My Grandfather, the Master Detective (2023) by Masateru Konishi

Masateru Konishi, a TV and radio writer, debuted as a novelist in 2023 with Meitantei no mama de ite, vol. I (Stay a Great Detective), retitled in English to My Grandfather, the Master Detective, which is partly based on the author's "own experience of caring for his father with dementia" – netted the book the 21st "This Mystery is Amazing!" Grand Prize. Last year, the English edition of Konishi's My Grandfather, the Master Detective, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, was published by Macmillan. And, from what I gleaned, this series is a trilogy with the title of the last volume suggesting a definitive ending. So assume a translation of the second title in the series will be published later this year.

My Grandfather, the Master Detective is an interconnected collection of short stories, some
would probably call it an episodic novel, of six chapters (or short stories) about 27-year-old school teacher Kaede and her grandfather. Kaede's grandfather is a retired school principal, born storyteller and an avid reader diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia. Even when struggling with dementia, Grandfather is one hell of an armchair detective during his better, lucid moments.

So the first chapter, "Those Little Scarlet Cells," is an introduction to Kaede, Grandfather and how they try to cope with his diagnosis. Dementia with Lewy Bodies, "the third dementia," which are "tiny, fried-egg-shaped crimson structures" found on the brains and brain stems of patients causing Parkinson's symptoms, hypersomnia, spatial recognition impairment and very vivid visual hallucinations. Grandfather is not only an avid reader, but, back in the 1970s, he was a core member of the Waseda Mystery Club, a university club, who met at cafe Mon Chéri to "froth in excitement over the latest mystery novels" – meetings that would "produce a whole slew of famous mystery writers and critics." Ever since her grandfather's diagnosis, Kaede has become something of a mystery magnet and brings the puzzling mysteries, big and small, to her grandfather to help keep his mind deteriorating too fast ("...mystery was the best medicine for her grandfather"). As her Grandfather says, "Hercule Poirot is always talking about his 'little grey cells,'" but "in my case, due to the reddish-orange appearance of those Lewy bodies scattered throughout my brain, I have 'little scarlet cells.'" Their armchair sessions aren't only to discuss mysteries and puzzles, but simply for Kaede to spend time with her grandfather.

The first real case is the second, promising titled story, "The Izakaya Locked Room Murder Mystery," which also introduces two recurring characters, Iwata and Shiki.

Iwata is a male colleague Kaede and Shiki one of his high school friends who recently got involved in an actual impossible murder. Shiki was visiting a small, intimate sports bar to watch the football match, soccer for you Americans, between Japan and Saudi Arabia with his group occupying one of the two tables. When one of his friends gets up to go the toilets, supposedly free, he finds it locked, blood seeping out from under the toilet door and when looking over the top of the door sees the body of shaved, tattooed and pierced man sitting on the seat – "a knife-like object sticking out of his back." This is murder poses a double impossibility as nobody had seen the victim enter the bar and the toilet supposedly unoccupied, which means "the victim had to suddenly appear in the toilet and the killer to vanish" without being seen. Kaede decides to bring this locked room problem to her grandfather who, between drags from a cigarette, beautifully reasons two linked solutions: an incomplete, false-solution and a complete correct one. But was even more impressed with Konishi creating an impossible crime without any actual locked room-trickery. So, needless to say, "The Izakaya Locked Room Murder Mystery" is my favorite part, but it's the characters, all of them, whom drive the plot and story. Not the baffling impossible murder. That's true of all the stories, although a good locked room is always appreciated.

In the next story, "The Vanishing Person at the Pool," Kaede attends a reunion lunch of her old university class where she hears about a strange, inexplicable incident that happened at her grandfather's old school. A new, young teacher, only referred to as Madonna-sensei, vanished as if by magic in front of the children of her swimming class. When the lesson ended, Madonna-sensei blew her whistle to signal the class the get out of the pool and head for the showers, but, after the pool emptied, the children heard a splash behind them. So they assumed Madonna-sensei was taking a quick swim and, "kids being kids, they started complaining that Sensei was having all the fun." However, she didn't came back to the surface or climbed out of the pool. She had simply vanished as if the water had dissolved her! Kaede, of course, brings this mystery to her grandfather. Now the solution to the impossible disappearance is decent enough, not great but decent, but the reason why she had disappear and who had a hand in became a little too rich. This whole story reminded me of one of those ropey episodes from Jonathan Creek like No Trace of Tracy (1997) and The Curious Tale of Mr. Spearfish (1999).

