Visitors to the Isolated Island (2020) by Kie Houjou

Last year, Kie Houjou became one of my favorite mystery writers on the strength of two novels, Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019) and Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022), which are respectively the first and third title in the "Ryuuzen Clan" series – translated by Mitsuda Madoy and "cosmiicnana." Technically, they're hybrid mysteries. The Time Traveler's Hourglass weaves time travel into an intricate, immaculately-plotted detective novel and Delicious Death for Detectives entrenched its plot in an immerse, futuristic Virtual Reality game. However, they're so very well done, well rounded and incredibly innovative mysteries, it would be more accurate to call them the detective series of tomorrow. I especially can see Delicious Death for Detectives becoming the classic detective novel from the first-half of this century (i.e. comparable to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, 1939).

I had a sneaking suspicion the second book in the series, Katou no raihousha (Visitors to the Isolated Island, 2020), could become my favorite. A suspicion that proved to be not far off the mark!

Kie Houjou's Visitors to the Isolated Island is the second title in the "Ryuuzen Clan" series, but Meister Hora only appears in the foreword to assure the reader that although "the events of the story seem absurd, there is no need for you to fear" as it will remain a detective story at heart ("I value fair play above all else"). Kamo Touma is only mentioned as the author of an article on the titular island in the Unsolved Mysteries magazine. Instead, the story focuses on Kamo's brother-in-law, Ryuuzen Yuki, who's the Assistant Director at J. Production en route to the lush, now uninhabited Kakuriyo Island to shoot a TV special for the World's Mysteries Detective Club show – which is going to spotlight the 1974 "Beast of Kakuriyo Island" incident. A mass murder robbing the island of the last of its last inhabitants.

Kakuriyo Island, "a perpetual summer paradise," actually consists two islands. A bigger, oval shaped island and a smaller tidal island, known as the Divine Land, which is connected to the main island during low tide when a gravel path appears. In 1974, the entire population (12), in addition to a visiting professor researching folklore, was wiped out in a single night with bodies found in different locations. All the victims had one thing in common: they had been stabbed in the heart by "a cone-shaped object." The police concluded the visiting scholar, Professor Sasakura, killed the islanders when caught digging up the cemetery looking for buried treasure. And died himself in a struggle with the last victim. Furthermore, the police believe the dogs kept on the island were responsible for savaging Professor Saskura's body. A conclusion that doesn't satisfy or hold up, as outlined in Kamo's article, but that's where the case stood for nearly half a century.

Fast forward to 2019, Yuki has come to Kakuriyo Island not only as the assistant director, but to get revenge for a friend whose death can be blamed on certain members of the production company.

However, Yuki plans to break with long-standing (shin) honkaku traditions by opting for practical methods rather than "crimes patterned on old legends or nursery rhymes and serial killings in villas," because locked room murders, fabricated alibis and other fictional crimes "were often useless in real life" – preferring to arouse as little suspicion and panic as possible. Only the appearance of a great detective, which is why invited a well-known researcher of subtropical ecosystems and detective fiction enthusiast, Motegi Shinji, to "reveal a false truth prepared by Yuki." So imagine his annoyance when one of his prospective victims is impossibly killed in a way mirroring the 1974 murders. Unno Nisaburo, the director, is found stabbed through the heart on top of a bush with only his muddy footprints leading to the spot.

So the plot, up till this point, still sounds fairly conventional shin honkaku mystery with the customary closed circle of characters stuck on an isolated island when a murderer begins leaving bodies in bizarre or impossible circumstances. It could describe the plot of Yukito Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987), MORI Hiroshi's Subete ga F ni naru (The Perfect Insider, 1996), NisiOisiN's Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) or half the titles from The Kindaichi Case Files series. Not to forget Danro Kamosaki's recently reviewed Misshitsu kyouran jidai no satsujin – Zekkai no katou to nanatsu no trick (The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks, 2022). Where Visitors to the Isolated Island begins to differ is when Yuki proves Sherlock Holmes' adage, "when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth," correct. Yuki deduces from the circumstances in which the director was killed that "the so-called Beast of Kakuriyo Island actually exists." A creature not native to the island, our planet and perhaps not even from this reality!

