番外編：The Labyrinth House Murders Released

I probably mentioned it earlier on this blog, but today's finally the day: this is the day Pushkin Press is releasing my English translation of The Labyrinth House Murders (Meirokan no Satsujin) by Yukito AYATSUJI. Or at least, in the United Kingdom, I believe the US release will follow in a few months.

While my English translation of The Decagon House Murders was released via Locked Room International back in 2015, Pushkin Press took over the license, starting first with a revised re-release in 2021, and then following up with the sequel The Mill House Murders in 2023. Fortunately, both Ayatsuji himself and Pushkin wanted me on board again for the sequel and I was glad to hear that they also had intentions of continuing the series, so that brings us to the third book in the series: The Labyrinth House Murders was originally released in 1988 and is set in a rather unique location: the titular house is a genuine underground maze inspired by the myth of the Minotaur and the home of Miyagaki Yotaro, a veteran mystery writer who has been active for decades not only as an author, but also in an editing position where he helps younger authors debut in his beloved genre. As of late however, he has decided to retire, but for his sixtieth birthday, he has decided to invite some of his closest comrades, like writers who debuted under his tutelage and an editor with whom he has worked for a long time. However, soon after everyone has arrived, a shocking death is sprung upon the guests, and they are locked inside the Labyrinth House and are asked to participate in a bizarre competition with deadly results...

The Decagon House Murders was not written as a 'series' book with obvious story hooks or anything like that, which explains why The Mill House Murders, as a sequel, could be read without any prior knowledge of the series. That also holds for The Labyrinth House Murders: while a few references are dropped about earlier cases, the tale itself can be read independently, so there's no real problem if you decide to start with this book.   

Personally, this has always been one of my favorite entries in the series, ever since I read it over a decade ago. This is in part due to the background setting: ever since I was a child, I have loved Greek mythology, so the setting of the labyrinth and rooms named after figures related to the myth of the Minotaur really appeal to me. The floorplan of the titular Labyrinth House is also much more complex than any of the maps we have seen so far: it's a genuine maze and each time you want to move from one room to another, you need to go through the maze. As you read, you'll be looking at the floorplan, and that adds a fun element, kinda like how you'd read The Lord of the Rings and check how everyone was moving while heading for Mordor. But the story itself is also fun: we have a group of genre-savvy characters gathered together, from mystery writers to a critic, an editor and a huge fan of the genre, and the plot plays a lot with that. As for the mystery, it's a really tricky one once again, that has hints hidden in more places than you'd expect.  

Translation-wise, there's something I do want to discuss in due time, but I might wait a little bit longer to get back to that, as it's not something to mention right away on release day! 

Anyway, if you liked The Decagon House Murders and/or The Mill House Murders, please read The Labyrinth House Murders too, and if not... try it anyway! In a way, it's the most "detectivey" book of the three books released until now, so I have no doubt a lot of readers will enjoy this one. And as for more translations of this series? As you can expect, positive reception is the most likely to ensure more translations follow (hopefully by me of course), so it'd be great if you'd pick the book!

Six Were Present

Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five

"And Then There Were None"

Today: an English review of a French novel translated to German. 

On a May day, the people on the streets are surprised by screams coming from above. A woman stands near the window of a flat above, yelling for help. The people below recognize her as Simone Vigneray, standing near the kitchen and it's clear some assaillant has barged into the Vigneray's flat. The Vigneray couple is in danger, and people run up to the flat, but find it locked. They call for the concierge to open it, while they hear shots and other sounds going on on the other side of the door, but when they finally manage to open the door and enter the flat, they find Marcel Vigneray lying dead on the floor, Simone nearly dead in the kitchen... but no sign of the murderer. The kitchen window was still watched by others, and while there's a back door leading to a staircase for the servants, that door is locked from the inside. Private detective André Brunel (and his friend the narrator) is on the case, as well as Roland Charasse, Marcel's cousin and a famous criminal lawyer. But it doesn't take long for more impossible crimes to follow: not only did the unseen assailant managed to escape the locked Vigneray apartment, not long after, the maid is also found murdered in her own room in the servants quarter of the flat block, but the police checked her room earlier, found it empty and posted an officer in the hallway, and yet the second time they visited the room, they found her dead on the floor! The investigators desperately try to stop the invisible killer from striking more, but they will strike six times in Pierre Boileau's 1939 novel Six crimes sans assassin ("Six Crimes Without a Killer"). And because I forgot most of the French I learned at school, I read the German edition Sechsmal Tödlich ("Deadly Six Times") translated by Ernst Sander.

I have to admit I am nearly ignorant when it comes to French mystery fiction. Some months back I read comic adaptations of the work of Stanislas-André Steeman, who is Belgian but wrote in French, but beyond that, it's basically just Lupin... The name Pierre Boileau is one I had seen often however, and connected to that were of course references to Six crimes sans assassin, which I'd guess is his most famous work when it comes to fair-play mystery fiction? The premise of six impossible crimes sounds interesting at least, so when I heard there was a German translation (which I can read infinitely quicker than French), I immediately got on the case.

