills, as she inherited the Café Ippukudou, but she listens very carefully to the discussions her customers have, and once she notices something her customers don't, she won't hesitate to snap (somethings breaking plates in the process) to tell them how they're on the completely wrong track (often by comparing their thoughts to her own, badly made coffee).

The four stories in this book are all set in different seasons (hence the title), but another connecting theme between the four stories is surprisingly, the gruesome murders. While the stories are told within the setting of the quaint Café Ippukudou, with Yoriko often clumsily trying to serve her customers, who are bantering about whatever case they got involved with (in a comedic manner, of course), the cases are actually quite grim, with grotesque murder scenes. The contrast between the framing story, and the actual case is pretty significant, and it leads to an unusual, but very alluring tone at times.

The opening story, Haru no Juujika ("A Crucifix on Spring") for example has the victim crucified (well, tied to a cross) and discovered under seemingly impossible circumstances, as the annex had been watched for Renji for most of the night, and the door was locked from the inside. The story provides three suspects, because three is the magic number (the aunt, the relative and the student with whom the victim was having an affair), but none of them appear to have been able to enter the annex (and certainly not unseen). The solution to the problem is probably not very surprising if you're experienced with these kinds of locked room mysteries, but I think it works well enough, considering the limited page count and Higashigawa did enough to properly clue the path to the solution too, so while not a gem by any means, I think it's a very capably plotted story, that shows that Higashigawa at least knows how to handle t a plot that could've come out a lot less enterrtaining if not for his experience.

In Mottomo Ryoukitekina Natsu (A Most Macabre Summer), Renji is meeting someone at Ippukudou: Miyuki got involved in a murder case recently, and is being interviewed by him. On a summer day, Miyuki was helping her childhood friend Kousaku on his rice farm, cutting weeds together. They see three people visiting Kousaku's neighbor Nakazono's place that afternoon: a representative of a supermarket that wants to buy Nakazono's land, Nakazono's ne'er-do-well cousin, and the local madwoman who started a snake cult. All three seem to find the house empty, as they each of them go inside and leave after a short while. After finishing their work and having dinner together, Miyuki returns home only to be sent to Nakazono's place to return a pineapple cutter. She finds the door unlocked, and inside, she discovers Nakazono's dead body has been tied to a cross, placed against the main pillar of the house The man was killed during the afternoon, but which of the three visitors killed the man? This story competes with the last story for being the best: while the set-up is very simple, I love how the incriminating clue was hidden in the text: it's easy to overlook it, but once you realize its significance it points so clearly to the culprit, and it's quite daring in that regard. 

Kiritorareta Shitai no Aki ("A Cut-Up Body in Fall") has the not very succesful author Minamida Gorou visiting his friend, the very successful Higashiyama Atsuya (not to be confused with Higashigawa Tokuya, of course). Higashiyama invites Minamida out for a night of drinking, and after saying goodbye to Higashiyama's secretary/assistant/lover Nakahara Saeko, they spend the night hopping bars and end up in a karaoke bar with a guy they don't even know. When they return to Higashiyama's home in the morning, they find Renji in front of the house: he had an appointment with Saeko to discuss a project for Higashiyama, but she won't respond at all. Minamida and Renji decide to check if Saeko's in her own apartment, but they find the door not locked, and inside the bathroom, they stumble upon her body, minus some body parts like her head. The following day, her head and other parts are found scattered around town in gardens and other places. Minamida and Higashiyama end up discussing the case at Ippukudou, after hearing Renji talking about Yoriko, and indeed, she quickly points out why the murderer must've cut the body up in pieces and more importantly, who the murderer is. This story suffers a bit from the limited page count of the stories: there are extremely few characters in this story and basically only one is a viable suspect, meaning the story doesn't really have whodunnit aspect, only a howdunnit, but once you can safely guess who done it, you almost immediately arrive at the how as the possibilities to commit the murder for this person are just too limited. So this story feels a bit too straightforward, and it would have felt more satisfying if the story had a larger scale. 

