12/19/19

The Kindaichi Case Files: The Santa Slayings by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato

The Santa Slayings is the 7th volume in the original series of The Kindaichi Case Files, written by Yozaburo Kanari and illustrated by Fumiyo Sato, which was among the 17 volumes that received an official release in the West – published during the golden days of TokyoPop. I mentioned in a previous review that there were gaps in my reading of the American releases and The Santa Slayings was one of the gaps.

So what better time to finally read, to my knowledge, the only seasonally-themed mystery in the series than the week preceding Christmas?

The Santa Slayings opens with a bleak prologue telling the reader that, ten years previously, the body of an unidentified woman was found off the coast of Kushiro, Hokkaido, which marked "the beginning of a tragic case." A case that would conclude ten years to the day later.

Hajime Kindaichi is unexpectedly invited by Detective Kotaro Tawarada, who first appeared in the abysmal The Mummy's Curse, to attend a Mystery Night at an exclusive, Western-style hotel during Christmas. However, this gracious invitation is in actuality a plea for help. The hotel received a letter threatening that whoever dares to disturb, or spoil, the writer's sanctuary "a bloody death as retribution" awaits them on Christmas Eve – signed "The Red-Beared Santa Claus." A mysterious figure who rented Room 315 for ten years and lived there as a recluse, but vanished one day. Reportedly, he had died in an accident.

A second problem bugging Detective Tawarada is the presence of the coldly competent, hard-bitten Hokkaido Police Superintendent, Fuwa Narumi. Several weeks before, there was a joint investigation between Aomori and Hokkaido Police, but, when the case was successfully closed, she wrote in her report that "the case was hindered by the Aomori police." And this damaged their reputation. So Detective Tawarada is now burdened with proving the real worth of the Aomori police force.

After this, the focus of the story shifts to the members of The Aprodia Theater Group, lead by the hated Suzue Bandai, who'll perform a two-part mystery play, but they immediately become the target of the red-bearded menace. Suzue Bandai receives a severed, but gift-wrapped, cat's head and their dressing room is thrashed. And that set the stage for murder.

During the final scene, the characters in the play share a toast, but the glass of the troupe leader contained cyanide and the police surveillance ensured nobody could have "snuck on to the stage to poison the glass" – which limited possibilities to "someone within the theater group." What follows is a series of murders, leaning heavily on some clever tricks, that carried the story. Starting with the poisoning-trick that made the murder on stage appear as if it was completely random. A trick that, in theory, only works with a very specific kind of victim, but a clever stunt nonetheless.
 
The third murder in the series is a tragic one and involved and involved Kindaichi personally, in more ways than one, when his roommate is murdered in Room 315 and Kindaichi is rendered unconscious by the murderer. So, when the door is opened, Kindaichi is placed under arrest, because he's the only one who could have committed the murder. The doors in the hotel have locks that can only be opened and locked with key cards, which automatically expire every twenty-four hours and the timing of the murder seems to exclude everyone except Kindaichi. A second aspect of the impossible murder is that Detective Tawarada saw the murderer standing in front of the window, of Room 315, five minutes pass midnight, but how did he manage to disappear from the locked room?

What makes this, plot-technically speaking, an interesting locked room problem is not the patchwork-trick, but how thoroughly the explanation broke down that locked room and the triple-layered motive justifying this elaborate setup – making this impossible murder a key-piece of the plot. Another noteworthy plot-thread is the one-hundred year history of Room 315. A grim history beginning with the suicide of the original hotel owner and the long occupation of the room by the red-bearded stranger, but it was never explained how this person was able to turn the whole room red.

So with a bag full of good tricks, false solutions and a surprising departure from the customary avenger-from-the-past motive, you would assume The Santa Slayings stands as one of the better, early titles in the series. Well, you're wrong. Remember, this is one of the volumes that was written by Yozaburo Kanari. And the poor sod was unable to keep the plot together during the denouement.

Despite all of the good or interesting plot-strands, Kanari thought it was necessary to add one more layer to the story. A layer allowing to add a surprise twist to the identity of the painfully obvious murderer, but this twist, coming out of nowhere, is so cringe-inducing ludicrous and unnecessary that it soured the whole story for me. I suspect this was only worked into the plot so that Kindaichi could have one of his moralizing speeches and emotionally break down the murderer in the last chapters. This is why I dislike Kanari so much. Watching him trying to plot and keep it together can be like watching a fly trying to get out of an open window.

