Flatline (2018) by Robert Innes

Last year, my fellow locked room enthusiast JJ, of The Invisible Event, posted an installment on his blog of "Adventures in Self-Publishing," a series bravely tackling self-published detective novels, novellas and short stories, which introduced me to the work of Robert Innes – a mystery writer specialized in impossible crime fiction. So that earned him a top spot on my list of persons of interest.

As of this writing, Innes has penned nine novellas about his series-character, Detective-Sergeant Blake Harte, who transferred in Untouchable (2016) from Manchester to the quiet, picturesque village of Harmschapel. But as Sherlock Holmes and Midsomer Murders has learned us, "the lowest and vilest alleys in London" do not present "a more dreadful record of sin" than does "the smiling and beautiful countryside." Harmschapel proved to be a hotbed for seemingly impossible murders.

JJ had cautioned me to read the series in chronological order, because the later stories refer back to the murderers from previous cases, but also warned that Untouchable would probably infuriate me beyond all measure – which is why it took me so long to get around to this series. I had no idea where to begin. So I finally decided to just pick a title with the most intriguing-sounding premise and impossible problem.

Flatline (2018) is the sixth novella in the series and D.S. Blake Harte is hospitalized and scheduled to go under the knife to have his appendix removed, but something dark is brooding in the staff rooms and corridors of Clackton General.

Exactly a year ago, Doctor Joe Tilsley and Nurse Kelsey Richards, who are dating, accidentally killed a young woman, Lucy Pennock, when they struck her with their car on a dark, rainy country road. Joe convinced Kelsey they should get out of there in order to protect their careers, but the death of Lucy weighs very heavy on Kelsey's conscience, which naturally puts a strain on their relationship. She becomes incredibly suspicious and slightly paranoid when D.S. Harte is hospitalized, because she found out he's "an extremely talented officer" behind "the solving of some truly baffling cases," but worst of all, Harte is the police officer in charge of the investigation into a deadly hit-and-run – one which happened exactly a year ago! But the worst is yet to come.

Kelsey receives a disturbing video message from someone wearing a surgical mask and cap, who identifies himself as The Watcher, warning Kelsey that the time has come to pay for the innocent life that had been so cruelly snatched away. This is followed by the bells of Big Ben booming from the tannoy system in the middle of the night and sinister phone call from The Watcher ending with "the long, monotonous tone of a flatline." Finally, there's the murder.

Dr. Joe Tilsley enters one of the two elevators in the hospital on the tenth floor and gets stuck on his way down, between the eight and seventh floor, which stays there for twenty-five minutes. When they finally opened the elevator doors, Dr. Tilsey is lying on the floor. And according to the physical evidence, he had been drowned in a bone dry elevator during those twenty-five lonely minutes when he had been trapped inside.

So here you have, what's undoubtedly, an intriguing premise for an impossible crime, but the story turned out to be a mixed bag of tricks. Let me begin with what I liked about it.

The locked room-trick found a new variation on an old principle of the impossible crime story often employed by such luminaries as John Dickson Carr, Edward D. Hoch and Paul Halter. You have to wonder why nobody else had come up with this idea before and miraculous drowning in the closed elevator was strengthened by the cussedness of all things general. A well-done impossible crime with a Carrian touch. The second thing I liked was the presence of a rival-detective, Sergeant Gardiner, who has been after Harte's position ever since he arrived in Harmschapel and provides the story with a ridiculous false solution, which is exactly what I expected from a rival-detective – because the Western detective story needs more Simon Brimmer's and Superintendent Akechi's. They're simply fun.

On the other hand, I hated how Harte's private life intruded upon the story. I mean, this is supposed to be a dark, brooding detective story with an elusive figure dressed as a surgeon stalking a doctor and a nurse in the corridors of the hospital and apparently leaving behind a body in a locked elevator. But the flow of this story is interrupted several times so that Harte can argue with his boyfriend about him always working or discharging himself from hospital against the advice of the doctors.

