The Upper Flat

“I learned (what I suppose I really knew already) that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back—that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street, isn’t it?” 

"At Bertram's Hotel"

Now I think about it, it's been a while since I last stayed in a hotel...

It was Kujuu Masanosuke who made the Palace Side Hotel into one of the biggest and most succesful in Tokyo. While the hotel started out modestly as the Palace Hotel with only about fifty rooms, Kujuu's aggressive, but inspired leadership led to the organization growing into a gigantic 35-floor hotel, with two-thousand rooms and seventy event halls. Recently, the Tokyo Royal Hotel had been catching up, and even overtook the Palace Side Hotel's at the top, but Kujuu managed to arrange for a deal with Clayton International Corporation, routing their international visitors to Japan to the Palace Side Hotel to create a very steady stream of income. The deal is almost signed and done, though there are some internal objections to the deal within the Palace Side top management. So when Kujuu was found murdered in his private suite room on the 34th floor, the police had plenty of people to suspect: was it someone on the Palace Side Hotel side, or perhaps someone of the competition, who feared the CIC deal? But what puzzles the police even more, is the double locked room situation in which Kujuu's body was found in Room 3401. His suite consists of a living room and a bedroom. Obviously, the door connecting to the living room to the hallway was locked, but the connecting door betwen the living room and bedroom was also locked from the bedroom-side. The hotel room key was found on the bedside table, while the other known spare and master keys, in possession of the housekeeping captain of the 34th floor, the hotel manager or kept in the key safe, were confirmed to no have been stolen during the night, when Kujuu was killed. Hiraga, one of the detectives on the case, happens to be dating Fuyuko, who is Kujuu's private secretary and the person closest to Kujuu, as he had no other relatives. It is therefore not strange that Fuyuko becomes a suspect, but she has a perfect alibi for the murder, as she had spent the night with Hiraga when Kujuu was murdered. Early on, the police however manage to solve how the murderer managed to kill Kujuu in the double-locked room, a method which also needs an accomplice. The police don't know yet who the murderer could be, so hope the accomplice will confess everything, but the accomplice is found dead in a hotel room in Fukuoka almost immediately after an arrest warrant was issued. Finding a half-faded note in the toilet, the police eventually manage to identify a man whom they suspect killed Kujuu and the accomplice, but the man has an alibi for the murder in Fukuoka: he checked in before noon at a hotel in Tokyo to work in his room, and checked out late that night. He has no real alibi for the time he was in his hotel room, but at the same time, it would have been impossible for him to commit the murder in the fourteen hour gap, as the police can not find any trace of him having taking the train or plane from Tokyo to Fukuoka, and time-wise it would be nearly impossible in the first place. Can the police still capture this suspect in Morimura Seiichi's Kousou no Shikaku ("The Blind Spot in the High-Rise" 1969)?

Morimura Seiichi was a novelist who started out writing business books originally, but eventually moved on to mystery fiction: Kousou no Shikaku was his debut work as a mystery novelist, with which he won the 15th Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1969. I had heard his name before, but I have to admit I never looked up his work until he passed away about one year ago. That is not to even imply he was a minor novelist though, in fact, he was one of the most succesful mystery novelists in Japan. He was a member of that oh-so very exclusive club of mystery novelists who had over a billion copies of their books in circulation. To put in perspective, an extremely succesful modern-day writer like Higashino Keigo finally managed to reach that milestone last year. Other people on that list would be Nishimura Kyoutarou, Akagawa Jirou and Uchida Yasuo, writers I know and have read, but Morimura was a blind spot in my reading until now. I don't think all of his works are puzzle plot focused, but I at least knew this one was, so there was no better place to start that this book.

I have to admit this book surprised me a few times plot-wise. I had heard about this book being about a perfect alibi, so I was first surprised with a double-locked (hotel) room murder... and then I was surprised again when that double-locked room murder was solved basically two or three chapters later, after which the book focuses indeed on an alibi-cracking plot. The book opens with a cool floorplan of the 34th floor of the Palace Side Hotel, which is designed like an elongated three-pointed star... but because the locked room is solved so early in the book, you basically never page back to this floorplan, as it's not really relevant to the whole book. A weird choice, because it would have made more sense to just insert that floorplan in the early chapters, instead of at the start of the book. The locked room is solved fairly early, and as you can perhaps guess, the trick is fairly simple. In fact, it was so simple it caught me off-guard. You see, Morimura really goes into detail in his explanation of how hotel doors work, their auto-lock functions, the whereabouts of the spare and master keys and who keep watch over them and all of that, but the solution is in comparision incredibly straightforward, in comparison to the meticulous analysis of the many other (wrong) possibilities. The solution to the how will probably not impress anyone, though I have to say that Morimura's very detailed examination to write off the other possibilities was surprisingly impressive, even if the conclusion is so simple.

It was at this point, I started realizing this was very much like a Freeman Wills Crofts-inspired police procedural. The book moves very, very slow and deliberate, examining each minor step carefully and showing you one thing at a time, before moving on to the next item on the list. I also learned that Morimura in fact used to work at a hotel, which explains why his descriptions of the workings of a hotel are so detailed, which again, factors in how meticulous his investigations are when it comes to hotel affairs. He has great knowledge about procedures in a hotel, how different staff sections work with each other, the manner in which shifts being taken over, how spare and master keys are being supervised, check-in and check-out procedures, guest-staff interactions, even the way how employees from different hotels would interact with each other, all of that comes into play in this book, and each time, the descriptions and explanations are detailed, yet clear. These depictions of hotel workings are definitely a highlight of the book.

Once we arrrive at the Fukuoka murder, you get a book that very much reminds of Matsumoto Seichou's Ten to Sen for very obvious reasons, as there too a murder occurs in Fukuoka, but the main suspect is in a complete different part of the country. In this case, the alibi of the suspect isn't absolutely perfect, as they are only seen checking in and out of the hotel before noon and before midnight, but the police can't find any traces of the suspect having taken the plane from Tokyo to Fukuoka, not even with a fake name. While there are indications of what the murderer must have done after the murder, they don't seem to match the timeline the police try to make for the suspect, as they couldn't have done and still make it back to the hotel to check out (and be seen by someone who knows him). What follows is a very slow, Crofts-esque chipping away at the alibi of the suspect. This process is slow, and is basically always two steps forward, one step back. Each time, the police think they have a brilliant idea of what the suspect could've done to go to Fukuoka to commit the murder, but then they learn it couldn't have been accomplished in that specific way, so then they have to figure out another way, leading to another new idea, and once again learning it doesn't quite work that way. This jerking around takes quite some time, and while you do feel the police are very slowly making progress, it's definitely a police procedural style, where you see that a lot of police work is just... repeating motions and slowly, but surely crossing out possibilities. The murderer's plans are muti-phased and quite complex, and I quite like that, because that explains why the police keep thinking they've got it, but then have to adapt again, but a lot of the steps taken by the killer in this book, are quite outdated. Obviously, this book was published in 1969 so I assume it would have worked like that back then, but 99% of what is done here, would not fly in 2024, and some things, I may have heard once in my life about, like I know things worked like that back then, but I had no active memory of that, so while it didn't feel unfair (that's just how things go with older books), Kousou no Shikaku is definitely a product of its time (in fact it feels very much like a Showa-era story). It's a feeling I also often have when reading Crofts, but Crofts' books are of course much older than this one, and I read plenty of books written in this period, but because this book, like Crofts' work, is so methodical and focuses so much on the details and exact workings of the infrastructure and service industry, sometimes you feel the differences in time more than other books written in the same time, but don't go in as much detail in such things.

Not a big fan of the way the accomplice was portrayed in this book at all by the way, a lot of the actions of the accomplice only seemed to help the killer, but not the accomplice, even at a time where it was clear the killer was also going to kill the accomplice after Kujuu... 