Barabara Shitai to Misshitsu ni Fuyu ("A Chopped Up Body and a Locked Room in Winter") has Akane visiting Café Ippukudou again, and after some chatting, she's asked to tell about a case she had mentioned she had been working on the last time she visited (when she met Renji in spring at the Café). She and her subordinate had by driving along a road undergoing reperations after part of it collapsed the previous night, when a patrol officer notes he feels something off about one of the two lonely houses standing in front of the site: the lights in the house have been on since the previous night, but not once has the inhabitant come outside or even peeked outside at the construction work. They take a closer look and through the windows, they find the man lying dead inside in the living room, his throat having been cut with the knife lying besides him. They break inside as the doors and windows are all locked, and while searching the house, they stumble upon a second body, which is lying in pieces in the bath tub. Because the house is completely locked from the inside, and the chopped-up body obviously didn't commit suicide, it appears the first man must've killed the other man (his brother), chopped him up in parts, but then committed suicide by slicing his own throat. However, Yoriko quickly points out there's one other possibility, which is actually quite ingenious! While I liked Mottomo Ryoukitekina Natsu for its simplistic set-up and the execution, this final story is probably the best in terms of actual plotting and clewing: the solution Yoriko proposes comes in two parts, both quite surprising, and they result in an extremely memorable solution for this locked room mystery. The first part isn't really fairly clewed perhaps, but it plays wonderfully with the expectations and assumptions of the reader, and even adds a surprisingly emotional touch to an otherwise very light-hearted collection of stories, while the second part of the solution (the actual howdunnit) is just... a very unique way to commit a locked room mystery. It's not completely fair because unless you are aware of a certain thing, you wouldn't know it could be used in that manner (and they only first mention it explicitly in the solution), but the idea itself is both original and memorable, and it's especially the two-part set-up, with the first part of the solution allowing the introduction of the second part of the solution, that makes this a very unique locked room mystery.

Overall, I enjoyed Junkissa Ippukudō no Shiki: it's not big epic mystery by any means, but it's a short, yet pleasant read, where Higashigawa gets to show off his trademark style of comedic writing coupled with proper puzzle-focused mysteries, and he certainly always manages to keep a certain level of quality, and that consistency is also found in this book. Perfect material to squeeze in your schedule between thicker and darker mysteries. I might return to Ippukudou myself in the future too, because I am curious to see how the second book works as it has a different setting, but seemingly also (a?) Yoriko working there as the armchair detective.

Original Japanese title(s): 東川篤哉 『純喫茶「一服堂」の四季』:「春の十字架」/「もっとも猟奇的な夏」/「切りとられた死体の秋」/「バラバラ死体と密室の冬」

Topsy-Turvy Land

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain

"The Rain in Spain" (My Fair Lady)

I do like how all the covers in this series have managed to incorporate elements of all stories included, and not simply only the title story.

Professional photographer/amateur detective Minami Mikikaze has been close friends with the Kittridges for some years now, ever since father Kittridge acted as the surgeon who successfully conducted Mikikaze's heart transplantant a few years back. Daughter Elizabeth Kittridge, a medical forensic expert, has been visiting Japan to attend an international symposium and workshop program on criminal forensic investigation, and Mikikaze has been showing her around his home country since, but for some reason the two keep getting involved in various murder cases. After a few shorter cases in Aru Egypt Juujika no Nazo ("An Egyptian Cross Mystery") and Aru America-Juu no Nazo ("An American Gun Mystery", 2022), and a longer adventure in Aru Girishia Hitsugi no Nazo ("A Greek Coffin Mystery), Beth is almost ready to return to the States, as the symposium is over and her father has been in bad health lately. But before she leaves, she's of course going to visit her old friend Takizawa Atsushi, who lives in Wakayama. Atsushi is very fond of the country Spain, and his Spanish wife Alicia, and his home has been built like a Spanish house. A few years ago, they built a giant sculpture and set it on fire like the Fallas, which attracted the attention of a lot of locals, and ever since, they've been doing it every year, with more people participating with their sculptures. It's for this reason the cliff where Atsushi's house stands is known as the Spanish cape. During their visit, Mikikaze and Beth see how Alicia's daughter Akemi from a previous husband is attacked in the garden house, even though she should be alone in there and the doors and windows were locked. They also learn about an earlier attack on Alicia a year ago, when she walked out in the garden, but was found by her uncle lying naked in the garden, having been knocked out. Her clothes however were found neatly folded in the house hallway. Who is after Alicia, and why had she been left naked in the garden a year ago? That's the big mystery in Tsukatou Hajime's Aru Spain Misaki no Nazo ("A Spanish Cape Mystery", 2023).

