Death of the Living Dead (1989) by Yamaguchi Masaya

The first post to appear on this blog in 2020 was a review of a very unorthodox Japanese crime novel, Hirakasete itadaki kōei desu (The Resurrection Fireplace, 2011) by Hiroko Minagawa, which is a historical and cultural travelogue of 1770s London – a time when body-snatchers were emptying the cemeteries and illegal autopsies were performed by candle light. A somewhat strange historical crime novel casting the morgue in a distinctly Dickensian light, but the plot did very little to scratch that detection itch. John Pugmire, of Locked Room International, had me covered there and published an English translation of Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017) back in August. 

Death Among the Undead gave expression to the yearning of the Japanese shin honkaku movement for "the kind of impetus" Soji Shimada's Senseijutsu satsujinjiken (The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, 1981) and Yukito Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) had created over thirty years ago. Something daring and different to refresh the traditional, fair play detective story. Just like they have done with their ghoulish corpse-puzzles and often youthful, college-age detectives. So the path Imamura took was simply to add a fantastical element to an otherwise traditional shin honkaku (locked room) mystery by staging it smack dab in the middle of a small, localized zombie apocalypse. Zombies alter the equation of any closed-circle situation or locked room murder, but the rules of fair play were thoroughly honored. I wanted more of this kind of impetus myself! But where to find it?

Fortunately, an anonymous comment was left on my review saying "that there is actually another famous award-winning zombie-related honkaku mystery," Yamaguchi Masaya's Ikeru shikabane no shi (Death of the Living Dead, 1989). The comment also mentioned the book had "been completely translated into English," but Masaya "was still looking for somebody to publish it," which immediately dampened my hope as that meant it would probably take another year or two before the book was published – only for Christmas to come unexpectedly early! Back in November, Ho-Ling Wong announced on his blog that he was the one who translated Death of the Living Dead, "widely considered to be one of the more important works of early shin honkaku mystery fiction," which Ammo published last December. Just in time to brighten the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, which ended and began over here with another complete lockdown. So let's dissect this classic!

First of all, Death of the Living Dead is a beast to review. A 400-page detective novel with half of the pages setting up a story populated with over thirty characters (dramatis personae covers an entire page), multiple plot-threads and a series of truly bizarre crimes. One that takes place in a world that has to come to grips with the fact that the gap between the living and the dead is narrowing. 

Death of the Living Dead begins with a prologue demonstrating that very point. A homicide detective, Lieutenant Neville, confronting the culprit of a domestic murder in a blood-spattered room. But, as Neville explains to the murderer that her "whole alibi depends on the hourglass inside that aquarium and the clown doll covered in ketchup," the lips of the corpse quivered. Just a few moments later, the corpse stood up, cried out "I won't let you kill me again" and jumped out of the window. The next chapter explains that the prologue described one of numerous "astonishing incidents that had been happening all across the United States, and indeed the whole world, of the dead coming back to life" – thirteen known occurrences in US within the span of a month. However, these "living dead" are not your typical horror movie zombies, who want to snack on your brains, but have "the same mental capabilities as when they were alive." Some go crazy when they learn they are dead or refuse to believe it, while "others feel like outcasts among the living and fall into depression." So with the dead coming back to live with their full mental capabilities changes quite a few things.

This changed world is explored during the first, lengthy half of the story and introduces the most important character of the story, Francis "Grin" Barleycorn. Steve Steinbock aptly described Grin as "a Punk Ellery Queen living in an otherworldly Wrightsville." An otherworldly Wrightsville known as Tombsville in the countryside of New England. Grin is the grandson of the dying Smiley Barleycorn, head and general manager of the family-run Smile Cemetery, who welcomed back the child of his estranged son. Grin traveled to the Smile Cemetery to meet with his family for the first time and is accompanied by his girlfriend (of sorts), Saga "Cheshire" Shimkus, whose mother (Isabella) is connected to the cemetery.

I think readers who prefer mystery writers to leave their literary pretensions at the door and get to the point might find the first 200 pages a little trying, but you have to give Masaya the space and time to setup the whole story. More importantly, there's a lot of important information, clues and developments in the first half that will become important later on in the story. And, if you love the arcane or macabre, you find a lot to enjoy in those first 200-pages. There's the necessary history of the family of undertakers and Smile Cemetery, but also sidetracks into embalming, cremation and "the unique funeral traditions of the United States" as well as discussions of the dead rising up and live and death in general. But, as mentioned above, there's plenty of relevant information hidden here that will become important later on. Not to mention a very important plot development happens during the first half.

After a family meeting, which resembled "the mad tea party in Alice in Wonderland," Grin is poisoned with arsenic, gets sick and dies in his bathroom – waking up from his eternal slumber only a few hours later. Grin only takes one person into his confidence, Dr. Vincent Hearse, who's a professor of Thanatology and special adviser to the local police. There's a rather sad and bitter taste to the scenes of Grin describing and trying to cope with his death and resurrection. Grin tells Dr. Hearse being a living dead feels like being in a dream, or watching a movie, like he was "separated from what's actually happening." This is shown in a very brief, but depressing scene, when Grim tries to sleep, gets up and kicks the bed in frustration. Grin "could see the bed shaking from the shock," but "not feel any pain in his leg" and cried "a tearless howl from the depths of his soul." By the way, typically Japanese storytelling to do either something truly horrible to one of the main protagonists or take them out of the story entirely.

Well, the readers who patiently waited for the plot to finally kick off are richly rewarded when one of the family members is stabbed to death in the viewing room, in front of Smiley's casket, in the West Wing of the Funeral Hall (floorplan included). That wing was "a hermetically sealed space" at the time of the murder and CCTV footage only deepens the mystery. The footage shows someone wearing a hockey goaltender mask, who they simply call "Hockey Mask," enter to the sealed wing unseen to play hide-and-seek with the victim-in-waiting. Only to disappear without a trace! No. The solution is not what you think it is (Fzvyrl qvq abg pbzr onpx gb yvir naq fgnoorq gur ivpgvz), but there's so much to the plot that has everything from hearse races to the possible return of a serial killer, who chainsawed college girls seventeen years previously, to the region. Than there are the murder victims who rise up right after they were struck down to complicate everything even further. Every aspect of the story, philosophical or practical, is used to perfection to build up to a beautifully orchestrated, three-punch ending.

Firstly, there's the wonderful character of the much harassed Richard Tracy, Police Lieutenant of the Marbletown Police Station, who has trouble adjusting to "living in an abnormal world where the dead can come back to life again." More than once, he has to deal with a victim whose murder he's investigation getting up and meddle with his work, exonerating his suspects or even getting physical with them – which results in regular scheduled appointments with a psychiatrist. Lieutenant Tracy battles through and pieces together a brilliant solution presented in a dramatic denouement "like the great detectives in mystery novels do." A false-solution that's immediately picked apart by everyone in the room (living and dead), but it's a false-solution worthy of the underappreciated Simon Brimmer. After the false-solution has been shot to pieces, Grin steps forward to reveal he, too, is dead and then proceeds to explain what really happened during that tea party and the subsequent crimes in an impressive chain of deductive reasoning. Grin has a lot to explain a lot and the explanation is a long one, but every piece of this intricate, maze-like plot is unraveled in a clear and methodical way. What emerges is an extraordinary, but logical, chain of events and crimes that could have occurred only under these very special circumstances that created some highly unusual and original motives. Throughout it all the motives of the living and death are both intertwined and at odds.