Overall, Kousou no Shikaku was pretty entertaining. The depiction of how a hotel works is the highlight for me of this book, but the methodological manner in which the crime is solved is definitely going to appeal to people who also enjoy Croft's slower police procedurals where an alibi is slowly, very slowly, but surely cracked. I definitely found this an interesting first encounter with Morimura's work, so I might read more in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 森村誠一『高層の死角』

Still Waters

So when in tears ]

The love of years 

Is wasted like the snow

"The Forest Reverie"

I think this is the first time I read a "general" fiction book by publisher Tokuma, all the other Tokuma books I ever read where Ghibli-related...

Kaji Tatsuo (1928-1990) was a mystery author who debuted in the fifties of the previous century and basically kept on writing until his death in 1990. Publisher Tokuma started re-publishing some of his books in their label Tokuma's Selection about two or three years ago, and these books have pretty interesting covers, which was what first caught my attention. I hadn't heard of Kaji before, and actually thought initially these were newly written novels, but apparently they have been around for decades, and I saw a few mystery authors I follow on Twitter (...) be quite positive about them, so I decided to pick one up. Kiyosato Kougen Satsujin Bessou ("The Murder Villa in the Kiyosato Plateau") was originally published in 1988, so it was one of Kaji's last novels to be published. The book opens with the arrival of a group at a villa in the Kiyosato Plateau, a popular place for people with means to have a second home. The group of five sneak inside the house with a copy of the key they made earlier, and quickly lock the door behind them. This is a second home the art collector Kawakuchi Kouei had built for his son, but it is not used right now as the son (the stereotypical spoilt son who loves women) has gone missing, and the group plans to use this house for some time. The leader of this group, Katsuura quickly orders the other four to check the rooms and prepare for their stay here. Yoshinobu for example will be cooking for everyone, Ruriko (his girlfriend) helps him move the groceries inside, while Takamori and Kure (who don't really get along with each other and were already arguing upon arrival) start checking out the rooms, while Katsuura disconnects all phones except for one. While checking out the house, they find a shocked woman in one of the bedrooms: Akie tells them she's the daughter of Kawakuchi and that she decides on a whim to come here. The five tell her they have no intention of harming her, but they will be staying her for a few days, waiting for a certain phone call, and they'll be together until then. After a while, Akie learns from Yoshinobu that the five have robbed a bank. They are now staying low in the villa, waiting for their leader to pick up the money from where they hid it, so they can split the money. That is why nobody is allowed to go out of the villa (afraid of traitors), and all the phones are disconnected. They all pick a room to stay in, and Yoshinobu starts preparing dinner. Everyone is waiting for Takamori, who comes stumbling in the room late, but then falls on the floor: he has a dagger in his chest! But who could have stabbed him? Everyone was at the dining table, and they are sure there was nobody else besides Akie in the house... or are they? 

Interesting first experience with Kaji's writings! On the whole, the book follows the very familiar trope of the closed circle situation of a villa during a snowy night, though technically, this is not really a closed circle that is cut off from the world due to the snow: the group of five choose to not leave the villa, because they robbed a bank and have to stay hidden for a while in this house. This is an interesting idea for a closed circle, the "self-inflicted" closed circle (like the sect in Arisugawa's Jooukoku no Shiro), where a (believable) reason has to be given why these people don't just step out of the house and call for help from the police. It works here, I think, partially also because we have Akie, an extra character who is not part of the robbers, so they have even more reasons to not just leave while she has seen them and talked with them. I'd love to see more of these self-chosen closed circle situations actually...

As a closed circle mystery however, Kiyosato Kougen Satsujin Bessou is pretty predictable for about 80% of the book. The cast is pretty small (and the book is short), so the counter of survivors goes down rather quickly, and a lot of the murders are fairly straight-forward. There's often an element of impossibility/implausibility involved with the murders, like when one of them is poisoned, or another is found dead in the hallway even though it doesn't seem anyone could've done it time-wise, but these impossible angles are not really played up to very strongly, and most of the time it seems they shrug it off as 'oh, but perhaps it could've been done anyway'. I think the impossibility angle is kinda hard to achieve, because ultimately, the setting is just one villa, and there's only that much "unobserved" space in a house with 6 people in it, so I guess it would be difficult to really make it feel impossible, but the book tries to feel both claustrophobic, while also trying to sell some deaths as semi-impossible in a setting that's not really suited for it, so that kinda fell flat for me. When you learn the solution to most of these murders, you'll probably just shrug and say 'sure, okay, I guess that works.' (and probably shake your head at the first one). The middle murder might be the most interesting, using a rather unexpected prop in a clever way to create a kind of impossibility, and the hints pointing at the prop can be rather tricky.

But, I have to say, the book really got me at the end. The ending went in a direction I had not expected at all, but in hindsight, I have to admit it was really pretty well telegraphed. Some moments I simply thought there was weird writing, but it turns out they were clues building up to the ending. If the book had not featured this ending, it would have at best an average closed circle mystery (mostly saved by the middle murder), but I have to say this ending does pull the book into the 'oh, I think that was worth reading' territory. The misdirection works really well in this book. The motive of the murderer was not as convincing I think, it might be a 'your mileage may vary' thing, but I think that overall, the book was worth the time I spent on it.

So I did enjoy Kiyosato Kougen Satsujin Bessou as a short read. For a long time, the book develops as a rather predicatable closed circle thriller with on the whole, not really inspired murders, and while the ending may not be the kind of eye-opening conclusion you'll remember for decades like And Then There Were None, I do have to say the book will probably end up a lot better than you'll initially expect based on the middle part of the book. It's a short novel anyway, so it's not like it'll take up much of your time, but it'd be a shame if you'd give up early on it, as I did really like the ending. I'll probably try out more of Kaji's work in the future.

Original Japanese title(s): 梶龍雄『清里高原殺人別荘』

Il Nome Della Rosa

「俺の名を言ってみろ」

『北斗の拳』

 

"Say my name!"

"Fist of the North Star"

As I write this review, I also looked back at the older reviews for this series and it's absolutely insane how this series manages to maintain this incredibly high level of quality throughout.

Toujou Genya series
1) Majimono no Gotoki Tsuku Mono ("Those Who Bewitch Like The Evil Spirits", 2006)
2) Magatori no Gotoki Imu Mono ("Those Who Are A Taboo Like The Malicious Bird", 2006)
3) Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono ("Those Who Cast A Curse Like The Headless", 2007) 
4) Yamanma no Gotoki Warau Mono ("Those Who Sneer Like The Mountain Fiend", 2008)
5) Himemuro no Gotoki Komoru Mono ("Those Who Stay Inside Like A Sealed Room", 2009)
6) Mizuchi no Gotoki Shizumu Mono ("Those Who Submerge Like The Water Spirit" 2009). 
7) Ikidama no Gotoki Daburu Mono ("Those Who Turn Double Like The Eidola", 2011)
8) Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono ("Those Who Resent Like The Ghostly Courtesan", 2012)
9) Haedama no Gotoki Matsuru Mono ("Those Who Are Deified Like The Haedama", 2018)

10) Maguu no Gotoki Motarasu Mono ("Those Who Bring Forth Like the Demon Idol", 2019) 

11) Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono ("Those Who Are Sacrified Like The Shunned", 2021)