With this final book, Tsukatou Hajime finally ends this miniseries starring his series detective Minami Mikikaze. As one can guess going by the titles, this miniseries took its inspiration from the earliest Ellery Queen novels (the 'nationality' books). These stories are not directly based on the respective Ellery Queen novels though, but only built on themes or just the title: in the case of Aru Spain Misaki no Nazo, we have a location called the Spanish Cape, and there is a naked victim. The collection itself features three stories, which might sound surprising to the more attentive reader: for The Roman Hat Mystery, The French Powder Mystery, The Dutch Shoe Mystery, The Greek Coffin Mystery, The Egyptian Cross Mystery, The American Gun Mystery and The Siamese Twin Mystery have all been adapted already in this series, which should only leave The Chinese Orange Mystery and The Spanish Cape Mystery, so two stories. Well, in Japan, the book The Door Between is published with a title that translates to The Japanese Jay Mystery, which is why it's considered quasi-part of the Nationality novels. It's actually the same in this book too, as it's basically a bonus story, set after Beth has already left Japan, so it's not "really" the same kind of story as the ones preceeding it.

In the first story Aru China Daidai no Nazo ("A Chinese Orange Mystery"), we folllow Mikikaze and Beth during their visit to Nara General Art College: Atsushi's son Shigeru is a student here, and they're having a campus festival today, and Shigeru is actually part of the committee. The big artistic project they show off today is a hall where everything has been turned around and topsy-turvy. They actually made two of these rooms, as one was used during the day, but they have a second room prepared for the evening part of the festival. One of the guests at the festival is the Chinese artist Xu Yuan and his interpreter, as he'll be doing a speech in the evening, and in the meanwhile, they are being shown the campus by people of the committee. When the students can't find Professor Tachibana, they learn someone has locked the storeroom serving as the evening topsy-turvy room from the inside on all three entrances. They break the door open, and find a dead woman lying on the ground, but whose face has been burned off. And that's not all, want the victim is wearing her clothes the wrong way around, with the front facing her back. Meanwhile, the main topys-turvy room is discovered to also have been tampered with: somebody has put everything back in its proper place and facing the correct direction. What has happened at this university?

I kinda liked how this story came up with a reason to have a topsy-turvy room like the original The Chinese Orange Mystery, and it even has a mystery with a "normal" room which should have been topsy-turvy. This was a story I partially liked, and partially didn't like. The mystery part for the room which has been turned back normal was by far the part I didn't like: a lot of the deductions leading to the solution came out of nowhere, and it was dependent on so many outlandish assumptions by the culprit to do that, but also an outlandish idea to create the exact motive that forced the culprit's hand, it didn't feel at all convincing as a mystery. The murder victim in the "straightforward" topsy-turvy room however, was a bit more interesting. While the locked room mystery isn't really an important factor in the grand picture and a lot of other clues seem a bit simple, I do like the reason given to explain why the murderer did all kinds of seemingly silly things to create the crime scene, as the reader is just as likely to fall for the trap as the in-universe characters. As a mystery story, I don't think Aru China Daidai no Nazo ranks among the best of this miniseries, but hey, it's not the worst story in this book!

The second and title story is by far the longest, and the story is in scale also quite large, as it spans two periods of time: Mikikaze and Elizabeth see how Akemi crumbles down in the garden house as they approach it, but find the building locked from the inside, and when they do get inside, they can't find any trace of an assailant hiding. Afterwards, another character disappears from the Spanish Cape, making the matter even more baffling. As "impossible crimes", these present-day mysteries aren't really memorable, though I do like some of the deductions Mikikaze poses in regards to Akemi's attack, as it does require you to have spatial awareness, which is something I always like in mystery stories. My favorite part is definitely the past mystery, when Akemi was knocked out by someone in the garden, and left naked there. While the fact she was found in the garden does seem to indicate the attacker was someone of the household (she was not sexually assaulted either), the mystery remains baffling, for why did the attacker undress Akemi and why did they go all the trouble to fold her clothes up and leave them in the hallfway of the house? This mystery is also related to Akemi's dark past, as she actually committed two acts of arson during a stressful time. After surviving her attack, she decided to come clean, but some of the victims of course never forgave her even to this day, which would provide a motive for attacking her now, but what then about the attack on her in the past? I love the explanation to why Akemi was left naked in the garden: it is sooooo simply, but so easily overlooked, and I like how elegant it is: once you figure out why Akemi was left naked, you immediately realize it could only have been one person, and this would immediately also explain some other mysteries lingering in the background. Definitely the best story of the collection.