I can only recommend The Santa Slayings to genuine fans of The Kindaichi Case Files, but advise everyone else to save themselves the money you'll likely have to spend in tracking down an overpriced, secondhand copy of the TokyoPop edition.

6 comments:

  1. Interestingly, they changed the third murder in all adaptations of this story. In the anime, it wasn't a murder, while in the live-action drama, they simply had a completely different character to fulfill that role (and the episode was very different anyway: Hajime was in the hospital, and Miyuki went to the hotel pretending to be Hajime because she used up all the money sent to them as a reward).

    The currently running story in Kindaichi, Age 37 bring Hajime back to the hotel by the way, so it might be interesting to see how the trauma here comes to haunt him. Though to be honest, even in the manga, it has been treated more like a running gag...

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    1. "Interestingly, they changed the third murder in all adaptations of this story."

      Honestly, I can understand why.

      V qba'g guvax gurer unf orra n qrngu bs n erpheevat fvqr-punenpgre gung unf zrnag yrff guna Fnxv'f zheqre.

      So why bother putting it in the anime/live-action adaptations.

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  2. Thanks for the review, and I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy it as much as “Headless Samurai”. To be fair, “Headless Samurai” is, I think, the best of the Kanari entries for the Young Kindaichi series.

    I have relatively fond memories of this one, and found one or two of the plot tricks quite clever. Admittedly, I watched this one as a live-action drama when I was young, and had yet to be exposed to the dazzling heights of the Golden Age genre... But I still think the culprit was reasonably well-hidden; even when re-reading the manga recently, I wouldn’t have caught onto his/her/their identity without prior knowledge.

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    1. "To be fair, "Headless Samurai" is, I think, the best of the Kanari entries for the Young Kindaichi series."

      You know, for all his shortcomings, Kanari has written some decent or even good volumes. The Headless Samurai is one of his best, but House of Wax is probably his best. I also liked Death TV, Smoke and Mirrors (a pleasant diversion from the series formula), The Magical Express and The Undying Butterflies. Sadly, he also churned out The Mummy's Curse, The Legend of Lake Hiren, No Noose is Good Noose and Graveyard Isle.

      "I have relatively fond memories of this one, and found one or two of the plot tricks quite clever."

      I acknowledged The Santa Slayings had some good tricks and liked that the plot ditched the avenger-from-the-past motive, but the finish makes it a middling effort at best. And, for me, another example why I don't like Kanari.

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  3. I just reached this part of my Kindaichi reading. I somehow liked it even less than you did. I've seen the two stitched-together locked-room tricks done better at least a dozen times each in different stories, and I figured it out pretty much immediately (it's the only solution really possible, given the set-up). The killer's identity was pretty obvious to me, too. The rest of the plot was just generic-at-best, utterly cheap-at-worst theatrical mystery cliches. While I liked the motives for the killer's plan, it absolutely fell apart when they introduced the killer's entirely unearned backstory based entirely on NOTHING but how she holds her spoon! The backstory is sweaty, eats up three chapters, and isn't earned at all. The whole drug dealing thing with a drug-dealer Santa stands out like a sore thumb as having almost nothing to do with the story around it. I liked the attempts to depart from the Kindaichi formula for the killer, but it's unearned and poorly-executed. I still like it better than the other stories, though...

    If you were interested, my ranking so far is...

    SMOKE & MIRRORS (C-Tier, 6/10)
    Santa Slayings (D-Tier, 5/10)
    Opera House 1 (D-Tier, 4.5/10)
    Lake Hiren (D-Tier, 3.75/10)
    Death TV (F-Tier, 3.25/10)
    Mummy's Curse (F-Tier, 1.00/10)

    Nothing I consider good yet.

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    1. That's a lot of words to say that Yozaburo Kanari sucks.

      I've to reread Death TV to be sure, but remember thinking it stood out among the earlier volumes as better than average. It certainly towered above its two predecessors, The Opera House Murders and The Mummy's Curse.

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