Reconstructive Nostalgia: Q.E.D. vol. 17-18 by Motohiro Katou

"Disaster of a Disastrous Man" is the first of two stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 17 and marks the return of the CEO of Alansoft, Alan Blade, who previously appeared in vol. 13 to force the teenage detective, Sou Touma, to partake in an April Fools' Day Challenge – a potentially life changing challenge with high stakes. If he had lost the challenge, Touma had to renounce his Japanese citizenship and come to America as Blade's employee. Touma won the battle-of-wits handily, but the software giant has been scheming and plotting ever since. And he seems to have hit on a failure-proof plan to ensnare Touma in his corporate empire. 

Alan Blade's birthday is coming up and hatches a plan with his personal secretary, Ellie Francis, to invite "the people who refused an offer in the company" to his summerhouse on a private island. There he will offer each guest a million dollars cash to come and work for Alansoft, which they will likely refuse. So the plan is to make his guests indebted to his company by having Ellie steal the money from their beach huts.

Sou Touma receives an invitation as well as his friend and MIT student, Syd "Loki" Green. Touma and Loki brought along Kana Mizuhara and Eva Scott. The third to receive an invitation used to "a world-famous hacker," Elliott Webb, who was caught by the FBI and put on probation, but the person who helped the FBI catch Webb was a software magnate, Liu Han – a man who was "once called the pioneer of the computer world." Liu Han was one of the founders of "the famous Grape Computer Enterprise," but Alansoft drove the company out of business and reduced the pioneer to managing a small software company as he refused to work for Blade. Han got the fourth and last invitation. So the plan is set in motion as the four suitcases with a million dollars a piece, one by one, begin to disappear from the beach huts, but it appears someone took the suitcases before Ellie could get to them. They searched everywhere, but the money appears to have vanished without a trace from a tiny island with only eight people on it.

This story and its central puzzle would probably provoke a discussion on whether it's a closed-circle situation or a locked room mystery/impossible crime. Katou kind of presented the story as an impossible crime, but it really is only a closed-circle as the suitcases could be hidden in several places that were never considered. They could have been hidden on the roofs of the hut, buried on the beach or sealed in weighted, waterproof bags and submerged into the bay of the crescent-shaped island. So more of how-was-it-done with an interesting, but risky, solution which could have easily misfired by either a rush of irrationality or a spot of honesty. However, the ending will make every plot purist and stickler for fair play crack a smile. All in all, not a bad story.

The second story from this volume, "Black Nightshade," has Inspector Mizuhara acting as a security guard/paparazzi regulator on a film set as personal request from "the giant of Japanese cinema," Director Oosawa Kazumasa. Kana Mizuhara and Sou Touma have backstage access and witness the filming of the scene in which the lead actress, Kurokawa Misa, stabs the male lead, Nangou Haruhiko, but the prop knife with a retractable blade turned out to be very real – killing him practically instantly as she plunged the knife into his body. So who could have swapped the prop knife for a real one and why? Nangou Haruhiko was known as "an extreme womanizer" whose name is attached to many incidents, but Kana (doing the legwork) learns that the mysterious actor was also known as a really nice guy and even his conquests didn't have a bad word to say about him. And then the case takes an unexpected, dramatic turn when the apparent murderer commits suicide. But the keyword there is apparently as it's really a murder presenting both Sou and the reader with a highly original locked room puzzle.

There's a small, high-walled makeshift prop-room with an open ceiling on the studio lot put together with some worn out plywood from the set, which has one door that can be blocked-shut from the inside with a table. The supposed murderer has locked himself inside that windowless prop-room and the thin walls, while very high, can't support the weight of an adult trying to climb over it. Sou Touma is the shortest and lightest person present and has go over the plywood wall to unblock the door. What they find inside is a body with his throat cut and a suicide note. The locked room-trick has a simplistic brilliance to it, but the answer to the rice cooker clue is probably beyond the comprehension of most readers. Still a very clever piece of plotting with a locked room-trick on par with the best impossible crime stories by Edward D. Hoch. Let's not forget about the first murder, which is not too difficult to solve, but the strange motivation and distraction used to swap the knives makes it stand out. An unusual, but effective, detective story and ends the volume on a high note.

The first of two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 18, "Arrival of the Famous Detective(s)," is a case in point of the bizarre, sometimes downright experimental or quirky, but often original, detective stories you can find nowhere else – except in this series. This time, Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara are reduced to mere background characters for most of the story. Only appearing at the beginning and end to setup and close the case. A case that followed around the three members of the Sakisaka Private High School Detective Club, Enari "Queen" Himeko, Nagaie "Holmes" Koroku and Morita "Mulder" Orisato, who try to be real-life detectives without much success. Even when a case happens in their own club room. Who ate the cheese cake that Queen had left behind in the club room for them to eat after classes were done for the day? They try to come up with explanations, but they are completely inapt as "Holmes" is incredibly bad at drawing deductions and "Mulder" simply wants to blame ghosts. And their investigation only uncovers more mysteries. Such as a ghostly image in one of the mirrors of the school bathroom and even a minor locked room mystery when the statuette of a cat dressed as Sherlock Holmes is knocked over in the locked club room. All of these smaller problems only get resolved when "Queen" notices she always sees Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara around when the incidents happened and decides to question them about it.