Both these stories still have the usual problems this series has had with its writing by the way. In my review for the first book, I wrote: "Tsukatou often jumps a few minutes ahead and has the characters discuss all kinds of things that seem slightly vague to the reader and after that section, the narration catches up and explains how they got to that point (which explains the vague allusions in the earlier dialogue). It's a story device you often see in detectives, especially in the conclusion when the detective suddenly unveils the identity of the murderer, and only after that, the narrative explains how the detective laid their trap, but these stories, it happens too often: Tsukatou does this 'jump a bit forward, have some dialogues that include facts the reader hadn't heard about yet and then explain afterwards' thing few times per story. It's like you're being driven around in a car, but the car speeds up for no reason, only to turn around and do the same part slowly once again. It's jerking you around all the time, which makes enjoying the stories a bit difficult. At first, I thought it was just me needing to adapt to Tsukatou's writing style with the first story, but it happens in all four stories." This hasn't changed at all in this fourth book. The stories feel unusually long, because each time you get a scene in media res with some cryptic comments and names, then it jumps back in time to explain everything, and then you get the original scene again, and the next section it happens again. Every scene feels much longer than they need to be, being told in a roundabout manner. Even after so many stories, I still can't get used to this writing style, and each time, I can't help but feel annoyed by it.

The final story Aru Nippon Kashidori no Nazo ("A Japanese Jay Mystery") feels more like a gaiden story, as it's set after Mikikaze and Beth have gone their own ways. During a stay at an acquintance's place, Mikikaze hears Tanemura Kaitarou has been arrested on suspicion of murder of his roommate Kyouko. The elderly poet was living together with a woman whom he considered a soulmate, though not in the romantic sense of the word. The two live in a small house near Mikikaze's acquaintance, and the woman was bed-ridden, being taken care of by Kaitarou. After a rare visit to the city to talk with his publishers, Kaitarou returned home to find Kyouko had been murdered, having been attacked by someone, but instead of contacting the police or the physician, he decided to go on a stroll in the forest to process the death, as, as he claims, he had promised to Kyouko to write a poem immediately after she died. It was only long after Kaitarou had, by his account, found Kyouko's body he bothered to inform the authorities, and this of course seems more than suspicious to them. But as Kaitarou himself also says the house was locked when he returned, it does seem only he could've committed the murder on Kyouko.

This story just didn't work for me. Part of it might simply be because I don't feel as strong about the original The Door Between as for the Nationality novels, but some of the mystery in this story also seems a bit forced. A large section of the otherwise not very long story is for example dedicated to a certain theory the inspector in charge has, but the theory seems to come out of nowhere and they keep going on about it for such a long time, it felt a bit tiring. There had to be a more natural way to introduce that theory, because it comes so sudden now and I do like the idea behind this theory, but the story is so short, it doesn't feel like its full potential has been tapped into. Perhaps a re-read at a later time might change my mind.

So overall, Aru Spain Misaki no Nazo was a somewhat uneven end to this miniseries with Minami Mikikaze. The first two stories are the best, but I can't love them unconditionally, and I didn't like the last story at all, which is always a sad way to end a series. Overall, I think the first two books in this series were better than the last two books, but I'm still glad I read them all as a fan of Ellery Queen, and also because it was Aru Egypt Juujika no Nazo ("An Egyptian Cross Mystery") which got me reading Tsukatou seriously four years ago, and it has brought some interesting things on my path. I wonder whether Tsukatou will have Mikikaze take on other "series" in future books! Only the future will tell!

Original Japanese title(s): 柄刀一『或るスペイン岬の謎』:「或るチャイナ橙の謎」/「或るスペイン岬の謎」/「或るニッポン樫鳥の謎」

Trouble Island

Tell me, princess 

Now, when did you last let your heart decide? 

I can open your eyes 

Take you wonder by wonder

"A Whole New World"

I do like this cover art a lot...