This is exactly what I hate about so many modern police procedurals. Not to mention that this came at the cost of at least three characters who needed a little more fleshing out.

Dr. Joe Tilsley is pretty much a non-entity and only there to provide a corpse for the story and a motive for the murderer, while Nurse Kelsey is a typical woman-in-peril who gets unburdened when a deus ex machine gave a new explanation for the hit-and-run. So not very original, but could have been more than it was if it was shown how that fateful night changed their relationship. The two already were an interesting contrast of each other. But the character who really got the short end of the stick was the murderer.

If the reader had been told what made the murderer tick, it would have strengthened the locked room-trick even more, because the murderer's personality and state-of-mind is integral to the murder. Innes could have gotten away with this, because he had dragged a good red herring across the trail to divert your attention away from this person.

So, all in all, Flatline is an uneven detective story with some good ideas, but clings too much to the conventions of the modern, British police procedural and allowed the personal life of the police-detective to intrude upon the story – disrupting and eventually breaking my immersion. However, I will not give up on this series and try one or two more. Ripples (2017) and Atmosphere (2018) have fascinating-sounding premises for an impossible crime story.

Well, this is the third mixed review in a row, but I'll try to pick something good for my next read. Fingers cross!

The Case of the Magic Mirror (1943) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Magic Mirror (1943) is the twenty-sixth entry in the Ludovic Travers series and here the influence of the tough, hardboiled school began to show with its first-person narration by the detective, "the dissolute rich" and "scheming femmes fatales" – changing Travers from a prim intellectual to a genteel private-investigator. However, the plot hearkened back to the more elaborate, Golden Age baroque-style detective stories from the early days of the series (c.f. The Case of the April Fools, 1933). The book even begins with a sporting challenge to the reader.

The Case of the Magic Mirror begins in the Spring, of 1942, with Travers recovering from an operation that removed "a lump of shrapnel from a premature bomb." So he has enough time on his hands to tell the story of one of the most unusual murder cases he had been unofficially connected to, but the solution was "so absurdly simple" that some wonder why they haven't "seen it from the very first."

To cement his claim, Travers tells the reader that in the next paragraph is "the germ of that simple solution" allowing you, the reader, "to solve the whole thing well before the last page" and prove your mettle as an armchair detective – which is an excellent example of fair play. Right off the bat, Bush gives away a clue as a freebie! This is exactly why he has become one of my favorite Golden Age mystery writers.

The story Travers has to tell took place shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1939, but the case has its roots in an earlier swindle affair and a big, headline grabbing 1937 trial. Five men were charged and convicted for fleecing thousands of pounds from race-horse bookies by tampering with the time-stamps of telegrams, which were used to wire bets to the bookies. These convictions were secured with the testimonies of the "socially dubious" Joe Passman and one of the accused, Rupert Craigne, ensuring most of them got "a couple of years apiece," which infuriated one of them, Patrick Sivley – who worked as Passman's chauffeur. And, as he's dragged out of court, he screams he will get them even "if it's the last thing I do."

Enter Joe Passman's stepdaughter, Charlotte Craigne, who's married to Rupert and, once upon a time, she had been Travers' sole indiscretion in life.

Charlotte is completely devoted to Rupert, but financially depended on Passman and suspects he masterminded the bookie-swindling case. So she turns to her ex-lover, Travers, to use his detective skills to dig up dirt on Passman, which she wants to use as blackmail material. So why would Travers agree to take part in this scheme? Charlotte hands him a snapshot of a small boys and tells him its his son! A son she gave birth to after their relationship ended. If he refuses to help her, Charlotte promises him to send his wife all the prove of his bastard son. So he has no choice but to acquiesce.

However, Travers makes plans "to clip the lady's claws" and engages a private-detective, Edward "Eddie" Franks, to not only help him with the Passman end of the swindling affair, but also help him disprove his paternity by identifying the boy in the photograph, which is one of the things that reminded me of the early books in the series – when John Franklin, an inquiry agent of Durangos Limited, assisted Travers and Superintendent George Wharton (e.g. The Perfect Murder Case, 1929). So far, this appears to be a relatively simple, straightforward case, but then the murders happened. And those murders is another thing that reminded me of the earlier books.