 

 

Yuki's outlandish theory is quickly proven correct and places entirely new complexion on both their situation and that of the detective story. Now the problem is not trying to fit motive and opportunity to one of the suspects, but applying the art of deduction to unraveling the nature of the creature ("...so little information and so many unknowns..."). Where did it come from? What can it do? What are its limitations? How intelligent is it? How can they possibly protect themselves from it? One thing that's obvious from the start is the creature, called a Visitor, is halfway between a Chupacabra and a Skinwalker. It sucks living creatures, preferably humans, dry like a juice box. More disturbingly, it can take on the form of its victim in addition to some other distinctly non-human traits and abilities, but its “mimicry” poses a direct treat to the group. Visitor has the ability to replace someone in the group and this danger even extends to animals no smaller than a cat. So they not only have to find answers and trying to draw conclusions from the gathered information, but strategize in order to survive and prevent the Visitor from escaping the island.

A comparison can be drawn with the zombie hoard encircling the villa in Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017), but the Visitor presents the Yuki and the reader with a genuine, ultimate unknown – an intelligent, non-human interloper. An invasive species knocking humanity down a place on the food chain. And with every new discovery about the Visitor, it throws another complication on their various problems while the bodycount and suspicion steadily rises. So not exactly the same obstacle presented by the zombies from Death Among the Undead, but towards the end, the traits and abilities of the Visitors come into play when someone is bumped off while alone in a watched room with a dog guarding the hallway. Solutions to this impossible murder and Yuki's explanation twists and coils right up until the final pages with some wonderful, highly imaginative applications of the Visitor's abilities to the traditional, fair play detective story.

How fairly the game was played here is more impressive than how Kie Houjou handled the ultimate unknown within the confines of the traditional detective story. A good, non-spoilerish example is the coded message the original inhabitants left behind revealing the hiding place of a treasure trove of information on the Visitors. In my experience, Japanese code cracking stories, or subplots, rarely work in translation, but Yuki pointed out that "this code was made to be solved by a complete outsider to the island" – including the reader. Not only is the code 100% solvable, it's solution is a clue in itself. Houjou played it so fairly, she included two relatively short chapters from the perspective of the Visitor. I was, in fact, able to anticipate an important part of the solution without getting all the way. But it was fun trying to find my way in what's new territory for the detective story.

That's another noteworthy aspect of Visitors to the Isolated Island. It demonstrates why hybrid mysteries have become the next frontier for Japanese mystery writers. When done correctly, the hybrid mystery allows to break new ground and create new possibilities, while staying well within the framework of the classically-styled, fair play detective story. Visitors to the Isolated Island is a superb example of the fair play, hybrid mystery done right. Only drawback is how unrealistically perfect, almost dreamlike, all three novels are. Like a collective wish-fulfillment of detective fans come true!

So what else to say, except that The Time Traveler's Hourglass, Visitors to the Isolated Island and Delicious Death for Detectives deserve an official release in as many different languages as possible, because these three detective novels are going to be the classics of the 21st century. To quote Mitsuda Madoy, "they phenomenal, absolute masterpieces" and "boringly perfect" to boot. Highly recommended!

Note for the curious: yes, I know, I rambled on long enough, but something else I liked is how Visitors to the Isolated Island, an experimental hybrid mystery, embodies the past, present and future of the genre. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) was not only the first modern detective story and first official locked room mystery, but also the first hybrid mystery combining horror with a tale of ratiocination. A line can be drawn from Poe to this book and the direction the genre (in Japan) seems to be headed in the years ahead.

Delicious Death for Detectives (2022) by Kie Houjou

I previously reviewed the first, of currently three, genre-bending detective novels in Kie Houjou's "Ryuuzen Clan" series that successfully added new dimensions to the classically-styled, traditionally-plotted shin honkaku mysteries – weaving together the logical with the fantastical. Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019) is a superb time travel mystery and Ho-Ling Wong's review of Katou no raihousha (Visitors on the Isolated Island, 2020) makes it sounds like a prototype of what the detective story might look like a hundred years from now. When the detective, horror and science-fiction genres blend together to create a new entity. The third entry in the series keeps the plot a bit more grounded without time travel or otherworldly entities in order to create an insanely tangled, multi-level detective novel that might very well end up fulfilling the role of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939) of this century's iconic detective novel.

Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022) is one of Houjou's two novels nominated for the new, updated "Locked Room Library" translated by Mitsuda Madoy and "cosmiicnana." So, with that out of the way...

Kamo Touma from The Time Traveler's Hourglass returns to take on the double role of protagonist and antagonist. Kamo is a magazine writer with a column in the monthly magazine Unsolved Mysteries, "The Pursuit of Truth," in which he presents "alternative explanations" to old, presumably settled cases. His analyses revealed quite a few miscarriages of justice resulting in several wrongful convictions getting overturned. That gave him a reputation of being something of an "amateur detective" and landed him a very special invitation.

Kurata Chikage is a game producer at MegalodonSoft who produces open-world RPG games and the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns caused a boom in game sales. MegalodonSoft into Virtual Reality and created the hit sensation Mystery Maker. A VR game in which "players take on the role of one of the world's top amateur detectives" and "participate in the solving of various difficult incidents" or battle Dr. D, the King of Crime, in Story Mode – even creating original scenarios. Sixty million sold copies later, Kurata and MegalodonSoft expect to release Mystery Maker 2 in February, 2025. By the way, Delicious Death for Detectives takes place in the far-away future of November, 2024. Kurata is organizing an internal event as a special demo, or, to be more precise, "a closed circle event." She asks Kamo to create/design a challenging scenario and play the role of murderer in the play test demo of the VR version of Mystery Maker 2.

The group of people she invited to go head-to-head are "the top real world amateur detectives" who are "to act as detectives and murderers" in an intense battle of wits and cat-and-mouse. Well, Kurata restricted her picks to the amateur detectives of Japan. The first of these amateur detective is the cousin of Kamo's wife, Ryuuzen Yuki, who's a struggling mystery writer under the name "Ryuuzen Yuki." Roppongi Shido is a retired investigator, critic and reputedly an off-the-book consultant to the police ("...often assisted with investigating cases in secret"). Fuwa Shinichiro is the director of the Shinjuku-based Fuwa Detective Agency with a reputation to match. Michi Chiaki describes herself as a job hopping, jack-of-all-trades "who mostly solves or prevents scams for clients." Azuma Yuzuha is an administrator for a hospital, but her brother was a famous detective who died in the line of duty and she carries on his work with her sister-in-law. Hajime Kindaichi Sou Touma Kyu Renjo Kenzan Ryohei is the obligatory, teenage high school detective who solved the cipher murder case at his cram school and several other incidents at his regular high school. Munakata Nozomi is simply known as the drifting detective whose only companion and Watson is a husky, Retsu. Kamo makes eight.

MegalodonSoft honors the time-honored traditions of the detective story and holds the three-day event at Megalodon Manor (floor plan included) on the island of Inunojima in the Seto Inland Sea ("the building certainly resembles the sort of mansion you'd see in a mystery novel"). A VR version of Megalodon Manor was created, called Puppet Hall (floor plan included), where the demo takes place and can be accessed through a full body VR control device – named RHAPSODY. But before the games can even begin, Kurata goes rogue and informs the detectives that there has been a serious change of plan. The game is still going ahead as scheduled, but, this time, being a fallible detective comes with consequences. Kurata states, "normally, the ones who suffer for your mistakes are others, but in this game, you'll be asked to bet your own lives." If the Detectives or Murderer (Kamo) fail to fulfill any of their victory conditions, they'll be killed on the spot. Everyone was given a MegalodonSoft smartwatches that has "death trap" device with a remote controlled poisoned needle. And, to absolutely ensure their cooperation, she gifted similar smartwatches to their loved ones.

You have heard of puzzling brain teasers? Delicious Death for Detectives is a puzzling brain thriller!

I should point out here that all of this is an overly simplified, stripped down summary of the story's setup as it not only has to introduce the characters, laying the groundwork of the plot and explaining the rules of the game, but also has to do a bit of world-building regarding the VR setting of Puppet Hall. An entirely new, specialized setting, "a space set up specifically for a game of deduction," that comes with its own sets of possibilities and limitations. For example, the VR gear is ID-locked with an iris scan bio-authentication and players who get killed in the game, but not IRL, can be resurrected as ghosts with a halo hovering above their virtual avatar to give evidence. So the in-game murderer (Kamo) has to be careful not to be identified when carrying out the murderer. That's why the character of the murderer has the ability to extinguish the lights in the building during "Crime Time" and has night vision function.