The members of the art university club Muse travel to the private island of Kiseki Island for a job arranged for them via a former member of the club, who currently works at a museum. Kiseki Island is owned by the Ryuumon Clan, but the island has been sealed off for three decades now. At the time, before World War II, it was the home of "princess" Ryuumon Yukako, the granddaughter of the patriarch of the clan at the time. She had a gigantic manor built on the island called the Chalk Manor, a smaller version of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia and collected all kinds of art. She entertained a lot of men at her home, who all fell for her beauty and all hoped to take her for themselves. However, one night tragedy struck: the princess was found decapitated in the top room of an adjoining outlook tower, where she had gone alone the previous night. However, the only footsteps left in the muddy ground around the tower, were those of her, and the man who discovered her body the following morning (but who has an alibi for the time of death the previous night). A wax doll of Yukako was also found decapitated in the manor. The house and island had been left sealed since, but now the current patriarch of the clan (Yukako's uncle) thinks it's time to open the island again, perhaps turning the manor into a museum. The members of Muse are to stay for a week in the Chalk Manor to try and create a tentative catalogue of the art treasures inside the manor, with proper museum experts coming later based on their findings. They are brought to Kiseki Island on a boat, which will return in a week for the group of 8 students, plus their supervisor, as well as an elderly couple who worked for the Ryuumons and will now take care of food and washing for them during their stay. During their stay, they are shocked to learn that the Ryuumons are actually related to a woman who had been a member of Muse last year, and who was at the center of a shared traumatic experience to all who had been a member at the time. She has passed away now, but left a will addressed to the members of Muse, telling them that the person who will create the best work of art during their stay here on the island, will inherit the island, Chalk Manor and all the art inside! The members are however very reluctant to follow this will, as their memories with the deceased are very dark, so for the time being, they decide to just focus on their work. But then one of the students dies in a freak accident by falling over a balustrade and being crushed by a lamp.Or was it an accident? For the following morning, the decapitated head of the dead student is found in the dining room, having been placed on a plate. Is there a murderer on the island, or is it one of them? And who can solve this mystery in Nikaidou Reito's Kisekjima no Fushigi ("The Wonders of Miracle Island", 1996)?

While the book seems to make it a mystery who the detective will be, I don't think it really works, especially not now in 2024, as almost every write-up on the book will mention it: yes, this is a book in Nikaidou's Mizuno Satoru series, which is immediately obvious because of the title convention. So yeah, we'll see the handsome, but somewhat geeky detective appear here. The Mizuno Satoru series is divided in two eras, with books set in his student days (with books titled [Something] no Fushigi), and books set after he's become a working member of society (with books titled [Location] Magic). In the first book, Karuizawa Magic, we saw Mizuno working as a travel agent, and Kisekjima no Fushigi was released a year later, as the second book in the series, and it seems Nikaidou basically goes back and forth each time between the two eras when publishing the Mizuno books. This is only the second time I read a book about the student Mizuno by the way: Kikounin (Collector) no Fushigi ("The Wonders of Collectors") is one of the very first Nikaidou's I ever read (I mostly remember it from the in-depth Tezuka Osamu discussions), so it's been basically fourteen years since I last read a book about Mizuno set in this era.

I have read a lot of Nikaidou's work, like all of his main Ranko series, and once you start reading his work, you'll quickly notice he's mainly a howdunnit person. He's great influenced by John Dickson Carr, and most of his works feature locked room murders and other impossible crimes. And that's the reason why I got interested in Kisekjima no Fushigi, because it was touted as the work where Nikaidou focuses solely on the whodunnit for a change! The whodunnit form has never been something I associated with him at all, so this surprising twist really made me curious. How would someone best known for creating impossible crimes, tackle a very different kind of mystery writing, with clues pointing to who the culprit is and the logic leading up to that revelation?

In terms of form, Kisekjima no Fushigi follows a very familiar format, being the closed circle situation on an isolated island, and comparisons with And Then There Were None are of course quickly made, and the closed circle with art students and the surprisingly many discussions on various forms of art remind of Ayukawa Tetsuya's Lila-sou Jiken and Maya Yutaka's Natsu to Fuyu no Sonata. As you can guess, the students are getting killed off one by one, and of course, they suspect the killer is one of them, and they start getting more suspicious of each other as the story develops. As a book focusing mostly on the whodunnit, Nikaidou really doesn't do very much with his trademark impossibilities: there's the decapitation on Yukako in the past, but there's not much beyond that, with most murders being possible to most characters (very seldom people have alibis), so you'll have to look out for very different kind of clues if you want to figure out who did it.