To begin with the conclusion right away however, I don't think that the book is really a must read if you're only interested in the book as an impossible crime story, especially in 2024. While yes, the book is full of impossible crimes (locked room murders), with a rather surprising amount considering the short page count, it can't be denied that basically all the tricks in this book are very outdated for a modern reader. The tricks we see here for the locked rooms, are basically the "base form" of familiar locked room murders, and you will not only likely have seen many, many variants on these ideas, you're also likely to have seen more original and captivating iterations of what is done here. I can't even imagine that in 1939, the locked room mysteries in Six crimes sans assassin were genuinely shocking or original, and while some authors can weave a more complex web out of basic tricks by having various situations interact in surprising ways or for example using clue synergy to intertwine basic tricks into a stronger whole, Boileau doesn't really manage to accomplish that in this novel, with most of the situations feeling like distinct, discrete events: which is also a reason why the book feels very simple, as it's jsut event after event after event. I have seen the novel be praised for how fair the book is, but while the book is fair, I do have trouble seeing the 'fairness' of this book being in any way outstanding. It is fair in the way I normally expect a puzzle plot/honkaku mystery novel to be, as in, that is the bare minimum I expect of such a novel. There are no clues that are particular clever or audacious, so on the whole, the book just feels... it's there. 

(And while some murders André Brunel really couldn't do anything about, there are also some murders that really makes you question how effective Brunel is as a detective, or at least, if he was more interested in protecting a possible witness, he probably should take different actions because some deaths were totally avoidable)

What the book can be lauded for, is the amazing pace the story moves at. One page in, and we hear Simone Vigneray scream for help, and from that point on, the story keeps on moving and moving. There's nearly no rest, and Boileau keeps pushing his characters to the next murder, but again, this also prevents each crime scene from really developing, as everything is "what you see is what you get" and more often than not, you can already make a very, very close intuitive guess about what happened even before the scene is over, precisely because everything is dressed so simply, But on the other hand, you really are never bored, and the murderer gets rather busy as they have a lot to do before the end of the book! There's also some melodrama, which despite my very, very limited contact with French mystery fiction I'm going to call a trope of the genre because it does remind me a lot of the melodrama in the Lupin novels, but it never interferes with the story of detection, and in some ways, it does tie back nicely to the mystery plot, though the melodrama does seem to also push the murderer in some ways that seem a bit dramatic at certain points in time (like, the third and fourth crimes seem... rather excessive at that point in time still...).

So I wasn't really a fan of Six crimes sans assassin, which is a shame as you do hear a lot about it when it comes to classic French mystery fiction. Some more work of Boileau is available in German and it certainly reads easily away, so I might try another of them in the future. In the meantime, let's just pretend Poirot is French mystery fiction!

Physician, Murder Thyself

'The golden axiom of Chomel, that it is only the second law of therapeutics to do good, its first law being this—not to do harm—is gradually finding its way into the medical mind, preventing an incalculable amount of positive ill.’ So remarks Dr. Bartlett in a work (...)

"Physician and Patient"

I do think these realistic covers for the Matsumoto Seichou pockets look really good...

Sumida Tomokichi is attending a medical conference for internists in Nagoya, but once it's over, he informs the organizer he won't be staying that night at the reserved inn with the rest of the attendees for the after-party, as he's going to meet an acquaintance in the city of Nagoya. The next day however, he is found dead in a hotel room when he fails to check out on time. The man is found murdered in a rather gruesome manner: his wrist had been slit open and then his arm was put in a sink with running water, quickly draining him of his blood. The police try to find out who he was going to meet that night, and while his co-workers and wife don't think he was the type to have an affair, the police do think he might have been seeing a woman at the hotel, especially as they find out that before arriving at the hotel, he visited a cafe where he received a call from a woman. Nagoya police inspector Ootsuka hopes to find a trail for any motive and also looks into Sumida's connections to a haiku club, where he was a major member, being the one to select amateur haiku entries to publish in their self-published poetry magazine. The investigation soon hits a halt as no viable clues can be found, until some time later, a murder occurs behind Jindaiji Temple in Tokyo, where a surgeon is cruelly stabbed, and then intentionally let free by his attacker, knowing he'd bleed to death trying to find help at the nearby residences. The two cases are connected once the Tokyo police find a receipt on the victim for a souvenir from Nagoya dated the last day of the medical conference Sumida also attended. Inspector Suda of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police who had been asssiting the Nagoya police while investigating Sumida, of course starts investigating this Tokyo murder too. Why were these two medical men killed in such a cruel manner in Matsumoto Seichou's Soushitsu no Girei ("Rituals of Loss", 1969)?

Soushitsu no Girei was originally serialized in 1969 and published as a standalone book in 1972, and while this is not a major work by Matsumoto like Ten to Sen (Points and Lines) or Suna no Utsuwa ("Vessel of Sand", also known as Inspector Imanishi Investigates"), the book has been adapted for the small screen no less than three times, with the last one even dating as recent as 2016. Matsumoto Seichou is of course best known as the main figure of the shakai-ha (social school) movement, a post-war school of Japanese mystery fiction that places emphasis on the social backgrounds of crimes, which is usually often juxtaposed against honkaku orthodox puzzle plot mysteries. The best known Matsumoto stories has him zoom in on the people getting involved with the crimes in his books, not rarely victims of company politics who find themselves, often due to circumstances beyond their control, forced to commit some kind of crime. I am not a big fan of shakai-ha mystery in general (there are always exceptions), and I therefore don't read Matsumoto's work very often, but there are works I like very much (Ten to Sen and sequel Jikan no Shuuzoku are police procedural puzzlers like Crofts' work).  