Fortunately, the third story, "They Were Thirty-Three," is a better story despite being half the length of the other stories. Kaede is worried about signs that her grandfather is on the decline. So she tells him about an incident from her own classroom. She was teaching a sixth grade class that has an unusual trio, two boys and a girl, whom she compared to Harry, Ron and Hermione from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series – an inseparable trio always at the center of attention. One day, Harry shared a scary story in class about a crying ghost girl connected to a WWII air-raid shelter that used to stand on spot of the classroom. Kaede immediately put an end to the scary stories and started the English conversation lesson, during which they're not allowed to speak Japanese, but they heard someone say in Japanese, "lonely and tearful." But nobody could have spoken those words! So was it the ghost girl or someone else, but the main question remains "how a thirty-third suddenly turned up in a class of thirty-two." A very well done riddle in story form with clues hidden in both the outline of the problem and the floor plan of the classroom.

The last two stories, "The Phantom Lady" and "The Riddle of the Stalker," are connected as the first introduces a problem, Kaede's stalker, that will be resolved in the last story. "The Phantom Lady" has another, rather pressing, case needing a brilliant armchair detective first. On an early Saturday morning, Iwata is jogging along the riverside when he witnesses a struggle between two men under the bridge. One man leaves the other man seriously wounded and unconscious with a knife in his stomach, which leads the police to arrest and incarcerate Iwata on suspicion of assault and attempted murder. Only witness, a woman power-walker in a hoodie, is nowhere to be found. Kaede and Shiki come to the rescue of their friend, but the witness has not only vanished. She doesn't even appear to have existed at all! They had seen the woman in hoodie on their previous jog through the area and assumed she's a regular of the route, but other regulars don't remember ever having seen a woman power-walker in a hoodie along the riverside route. Just like the other stories, there are many literary references to other phantom person stories like Cornell Woolrich's Phantom Lady (1941), John Dickson Carr's radio-play "Cabin B-13" (1943) and the 1800s urban legend of the vanishing lady at the Paris Exposition, but not Basil Thomson's short story "The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser" (1925) collected in Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries (2025). I think Edward D. Hoch's "The Problem of the Leather Man" (1992) warrants a mention as not only a great take on the phantom person device, but the episode from the Furuhata Ninzaburo series described here sounds very similar to Hoch's story. Anyway, this is not bad take on the phantom person and how the woman in a hoodie faded out of existence and unwilling to come forward.

On a side note, "The Phantom Lady" begins with an interesting discussion between Kaede and Shiki when Iwata interjects with his "Pro-Wrestling and Mystery Equivalence Theory" stating "pro-wrestling and mysteries have a lot in common." What follows is a fun, brief discussion going from Iwata's shallow comparisons ("wrestlers with mystery-related nicknames...") to Shiki pointing out their commonalities when it comes dramatics ("all these storylines converge perfectly at the final match in the grand arena"). Personally, I've always been baffled that something as American as pro-wrestling never was the subject of a vintage sports mystery novel or even thriller. Just that one short story by Craig Rice. That as an aside.

My Grandfather, the Master Detective concludes with "The Riddle of the Stalker" bringing everything, and everyone, together, but can't say much about it except to expect a modern rendition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" (1913). But with an actual dying detective. And it makes you really root for grandfather as he has to take on both his granddaughter's stalker and his dementia. A very well written conclusion to round out this first volume.

First of all, this review mainly focused on the plots, but the stories making up My Grandfather, the Master Detective are mainly character-driven mysteries – even when they involve locked rooms or diagrams. Not only Kaede and her grandfather, but everyone around them. From her friends to the team of caregivers surrounding her grandfather. And, of course, the people involved in the various cases and problems. They all reminded me of the mysteries-with-a-heart from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series, where people are the metaphorical pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together to get the complete and correct picture, whether it be a locked room murder or ghostly chatter in a classroom. Add to this the relationship between a granddaughter and a doting grandfather struggling with his dementia, you have something very different from what I expected when this translation was announced as forthcoming. I expected a Japanese take on James Yaffe's "My Mother, the Detective" series, but Masateru Konishi delivered something entirely different with My Grandfather, the Master Detective. Not in the least for creating a memorable armchair detective and an even better pair of detectives & co! So a warm recommendation and hopefully Louise Heal Kawai gets to translate the second and last book in the series. Fingers crossed!