Lastly, you have the ending that drove home the fact that, while there will always be a dividing line between the living and living dead, they still have one thing that binds them together. The human element. Something that can be torn away again. This ended in a slightly depressing, bitter sweet conclusion when the time came to say goodbye.

So what more can be said about Yamaguchi Masaya's Death of the Living Dead? Masaya crafted a genuine masterpiece in more way than one. Death of the Living Dead is one of those rare, successful hybrid mysteries in which Masaya logically tackled the problem of murder in a world where "the dead are rising one by one, and can walk, think and talk." Masaya handled and treated humanity's old, morbid fascination with death in an equally fascinating way, which were craftily incorporated into a first-rate plot. A plot that has everything from corpses meddling in their murder cases, impossible crimes and a brilliant use of the false-solution, but it's the who-and why exposed by Grin that stole the show in the end. A wonderful, otherworldly, but also very human, detective story that gave a whole new meaning to a rising bodycount. If Western crime-and detective fiction was half as good as their Japanese counterparts, I wouldn't have the time to fanboy all over these shin honkaku writers.

Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene (2021) by P. Dieudonné

Back in 2019, P. Dieudonné followed in the footsteps of the late A.C. Baantjer with his debut novel, Rechercheur De Klerck en het doodvonnis (Inspector De Klerck and the Death Sentence, 2019), written as a tribute to the master of the Dutch politieroman, but Dieudonné began to differentiate himself from other Baantjer imitators in his subsequent novels – even improving on the old man himself. Rechercheur De Klerck en het duivelse spel (Inspector De Klerck and the Diabolical Game, 2020) added more plot complexity to the true and tried Baantjer formula. Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020) is a full-blown, neo-classical detective novel with no less than three impossible crimes and my personal favorite so far. Rechercheur De Klerck en het lijk in transito (Inspector De Klerck and the Corpse in Transit, 2021) is a traditional detective story masquerading as a contemporary police novel. 

Rechercheur De Klerck en moord in scène (Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene, 2021) plays a similar game as its predecessor, but improved on it as the Inspectors Lucien de Klerck and Ruben Klaver have to digest a heavily leaded slice of Urban Americana in Rotterdam. But, as the detective story has learned its readers over the centuries, nothing can be more deceiving than outward appearances. 

Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene begins with De Klerck putting down the Rotterdams Dagblad and remarks to Klaver that "the youth is unhinged, orphaned" in response to an article about the discovery of drugs, fireworks and weapons in the lockers of a high school – including "a hand grenade and a loaded gun." Klaver puts it down to puberty and hormones, but that doesn't wash with the old detective and De Klerck fears that "today's street urchins are tomorrow's hitmen." And that's when their shift really begins. A skipper and old friend of De Klerck reports someone attempted to throw a gun into the water from a bridge, but the loaded, recently fired gun landed on his boat. Klaver remarks they might have gotten hold of a murder weapon and CCTV footage of the various bridges could catch them a killer before his crime is discovered ("we have never worked so fast"). Just a moment later, they're called to the Parkkade where the Harbor Police pulled a body out of the water.

The victim is very well-known to the police, Robin Breidenbach, who's "an equally popular and notorious Rotterdam rap artist." Breidenbach was known as Da Rotting Thug and his "incendiary raps" earned him admiration as well as a ton of enemies, which include an escalating blood feud with Yunus Özütok's De Leftbank Militia from Rotterdam South. A year ago, Özütok was stabbed and robbed, but he blamed Breidenbach. Two weeks later, Breidenbach's cousin was stabbed and seriously wounded by a member of De Leftbank Militia, which left him with a limb. Justin Breidenbach never mentioned this to De Klerck and Klaver, but directed their attention to his cousin's producer, Daan de Rooij. Apparently, they were having a disagreement over royalties. De Klerck sees a parallel with a "rivalry between rappers from New York and their more successful Californian colleagues" in which the two figureheads of the feud, Tupac Shakur from Los Angeles and Notorious B.I.G. from New York, were shot and killed. Is history repeating itself a quarter of a century later in Rotterdam?

So not really the plot-ingredients you expect to find in a detective story with a more traditional bend and Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene does have all the outward appearances of an uncomplicated, modern-day police novel. Dieudonné gradually and effectively spins a complicated puzzle out of an apparently ordinary and sordid crime with every new piece of information that's unearthed bringing both clarity and posing new questions. Like peeling an onion in reverse! I was reminded of the commentary on Christopher Bush's plotting-technique "of starting with very little information (victim's identity) and working outward, lightening up the darkness." A very fitting description of the plot and how it progressed with (for example) the discovery of the original scene of the crime revealing that the murder was a tricky and complicated affair, which would not have been out of place in a Golden Age mystery novel – except perhaps for the clothing and music. While the clues and red herrings were not thickly spread around the story, the ones that were present were on a whole of a good quality. The central clue is not so much a traditional clue as it's a curious, very subtly planted anomaly (oyhr, havsbezrq nyvovf) doubling as a slippery red herring. Something you either spot and note as a suspicious coincidence or miss entirely, but, if you spot it, you can work out the solution.

When I read the synopsis, I assumed Dieudonné was going to go easy on the plot this time around and dreaded having to bang out a lukewarm review, but Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene exceeded all my expectations and ranks alongside Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death as the best the series (so far) has to offer. A series that's fast becoming a personal favorite as its soothing to my nostalgic cravings and meets my demands for good, quality plots. Dieudonné, De Klerck and Klaver deserve to be introduced to an international, English-speaking audience who will be more appreciative of them. But, in the meanwhile, I'm eagerly looking forward to the next one!

If you haven't had your fill of untranslated, Dutch-language detective fiction, I recently reviewed Vanno's De moord op het sloependek (The Murder on the Boat Deck, 1941) and Anne van Doorn's Meer mysteries voor Robbie Corbijn (More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn, 2021). And, yes, I crammed this review into a few planned posts, because didn't want to wait with posting the review until January.

The Murder on the Boat Deck (1941) by Vanno

During the first years of Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Bruna published two detective novels by an unknown, pseudonymous author, "Vanno," who crime fiction collector Wim van Eyle identified as Charles van den Dool and the war likely ended more than just his writing career – reportedly executed in 1944 as a member of the Dutch resistance. However, I've been unable to find anything to corroborate the report of his execution. So take that as you will. 

Fortunately, I stumbled across Vanno's second detective novel, De moord op het sloependek (The Murder on the Boat Deck, 1941), which not only sounded promising, but delivered most of the goods. A much needed uptick in quality after my previous two excavations of the Dutch detective story, Dick A. van Ruler's Moord op een negatief (Murder of a Negative, 1963) and B.J. Kleymens' In de greep van de kreeft (In the Grip of the Lobster, 1965), turned out to be paper thin affairs. 