Horror novelist Toujou Genya is also an accomplished amateur scholar in folklore, which is why his old university friend Fukuta needs his help. Fukuta plans to marry Amagami Ichiko, a girl who, like himself, works in the toy company of his parents. Ichiko hails from Mushikubiri Village in the Inanagi region, and her family is one of the two wealthiest clans in the small community. Fukuta's mother Katsuko is very much fixated on social status. Katsuko is also fond of Genya, as he is former nobility, so Fukuta wants Genya, with his knowledge of folklore, to explain to Katsuko what an important role the Amagami family has in Mushikubiri Village, by explaining the Rite of the Ina and its connection to the Amagami family. The Rite of the Ina is a centuries-old ceremony that used to be conducted widely in the Inanagi region, but now, about a decade after the Second World War, the Amagami family is one of the few that still does it. In principle, the ceremony is conducted by everyone whenever they turned 7, 14 and 21, as is connected to the fact children in the past died easily: while children were especially prone to die before their seventh birthday, the Rite of the Ina was to ensure that even after turning seven, they would be warded from evil and not be 'taken by the demons.' For that, every child is given an "Ina", or "the Name of the Shunned" when they turn seven. The Shunned is basically a "shadow self", a fictional replacement who shall undergo all the misfortune and every bad thing that would otherwise happen to the child itself. The child must therefore never utter the name, nor ever react to the name by turning around when called by that name, for then all the misfortune that the Shunned had been enduring in their place for all those years, will bounce back to the actual child. When they turn 7, 14 or 21, the participant needs to take a talisman with the Name of the Shunned, and make their way through a path through the forest up the mountain to throw the talisman in the waterfall there to appease the Shunned. 

When Ichiko did the ceremonies, she remembered she felt as if something had been following her all the time, calling out her name and trying to attract her attention, and when she was fourteen, she even ended up nearly dead. Genya does some minor research on the ceremony and the following day, he manages to convince Katsuko that the Amagami's long-running tradition indeed is connected to their historical social status in the village, setting Katsuko at ease about the upcoming marriage, but that same day, Ichiko and Fukuta receive a phone call telling them that Ichiko's half-brother Ichishitarou died yesterday, while performing the ceremony at age 14. What's more, it seems like he was murdered right in front of the waterfall, in a rather brutal manner with him being stabbed in the eye with a weapon coated in poison! Ichiko of course needs to travel back to Mushikuburi Village to attend her brother's funeral, but Fukuta and Katsuko are also asked to come along, as they have not met Ichiko's family yet, and they hope they can also properly discuss the marriage between the two too (and Ichiko thinks her very conservative and stubborn grandfather Genzou, the patriarch of the family, might be a little less stubborn due to the family tragedy). They invite Genya along too, as he has a personal interest in the Rite of the Ina but also local funeral rites. When they arrive in Mushikuburi Village however, the local police seem to know of Genya's reputation as an amateur detective too, and they hope he can also shine some light on the death of young Ichishitarou. He and his twin sister Itsuko are actually illegitimate childs of Ichiko's father Taiichi. Ichiko's two oldest brothers died in the war, her third brother was deemed too weak character-wise by his grandfather to become the next patriarch and Ichiko will marry into Fukuta's family, so Ichishitarou would have become the next patriarch, but it seems some people in the Amagami family were quite against Genzou's decision, but did one of them kill Ichishitarou during the ceremony? Sightings of a figure with a horn for an eye on the day of the murder also roam around, fueling rumors something otherwordly might have committed the murder, but could that really be true? Genya, reluctant as always, tries to figure out who killed Ishitarou so his friend can marry safely in Mitsuda Shinzou's Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono ("Those Who Are Sacrified like the Shunned", 2021).

This is the eight novel in Mitsuda Shinzou's Toujou Genya series (the eleventh entry in total) and ever since I started reading these books about five years ago, I've been an absolute fan of them. The way Mitsuda mixes horror with brilliant puzzle plot mysteries is amazing, and I especially love the focus on folklore. Basically each novel is set in some (fictional) obscure, isolated community in the mountains or near the sea, with their own local, centuries-old ceremonies and rites, tied to religious history. While the ceremonies themselves are fictional, a lot of the dynamics and interpretations presented throughout these books is based on genuine folklore studies, so a lot of what you read in these books is actually applicable to actual Japanese religious customs and rites. These books are incredibly informative, but also work very well as horror stories: while being detective stories, the books usually do include elements that are not really explained, suggesting there really is something supernatural out there, even if they have no direct connection to the murder plots. While I started late with reading this fantastic series, I have been buying the pocket releases on release ever since I have caught up, and Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono is at the moment the most recent release, so I'm finally really completely up-to-date!

While this book does take on the usual format of most of the Genya novels, it does feel a bit different, though not as extremely different as Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono ("Those Who Resent Like The Ghostly Courtesan", 2012). As usual, we start with a horror-esque opening, where we are told about the Rite of Ina from the perspective of Ichiko, as she relates how she experienced her own Rites when she was 7 and 14, and the really creepy things that occured to her while she went up to the waterfall and back. While a lot of the information here is relevant to the overall plot, you can also easily read these first few chapters just as a horror story, and it really sets the mood, as we learn about the Shunned, a fictional being that only exists to basically suffer instead of the "real" person and must never be acknowledged by name. Ichiko's detailed description of the route up to the waterfall as she retells her own experience is also very important here. The route starts at a gate, and then goes up the mountain, going past a small path with a big rock in the middle, a shack of someone who has been ostracized by his own family, through a small cut-out U-shaped path until you come near the waterfall. The route is not actually completely closed off, as one could make it through the thick bushes and threes to get on and off the path unseen, but this would take a lot of time, and your clothes would not go unscathed, and this becomes part of the mystery of Ichishitarou's death, as while he died on the route to the waterfall, it was not physically a genuine "locked room" (sealed space), but considering the alibis of the suspects and how much extra time it would have taken to get on and off the path unseen via the bushes, they do treat it as practically a locked room mystery, even if it's not really one.

While there are other mysteries that puzzle the police and Genya, like the sighting of a figure dressed in white, and a figure with a horn for an eye, around the time of the murder, the investigation is mostly focused on the death of Ichishitarou, and especially the alibis of various members of the Amagami family, who might have a motive for wanting to kill Ishitarou, from father Taiichi or the third brother Sanshirou (who might have resented not being picked as the next patriarch), to Sanshirou and Ichiko's mother and grandmother, who might resent having an illegitimate child taking over the clan. I have to admit, I wasn't that big a fan of this problem. Previous books had true impossible crimes occuring during the rituals in those books, like murders happening a closed off area where only the victim was, but here we have a relatively open area, that is kinda treated as a locked room due to the bushes/forest/cliffs surrounding the route, but isn't really. It takes away a bit of the mystery, as you can never really discount "random third party appeared at the watefall, killed kid, and left again." The investigation also focuses on motive, but these motives are fairly static: they point out what motives each of the Amagami family members could have or don't have at all, and while there is one new fact introduced later on, that changes the motives a bit, that one new fact is basically a wild guess, that is only confirmed because the author wants it to be like that, so that doesn't feel very satisfying. The middle part of the book is also a bit slow, as Genya only enters the area after the murder already has been committed and the whole village is helping out with organizing the funeral for Ichishitarou, so he has trouble getting information about the family and the rite as everyone is busy. Of course, we later learn a lot of these slower parts do hold vital hints for the mystery, but after the chilling first few chapters with Ichiko telling how her own rites went, the book slows down considerably, with a slow start-up time for Genya's investigation, which again is very alibi-focused, and sometimes is really about "it takes 20 minutes to walk from this part to this part, 10 minutes to the next part, here a witness saw this, then another five minute walk..."

The relatively simple set-up of the murder leads to another anomaly for this series, as Genya doesn't even need to make a list of 50~80 questions that bother him about the mystery, and which act as a guide towards solving the crime! Previous books had Genya making these gigantic lists of every little thing that bothered him, from facts related directly to the murder to things that bothered him about about the rituals in question and their history and it was by answering all of them, Genya would eventually arrive at a solution, but this time, Genya doesn't even gets time to do that, as he is rather suddenly asked by the police to just point out who did it. As always though, Genya uses his "multiple solutions" method, where he just loudly voices a possible solution, examines it, and then discards it if he finds a flaw an moves on to a next solution. Some of the false solutions are fairly simple, but I really love the major "wrong" solution of this book! It is absolutely bonkers, but is absolutely terrifying and fits so well with the theme of the book and the Rite of the Ina. I am glad it wasn't the real solution because it was a bit silly, but man, thematically it would have been great, and I think I would have learned to accept it anyway.

