The Kindaichi Case Files: Ghost Fire Island Murder Case

Back in August, I reviewed the last of four translated "light novels" in The Kindaichi Case Files series, written by Seimaru Amagi, which ended my exploration of that part of the franchise as the rest of the often promising-sounding novels remain frustratingly untranslated – like Yūrei kyakusen satsujin jiken (Ghost Passenger Ship Murder Case, 1995) and Onibijima satusjin jiken (Ghost Fire Island Murder Case, 1997). I considered to get to the third Opera House case or the new 37-year-old Kindaichi next, but an anonymous comment directed my attention to the anime adaptation of Ghost Fire Island Murder Case. Saying it's "one of the most underrated and overlooked mysteries in the series" that "received the greatest improvement in its anime adaptation" compared to the novel. So why not? It's been a while since I visited the anime series. 

Ghost Fire Island Murder Case, alternatively titled The Murder Case of Will-o'-the-Wisp Island or The Will-o'-the-Wisp Isle Murder Case, originally aired as a four-episode story on Nippon TV between October 12 and November 2, 1998. So let's get started!

The story begins with Hajime Kindaichi being accompanied to the hospital by his childhood friend and hopeful love interest, Miyuki Nanase, to have a gastric examination when they spot a notice for a cram school/training camp for medical students – asking for part-time workers to help out over the summer course. Since they can use some pocket money, they sign up as part-time workers and travel to Eikou Hostel situated on a remote island in the South Sea of Japan.

Shiranui Island is rumored to be "a gathering place for wandering and revenge-taking spirits," where ghostly will-o'-the-wisps roam at night, but the hostel has ghosts of its own. The hostel used to be sanatorium in the past where tuberculosis patients were treated and has a dusty, unused room with "an interesting history," but there's also a more recent tragedy looming over the summer seminar. Following a previous trip to the island, a student attempted suicide and ended up in a coma. Now the students who were involved have returned to the island. And it doesn't take very long for things to go south!

On the first evening of their two-week stay, there's an annual midnight test of courage, which is intended to "make some good memories" before everyone begins cramming for exams, but it involves "a little ghost story" concerning the vacant room and an otherworldly entity – simply known as the Midnight's Evil Spirit. When the sanatorium was converted into a medical training camp, nobody was to use the Sarusuberi Room as it's "an intersection for wandering spirits of the dead." Ten years ago, a student committed suicide in that room after failing an exam and his ghost appears every year on the anniversary of his death. You can see his ghost hanging in the room with an eerie will-o'-the-wisp floating outside the window by peeking through the keyhole.

Kindaichi is new to the island and has to be first that night to look through the keyhole, but the grave image he sees is a little too realistic to be ghosts! What he sees is one of the students being hung by a figure, whose face is obscured by the darkness, dressed in a hospital gown and he even hears the rope creaking. But when the hostel manager opens the door with a spare key, the room is completely empty. There's dust on the windowsill and a connecting door was nailed shut years ago. So the manager wants to brush the incident away as over excited students imagining seeing ghosts, but one of the students is indeed missing. Their lines of communication to the outside world are destroyed, which effectively maroons them on the island for the next three days. Before they know it, they have two bodies on their hands with one of them found hanged from a very high beam in an abandoned church with a lack of footprints in the sand muddling the question of alibis.

So the story (mostly) adheres to the familiar formula of the series, but it's very noticeable the episodes were adapted from a novel instead of the usual manga (comic book), which came at the expense of the visual element of the plotting and clueing. There was more said in the episodes than shown. What it showed (blatantly) was no doubt easier to hide or slip by the reader in a novel, but here it gave away an important part of the solution. I believe one particular scene, early on in the story, would have been presented a little different to the reader had the story originally been written/drawn as a manga. For example (ROT13), vg jbhyq unir orra orggre unq Xvaqnvpuv'f zrqvpny rknzvangvba gnxra cynpr oruvaq pybfrq qbbef jvgu gur svore fpbcr bayl oevrsyl fubja ba fperra nf gur qbpgbe jnf gvqlvat hc. How it was done in the animation was too in your face.

Nonetheless, there are still some pretty good twists and turns to be found. Such as the excellent locked room-trick, which has a setup designed to arouse the suspicion of well-read, seasoned mystery readers – as we have seen these type of keyhole-tricks before. The moving figures, sound of rope being stretched and that peculiar thump suggested something different was at the back of this locked room. Amagi delivered with a completely new solution to the impossibly vanishing scene observed through a keyhole. The second murder has a less original, two-part answer (Qblyr'f Oveyfgbar Tnzovg naq n snxrq unatvat), but necessary as it served a very specific purpose. I thought the clue of the missing stepladder and its true meaning an inspired piece of plotting.

I've called Amagi the Soji Shimada of the anime-and manga detective story in previous reviews, specialized in majestic, grand-scale locked room mysteries and alibi-tricks, but the light novels demonstrated he could work on a much smaller scale. However, they did expose that he wrote his stories around the locked room and alibi-tricks to ensure everything was on hand without making it feel too contrived. Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998) is a perfect example of a story written around a plot like silly putty stretched over a classroom skeleton. It worked quite successfully in Deadly Thunder, but here it directed even more unwanted attention to the one thing that should have been subtly sneaked pass the reader/viewer. And, if you spot it, you can easily work out whodunit and what's going on with the second murder. But, on the upside, one of Amagi's drawbacks that crop in these original light novel cases worked splendidly here. Amagi has the tendency to go one twist too far with last-minute revelations about either the murderer or motive, which tend to be either pitch-black, or outright cruel, but here it gave the ending a genuinely tragic touch. I particularly liked where and how the murderer learned all those deadly tricks. You can't help but feel a pang of sympathy when you learn the precise motive.