The Murder on the Boat Deck is, as the title suggests, a shipboard mystery and entirely takes place aboard a luxury cruise ship, the Princesa Marya, which lifted anchor in Venice, Italy, embarking on a holiday trip in the Aegean Sea – along "the smiling shores of Yugoslavia" and "the beautiful, ancient edifices of Athens." There are two detectives aboard on a well deserved, long overdue holiday. Inspector Barney D. Weston, of the New York Metropolitan Police, who's a typical, hardboiled homicide cop occasionally hampered by a short-fused temper. Weston is accompanied by a friend and "a detective of some notoriety," Charles Venno, whose methods of deductions is described by Weston as "screwy, quasi-psychological lectures" comparable to a "fantasy sleuth from the detective novels." But he gets results. And their fellow passengers are determined to turn their last three days aboard into a busman's holiday.

Rex Corbin is a manufacturer of undisclosed goods and his chronic jealously not only makes his wife, Elsie Corbin, terribly unhappy, but makes her very susceptible to the charms of the cruise's troublemaker. Allan Hunter is a land surveyor and, as someone aboard described him, a "damned, self conscious womanizer." Hunter is very unhappy as he spend years in a remote corner of Venezuela as a land surveyor for an oil company, living in a primeval forest away from civilization, which is why he's determined to have some fun. Robert Jones is a lean, sinewy and funny looking man who accompanied Tom and Mary Vane on the cruise. Daisy Mitchell is a holidaying secretary who had a brief, but intense, holiday romance with Allan Hunter. Ted Randell is a writer who mockingly confides in Venno and Weston that he would be ashamed to use what happened on the Princesa Marya as a plot for one of his books, because it has "the level of a dime store detective novel." But he has important information to share with the two detectives. Vanno and Weston also get help from a lonely, middle-aged passenger, Miss Alice Ferris, who hungers for adventure and romance, but even she has to admit the movies pale in comparison to "these wonderfully frightening and yet so terrifying-exciting events" that surround a real-life murder. Gordon Waller is a representative on holiday and has been chasing Mrs. Corbin during the entire trip, but now had to look on as Hunter threatened to snatch her away from him and her husband. There also two school teachers, Dorothy Campbell and Louise Coburn, and a businessman, Aloys F. March. But the trouble really began with another passenger, Dr. James R. Holton.

James Holton is an ethnologist who's asked why there's a small, snakeskin tube attached to his watch chain, like a good luck charm, but, even more importantly, what's inside it – which turns out to be a miniature model of a poison smeared arrow. Curare, to be precise. A very potent poison that kills within seconds when enters when it enters the bloodstream! So a very dangerous object that has to be carefully handled, but, somehow the tube with the poisoned arrow disappears. Everyone simply assumes it had been mislead somewhere, but, later that evening, they discover there was a much more sinister reason why it got lost.

The murder is preceded by an late night, shipboard game, called "Paspoort," in which everyone has to draw a piece of paper from a hat. All but one of the papers has the word passport written on it and they have to scatter and hide in couples, while someone playing the customs officer is tasked with finding the person who drew the blank paper. However, the game is merely an excuse to fool around the boat deck. This naturally leads to some tension among the participants.

Later that night, the group decided it was too late and warm to go to bed. So they agreed to wait until sunrise and go for an early morning swim, but Hunter told them he was going to shave first ("I have a beard like a robber") in his cabin. The rest of the group placed deck chairs in front of the cabin door to talk and tell jokes, but, a few minutes later, they hear a heavy thump inside. Hunter inexplicably died without a sign of a death struggle and only the pale, bluish tint of the face betraying he didn't die naturally. The ship doctor determines he was poisoned with curare, which not only ended Venno and Weston's holiday, but presented him with a seemingly impossible poisoning in a cabin with the door both blocked and watched by a whole group of people!

They neither find a trace of poison or the stolen arrow in the cabin, which poses a real puzzle as both the ship doctor and the medical literature aboard that death was a question of seconds. Not minutes. Hunter had been alone in his cabin for several minutes when he was poisoned. So how was it done? A poisonous puzzle that leads to two false-solutions, but Vanno and Weston belong to the category of fallible detectives as they overlook some pretty obvious flaws in their solutions – one of them pointed out by a potential suspect. Nonetheless, I very much enjoyed these bits and pieces of theorizing and constructing false-solutions. Only to see them get demolished like sandcastles. This time, the false-solutions didn't outshine the real solution! Although one of the false-solutions, implicating the ship doctor, could have been explored a bit more in depth as there are many variations possible on that idea. For example, Hunter could have become actually sick and the doctor, who has a ghost of a motive, could have pricked or scratched Hunter when he looked him over. Hunter could also have had some kind of stomach problem, like ulcers, which would open the possibility of introducing curare into his bloodstream via the stomach by way of a curare laced drink. This perhaps could have delayed death a few minutes. Maybe...

Nevertheless, the actual poisoning-trick is more practical (considering the murder weapon) and something I should have immediately caught, but imagined something from the period completely wrong. What tripped me is that it was fairly mentioned, but not described in detail. Not that it was necessary at the time. But some reader's today might miss it. Needless to say, the impossible poisoning-trick is one that Paul Doherty would no doubt approve of. 

The Murder on the Boat Deck is not merely a shipboard locked room mystery, because there are two more murders and various plot-threads to keep Vanno and Weston hopelessly tied-up, while only having a few days to clear everything up – before having to hand over the case to the Yugoslavian authorities. A prospect nobody is looking forward to. While not every plot-thread knocks out of the park and the ending misses that Agatha Christie, rug-pull-like effect Vanno (the writer) was aiming, I was nevertheless impressed how everything dovetailed together. A scheme that started out as a subtle and relatively crime slowly collapsed under weight of the cussedness of all things general. There was something else I really loved about the solution. When the who-and why began to dawn on me, I wondered why the murderer didn't kill Hunter during a quiet moment and dumped the body in the sea. It seemed like the simplest and safest approach to accomplish what was taking shape. Well, the ending answered why that scenario didn't happen.

Vanno evidently put some thought into the plot. Even though he didn't think every single thing through to its logical conclusion. Such as the possibilities suggested by the false-solutions, but regardless, The Murder on the Boat Deck turned out to be a pleasant surprise and a solidly plotted detective novel complete with false-solutions and a locked room murder – which I honestly didn't expect to find in this mystery. I merely picked it because of its cruise ship setting. Who doesn't love a good shipboard mystery in sunny climes? So my only complaint is a stylistically one. The Murder on the Boat Deck was published in 1941 and has old-fashioned, now very dated, spelling littered with extra e's and ch's. Secondly, the characters are supposed to be Americans, but act and talk like Dutch characters. However, this has nothing to do with wartime censorship, like with Italian detective story, because pre-1950s Dutch detective fiction more often than not had foreign characters and settings. This is why there was a call in the fifties for the Dutch detective story to have Dutch characters, crimes and setting.

