The best way I can describe Murder in the Hall of the Eye is “discount Hiroshi Mori.” Which on one hand feels a bit disrespectful to Ritsu Shuuki, but on the other hand really does feel like the most effective way to convey a general overview of the book. Murder in the Hall of the Eye is a murder mystery with a STEM focus, which is exactly Mori’s wheelhouse. But Murder in the Hall of the Eye adds an isolated, remote mansion into the mix, which does give the book a bit of a different flavor. This is an ambitious novel, and it… kind of pays off?
Our protagonist and detective is Tadahito Towada, a nomadic mathematician who wanders the world looking for other mathematicians to collaborate and research with. He is an eccentric but chill dude. (By the way, “Tadahito” literally means “ordinary guy.” Fun naming scheme in this book.)
One day Towada receives an invitation to a party hosted by You (that’s “yoh,” not “yuu”) Todoroki, an architect as famous for his skill as for his massive ego and belief that architecture is literally the most important science in the world, in Todoroki’s personal home and architectural masterpiece, the Hall of the Eye.
The slight snag: Towada is followed everywhere by Aiko Mutsu, a journalist (and our narrator) who wants to write a piece on Towada, but the invitation was addressed to Towada alone. The Hall of the Eye is located deep in the mountains, so if Mutsu is turned away… well, she won’t have a fun time making the return trip.
Towada goes to the Hall of the Eye because he was invited, so why shouldn’t he? Mutsu follows because that's what she does, even though the pair thinks there’s a fair chance Todoroki will turn her away at the gate… but he surprisingly allows Mutsu to stay and join the party, which is full of famous people at the top of their respective fields.
Remote location? Check. Improbably constructed mansion? Check. Old reclusive crazy grumpy rich guy? Double check. Yeah, you all know where this is going.
Before continuing, I need to explain the layout of the Hall of the Eye. There are several reasons the building has that name, but one reason is that from above the structure looks like an eyeball (as if a person were looking downwards). At the south end is the "pupil," a black circular structure containing the dining room and bedrooms, which is fully enveloped by a circular hallway representing the iris. The iris connects to each bedroom and the dining room from the south end, and on the north side has windows looking out. The white of the eye is composed of a massive marble basin in which the pupil and iris are raised. (This house reportedly took over half of Todoroki’s fortune to build.) The basin also has a number of large marble pillars inside. (I like to think they represent eye floaters.)
Anyway, the next morning the group discovers Todoroki impaled by one of the pillars in the basin. Or at least, they think they do. There isn’t actually any way in or out of the basin, so they cannot directly investigate the “body.” But that just begs the question of how the culprit managed to get the body on top of the pillar. The group eventually hypothesizes that the “victim” is just a dummy prepared by Todoroki, and this is just a test to prove that architecture is superior to other fields of stuff—so that adds to this situation the question of whether this is even a murder or not. (This is a murder mystery novel, so you get one guess.)
The group also discovers that the front door is locked and there are no other exits (what is it with murder mysteries and fire hazards?) so they’re trapped until help arrives, whenever that is. Of course more people die as the book progresses, but the impaled body is the marquee mystery.
There are a lot of decent elements and ideas in this book, but they just don’t gel together that well. For instance, this book feels like it’s trying to be a STEM mystery (almost like Hiroshi Mori, you could say), since all the characters are at the top of a STEM or STEM-adjacent field, and Todoroki’s big schtick is his unyielding belief that architecture is the emperor supreme of all sciences, but… there’s no connection to STEM beyond this surface-level setting. The cast could’ve been freewheeling hippies in a house designed on drugs and the plot would be the same. (Meanwhile, for example, the first S&M book takes place in a cutting-edge electronic research lab and the second book takes place in an extreme climate research lab. The third book admittedly fits the same “STEM cast in a non-STEM location” mold as Murder in the Hall of the Eye, but that’s the exception in S&M while it’s the entry point of this series.)
The tricks are wild and over-the-top, which I appreciated but could also see backfiring for some readers. There was one trick in particular that I liked and thought was clever, but according to Amazon reviewers it was stolen wholesale from another work. I don’t know and couldn’t figure out what they were referring to, and it’d be unfortunate if it’s true. On the other hand, the selection of the culprit is the most boring choice and the motive is straight-up bizarre.
I liked the concept behind the ending, but the execution felt a bit lacking. Maybe it’s because the clues don’t feel sufficient at all. One clue requires figuring out which part of the information we, the reader, were given is “real” and which is “fake” without any sort of external indication. Another clue is extraordinarily vague and wishy-washy. The ending also takes advantage of a narrative trick that is so minor it doesn’t even feel like it was worth including.
There was also something about Towada himself I just couldn’t grasp. He’s portrayed as eccentric, which is fine, but also as extremely logical. He’s a diehard agnostic… but also holds a deep belief in the existence of The Book, a book that contains all axioms and proofs governing the world. But… why?! Towada’s logical nature prevents him from being theist (or atheist), but why does he believe in a magic book? What proof of its existence does he have? Towada’s belief in The Book seems to cut against all his other character traits. The Book doesn’t show up in the novel or factor into the plot or anything like that, it’s just a random tangent Towada talks about sometimes and Shuuki thought it was important enough to insert as the subtitle of the book and I want to know why.
Deep breath.
I enjoyed the writing of the prose in the book, which I typically don’t even pay attention to because I’m so busy just trying to figure out what’s being said. There are several passages that feature a number of successive lines in a pattern, which I thought was fun. I don’t know how a native Japanese speaker would take it (maybe they’d find it tacky?) but I liked it.
Murder in the Hall of the Eye is one giant ball of average. (Or is it median?) Some plot elements are great, some are lacking, and some are fine but don’t fit too well with the others. The result is neither outstanding nor objectionable. I think there’s potential for the series, and if you like big tricks Murder in the Hall of the Eye is probably worth checking out eventually, but there’s no need to fast-track it to the top of your list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s#Personality
ReplyDeleteI guess this explains where the 「Tｈｅ Ｂｏｏｋ」comes from.
> He had his own idiosyncratic vocabulary; although an agnostic atheist,[68][69] he spoke of "The Book", a visualization of a book in which God had written down the best and most elegant proofs for mathematical theorems.[70] Lecturing in 1985 he said, "You don't have to believe in God, but you should believe in The Book." He himself doubted the existence of God, whom he called the "Supreme Fascist" (SF).[71][72] He accused SF of hiding his socks and Hungarian passports, and of keeping the most elegant mathematical proofs to himself. When he saw a particularly beautiful mathematical proof he would exclaim, "This one's from The Book!" This later inspired a book titled Proofs from the Book.
Huh, from a quick skim of the Wikipedia page it seems like Tadahito was based on Erdos as a whole. Neat find! (The Book still feels a bit weird/out of place, but at least now I know where it came from.)
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