Soushitsu no Girei was a book I honestly didn't know anything about. It certainly doesn't have the reputation of Ten to Sen as a puzzler, so why did I pick this book? Well, actually, the reason is very simple. I was just looking for a mystery novel with the case set near Jindaiji Temple and happened to come across this one. I quite often just look for mystery books with a specific location, or plot device, or something like that, so I just happened to find out about this book and it was on sale.

Having read the book now however, I wouldn't say this is a must-read by Matsumoto by any means. It's a very slow police procedural, where we follow Ootsuka and Suda in their investigations into possible motives and suspects for the murder, but I can't say the plot really impressed. The first part is very slow, with the police trying to learn how Sumida ended up in the hotel in the first place, but a lot of it turns out, in retrospect, to be just padding by the author, as there's no real explanation why Sumida used such a roundabout route to end up in that hotel: that part only exists to allow for a longer investigative segment. This happens more often, with parts that feel like they are only there to pad out the story, but which don't feel natural because while they temporarily offer "a mystery" to the reader ("Why did X go to this place first before going to the next?" etc.) the answer often barely changes anything about what we already know about the case, and in some situations, the answer still leaves you wondering why they did that, because no adequate explanation is given for what compelled X to do this or that, just an explanation they did it.

This becomes apparent when you start thinking about the actual way the investigation developed in this book. Coincidence plays a big role in this book, but not in an interesting meta way like in Yamaguchi's Kiguu! Here we have both the culprit and the police learning things by complete coincidence, like a police detective who happens to run out of cigarettes, walks into the store nearest by and there happens to be a person holding very vital testimony concerning the case. Or the culprit learning certain facts incredbibly convenient to know to commit the murder in that particular way, but again, the only they could learned that information is through luck. So much of the developments in the investigation feel artificial, which is weird because it should be down-to-earth police procedural with a focus on realism, following Matsumoto's own style, but much of what happens in Soushitsu no Girei feels very forced Why did the police for example need to examine the haiku group in such detail at that point of the story for example? Only because it'd become relevant again later on.

Not to say there's nothing to like about this book. I do like the broad strokes of the story: trying to tie the two murders in Nagoya and Jindaiji, the possible motives behind the individual murders and one that connects the two, the creepy way in which the murders are committed, some of the actions taken by the culprit to evade suspicion, the idea behind the parts concerning a mysterious woman with red hair, and the actual motive and the way it ties back to the title are all elements and concepts I do like, only the way the investigation is built up and tries to guide the reader from the initial murder all the way to the discovery of who it was and how and why has quite the few speed bumps that makes you hit your head more often than you'd want. Now it makes me curious to the adaptations, to see if they changed the flow of the investigation a bit while keeping the basic building blocks.

Soushitsu no Girei is thus not a must-read by Matsumoto. Not that I was expecting it to be one, but while it had a few points I did find interesting, I think the overall book is not remarkable enough to really warrant a recommendation, especially not if you're mostly reading this blog because you want to hear more about puzzle-plot focused mystery fiction. Oh well, I guess I was just reading this book only because it was set at Jindaiji, and at the very least, the book did exactly that!

Original Japanese title(s): 松本清張『喪失の儀礼』

The Case of the Seven Bells

"Blue flowers are fatal to you - remember that."

"The Blue Geranium"

This is one cover that probably looks a lot better in full-size printed on actual paper than as a small thumbnail on your screen...

The Demon God has been defeated and sealed away, but can not be killed. The Demon God will inevitably rise again, but the Goddess of Fate watches over the world, and when the Demon God starts to wake again, six heroes will awaken in the world, destined to seal the Demon God again. Each generation, warriors hoping to become a destined hero undergo a ceremony to present themselves as a candidate, and when the time comes, six of these people will receive the mark of the hero somewhere on their body in the shape of a flower's petal. Because nobody knows exactly when this happens, the six heroes who are awakened might all be in different corners of the world when their call for duty comes, so it is a rule for the Six Heroes of the Flower to make their way to a designated spot near the seal of the Demon God within a month, where they will gather and then set out to fight the evil again, while monsters and other minions of the Demon God will of course attempt to fight the heroes off. Adlet, a cocky young man who boasts to be the strongest man in the world and has absolute confidence he will be chosen as a hero, really turns out to be a hero when a flower mark appears on his body. There is the small problem of him being in prison now, but Nashetania, the princess of Piena and the Saint of Blades, which grants her the power to conjure swords out of nowhere, releases Adlet out of the Piena prison as she reveals she too is a hero. The two travel to the rendez-vous point, fighting against demons together as they make their way there. They end up with a motley crew, from the assassin Hans to Mora, head of all Saints and Goldof, a personal knight to Nashetania. But there's also Fremy, someone who until recently had actually been killing off potential heroes, but is now chosen as one of them. But when the heroes arrive at the temple where they are supposed to gather, a trap is set by the evil legions bent on holding them off until the Demon God revives again: a magical mist field that had been set standby around this temple has been activated. The mist messes with the sense of direction of everyone inside it, making it impossible for them to actually walk out of the covered area. It was originally intended to trap demons there, so the heroes could head towards the Demon God, but now this trap has been used to trap the heroes themselves in the mist field, making it impossible for them to wander far away from the temple. But what is even more distressing is the realization, there are not six heroes here, but seven! There have always been only six heroes, so they soon realize one of them must be a fake sent by the demons, and that this fake must have used the trap to capture all heroes, but which of them is the fake? They all carry the mark of the hero, but unless they quickly find out who the imposter is and force them them to lift the mist field, the Demon God will rise and take over the world. The six heroes can fight, but can they also think  their way out of this obstable in Yamagata Ishio's Rokka no Yuusha ("Heroes of the Six Flowers" 2011), also known as Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers? 