So, on a whole, Vanno's The Murder on the Boat Deck is a welcome addition to that too short list of genuine, Dutch-language Golden Age detective novels. And, while only a second-string mystery compared to the best of its American and British counterparts, I'm always beaming with pride whenever I come across one that does a decent job of holding its own. Hopefully, I'll be able to add more Dutch mysteries from the 1920-40s period to the big pile in the future, because they have become a little easier to find.

You can legally download (PDF) The Murder on the Boat Deck from the Delpher website for private use or as study material. Over the past year, or so, they uploaded a modest, but interesting, selection of vintage Dutch detective novels. So I'll be rooting around in their collection for hopefully something good and unjustly forgotten. Wordt vervolgd!

More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn (2021) by Anne van Doorn

Four years ago, M.P.O. Books launched a new series under a now open penname, "Anne van Doorn," which starred two particuliere onderzoekers (private investigators), Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong, who specialize in cases that have gone stone cold and occasional miscarriages of justice – ranging from missing persons to murder cases. Fascinatingly, Corbijn and De Jong were introduced in a promotional freebie, "De dichter die zichzelf opsloot" ("The Poet Who Locked Himself In," 2017). A short story that actually received an English translation and appeared in the September/October, 2019, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. 

I have since read and reviewed two novels, two short story collections and a handful of short stories culminating with the magnificent De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019). A monument of a Dutch detective novel with two impossible crimes, a dying message and a revelation about one of the characters that caught me by complete surprise. One of those painful moments in which the professional mystery novelist showed the amateur armchair detective who the real murder expert is.

The series went dormant for nearly two years, but has now reemerged with a third volume of short stories, entitled Meer mysteries voor Robbie Corbijn (More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn, 2021), collecting ten detective stories of various plumage – including two previously unpublished stories. However, I've already read and reviewed "Het huis dat ongeluk bracht" ("The House That Brought Bad Luck," 2018), "De bus die de mist inging" ("The Bus That Went Into the Fog," 2018) and "De brieven die onheil spelden" ("The Letters That Spelled Doom," 2018) on this blog before. So I'll skip them for the sake of brevity, but it needs to be said that they represent the standouts of the collection. And with that I mean they're the most classically-styled of the bunch full with unbreakable alibis, impossible murders and ghostly mischief. Don't overlook those separate short story reviews. 

"Het schilderij dat niet bleef hangen" ("The Painting That Didn't Hang Around," 2018) is a case that was nothing more than "a comical snack" to Robbie Corbijn, but not to the people who were directly affected by it. Isabelle Valck comes to Recherchebureau Corbijn – Research & Discover to ask them to reopen an unsolved, thirteen year old case concerning a 350-year-old painting by Jan Steen. The painting was stolen in 2003 from De Catharina Hof, in Gouda, where Maarten Lippinkhoff was the curator of the museum when the burglary took place. Lippinkhof was Valck's father and he had always been haunted by the theft, but Valck received a shock when she discovered the stolen painting, badly damaged, in his attic shortly after he passed away. She really wants to know what exactly happened and the painting is closely examined, but, whether the painting is authentic or a masterly done forgery, neither gives a satisfying answer why it was found in the attic of the former conservator. Not until Corbijn forces someone's hand by staging a denouement in the attic and has a laugh at everyone's else expense. A fun and almost typically Dutch little crime caper. 

"De vrouw die onraad rook" ("The Woman Who Smelled Trouble," 2018) presents Lowina de Jong, series-narrator and detective-in-training, why Corbijn has "a spitting hatred for adultery cases" and thoroughly vets prospective clients – before accepting or turning them down. De Jong remembers Corbijn harshly turned down such a case, but De Jong wants to help her out. Melanie van Staveren-de Maillie tells De Jong her tragic history that eventually lead her to be kind of unfaithful to her husband, which now has some potential devastating consequences. She has received a threatening warning letter and had an eerily realistic dream in which “an ice cold hand” was chocking her. But was it a dream? A week later, De Jong reads her obituary in the newspaper and suspect foul play, but Melanie appears to have died from natural causes in her sleep. When she was all alone in a locked house (not an impossible crime) and the clock is ticking away the hours until the body is cremated.

So a how-was-it-done kind of detective story, but the impressive part of the story is not the how or why. It's the slippery, but impressive, wire-walking act Corbijn had to perform to convince the reader the who was completely fair. When I learned the identity of the murderer, I frowned disapprovingly at the page as it was just plain unfair. Corbijn started to explain and pointing out why the solution is correct and not unfair at all, which is technically true, but not very satisfying. Not one of my personal favorites. 

"De pianist die uit de toon viel" ("The Pianist Who Fell Out of Tune," 2018) has a disappearance problem somewhat reminiscent of Freeman Wills Crofts' The Hog's Back Mystery (1933) with a solution that twists and snakes like a John Dickson Carr story! Maurice Kleinluchtenbeld was a famous pianist who reached the charts in most European countries in the 1990s with "his modern, romantic interpretations and arrangements of classical pieces," but vanished under mysterious circumstances in 2004. Corbijn remembers the case and described it to De Jong as having the appearance of "a botched magic trick." One moment the pianist was walking back home across a hill, De Soester Eng, which is surrounded on all sides by houses and the next moment he was gone. Vanished without a trace! Now he son wants the case reopened.

Corbijn and De Jong have two logical, yet unlikely, possibilities to explore: a voluntary disappearance or foul play, but, if he disappeared voluntarily, how could a famous musician with striking features stay hidden without ever getting spotted or even discovered – murder should have produced a body. The time, place and eyewitnesses at the time of the disappearance places constraints on a murderer with barely enough time to get rid of the body so effectively it was never found. Solution is a thing of beauty, "a clever magic trick," which rendered more than one character practically invisible. A pure, neo-Golden Age detective story. 

"Het bruidje dat geen afscheid nam" ("The Bride Who Didn't Say Goodbye," 2018) is a more of a thriller than a detective story and puts the spotlight on Corbijn's assistant, Lowina de Jong. Two times before, De Jong had been allowed to handle an investigation on her own and the first and last time her involvement lead to someone's untimely death. This third case is the second time it goes horribly wrong. De Jong took some vacations days to go to Finland to help find a missing and recently married woman, but the trip, told through a series of diary entries, is turned on its head when she finds herself trapped on a remote, desolate island with a captor who can vanish and reappear out of nowhere. There are some touches of the Had-I-But-Known School ("If only I had stayed in the Netherlands" or "if I hadn't kept deadly quiet, I probably would have ended up with my throat cut"), but the punch of the story is in its tragic and almost cruel ending. An ending that taught the detective-in-training a harsh lesson. 

"De man die wilde vliegen" ("The Man Who Wanted to Fly," 2021) is the shortest and perhaps the most ambitiously-plotted story of the collection. A story in which Corbijn tells a story to De Jong about his time with the police that taught him a valuable lesson. Always beware of the unreliable witness.

