Crystal Pyramid / 水晶のピラミッド

Crystal Pyramid is a grand, larger-than-life mystery that is perhaps a bit too grand and larger-than-life. Souji Shimada’s recurring detective Kiyoshi Mitarai investigates a murder that occurred at a full-scale recreation of the Great Pyramid of Giza on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, and this mystery works really well, but there’s a lot of extraneous flak that comes with it.

Numerical Models / 数奇にして模型

Numerical Models is the penultimate entry in Hiroshi Mori’s S&M series and features a model (person) murdered at a model (toy) convention, but unfortunately falls quite short of being a model (paragon) murder mystery.

Murder in the Crimson Manor / 紅蓮館の殺人

Murder in the Crimson Manor is lit. Actually, I think it’s just okay, but “Murder in the Crimson Manor is lit” seemed like a snappier opening, and obliques references the massive fire that occurs in the story. It’s competently plotted, has a decent premise, and employs some fun tropes… but these various elements don’t reinforce each other, and there was nothing that wowed me. So while I liked Murder in the Crimson Manor, my feelings are admittedly lukewarm.

Switch Back / 今はもうない

The S&M series has always had a lot of character work and philosophical tangents, and while they sometimes felt a bit overbearing, they never intruded on the mystery plot too much. But in Switch Back it feels like Mori has really drank his own Kool-Aid. I don’t know if Switch Back is my least favorite S&M book, but it’s definitely in the bottom tier. While the mystery plot isn’t bad, it’s incredibly bare, leaving the rest of the page count to be filled by awful character work.

The Locked Rooms of the Twin Snakes / 双蛇密室

The Locked Rooms of the Twin Snakes is the fourth book in the Lychee Kamiki series starring the titular high school prostitute detective, and I think it’s the perfect entry to read in the Year of the Snake. The book explores the past of Hiroshige Aikawa, a recurring character from the previous books that’s a policeman and one of Lychee’s clients. Other than the hardcore sex scenes, this book provides basically exactly what I’m looking for, with a wild but well-clued solution and a streamlined investigation with basically no fat to cut.

The Tragedy of 1 / 一の悲劇

I assume most people reading this blog know who Ellery Queen is, but for who don’t, he (actually the joint pseudonym for two cousins) is one of the most influential writers from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. He was famous for novels resolved by a chain of deductions from physical clues, used to narrow down the suspect list to one candidate. While there aren’t many authors writing mystery stories with that style of plotting in English nowadays, there are plenty of Japanese writers who have adopted the style, including Alice Arisugawa and Yuugo Aosaki (who was marketed as “Queen of the Heisei period” with quite unfortunate timing since Japan’s emperor passed shortly thereafter, ending the Heisei period).

But another author who writes in the Queensian school is Rintarou Norizuki (which, like Ellery Queen, is both the author’s pen name and the name of his fictional detective), author of The Tragedy of 1, which is clearly a reference to Queen’s Drury Lane series. To be honest, I’m not sure why I read this book. As you may have noticed from my blog, I usually play a series or read an author’s work in order unless there’s a particular reason to start with a different work. The Tragedy of 1 is not Norizuki’s first novel, and I can’t remember what (if anything) prompted me to buy it... but I suppose it’s a decent choice to read “1”st.

(Following the same convention as my Alice Arisugawa reviews, Norizuki will refer to the author and Rintarou to the character.)

The Wonder

Anna O’Donnell hasn’t eaten since her eleventh birthday four months ago.

Or at least, that’s what she and her family claim. 

As word of the girl spreads, some people believe Anna has received a divine blessing, while others claim the O’Donnells are just lying fraudsters. In order to settle the matter once and for all, a few community members decide to hire a neutral outside observer to watch Anna for two weeks and see if she actually eats or not. Thus Elizabeth “Lib” Wright, a Nightingale-trained nurse, travels from England to Anna’s small Irish hamlet. 

Is Anna’s fast a hoax? Or if she truly a wonder? 