Before his fall from grace, Rupert Craigne was a famously conceited actor and, upon his release, he has been making a public exhibition of himself by loudly proclaiming his innocence in public.

One day, Charlotte gets a letter from Rupert telling her that he's going to a seaside place, called Trimport, to "collect a crowd" and "tell them a few things." Theatrically, Rupert was standing in a small boat addressing the scores of swimmers and the people crowded at the water's edge. A rifle-shot silences the actor as he falls backwards into the sea. Charlotte and Travers witnesses the murder, but the worst is yet to come. When they return to the manor house, the place is crawling with police. Joe Passman has been stabbed to death around the same time Rupert Craigne was shot!

These multiple, closely-timed and tightly intertwined murders were a staple of Bush's detective novels from the 1930s and he got a lot of mileage out of exploring the possibilities this premise has to offer. Some notable examples are Dead Man Twice (1930), Dancing Death (1931), The Case of the Bonfire Body (1936), The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938) and the previously mentioned The Case of the April Fools. This time the murders are complicated when two people go missing: Sivley had been spotted near the house around the time of Passman's murder and this is assumed to have been the reason why he bolted, but the old, dutiful butler of the place, Matthews, appears to have "simply walked out of the house" – vanishing without a trace or reason. Lastly, there the titular mirror, which was taken from the wall and replaced by a framed print.

The Case of the Magic Mirror has all the ingredients of a first-rate detective novel. An intricately-linked double murder plot, a cat-and-mouse game with a dangerous, beautifully characterized dame and personal angle for the protagonist. Travers is not only blackmailed, but circumstances forces him to pull the wool over the eyes of the old war-horse, Superintendent George "The General" Wharton. Always a tricky thing to do. Even more so to someone he respects as a friendly rival and considers to be a friend. Or what about keeping his wife in the dark about his past with Charlotte? Consequently, Travers emerges from this story "a trifle shop-soiled."

In spite of the rich, busy plot with multiple moving parts and a quasi-impossible alibi-trick, the whole scheme was as transparent as a child's lie and this made the intended surprise solution fall flat on its face. However, I have to give props to Bush for the trickery behind the first murder. Some parts of the trick are a little difficult to swallow, which mainly has to do with time and timing, but not entirely impossible to pull off under those circumstances. As an aside, a far more famous mystery writer used a slight variation on this trick in one of his latter, lesser-known detective novels.

So, on a whole, The Case of the Magic Mirror failed to secure a place among the top-rank titles in the series and not recommended to readers who are new to the series, but the close ties Travers has to the case and how he handled it makes it a must-read to fans of Bush.

Unrest at Raubrakken (1935) by A. Roothaert

Anton Roothaert was a Dutch lawyer, writer and a pesky gadfly of the Roman Catholic Church, who agitated against "the suffocating influence" of the Catholic Church in the southern provinces of the Netherlands, best remembered today for his streekromans (regional novels) about a clumsy veterinarian from Brabant, Dr. Vlimmen – who appeared in a trilogy of novels. More importantly, Roothaert produced half-a-dozen mystery novels and a stage-play.

The first four novels, Spionage in het veldleger (Espionage in the Field Army, 1933), Onbekende dader (Unknown Culprit, 1933), Chinese handwassing (Chinese Handwashing, 1934) and Onrust op Raubrakken (Unrest at Raubrakken, 1935), were written during the Golden Decade of the genre's Golden Age. Nearly two decades later, De wenteltrap (The Spiral Staircase, 1949) and Een avondje in Muscadin (An Evening in Muscadin, 1952; co-written with J. Romijn) were published. These two short-lived flings as a mystery novelist was punctuated with Gevaarlijk speelgoed (Dangerous Toys, 1954). A play that reportedly has never been performed on stage.