So, yeah, a pretty mixed bag this time around. Ghost Fire Island Murder Case is, on a whole, a fairly standard Kindaichi tale with some good plot-ideas, but noticeably weaker visually. Saying more than it shows or showing more than it should. You can put that down to the anime adapting the story from a novel instead of a comic book. I'm sure everything worked better and is less obvious in its original form, which I very likely would have appreciated a little more than this adaptation. Sorry anonymous commentator.

The Shanghai River Demon's Curse (1997) by Seimaru Amagi

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the co-creator of The Kindaichi Case Files, Seimaru Amagi, wrote nine "light novels" in the series and four were translated as part of either the Kodansha English Library or Kodansha Ruby Books, which were intended as an educational tool to help improve the English of Japanese readers – not to dazzle Western readers. Hence, each novel ends with a nearly thirty-page long English-Japanese vocabulary list. 

According to our resident expert, Ho-Ling Wong, the English editions enjoyed a long print-run in Japan and there must be "a fair number in circulation," but, in the West, copies have become as rare and elusive as a Kappa. Not quite rare or obscure enough to elude me forever!

Several years ago, I came across Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996), which is possibly the first detective novel to use the internet meaningfully in a traditionally-styled mystery complete with an isolated, snowbound setting and ironclad alibis. You can borrow a digital copy from the Internet Archive. Next one that fell into my hands was Operazakan – aratanaru satsujin (Opera House, the New Murders, 1994), published in English simply as The New Kindaichi Files, but the plain, uninspired title hides a classic, first-rate theatrical locked room mystery – translating into my favorite Kindaichi title to date. Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998) is a very minor, short and somewhat flawed detective story, but you can cross-off some of its shortcomings against an imaginative piece of miniature world-building and an inventive impossible crime. So that left with me with one more title to track down. 

Shanhai gyojin densetsu satsujin jiken (The Shanghai River Demon's Curse, 1997) is the fifth novel in the series and the third to be translated, which turned out to be a bit of an odd duck. 

The Shanghai River Demon's Curse brings Hajime Kindaichi and Miyuki Nanase to Shanghai, China, where the famous Yang Variety Troupe performs a daily, two-hour variety show at the Mermaid Hall. An enormous ship moored along the bank of the Huangpu River. The main event of the show is an acrobatic underwater act, "The Legend of the River Demon," which is patterned after the tale of a creature that's half-fish, half-human that lives at the bottom of the river. A monster with the ability to curse, or even kill, human beings. In some places, it's considered "bad luck to mock such spirits on stage" like "in Japanese ghost stories."

Following a performance of "The Legend of the River Demon," the director of the troupe, Yang
Wang, is found in his office with a bullet in his head, but his body and the floor are unaccountably soaking – water has "the unpleasant odor of freshwater fish." Even stranger is that the murderer scratched a huge Chinese character for “spring,” a meter wide, on the wall. The first word of the lullaby of the river demon's curse. However, the Shanghai police have a very human suspect in their sights.

Once the show begins, with "animals like the tiger and monkey roaming around," the door to the dressing room is locked from the inside and it's "impossible for anyone from the audience to get in," which was still locked from the inside when the show ended. Nearly everyone on that side of the door had an alibi except the victim's son, Yang Xiaolong. His young sister, Yang Lili, writes her Japanese penfriend, Miyuki, a distressed letter saying her brother is suspected to have murdered their father. Miyuki decides to go Shanghai to help by bringing her childhood friend, Hajime Kindaichi, who's "the grandson of the master detective Kosuke Kindaichi" and "solved several cases for the Metropolitan Police Department." But his grandfather's name or reputation is not as well-known in China, which is one of the challenges facing the young detective who became a little timid when landed in foreign country for the first time in his life.

When they finally arrive in Shanghai, there are two big surprises waiting in the wings. Firstly, they find Detective Li Boer, of the Shanghai Police, in the company of their friend in the MPD, Inspector Kenmochi. Recently, the body in a decade old murder case was identified and "a small clue" led the Tokyo police to the Japanese director/producer of the Yang Variety Troupe. But is there's a link to the new murder? Secondly, Kindaichi and Miyuki get to witness a second murder during a performance of "The Legend of the River Demon" when a body plunged down from above the stage into the swimming tank. Another bullet to the head and the Chinese character for "summer" was slashed in the victim's back with a knife. So the murderer was intended to follow the grim lullaby. 

In spring, the boat is flooded,

In summer, the river turns a murky mauve,

In autumn, the traveler must drink putrid water,

In winter, fish no longer swim but sleep.