A pure, tongue-in-cheek parody with a simple, lightweight plot, but therefore not any less amusing and loved Nagaie's preposterous false-solution to the locked room problem. Suggesting the culprit had hammered out a hole next to the locked door of the club room, locking the door after he was finished and repaired the wall like it was new ("it is but a simple trick"). Another fun bit of trivia is that the opening revealed Sou is as a tone deaf as Conan Edogawa from Case Closed.

The second and last story to close out the volume, "Three Birds," is another perfect example of the series straying not only from the conventions of the shin honkaku-style, anime-and manga detectives, but the traditional detective story in general. I should hated "Three Birds" as it's the complete opposite of what I want to find in my detective fiction, but loved this nostalgia-driven, psychological crime drama.

 

Detective Sasazuka is a colleague of Kana Mizuhara's father, Inspector Mizuhara, who hears on the news the skeleton remains of a man and woman were discovered in the mountains of Y City, T Prefecture, which is his hometown – skeletons were found close to place where he used to play. Sasazuka had a secret tree-hut where he hang out with two childhood friends, but the discovery of the remains coincide with a reunion of the three friends and Sasazuka makes a discovery of his own. There are worrying gaps in his childhood memories like not being able to remember he had an expensive toy pistol, but has it anything to do with the remains of the two people who apparently committed suicide thirteen years ago? The story is interspersed with an illustrated children's story about three bird friends and gold coin who lived at the peak of a tree. This is such weird, but effective story with the ending laying bare some genuine crimes. Or, to be more precise, criminal and moral misdeeds, but not the ones you might expect. Once more, the series produces an atypical, but original, crime/detective story with the problem of Sasazuka's memory having something new to offer (ROT13: gur phycevg gelvat gb genafsre uvf gebhoyrq zrzbevrf ba gb uvz). So never let it be said again I only care about plot and tricks!

On a whole, Q.E.D. vol. 17 and 18 were both splendid with either strong or simply entertaining stories which represented the reader with the best the series has to offer. Surprisingly, "Three Birds" ended up stealing the show, which is not going to do my reputation as the resident locked room fanboy any good, but let the record show I fanboyed over the impossible crime from "Black Nightshade." Anyway, Q.E.D. deserves more appreciation and attention.

Murder Without a Net (1962) by Martin Meroy

"Martin Meroy" was the penname of Charles Ewald, a French journalist, radio producer and writer, who penned a series of typical, 1960s tough-guy novels starring a hardboiled private eye of the same name, Martin Meroy, which differed in one important respect from other tough-guy fiction of the period – an alluring "fondness for impossible crimes." The series has never received an English translation, but thirteen of the novels were translated into Dutch as part of De Schorpioen's Inter-Pol Collectie. A now obscure, not always easy to obtain line of mostly American flavored English, French and German crime-and detective fiction. I say mostly because the series include one of the scientific mystery novels by E. and M.A. Radford (Death on the Broads, 1957). 

So the Dutch translations of the Martin Meroy novels are not entirely out of my reach and actually (poorly) reviewed Du plomb pour la familie (Lead for the Family, 1959) and Meurtre en chambre noire (Murder in a Darkened Room, 1960) back in 2011. They were fun, fast-paced and short private eye stories with simple, straightforward solutions to the locked room puzzles. More workmanlike than truly inspired takes on the impossible crime tale, but good enough to keep an eye out for the other Dutch translations. And that took a little longer than expected. But finally got my hands on another one!

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Brett Halliday's Mike Shayne or Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective found themselves transported to Anthony Abbot's About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932)? Martin Meroy's Meurtre sans filet (Murder Without a Net, 1962) has the answer.

Martin Meroy is a French detective, who lives and operates in New York City, but the opening of Murder Without a Net finds him back in France on the day he's supposed to go back to America to when Commissioner Blaise Chateau calls him at his hotel – requesting his immediate presence at Circus Wallace. Judging by the Commissioner's tone, Meroy suspects "that there's a brand new corpse on display." And not any old regular corpse!

Gloria Suzin belongs to a group of three flying trapeze artists, called the Berena's, who retreated to her caravan following a late night training session, but didn't came out the next morning. So they broke one of the windows on the door to open door and discovered Gloria had been shot to death in her bed under very strange, almost impossible circumstances. The bullet "entered the crown, cut right through the neck and ended up in the stomach." A peculiar entry and trajectory, but just as peculiar is how the murderer entered and left the caravan. The caravan has a double-wing door with the left wing being locked in place, top and bottom, while the right wing door was secured on the inside with a hook-lock. There was precious little room in the crammed, over stuffed caravan to hide or any opening that lined up with the trajectory of the bullet. Since she's a circus artist with a backstory, the circus terrain is teeming with colorful suspects and certain danger.