Up until this moment, I thought this was an okay mystery novel, though not quite up at the level of the usual very high standard of the series. While I can't expect all novels in the series to be like the absolute high points Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono ("Those Who Cast A Curse Like The Headless") and Yamanma no Gotoki Warau Mono ("Those Who Sneer Like The Mountain Fiend"), it did feel like this novel missed something. It felt like a story that would have been absolutely great as a short story or novella, but a bit too lean for a full novel. But the final solution did manage to win me over! While I still don't think the actual murder on Ichishitarou at the waterfall manages to be really memorable, though it does lead to some very interesting clues. I did find it a bit disappointing to learn the actual meaning behind the Rite of the Ina (Genya realizes the underlying meaning behind the ceremony, giving meaning to each and every single part/action of the ceremony) was not a vital clue in solving the how of the murder, I have to say that thematically, it is fantastic, as it ties very deeply with the why behind the crime. The motive behind the murder of young Ichishitarou is absolutely brilliant and the absolute high point of the book. It is a motive that could only work in this world, in this community as portrayed by Mitsuda. A lot of minor things that bothered me about the book suddenly made perfect sense in hindsight, as yes, things would end up like that if that's the motive! The motive is so deeply rooted in the old-fashioned, isolated, restricted culture of Mushikubiri Village portrayed in the book, and while yes, this is a fictional village, the underlying dynamics behind the motive are very real, and you could almost imagine this motive leading to murder in the real world too (which is what makes these book so horrifying at times, as they are based on real folklore). The clewing in regards to this is excellent too. The book is great at misdirection, at not drawing your attention to the motive despite it, in hindsight, being addressed so many times, and a lot of the minor things I thought were odd, turned out to be connected to this too, only I never made the connection between the various things that bothered me. The motive is something you will never see anywhere else but here, and that makes this book definitely one of my favorite reads of the year.

Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono is a book that might not be as good as some of the other novels in the series, but that doesn't say much if the level of quality of the Toujou Genya series is consistently insanely high. Like Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono, this book does things just a bit differently, though it stays relatively close to the usual format, but the ending does show Mitsuda is still a master at his craft, providing a haunting conclusion with one of the most memorable and fantastically founded motives I've ever seen in mystery fiction. I can't wait to read the next adventure of Genya, whenever it comes!

Original Japanese title(s): 三津田信三『忌名の如き贄るもの』

The Mad Mermaid

It was many and many a year ago, 

 In a kingdom by the sea, 

That a maiden there lived whom you may know 

By the name of Annabel Lee

"Annabel Lee"

I seem to have been experiencing the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon regarding the city of Choufu. I recently heard about it (home of Mizuki Shigeru!), and since I see the place appear in all kinds of novels...

Budding mystery novelist Hikawa Tooru is on his way to the Choufu Welfare Hospital, where his old high school friend Ikuta Shun works as a psychiatrist there. On his way, he has a rather weird encounter with someone who seems to hit on him, or perhaps not, but that was not the strangest happening that day. When he arrives at the hospital, he is surprised to see fire trucks parked around there, and when he asks what's going on, he's told shocking news: his friend has died! A fire occured in one of the free offices, which was assigned to Ikuta that day. Inside that office, a burnt body was found, but its face has been rendered completely unrecognizable. Because Ikuta was supposed to be working that time at that office, and he's not found anywhere, the people at the hospital of course assume it was him who died, but both the police and Hikawa are familiar with tropes of detective fiction, and Hikawa in particular wonders whether the body is really that of his friend. But what if the body is not that of Ikuta, whose body is it, and is Ikuta then involved with this person's death? As he asks Ikuta's co-workers about how Ikuta was as a person, since they didn't see each other much any more after high school, he learns Ikuta was indeed always the person he was at school too, but could that have led to his death? Hikawa is determined to learn the truth in Hikawa Tooru's Ningyo to Minotauros ("The Mermaid and the Minotaur" 2002), which also carries the English title The Border-Line Case.

Ningyo to Minotauros is the fourth novel in the Hikawa Tooru series, written by the same author, following the Ellery Queen model not both in this form, but also by how the character of Hikawa Tooru solves the crimes in these books, with a focus on chains of deductions, physical evidence and the conclusions one can make based on them, and eliminating suspects one by one off a list until the last suspect ends up being the murderer. As in previous novels, the crime takes place in a semi-personal circle, with Hikawa Tooru being friends with the (supposed) victim this time, while in previous novels too, his friends and people he worked with ended up being victims and/or suspects. Story-wise, we have some references to earlier novels (including the second one, which was published by a different publisher than the other books), but there's not much of story development here, as Hikawa is still a struggling novelist at this point, still waiting for his first book to be published.

The book starts rather sudden, with just a few moments before Hikawa arrives at the hospital, only to hear his friend (very probably) died in the fire. Shocked by the loss of his friend, Hikawa goes around the hospital, asking Ikuta's co-workers what kind of person he was at the hospital, as Ikuta was a very unique person at high school, one of the few people Hikawa could really get along with, and he wonders whether or how his personality could've led to his death, as he was the sweetest guy around. During his "investigation" Hikawa gets to know several people around the hospital, from nurses to fellow doctors and even some of Ikuta's patients, and they all seem to agree Ikuta was not the kind of person to get himself murdered. Some of the women Hikawa talks to even seem to fancy his old friend, which hurts as hell, knowing he just died so young. Because of previous cases Hikawa got involved with, he also gets fed some confidential investigation information from a friend with the police, which slowly give Hikawa a better idea of what happened before he arrived there. 

As a puzzle however, Ningyo to Minotauros isn't that interesting. Perhaps it's because the setting is very limited, with few characters who were at the hospital at the time of the fire, meaning there are very few suspects, and most of the book is just devoted to Hikawa interviewing people about where they were at that time, with almost no other story developments after the initial scene of Hikawa arriving at the hospital. After that it's just a lot of talk about Ikuta, and occasionally some talk about alibis of where everybody was before the fire. The idea is of course you've got to check whose alibis are actually confirmed and which are just based on the suspect's own testimony (without supporting proof), but this is something Hikawa Tooru has already done in previous books, and each time it just felt... too bland. This focus on timelines is very technical, but it is also told in a very dry manner, and because there are usually few other developments in the story, it all feels very clinical, with little to keep the reader entertained but hoping the next bit of information will be interesting. Previous novels however were a bit lengthier than Ningyo to Minotauros, which allowed for a bit more variation and more insight in the characters, but that is a bit lacking here, especially as a lot of the book is devoted to drawing a portrait of Ikuta, at the expense of the actual (living) suspects. 

There ultimately isn't like something clever or trick behind the arson in the office, and while there's some meta-talk about the unrecognizable corpse, this does not remain a mystery for long as the police just have the body examined and they arrive at a clear answer relatively soon (before the actual conclusion), so the mystery ultimately really revolves around who committed the murder and set the office on fire, and therefore, the matter really just revolves around alibis. While there are a few clever clues that point to the murderer at the conclusion, leading to an interesting revelation about the whole first scene (the final step in determining the murderer is interesting), I still find this the least engaging book of the series until this point. There's just too little really interesting about the mystery and the way it is solved, and I guess there's some interesting talk about gender studies here (hence the Japanese title), but it's not enough to really keep my attention.