Ten years ago, Corbijn accompanied his then chef to the scene of what appeared to him to have been an impossible murder. A man had fallen to his death from a watchtower in a wooded, hilly area and there were two witnesses present who saw and heard the man fall. One of them was ascending the staircase and heard the victim hit the ground, while the other saw him fall and was seen bending over the body when the first witness arrived at the top of the tower. They all knew each other and the two witnesses have a strong motive, but neither witness/suspect were close enough to have pushed the man and that gives them, what can be a called, a positional alibi – which opens the door to a series of false-solutions. Corbijn demonstrates why "the unreliable narrator is a pitfall in any investigation" with an unexpected, third possibility. Anthony Berkeley would have loved this story that proved Anthony Boucher right that the rules and conventions of the genre can only be broken by writers who understand and respect them.

On a side note (Spoilers/ROT13): Z.C.B. Obbxf/Ina Qbbea unf orra rkcrevzragrq va gurfr fgbevrf jvgu znxvat gur zheqrere n crevcureny punenpgre be rira na haxabja K, juvpu (vs V erzrzore pbeerpgyl) snvyrq gb jbex va “Qr negf qvr qr jrt xjvwg jnf” (“Gur Qbpgbe Jub Tbg Ybfg ba gur Jnl,” 2018). “Gur Jbzna Jub Fzryyrq Gebhoyr” jnf n grpuavpny vzcebirzrag, ohg ur anvyrq vg jvgu “Gur Zna Jub Jnagrq gb Syl.” This is why this story deserves to be translated, because an international, English-speaking mystery reading audience will appreciate it more than Dutch readers. One is sadly more knowledgeable than the other where classic detective fiction is concerned. 

"De studente die zichzelf tegenkwam" ("The Student Who Met Herself," 2018) shows the author of these stories is not only a traditional mystery novelist and a modern crime writer, but also a massive Sherlock Holmes fan. A story with an unmistakable hint of Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" (collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892). Veerle Peeters is an archaeology student and active in an amateur theater company, but recently, she got involved in a bizarre situation. Veerle wants Corbijn and De Jong to find out whether she unwittingly collaborated in something criminal, or not, because a sick woman might be held against her will by her own family. The student was hired by a Hilda Jonckheere to play the real-life part of her terminal ill daughter, Bernadette, who was summoned to the deathbed of her estranged grandfather. Something is obviously at stake for the parents. But following a few critical questions, Hilda and her family simply vanish without a trace. So what really happened? What's the significance of the tattoo Veerle spotted on the wrist of the dying Bernadette? More importantly, what happened to everyone? And why? The plot and solution is a grand play on breaking down identities and really deserved a novel-length treatment. There were some great scenes, discoveries and revelations that would have been perfect to pace out and deepen the plot of a detective novel. And then there's the ending. Corbijn receives an envelope with a missing piece of the puzzle, but who mailed him the newspaper clipping is "a mystery that has never been solved." I vaguely remember that happening at least once before in another story and perhaps The Man Who Relieved His Conscience has made me paranoid, but begin to suspect there's a shadow detective looking over Corbijn's shoulder. You won't fool me this time. I think I can make an educated guess who this potential rival-detective could be. 

"De man die liever binnen bleef" ("The Man Who Rather Stayed Inside," 2021) is a perfect specimen of, what I like to call, oranje pulp (orange pulp) and I say that with the upmost affection as the story delivers a pulp-style locked room thriller remindful of two writers previously discussed on this blog – namely John Russell Fearn and Gerald Verner. A case with very little interest to Corbijn, a broken relationship without an apparent crime, which is why De Jong is tasked with most of the work. De Jong has to try to get into contact with a reclusive software millionaire, Hadley Green, who lives in a manor house on an estate "separated with a high fence and barbed wire" from the outside world. One day, without an explanation, he kicked his girlfriend and their 5-year-old son out of the house. She desperately wants answers. De Jong quickly finds out that getting past the gatekeeper and estate manager is easier said than done. She eventually gets passed the gate on a dark, stormy night when the entire house is plunged into darkness and potentially crawling with intruders culminating in a shooting in a tightly locked bedroom. Just when I thought I had figured everything out, De Jong's return to the estate the following morning threw an entirely different complexion on the case. A very well done take on the pulp-style thriller with an impossible crime in a house under siege (see Brian Flynn's Invisible Death, 1929).

So that brings us to the end of More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn. A rewarding collection with a dodgy story, or two, but without a single genuine dud to be found and traditionally there are one or two bad stories in every short story collection and anthology – speaking volumes about the overall quality of the series. Another plus is the variety within the series and this collection. Covering everything from armchair detection and (pulp) thrillers to locked room mysteries and contemporary interpretations of the Doylean-era crime story. This type of crime-and detective fiction is regrettably all too rare in my country, because not that many Dutch writers have the know-all to clue, misdirect or play around with the conventions and tropes of the genre. That's why I've been enjoying this series so much, but don't assume that completely clouds my judgment. Only a little. And many of the stories collected here would charm the pants off of non-Dutch detective fans, if they ever get translated. Here's hoping!

Murder of a Negative (1963) by Dick A. van Ruler

Last month, I reviewed In de greep van de kreeft (In the Grip of the Lobster, 1965) by "B.J. Kleymens," a shared penname of J. Kleijn and B. Mensen, whose only detective novel was their contribution to the "Zodiac Mysteries" – a collaborative project of twelve writers and an editor. Ab Visser gathered twelve writers each tasked with writing a detective novel in which one of the astrological signs plays a central or even decisive role. But the project was abandoned and left unfinished after eight novels. So what happened? 

I used my review of In the Grip of the Lobster to burrow deeper into the mystery of the missing "Zodiac Mysteries." I was unable to discover why the series was abandoned or canceled, but Robert van Gulik's novella "De nacht van de tijger" ("The Night of the Tiger," 1963) from The Monkey and the Tiger (1965) was originally intended to be his contribution to the series. There's a possibility, as noted in my review, Jacques Presser's Moord in de Poort (Murder in the Poort, 1965) is another lost Zodiac mystery that made it to print. Maybe. So this left only two contributors unaccounted for.

One of them, Leon Derksen, has to my knowledge never written or published a single detective story, but the subject of today's review did put one to his name. I was more than a little intrigued by his sole detective novel on record.

Dick A. van Ruler studied theology at the Rijksuniversiteit of Utrecht in the 1950s and began to work as a journalist for the Utrechts Nieuwsblad in 1961, but gained national fame as the presenter of popular NCRV TV programs such as Hoe bestaat het – which translates to How It Exists or How Does It Work. A pop-science show from the 1960s and the second picture in this review comes from a newspaper teaser about that program. Yes, Van Ruler is pulling "the weight of eight train wagons" or "five and a half thousand times the weight of Dick van Ruler." You had to tune in that evening to learn the trick behind his incredible feat of strength. Regrettably, I've been unable to find even a few seconds of footage online.