There are the other two Berena's, Simone Lhardy and Pierre Rouget, who immediately replaced Gloria with Dorothy Hardt. An English trapeze artist who happened to be Paris and was available to take her place. Fred Saint-Brieuc is the aristocratic looking owner of Circus Wallace and entangled with Gloria in more ways than one. Cyril Beaton is an animal tamer who took great risks with both wild animals and his money, which is why he owed Gloria a ton of money. Arthur Raymondini used to be a flying trapeze artist himself, but nearly died in an accident and, when he returned, discovered that his then student Pierre Rouget had stolen his whole act. And now limps around the circus ring as Nanave the Clown. Bernard Dreville is a magician, escape artist and locked room specialist who references Meroy's success in Murder in a Darkened Room. Jacques Graillet aspired to be a world famous musician, but ended up as a circus orchestra master and Raoul Anderson is circus-technician who knows how to put a gadget together. Last, but not least, is the Goliath strongman, David Rezeff, who strongly objects to nosey parkers, like Meroy, sticking his nose in their business.

So the Goliath provides Meroy with a physical challenge to overcome, but Meroy, while an expert in impossible crimes, belongs to the tough-guy school of detectives and spends every morning hardening the sides of his hands karate-chopping "hard objects" – allowing him to end their first encounter with double axe-handle smash to the neck. But resorted to some dirty tactics during their next few encounters with the blow-off threatening to end in a disappointing brawl to the back. Fortunately, that was not the case. Another moment Meroy got to shine as a hardboiled gumshoe is when he found a bomb under the hood of his car, removed it and casually dropped it into his pocket. Meroy is booked strongly here.

Most of you are more interested in the plot than the action and, like mentioned at the beginning, the series differentiated itself from its contemporaries with stronger plot often centered on an impossible crime. The back cover of the Dutch edition even called Meroy "de specialist van moorden in gesloten ruimten" ("the specialist of murders in closed spaces") and he certainly lives up to his reputation in Murder Without a Net. Considerable attention is given to the locked room problem as numerous possibilities are considered (a hidden panel) and eliminated (reconstructing the pane of glass to look for signs of tampering), which resulted in a nicely-done false-solution towards the end. Regrettably, the actual, two-part solution turned out to be a mixed bag of tricks. The locked room-trick itself is a reasonable well-done variation on an old dodge of the impossible crime story (if you know your locked room fiction), but there was something genuine daring and original about the murder itself – which bordered on pure pulp. No, it has nothing to do with the mischievous, popgun wielding monkey. Only reason why it didn't entirely worked is that all the relevant clues and scraps of information were withheld from the reader until the last possible moment. Such as the wet smear of paint.

On the other hand, the murderer had a gem of a motive to stage the murder as a locked room mystery and Meroy got solve two equally baffling, even borderline impossible crimes towards the end in record time. One of these two deaths is staged inside the circus tent filled to capacity, which is very similar to the murder from Abbot's About the Murder of the Circus Queen, but with a completely different solution. A trick that almost feels wasted how it was tacked on at the end of this short, fast-paced novel.

So, all in all, Martin Meroy's Murder Without a Net could have been better, but it also could have been a lot worse and, if my memory is to be trusted, the best of three read so far. It's definitely the title I would recommend to translate to a publisher, like Locked Room International, as it scratches that impossible crime itch. Even with the eventual solution being marred by the late clueing and partially relying on a rather routine trick. But still good enough to keep on the lookout for the other translations.

The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka (1966) by Josef Skvorecky

Josef Skvorecky was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher, born in former Czechoslovakia, who became an internationally acclaimed author of works like Bassaxofon (The Bass Saxophone, 1967) and Příběh inženýra lidských duší (The Engineer of Human Souls, 1977), but he was also a pillar of support to Czech dissident writers – printing and smuggling their books into the country in defiance of Communist censorship. When he was not thumbing his nose at the totalitarian regime lording over his home country, Skvorecky was "an avid reader of Ellery Queen, R. Austin Freeman, John Dickson Carr, et al."

Skvorecky love of mysteries found expression in a series of detective stories about a melancholic, sad-eyed Czech policeman, Lieutenant Josef Boruvka, who appeared in three short story collections and a novel. The series has been described as "mischievous parodies" of the traditional detective story with Hříchy pro pátera Knoxe (Sins for Father Knox, 1973), a collection with each story breaking one of Father Knox's "Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929), standing as the most well-known representative of that reputation. However, the plots all hinge on a unifying gimmick, like Agatha Christie's The Labours of Hercules (1947), which didn't allow him to really showcase his abilities as a plotter. All he had to do was present a solution or situation that violated one of Knox's ten rules.