After all the Danish, French and Japanese mystery reviews, I wanted to return to a Golden Age period detective novel from my own country and began sifting through Roothaert's work.

This turned up two titles, Unknown Culprit and Unrest at Raubrakken, which appeared to adhere to the traditions of their Anglo counterparts and settled on the most traditional-looking of the two, but the story turned out to be more in line with the work of French mystery writers from the early 1930s – such as Gaston Boca, Pierre Véry and Noël Vindry. Going by the French-speaking characters in the book, I assume Roothaert was proficient in French. So it's not entirely impossible that he was not only aware of these early French mystery writers, but might have even been influenced by them.

Unrest at Raubrakken is Roothaert's fourth published mystery novel and has messy, loosely told first half, which was obviously done to cover-up a massive coincidence needed to bring two different sets of characters together.

During the opening chapters, the reader is introduced to small, shady group of people who had to scramble in a hurry to escape from the Belgian gendarme. One of them is a 19-year-old woman, Annebet van Asseldonck, whose older brother, Loe, is part of the gang, but she had no idea what they were up to in that blacked-out room in the house they had rented. One day, Loe told her she had five minutes to pack and not to leave a scrap of evidence, because they were going to the Netherlands, but, in the pell-mell, they got separated and she was left behind with the crusty Dekema and amorously-minded Maurice – which made her think "she was surrendered to the Turks." So she gave them the slip and took along a mysterious briefcase.

A midnight game of hide-and-seek in a dark, damp forest brings a cold, hungry and exhausted Annebet to an old country estate, the Raubrakken, on the border with Belgium.

The place is the property of Jan-Karei van Neeritter Eckberts, lord of the manor, but "never a drop of blue blood" was spilled in his bloodline. Jan-Karei is not your typical country gentleman. He's a young, 25-year-old man who prefers to spend the entire day in bed reading hefty tomes on (criminal) psychology, which made me suspect he was going to be the detective of the story. Jan-Karei made some Sherlock Holmes-like deductions in the beginning and even helped capturing one of the gang members.

Maurice turned up at Raubrakken, out of nowhere, under a false name and attempted to scam 15,000 guldens from Jan-Karei, which is close to 145,000 euros in today's money. Or nearly 165,000 dollars for you Americans. But he astutely spotted the flaw in a falsified document.

However, the detectives turned out to be two policemen, Inspector Piron and Deputy-Inspector Fluyt, of the Centrale Opsporingsdienst (Central Investigations), who can get to work when the book finally begins to resemble a proper detective story – which is somewhere around the halfway mark. Maurice makes a spectacular escape from his prison cell. Jan-Karei receives a warning letter requesting the return of a wallet and a bullet is fired through the window of his library when he was having guests. And the next day, the library becomes the scene of a seemingly impossible murder!

First of all, I swear I had absolutely no idea Unrest at Raubrakken was going to turn into a full-fledged impossible crime story towards the end. I was completely taken by surprise, but oh boy, what an impossible crime!

One of Jan-Karei's house-guests is a Dutch-American retiree, Mr. Weider, who's sitting in an armchair in the library when a shot was fired through the broken window, but the shooter outside had to be trapped, because every exit was either blocked, locked or under observation. Piron and Fluyt were two of the eye-witnesses who swear the shooter could have escaped without either being captured or seen. So how did the murderer manage to "immediately vanish like a ghost" after firing the kill shot?

I unreasonably love this trick! An open-air locked room with an explanation reminiscent of John Rhode, which cleverly reinvented an old idea, but what made me love it is how incredibly Dutch it was. On top of that, the shooting is expertly hitched to a very nifty alibi-trick.

Unfortunately, the elaborate trick and impossible murder are the only really good aspects of the story and plot. The story telling is everything but smooth. The characterization is paper-thin even by my standards. The murderer stood out like a sore thumb and clueing was kept at a minimum, while Piron limited his detective work to uttering cryptic remarks and finding those few clues needed to reconstruct the murderer's trick. A very good trick, but was it enough to save an otherwise mediocre mystery novel? Well... sort of.