More importantly, Van Ruler penned a detective novel around the same time, Moord op een negatief (Murder of a Negative, 1963), which the back cover tells showcases his interest in pastoral matters. Van Ruler is not so much interested in the crime solving techniques of the police as he's in those who come into contact with the police. Murder of a Negative is not about the who and/or how, but the why and the far-reaching, sometimes unforeseeable consequences of murder. So the result is a quasi-social crime novel similar to K. Abma's De hond was executeur (The Dog Was Executor, 1973) with the difference being Van Ruler tried to write something resembling a Dutch politieroman.

Before going over the story, I need to briefly return to the "Zodiac Mysteries" and Van Ruler's contribution that never materialized or remained unpublished. I didn't expect Murder of a Negative to be a lost Zodiac title, but postulated in my review of In the Grip of the Lobster it might have caught the eye of Visser and earned him a seat at the table – a guess which could be closer to the truth than I imagined. Murder of a Negative more or less, likely without intending it, low key setup a sequel in the background that could tie-in to and be part of the Zodiac series. The wife and confident of the police detective, Mary, "hung her believes and soul" on astrology (well, sort of) and knew her way around the field. She could advise her husband in a murder case involving one of the Zodiac signs. This raises a question: did Van Ruler penned a sequel that was part of the "Zodiac Mysteries" and, if he did, what happened to the unpublished manuscript? Did it survive or did it get lost or even destroyed as there was little chance of it ever getting published? Questions that will probably never get answered and this elusive, hypothetical second novel is so intangible that it can't even be entered into the Phantom Library of Lost Detective Stories. But let's get to the story. 

Murder of a Negative dogs the footsteps of Chief Inspector Leendert M. van Dop, of the judicial police in Utrecht (cheap pop!), who gets "de Kruit-affaire" dropped on his desk.

Johan Kruit was a valued, highly respected and pious financial manager of an import-and export company in Utrecht, De Giec, who was the first to clock in and the last to leave – never taking any vacations. When he finally took a holiday and boarded a ship with his wife to the United States, he discovered too late that his sleeping powders contained a cyanide. And he died on the floor of his cabin. Suicide is quickly dismissed by both the authorities aboard and the Americans, which made them decide to return the body and accompanying problem back to the Netherlands.

Van Dop can begin his investigation quietly and unhurried, but is getting nowhere as he's confronted with a broken, disunited family. Mrs. Kruit is silent, submissive woman who "intoxicated herself with the past" and refused to acknowledge her husband's flaws "so as not to get from the others." Namely their two children. There's a 13-year-old girl, Bertje, but she barely appears. She has a much older brother, Hans, who Van Dop finds to be an "odd boy" suffering from his "learned indifference." And he was not on the best of terms with his father. There's the problem of the two-sided, negative image of the victim.

Johan Kruit had a squeaky clean, public image of an honest, hardworking man who sat on several church and school boards, but back home he acted like "an Old Testament patriarch" who was quick to judge and hated compromises. An image that is completely shattered in the wake of his death when it's discovered he stole tens of thousands of guldens from his employer. And they're not the only victims of Kruit's financial shenanigans. Van Dop even comes across a secret mistress. So there are more than enough motives to go around.

I already said the who-and how take a backseat to the reasons behind the murder and its consequences. The murderer is not difficult to spot (ur'f ba gur pbire) and there's nothing really clever hiding behind the poisoning, which is limited to going pharmacists to ask if anyone bought some cyanide. Murder of a Negative is almost entirely focused on the why and showing how easily a situation can spin out of control. Even when someone does something horrible with the best of intentions. Some detective stories can best be compared to complicated riddles or intricate, maze-like crossword puzzles while others are character studies, but Murder of a Negative is simply watching dominoes falling down – as one bad deed leads to another ending a second murder. A death as inevitable as it's dark and tragic. So not particular satisfying as a fan of the plot-driven detective story, but readers who prefer the social and realist approach will find something of interest between its pages.

Van Ruler's Murder of a Negative is another demonstration that the Dutch detective story is all over the place, which refuses to be defined by a single school of thought or time-period. This makes finding your way not unlike groping around a pitch-black labyrinth. You take what you can get hold off and what you get is not always what you like or were looking for. Sometimes you get lucky and find a Cor Docter or Ton Vervoort. Other times you get a Bob van Oyen. Van Ruler falls into the category of interesting, but not to my liking. That being said, I did enjoy following a typical Dutch police character down all those familiar streets under the watchful eye of the Dom Tower. I just wish it had been more of a proper detective novel.

Penelope's Web (2001) by Paul Halter

I remember reading Xavier Lechard's review of Paul Halter's La toile de Pénélope (Penelope's Web, 2001) back in the late 2000s, on his old blogspot, describing the story as "one of Halter's most orthodox detective novel" born from a challenge posed by a Belgian scholar, Vincent Bourgeois – challenging him to devise "a strange manner" to seal the scene of a crime. Xavier praised Penelope's Web as an "elegantly and soundly devised" locked room mystery that ended up looking "more like Christie than Carr."

That old review never stopped to intrigue me and cemented Penelope's Web on my impossible crime wishlist. But, at the time, the only English translations of Halter's work consisted of a smattering of short stories with the first novel-length translation finally being published in 2010. Over the next ten years, John Pugmire of Locked Room International would go on to publish sixteen of Halter's novels and compiled two short story collections. Penelope's Web remained untranslated and tantalizingly inaccessible until recently. So let's cut through the tangled web of this long, eagerly anticipated translation.

Professor Frederick Foster was an entomologist who went to South America, "to study some rare species of spider," three years ago, but he went missing in Brazil and his body was eventually found on the bank of a river – murdered by a band of savages. Back home, the Foster household continued and his widow, Ruth Foster, became engaged to the local physician, Dr. Paul Hughes, who has been treating her for an illness of retina that made her practically blind. Ruth and Paul receive a nasty shock when they receive news that the body in Brazil was misidentified and Professor Foster is not only alive, but on his way back home to the village of Royston.

Professor Foster brought back more than just stories and anecdotes about his "incredible tribulations in the Amazonian jungle." What he brought back are some very rare, even hitherto unknown species of spiders and "practically tamed" one of them, which he named after his goddaughter, Penelope Ellis. Penelope is one of those unknown species with very well-developed silk-spinning organs and can spin a web faster than her sisters. Professor Foster placed Penelope in an open window of his study where she spun an fine, intricate silk web stretched across the oak window frame. Something that becomes important later on in the story.

So the situation is an uneasy one and begins to deteriorate when questions arise about his identity. A photograph of the professor turns up, but the name scribbled on the back, Peter Thompson, is that of his traveling partner. The man whose body was found on a Brazilian riverbank. Or was it? There's no denying Thompson is, or was, the spitting image of Professor Foster, but are they dealing with an impostor? A question that's not as easily answered as it should be.

Ruth is half-blind and Dr. Hughes always tried to avoid Professor Foster, because he had eyes only for his wife. Ruth's 12-year-old orphaned nephew, James, remembered him only as the uncle who read him Thousand and One Nights and Gulliver's Travels as an 8-year-old (he recently turned 12), while the professor brother-in-law, Major Edwin Brough, confessed he can't be sure either way – only Penelope believes Professor Foster is her godfather. Even if he aged, lost a lot of weight and grew a beard. So the police has to get involved and they tracked down a set of fingerprints from registry office to settle the matter. Shades of John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge (1938)! But, of course, the fingerprints gets stolen during a frantic search for two escaped spiders.