There is, however, one of the three collections in the series that has been on my wishlist for ages. Smutek poručíka Borůvky (The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka, 1966) introduced Lieutenant Boruvka in twelve short stories that are either tongue-in-cheek or serious renditions of the classic detective stories of yore, but loaded with bizarre clues, strange crimes and a number of locked room mysteries. Robert Adey listed only three of the stories in Locked Room Murders (1991), but there are several more to be found here. So let's get started! 

"The Supernatural Powers of Lieutenant Boruvka" opens the collection and explains why Constable First Class Sintak is "firmly convinced that Lieutenant Boruvka wielded powers that were not entirely in keeping with normal human abilities," like a wizard, which he irrevocably proved to Sintak in the Semerak case – a case officially handled by Boruvka's young sergeant. Sergeant Malek meets with his superior at the scene of the crime, an attic where an elderly woman was hanging by her neck from a rope tied to a ceiling beam, but enthusiastic sergeant knew it was murder and the whole story is basically a conversation between the two. A conversation that quickly begins to poke fun at the fictional detective who love being complicated for the sake of being complicated. Malek's has complicated timetables, collected a piece from a building as evidence and ordered divers, backed by a helicopter, to go over a pond to look for a discarded bike. Meanwhile, Boruvka tries to get in a word edgewise ("certainly, but..." "it's just that...") and it takes him a while before he can point out something really obvious in the attic. Something proving without a doubt that the old woman had been murdered. 

This story has a very thin plot, which hinges on the obvious, but it was a genuinely amusing take on the exasperating, fictional detectives and Malek gave his amateur counterparts a run for their money. But what made the simplistic solution work is that both detectives were correct. Only difference is that Malek took the long way round and Boruvka a short cut. A great introduction to the lieutenant and his sergeant!

Unfortunately, the second story, "That Sax Solo," is the weakest and my least favorite story from the collection. The lead singer of a Jazz band is murdered at a hotel and Boruvka has to use a musical clue to break down a musical alibi, but the clue was used in the worst possible way to end the story. 

"The Scientific Method" is the third story and one of the stories in the collection that was overlooked by Adey in Locked Room Murders. This is also the first theatrical mystery of the collection and brings Lieutenant Boruvka to the Odeon Theatre where a ballet dancer has been killed, a bullet fired "straight into the nape of her neck," while she was taking a shower, but "a body search of all the ladies" was conducted before they left the showers – no weapon was recovered. Malek remarks they have "a miraculous marksman" on their hands. However, the trick has been done before and the idea behind it can be considered as one of the earliest innovations in impossible crime plotting. But the solution is the first one to show Skvorecky's fascination as a plotter with trajectories and movement along horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. You'll find this approach in his more trickier and complicated stories. 

"Death on Needlepoint" is potential anthology material and reminiscent of the mountaineering, open-air locked room mysteries by Glyn Carr. The story begins with three mountaineers, Patera, Bartos and Jirina, climbing the rocky face of Needlepoint linked by only a rope with a sixty-foot precipice yawning beneath them. Patera is the first one to make it over the overhang of the summit, but then the rope slackens and when Bartos completes his harrowing ascent to the top, he makes a terrifying discovery. Patera sat, "strangely contorted," on the bare summit of the rock with his face between his knees and "the carved handle of a bowie-knife protruding from his back." Bartos recognized his own knife which he assumed was back at the camp in his tent. When the police arrives, Boruvka discovers Patera and Bartos were rivals who tried to win Jirina's affection. But how was the murder carried out?

Boruvka has a crime scene "which the murderer couldn't have reached and from which he couldn't have escaped," but the place is not half as inaccessible as it appears on first sight. There are several very well done false-solutions with the one accusing the third climber, Jirina, standing out as particular ingenious, but the actual solution is no slouch either. Only thing lacking was a diagram. It would have made the tricky solution so much clearer. Unquestionably, one of the collection's stronger stories. 

"Whose Deduction?" is a minor, forgettable story which I already have trouble remembering. The story is part of a character-arc that runs through the collection and concerns a young policewoman, Eva, who was introduced in the third story and Boruvka is beginning to fall in love with her. However, he's a married man with a teenage daughter and an unimpeachable reputation as an inspector, which will cause some serious trouble in later stories. So the modern trope of the troubled policeman rears its ugly head here, but there's kind of a payoff in the stories ahead. This story is not one of my favorites, however, it perfectly demonstrates why I prefer plot over character.

The next story is "The Case of the Horizontal Trajectory," but have previously discussed it in my review of John Pugmire and Brian Skupin's monumental anthology, The Realm of the Impossible (2017). It's one of the standout stories of the collection and a solid impossible crime story in the tradition of the scientific detective stories by Arthur Porges. 