So, roughly, the first quarter of Delicious Death for Detectives gives the reader a lot to digest and can be counted as its sole shortcoming as Kurata, in her role as Gamemaster, keeps adding new details and bits of information when the game has already started – giving the impression the story's not playing entirely fair. That's not the case, of course, but simply spacing everything out in order to not give the reader an even info dump to digest. I think it would have been both helpful, not to mention very fitting, if the book had opened with a short game guide explaining the rules, mechanics, maps and list of the in-game inventory and players. It would have smoothed out the opening stages of the story, but, once you get pass that, you get a detective novel like few others. Even by the standards of hybrid mysteries!

I already noted Kamo has to play a double role of detective and in-game murderer. Only the reader, up to a certain point, knows Kamo is the murderer in Mystery Maker 2, but not how he engineered the (locked room) murders. So the murders in Puppet Hall can be taken as semi-inverted mysteries in which the reader knows whodunit, but, frustratingly, not howdunit. Getting caught, having his tricks exposed or successfully defending himself by demolishing a wrong theory, it has deadly consequences either way. If Kamo gets exposed, or one of his tricks, he and his family dies. But if he successfully defends himself, the detective whose theory got demolished is marked for death. The person charged with carrying out the real-world executions is simply called the Executioner and someone hidden among the other players.

I'm going to reveal too many of the details about the impossible crimes themselves, but they deserve to discussed as they're all gems, especially those staged in Puppet Hall.

Firstly, there's the murder Kamo staged in a storeroom barricaded from the inside, which appeared to be the central locked room puzzle of the story as it received a considerable amount of attention and scrutiny – two detectives tacking a crack at it complete with diagrams. A pleasure for everyone who enjoys Ellery Queen-style chains-of-deductions, building false-solutions before tearing them down again centered around the fallibility of the detectives. All the solutions, correct or not, to this locked room puzzle are ingenious and original, but surprisingly conventional compared to the other impossible murder in the VR space. Secondly, around the same time, someone else is poisoned in a locked room and it didn't appear it would develop in anything particular noteworthy, but it ended up giving the book its claim to at least the status of a locked room/hybrid mystery classic. The brilliant solution completely took me by surprise and left me speechless. Revealing a string of pretty unique clues and its brazen originality functioning as a red herring. Is this one of the most pleasing locked room-tricks to mentally visualize? Well, what more can I say? It's a masterclass in how to integrate an invented world or fantastical elements into a fair play (locked room) mystery. And how such a setting can unlock new possibilities to plot and tell a detective story.

If Delicious Death for Detective had been a smaller-scale detective novel restricting itself to experimenting with a locked room murder inside a VR game, it would have still been a first-rate, highly original and fresh treatment of the classical manor house mysteries. Delicious Death for Detectives is a big picture mystery and story continues to twist and turn right up till the epilogue as more people die. But as false-solutions get demolished, the Executioner begins to kill detectives in Megalodon Manor under seemingly impossible, or mysterious, circumstances. I've still barely scratched the surface of this insanely intricate, densely-plotted detective novel climaxing on the third day during the final round of "Answer Time" when Kamo has to reason for everyone's life. Like I said, the story never settles down until the epilogue. All done according to the fair play rules of the grandest game in the world.

I can go on lavishing praise on the story and plot, but you get the idea by now. It's a superb detective novel. A prototype of the detective story of the future and likely going to be a modern classic. What deserves to be pointed out is how it reads like the past, present and future of the genre coming together Megalodon Manor/Puppet Hall, but mostly done very subtly and without referencing famous detective stories or locked room lectures. Those not overly familiar with Japanese mysteries, in all its guises, will no doubt see shades of Christie's And Then There Were None, Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), Leo Bruce's Case of Three Detectives (1936) and Ellery Queen, but was particular pleased to spot all the nods to everyone favorite manga mystery series. Some were more obvious ("...the black shadow figure from a certain mystery manga") than others (VR setting and smartwatch hostages), but enjoyed. I really believe what was done with the specialized setting and plot is a glimpse of the detective story of the future.