These murders also have an element of the impossible as the victims were shot with a derringer, which apparently can vanish, or materialize, whenever it's convenient to the murderer. The part of the ship between Yang's office and the dressing room was locked at the time of murder, which meant that nobody went in, or out, before the police arrived. So nobody had an opportunity to dispose of the gun, but they went over the entire ship with dogs and metal detectors without finding anything. They simply assume the murderer found a way to throw it in the river until discovering the second murder was committed with the same weapon! I've seen two variations on this type of vanishing weapon trick before and hated both of them. This one is marginally better, because Amagi tried to make it somewhat convincing. But the trick is still Yozaburo Kanari. Yes, Kanari's name in this context is a euphemism for shit.

Well, so far, it seems like a fairly standard and typical Kindaichi story with exception of the setting and its effect on Kindaichi's normally cocky attitude, but the story moves away from the series formula in the second-half – turning into a chase story with a coming-of-age angle. Kindaichi helps Yang Xiaolong to escape from police custody and they're chased to Shanghai as they make a run to the Yang's home village. A dirt poor place where the children had to grow up faster in order to make money, which is why Xiaolong and his sister acts so much mature than Kindaichi. But, while their on the run, they both find something of themselves they had either lost or never had. This comes at the expensive of the usual plot structure with the alibis, impossibilities and the nursery rhyme theme of the murders being heavily underplayed during the second-half.

I also hated that during the first-half an intriguing, quickly discarded plot-thread was introduced when Kindaichi learned of a former troupe member, Wang Meiyu, who was a superb swimmer, but a bit strange. Meiyu not only swam really well and could stay underwater forever, but "she only ate aquatic plants and freshwater fish." And it was her talent that lead the troupe to adopt the "The Legend of the River Demon" as their signature act. But then strange rumors began to circulate. Members began to talk that every time she took a shower, the bathroom would "reek of fish" with "large fish scales on the floor." So they began to avoid Meiyu and culminated in her committing suicide by jumping into the river from the toilet window. She left four characters scrawled in blood on the wall and has now risen from "the depths of that murky river" to extract revenge. But the plot-thread was quickly brushed aside. And given an even quicker explanation towards the end. So the only reason why it was even brought up was to give the book a snappy title.

Thankfully, the solution was not all bad with a pretty good alibi-trick and an inspired piece of misdirection, which successfully hid the murderer for a good chunk of the story. I eventually figured it out, because if you how the gun can vanish and reappear, you know who pulled the trigger. Not so good is that other parts of the solution stretches things considerably with an unnecessary, rather cruel twist nearly ruining the whole thing. I mean, this murderer is very likely going to be executed. So why throw that revelation out there? Amagi is the Soji Shimada of the anime-and manga detective story who is nearly unmatched when it comes to erecting grand-scale plots with majestic locked room-and alibi-tricks, but when it comes to characters, sometimes he goes one twist too far. Deadly Thunder has a similar problem.

So, on a whole, The Shanghai River Demon's Curse is not entirely without interest and its break with the formula and foreign setting makes it a worthwhile read to long-time fans of the series, but don't expect anything more than an average detective story. Regrettably, the weakest of the four translated novels.

This more or less closes the chapter on The New Kindaichi Files light novels with such untranslated novels as Yūrei kyakusen satsujin jiken (The Ghost Passenger Ship Murder Case, 1995) and Onibijima satusjin jikes (The Ghost Fire Island Murder Case, 1997) remaining tantalizingly out of my reach. Well, the novels are out of my reach, but not the '90s anime adaptations. So I might make one of those my next stop in the series.

Deadly Thunder (1998) by Seimaru Amagi

Earlier this year, I tracked down and reviewed an obscure, hard-to-get Japanese light novel in The New Kindaichi Files series, Operazakan – aratanaru satsujin (Opera House, the New Murders, 1994), written by the Soji Shimada of the anime-and manga detective genre, Seimaru Amagi – who crafted a beautiful, perfectly executed theatrical (locked room) mystery. One of the better entries in the Kindaichi franchise demonstrating Amagi is a mystery writer who's firmly entrenched in the traditions of the shin honkaku school. 

A fact he already proved with another light novel, Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996), which is perhaps the first whodunit to use the internet in a meaningful way. Not to mention his original manga stories/anime adaptation of The Prison Prep School Murder Case, The Rosenkrauz Mansion Murders and The Legendary Vampire Murders. So I was eager to get my hands on the other two translations in the series, but those editions were intended for Japanese readers learning to read and speak English. Consequently, the well of secondhand copies in the West is practically empty and bone-dry.

Nevertheless, I managed to get hold of a copy of the sixth title in the series, Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998), which is the fourth and last novel to be translated and is a relatively minor story compared to the bigger, previously mentioned cases – centering on "a spontaneous crime" with an improvised trick. A trick turning an otherwise simple, straightforward murder into an impossible crime! It's not the no-footprints trick that makes Deadly Thunder somewhat standout, but how the plot combined everything from elements of cultural anthropology and entomology to geology and meteorology. All of these different aspects come together in the remote, unique setting of the story with the result reminding me of the regional mysteries by Todd Downing and Arthur W. Upfield. Two names not often associated with the Japanese shin honkaku detective story. 

Deadly Thunder has a standard enough opening with Hajime Kindaichi and Miyuki Nanase traveling to a tiny, remote village to visit a former classmate, Akie Asaki.