The situation becomes an impossible one when Professor Foster apparently shot himself in his study with "the only door bolted from the inside" and two, of the three, windows "more or less rusted in place." The third window is open, but covered entirely by Penelope's intricately-woven, unbroken silky web. The dark hole in his temple was still "oozing blood" when they broke down the door and there was "a strong smell of gunpowder in the room." However, the police quickly eliminate the possibility of suicide, but how could it have been murder? Dr. Alan Twist and Inspector Archibald Hurst happen to be on hand to help out the local policeman in charge, Inspector Mike Waddell. 

Penelope's Web is one of Halter's shortest novels to date with the murder taking place close to halfway mark, which makes it tricky to discuss further details. Suffice to say, Halter delivered on his promise of not only finding a new way to lock and seal a room, but came up with an original, tailor-made solution to fit a very novel impossible crime. Interestingly, the how doesn't immediately reveal the murderer's identity, which was almost ruined by the annoying use of unidentifiable pronouns. Even when they made no sense to use in certain sentences. However, this hardly detracted from an overall enjoyable, clever and original locked room mystery. One that strongly reminded me of Halter's Le cercle invisible (The Invisible Circle, 1996) as it shared some of its strength and weaknesses.

While both Penelope's Web and The Invisible Circle both sport original impossible crimes with equally original solutions, but they're not exactly flawless and you can pick holes in them. For example (no spoilers), Dr. Hughes points out to Dr. Twist that there are "traces of gunpowder on the temple" indicating "the shot was fired from point-blank range," but, according to the solution, the shot was fired "through a piece of cloth." There are some other details about the locked room-trick that can be a little sketchy or make you scratch your head.

Penelope's Web is not merely the sum of its locked room-trick and Xavier said in his old review the story ended up being more Christie than Carr. I sort of agree. Penelope's Web is arguably better as who-and whydunit than as an impossible crime story as Halter expertly dangled the smartly clued solution in front of the reader's eye while simultaneously planting red herrings as a distraction. Judging the story purely as a whodunit, Penelope's Web stands as one of his stronger and more solid efforts. The locked room-trick is merely the cherry on top. You can say the same about the second murder, which gave the story a dark and tragic tinge, but a good use of a second murder that's not merely there as padding. Still a pity, because the second victim would have made an interesting detective character. Even if it was just for a one-shot.

So, yeah, I personally enjoyed and recommend Penelope's Web, but mystery readers who are still struggling with Halter might find themselves in another frustrating catch-as-catch-can wrestling match with his own unique brand of plotting and mystery writing.

Now that Penelope's Web can be crossed off my Halter/LRI wishlist, I hope Le crime de Dédale (The Crime of Daedalus, 1997), Le géant de pierre (The Stone Giant, 1998), Le douze crimes d'Hercule (The Twelve Crimes of Hercules, 2001), Le voyageur du passé (The Traveler from the Past, 2012) and Le tigre borgne (The One-Eyed Tiger, 2004) will follow soon!

Death Among the Undead (2017) by Masahiro Imamura

Back in late 2018, Ho-Ling Wong posted an intriguing review of Masahiro Imamura's debut novel, Shijinso no satsujin (The Murders in the Villa of the Dead, 2017), which "made enormous waves in the world of Japanese mystery fiction" as it swooped the number one spots in the Kono Mystery ga Sugoi, Weekly Bunshun Mystery Best 10 and Honkaku Mystery Best 10 rankings – marking "the first time anyone had managed to grab the grand spot of these three annual mystery fiction rankings." There's a good reason why the book was a smashing success in Japan spawning "a multimedia franchise" with manga and live-action adaptations. 

Masahiro Imamura accomplished something in his debut that many have attempted, but only few have succeeded in doing. The Murders in the Villa of the Dead blurs the lines between two different genre, namely the detective and horror story, without corrupting or tainting the integrity of either. The book impressively juggles the traditional locked room mystery with an actual zombie outbreak, which isolated the characters to the titular villa and created one of the most original closed-circle situations on record!

So, naturally, I've been banging on about the book getting translated ever since and half-expected Pushkin Vertigo would eventually pick it up, but it was John Pugmire, of Locked Room International, who scooped up the publishing rights – getting out an English translation quicker than I could have asked for. Ho-Ling Wong translated The Murders in the Villa of the Dead, retitled Death Among the Undead, which has a must-read introduction by the "God of Mystery," Soji Shimada. A jealousy-inducing introduction as Shimada goes over the history of the Japanese detective story and particular how "the youngsters belonging to the university mystery clubs" rebelled against the domineering social school of crime fiction. This is now known as the beginning of the shin honkaku boom in Japan. A movement that completely rejuvenated the traditional, plot-oriented detective story and mystery fans everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to them.

However, while the West only recently have gotten a taste of the great shin honkaku school, the movement has been dominant in Japan for decades and readers "yearned for the kind of impetus" that Yukito Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) had created. Death Among the Undead gave expression to that yearning and might very well be the signal of "a revolutionary change for the mystery genre" in which authors look to fantastical elements, like "country house murder mysteries which utilize artificial elements" or zombies, to add something new and original to the core-puzzles of their novels. This is both amazing and slightly depressing. I'm poking here through the remains of the brief flareups of the Dutch detective story, while Japan is about to enter their Third Golden Age. 

Death Among the Undead forced that first step towards new grounds, like the shin honkaku movement did in the past, but the story begins as a typical, shin honkaku-style detective story with a university student as the narrator, Yuzuru Hamura – who's loves traditional detective fiction. So he tried to join the Shinkō University's Mystery Club, but its members were more interested in Young Adult fiction and used to club as an excuse to socialize. However, there's a second, unofficial and one-man mystery club on campus run by a third-year student. Kyōsuke Akechi is the president of the Mystery Society and aspires to be Great Detective, known as "The Holmes of Shinkō," who recruits Hamura as his Watson. Akechi and Hamura go around campus solving cases (like "The Case of the Leaked Theology Tests") or looking for lost cats as a part-time job for the Tanuma Detective Agency. Akechi always hoped something truly interesting and worthy would occur around him, but he was not content to wait until something turned up and had the habit to jump in on his own. This is why he has set his eyes on the Film Club's summer trip.

The Film Club has planned a trip to the Villa Violet, a private boarding house, situated near Lake Sabea in S Prefecture where they want to shoot a short, POV-style horror movie, but the trip is also "what some might call a group dating party" – which is why there not too keen on outsiders trying to horn in. A group of students gathering at a boarding house in the summer strikes Akechi as "the perfect place for some incident to occur," but he gets turned down several times. No outsiders! This changes when a note is found in club room asking "who will be the sacrifice this year?" A reference to a female club member committing suicide after their previous summer trip. Like I said, the story starts out like a fairly typical, neo-orthodox detective story. This could easily have been the premise of a story from The Kindaichi Case Files (The Legendary Vampire Murders comes to mind).