 Delicious Death for Detectives is not the first hybrid mystery discussed on this blog proving not everything under the sun has been done before, but Kie Houjou delivered a particular effective, convincing and basically a textbook example of the hybrid mystery done to near perfection. And produced a classic locked room mystery in the process. Hopefully, I get an opportunity to read the second, utterly bizarre sounding, Visitors on the Isolated Island one of these days, but, in the mean time, Delicious Death for Detectives comes highly recommended!

Hold on a minute: I have one, very minor, thing to nitpick about. I don't like the title Delicious Death for Detectives or, to use the apparently correct title, "Delicious Death" for Detectives. Just Deserts for "Great Detectives" would be a better fit for an English title, but even that one sounds too cozy-like and this is a story that would actually benefit from a simple, straightforward title. Something like Death and the Great Detectives or Deleting the Great Detectives.

The Time Traveler's Hourglass (2019) by Kie Houjou

Kie Houjou is a Japanese mystery writer who bagged the Tetsuya Ayukawa Award for her debut novel, Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019), which belongs to the emerging, third wave of the shin honkaku movement – currently in the process of evolving the traditional detective story. The first two waves of Soji Shimada, Yukito Ayatsuji and MORI Hiroshi revived, refreshed and rebuild the traditional, fair play detective to great success. After twenty years of dominance, there came a yearning for the kind of impetus that Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) and Hiroshi's Subete ga F ni naru (Everything Turns to F: The Perfect Insider, 1996) brought to the table. The stick to scratch this itch proved to be hybrid mysteries. Not merely as a gimmick!

The idea is to take your normal, everyday shin honkaku mystery and incorporate elements from other, seemingly incompatible, genres like fantasy, horror and science-fiction. And the trick, of course, is to harmonize the two and make it work as a fairly plotted detective story. A tricky, slippery tight-rope to traverse, but Masahiro Imamura pulled it off with Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017) and Magan no hako no satsujin (Death Within the Evil Eye, 2019). Shimada called Death Among the Undead a possible revolutionary change for the genre, but should note here that the idea of hybrid mysteries itself is not revolutionary one. Yamaguchi Masaya's Ikeru shikabane no shi (Death of the Living Dead, 1989) preceded Death Among the Undead by nearly thirty years and Takekuni Kitayama combed impossible decapitations across time with a reincarnation plot in Rurijou satsujin jiken (The "Lapis Lazuli Castle" Murders, 2002). Even over here there's a history of genre blending, especially science-fiction mysteries, but rarely produced a classic or actually went anywhere (except for the historical mystery that became a genre of its own). Now it feels like they have started in Japan to explore the potential and possibilities of blending and merging genres in earnest.

If there's one thing The "Lapis Lazuli Castle" Murders and Death Among the Undead have demonstrated, it's that the inclusion of normally destructive (to the detective story) elements like zombies, reincarnation and time hopping can unlock doors to new possibilities previously unthinkable. All it needs is a good mystery writer who understands what makes a plot tick.

I've read about Kie Houjou, The Time Traveler's Hourglass and the Ryuuzen Clan series, but didn't expect to see two of her novel emerge from the first round of nominations for the new, updated "Locked Room Library" – translations provided by Mitsuda Madoy and "cosmiicnana." You know their story from previous reviews. The Time Traveler's Hourglass is basically a literary descendant of John Dickson Carr's experiments with historical time travel mysteries, namely The Devil in Velvet (1951) and Fire, Burn! (1957), taking the concept of time travel mysteries to its next logical stage. Houjou followed the example of Death Among the Undead by creating a fairly typical, recognizable shin honkaku premise and overlaid it with a time travel plot with sublime results. This year's best-of list is going to look weird!

The Time Traveler's Hourglass is the first novel in the Ryuuzen Clan series and introduces the Ryuuzens as a family living, and dying, under a curse. For nearly sixty years, everyone who "inherited the blood of the Ryuuzen clan began to rapidly pass away" from accidents, murder, suicides and natural causes. A string of untimely passings starting with the "Deadly Tragedy of Shino" back in 1960. At the time, the Ryuuzens gathered at their remote villa in Shino to celebrate the birthday of the head of the family, but they got wiped out in a landslide. When the victims were recovered, the "majority of the bodies found were proven to have been murdered" ("however, with so little evidence, there was little to do"). Kamo Rena is one of the last living descendants of the Ryuuzen clan, living in 2018, but she's rapidly deteriorating from acute interstitial pneumonia which leaves her husband in despair.