All things considered, Unrest at Raubrakken should have been a resounding disappointment, but the unexpected, surprisingly good and typically Dutch locked room-trick was, as we call it over here, a goedmakertje (a small compensation) – which makes it impossible for me to hate this book. What can I say? Sometimes, I'm very easy to please. This is one those times.

The Locked Room Reader X: My Five Favorite Impossible Crime Stories from Case Closed, vol. 1-69

Previously, I reviewed volume 69 of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, a long-running Japanese detective anime/manga series published in the non-English speaking world as Detective Conan, which is littered with often original, cleverly contrived locked room and impossible crime stories – some of these stories are absolute gems. So, with the release of volume 70 earlier this month, the time had finally come to slap together a best-of list. I managed to keep my list limited to five stories that impressed me for various reasons.

My first pick is known as "The Mist Tengu Case," collected in volume 11, in which Conan Edogawa solves a seemingly impossible murder in a mountain temple haunted by the titular Tengu. A long-nosed goblin who is held responsible for hanging a priest from a beam inside a small, but tall, wooden temple tower with unscalable walls. The locked tower-trick is as ingenious as it's original, but one that only works and is acceptable in comic book format. Still a highly recommendable story with a good plot and setting.

The next story is "The Loan Shark Murder Case," collected in volume 15, which has one of the best and cleverest poisoning-tricks of the entire series.

A loan shark is poisoned with potassium cyanide in his office. However, the whole building had been secured from the inside and everything is tested for traces of cyanide, such as the money the victim had been counting, but without result – until the brilliantly titled chapter, "The Devil's Summons," reveals the trick. A devilishly simplistic, but oh-so effective, trick that makes this story a minor locked room classic.

"The Magic Lovers Case" can be found in volume 20 and brings Conan to a snowbound lodge, where an online group of magic enthusiasts have gathered, but dark magic seems to be at work when a member of the group is murdered under apparently impossible circumstances. His body is found outside the lodge, sprawled in the middle of a field of snow, which is virginal and unbroken without a single footprint going to, or coming from, the body.

In my opinion, the no-footprints scenario is the trickiest and most difficult of all impossible crimes to do successfully, because the physical nature of these tricks eliminates misdirection from the equation in most cases and admired Aoyama's unique approach to the problem – a very technical and elaborate trick. These complex tricks work admirably well in the comic book format, because you're shown had it was done.

The next story, "The Detective Koshien Case," is spread out over two volumes, 54 and 55, which is somewhat of a landmark story in the series.

Conan Edogawa and Harley Hartwell travel to an abandoned house, on a deserted island, to take part in a reality TV special about the "Teen Detectives" of Japan. The participants are the high-school detectives of the North and South, Yunya Tokitsu and Natsuki Koshimizu. Harley Hartwell represents the West and Jimmy Kudo the East, but, since he's there as Conan Edogawa, his place is taken by Saguru Hakuba – who previously appeared in volume 30. This reality show becomes a deadly game when one of the detectives, Tokitsu, is bludgeoned to death in an upstairs room of the abandoned house with the door and windows locked or fastened from the inside.

Granted, the solution reworks an old locked room-trick, but it was a skillfully done job and the whole story felt like a big deal with a strong crossover vibe. And the story has one of the most memorable and likable murderers in the series.

Finally, the list appropriately closes with my favorite impossible crime story, "The Poisonous Coffee Case," which can be found in volume 60. A melancholic, character-driven locked room story with a dark, rainy and noir-ish atmosphere. An immoral TV executive, Raisaku Nakame, is poisoned behind the chain-locked door of his top-floor condo. Evidence at the scene, such as coffee stains, suggests someone else had been in the room after he had died. But how did this person manage to get away?

