Doctors in the Isolated Room (1996) by MORI Hiroshi

Last year, the BBB finished the e-serialization of MORI Hiroshi's celebrated debut work and first ever Mephisto Prize recipient, Subete ga F ni naru (Everything Turns to F: The Perfect Insider, 1996), translated by the second winner of the Mephisto Prize, Ryusui Seiryoin – published as a complete ebook in February, 2023. The Perfect Insider is credited with starting the second shin honkaku wave that moved away from the traditional, Seishi Yokomizo-like trappings of the first wave by placing the puzzle plots in specialized areas rather than bizarre mansions, isolated islands and remote villages. The Perfect Insider certainly represents a departure from the works of first wave writers like Takemaru Abiko, Alice Arisugawa and Yukito Ayatsuji. A locked room mystery set at an IT research institute run by computers where the hermit-like group of researchers communicate via email, chat or VR meetings. In 1996, The Perfect Insider must have read like a science-fiction mystery hybrid recalling Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun (1956/57).

I was a bit more measured in my praise. The Perfect Insider definitely is a fascinating, mostly
well put together and fresh treatment of the classically-styled detective story, but not the best Japanese mystery translated so far. A mystery novel high on ideas, but not executed with rigor we have come to expect and associate with those first wavers.

However, The Perfect Insider is only a first for both MORI Hiroshi and the second shin honkaku wave. So wanted to read more. Fortunately, the e-serialization of the second novel, Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996), was already in progress and the final chapters were released last March – together with the complete ebook edition. Doctors in the Isolated Room is more my kind of detective novel than The Perfect Insider.

Doctors in the Isolated Room is the second title released in the S&M series, but it was actually the first of three completed and unpublished novels with The Perfect Insider being intended as the fourth book in the series. Hiroshi's editor made the call to make it the first in the series, because it worked better as an introduction to the series with a plot that would leave an impression on the reader. And, well, he wasn't wrong. The Perfect Insider turned Hiroshi into a bestselling novelist and kickstarted the scientific period of the second shin honkaku wave, which seems to have inspired personal favorites like Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series and Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) by "NisiOisiN." So, for me, that was one of the more interesting aspects of The Perfect Insider, but Doctors in the Isolated Room is exactly the type of detective story I was hoping to find last year in its predecessor.

Before diving into the story, I should note that the BBB edition concludes with a new interview in which Hiroshi calls Doctors in the Isolated Room "an embarrassing piece" and "one of the bitter experiences I don't really want to re-read myself." This can be dismissed as an author balking at his earlier work. It might not be as ambitious, or "transcending," as the celebrated The Perfect Insider, but as an intended "update" of Yukito Ayatsuji & co, it's a success story – which is impressive for a first try. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Doctors in the Isolated Room takes place a year after the events of The Perfect Insider and finds assistant professor Sohei Saikawa and his first-year student, Moe Nishinosono, embroiled in another "mysterious incident."

Two weeks previously, Hokuto Kita of the civil engineering department invited the two over to the Polar Environmental Research Center (PERC) for a tour of the low-temperature laboratory ("it's 20 degrees below zero here"). And to observe one of their experiments. What, exactly, they're doing is a long, technical story that needs not to be recounted here, except that it requires some patience to get from the first mention of the incident to the actual incident. However, if you can appreciate a well developed/specialized setting as much as a sound plot or engaging characters, the tour of the PERC building with its low-temperature laboratory is not going to disappoint you. Nor is the demonstration of the experiment, which is bound to plant certain ideas in your head. Afterwards, the instructors and graduate students of PERC have a little drinking party during which Kenjiro Niwa and Tamako Hattori, two grad students, go missing. A search ensued without results until they decide to unlock the preparation room and find Hattori's body. The body of Niwa is found moments later lying at the bottom of the stairs giving access to the loading room. Both stabbed in the back.