Kamo Touma is a magazine writer who used to write for a paranormal rag and met Rena following a flare up of the curse of the Ryuuzen clan, but they started dating and eventually married. She only developed a morbid fear for the family curse following the death of two cousins, which is the cause of her deteriorating health. Recently, Kamo has been working on an article about a new urban legend, "The Urban Legend That Brings Happiness: The Hourglass of Miracles." A trending topic on social media telling of an hourglass-shaped pendant granting a wish to whomever can get their hands on it. Kamo is contacted by someone calling himself Meister Hora ("...the name of a character from Michael Ende's Momo... the keeper of time...") offering him the hourglass and an opportunity to put the curse to rest by going back to 1960 in order to stop the murders. But when they arrive at the villa in 1960, the killing spree has already started.

Before returning to this gem of a detective story, I need to point out a couple of things about its presentation and translation. Firstly, Mitsuda Madoy opted to present all the names in the Japanese style of family name-given name order, which is something that never fails to confuse me. So the heads up from the translator is much appreciated. Secondly, this book has all those little extra detective fans love so much. A cast of characters, an elaborate family tree, two floor plans, a map of the surrounding area and an introduction by Meister Hora – ensuring the reader that they're reading a fair play mystery ("...I will tell no lies in the story, nor shall I lie to you, the readers"). And, of course, a challenge to the reader. Rarely has a challenge to the reader been as appropriate as in The Time Traveler's Hour Glass. The clueing, misdirection and general fair play on display here is of an incredibly high purity. More on that in a moment.

So when they arrive in 1960, the murderer is ahead of schedule in defiance of historical records and a bridge collapse ensured they're isolated from the outside world. The murderer also cut the phone lines to complete the picture of a classic shin honkaku mystery novel.

Kamo and his talking, hourglass-shaped pendant Meister Hora's arrival was seen by 13-year-old Ryuuzen Ayaka. Ayaka aids them by introducing Kamo to the family as a famous private detective she invited as a surprise for grandfather, because he's a veracious reader of detective fiction. Not something out-of-character as she previously invited a magician without telling anyone. So he can investigate the two murders that have just taken place with body parts found inside the house and near the river. One of the victims is Ayaka's father. Kamo's investigation pretty soon reveals why the family referred to the murders as an impossible crime. An impossible crime that boils down to the question how the head and torso were carried out of the house when the only exit was under constant observation. A very neatly done impossibility and the explanation delivers, which is not the last, slightly unusual impossible crime or locked room puzzle to come his way. I should note here the villa has an interesting feature as each of its twelve private rooms is named after one of the signs of the Chinese zodiac (Dragon Room, Monkey Room, Rabbit Room, etc). Kie Houjou went out of her way to keep things as clear and uncluttered as possible. Even suggesting "some mnemonics" to help remember who's staying in which room ("the Rat, the smallest animal of the zodiac, was the room belonging to the youngest person, Ayaka"). The care she gave to the plot is admirable.

So, being familiar with the historical case notes and old diary entries, Kamo spends the next night hiding in a hall closet to catch the murderer red handed, but the night goes by and the supposed victim emerges the next morning unharmed – suggesting that the timeline has been altered. This is where the earlier established rules of the time traveling hourglass starts playing a role, because even with "the existence of technology for space-time travel, this is still an impossible crime." The steadily growing pile of corpses, severed body parts, inexplicable disappearances and the impending landslide is still only a fraction of the plot. For example, Kamo suspects the bodies were cut to pieces to imitate a painting, hanging in the villa, depicting the Nue of Japanese folklore ("the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the tail of a snake, the limbs of a tiger, and a cry like a thrush"). The missing artist who made the painting is one of the many skeletons rattling around in the family closet. What about that strange night when the last two of prospective victims barricaded themselves inside the villa, while the rest waited out the night in a trailer with Kamo sitting with his back against the door. Only to be greeted by a horror show the following morning. A truly labyrinthine-shaped plot created out of space-time through which Houjou marched an "endless parade of horrors."

