The Nature of Things: C.M.B. vol. 7-8 by Motohiro Katou

Following a short hiatus, I returned to the work of Motohiro Katou back in September with a review of C.M.B. vol. 5-6 and the intention was to have gone through the first ten volumes, before the end of the year, but just noticed I forgot to do C.M.B. vol. 7-8 last month – having reviewed Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 95 in October. So guess you can call that a return to tradition.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 7 differs from previous volumes in both the C.M.B. and Q.E.D. series, which normally contain two longish stories or occasionally a single long story (e.g. C.M.B. Vol. 4), but Katou this time tried his hands at four shorter stories. So the plots and storytelling tend to be smaller in complexity and scope than the longer stories. The result's as mixed and varied as the stories themselves.

"Locust" is the first of these four shorter stories and best described as an ecological mystery-thriller, of sorts, which takes place in one of those remote, mountainous villages named Yamanomizu – plagued and torn by several divisive issues. First of all, the village is divided over the plans to build a road to bring government money to the village and province, but half the village opposed the plans because they "feared that the forest would be torn down." Secondly, the province where the village is located has a plague of locusts and in three days, "the village and their crops will be attacked by the locusts." So the villagers in favor of the road want to spray everything from the fields to the forest with insecticide ("...going to be torn down anyways"). Thirdly, local children spotted a rare, beautiful bird in the forest, "never seen before," but nobody believes them. One of the kids heard of Sakaki Shinra, curator of Shinra's Museum of Antiquities, who takes Nanase Tatsuki to Yamanomizu. Shinra has a pretty good idea about the bird, but seems more interested in the locusts and, of course, someone tries to protect money making road project to give the story a mild touch of the thrillers. Not much of a detective story, plotwise, but the backdrop allowed for a few good, nicely drawn scenes towards the end.

The second story, "Iron Door," is a different story altogether! Mau Sugal, the black market broker, returns to the Museum of Antiquities to take Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki along on an unusual treasure hunt. She brings them to an abandoned factory with a once buried, now excavated bunker doubling as an army research laboratory during the Second World War. This leads to a long, dark passageway with a huge, heavy steel door at the end. A door that used to be opened with a motor, but the motor was destroyed when the place was closed and sealed. So now it takes the combined effort of three, or more, people to open it. Mau believes "there's some treasure behind this door," but she needs the other two to help her pry it open. When they do, they find an empty storeroom with the fresh corpse of an elderly man inside, 81-year-old Gomoku Shigetsuga. He turned up shortly after the place was excavated and unsealed to claim the place couldn't possibly be empty.

So while "Iron Door" is as long, or short, as "Locusts," it's a much denser story with a packed, nestling doll-like plot – stacking mystery upon mystery. Who trapped and killed the old man? How did the murderer opened, and closed, the door without help? What did the victim know about the wartime secrets buried in the bunker? And what happened to those secrets? Is there still something hidden in the bunker that the police overlooked? How does Mau figure in this case and why did she leave cartoon smoke after discovering the body? The answers to all these questions nicely dovetail together with the unusual impossible crime situation making it standout, but even better than the original, quasi-inverted take on the locked room mystery is the clearly written, cleverly hidden dying message. Maybe the best use of the hidden dying message since the Columbo episode Try and Catch Me (1977). The best story of the volume!

The third story, "In the Civic Pool," is not necessarily bad, but it has a threadbare plot and a very forgettable story. Tatsuki takes Shinra and some of her classmates to the public swimming pool where they become entangled in a series of mini-mysteries involving missing concert tickets, a water beetle supposedly "extinct in Tokyo" and figure in the swimming pool who disappears like a ghost when looking in its direction. All very simple mysteries with simple, straightforward answers. Only thing that really stood out is Shinra taking care of the water beetle, but other than that, Katou still has to figure out how to translate his trademark character-driven, slice-of-life puzzles to the one-chapter story format.

This volume ends on a high note with a pleasingly conventional mystery, “The Turk,” which is the famous chess playing automaton that toured and enraptured Europe in the 18th century. A replica of the Turk is currently part of Tagame Tatsuo's collection of antique “mechanized puppets” and Shinra, holder of the "C," "M," and "B" rings, has full access to the collection for his research – even gets to play to play the celebrated automaton. During their round of chess, the automaton fails while a robber smashes a display and gets away with three valuable puppets. Shinra promises to get back the antiques in exchange for the replica of the Turk. So the solution appears to entirely hinge on breaking down the alibi of the person who operated the automaton. Shinra reminds everyone the Turk is "not a mechanized puppet," but "more of a magic trick." Like I said, a pleasingly conventional detective story.