The land around Kumoba Village is "shaped like a valley or a basin," which makes it very hot during the summer with clouds forming above the surrounding mountains to produce heavy thunder and rain storms. In the past, the locals thought these thunderstorms were an act of the gods and appeased them with the three-day Thunder Festival. A long-standing, unbroken traditional of 300 years that has preserved to the present-day, but the rain and thunderstorms also gifted the village something special and unique. A kind of clay that's only found in Kumoba Village, which is washed down from the mountains.

Akie comes from a long line of potters whose "curious, translucent white" pots were presented to the Shogun during the Edo period and the ground their family home stands on has the best pottery clay, which is why it's surrounded by a large, foreboding wall with spikes on top – erected by previous generations "to protect the clay from robbers." She has to share the home with her stepmother and stepsister, Hazuki and Shigure Asaki, who Akie and her aunt, Haruko, consider intruders ("those two"). They also have a quasi-residential house guest staying at the annex, Kyoichi Muto, who's an entomologist. Apparently, the village is also rather unique in its "variety and number of cicadas."

So the setting is very well piece of miniature world-building as Amagi created a small, unique geographical area and populated it with a unique, somewhat isolated culture. A culture with its own history, religious practices and even architecture. Such as all the houses being low built, single-storied "to avoid being struck by lightening" with a tall tree in every garden to "serve as a lightening conductor." Another interesting aspect is how rich Deadly Thunder is in sound. Deadly Thunder is filled with the sound of falling rain, claps of thunder, chanting, beating of drums and "the incessant drone of cicadas," which all helped elevate a mostly routine detective story.

This kind of world-building is unfortunately a rarity in the detective genre, but Amagi has done it before, on a much larger scale, for Detective Academy Q with The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case. I co-reviewed the anime adaptation with Jim here.

Anyway, as the story moves towards the halfway mark, everyone begins to prepare for the first day of the annual Thunder Festival, but the celebration, or rather spectacle, ends with Hazuki discovering Muto's body in annex – bludgeoned to death. The body was covered in "hundreds, no thousands, of cicada shells," but even more inexplicable where the two sets of footprints going from the back of the house to the annex. A set of fresh, recently made prints belong to Hazuki, while the older, rain washed tracks were made by the well-worn, easy to identify sandals of the victim. So with the question of time and rain taking into consideration, the tracks turned the murder into a locked room mystery! 

Deadly Thunder has only one body and three suspects, which has been done before in the series (e.g. The Blood Pool Hall Murder), but not very often and the plot really needed a good locked room-trick to give the plot some weight. Thankfully, the locked room-trick delivered as it did something new with the no-footprints scenario, but with all the clues in place necessary to arrive at (nearly) the same conclusion as Kindaichi. Why the body was covered in cicada shells was an inspired piece of plotting functioning as both a clue and a red herring.

The reader has an easier time putting all the pieces together than Kindaichi as he has to deal with a local policeman, Detective Akai, who's more annoyed than impressed by the grandson of "the master detective Kosuke Kindaichi." Even if he "solved several murder cases and mysteries that the police couldn't solve." Detective Akai only sees an ordinary high school student who speaks to adults like they were taking classes together. Kindaichi has to learn and show a little humility before getting an opportunity to prove himself to Detective Akai. One of those many small touches that made the story shine.

There is, however, a minor problem with the solution. Amagi added a last-minute twist that gave the story an ending as black as the ink with which it was printed, but not a fair surprise as it's impossible to anticipate the motivation behind the act. A smudge on an otherwise very well written, competently plotted detective story.

That being said, the good definitely outweighed the bad with a simple, but good, locked room-trick and a splendid, vividly realized setting, which told its story in less than a 130 pages with full-length illustrations. The short length proved to be an asset as it enlarged all its strong points and prevented the story from overstaying its welcome by dwelling on its weaknesses. So, yeah, a perfect detective story to nip at during a lazy summer afternoon.

The New Kindaichi Files (1994) by Seimaru Amagi

Two years ago, I reviewed Seimaru Amagi's Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996), a so-called "light novel," which is the Japanese, manga-like equivalent of young adult fiction complete with illustrations and penned all nine light novels in The Kindaichi Case Files series – published between 1994 and 2001. Only four of the novels were translated as part of the Kodansha English Library, but copies have become scarce over the past two decades. 

Ho-Ling Wong commented on my review to explain that "these books were not really intended for the international market," but to help Japanese readers who were learning to speak English and the reason why there are English/Japanese vocabulary lists at the end of the books. So not that many copies journeyed to the West.

Nevertheless, when has the obscure, out-of-print status of a tantalizing-sounding detective novel ever stopped any of us? John Norris has obscurity serve him drinks while reading. I managed to get hold of a copy of the first novel in the series, Operazakan – aratanaru satsujin (Opera House, the New Murders, 1994), which appeared in English under the nondescript title of The New Kindaichi Files. But don't let the bland title fool you. The book is an important entry in the series mythos and a sterling performance of the theatrical mystery novel with a five-star locked room-trick! 

