The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks (2022) by Danro Kamosaki

So I was perusing the blog-posts and reviews from the previous two, three months when I noticed it had been about that long since I came across a good, hefty locked room or impossible crime novel – going back to late February. That substantially-plotted impossible crime novel in question was Danro Kamosaki's Misshitsu ougon jidai no satsujin – Yuko no yakata to muttsu no trick (Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms – The House of Snow and the Six Tricks, 2022). You can't always pick a winner beforehand, but sometimes you can steer a bit in the right direction. When I say steering a bit in the right direction, I mean going for the blindingly obvious.

Danro Kamosaki's Misshitsu kyouran jidai no satsujin – Zekkai no katou to nanatsu no trick (Murder in the Age of Locked Room Mania – The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks, 2022) is the second entry in the "Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms" series translated by Mitsuda Madoy and "cosmmiicnana." Like its title suggests, it has even more locked room murders than the impossible crime extravaganza that's The House of Snow and the Six Tricks.

The premise of this series is basically a glimpse of what feels like my home universe/native timeline. A real-life locked room murder lead to the murderer being acquitted, "proof of non-resolution of a locked room is equivalent to proof of absence from the of a crime," which "was the same as acquitting a suspect with a perfect alibi" – not without consequences. The number of people murdered in locked rooms increased at an alarming rate alongside new kind of professionals and professions. There are specialized detectives tackling cases that can't be explained by one of the well-known tricks in the Ministry of Justice's Locked Room Classification List and appraisal companies who examine houses for secret passages and other nooks or crannies with ultrasound and x-rays. In the criminal underworld, "hitmen who specialized in locked room murders" ("they were called locked room agents") who for the right price would end their targets in a perfectly locked room. Not to be overlooked is the Tower of Dawn, a religious cult, dedicated to worshiping the scenes of locked room murders.

So that's background of The House of Snow and the Six Tricks in which 17-year-old high school student Kasumi Kuzushiro is dragged by Yozuki Asahina to house of a celebrated, but dead, mystery writer. A house that would soon host a series of grisly, seemingly impossible murders and reunion with an old school friend, Shitsuri Mitsumura, who has a knack for solving complicated puzzles. Particularly locked room puzzles.

The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks follows a similar setup, except for the opening pages. A notorious, nameless assassin-for-hire, known as "The Living Locked Room Library," receives an assignment to wipe out an entire group with one particular condition – eliminate the targets inside a locked room. One of the targets is a reclusive business tycoon, Aoi Otomigawara. She lives on an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean known as Wire Mesh Island. A solitary island that was once the home of the last living Golden Age mystery writer, Richard Moore, who died in 2010 aged 111. Yes, Moore's name is a Case Closed/Detective Conan reference. Anyway, Wire Mesh Island, formerly known as Full Moon Island, is encircled by a high wire mesh fence and the only gap, or entrance, is the gate at the dock which is under camera surveillance. Everything that happen to pass over the island is monitored by cameras on top of the fence pointing straight upwards. So a island tailored to the backdrop of a good, old-fashioned whodunit with its fortress-like appearance and dotted with strange, custom-made cottages. Even before Otomigawara took it over, the island was the scene of two impossible murders that became known as the "Decapitation Chamber of Wire Mesh Island" and “One of Japan's Four Great Locked Rooms."

Otomigawara is hosting a "Locked Room Trick Game" on the island and invites a number of experts like a Youtube detective, a singer-song writer detective, a Tower of Dawn executive and a former judge. Kasumi Kuzushiro, Yozuki Asahina and Shitsuri Mitsumura are also present. Similar to the first novel, Kuzushiro didn't expect to find Mitsumura among the guests. Furthermore, there are two butlers, a chef, a doctor and a woman, Emiri Sotodomari, who claims to be a 1000-year-old vampire camping on the island. The first locked room problem to solve is part of the game and won't go into the game rules, because the game is abandoned when the real murders begin. A lottery picks the player who gets to be the culprit and has to stage a locked room murder somewhere in the mansion for the others to solve with the victim being a large, stuffed polar bear. This also mirrors the first novel in which the first problem under investigation was the stabbing of a doll inside a perfectly sealed room.

This first locked room "murder" of the plushy is not terribly relevant to the plot of this story, however, something tells me it might be very relevant to the main storyline of the series (ROT13: "V'yy unir lbh xabj V'z dhvgr cebhq bs gung gevpx"). When the first real murder is discovered, things really begin to kick off. Note that the Chapter 4 is already titled "Too Many Locked Rooms."

