The Butterfly Murder Case / 蝶々殺人事件

While Kousuke Kindaichi is by far Seishi Yokomizo’s most famous fictional detective, he is not the only one. Yokomizo also wrote many books about Professor Rintarou Yuri—and in fact, Yuri predates Kindaichi by more than a decade. Although it’s not something I’m going to obsess over, I typically prefer to read series in order. However, because Amazon has literally the worst numbering scheme imaginable, The Butterfly Murder Case is, in fact, the final Professor Yuri novel.

Snow White / スノーホワイト

Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the cleverest of them all?

Snow White is a light, cute and unique book, and now that I’ve read the second Sanzunokawa book, I think I have a much better idea of how this series operates. They are deductive novels, not murder mysteries. They involve some supernatural element, with the characters trying to achieve some goal revolving around that supernatural element.

And the series detective, Kotowari Sanzunokawa, is the villain.

A Great Detective Never Lies / 名探偵は嘘をつかない

A Great Detective Never Lies is slightly convoluted, so bear with me for a moment.

Jack the Poetical Private / 詩的私的ジャック

Despite its focus on STEM, the S&M series sure seems to have an aversion to formula. While the previous book broke the mold by moving from a lab to a more traditional manor, Jack the Poetical Private instead breaks free of the closed circle. Unfortunately this didn't quite work out, and Jack the Poetical Private is the weakest entry in the series thus far.

Definitely no underlying reason for that...

The Seven Great Detectives / 7人の名探偵

Yukito Ayatsuji’s The Decagon House Murders was published in 1987, and is credited with kick-starting the shin-honkaku (new orthodox) movement of murder mystery writing. Three (and a half) decades later, the genre is still going strong! There were several pieces and events in 2018 commemorating the 30-year anniversary of the influential work, and one of those was The Seven Great Detectives, a collection containing short stories from seven shin-honkaku writers.

Legend of Grimrock II

Legend of Grimrock II is a masterpiece. Go give the developers your money.

Observation

I’m going to just come right out and say it: I didn’t like Observation much. It’s a sci-fi mystery thriller game with a rote linear plot and confusing controls. Honestly, if it just stuck to regurgitating 2001: A Space Odyssey I probably wouldn’t have minded it that much; it’s doing so with such a horrible control scheme that irks me.

Rainbow Toothbrushes: Refractions of Lychee Kamiki / 虹の歯ブラシ 上木らいち発散

Returning from The ???????? Murder Case, Rainbow Toothbrushes features high-school prostitute Lychee Kamiki as she screws and deduces her way through an assortment of lewd cases. In The ???????? Murder Case, Kamiki functioned almost like a side character (until she started having sex with everyone and solving the case), but in this short story collection both Kamiki and the lecherous subject matter are presented front and center.

Murder in the Hall of the Eye: The Book / 眼球堂の殺人 ~The Book~

Eye see you, heheheh…

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?

The Postscript Murders

I had a snarky zinger to open this review, but it leans a bit heavily into spoilers and, no matter how worthless I think a book is (spoilers for my opinion), I just can't bring myself to put spoilers of that level above a cut without warning. So now you've been warned. I'm a bit looser than usual with spoilers in this review, but I do my best to make up for that with a thorough roasting.

Mathematical Goodbye / 笑わない数学者

Mathematical Goodbye is a strange book. It’s different from the previous books in the S&M series (standing for the protagonists’ names, Saikawa and Moe, and nothing else). The main trick is exceedingly obvious from the start, quite similar to another book I’ve panned on this blog (link purposefully withheld), and there aren’t any secondary tricks to salvage it. Basically, this is the type of book I’d normally consider a waste of time… and yet I liked it a lot.

Wings in the Dark: Mercator Ayu - The Last Incident / 翼ある闇 メルカトル鮎最後の事件

Wings in the Dark is phenomenal. But before I gush about it, I must proceed with the airing of grievances.

Why does it have to have “Mercator Ayu The Last Incident” on the cover?? I actually have a fairly rigid hierarchy for how I select the English titles for Japanese works in my blog. First, if there’s an official English translation, I use that name. Then, if an English title is presented by the book itself, I’ll use that. If someone else (read as: Ho-Ling Wong) has covered the book, I’ll use their translation of the title for consistency in the English-speaking Japanese mystery fiction blogosphere. (Well, unless I don’t really like that translation. Sorry, Ho-Ling.) Finally, if there’s absolutely nothing else, I’ll use my own translation.

So I need to title this post “Wings in the Dark: Mercator Ayu - The Last Incident” because as you can see for yourself that’s what it says on the cover. Which is stilted in English! Without that I could easily translate the Japanese title into “Wings in the Dark: the Final Case of Ayu Mercator,” which works perfectly fine. But noooo, I’m stuck with “Mercator Ayu - The Last Incident.”

To add salt to the wound, an earlier edition of Wings in the Dark apparently has “Messiah” as the English title. That would’ve been fine too! But they just had to go and change it. (As I've previously discussed, for my posts I try to use the actual cover of whatever version I experienced, so I can't just use the "Messiah" cover for this post, either. And yeah, there's still that little tiny "Messiah" on this cover, but it's clearly beaten out by the other English.)

Anyway, that’s my biggest grievance with this book.

Mystery Arena / ミステリー・アリーナ

Detective fiction is a huge genre in Japan. This probably isn’t that surprising, considering the consistent stream of Japanese mystery novels that get published, or the fact that Ace Attorney and Danganronpa are Japanese franchises, or that Detective Conan is a multimedia juggernaut. Mysteries are so popular, they even have TV shows where guests are confronted with a crime that they then have to solve.

Of course, actually finding time to sit down and watch a TV show can be a bit annoying... So what if instead of a TV show, we have a book about a TV show where contestants are given a murder mystery story and need to solve it? It's the excitement of a gameshow with the accessibility of a novel. Genius!

Hence, Mystery Arena was born. Maybe. (Probably not.)