Those Who Sneer Like the Mountain Fiend / 山魔の如き嗤うもの

Another Genya Toujou book, another series of bizarre murders in a remote village that are entangled with the local folklore. Those Who Sneer Like the Mountain Fiend is mainly set in the village of Kumado, but the impetus begins in the nearby village of Hado. Nobuyoshi Gouki is the youngest son of the Gouki family, a prominent clan in Hado. While Nobuyoshi’s father and brothers are outdoorsy and outgoing, Nobuyoshi is subdued and introspective. Naturally, he does not have a particularly happy upbringing. He leaves Hado to go to college in Tokyo and doesn’t look back. The Gouki family has a coming-of-age rite where each family member must visit three shrines in the holy mountains neighboring the village, but Nobuyoshi uses his studies as an excuse to put off the rite.

Eventually, however, once Nobuyoshi has graduated and gotten a job as a teacher, his grandmother persuades him to undergo the rite. While Nobuyoshi was always the black sheep of the family, he sees this as a way to potentially earn acceptance. Even if Nobuyoshi isn’t as physically active or familiar with the mountains as his brothers, the rite is essentially a day hike through a single-path trail, so it’s not a huge undertaking. 

Obviously, it doesn’t go as planned. (But, miraculously, it doesn’t end in murder!)

Who's the Shadow? / シャドウ

Who’s the Shadow? is about Ousuke Gamo, a boy whose luck would give the Baudelaires’ a run for its money. First his mom dies, and then his best friend’s mom dies, and then his best friend gets hit by a car. And that’s just the start of the book.

The Devotion of Suspect X / 容疑者Xの献身

I had The Devotion of Suspect X on my bookshelf for a while. It was famous and supposed to be really good, so I eagerly bought it. Then I realized it was technically third in the “Detective Galileo” series, so I bought and read Detective Galileo. And any interest I had in reading Suspect X dissipated. I hadn’t abandoned it completely—it was famous, after all—but I had no active desire to read it anymore. I figured I’d get around to it eventually… and eventually has finally come.

Fortunately, The Devotion of Suspect X is much, much better than the Detective Galileo stories, structured as an actual mystery novel and not a series of cheap science fair experiments. I didn’t love it, but I did enjoy it.

The Maid

The Maid needs to clean up its act. Ostensibly it’s a cozy mystery, but in reality it’s more like a contrived, saccharine story about an autistic woman overcoming adversity to find happiness.

It Walks By Night

It Walks By Night is the debut novel of John Dickson Carr, and much better than the other one. It features one of Carr’s recurring detectives, Henri Bencolin of the French police, and, naturally, a locked room murder. As a first novel, it seems emblematic—clever and bold, but a bit underdeveloped.

It Walks By Night / 夜歩く

It Walks By Night is an awful book that no one should read. This isn’t going to be a roast, because it’s not that kind of awful, but I think the tone of this review has been set. It Walks By Night takes place almost immediately before The Village of Eight Graves and features a fantastic atmosphere involving sleepwalking, a supremely dysfunctional family, and a cursed sword, but wastes it all.

Replaceable Summer / 夏のレプリカ

In the opening paragraph of my Illusion Acts Like Magic review, I described how Moe met her high school friend Tomoe Minosawa, and then never mentioned Tomoe again, and you might have thought that was kind of weird. First, that’s exactly what Illusion Acts Like Magic does, so Mori was weird first. Second, I was going somewhere with that! (And so was Mori.) While Tomoe is never mentioned again in Illusion Acts Like Magic, her adventure continues in Replaceable Summer, the next book in the S&M series, which takes place concurrently with Illusion Acts Like Magic.

Illusion Acts Like Magic / 幻惑の死と使途

Illusion Acts Like Magic begins with Moe meeting her friend Tomoe Minosawa and going to a magic show. Saikawa was supposed to come as well (a date!) but backs out at the last second because Saikawa. Tomoe is Moe’s best friend from high school. For a long time Tomoe saw Moe as an academic rival, while Moe… had no idea Tomoe existed. But once Tomoe confronted Moe they became fast friends. Anyway, Tomoe doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the book. At the magic show Moe receives an ad for an upcoming magic show at a local park, and that’s where the plot of the book really begins.