By the way, I liked Tatsuki's false-solution infusing the 18th century illusion of the chess playing automaton with modern technology.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 8 continues the format of vol. 7 with four shorter, one-chapter stories and the first story is “One Hundred and Thirty Million Victims.” Detective Inspector Takeshi receives a picture of an ant-lion accompanied by threatening letter promising that, "on November 6th, at 6 PM, I will enact my revenge. The 130 million people of Japan will be the victims." Takeshi goes to Shinra to use him as a soundboard and, pretty soon, a lead presents itself. A man by the name Yoshikawa Masahisa was arrested and convicted for a disgusting crime: robbing a young mother and kicking over the baby carriage, which injured the baby. So the media and public came down like a ton of bricks on him and his family. However, the real culprit was found years later and Yoshikawa Masahisa was released from prison without a word of apology from the media and public. The story is about trying to prevent someone from taking revenge, however, the ending showed that not everything is as it seems. A prescient ending at that for a story originally published in 2008 (likely had a magazine appearance in 2007). A good opening act!

"A Meteorite" is the second and my personal favorite story from this volume. Shinra travels to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a Russian operated spaceport in Kazakhstan, where "something cumbersome" crashed nearby and created a giant crater – a large meteorite. There are, however, two problems. Firstly, the representatives of Kazakhstan and Russia both stake claim the meteorite. Secondly, the meteorite itself has impossibly disappeared without a trace. Not only the meteorite has disappeared, but they couldn't find a bit of debris or single fragment of it at the impact site. Someone, somehow, cleaned out the entire site in a mere three days. And, given the circumstances, that's a Herculean task. What a great and original premise! Shinra also has to take a well-known meteorite hunter and the locals into consideration when answering these questions and arbitrate the outcome. Yes, the explanation how the impact site was cleaned out is as clever as it's cheeky. Simply a good, fun and original mystery.

The third story of this volume, "A Strange Tale from Kushino Mura," gets a little experimental. This story finds Shinra and Tatsuki on a skiing holiday, but, where the ski resort stands today, once stood a mountain settlement, Kushino Village. Shinra naturally gets interested in the backstory of this forgotten village and an old man tells them to visit the shrine, if they want to know more. A shrine dedicated to the cats that once saved the village and a faded backstory, barely legible, written on the wall mentioning demonic possessions, deaths within three days and a husband and wife ("...one of them died"). A short time later, Shinra and Tatsuki get caught in a blinding snow storm, on the advanced trail, that somehow flings them back into the past. On the day when Kushino Village was born into tragedy. So they have to figure out the source of the original tragedy to prevent another, but what gave the story a real chill is when Shinra realizes the truth behind their time-slip adventure (ROT13: n gvzr-ybbc va juvpu crbcyr “ercrngrqyl qvr, sberire”). Not exactly a classically-styled detective story, but this one is more about storytelling than laying out an elaborate plot. I enjoyed it.

On a side note, "A Strange Tale from Kushino Mura" is not the first time-slip mystery to feature in Katou's detective fiction. "The Legacy of the Sage," from Q.E.D. vol. 19, transports Kana Mizuhara from 2004 to 1927 where she meets Sou Touma's historical double.

"The Statue of a Male Goat" is the fourth, and final, story from this volume. Shinra is drawing plans, in class, to redo the layout of his museum and he has the resources to do it ("...already hired a moving company"). Meanwhile, the owner of small, struggling moving company is offered a big sum of money to swap the titular statue from the museum's collection for a replica, but stealing from Shinra is not as easy as taking candy from a baby. Another fairly minor story, but always welcome a return to Shinra's museum.

So these eight stories from C.M.B. vol. 7 and 8 present the proverbial mixed bag of tricks. "Iron Door" is the obvious standout and my favorite for boringly predictable reasons with "The Turk" and "A Meteorite" following close behind. I liked "A Strange Tale from Kushino Mura," but more as a historical flight of fancy with criminal intent than as a proper detective story and "One Hundred and Thirty Million Victims" has a memorable conclusion. "Locusts" is mostly scenery, "In the Civic Pool" and "The Statue of a Male Goat" give little to comment on. Not bad, on a whole, considering Katou switched from longer to shorter stories as none of the stories are bad, but some work still needs to be done. I'm curious to see how Katou is going to continue these short, one-chapter stories in C.M.B. vol. 9 and 10 next year.