As a fan of Queen-esque mysteries, it's a bit of a shame that while on a technical level, Ningyo to Minotauros certainly follows the model in terms of chains of deduction to identify the murderer, the very brief story is told in a rather dry manner, despite the "personal" angle about Hikawa's friend either being a victim, or otherwise involved in the mysterious death, and while the chain shown here would be okay for a short story, it's not enough to carry a whole novel, at least, not the way it is told. One more of these novels to go!

Original Japanese title(s): 氷川透『人魚とミノタウロス』

Long Shadows

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" 
"Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words"

I like reading short story collections, I hate writing posts about them as there's usually a lot more work involved...

Last year, I reviewed three of the four books written by Kagami Masayuki published during his lifetime. Kagami was an active writer in a very short period of only about ten years, unitl 2013, when he died young in his early fifties. In that period however, he became known as a specialist in locked room murder mysteries, who was very strongly inspired by John Dickson Carr. In fact, his series detective Charles Bertrand was directly modeled after Carr's own Henri Bencolin, both sharing the same background as Parisian magistrates, sharing the same appearances and also having an American narrator. The books I read by Kagami were definitely the stuff Carr fans would love, not only in terms of tone and the type of tricks used to create locked room mysteries, but also because they were full of Carr references, a lot of them I, to be honest, didn't get exactly because I haven't read that many Carrs in general, but you could feel Kagami's love for Carr everywhere. In 2022, almost a decade after Kagami's death, publisher Koubunsha released the big tome Kagami Masayuki Mishuuroku Sakuhinshuu which also carries the English title The Uncollected Works of Masayuki Kagami. As the title suggest, the book collects the short stories Kagami wrote in his lifetime which had originally been published in magazines or anthologies, but had not been published as their own standalone release yet. The book collects these ten stories, but very interestingly, these stories actually form a wonderful cohesive collection. Basically only one story doesn't fit with the rest of the selection in terms of theme, which is amazing considering these stories were only collected together in one book because Kagami passed away and these were "left behind."

The book opens with Waga Tomo Henri ("My Friend Henri"), which is technically Kagami's debut work: while his first published novel is Sougetsujou no Sangeki ("The Tragedy at the Twin Moon Castle"), he already had a few short stories published irregularly in anthologies in the years prior.The story is set in 1900 and narrated by Nicolas, a student studying at Haverford College. His friend Henri is from France studying there, while the twins Alexei and Ivan are from Russia. One evening, Alexei, Nicolas and Henri are hanging out in one of their rooms in their dorm, when they hear a bang from the room next door, which is the room of the twins. They go the room, but find it locked. When they finally manage to break open the door, Ivan is lying dead in the room, having been shot. They find the sign "I" next to Ivan. They of course try to warn the campus guard, but then they learn a professor has also been just shot to death and it turns out, near the professor's body was left the message "II". How could the murderer shoot two persons at about the same time, of which one victim was in a locked room? A technically sound story, though I am very indifferent about the coded message, and I can't say the solution to the locked room shooting and the way the murderer managed to kill both men in a very swift manner are very surprising: you are likely to have seen variants on the same ideas elsewhere before, but the story is constructed in a competent manner and fun to read. It's not a big surprise who Henri is, but interestingly enough, a character from this story will also appear in many other stories in this collection, acting as connecting tissue between the various stories.

In Angoumei Matryoshka - Ulyanov Ansatsu Shimei ("Codename: Matryoshka - The Order to Assasinate Ulyanov") starts with a spy discovering a plot by the secret police Okhrana to murder the revolutionary Ilyich Ulyanov. Apparently, an assassin code-named Matryoshka has already been installed in the close circle around Ulyanov. While the spy manages to escape, he is fatally shot and can only convey the presence of the assassin, and their background in German espionage missions before he dies. Meanwhile, Ulyanov, his wife and a few trusted friends are staying in a safehouse, but who of them is in fact Matryoshka? When suddenly one of the people falls from the top floor window while burning, it seems Matryoshka has finally struck, but why was their target not Ulyanov? I like the idea of how Matryoshka is identified (the specific clue), as it's the kind of clue I like very much and wish I'd see more in mystery fiction, but it feels very detached from the impossible elements of the story (there's no synergy). The room from which the victim fell, was locked, but there was one sleeping person in the same room. Physical evidence seems to indicate this person was truly lying in bed sleeping while the victim was killed, set on fire and pushed out of the window, but why would Matryoshka go such lengths to kill someone who wasn't even the intended target? The answer to how the murder was committed, could have been clewed a bit better perhaps, and a diagram of the whole house would probably have made the thing a bit more convincing in terms of character movements, but it's an okay story.

Taru no Ki Sou no Higeki ("The Tragedy of the House of Barrel Wood") is set in Manchukuo (the Japanese puppet state located in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia) and is about a Japanese man Tooru (a big fan of mystery fiction) and his Russian girlfriend Natasia, who are going to spend Christmas Eve together. They are going to visit a museum in Lüshun during the day, while returning back to Dalian at night to visit Tooru's old friend Fedorov. Tooru and Natasia have a nice day in Lüshun, but after the museum visit, Natasia isn't feeling well, leading to them taking a train later and Natasia returning home after arriving at Dalian, while Tooru visits Fedorov alone to explain how they'll have dinner together another time. When he arrives at Fedorov's home, which is built with the crooked wood from barrels, he sees a set of footsteps in the snow leading in the house, but none out. He enters the house, where he finds Fedorov dead, having been stabbed to death! But there is nobody else in the house, though he does spot a set of clothes and a mask in the garden, but no footsteps, as if the murderer just vanished in the sky. The reader with some knowledge of Japanese mystery fiction will probably recognize the name Tooru, Manchukuo and Dalian immediately, so the "twist" about who Tooru is and why a lot of the elements of this story feel so familiar, will not be a big surprise, but as a historical pastiche, this is pretty good! Yes, this story does feel very close to a certain famous Japanese impossible crime story, but this story can get away with this because it is a pastische, giving a good reason for why it feels so familiar, and it has a few original elements too that are really fun if you know your Japanese mystery fiction. This is most of all a fun story, despite a rather tragic background story that cleverly ties into some of the earlier, but also later stories.

As the title suggests, Touya ni Shisu Onitsura Keibu Manshuujidai no Mihappyou Jiken ("Death on a Freezing Night - An Unpublished Case of Inspector Onitsura In His Manchukuo Period") is an Inspector Onitsura pastiche, based on the police detective created by Ayukawa Tetsuya. Onitsura worked in Manchukuo in the earlier days of his career (like in Ayukawa's debut work Petrov Jiken), and it's always cool to see this unique setting again, as the state doesn't exist anymore as it was. The dead body of Stefan Milovski is found in an empty house in Dalian. The businessman had gone missing a few days and his assistant knows right away who killed him: Stefan's twin brother and his mother. Apparently, the twins had been seperated soon after birth when their parents had to flee Russia. Because they couldn't take care of both children, they gave away one of the twins to a woman: Rosa became the mother of the boy she'd call Rubin. But while Stefan became a successful businessman with the help of his parent's money, Rosa and Rubin always had trouble making a living. Recently, they learned about Stefan and started asking for money, claiming half of the money Stefan made thanks to his parents' money, belongs to Rubin too. Stefan refused however, which may have been the motive for murder. When Onitsura examines Rosa and Rubin's alibis for the night of the murder however, he learns they were in a completely different city, to attend to the wedding of Rosa's niece. Onitsura is convinced they did it, but how could they have committed the murder in Dalian while being hours and hours away by train? It's an Onitsura story, so of course it's an alibi-cracking story with an emphasis on train tables! A bit easy to guess due to the presence of one certain plot element that is probably going to make the reader immediately suspect *something* has occured using that. While Kagami does add a few nice pieces of misdirection, you can't help but shake the feeling the main trick is telegraphed so early, the elements of misdirection just don't do enough.