But... there's a reason why we associate Nikaidou with the howdunnit and not the whodunnit, and sadly enough, this book tells us enough. As a whodunnit, Kisekjima no Fushigi really isn't remarkable in any way, and seen purely as a whodunnit, there are quite some spots where the logic leading up to the identification of the culprit is playing very lightly with the definition of the term "logical". The book tries to do an Ellery Queen-style "identification of the culprit" segment, but it seldom really works. The logic behind who could've decapitated the first student, whose body had been laid to rest in the cellar after he had been crushed by the lamp, is a prime example of the weird logic: there's one step eliminating two people from the suspect list that make absolutely perfect sense, but then the other characters on the list are eliminated based on just psychological impressions ("they wouldn't do that because they wouldn't"), in order to arrive at the culprit. Other murders often have this too, where there's a moment of a good idea to show someone couldn't have been the murderer, or that something might not have been the way we assumed, but then other moments in the same process are very sloppy, which makes the whole process of elimination feel not convincing, and by the time we arrive at the identity of the culprit, the moment just doesn't feel triumphant at all as you still have all those questions in your mind telling you "Hey, the way that suspect was eliminated... did that actually make any sense?" The result is a whodunnit that... simply has trouble feeling fair to the reader. You can see Nikaidou tried to play with few familiar tropes in classical 'process of elimination'-style deductions, trying to subvert the tropes, but it just falls flat here.

Art plays a surprisingly big role in this story, with the characters name-dropping a lot of art styles and famous artists in various fields as they explore the mansion and discover all kinds of interesting pieces of art, from stained glass windows to wax dolls (9 wax dolls...) to paintings and vases and more. Knowledge of art is also handy for certain parts of the final deduction, though again, you can see Nikaidou isn't really used to doing fair-play whodunnits, as the knowledge necessary to pick up on the clues as Nikaidou intended, isn't provided to the reader before he points it out. While he talks a lot about art throughout the book, the necessary art-related clues are not discussed in detail, making it impossible to guess his intentions until he does his "Tadah!" trick, pretending like you should've caught that before.

It's funny, because there's the impossible crime set three decades ago, about how Yukako got killed and decapitated even though there were no footsteps of the culprit going to/from the tower, and that part alone has at least a more original take than the rest of the whodunnit plot. Apparently, this part alone was originally a short story on its own, starring Ranko, but Nikaidou wasn't content with it, and eventually incorporated it into the backstory for this book. While it's true that on the whole, it's not really that memorable a locked room mystery, and some might even find it utterly insulting, I did kinda like the explanation to how Yukako ended up decapitated, especially the motive behind the actual decapitation. 

As I was reading the book, I did find it odd a lot of the book's setting didn't seem to correspond to the actual story. Like, there's a whole backstory to Kiseki Island, how people used to believe there were Oni living there throwing rocks at people (Kiseki) and how it got renamed to Miracle (Kiseki) later on, and there are still locations on the island named after Oni... but we never visit those places. And then there's the Chalk Manor,  a smaller version of the Sagrada Familia and the book even opens with a super detailed floorplan of the manor... but it's not actually directly relevant to solving the mystery. It makes no difference whether there's a floorplan or not, it at best just makes it slightly easier to visualize the place. It's almost like the setting was originally created for something else, and Nikaidou just ended up using the place for this story. It's a shame because the Chalk Manor is really designed in surprising detail, with all of the rooms accounted for (even though you barely go there in the book, or they are only mentioned in passing), and I was expecting something much more bigger hiding behind it considering how overwhelming the floorplan looks at first.

So I decided to google to see whether anything had been written about my suspicions, and I ended up on on Nikaidou's own website, and it turns out... well, he didn't write about my suspicions, but he did write something else very surprising. Apparently, the version of Kisekijima no Fushigi that got published, is actually the "B version" of the story. The original "A version" featured a different prologue and epilogue, and these framing devices actually led to a very different type of mystery added on top of the whodunnit plot. Nikaidou and the editor apparently couldn't quite make up their mind which version to publish until the very end, and Nikaidou has posted the alternate prologue/epilogue on his site. While the core whodunnit plot doesn't change, I think the added dimension does at least make the book feel a bit more special than it is now, though I can also understand why they went with the simpler B version, as the tone of the book is very different in the A version, which would have worked better as a completely standalone novel. The A version wears some of its inspiration far more prominently on its sleeve, and I do like it for that, so if you have read this book, I do think it's worth to read the A version too if you have the time, just to see how the book was originally conceived.

But while Kisekjima no Fushigi is certainly a very readable book despite its rather lengthy page count, I wouldn't say this is a must-read by any means, especially as it's certainly not written to play up to Nikaidou's strenghts as a mystery writer. As a pure whodunnit, it takes on the correct form, but at no point is it really a showcase of wonderful logic, nor does it manage to really surprise you with the "shocking" revelation of the culprit. 

Original Japanese title(s): 二階堂黎人『奇跡島の不思議』