"A Tried and Proven Method" breaks with the routine of previous stories as Boruvka promised his 17-year-old daughter, Zuzana, to spend a holiday together in Italy ("the home of her mother's family") under the condition her school report turned out well, which she interpreted as not failing her classes – collecting an abundance of Cs, Ds and two As. Boruvka gave in and took Zuzana on her first trip abroad, but the holiday slowly turned disastrous. They run out of gas in the mountains and have to climb on foot to the hotel, but they come across two very unusual sights in their track to the top. Firstly, Zuzana notices that the pale, gold sand on a plateau sixty feet below is disturbed "as though a struggle had taken place there," but no tracks led to the spot. The sand all around was "absolutely smooth." Secondly, they come across a dead woman near the stony path. Boruvka knows its murder, but, as a Red policeman from a communist country, he's regarded with suspicion and mocked to his face ("in your country everyone suspicious"). Besides, the local police knows it must have been suicide. Not murder. 

The gravely ill victim was not bludgeoned to death, but had fallen from a terrific height and likely threw herself out of a cable cart, which she had repeatedly threaten to do. She was seen boarding the cable cart alone and it arrived at the station empty with an open door. Nobody could have gotten to her. Boruvka is still convinced it was murder and comes up with an interesting solution befitting such an unusual, bizarrely staged impossible murder. A solution treading dangerously close to the territory of second-rate pulp trickery, but Skvorecky handled and presented the trick very convincingly. 

"Falling Light" is a sequel, of sorts, to "A Tried and Proven Method" in which Boruvka and Zuzana spend a few days of their Italian holiday as guests of Signor Greffi. A relative of the victim from the previous story and out of gratitude for capturing her murderer, he invited father and daughter to his Venetian residence. Boruvka finds himself in a "linguistic isolation" among the English and Italian speaking guests, which is a situation that's hardly improved by the murder of their host. This story is a quasi-locked room mystery masquerading as a closed-circle whodunit, but this time the solution is unmistakably pulpy in nature. Something you would expect from John Russell Fearn or Gerald Verner. Nonetheless, I can appreciate a good, pulp-style impossible crime and liked the clue of the ugly doll. 

"Aristotelian Logic" begins with the murder of a model during a fashion show, stabbed to death in her dressing room cubicle, but the murder serves as vehicle for an argument between Boruvka and "the policewoman," Eva. Boruvka is annoyed at his infatuation with Eva and becomes quite unpleasant to her over the course of the investigation, which results in him chiding her that "the homicide squad cannot be guided by feminine logic" and "she had no idea what Aristotelian logic was." However, while Eva's view of the case "could hardly be termed strictly Aristotelian logic," she beats Boruvka to the solution. Not the strongest of the stories collected here, but an interesting, well done variation on that rarely used trope of the rival detectives. 

"The End of an Old Tom-Cat" has better storytelling and imagery than plotting beginning on the night Boruvka is kept awake by a whole quartet of cats, wailing a concert on the roof of his house, while an old tomcat lay dying at the other end of the city – foreshadowing next morning's murder case. Boruvka is summoned to the home of a well-known Public Prosecutor, Paul Hynais, who died in his bed that night with all the tale-tell signs of poisoning. Hynais turns out to have been somewhat of roguish tomcat, in human guise, who accepted favors from women to go light on the men in their lives in the courtroom. This angle brings back a character from an earlier story, but, on a whole, the story surrounding the murder was more interesting than the murder itself. Boruvka actually finds part of the solution in Ellery Queen's The Roman Hat Mystery (1929).

For some reason, "The End of an Old Tom-Cat" strongly reminded me of the Inspector Ghote novels, like Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade (1966), by H.R.F. Keating. 

"His Easiest Case" is shortest story of the bunch with an incredibly misleading title, because it's kind of brilliant, plot-wise, but how the story is structured and told makes it one of the standouts of The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka. The policewoman who has been occupying Boruvka's thoughts is attacked with meat chopper in a murderous assault and left critically injured, but Sergeant Malek already has a suspect and an indisputable piece of evidence. A thumbprint with "a very clear and distinctive scar." A print that belongs to Boruvka and it was the only print found in the apartment that has been professionally wiped clean. So did he actually took a swing with a meat chopper? Only way out is to find an explanation how the fingerprint could have ended up there and that explanation truly is an inspired piece of plotting. An idea that deserved a novel-length treatment, but the who-and why had equally fascinating solutions. Something you can only, sort of, anticipate if you've paying close attention to one of the previous stories. The same applies to the last story. 

“Crime in a Girls' High School” is best described as an anti-detective story and actually a prologue that was put to better use as an effective closing-act. Boruvka tells Eva how he had to abandon his first profession as a gym teacher, which happened nearly twenty years ago in the wake of a theft. A former private detective was called in, Jaroslav V. Klima, who acts as a hotblooded Hercule Poirot as he follows all the clues to uncover a very different kind of problem. The ending explains to Eva why "deep, infinite sadness" was "ineradicably engraved on the lieutenant's face." There were clues to what's behind his melancholy in previous stories that fitted the clues Klima was tracking down. So, while a little unorthodox, the story is a fitting end to an unusual collection of detective stories solved by a reassuringly human detective.