EDS Kinkyuu Suiri Kaiketsuin - Kaiki Suirika ("EDS: Emergency Detective Solution Hospital: The Strange Deductions Department") is the weird exception of this book, the only story that is not a historical work with pastische elements and the one story that is not in any way connected to the other stories via crossover characters. The EDS is a "hospital" where the "Holmeses" (doctors) also have to detect the curious deaths they oversee. In this story, the Holmes-on-duty examines a woman who called the emergency lines because her boss cut her arm off. When the ambulance arrives there, they find the woman bleeding heavily, but also her dead boss. He has bruises on his neck that appear to have been inflicted on him by a hand squeezing his throat. When the ambulance people talk to the woman, they learn her boss was crying something about a cut-off hand roaming around the house, which had been attacking him: he also cut the victim's arm off because he was surprised by her and thought she was the hand. What is going on and why is there a hand walking around? This is almost a horror story, and the solution is incredibly silly. But I think it works in this volume, as the rest of the stories are so.... serious? Like, the other stories are very serious, straightforward takes on classic locked room mysteries, Carr's work in particular, so this story brings a lot of variety. I like the idea of the EDS too, I wish there had been more of these stories (I guess this story has some traits of the Department of Queer Complaints, but it's not really like that...)

Tetsuro ni Kieta Dantouri ("The Executioner Who Disappeared On The Rails") is the big Carr-Kagami crossover story: Dr. Fell is travelling with a new friend in a train, when he sees Superintendent Hadley travelling in the same train. Hadley and his subordinate Ames are tailing Jacqueline Midget, a key figure in a smuggling ring which uses the old routes from the international master criminal Baldwin, who was arrrested some years ago by Charles Bertrand (and who would play a vital role in Kagami's second novel Kangokutou). It seems that she's finally become aware the police are after her, so Hadley and Ames followed her on the train, fearing she's trying to escape abroad. Hadley and Ames have taken the compartment next to her, in the middle of the carriage, while the remaining car is occupied by a third traveler. Because Jacqueline has remained in her compartment the whole evening, Hadley has come to the dining car to get something to eat, while Ames is watching her. But then Hadley is informed something has happened: Jacqueline is dead and decapitated. Ames had been standing on the outer deck smoking, when he saw someone come out of Jacqueline's compartment and enter the toilet. He called out for the conductor, who was in his room in the carriage, who indeed saw someone enter the toilet. Because the doors in this car lock from the inside, Ames had to ask the conductor to open the deck door for him. But when they look in the toilet, they find it empty. Fearing something had happened, they enter Jacqueline's compartment, where she was found dead and decapitated. But where did the murderer go after entering the toilet, as the train was still moving at high speed? This is probably one of my favorite stories of the volume. Partially because of the crossover elements (it's a pretty impressive Carr crossover), but as an impossible crime, it's quite memorable too. While I do think it's a bit too technical/string-and-needley for my taste (it's just hilarious imagining what the murderer would have needed to prepare beforehand and how...), the construction of the mystery is great, and I really like "that prop" that was used to actually commit the murder. The story is also enjoyable without any knowledge of the crossovers taking place here I think.

Ungadoori no Shounen ("The Boy In the Canal Street") is set in Amsterdam just briefly before World War II. A girl who calls herself Hannah becomes friends with a young American boy, Ted Smith (son of Patrick Smith, the chronicler of Charles Bertrand), playing on the Prinsengracht in the centre of Amsterdam, when they see a policeman asking them about whether they saw someone pass by here. They learn a murder has occured in a nearby trade company, Koster Trading, located in one of the Amsterdam canal houses. Ursula is friends with both Hannah and Ted, and tells them her brother was killed. During business meeting with a new business partner, Ursula's father was talking with this man when they thought it was strange Emil (Ursula's brother) wouldn't come down. When they went up to his room, they found it locked and when they looked inside via the window above the door, they saw he was dead, having been hit on the head. But how could the murderer have done that in a locked room, especially as Hannah and Ted never saw someone leave the house? The trick is simple, but I really love how it makes use of something that is very specifically something typically Amsterdam. The story also becomes a rather surprising crossover, as I think a lot of people will soon recognize names like Hannah and Margot in this time setting, and I honestly had never espected to read a mystery story that would do a crossover with that person...

Sei Alexandria Jiin no Sangeki ("The Tragedy at the St. Alexandria Chapel") is actually the very first Kagami story I ever read over a decade ago, as it was included in an anthology I have. Set in Russia, it's about the death of a priest in the St. Alexandria Chapel who was hung from the very, very high ceiling. While I can appreciate this story more now, as I know see how this story ties back to the other stories in this collection, I'm still not a very big fan of it because it's just... mechanical as a locked room mystery, and even with the diagrams, it's pretty hard to understand what really went on there.

Kubitsuri Hanji-tei no Kimyou na Hanzai - Charles Bertrand no Jikenbo ("The Curious Crime at the House of the Hanging Judge - The Case Files of Charles Bertrand") is the one Charles Bertand short story that hadn't been collected in the short story collection, though it feels like it should have been part of it too, as this story too makes direct references to supernatural beings being responsible for a murder (in this story, poltergeists) like the other stories in that book. Charles and Pat are in England, when they learn about two curious deaths that happened nearby one week ago. Alfred Harbottle was a judge known for a lot of hanging sentence, hence his nickname of the Hanging Judge. He recently married a much younger wife, Catherine. As devouted believers, the whole family of Alfred, Catherine and his son of his deceased first wife, Jonathan, attend the service held a the chapel on the manor grounds each Sunday, but this week, Alfred was feeling sick, so he remained in bed. After the service, the butler, Catherine, Jonathan and the priest remained. They were ready to leave, when Catherine returned to the altar because something had been left there, but the next moment, all three witness swear a dagger just appeared out of nowhere, plunged into her throat! The dagger was a relic of the Harbottle family, which had a special design and said to defeat the enemies of the clan. Grieving for his poor wife, judge Harbottle blames the dagger for the death of his wife, and he decided to lock himself up in one of the rooms of the chapel, together with the dagger. For three days, he remained cooped up in the room, with food being delivered to this room, but on the fourth day, he didn't open the door. They broke the door open, which they also found sealed with tape on the inside, and in the room, they found the judge lying dead in his bed, the dagger plunged into his throat too! Has the Harbottle dagger turned against the people it was supposed to protect, or is there foul play at hand? The answer to the murder on Catherine is of the kind I generally don't like, and this is no exception. It could work with some exceptional clewing, but here it feels kinda cheap, even with the set-up and explanation to how it was supposed to work. The murder on the judge, of which the door was taped down, is a bit more interesting. While I am kinda indifferent about the dynamics of how the murder was exactly committed (this kind of trick is used a bit too often in this collection), I do like the exact use of the dagger, it is the type of "technical" explanation that didn't quite work for me in the previous story, but I think is much better in this one.