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.

And Then They Never Die / そして誰も死ななかった

The protagonist of And Then They Never Die, Ushio Oomata, is a sleazebag. He’s crass, rude, and a fraud—he’s a mystery novelist, but the only book he published was actually a manuscript he found among his dead father’s belongings. That book becomes a massive success, and Ushio decides to play along with the role, despite being uneducated, uncultured, and completely ignorant of the mystery genre. At least until he encounters a certain woman.

Ten years later, Ushio is a financially stable sleazebag. He works for an at-home health (read as: prostitution) company. One day he receives an invitation from a mystery novelist to a party on a private island celebrating the novelist’s career. (Despite being a one-hit wonder, Ushio is still known to the world as an author.) Ushio brushes off the invitation until he discovers one of the girls at his company moonlights as a mystery writer—and also received an invitation.

The pair and three other mystery novelists set out for the island, which contains nothing but the host's mansion and studio. However, when they arrive, their host is nowhere to be found, and five dolls have been set up in the dining room. With five four mystery writers (and one sleazebag) present, it doesn’t take them long to figure out what the dolls mean. The group is essentially stranded on the island (their boat lost some fuel on the ride over and doesn’t have enough for the return trip), so they resolve to take precautionary measures that night and figure out what to do tomorrow—which is not cautious enough, since someone massacres all five overnight.

House of Earth and Blood

The first sentence on the blurb on the back cover of House of Earth and Blood is “Half-Fae, half-human Bryce Quinlan loves her life.” And that’s how I knew things were going to horrifically wrong for her.

As even a quick glance at my blog will probably show, I’m interested mostly in mysteries and video games. But I love fantasy as well! (Perhaps not so surprising, since it’s the genre of many video games, especially RPGs.) The reason I don’t read much fantasy, however, is because, while I like fantasy, I like mystery more. So whenever I would buy a fantasy book, I ask myself… why not buy a mystery instead? And that's what I end up doing. 

But HOEAB was gifted to me by a friend, and so bypassed that entire ordeal. Plus it features a murder, so it’s not entirely off-brand? 

Turnabout Airport / 逆転空港

In the world of Ace Attorney, it seems impossible to be involved with the law without getting accused of murder once. (Or thrice.) Yet despite the seemingly irresistible pull of the defendant’s chair, there is one major character who has managed to avoid it… until now.

It’s finally time for Apollo’s time in the hot seat in Turnabout Airport, when the person in line in front of him at the security checkpoint rudely falls over and dies, stabbed to death by the bloody icepick in Apollo’s hand. (Apollo claims he just noticed it on the ground and picked it up without realizing what it was, a likely story.) And, of course, there was nobody else on line at the time besides Apollo and the victim. Whoops! Naturally, Phoenix must swoop in to save Apollo and prove his innocence.

Nobody Can Pass Judgment on Me / 誰も僕を裁けない

I’m fairly certain the title of the book is meant to be a defense against reading erotica in public…

Anyway, Nobody Can Pass Judgment on Me is the third entry in the Lychee Kamiki series, and my favorite so far. One day Lychee, our high schooler prostitute detective heroine, receives a package with a maid outfit and a letter from a man named Touzou Sakai requesting to hire Lychee as a live-in maid for the first week of May. Lychee has never heard of him before, but an internet search reveals that he and his brother run a massive machinery business—in other words, he’s filthy rich. It’s an odd request and Lychee isn’t sure whether she’s actually being hired as a maid or if that’s just a cover to take in an escort, but Lychee can’t resist the allure of cold, hard cash. So she goes to the Sakai estate and is hired as a maid—but it’s clear from her interactions with Touzou that he didn’t actually send the letter. The letter had Touzou’s personal seal, so it must have come from someone in the house. Lychee resolves to get to the bottom of this strange situation—but the next morning one of Touzou’s sons is discovered murdered in his room.