So, on a whole, The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka follows to the tradition of short story collections by being a little uneven in quality with a few duds and focus shifting from plot to character or storytelling, which resulted in some tightly-plotted locked room mysteries and some more loosely-told character-arcs – although the clueing was a little murky at times. However, the overall result succeeded in venturing off the beaten path while remaining (mostly) true to the fundamentals of the traditional detective story. For example, the last two stories. Skvorecky's The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka is a noteworthy and original contribution to the genre during a period when these type of detective stories were considered old-fashioned or even obsolete. Skvorecky demonstrated early on that you can have a fusion of styles complementing both the classical and modernist schools.

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.

Murder Among Actors (1963) by Ton Vervoort

This year, I began exploring the work of an unjustly forgotten, long out-of-print Dutch mystery writer, Peter Verstegen, who wrote a handful of lightly written, but smartly plotted, detective novels during the early and mid-1960s – published as by "Ton Vervoort." Just two of his detective novels were reissued, in 1974, as part of Bruna's Zwarte Beertjes pocket series. So none of his detective novels has been in print for half a century and have since disappeared from the public's memory. And the pool of secondhand copies is beginning to dry up. 

Fortunately, the copies that still float around don't cost an arm and a leg or a spare kidney, which made it both urgent and easy to begin collecting them now. Who knows how rare and difficult to obtain some of these titles will become ten years down the road. Not much gets reprinted in my country unless its fashionable or really, really profitable. That hasn't done the Dutch detective genre any favors.

So it was a pleasure to come across Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963), which seemed like an interesting book to contrast with W.H. van Eemlandt's astronomical-themed detective novel Dood in schemer (Death in Half-Light, 1954). 

Amazingly, the detective story centering on the pseudoscience of astrology turned out to be so much better than the whodunit staged during a minutely-timed, scientific observation of a solar eclipse. Murder Among Astrologists under promised and over delivered that came with one of those rare, Dutch-language takes on the Ellery Queen-style dying message, which I read as an open invitation to come back for seconds, thirds and fourths – revealing a top-tier, second-string mystery novelist. Having read three of them over the past few months, I've noticed Vervoort's detective series can be summed up as a bicycle tour through the genre and the Netherlands. 

Murder Among Astrologists is set in the millionaire's enclave of Bloemendaal with a plot that pays homage to the zany, Ellery-in-Wonderland mysteries complete with strange architecture and a dying message. Moord onder de mantel der liefde (Murder Under the Mantle of Love, 1964) started out as a closed-circle of suspects situation in a 17th century canal house until a serial killer cut loose and goes ham on the invalids of Amsterdam. Striking everywhere from the Rijksmuseum to the rowdy Zeedijk. Moord onder maagden (Murder Among Virgins, 1965) combines a convent school setting with the festive, seasonal holiday mystery beginning with the strange death of a student playing Saint Nicholas and moved from Amsterdam to Maastricht where the story concludes during the annual, three-day carnival celebrations. Vervoort even threw in a (minor) locked room problem that doubled as a (late) clue.

So he took a different approach in plotting and storytelling in each novel that regularly
ventured outside of the Amsterdam canal belt. This certainly is true for the subject of today's review. 

Moord onder toneelspelers (Murder Among Actors, 1963) is the second novel in the lamentably short Inspector Floris Jansen series and, as the title suggests, takes place among the members of a traveling theatrical company with a big role for his friend and narrating chronicler, Ton Vervoort – who gets to shine as a detective rather than as a Dr. Watson. Vervoort also falls in love here with one of the actresses, Sannah Wigman, whom he married in Murder Among Virgins. This time, it's Jansen who comes to Vervoort to ask him to go undercover as an extra in Erik Le Roy's theatrical company in a quasi-official investigation.

Until two years ago, Erik Le Roy was "one of the top actors who played the municipal theaters," but got too few starring roles to his liking and decided to start freelancing. A disastrous decision that reduced him to doing television bits and only turned his situation around when he began a theatrical company, which traveled "the provinces to bring art to the countryside" and claimed "principled motives" to turn down state subsidies. Although the truth is that the company doesn't qualify for state subsidies. But by doing production in-house, everything from translating and directing to lighting playing dual roles, they managed to turn a profit. Le Roy's financial success and his stance against drama schools acting as gatekeepers to the stage-lights made him popular with both actors and the always hopeful extras.

So who could possibly have a reason to send Le Roy threatening letters saying "you will die soon," "you will be dead very soon" and "it won't be long now." Jansen hopes it's a practical joke, but fears it could be a war of nerves to mentally whittle down the actor or even a murderer-to-be with plans to remove him in a more permanent fashion. Vervoort goes from Watson to independent detective ("quite a promotion") and travels with the company to Winschoten, Groningen, as an extra. But as the opening line of the story betrayed, Vervoort didn't succeed in stopping the anonymous letter writer from becoming a killer.

Someone fired two shots at Le Roy while he was driving and his car ended up in a canal, but only his passenger resurfaced and news of the incident resulted in an attempted suicide and a second murder. This is the point where the story becomes difficult and tricky to discuss.