Jeff Marle no Tsuisou ("The Memoirs of Jeff Marle") is a direct sequel to Carr's own It Walks by Night, the very first Henri Bencolin novel. Which... I have not read. In fact, I have not read any Bencolin stories... While the book does not spoil the murderer of that book directly, it does touch upon several story elements that sounded important to me, so perhaps some readers will prefer to read this after reading It Walks By Night. Set after the book, it chronicles how Jeff Marle (friend of Bencolin and narrator of the stories) and his fiancée Sharon receive a threatening letter from someone from their past, whom they believed had passed away already.  They are instructed to visit at night Fenelli's former gambling establishment where the events of It Walks by Night occured. In one of the rooms there, which was locked from the inside and which Jeff and Sharon had to break open, they find the decapitated corpse of Fenelli. But there is no sign of the murderer in the room, so Jeff quickly calls for the police (while making sure Sharon locks herself up in one of the rooms to be safe). When the police arrives, it turns out there was another person in another room of the house: a Japanese tourist who learned about the earlier murder that Bencolin solved and became interested in the place. While the Japanese man might not be involved with the murder (and yes, like many of the stories here, if you have some knowledge of pre-war Japanese mystery fiction, you might realize who this historical person is based on his name...), there are other mysteries that complicate the matter, like the sighting of a flying decapitated head... I have to admit I couldn't enjoy this story completely because I kept wondering whether the things that were said about It Walks By Night were vital spoilers or not, I think the idea of a straight sequel makes so much sense for Kagami: his work is so full of Carr, and specifically Bencolin references, and he has already written stories directly based on Carr stories before, so why not do "straightforward" fanfiction? It's also one of the better impossible crimes of the volume, with pretty clever clewing about how the decapitation came to be (especially regarding misdirection about some characters' motivations) and with smaller elements like the floating head adding some depth to the mystery. I might have enjoyed the story better if I had known It Walks By Night, but it's a good mystery nonetheless.

Anyway, this was a pretty big volume so this post is quite a bit longer than my usual posts. I can defnitely recommend Kagami Masayuki Mishuuroku Sakuhinshuu/The Uncollected Works of Masayuki Kagami though! It provides a good insight in the writings of Kagami, and because it's easier to purchase now because it's still in print, whereas the books printed during his lifetime are already out of print, it is the go-to book now if you want to try out his work. Nine of the ten stories are also somehow connected with characters popping up in several stories (one character even gets their whole life fleshed out over the course of several stories), and that makes this more than just a collection of random stories. You also get a good idea of Kagami as a locked room mystery specialist, as basically all stories involve an impossible crime, and most of them are historical works too. At this moment, I have read all of Kagami's work except for his third novel, which, as mentioned, is a bit expensive on the used market, so I won't be reading it soon. I think I still like his first novel the best, but on the whole, he was certainly a very fun author to read, especially if you like John Dickson Carr, and he's dearly missed!

Original Japanese title(s): 加賀美雅之『加賀美雅之未収録作品集』:「わが友アンリ」/「暗号名『マトリョーシュカ』 ――ウリャーノフ暗殺指令――」 /「『樽の木荘』の悲劇」/「凍夜に死す 鬼面警部満州時代の未発表の事件」/「EDS緊急推理解決院 怪奇推理科」/「鉄路に消えた断頭吏」/「運河通りの少年」/「聖アレキサンドラ寺院の惨劇」/ 「『首吊り判事』邸の奇妙な犯罪 ――シャルル・ベルトランの事件簿」/「ジェフ・マールの追想」

No Thanks, Masked Manx

"I haff tvelve metchsteek."

"Fuck you!"

"Professor Layton And The Perpetual Torment" (Penny Arcade)

Man, these Sugimoto Ichibun covers remain gorgeous. And creepy.

Ootori Chiyoko was not only a silver screen actress famed for her beauty, she was perhaps even better kwown for her many, many husbands. By 1960, she had already married four times, and gotten divorced four times. While she and her first husband Fuenokouji Yasuhisa had one daughter together, Misa was mostly raised by her grandmother Fuenokouji Atsuko. This meant Chiyoko was quite free to pursue new men, and in 1960, she had already set her eyes on her next husband: businessman Asuka Tadahiro, who in turn is also quite in love with Chiyoko. In 1960, Chiyoko and Asuka are both in Karuizawa, the popular resort town, but they are not alone. Not only are Misa and Atsuko also staying in Karuizawa, but also Chiyoko's third and fourth husbands: Maki Kyougo and Tsumura Shinji. Last year, the same faces were also gathered in Karuizawa, but with the extra inclusion of Fuenokouji Yasuhisa. He however passed away then, as he had drowned in a pool after a night of drinking. It happens however Chiyoko's second husband Akutsu Genzou has also passed away the year before that in a traffic accident, which leads to some speculation about whether the deaths of Chiyoko's exes are really just accidents. These suspicions explode when this year, her third husband Maki Kyougo is found dead in his atelier in Karuizawa, having taken cyanide. Asuka decides to hire private detective Kindaichi, who happens to be staying in Karuizawa with a friend, to investigate the case, because the police are suspecting Chiyoko has something to do with the deaths of all her husbands. Kindaichi quickly points out it is very likely Maki's body might have been moved in the atelier, meaning he was murdered somewhere else, and the biggest clue they have are a bunch of matches of which about half are broken and the other half not, but what do these matches indicate? Is there some murderer who wants to kill off all of Chiyoko's husbands, or is there some other connection between these mysterious deaths in Yokomizo Seishi's Kamen Butoukai ("Masquerade", 1974)?

Kamen Butoukai is one of the later Kindaichi novels by Yokomizo Seishi, only followed by Byouinzaka no Kubikukuri no Ie and Akuryoutou. Its birth was also quite troublesome. It had originally been planned and announced as a direct-to-novel release with the slightly different title Kasou Butoukai, but it was never actually released. Then it became a serialized novel in Houseki starting in 1962, but the following year, Yokomizo had to pause the serialization due to health problems. By then however, the Japanese mystery scene was already focusing more on the social school mysteries like those of Matsumoto Seichou, and Yokomizo seemingly lost interest in writing the Kindaichi Kousuke novels, which were basically the anti-thesis to the social school novels, being gothic, fantastical mysteries with a lot of theatrics and drama. But after the success of the manga adaptation of Yatsu Haka Mura, the re-releases of his Kindaichi novels as mass market paperbacks which ignited a genuine "Yokomizo Boom", he got interested again, and in 1974, Kamen Butoukai was finally finished via a direct-to-novel release. Twelve years is quite a long time to finish a book!

But as the book was started in 1962 and the social school boom had already been on-going, you can definitely feel some of that must have influenced Yokomizo, and this book (like the previous novel Shiro to Kuro) feel surprisingly "modern" compared to the more famous Kindaichi novels, which are all set soon after World War II, instead of 15 years later. While the war does still play a role in the book (the Fuenokouji clan is former nobility, the war had affected not only Chiyoko's career but also her bond with Misa, as Misa and her grandmother had to evacuate Tokyo during the bombings, meaning they lived apart for a long time), the world does feel less weighed down directly by the war, and while this story doesn't take place in the city, Karuizawa is still a very popular resort town for more rich people, again quite different from the isolated mountain village or island you'd be familiar with from the more famous Kindaichi novels. Especially for those who have read many of those, this book will feel strangely refreshing.

That said, the book does still follow the usual tropes of a Kindaichi novel, being very focused on digging into complicated family relationships with hidden histories, and these relations being strongly connected to the motive behind the deaths. Very "obvious" tropes like the dying message are used far less often usually. The meaning behind the matches is actually pretty ingenious, but completely impossible to guess before Kindaichi explains what it means. Even if you know what the clue is actually indicating, you can't possibly ever tie that piece of information to the matches, even if in hindsight, it makes sense. In fact, the piece of information it refers to, is something I have seen in quite a few mystery stories, and I think it is used pretty clever here. There is another clue indicating the same thing in this book that on a creative level has much better potential, but it used in a very weird manner, basically showing you the clue, and immediately telling you what it is, which takes away so much of the surprise, as it would have been much better if we had been first shown this scene, and only later been told what it actually meant. Now you get a very vital clue about 70% in the book, while the solving doesn't actually occur until the 90% point. The thing it indicates is used cleverly though: while it used in conjunction with something else that seems a bit obvious and tropey, these two elements work together well to create some misdirection, and I do like it as a clue on its own. It just could have been presented to the reader in a somewhat different manner to make the revelation feel a bit more surprising, and also earned.

