The Resurrection Fireplace (2011) by Hiroko Minagawa

Hiroko Minagawa is a Japanese writer of fantasy, horror and mystery fiction whose Hirakasete itadaki kōei desu (I'm Honored to Open It, 2011) was the recipient of the 2012 Honkaku Mystery Award and Bento Books released an English translation in 2019 – published under a new title, The Resurrection Fireplace. The book was initially announced under the title The Case of the Curious Cadaver in the Dissectorium of Dr. Daniel Burton, but It Was An Honor to Open You Up would have been a better title than The Resurrection Fireplace. It's much closer to the original Japanese title and would have fitted the overall story better. Particularly the ending.

Either way, The Resurrection Fireplace is not your typical shin honkaku mystery and is hard to pigeonhole. For all intents and purposes, it's a historical and cultural travelogue of 1770s London when body-snatchers scavenged the cemeteries and secret autopsies were performed by candlelight, but it's predominantly a character-driven, Dickensian crime novel that still manages to have an ambitious puzzle plot. There are even scraps of the bibliophile detective story, a dramatic courtroom conclusion and more. What's even more astonishing, is that this sprightly and surprisingly consistent hodgepodge mystery was penned by an 80-year-old! So let's begin the postmortem.

The first half of The Resurrection Fireplace tells two different, but intertwined, stories in alternating chapters with the main story centering on the pioneering physician, Dr. Daniel Barton, who recognized that the science of anatomy has barely progressed in England – because "most people took a dim view of dissection" in 1770. Dr. Barton receives only six cadavers annually from the state, which is barely enough and makes his research depended on body-snatchers. For a time, Dr. Barton and his five favored pupils, Nigel Hart, Edward Turner, Clarence Spooner, Benjamin Beamis and Albert Wood, were able to work in peace at the anatomy school during summer recess. When the heat made it impossible to do perform legal dissections. However, their work eventually placed them at odds with the Bow Street Runners and the magistrate for the City and Liberty of Westminster, Sir John Fielding.

Sir John is an actual historical figure who helped his older half-brother and previous magistrate, Henry Fielding, reform the policing of London by replacing the mercenary thief-takers with "trusted officers" who were paid a fixed salary and strictly forbidden to accept bribes. Sir John expanded and strengthened the force with district stations and "working with officers there to apprehend criminals." Since he lost his sight as a young man, Sir John became known as the Blind Beak of Bow Street. I suppose that makes him the first blind detective on record.

Normally, there's nobody to complain when corpses of indigents or beggars get snatched, but the last corpse they purchased turned out to be of a baronet's unmarried daughter, Miss Elaine Roughhead, who was six months pregnant – which is only the beginning of their troubles. Dr. Barton detects traces of arsenic in the body and another body turns up in the dissection room at the same moment Sir John's assistant is their to investigate the Roughhead case. The body is of a young, naked man whose arms were amputated at the elbow and both legs below the knee. An ink stain on his chest is interpreted as a dying message. The Resurrection Fireplace can have 18th century England as its setting all it wants, but the plot is at its heart unmistakably Japanese. More on that in a moment.

I think the chapters covering the tug-of-war between Sir John and Dr. Barton and his pupils will delight fans of Christianna Brand. There's a great deal of affection among the students for their teacher and each other, which is the fuel powering the plot. So they're constantly running interference, temper with evidence, give false or incomplete statements and placing a noose around their own neck to protect someone else. This applies to the second storyline as well.

The second story is woven around a 17-year-old boy, Nathan Cullen, who had "mastered the language and script of an earlier century" and came to London to get his poetry printed, but Nathan also carries old parchment on him with an ancient poem written on it – which he found collecting dust in an attic. During his stay, Nathan befriends two of Dr. Barton's pupils and meets Miss Elaine Roughhead. Who inspires him to write an archaic poem titled Elegy. However, the story of Nathan Cullen has a Dickensian flavor to it as it shows the poor living conditions and injustices suffered by the lower social classes. This comes to a head when Nathan is swept up in an anti-government riot, arrested and imprisoned in Newgate Prison, which was not exactly known at the time as a five-star resort. A notable scene is when Nathan speaks with another prisoner, a mere child, who found a coin in the street and was immediately accused of stealing. Thieves are usually hung and without the money to pay a lawyer, the child was doomed to die, but the court took pity and exiled him to the colonies with a mark "to show he was a criminal." Nathan's troubles continue after his release when he falls into the hands of a villain with designs on his ancient poem and mastery of "the emotive language" of medieval English.

So these are two very divergent storylines about mutilated bodies and ancient poetry, linked together by the characters, but did it work when these strands were pulled together. Technically, no. Yes, the puzzle is not without ambition, but the problem is that there were more red herrings and faked clues than actual clues. This makes the plot, technically speaking, unfair with all the covering, lying and manipulating evidence without any genuine clues. Nevertheless, you can still work out a large part of the plot and anticipate the surprise twist with nothing more than a basic understanding of the tropes of the Japanese detective story. There was something done to one of the bodies that immediately gave away a big piece of the puzzle. Like I said, it's unmistakably a Japanese detective novel, but not a very typical one.

This makes it difficult to sum up, or recommend, The Resurrection Fireplace to readers familiar with the translations of Takemaru Abiko, Yukito Ayatsuji, Soji Shimada and Seishi Yokomizo. Hiroko Minagawa is a little less orthodox here and the result is described as standing somewhere between Katsuhiko Takahashi's quasi-historical Sharaka satsujin jiken (The Case of the Sharaka Murders, 1983) with its ambitious, but imperfect, plotting and the stylings of NisiOisiN's Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002). However, you can probably chalk the latter down to having seen the Japanese cover before reading the book and couldn't help seeing the characters as somewhat manga-like. A good example is the relationship between Dr. Barton and his pupils, which is not as strictly academic as it would have actually been in the 18th century. And there other aspects that bleed through the story betraying that it was written by a modern, non-English writer.

So, plotwise, The Resurrection Fireplace is not the best shin honkaku mystery currently available in English and therefore hard to recommend to the regular readers of this blog, but the rich, imaginative storytelling, the Japanese portrayal of 18th century London and characterization stray off the beaten track – making it a perfect read if you're looking for something a little different. Just don't expect to find another Shimada or Yokomizo. 

A note for the reader: Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate, is the detective in a series of historical mystery novel by Bruce Alexander and Blind Justice (1994) is listed in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). Yes, it's on the big pile. So stay tuned!

A warning to the reader: The Resurrection Fireplace is referred to in several places as a locked room mystery, but the reported locked room and impossible situation were only teased as such. Such as the appearance of the limbless body in the dissection room or a later murder in a disreputable establishment, but there's always an unlocked door, an open window or a hiding spot. Oh, well, you have it all.