The New Kindaichi Files is a sequel to the very first Kindaichi (manga) story, Operazakan satsujin jiken (The Opera House Murder Case, 1993), published in English in 2003 by TokyoPop as The Opera House Murders, which brought Hajime Kindaichi to the Hotel Opera on Utashima Island – where he was confronted by a string of murders modeled on Gaston Leroux's Le fantôme de l'opéra (The Phantom of the Opera, 1909). Kindaichi would return to Utashima Island a total of four times to solve Phantom of the Opera-themed murders. Ho-Ling reviewed the first three cases in 2012 in his blog-post "Three Act Tragedy" and discussed the fourth story in two-parts, which can be read here and here. But, for now, let's take a closer look at the second story that once again bathed the small island in blood.

Kazuma Kurosawa is one of the top five directors in Japan, reformer of modern drama and "the man behind the commercial success of theater" who had written and directed eight hit versions of The Phantom of the Opera. Ten years ago, Kurosawa had bought the island and spent six years restoring and converting the Georgian-style vacation home into a hotel with theater, which opened four years before The New Kindaichi Files. And what happened during its opening can be read in The Opera House Murders. Four years later, the old theater had been torn down and a new one built where Kurosawa plans to stage his ninth version of The Phantom of the Opera.

Hajime Kindaichi, Miyuki Nanase and Inspector Isamu Kenmochi all receive an invitation to the grand reopening of the Hotel Opera, because they were caught in the middle of "the serial murders at the Hotel Opera" and it was Kindaichi who unmasked the Phantom – although it was Kenmoichi who received the credit and the Metropolitan Police Superintendent's Medal. When they arrived on the island, Kindaichi experiences "a twinge of nostalgia" and "something less pleasant." A strong feeling that something bad is about the happen and the cast of characters for the impending tragedy have already taken their place on the stage.

The stars of the Genso theater group and play are an husband-and-wife acting duo, Kozaburo and Seiko Nojo, but they're not particular warm, or pleasant, people to be around. Yukio Midorikawa, Atsushi Takizawa and Rio Kanai are the other actors of the troupe who have one, or more, roles to play in the production. There's also a university student, Rokuro Eguchi, who works on the island every summer and a reclusive painter, Seiji Makube, whose features are obscured by a surgical mask. Dr. Eisaku Yuki rounds out the party and he was also present during the first series of murders on the island. Only eight hours pass before all hell breaks loose on the isolated island.

A small piece of paper with an ominous warning is found, saying "Carlotta sang farewell as the chandelier fell," signed "P," but when they investigate the theater with "an enormous chandelier" suspended over the stage, it's discovered completely empty. So they fastened the door from the outside with a padlock, but a short time later a crash shakes the house and rattles the windows, which unmistakably came from the theater. The door is opened in full view of everyone and what they discover is Seiko Nojo's body on the stage, "crushed beyond recognition," among the smashed and shattered remains of "that massive piece of intricate glasswork." More shockingly, Seiko had been strangled before the murderer dropped the chandelier on her. But how?

The whole auditorium had been "completely locked up," but somehow, "the murderer carried the body onto the stage" and "dropped the chandelier on it" before vanishing from a theater where "one set of doors was closed from the inside" and "the other entrance was shut with a padlock" – not a window to be found. Honestly, The New Kindaichi Files is the best and most original locked room mystery I've come across since Tokuya Higashigawa's Misshitsu no kagi kashimasu (Lending the Key to the Locked Room, 2002) and James Scott Byrnside's The Strange Case of the Barrington Hills Vampire (2020). Amagi crafted a minor gem of a locked room mystery, while flexing his plotting skills, peeling away the layers as he added new ones. Such as giving away part of the trick early on in the story, but at the same time complicating the whole problem with pesky alibis, unclear motives, more murders and a false-solution to the padlocked entrance. Only to deliver a knockout punch in the end with a thoroughly satisfying and original solution the murder in the locked theater. A solution that even takes into account the illogicality of presenting the murder as an impossible crime and what gave the murder the idea to stage such a trick.

A multi-layered locked room-puzzle that clearly shows the difference between Amagi and the series co-creator, Yozaburo Kanari. Amagi understands what makes a detective-plot ticks and Kanari clearly doesn't. Something that's also reflected in how Amagi managed to cleverly subvert the series formula to (temporarily) hide the murderer. It's why it took me longer than usual with this series to catch on to the murderer, which gave me a pretty good idea about the real angle of the motive. But not the locked room-trick. The trick I envisioned was amateurishly stupid and clumsy in comparison. Amagi is the Soji Shimada of the anime-and manga detective story.

Only weak spots in the solution is that the story conveniently ignores how easily a padlock can be picked open, or refastened again, and long-time mystery readers unfamiliar with the series will likely have an easier time spotting the murderer – because they don't know what they're supposed to expect from the setup. Other than that, The New Kindaichi Files is not merely a good and solid entry in the long-running Kindaichi series, but an excellent and beautifully executed theatrical locked room mystery in its own right. I can't exactly tell you why, but this is the most fun I had reading/watching Kindaichi. Highly recommended, if you can find a copy!

So let me end this review with a plea to Kodansha to reprint those four light novels that were translated into English during the 1990s, which would now be a welcome addition to the steadily increasing stream of shin honkaku translations. Now there's an actual audience for them. A good alternative would be a four-in-one volume from Locked Room International with Ho-Ling, a huge fan of the series, writing the introduction to give new readers a crash course in all things Kindaichi. Even better would be brand new translations of all nine novels, but that's perhaps asking too much. Well, here's hoping something will materialize in the not so distant future.