So begins, what the media would come to refer to as, "the PERC locked room murder case." Just like the premise, the locked crime scene is too detailed to describe and not as easy as simply every door and window being locked or watched. There several potential exits, ranging from doors, emergency exits and a defective shutter, which all appear to be blocked and prevented the murderer from escaping (unseen) from the locked portion of the PERC building. This is one of those large scale, architectural locked room murders that Herbert Resnicow specialized in a decade earlier. And no wonder. Hiroshi and Resnicow both had backgrounds in engineering. Doctors in the Isolated Room recalled Resnicow's The Dead Room (1987) where a deadly stabbing occurs in the anechoic chamber at a Hi-Fi company under impossible circumstances. Like the low-temperature laboratory, the anechoic chamber is a controlled environment used for specific experiments and opens the door to do something very different with the locked room puzzle. Resnicow conceived of a truly original, perhaps even unique, solution to the impossible stabbing in The Dead Room. However, while Resnicow concentrated solely on that one problem, Hiroshi turned the locked area of the PERC building into one giant puzzle box.

Firstly, the police search of the building uncovers another startling surprise adding another complication to an already tangled situation. Secondly, the PERC facilities sees several additional, seemingly impossible, incidents when Moe attacked and a fresh body is discovered in the loading room – bringing the noisy mass media to PERC ("Three Locked Rooms and Four Bodies"). Fascinatingly, it's not just the physical environment of PERC hosting a genuine mystery, but it's digital environment as well as Saikawa finds a ghost account hidden deep in PERC's UNIX system with Root privileges. Sure, it clearly dates the story, but it also adds some now historical charm to it. One of these days, we really should compile a list of these 1980s and '90s computer/internet detective stories (early internet access mysteries?). Anyway...

I didn't mention the majority of characters in Doctors in the Isolated Room, numbering well over twenty, because the majority of those characters came across as little more than numbers in a math problem. Saikawa is not an overly emotional person ("besides, I don't care much ... you know, about living things") whose initial surprise at the deaths near him turned into "a puzzlement, like a math problem" he was struggling to solve. So don't expect the usual routine of tackling a murder case or even a locked room mystery of this magnitude, which has both an advantage and a disadvantage. Well, depending on your personal preference and demands from a detective novel.

On the upside, the locked room aspect of the plot is given the space it needed. I feared the locked room-trick(s) would turn out to be either disappointingly simple or ingeniously messy and overly complicated. Neither was the case. The explanation of how the two grad students were killed is tricky, but clearly explained, easy to follow and visualize. Even better is the answer to that age-old question of the classically-styled detective story, "why did the criminal need to make it a locked room?" The other impossibilities are smaller, far less complicated parts in the overall plot, but all neatly dovetailed into the final explanation. So, plot-wise, Doctors in the Isolated Room is a small, technical marvel. However, if you demand engaging characters and some emotional depth to the plot/solution, Doctors in the Isolated Room is going to disappoint as it's consistently the weakest aspect of the plot. The clever locked room-trick also demands a pretty good and convincing reason to use it to kill two people, which tries to go for an emotional gut punch, but came across as very unconvincing in this academic, mostly clinical locked room mystery. So the motive behind the murders landed like a damp squib. I can forgive the lack of characterization, but the human element behind the murder falling flat is admittedly a smudge on an otherwise engrossing take on the impossible crime story.

Doctors in the Isolated Room is not a perfectly-rounded detective novel and perhaps too specialized/technical for some readers, but, purely as a densely-plotted locked room mystery with a research facility, it's an excellent and impressive first stab – better than The Perfect Insider. Hiroshi is a fresh new voice (for us, anyway) in the shin honkaku translation wave and look forward to the third entry in the S&W series. The BBB has already started the e-serialization of Warawanai sugakusha (Mathematical Goodbye, 1996), which should become available as a complete ebook sometime in February or March, 2025. Until then, I have Seishi Yokomizo's Akuma no temari uta (The Little Sparrow Murders, 1957/59), Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi hakuchou (The Black Swan Mystery, 1960) and Ayatsuji's Meirokan no satsujin (The Labyrinth House Murders, 1988), to carry me over.