Rokka no Yuusha is a light novel series by Yamagata Ishio and featuring illustrations by Miyagi, with the main series being 6 volumes long running from 2011 until 2015, and was followed up by one additional extra volume one year later. There has been a manga and anime adaptation, and the books have also been released in the United States, so imagine quite some people are actually already aware of this series one way or another. I had known about the series for some while, but it took me quite some time to finally get started on it. I have read a few other mystery novels set in a fantasy setting, like Satsuryuu Jiken - A Case of Dragonslayer, Isekai no Meitantei, RPG School and Seijo Victoria no Kousatsu, but I always interested in seeing more, and Rokka no Yuusha in particular is so widely available, I knew I had to get started on it sooner or later.

As one would expect, the book starts out focusing more on the fantasy elements, first presenting the story of the Demon God reviving, the legend of the six heroes awakening, and then telling the story of Adlet, the young, over-confident protagonist who never even doubts he will be chosen as a hero, and who only dreams of becoming one and fighting the Demon God with his comrades. The first half is very, very focused on the "gathering of the heroes" part, and if you're here just for the mystery, you'll have to be patient, as this part is pretty stereotypical, with heroes slowly gathering and meeting each other, some of the heroes being typical hero-like characters and others who might not seem fit to be a Hero of the Flower initially. It's only in the second half the book really starts to focus on the mystery, when the heroes have arrived at the temple from which the magic mist field can be started. Someone starts the field while the heroes are still there, even though it was supposed to be activated after the heroes had left the area, so now they are all trapped, and they realize that seven heroes have gathered at the temple instead of six, meaning one of them has to be an imposter, likely someone sent by the demons to stop the heroes from reaching the Demon God.

Some of the heroes already know each other, others have more shady backgrounds, and even someone being well-known is no guarantee they are indeed a hero chosen by fate, so the deductions actually do end up being based on very "normal" evidence like testimonies and witness accounts, but even so, even after the plot shifts to the mystery, it does take some time for the story to focus on that. Partially because the book also presents a lot of combat: when in a "normal" detective story people start accusing each other of being the culprit, you might see some fighting, but obviously, fighting in a fantasy setting, with people being able to wield magic or are obviously superhumanly powered, is a tad different. At some point, Adlet ends up being suspected as the imposter, and as everyone thinks killing him is the way to lift the mist field, he has to fight off and flee from his fellow heroes as he tries to figure out who then is the real imposter. Lots of action here, and if you have ever read a shounen battle manga, you probably know what to expect from these fights, and how they are also used to help flesh out and delve deeper into the characters.

When it comes down to the mystery, it was... well, I have to admit, because the book ultimately did not focus very strongly on the mystery of who activated the mist field due to the many fights, and it seemed more intent on just dwelling on the "there's a seventh hero!" surprise mystery, I was getting a bit worried, but there are certainly parts regarding the mystery that are actually cleverly set in the world of Rokka no Yuusha (a fantasy world) and could only work there. Adlet 's main concern is that he arrived at the temple first which was locked from the inside, but saw nobody in the temple activate the mist field (making him the main suspect as the self-proclaimed first on the scene) and some parts of the trick behind how the imposter managed to activate the field even though the room was sealed are both foreshadowed and hidden well. I think some more focus on for example the working of magic and other world-specific "rules" would have helped faciliate the trick a bit better, but it was certainly better than I had started to fear. The motive behind the deed is a lot less memorable, it kinda comes out of nowhere, and because Rokka no Yuusha is a series, the problem is barely resolved in this first book: yes, they identify the culprit, but they have not gotten one step closer to fighting the Demon God, and the book actually ends on a cliffhanger by throwing another surprise at the reader at the very end, so as a standalone book, it offers an okay mystery, that is however just a small part of the whole story. And depending on how invested you are in the main story, the mystery is not 'big' enough to really keep you entertained all the time.

And that's the point I am now at. The first volume of Rokka no Yuusha, which corresponds with the contents of the anime series, has an okay mystery in it, but it's at least equal parts fantasy action and it's also just a minor part of a bigger story that is not even close to being resolved in the first volume. I don't think I am invested enough in the story to want to read the rest too, at least not now, and I also have no idea what kind of mysteries the next novels will throw at you (the cliffhanger kinda has me worried to be honest, though I can only hope it's not really to going to do that in the second volume). It's worth a look at if you want to read a fantasy mystery novel, but be aware the mystery element is fairly light and that it is just the prologue to a larger story.