Yokomizo does a good job at weaving a complex web of people moving about in Karuizawa around the time of the Maki death and how people's actions will influence other people's actions, though some parts feel a bit odd. The book actually opens with two people committing a love suicide together, but Kindaichi stumbles upon them and calls for help, though he sadly only managed to save one of them. The way this prologue becomes connected to the deaths of Chiyoko's exes is quite forced, and some might even think it feels cheap, as it basically forces one character to behave in a certain way because... the book needed them to do that, but also give them some kind of motivation for doing so, but it doesn't really work.

There are some nice Christie-esque twists in the plot, that worked really well here. In a way, the book feels very much like a Kindaichi novel, but at the same time, it also subverses a lot of the tropes, like via the more modern setting as mentioned, but also the role of Chiyoko in the book. Even the final confrontation with Kindaichi will feel somewhat familiar, though I think this is one of the better times in the series, as the actions of this culprit were really horrible and created a huge tragedy, but in a very different way than in other Kindaichi novels, while still very rooted in reasons that, in a roundabout way, seem to make sense from their point of view. I don't think this one is an absolutely must read (Yokomizo himself did rank it no. 7 out of his personal top 10 Kindaichi novels he wrote), but it is quite fun to read especially if you are already familiar with the better-known books (that follow the classic tropes).

So I wouldn't recommend Kamen Butoukai as anyone's first meeting with Kindaichi, but if you have read a few already, you might find this book very refreshing, set in a very different time period like Shiro to Kuro, and with some elements that feel almost subversive for the series. Not A-tier material, but a solid B. Despite me saying it feels subversive at times, this is still however very clearly a Kindaichi Kousuke novel, and there's plenty to recognize here (the complex human relationships!) and if you like that part of the series, you'll be satisfied with this book too.

Original Japanese title(s): 横溝正史『仮面舞踏会』

Mr. Monk and the Miracle

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus

"Il nome della rosa"

In a way, a game based on this particular book is kinda fitting, as a contextual framing story...

A few weeks back, I reviewed Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa, which had a really memorable setting with its monastery harboring secrets and a labyrinth-like library. And I was obviously not the only one, as there are multiple games based on the impressive book. Murder in the Abbey is a 2008 game by Spanish studio Alcochofa Soft, based in turn on the 1987 game La Abadía del Crimen, a game which actually started out as an adaptation of Eco's work until they couldn't get the rights, and it was apparently quite popular in Spanish-speaking terrorities at the time. I haven't played La Abadía del Crimen myself, but as for Murder in the Abbey, it is certainly very, very clear it was also inspired by  Il nome della rosa. The game starts with the monk Leonardo of Toledo travelling with his apprentice Bruno: Bruno is to study at the Nuestra Señora de la Natividad Abbey, so once delivered there the two will part their ways, but on their way to the abbey, a boulder nearly falls on Bruno. When the two arrive at the abbey, they learn the abbot has need for Leonardo's abilities as a problem-solver: the gatekeeper has recently passed away in a tragic accident, but was it really an accident? The abbot even fears the death might perhaps be the devil's work. Leonardo sets out to investigate the curious death, but he is hindered by the fact he's not allowed in the famous library of the abbey, which is said to hold a wealth of knowledge, but only the abbot, librarian and his assistant are allowed to enter the library, and even copyists only get their materials supplied via the libarian. While Leonardo and Bruna poke around the abbey however, they learn the gatekeeper might have had information about the library that led to his death, and then more monks are murdered at the abbey. Can Leonardo solve the mystery of the murdered monks in Murder in the Abbey?

This game was re-released in 2019 as The Abbey: Director's Cut with apparently some puzzles changed/added, and that's the version I played. The Abbey: Director's Cut is a point and click adventure with a rather attractive visual style, using nicely designed 2D abbey backgrounds with cartoony 3D characters which have rather animated facial features. While Il nome della rosa could be quite funny, The Abbey: Director's Cut is a bit more comedy-focused, though it can be rather surprisingly dark like its inspiration, and it's at those times the art style can clash a bit with the topic of discussion. Discussions on burning heretics don't come across as serious the way these characters are designed and animated...

The atmosphere in this game in general is really good though, and you really feel like you're wandering around some kind of medieval abbey harboring a lot of dark secrets. While there's not that much variety in the locations within the abbey, and all the characters save for Bruno are middle-aged men (for obvious reasons), the game does a good job at characterizing all these monks. A lot of attention has gone to the character writing, with surprisingly in-depth conversations about the church, their views on their beliefs and all kinds of references to political on-goings outside the abbey: it's here where the game really feels very much like Il nome della rosa, presenting a rich world within the abbey, but outside it. This part is also elevated by some voice actors: the voice actor of Leonardo is particular is really good at the part. But there are also voice actors who do a pretty iffy job, with Leonardo's assistant Bruno being the one you'll have to listen to the most unfortunately (and it doesn't help that Bruno is written in a very vexing manner on purpose; and while that leads to an interesting twist near the end of the game, the manner in which this was brought still didn't help the impression Bruno was really irritating as a character).

As a mystery game however, it has the same problem a lot of point and click adventures have when tackling a mystery story, and that the gameplay mechanics don't really allow for the player to solve story-related mysteries, and you are often simply busy with inventory puzzles to overcome an obstacle, which then leads to the story-related mysteries being solved for you via cut-scenes. As a point and click adventure, you'll be walking around The Abbey, stealing borrowing objects and talking to other monks in the abbey to gain information, and often you'll have to engage in fetch quests in order to gain the trust of a monk or be allowed access to certain locations within the abbey. So then you have to use your inventory items to solve a puzzle so you can get the object you're supposed to get, and then.... you'll get cutscenes or dialogues where Leonardo will make deductions about the case without your help. There is no mechanic to allow the player to deduce anything about the mystery, all they have to do is help Leonardo get past the obstacles/fetch quests, and afterwards, he'll engage with the mystery alone. And that's kinda irritating in these kind of adventure games. I'd rather see the opposite: skip the fetch quests for me, just give me a mechanic that allows me to engage with the mystery mentally! I don't want to be copying keys or retrieve a book for a monk so they'll translate something for me, allow me to investigate the corpse, ask me questions that allow me to deduce the truth behind the case! Especially, as I mentioned before, I do really like the setting and atmosphere of the game. As a point and clock adventure, The Abbey: Director's Cut also has some pretty infuriating pixel hunt segments at times, with very fussy hotspots, so be prepared to use a walkthrough.

The mystery story itself is... certainly not Il nome della rosa, even if a lot of cues are taken directly from the book. A lot of moments and story developments will feel extremely familiar, though the exact details behind the mysterious deaths in the abbey are not the same as Eco's book. As so much time of the game is actually spent more on fetch quests rather than actually engaging with the mystery itself, I have to admit some parts of the denouement fell a bit flat for me: had we been given more time to talk with each character about motivations/backgrounds etc. instead of constantly asking them about whatever fetch quest you were busy with, the reveal of the culprit and their motive might have made more of an impact, but with most of the mystery being solved automatically for you during cutscenes, it felt a bit lacklustre. 

As an adventure game, The Abbey: Director's Cut has pretty nice production values and in terms of atmosphere, it's really good: though a lot of it is very very directly inspired by Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa, it's cool you're able to explore a mysterious abbey yourself, the world depicted in the game is really interesting. While as a mystery game, I can't help but feel disappointed the player is mostly relegated to doing fetch quests, with the mystery being solved by Leonardo himself in the cutscenes and there are some annoying pixel hunting parts, I don't think The Abbey: Director's Cut is a bad game by any means, though I'd not immediately recommend it to people as a mystery game per se. But if you liked Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa and was curious as to how it'd work as a game, sure, this is fun. That is definitely the reason why I decided to play it, and in that regard, it didn't disappoint.