Ho-Ling Wong perhaps said it best in his 2020 review, "it's a very dense story, almost insanely so, but it holds together, somehow." And how! I mentioned in past review one risk of these kind of roller coaster-like hybrid mysteries brimming with impossible crimes, corpse-puzzles, contorted narratives and fantastical elements is running the risk of losing the reader along the way. The "Lapis Lazuli Castle" Murders ran into that problem towards the end. There's always the risk of the story getting entangled in its own overly clever, elaborate plot designs, but neither proved to be an obstacle for The Time Traveler's Hourglass. Even though the story concludes with a lengthy, Ellery Queen-style elimination of the remaining suspects full with twists, turns, false-solution and actual, crystal clear and very satisfying answers to the main problems – which in turn highlights just how fairly everything was clued and foreshadowed. Not a small feat to pull off when time travel, time paradoxes and altered timelines get added to the mix.

Even without the time travel shenanigans, The Time Traveler's Hourglass has all the makings of a more traditionally-styled, first-rate shin honkaku mystery with its isolated setting, gory corpse-puzzles and impossible crimes. A plot that would not be out of place in The Kindaichi Case Files (especially those penned by Seimaru Amagi), but the well-handled, time traveling hourglass and the character of Meister Hora allowed Kie Houjou to get more out of the premise than had it been a standard locked room mystery without a science-fiction artifact. Just like Death Among the Undead, the skillful way in which the fantastic is balanced with the rationale and fair play principles of the detective story unlocked doors to entirely new, previously undreamed possibilities for the genre. That alone makes it something of a modern classic and without question one of the best debuts in the history of the detective story.

There is, however, something about the characters and story I liked even more than the rich, densely-plotted web covering them (SPOILER/ROT13): Wncnarfr jevgref qba'g ful njnl sebz pbhegvat gentrql, ovggre be gentvp raqvat, xvyyvat bss punenpgref be raqvatf qrznaqvat n fnpevsvpr. Guvf fgbel nccrnerq gb trne hc gb qrznaq fhpu n fnpevsvpr sebz Xnzb. Bar gung pbzrf ng n terng crefbany pbfg, ohg vf jvyyvat gb npprcg vg sbe Eran'f fnxr. Fb, abeznyyl, hfvat gvzr geniry gb cebivqr n unccl raqvat sbe gur punenpgref vf ng orfg anhfrbhfyl purrfl naq fgbel-ehvavat purnc ng jbefg. Gur ernfba jul vg jbexrq urer vf orpnhfr gur ubhetynff bayl znqr gur unccl raqvat n cbffvovyvgl, ohg gur crbcyr Xnzb yrsg oruvaq va gur fvkgvrf rafherq vg unccrarq. Vg'f qvfthfgvatyl fjrrg naq urnegjnezvat, ohg, bapr ntnva, vg fubjf ubj tbbq Xvr Ubhwbh vf ng onynapvat naq znantvat n fgbel. Nyfb abgr gur rkpryyrag sberfunqbjvat va gur jbeqf Eran fcrnxf sebz ure ubfcvgny orq, “V xarj guvf jnf tbvat gb unccra. V'ir xabja sbe n ybat, ybat gvzr.” Just amazing!

Somehow, Kie Houjou pulled all of this off on her first try. She apparently is only getting started as the next two novels in the series are reportedly even better, more ambitious and audacious than this masterpiece of the neo-classical detective novel.

So, as you probably deduced from the tone of the review, lavish praise and length I really enjoyed The Time Traveler's Hourglass. The best detective novel of the year and already one of my all-time favorite locked room mysteries with the author already on the way of becoming a personal favorite. I highly recommend keeping an eye out for Kie Houjou, because something tells me she's one of today's mystery writers who will still be read, dissected and discussed a hundred years from now. If this trend continues, I can see this blending of the detective story, science-fiction and horror becoming an off-shoot/subgenre of its own. Similar to how historical mysteries became their separate thing. The Time Traveler's Hourglass would be seen as one of the first steps in that direction. Look forward to returning to the series as the third novel, Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022), was also nominated and translated by Madoy. I'm the most curious about the second, so far untranslated novel Katou no raihousha (Visitors on the Remote Island, 2020) because it sounds out of this world.

You can expect a review of Delicious Death for Detectives to pop up, one of these days, but first back to the Golden Age!