Original Japanese title(s): 山形石雄『六花の勇者』

The Message in the Haunted Mansion

"Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch."

Genesis 6:14 (KJV)

This reminds me, I still haven't finished Another Code: R in Another Code: Recolllection... I am a bit torn about the remake of the first game: I like the visuals a lot and how they reworked the mansion, but I do miss the darker vibe of the original manor, as well as the more memorable (but hardware-restricted) puzzles. I liked the original R a lot too so I really should get back to Recollection soon...

Suzuki Rika is now best known for her writing work on games like the Another Code and Kyle Hyde series for Nintendo hardware, which she developed at Cing, the company she co-founded. However, before her jump to the consoles, she was best known as a game developer working on adventure games for the PC for developer Riverhillsoft. Her best known work from that period are probably the J.B. Harold games, as most of them she worked on, like Murder Club and Manhattan Requiem, have seen an English release. The other series she developed at Riverhillsoft is the 1920 series, which was later retitled the Toudou Ryuunosuke Detective Diaries series. As the title suggests, you take up the role of private detective Toudou Ryuunosuke in these games set in the 1920s and work on serial murder cases in settings you know from classic mystery fiction, like a country house or an ocean liner. Suzuki wrote and designed two games with Toudou: Kohakiiro no Yuigon (1988) and Ougon no Rashinban (1990), but afterwards, the series stopped. However, developer Althi acquired the rights to the series in the early 2000s and starting in 2003, they first release feature phone ports of the first two games, and then continued on releasing more games in this series (of course, by that time Suzuki Rika wasn't involved anymore in the development). These games were a moderate success on feature phones and later smartphones it appears, as they released nine full entries in the end!

While this series was mostly developed on feature phones in Japan, they did port two of them to the Nintendo DS at the time: Kohakuiro no Yuigon (the first game) got a port on the DS on 2008, and one year later, they released a port of Aen no Hakobune - Soumatei Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ("The Zinc Ark - The Serial Murder Case at the Souma Manor"), a game originally released in 2005 on phones. And let me tell you: this release is rare. These games are pretty niche on their own, but Aen no Hakobune in particular released in very small numbers, and you could only get it used in Japan for insane prices. The problem however that it was also the only way to play Aen no Hakobune this last decade: the feature phone and smartphone games have not been available for purchase for a decade, and the games themselves are also not supported anymore by modern firmware iterations, so you can't even run the games anymore even if you had purchased them in the past. Heck, I have the iOS versions of Kohakuiro no Yuigon (and D.C. Connection), and I can't even re-download them or access the store pages anymore unless I whip out an old iPhone! But Aen no Hakobune was one of the few mystery games on the DS I figured I wouldn't be able to play due to the insane prices and no other way to play it.

Until G-Mode started doing their ports of feature phones games a few years back, and in 2023, they actually got started on the Toudou Ryuunosuke series! Previously, I already reviewed Ougon no Rashinban, the Switch port of the feature phone port of the second game, and earlier this year, G-Mode released the feature phone port of Aen no Hakobune, so I finally got to play this unicorn of mystery adventure gaming for a normal price. While prices have dropped slightly on used DS copies, at one time I have seen them go for as much as fifty times more expensive than the port you can now buy on the Switch. Being a fan of mystery fiction can be expensive...

 

That said, it's not like Aen no Hakobune is a paragon of mystery adventure gaming: it is basically the exact same game like Kohaku no Yuigon, Ougon no Rashinban and the earlier J.B. Harold games. The game is set at the gloomy manor of the Souma family standing on the edge of a cliff. The men in the family have always studied medicine, and they are running a mental hospital attached directly to the manor. The story starts with Toudou being hired by Kimura Tetta, a medical researcher and friend to investigate the curious death of his childhood friend Souma Keiichirou,who is a military doctor. Kimura is one of the researchers attached to the mental hospital who live in the Souma manor with the Souma family. When he went to the bathroom in the night, he noticed blood seeping from beneath the door of a basement room which haven't been opened for years, as the key has been lost. When they break the door open, they find Souma Keiichirou lying dead on the floor. He has apparently stabbed himself with an ornamental dagger, but he's also been sliced with a scalpel, which has not been found inside the locked room. While the police decides this is just a weird suicide, Kimura thinks it might be murder and he and the butler decide to hire Toudou to investigate the case and as Toudou starts asking questions to all the curious people who live in the Souma manor, he learns everyone has a secret to hide, but which of them is actually involved with Keiichirou's death?

As I mentioned, if you have played any of the major adventures that follow the Riverhillsoft adventure game model, you will have played all of them, and Aen no Hakobune is exactly that. You are just dropped in the game, and given many, many locations to visit in the Souma manor, and you are required to talk to a large cast of characters (over a dozen) and question them about a large number of topics (20~30 depending on the character). They might have something interesting (compressed into two text boxes...) to tell you about character X or Y, or about related topic 1 or 2; they might not. But you are still required to ask them about everything. Multiple times sometimes. The underlying idea is cool: at the start you know absolutely nothing, but as you interview everyone, you slowly start to make connections between all these topics: character A and B might offer you insights about character C (or even allow you catch them lying). You are initially free to choose who to interview about what in any order you like, so in that sense, it allows you a kind of freedom you seldom have in mystery games. But in practice, it just means talking to everyone about everything, which activates certain story flags, so then you go ask everyone about everything again, because *someone* might tell you a bit more now you have learned more information, but you seldom actually know what changed, so you are forced to explore every option you have just to make sure you didn't miss out on something. Sometimes learning fact A from characters B and C simply activates the possibility to talk about D to character E, even though it's not related at all. 