We all dislike it when an author, or detective, plays his cards too close to his chest, but not Vervoort (the author), who boldly plunked down his cards that suggested a solution that was hard to accept – a solution that thumbed its nose at Father Knox without committing a cardinal sin. But it was so on the nose, I refused to believe it and subsequent information seemed to agree with my skepticism. Or did it? What can be said about the plot is that Vervoort performed a juggling act with multiple alibis, identities and motives to create a detective story that's halfway between an inverted mystery and a whodunit. Or did he? I can't say much more about the plot except Vervoort performed a juggling act with alibis, identities and motives to keep the reader guessing whether they're reading an inverted howdunit or a genuine whodunit. I think fans of Brian Flynn would love this mystery.

Vervoort playing bluff poker with the genre-savvy mystery reader, while playing a more than fair hand, earned Murder Among Actors a place next to Murder Among Astrologists as the strongest entries in this short-lived series. Even if the eventual explanation doesn't exactly leave the reader slack-jawed, Murder Among Actors stands as a good, old-fashioned and technically sound piece of detective fiction that makes it all the more regrettably Vervoort bowed out of the genre so quickly. My country needed a mystery writer like him!

Luckily, I still have Vervoort's Moord op toernee (Murder on Tour, 1965) to look forward to and discovered it's not a standalone novel, but part of the Floris Jansen series without Ton Vervoort as the narrator. I've also tracked down one of his short stories and want to reread Moord onder studenten (Murder Among Students, 1962), which I read and reviewed (poorly) some years ago. And have been looking into a few other, long-forgotten Dutch mystery writers. Don't worry. I'll try to smear them out as far apart as possible.

An Alibi Too Soon (1987) by Roger Ormerod

Together with Kip Chase, Douglas Clark, Charles Forsyte and Jack Vance, Roger Ormerod belonged to the Lost Generation of detective novelists who attempted to conserve the genre's past as a foundation for a modern interpretation of the traditional, more plot-oriented, detective story – enjoying varying degrees of success and longevity. But they all arrived on the scene a good three, four decades too late. And they're practically forgotten today. 

Ormerod would never have appeared on my radar, if it weren't for Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) listing three of his impossible crime novels. Well, you know me. I dived down that rabbit hole head first and found not only a criminally forgotten, unexpectedly prolific writer of locked room mysteries, but a writer who perfected the modernization of the traditional, Golden Age period mystery with his best novels feeling like a natural continuation of that era. The Key to the Case (1992) and A Shot at Nothing (1993) are two great examples of Ormerod building on the past with a distinctly contemporary touch. That's not just me saying it.

John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, succumbed to the temptation of my previous reviews and tracked down a copy of Ormerod's The Hanging Doll Murder (1983), which he praised as "an engaging and devilish bit of detective fiction" and "a throwback to the heyday of detective fiction" – when plotting and storytelling superseded "character study and grim psychological probing." John has since joined me on an genre-archaeological expedition to unearth this too quickly forgotten, retro GAD author. So keep an eye out for his reviews.

I've previously read six of his nine, perhaps ten, confirmed locked room titles and wanted to keep the remaining three on the pile, for now, to see what else Ormerod did with the genre. Since I appreciate a good alibi-puzzle as much as a deviously-plotted impossible crime, An Alibi Too Soon (1987) was a logical place to start as I cherry pick my way through his work. 

An Alibi Too Soon is the third entry in the series about ex-Detective Inspector Richard Patton and his wife, Amelia, who are two highly reliable murder-magnets.

This story finds Richard and Amelia Patton in Welshpool, Wales, where they've come to view a converted water-mill with an option to buy it, but Richard remembered a former colleague, ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Llewellyn Hughes, retired to his beloved Wales to write his memoirs. And he decides to give him a call. Richard is surprised when he hears Llew Hughes has frantically been sending letters to his cottage on the south coast, while Richard was within a few miles of him "admiring a water-mill." Hughes has come across something in his memoirs about "a most important case" and believes they might have gotten it wrong, but he can't make any sense out of it.

So he promises to drop by with Amelia, but, when they arrive, the wooden barn house is ablaze and Richard only just managed to drag out a badly burned, dying Hughes clutching a manila envelope – name "EDWIN CARTER" printed cross its face. The envelope contained his notes on the Edwin Carter case. A case that was closed a decade ago and ended with a conviction, but Hughes spotted something in his notes that provides the story with its central puzzle. I think it's save to assume An Alibi Too Soon was intended to be Ormerod's take on the so-called "Humdrum" detective school of Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode.

Edwin Carter was a playwright who made a lot of money with his social-comment comedies, but flopped as a stage director and lost all of his money. Carter was an eccentric manic-depressive, "way up one minute, way down the next," who threw a party, "a kind of wake," to celebrate his failure and ruin. During the party, Carter announced he was going to drive out to get "a fresh supply of booze." Later that evening, Carter's body is found in one of the two closed garages, belted into the driving seat, with a crate of beer and bottles of spirits on the backseat. So everyone presumed he committed suicide upon his return, but the police figures it was murder. This is where a technical piece of the puzzle comes into play.