On a truly last note, my edition is a thing of beauty: a paperback with dustjacket with the back and leaves covered in Japanese writing, but you can actually read the story inside with the detailed floor plan of the theater, diagram of part of the locked room-trick and illustrations of the characters/scenes as the cherry on top – giving you the best of all worlds.

The Kindaichi Case Files: The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case

The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 2015 and collected, together with the second half of The Antlion Trench Murder Case, in volumes 6 and 7 of Seimaru Amagi's The File of Young Kindaichi Returns – praised as "surprisingly refreshing" to long-time readers. Since I've always had a love-hate relationship with this series, I decided to pick The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case over the new 37-Year-Old Kindaichi Case Files as my next stop in the series.

The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case brings Hajime Kindaichi, Nanase Miyuki and Saki (#2) to a Western-style mountain inn, in Yozakura Village, where they intend to research an old murder case for their school's Mystery Club. The inn used to be a private sanatorium, in the 1960s, but the arrival of Dr. Kigata Ouryuu coincided with the disappearance of a worrying number of patients.

On a dark evening, in late winter, a night nurse caught him burying a dismembered patient under the cherry blossom trees, where the police later found a private graveyard, but Dr. Ouryuu had already disappeared – never to be seen again. But when spring came, something unbelievable happened. Where the bodies had been buried, the trees bloomed with "crimson-colored cherry blossoms" that "looked like they'd sucked blood." So the story stuck in the public imagination, but everyone in the village prefers to forget it ever happened and that includes the elderly owner of the inn, Aizen Yoshino. She advises the three students to enjoy the crimson cherry blossoms and then return home. But things are never that easy in a detective story!

When they arrive at the inn, they meet Fuyube Sousuke, Etou Chinatsu and Onoda Kyouichirou, who have been friends since their schooldays and visit the village each year during the cherry blossom season. Miyazawa Shouku is an artist who comes each year to paint the crimson cherry blossoms. Toramoto Katsuo is an old man with a facemask and does very little except intently observing the cherry blossoms. The place is staffed by two part-timers, Hazaki Shiori and Shikishima Daigo, and a cook, Kitayashiki Gouzou.

So had this not been a Kindaichi story, there would have been scarcely a hint of the bloodletting awaiting them the next morning when Onoda didn't turn up at the breakfast table. The door of his room is locked and has to be opened with the master key. What they found behind that locked door was a spectacle, even for this series!

Onoda Kyouichirou is lying in the middle of the room with petals covering his body and the branch of a bloodthirsty cherry blossom piercing his heart, as if a small tree had grown out of his chest overnight, but equally curious is a braided cord "tied in a complicated manner" to the branch – a cord with the room key on it. The key is "an old model, German-made key" with a complicated design that's hard to duplicate and the master key was kept in a safe. A safe to which one person held the key and another the passcode. And with the windows securely fastened, Kindaichi and Inspector Kenmoichi are faced with a locked room murder.

 

Naturally, the murderer is not done yet and one of the subsequent murders is committed under practically identical circumstances in a locked and guarded room, but with a very different kind of solution. A solution that was audaciously foreshadowed in a much earlier chapter. However, the locked room-tricks are not the main draw of the story and neither is the who or even the well handled why. One of the locked room-tricks can only be described as routine and the other is a daring play on a true-and-tried impossible crime technique, while the murderer (purposely?) stands out in the cast of characters.

So what makes The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case a noteworthy entry in the series is the way in which Amagi toyed and subverted the expectations of long-time readers who are more than familiar with the cliches and tropes of the series.

A good example of Amagi toying with readers expectations is the first page, a one-panel prologue, which made think, "ah, this old song and dance again," but then it was openly admitted to and discussed about a quarter into the story – something that has never been done before in the series. Amagi delivered on the promise with a nicely done spin on the motive that has been done to death in Kindaichi. The identity of the murderer, while a little obvious, proved to have a surprise in store when it was revealed why the murders were presented so bizarrely. But were ultimately very simplistic.

So the (relative) simplicity of the locked room murders were a worthwhile sacrifice, because they served a clear purpose that paid-off in the end. And what a coincidence, I decided to read The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case right after Graham Landrum's The Rotary Club Murder Mystery (1993), which ended up doing the opposite.

All in all, The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case is not the best title the series has produced, but it's a top-rank title on account of how creatively Amagi played with the expectations of his readers. The story almost reads like a knowledgeable, fan-written pastiche that had fun with the established cliches and tropes of the series. Recommended to fans of the series!

The Kindaichi Case Files: Doll Island Murder Case

Doll Island Murder Case is the sixth entry in The File of Young Kindaichi Returns, originally serialized between October 2015 and January 2016 in Weekly Shōnen Magazine, which was written by Seimura Amagi and illustrated by Fumiya Satō – who drew on the folklore of human-like dolls to dress up the plot. The dolls with their tragic, star-crossed back-stories were used very effectively.

Doll Island Murder Case begins when Hajime Kindaichi is asked by his social studies teacher, Shinobu Tokita, to help her crack a coded message found in a doll that belonged to her late grandmother.

Kindaichi easily deciphers the coded message and it simply tells them to "go to Hitogata Island." Hitogata is a small island not far from Tokyo where, once a year, a doll ceremony is held attended by people from all over Japan together with "the dolls that hide their own feelings."