That said: Aen no Hakobune is one of the nicest games following this design, with a more limited cast and smaller location. Earlier games had you interview like 30, 40 people about as many topics, now it's just over a dozen! And some of them die over the course of the game! It's definitely the least tedious entry of the series to play and I barely needed to use a walkthrough this time (Yeah, I needed help to find that piece of evidence suddenly spawning in the bathroom at a certain point of the game even though it hadn't been there before...).

These games are ones that really would benefit from a modern remake though, more so than the Another Code games I mentioned at the start. The game design of these games is so horribly outdated, even though the atmosphere in these games is usually really good, and there are genuinely interesting characters to be found here, but they are usually just confined to speaking two or three text boxes about each topic, and can't really speak freely. But in Aen no Hakobune specifically, there are glimpses of really interesting topics that could've been put in the front much better, also to make the mystery more enticing, like a female researcher who is not respected by her peers because she's a female doctor in 1920s Japan, the rising militarism in the country, musings about the Great War in Europe and its consequences for the people in Japan, the mental hospital and the secrets it holds and so much more, but because of the very limited speaking freedom of all the characters, it never feels like you get the full picture. The locked room mystery in Aen no Hakobune isn't really interesting, but there's a pretty gruesome second death, but you don't see enough of the people's reactions to that, and the investigation into the decapitation seems a bit.... dry, even though you can make that so much more interesting mystery-wise. The motive of the murderer and the underlying backstory is also very interesting, firmly set in the context of the 1920s setting, but it is presented to the player is such a disjointed manner, it never feels as impressive as it could've been. There's honestly a lot of potential to tell much more compelling mysteries in these games, if the presentation and design was just more player-friendly.

A huge problem of these games as they are is also the fact you can't actually re-read most dialogue. Unlike so many other mystery games, you barely collect evidence or testimony in this game. Especially the fact you can't gather testimonies (or at least have a kind of summary) really hurts these games. Character A will mention once they saw character B doing something, and that'll allow you to press on B on that, but you'll only see the dialogue once (and there's a small mark on the screen for a second to indicate this was a story flag), but there's no way to re-read that in any way, so if you decide to do something else first, there's a good chance you'll forget that. A more modern game would likely record the testimony in same way and then allow you to present that evidence to the corresponding character. Or if these games were made now, at the very least they would give some kind of screen that records what testimonies you have gathered about each person to guide your investigation.

By the way, while I was happy I could play this game for a normal price, the DS version and subsequent iOS version do have much nicer (and larger) art... I wonder why they never put out the iOS versions of this series on Switch; they did release the first three J.B. Harold games on the Switch, based on the iOS versions...

Anyway, Aen no Hakobune is not a remarkable mystery adventure game by any means. It follows the model of the Riverhillsoft adventure games very rigidly, though the slightly more limited scope does make it a much more easier game to play. You play these games more for the atmosphere and the potential for a good story/characters, rather than the actual game, I'm afraid, but I always end up playing one of them once every two years or so... But I really, really hope someone would try to do an extensive remake of either this series or the J.B. Harold series, implementing completely different gameplay mechanics but keeping the underlying story beats and character reveals the same while also fleshing everything out. But I guess that's an impossible dream...

Original Japanese title(s): 『亜鉛の匣舟～相馬邸連続殺人事件』

Menace, Anyone?

"Submitted for the approval of The Midnight Society, I call this story..."

"Are You Afraid of the Dark?" 

I remember being really scared by a few Are You Afraid of the Dark episodes...

Disclosure: I translated Imamura's Death Among the Undead and Death Within the Evil Eye.

After his last summer break as an elementary school student, Yuusuke volunteers for a position for the class newspaper club: as a fan of the occult, he hopes to write about spooky stuff going in in the town in his last year. He is joined by class outsider Mina, who transferred late to this town and has still not managed to really mingle with the rest of her class, as well as former class representative Satsuki, who surprised everyone when she didn't offer to be the class representative this time. At first, Yuusuke is afraid Satsuki won't let him write a class newspaper on ghosts, but to his great surprise, she is actually very interested in such stories. To be exact: she is interested in the Seven Mysteries of Okusato, a collection of local ghost stories everybody in Okusato has heard about, even though it's not a set collection of stories, so there are actually more than seven. Satsuki's older cousin Mari was murdered one year ago, on the night before a great town festival. The murder was never solved, but Satsuki found files on Mari's computer indicating Mari had been investigating the Seven Mysteries of Okusato: Mari had compiled a file collecting six of the stories, like the Passenger in S Tunnel, Suicide Dam and The House with the Well. For some reason,  the seventh story is missing though that is often part of the "mystery" of the seven mysteries, but even so, the versions Mari has compiled all seem a bit different from the usual versions the locals hear. The three students decide to investigate the six stories as detailed by Mari, going to each spot in Okusato corresponding to the stories and see if they can find a clue that connects these stories to Mari's death. But as they dive into these stories and Mari's death, Yuusuke and Satsuki often find themselves on opposite sides, with Yuusuke believing in the supernatural, while Satsuki adheres to the rational. With Mina as their judge, can they decide what links these stories with Mari's death in Imamura Masahiro's 2022 novel Dispel?