So where to even begin? There are seven locked room murders and a problem of these impossible crime extravaganzas is maintaining a balance between quantity and quality. The House of Snow and the Six Tricks managed to keep a fairly decent, overall balance with only two, out of six, locked room-tricks being less than impressive – even if they were mostly excises in technical prowess. The locked room-tricks in The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks can certainly be deemed technical, Kamosaki found some wildly unrealistic imaginative ways to put them to use. And, more than once, the locked room-tricks ventured into being entirely original. You really, really need to have an unhealthy love for locked room mysteries to go along with all of them. Even I had to draw the line at one of them. But I'll get back to that one.

The second locked room is the first that stands out, a stabbing in a locked and bolted cottage, which has a bonkers way to do the job, but rather conventional compared to what comes next. The cottage where previous victims were decapitated claims a third victim and the solution is brilliantly original, fantastically nightmarish and unbelievably impractical. Loved it! While the trickery is borderline insane, I think these two impossible crimes could have easily carried a whole novel by themselves. That only makes three impossible murders with the next, another stabbing in a locked basement room, offers both a simple and elegant false-solution and correct solution – both very good, solid locked room-tricks. However, I don't think the correct solution would work (ROT13) orpnhfr, fheryl, gur plyvaqre bs gur qbbe uvatr vf abg jrvtug rabhtu sbe gur cva gb whfg qebc jura gur vpr unf zrygrq. Vg'f gbb gvtug n svg sbe gur cva gb or “nssrpgrq ol tenivgl naq snyyf vagb gur plyvaqre,” evtug? Lbh unir gb sbepr vg vagb cynpr. Much better is the trick used to leave body in yet another cottage with the door securely locked by a key card and the only two key cards lying right next to the victim. I remember coming across one, or two, locked rooms involving key cards in Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, but Kamosaki came up with a grand idea. So another one that easily could fueled an entire story by itself. Great stuff!

However, the impossibility involving the disappearance of a prisoner and appearance of a body inside a strange architectural structure called the Tower of Heaven. I actually liked the intricate setup as the impossibility didn't concern the lockedness of the tower, but how the key was securely tucked away in a nesting doll of locked rooms. The "key was in a different locked room, whose key was in a locked safe, whose key was in another locked room." And the safe requires five keys, "each of which is being kept by a separate person." This premise filled me with hope as I initially feared the bizarre, cross-shaped tower was really a giant mechanical toy and rotated to flip around the rooms with the prisoner and body to make it appear like an inexplicable disappearance/appearance. Amazingly, the actual solution somehow turned out to be even more preposterous than a pirouetting, cross-shaped tower. Something so ridiculously, it's impossible to suspend your disbelieve and go along for the ride. Not just because it sounds and probably looks ridiculous.

If you go for such an overly complicated and involved trick, you should at least be shown why it could have only been done in that specific way. I mean, (ROT13) vs lbh trg gur xrl bhg sne rabhtu gb unaqyr vg, jul abg fvzcyl znxr na vzcerffvba be phg bss gur fgrz naq ernggnpu vg yngre? Gur bgure ybpxrq ebbz-gevpxf nyernql gblrq nebhaq jvgu zrgnyf naq nyybl znavchyngvba. The various murders in the locked cottages also require the reader to suspend their disbelieve, especially the decapitation cottage-trick, but they gave a reason – demonstrating the cottages were practically sealed. And, in comparison, their tricks have a degree of believability the nesting doll-trick simply lacked. So only one out of seven locked room murders missed the mark. Not a bad score.

And then there's the seventh locked room murder. An impossible murder, once again, flipping the script on the whole story. Not one I'll soon forget! It does everything right what the nesting doll-trick did wrong with not many pages left to go.

Similar to its predecessor, The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks is mostly about picking apart ingeniously-contrived, original locked room-tricks littered with diagrams and floor plans. Well, mostly. I would be doing Kamosaki a disservice not to mention how immensely satisfying it was to see how (ROT13) gur raqvat ybbcrq onpx gb gur bcravat. An unexpected artistic touch from a plot-mechanic like Kamosaki. Not to mention one plot-thread turned out to be a demonstration how to cheat fairly. Well played, Kamosaki! Well played. This, of course, comes at the expense of characterization and a weakly handled motive ("I'm the sort of person who doesn't bother reading the motivation scenes in mystery novels"). Even the only meaningful characterization, between Kuzushiro and Mitsumura, is dominated by trying to find a solution to the murder that started the locked room boom. If you're like me, hopelessly addicted to impossible crime fiction, The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks is another extremely well done, must-read love letter to the locked room mystery improving on The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks is and upping the ante. Hopefully, I'll get an opportunity to read the third and apparently best novel in the series. From what I understand, it has a classic village setting for a series of eight locked room murders and mysteries.

Only question remains unanswered: how did I end up with you lot in this shitty Berenstain universe? I could have been the Hercule Poirot to this version of Japan! Oh... and I wanted to highlight this little fellow from the cover.