Medium - The Medium Detective Hisui Jouzuka / メディウム 霊媒探偵城塚翡翠

Shirou Kougetsu is your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Japanese mystery novelist. He writes novels, goes on wacky adventures with teenage sidekicks, and assists the police with actual murder investigations. You know, the usual. One day a college friend, Yuika (who’s a pretty young woman, obviously), tells Shirou that she recently got an odd reading at a psychic and feels a spirit has been following her ever since. In order to learn about this spirit, she asks Kougetsu to accompany her to visit a medium—the mysterious, delicate, and stunningly beautiful Hisui Jouzuka.

At the meeting Hisui demonstrates her powers, warns Yuika that she’s in danger, and asks to make a home visit to investigate further. However, when Hisui and Kougetsu go to visit Yuika, it’s too late—she’s been murdered in her apartment. The police suspect a break-in gone wrong, but Hisui tells Kougetsu that the culprit is a woman. Thus begins a partnership between medium and novelist: Hisui forms a conclusion using her power, and then Kougetsu uses his knowledge and experience as a mystery novelist to find evidence to back up Hisui’s findings (since they can’t just go to the police and directly report Hisui’s magic powers).

As Kougetsu and Hisui solve cases, we see interludes from the perspective of a serial killer who has been abducting and murdering beautiful young women. He’s extremely methodical and careful, and thus has avoided leaving any traces or clues for the police so far. He’s convinced himself that the only way someone would be able to catch him is with supernatural powers….

I hated Medium when I was reading it. I loved Medium when I finished.

Most of the stories just don’t work as mysteries. For instance, in the first story, Hisui tells us at the start that the culprit is a woman. There’s only one reasonable female suspect so the culprit isn’t a surprise, and there isn’t much of interest to the crime beyond that. The second story goes even further, with Hisui revealing the culprit at the end of the opening scene. (The third story is probably the closest to a functional mystery story, but I also feel like it was just an excuse for the author to show off his technical knowledge of cameras.) You could perhaps view the stories as howcatchems and howproveits rather than whodunnits or howdunnits, but I just don’t find those types of stories as interesting, and they aren’t pulled off well here. The logic often feels wishy-washy, with the plot circling the drain until its reached a sufficient word count.

It feels like a big draw of the book is supposed to be Hisui and Kougetsu’s relationship, but it’s just awful. Hisui acts innocent, naive, dainty, sweet, and kind. She has a super special awesome amazing special power, but is still completely useless on her own and needs Kougetsu to do any thinking for her. Kougetsu, on the other hand, has no discernible personality traits. In other words, he’s the perfect vessel for you to project yourself onto as Hisui inexplicably falls for him. It’s rote and heavy-handed.

So the mysteries aren’t interesting. The main character dynamic is boring and vaguely misogynistic. It’s clear that the plot is headed towards a confrontation between Hisui and the serial killer, but the interludes tell us the serial killer’s name, so regardless of how Hisui’s powers operate the final story won’t be able to work as a functional whodunnit. I didn’t think there was any way the final story could salvage the book.

And then it did.

I think that’s really all I can say about it. I don’t think everyone will like it—I suspect that the more you like the first part of the book, the less you’ll like the finale, and I could easily see both parts of the book falling flat for someone. But I loved it. Medium is a great book, and if you’re the kind of person who reads my blog and made it to the end of this review, you’ll probably like it too. (Just note that the final story relies on the first three, so as bad as they are, you need to read through them as well and can’t just skip to the last one.)