Dispel is the first original full-length novel written by Imamura Masahiro that is not part of his Hiruko series (and coincidentally, by a different publisher). I adore the Hiruko novels of course, and I even translated them, so when I heard Imamura was going to write a non-related novel, I was really excited, as I knew the kind of gold he writes. The summary of Dispel also caught me at once, as I love my "seven mysteries of [locale]" trope in Japanese fiction. In terms of mystery fiction, there's of course the famous Kindaichi Shounen story that serves as the anime and live-action series' pilot, but I'm also for example a big fan of the horror game series Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi ("Scary Stories at School"), a long-running series where you get to hear about seven ghost and horror stories set at a certain school. Knowing how Imamura mixes the supernatural with tightly plotted mysteries in his Hiruko novels, I therefore was more than thrilled to start with Dispel.

The book is quite different from the Hiruko novels though. First of all, the book is definitely written with a younger audience in mind, using the elementary school students Yuusuke, Satsuki and Mina as the protagonists. While they don't always talk and act as actual children, they do cope with problems appropiate for their age/phase in life, and that coupled with the simple narration from their point of view, it's clear Dispel was written for a juvenile ~ TA audience. As said, the three don't always come across as a real children because they are a bit too clever/quick on the uptake and feel more like older teenagers at time, but the way the three all have their growth arcs as they tackle this mystery while preparing to graduate from elementary school is something some readers might find very attractive.

As for the mystery, Dispel is surprisingly very oriented on the seven mysteries of Okusato. Every two weeks or so, the members of the club travel to a different location in Okusato to investigate one of the stories left by Mari, hoping to find out why she was investigating these variants of the stories. These stories function both as a ghost story, as well as a mini-mystery episode. As horror stories, they sound just familiar enough to recognize as "classic urban legends/ghost stories", but with enough unique details to keep you interested in the story itself and fans of urban legends and Japanese ghost stories will probably find them entertaining. Each time, the trio realize something in the story as left by Mari is actually a hint to something else, something they only notice when they visit the place in question. Some of these hints are pretty clever, and thus the ghost stories work pretty ingeniously as "mystery stories", as the reader is required to compare the scary story with reality, and has to figure out 1) what is actually not the same as the story and 2) try to explain what this difference actually means. While some of these questions are a bit open-ended, so hard to explain solely from the reader's point of view, it's stil fun seeing basically folklore study methodology applied to these stories, and often, the revelation feels quite satisfying. These revelations of course chain into some bigger revelation, all tied to Mari's death.

What is interesting is that the book also follows a structure reminiscent of Hayarigami, with Yuusuke preferring a supernatural explanation, Satsuki a rational one, and Mina acting as the judge. As the story progresses, we see both Yuusuke and Satsuki proposing their own explanations to the mystery and also attacking each other's arguments, and for the longest time, the reader honestly never really knows whether there's a rational explanation, or whether there perhaps really is something supernatural (but fairly clewed) going on. Mina works well as a fair judge, not favoring either side and willing to poke holes in both Satsuki and Yuusuke's theories. The book really keeps things thrilling until the end regarding who'll be right, and while with a lot of mystery authors, you'd be inclined to believe the "rational" will automatically win at the end, it's the fact we know Imamura of all people is writing this, that makes this work: you know he's not afraid of using the supernatural, but that doesn't mean he will use it, so you honestly don't know until the end.

To be honest though, I thought the actual explanation to how it was all connected to Mari's death was less interesting than the whole journey to the revelation. Finding glimpses of what seemed to be pointing to a bigger truth with each story worked better for the 'urban legend' atmosphere, than actually revealing everything at the end, I guess, but then again, this is still a mystery novel so you can't really skip this part....

Overall, I did find Dispel an enjoyable novel though. It is certainly a very unique work, and I don't think I have really read any mystery novels that follow a similar structure, something like a hidden treasure hunt within a kind of short story collection. While I don't think Dispel was as good as Imamura's Hiruko novels, it's still a fun horror-focused mystery novel aimed at a younger audience, and I am looking forward to seeing him fan out even more in the future!

Original Japanese title(s): 今村昌弘『でぃすぺる』

Art of Darkness!

「人を呪わば穴二つ」

 

"Curses return upon the heads of those that curse"

(Proverb) 

Huh, I have done more audio drama reviews than I thought... Though it's been a while!

Kitayama Takekuni is a writer strongly associated with the locked room murder mystery and other impossible crimes, and as his nickname of "Kitayama of the physical tricks" implies, he specializes in impossible murder mysteries that rely on a physical trick. And with that, I don't mean a string and needle, but like (hypothethically) houses that rotate or fly around, corpses being shot across a field with a cannon, that kind of thing. Most of the mysteries I have read written by him will feature visual aids like diagrams and floorplans to help the reader visualize the scene, as you often have to think in two, or three dimensions to figure out how the murderer managed to set the scene in such a way. When the murder is being explained at the end of  the story, you can often expect an updated diagram with arrows and other additions to explain how a corpse disappeared from scene A and appeared at scene B, or how a Rube Goldberg contraption helped lock the door from the inside.