So Kindaichi, accompanied by Miyuki, travels down to the island to attend the doll ceremony, but, as he reflects back, he had no idea there "an evil and terrifying motive" behind the code – which came to a bloody conclusion on the island of dolls. When they arrive, Kindaichi and Miyuki meet a couple of familiar faces. Inspector Kenmochi has a reason hovering between the personal and professional to partake in the doll ceremony. Yosuke Itsuki is the freelance reporter last seen in The Antlion Trench Murder Case and is accompanied by reporter of Queen Monthly Mystery Magazine, Karin Hoshizaka, who are there to report on three mysterious detective novelists.

Kiriko Kanda, Tomoe Benikoji and Mayako Suzuoka are a writing collective, known as "Persona Doll," who garnered popularity with both their Doll Mystery Series and writing gimmick. The true identity of the three members are a closely guarded and they only appear in public dressed as mute, life-sized dolls with masks. They don't utter a word and only communicate by writing on a small board. There are four more people, Hitomi Shimura, Kagechika Ameno, Soichiro Akagami and Tsuyoshi Tanaka, who all brought a doll with a personal story behind it. Stories full of tragic deaths, murders, suicides and broken lives. And a curse or two.

After they've exchanged the dolls for replacement dolls, miniature copies of the participants, the murderer begins to work like a butcher on piecework.

A headless, legless torso with arms and hands is found clad in the doll costume, one worn by Kiriko Kanda, whose room is spattered in blood and two life-size dolls are standing at the door, but the problem is that even her two colleagues are unable to identify her – because they wrote their novels "through the internet." So even they don't know each others real names or even faces. Naturally, they find out they're trapped on the island, unable to call to mainland for assistance, while someone begins to mutter about a long-dead village elder having returned as the "Cursed Doll."

 

A second body is found at the doll shrine, presumably Mayako Suzuoka, but this time the murderer elegantly posed the severed bottom part among the dolls. However, the real interest comes when the third body is found, which is presented as an impossible crime. And not a bad one either!

What's left of Kiriko Kanda

During the ceremony, Kenmochi looks through the observation window, a narrow slit in the wall, when he notices one of the dolls has a human ear, but, when they enter the shrine, the body of the dolls has inexplicably disappeared – leaving only a severed head with a doll mask "staked on a spear." Kindaichi points out that "everyone who followed the doll ceremony rites," including his prime-suspect, possesses an unimpeachable alibi. They were physically unable to enter the shrine, remove the body of the doll, plant the severed head on the spear and leave the shrine within the minute, or two, between spotting the body and entering the shrine.

This impossible rearrangement of the gruesome scene in the shrine is, plot-wise, the best and strongest part of the whole story. Unlike the other parts of the plot, the locked room-trick was delightfully simple, but very effective and satisfying. I expected some old-fashioned trickery with an identical or mistaken room, but this was so much better. Showing the Japanese are the undisputed masters of the corpse-puzzle.

Unfortunately, everything else manages to be simultaneously incredibly convoluted and infuriatingly easy to solve, because, logically, there was only one character who could have had a hand in it. Why the bodies were cut into pieces was not difficult to figure out. A suspicion confirmed when the mask was removed from the severed head. Granted, the idea behind the masked writers was not without merit, but the answer bordered on cheating as it unfairly muddled the case and gave me the idea the murderer had an accomplice, which would have been more convincing and appeared to be in line with an incident early on in the story – assuming it was a hint foreshadowing this part of the solution. This made me very suspicious of one of the suspects. And he turned out to be completely innocent.

So, on a whole, I would say Doll Island Murder Case is a good, but uneven, entry in the series. The story made good use of the tragedy-stained dolls and a setting steeped in doll-lore with an excellent, but ultimately simple, locked room-trick. On the other hand, the murderer was far too easily spotted with the finer details getting muddled in a convoluted plot playing three-card monte with identities. There were also times when it felt as if the plot went through the motions of a Kindaichi story. We have an isolated island with a closed circle of suspects, the avenger-from-the-past motif, the corpse-puzzle and even the dolls aren't entire new to the series (c.f. the excellent House of Wax).

Still, not too bad of a story with a couple of a good ideas, but just not in the same league as such stories as The Headless Samurai and The Legendary Vampire Murders.

The Kindaichi Case Files: The Legendary Vampire Murders

Last month, I reviewed a two-part episode of the enduring Detective Conan anime-series, The Dracula Villa Murder Case, in which a revered writer of vampire stories is impaled and crucified under apparently impossible circumstances in his locked study with the body lighted up by a running film projected – playing a movie-reel of a classic vampire flick. These episodes reminded me of another vampire-themed detective story, a manga, that has been languishing on the big pile for ages.

The Legendary Vampire Murders was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 2004 and the story has convinced me that Seimura Amagi is the present-day master of the unbreakable alibi. Amagi is so much better at plotting seemingly impregnable alibis than he's at devising locked room-tricks (e.g. the elaborate, grand scale alibi-trick from The Prison Prep School Murder Case).

Hajime Kindaichi is on a bicycle tour of Japan and decides to invite his childhood friend, Nanase Miyuki, to spend a few days with him at his next stop. An almost entirely abandoned village in the middle of nowhere!