There are two garages on the estate with up-and-over doors that can be either opened, or closed, with a radio transmitter or manually with the two buttons between the two doors. One of these garages was Carter's and the belonged to his niece and secretary, Rosemary Trew. But, for the system to work, "they had to keep to the correct garage for the correct car." And that's where the suicide became a murder. Another car had been parked in his garage and he was found in his niece's garage. So he had to push the outside button to close the door, run back under the door as it came down and belt himself into the driving as he waited for the car fumes to overtake him – which comes on top of an ugly bump on his forehead. However, the local police doesn't have to look very far to find someone who fitted the role of murderer like a glove.

Only person at the party without one of those "positive alibis" and a hint of a motive was Carter's nephew, Duncan, who came out on parole a few months ago. Duncan served ten years and is keen on getting pardoned in order to claim damages.

Richard Patton first has to figure out what incongruity Hughes had found that placed the case in a new light and he does notice something in a crime scene photo, which would give Duncan an alibi while removing all the others. But would his late colleague be driven half-crazy by a reversal of those "blasted alibis" or is there something else in the evidence? A stone cold, long-closed case is not the only problem he has to overcome.

Detective Chief Inspector Grayson was one of the original investigators of the Edwin Carter case and has diligently worked on his inflexible career ("he succeeds, you see"), which he's determined to protect by presenting Hughes death as an accident and frustrating Richard's private investigation. So they lock horns a few times over the course of the story, but he also comes across another, murky death of a blue movie actress, Glenda Grace, who had falling from the balcony of Carter's London flat during a house party – apparently sozzled and high on drugs. Some people believe she had been pushed. Several blackmail attempts had been made on various party guests. Richard also come to respect one of his suspects, Rosemary, who still lives at her uncle's estate where she used her "paltry inheritance" to produce plays and hold dress rehearsals. The theatrical crowd who hangs out there hasn't changed all that much from the time of those two tragic deaths.

So how well does Ormerod's An Alibi Too Soon stack up as a modern interpretation of the Crofts and Rhode-style detective story? Well, that's a bit of a mixed back of tricks.

Firstly, the two past murders of Carter and Grace were easily the best aspect of the plot with all the clues in place to give the reader a fair opportunity to figure out who, why and (mostly) how, which admittedly is not too difficult to do. Just like with Crofts and Rhode, the tricky part is putting all the pieces in the right place to get a complete and correct picture of the case. Something that was nicely complicated by the technical monkeying with the garage doors, a single word on the side of a beer crate and the premature alibi that gave the story its title. Ormerod gave some much needed weight to this part of the plot and his reputation as a retro GAD writer with a double-reversal of how the alibi-trick was perceived. A double-reversal nicely tied together with these other past plot-threads.

Unfortunately, the two present-day murders (a second body is found in a millrace) felt inconsequential and unnecessary. I think this story would have worked as well, perhaps even better, had Hughes not died. Grayson told Richard that Hughes' brain was going and Richard gently probing Hughes failing memory would have allowed for more engaging storytelling. This would have introduced a vital clue much earlier into the story. Now we have a murder that came about by pure change that's quickly shoved aside as an side-plot and used only as a reason to have Richard cross swords with Grayson. Oh, the Pattons become the new owners of Hughes' dog and they rename her Cindy (short for Cinders). I don't know why the second murder was necessary except to add some darkness to the story, but you can put down to the rushed ending giving the impression that a lot was left unanswered. 

An Alibi Too Soon is not one of Ormerod's best or strongest detective novels, but the story has a solid, competently plotted core with a clever play on the always tricky problem of arranging an alibi which makes it a worthwhile read to fans of Crofts and Rhode. But perhaps even more important that that, An Alibi Too Soon is another confirmation that Ormerod may have been one of the most anomalous mystery writer to have ever appeared on the scene. Not only was he a mystery writer who was both out-of-time and with the times, but his plots became stronger and his storytelling clearer as he neared the end of his career with his earlier novels, like The Weight of Evidence (1978) and More Dead Than Alive (1980), coming across as clunky compared to the previously mentioned The Key to the Case and A Shot at Nothing – published during his last active decade. I know writers are supposed to improve over time and maintain a certain standard, but, more often than not, there's an inevitable drop in quality in the work of prolific mystery writers. Not so with Ormerod.

I know my reading of Ormerod has been very limited to date, but my impression is that he spend his whole career honing and sharpening his skills. Beginning to show drastic improvement in the mid-to late 1980s and reaching his zenith in the 1990s. That's why When the Old Man Died (1991), Third Time Fatal (1992), Mask of Innocence (1994) and Stone Cold Dead (1995) have moved up a few layers on the big pile. So, yeah, expect more Ormerod in the coming months!

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.