So there are a few cancellations and the persistent Akechi is approached by a second-year student, Hiruko Kenzaki, who offers Akechi and Hamura to join them after all. Otherwise, the trip might be canceled all together. What makes her deal so curious, is that they learn she's a detective "who has taken on many difficult and downright inexplicable cases that even the police couldn't handle." Kenzaki solved those cases with her "matchless powers of reasoning," but she comes from an illustrious family and her involvement is covered up with "strict restraints" on the media. So could there anything behind her arranging a place for them on the trip?

Akechi and Hamura become the outsiders in a group comprising of Film and Drama Club members, university alumni's and the manager of the Villa Violet, but, despite the alumni's turning out to be unpleasant characters, there's nothing to suggest all hell is about to break loose. Well, they discover that their smartphones have no signal and can't connect to the internet. There's the sound of ambulance sirens in the distance, helicopters in formation flying over and a brilliant, glowing aura behind the mountains. But everyone assumed that the Sabea Rock Festival was getting wild. Until they ventured out to explore an abandoned hotel in couples on "a Trial of Courage dare." This is where the story becomes unapologetically awesome!

While out in the dark, they can make out several figures descending the mountainside, swaying from side to side, dragging their feet and moaning until they were close enough for the lamp posts to illuminate "about a dozen swaying figures" coming their way – exposing their dark, bloodstained faces and torn clothing. And "the pungent, rotten smell of blood, grease and more." Obviously, these torn creatures are no extras hired to scare them and no-sold a rock thrown at its face. So they left cartoon smoke as they run back to the Villa Violet, but not everyone makes it back as what remains of the group barricade themselves inside. That one line, "things don't always go right," shows why the best storytellers today can be found in Japan.

They hear on the news that there was a possible bio-terror attack at the Rock Festival and the police has sealed off the entire area, but the news is evidently censored and communication cut-off to prevent mass panic. So now they have to survive until (hopefully) rescue comes, but one of them sees "a sign from heaven" in "the appearance of the walking dead" and a change to exact revenge. And the next day, one of the survivors is found dead under gruesome, hard to explain circumstances.

President of the Film Club, Ayumu Shindō, is found dead in his locked room and his death had not been a pleasant one. There were parts of his body that had been bitten off and his face had been gnawed all over, but nobody else had been in the gory, blood-drenched room and the balcony looked down on "the hordes of zombies swarming the grounds below." But they also find a folded piece of paper with "let's eat" scrawled on it. So there you have, what the story calls, "an unprecedented locked room mystery," because only a human could have possibly entered the room, but nobody "showed signs of having bitten Shindō to death." On the other hand, a zombie could have killed him, but "the possibility of a zombie penetrating the double-layered locked room, by accident or coincidence, is zero." Possibilities are explored through a locked room lecture, discussing fictional zombies and analyzing their own homegrown zombie hoard.

Their "brain only seems capable of sending simple orders" and "the coordination of their limbs is so bad they can't even run," easily losing their balance and struggling with obstacles, but they have "unlimited stamina" and feel no pain – which reduce the barricades to temporary obstacles. More importantly, they don't attack human, or each other, to eat, but to infect the living and reproduce. Anyone who's bitten gets infected, dies and rises again as a fully fleshed out zombie. Imamura brilliantly and logically integrated what the zombies can, and can't do, with the plot and story's setting, but how and where the zombies come into play is one of the key-pieces of the puzzle. Not just with the first murder. There's a second, equally gruesome murder in the elevator, where someone has been bitten to death and got his head smashed to a pulp, which is more of a how-was-it-done than an impossible crime. But the solution is ingenious! The third, very late murder is somewhat glossed over, as the body is impossible to reach, but the presence of zombies opened the door to an original twist on an old dodge.

Purely as a traditional, plot-driven detective novel, Death Among the Undead can stand with the best of its kind, past and present, but the story makes a point not to ignore the whydunit angle. Not merely the murderer's motive, but why the murderer employed such dangerous and high-risk methods. The trickery behind the murders can eventually be explained, but here it raises the question why such methods were employed. I really liked the dark duality the solution exposed between the intellectual and emotional facets of both the murders and murderer, which I thought was nicely complemented by an interesting and grim piece of commentary on the murder-magnet trope. I could go on, and on, praising the book, but there's one small detail that bugged me and it would be unfair to ignore or gloss over it.

Masahiro Imamura's succeeded in injecting zombies in a traditional detective story without killing it, but it came with a noticeable side effect. The characters took a more proactive approach to the murders than to the more pressing situation of hundreds of zombies, breaking down the barricades, slowly taking over the villa – floor by floor. They're rather passive when it comes to the zombies with a wait and hope for the best attitude and while coming up with all kinds of false-solutions to the murders, nobody is trying to figure out a way to escape from the villa to their van. Sure, they complain about the rope-ladder or a rope made out of bed sheets, but you're in the epicenter of a small, localized zombie apocalypse. What did they expect? A rooftop slip-and-slide? The zombies standing outside the villa can, theoretically, be bypassed. Just imagine the limited number of zombies as being water and Villa Violet a giant sluice. Eventually, they'll begin flooding the house, but you have control and slowdown the flood by using everything in the house to create either obstacles or a pathway. When one side of the villa has (mostly) cleared of zombies, they can slide down from a balcony, window or even the rooftop from the rope-ladder or bed sheets. And run to the van like the devil is on their heels. I was also slightly annoyed that nobody stumbled to the idea to sharpen the blunted, decorative swords and spears. This would have spared a little muscle power fighting an undead creature whose only advantage is unlimited stamina.

Nonetheless, this minor complaint is nothing to the detriment of the threat these terrifying creatures pose to the people trapped inside the villa. I do not fear Dracula, Freddy Krueger or Godzilla, but zombies never fail to unnerve me in how they can turn friends and family "into enemies in the blink of an eye." Imamura's zombies drive that point home very effectively. This is why an actual zombie apocalypse wouldn't kill us as a society or civilization. It would be the psychological aftermath that would neck us. Particularly if a zombie virus is permanent and turns everyone who dies into a zombie. Just imagine what that would do to people! I think I prefer to deal with malevolent ghosts or demonic children.

So, to draw this overlong and rambling review to a close, Death Among the Undead is close to perfect as a hybrid-mystery novel and has a plot bubbling with exciting new ideas and the spirit of exploration, which earned it a place alongside Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1954) as a rare classic of its kind. Simply put, the blast I had with Death Among the Undead could have wiped out the dinosaurs a second time. My best and favorite read of 2021! I sincerely hope we can look forward to an English translation of the sequel, Magan no hako no satsujin (The Murders in the Box of the Devil Eye, 2019), in 2022.

On a last, somewhat related note: I didn't want to wait too long with posting my review of this modern masterpiece and crammed as early as possible in my posting schedule. This came at the expense of yesterday's review of three short stories by Joseph Commings. So, if you have missed it, give it a look.