The name of the place, Buran Village, originates from "Bran Village in Transylvania" and, according to the legends, Romanian immigrants had been chased out of the village on "the suspicion that they might be vampires," but there appears to be no historical basis for this story – as the countries didn't even appear to have a formal, diplomatic relationship until 1902. So this was purely done to transplant the legend of the Transylvanian vampire to Japan. A legend that appears to be very much alive in the deserted village.

Six years previously, the vampire legend had stirred back to life when villagers witnessed "a strange scene in the middle of the night." A cloaked man with a black hat was seen walking towards the abandoned hotel and appeared to have mental control over a woman in a white dress, who sleepwalked behind him, but when a group of young man, armed with wooden crosses, investigate the hotel they make a gruesome discovery in the basement – a body of the woman with two bite marks in her neck. The coroner didn't find "a single drop of blood" in the body. As if she had been sucked dry by a vampire!

This incident was the death knell for the already struggling, partially depleted village and the place would have been a ghost town had it not been for the presence of a peculiar boardinghouse.

Hirakawa Tooru bought the abandoned hotel and turned it into a boardinghouse, fittingly named "Ruins," which looks like a derelict mansion, but the guest rooms were refurbished, comfortable and clean. A childhood classmate of Kindaichi and Miyuki, Kifune Youhei, is working part-time at the boardinghouse and hopes to make the place a haunt for "ruin maniacs" (i.e. urban explorers). His presence is one of the reasons why Kindaichi stopped in Buran Village.

There are more people who found there way to this reclusive, empty place. Nagareyama Shintarou is a novelist who's writing a book with the boardinghouse as a setting and Nekoma Junko is a freelance writer collecting data on abandoned ruins. Futaganu Ikuo is a physician and Kaitani Asaka owns a boutique, both guests of the "Ruins," who were found poking around the abandoned hospital. And their behavior and obvious lies were suspicious to say the least. Hiiro Keisuke is a young man who was stranded at the hotel, but his appearance and complexion has a suggestion of the grave. Finally, there's Minato Aoko, a staff member of the boardinghouse, who fancies herself to be somewhat of an amateur detective and Inspector Kenmoichi – asked by Kindaichi to accompany Miyuki.

So the stage is set for murder, but there's a prelude when Miyuki is kidnapped by the murderer. The killer is dressed in a long, dark coat and has bandaged face with what appears to be fangs. This doesn't happen all the time, but the Kindaichi series has seen more than one costumed murderers (e.g. The Alchemy Murder Case). Sometimes this series really is a blend of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? and a 1980s slasher movie.

During her captivity, Miyuki had been tied up and had to look on, helplessly, as the vampire murdered one of the guests, Kaitani Asaka. Just one of the perks of being friends with Kindaichi!

Miyuki and Asaka are eventually found in one of the guest rooms on the first floor of the boardinghouse. They both have bite marks in their neck, but only Miyuki lived to tell about it. The problem this murder presents is that nearly everyone possesses a perfectly acceptable alibi, because the only way to reach is the first floor is by either climbing a spiral staircase or crawl into a small dumbwaiter with a weight-limit – which are eliminated as possible entries to the first floor. A brilliant and bone chilling alibi-trick that's eligible to be considered an impossible crime as it involves a physical impossibility. I commented on Dan's 2017 blog-post, "But is it a Locked Room Mystery? The case of the impossible alibi," when an alibi-trick qualifies as an impossible crime and I think this one makes the cut. The chilling explanation of the impossible alibi is another good example of how closely related Japanese mystery writers are to the horror genre. And they often put their horror material to good and practical use. Great stuff!

Miyuki had also been found with bite marks in her neck and, according to the legend, "anyone who's attacked by a vampire will become a vampire." There might be a grain of truth in it when a murder happens that only Miyuki could have committed!

A pool of blood with a body is found in Miyuki's locked guest room, bite marks in the neck, but Miyuki had been in constant possession of the room-key and there are no duplicates. So how did a murderer manage to leave a body inside a locked room? The explanation to this problem is a relatively simple one, but the idea felt fresh and original. I've seen a similar locked room setup in another detective story, but the ending in that was, on a whole, unimpressive as the solution turned on an age-trick. Amagi here cleverly reversed that solution and the result is possibly new variation on the locked room mystery. So, once more, this is great stuff!

The identity of the murderer was better hidden than usual, but you might want to write that down to me stubbornly giving the obvious red herring the fish-eye throughout the entirety of the story. I refused to let go of that one possibility and overlooked a hint or two. Amagi even gave the shopworn motive, carted out in nearly every volume, an additional layer of depth with the horrific back-story of the past murder. The back-story would make for a great horror or thriller story when told from the perspectives of the victim and her killer. As I said before, Japanese mystery writers tend stand closer to the horror genre than their Western counterparts. The Legendary Vampire Murders is a good example of that.

So, all in all, The Legendary Vampire Murders has one of the strongest plots in the series with an ingenious alibi-trick, as classic as it's sickening, and an excellent impossible crime. The rest of the plot, especially the motive, were well handled, but the murderer's alibi and locked room illusion are the main draws of the story. A pure puzzle-plot detective story that comes recommended to mystery readers who love busting alibis and explaining miracles.