In that sense, Kitayama Takekuni is basically the last author I'd expected to write an audio drama, precisely because his mysteries often rely on the visual aspect. Of course, he does not exclusively write such mysteries, but it's definitely his trademark style and his strength, and it is hard to imagine how a genuine Kitayama Takekuni mystery would work within the framework of an audio drama.

Which is why I was pretty surprised when I learned that Kitayama Takekuni has indeed written the scenario of a mystery audio drama: Shiromajutsu Tantei Mashiro Mami ("White Mage Detective Mashiro Mami") was released in 2020 by Mausu Promotion (a voice acting school) in their "Two Actor Theater" line: these audio dramas only feature two voice actors, each having a fixed role, so the stories play out via the conversations of these characters. Shiromajutsu Tantei Mashiro Mami features the talents of Kuwahara Yuuki and Takada Yuuki and starts off with Rina, a high school student, on her way to visit a venue with fortune tellers: the place is hugely popular, with a three month waiting list and a consultation session is far from cheap! But when Rina arrives the venue, she's spoken to by a girl with an eyepatch and a crutch, who tells Rina she really shouldn't go to that place, as the fortune tellers there are just money-grabbing charlatans. The girl then introduces herself as "the white mage detective" Mashiro Mami, and explains she too is a fortune teller, specializing in undoing curses (She choose the title 'white mage detective' to sound cooler). Because Mami looks as suspicious as her self-chosen name sounds, Rina is at first hesitant to listen to her any longer, but when Mami manages to accurately point out something that relates to the problem Rina has, she decides to visit Mami at her office for a consultation.

For Rina has an occult problem. Her family owns a painting which is said to be cursed: the painting depicts a woman, with wet hair and a haze covering the painting, like it's raining or there's mist. A rope-like line can be seen extending upwards from behind her neck, which is why the painting is known online as the hanged woman. The painting belonged to Rina's uncle, but he and his family died three years ago: he and his wife were hanging from a tree in the garden, while their son had been drowned in a puddle just outside the garden, having been hit on the head first. The circumstances seemed to suggest Rina's uncle had decided to commit suicide with the whole family (killing the son first). While the fact Rina's cousin had recently quit his job and was becoming more and more socially isolated had been weighing on her uncle's mind, it seems a weak motive for a forced suicide. The fact her uncle and aunt died in the same way as the painting doesn't help Rina's worries, especially as soon after their death, an image of the painting started to make its rounds on the internet, accompanied by the story it is cursed. Murder however seems ruled out: it had been raining earlier that night, and no foot tracks of outsiders were found in the grounds surrounding the house. Rina hopes Mami can investigate the painting and lift the curse, if there's one. But surprisingly, Mami's method of 'lifting a curse' depends a lot on meticulous investigation and deducing what really happened at the house...

As a mystery story, this is pretty short and while nothing mind-blowing happens here, it's pretty decent. You can tell Kitayama does know he's writing for an audio production with only two actors: the list of characters is fairly limited and there are little "tricks" to make some conversations feel natural, like Mami being too frightened to look at a photograph of the cursed painting, so Rina is forced to explain it verbally to Mami (and to the listener). Which is why it's funny how one of the most important twists in the story is actually visually based, but if this were actually a visual medium, the twist might have been a bit too obvious: while it may have been more fair, the twist does work better having the relevant object being described to the listener, who will then imagine the object as they listen to the drama, and then having the twist sprung upon them. As a mystery, Shiromajutsu Tantei Mashiro Mami is a fairly lite tale, with Mami solving not only the mysterious deaths of Rina's uncle, aunt and cousin, but also the mystery of why there's an urban legend surrounding the painting, but don't come in expecting some of Kitayama's best work here, but it's decent enough. Though I guess, a lot of it does implicitly includes the disclaimer of "within the confines of an audio drama". For at the same time, I can't deny the framework of the audio drama really doesn't allow Takeyama to do what he's best at (impossible crimes based on almost ridiculously grand physical tricks) and the drama isn't very long either (less than a hour). I would have loved to see more of this series, as this feels more like a nice prologue/first story, and you can are left wanting for the "main body".

I also like the two characters a lot: Rina's a lot sharper than she appears at first and certainly not just a gullible high school student, while Mami on the other hand is obviously a clever detective, but can also be very clumsy and she's a bit of a scaredy cat and these two have some really funny interactions. Which is another reason why I'd want to see more of this series: they are set-up as a really entertaining detecting duo and the epilogue of the story also shows the two having becoming close, so you feel more should come.

Shiromajutsu Tantei Mashiro Mami is in no way really a work that allowed Kitayama Takekuni to do what he's best at in terms of mystery writing, but nonetheless, it's an entertaining short mystery that shows potential for more. Though I guess since this originally came out in 2020 and nothing has followed, neither as audio drama nor in any format, I guess this will be all we'll hear from Mami and Rina.

Original Japanese title(s): マウスプロモーション、北山猛邦 (シナリオ）『マウス二人芝居     白魔術探偵・真白真実』