The original solution to the impossible poisoning is superb and a heart breaker. A genuinely sad story and one of the best stories in the entire series. If you read only one Detective Conan story in your life, it should be this one.

And that brings this filler-post to an end. I want to return to a regular, novel-length detective story for my next read, but might do one more multiple short story review. So... stay tuned to find out.

Yokai Attack: Case Closed, vol. 69 by Gosho Aoyama

In my previous post, I reviewed a short story by Rintaro Norizuki, "Toshi densetsu pazuru" ("An Urban Legend Puzzle," 2001), which cleverly used the popularity of urban legends as a premise for a good, old-fashioned detective story, but Japan is home to much older, often more rural legends of monsters, spirits and demons – commonly known as yokai. The legend of the single most famous yokai in Japan is at the heart of a Detective Conan story.

The 69th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, published in most countries as Detective Conan, opens with Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan traveling to the Kora Inn, in the village of Kuchibashi in Gunma, to meet with a client.

Moore had received a letter alluding to a murder that had happened there 11 years ago and asked him to use his "remarkable deduction skills" to the clear the name of the writer, which was signed Mika Tatezato. However, the local police told Moore that there was no murder in that village 11 years ago. Mika Tatezato is not a name that figures on their wanted list.

As to be expected, Moore's client no-shows their appointment and it appears he has fallen for a very unfunny prank, but along the way, they learn a child was drowned in the river and the police concluded that the boy got his foot stuck between some rocks along the riverbank – before drowning in a flash flood. But why was the boy playing in the water in January? More interestingly, the region is rife with legends of the Kappa, "water monsters that lure the unwary," of which there was a rash of sightings 12 or 13 years ago. Rachel even spots one near the riverbank on their first day in the village.

On the following morning, the father of the boy and inn keeper is found dead in a dimly lit attic room overlooking the river. His body was drenched in "a putrid fishy-smelling liquid." As if the Kappa had grabbed him and "dragged him into the depths of a swamp."

This is an excellent story that was very reminiscent of Gladys Mitchell's Death and the Maiden (1947), in which two young boys are drowned in a river following sightings of naiads (water nymphs), but Aoyama crafted a much tighter plot. The central puzzle of how the putrid water was brought from the swamp to the attic can be classed as a quasi-impossible situation, but here the trick is used to establish an unusual kind of alibi. My only complaint is that the murderer telegraphed his identity to the reader practically from the start. However, this was more than made up with the tragically misunderstood motive and sad ending. An excellent story with good atmosphere and back-story. Easily the best story in this volume.

The second story brings Doc Agasa, Conan, Anita and the Junior Detective League to a hot spring resort. Doc Agasa has invented a gadget for the owner of the hot springs, but lately, it has been malfunctioning and he has been asked to repair it. So he brought along the kids.

At the resort, they find out that the hot springs is used by a film crew to shoot a remake of the greatest movie in The Bloodsteam Hitman franchise, The Crimson Spring-Head, which is about a hitman who works at a hot spring and in the movie he "creates a perfect locked room murder" – solution to this fictional murder is briefly used as a false solution. Unsurprisingly, the screenwriter is murdered in one of the hot springs, but these are lake-top hot springs and you can only reach the pavilions by crossing a bridge. Nobody crossed between the time the victim entered, early in the morning, and when the body was found. It's a locked room murder on a lake!

This is another good story with a solid plot, but, sort of, figured out the plot. However, I was only able to do this because the locked room situation was very reminiscent of an obscure, little-known impossible crime novel from the 1950s. I doubt Aoyama has read the book, but I thought the similarities were still interesting.

The third story is an inverted mystery in which Hoshie Urai plots to murder her husband, Taruto Urai, who are president and vice-president of Urai Confections. He's specialized sweet candies and she's specialized in sour, which she uses to poison him during party and gave herself an unshakable alibi. Unfortunately, Richard Moore starred in a commercial for their Spy Chocolate White, "an ultra-sour white chocolate," which landed him an invitation to the party, along with Conan and Rachel – who is promptly used by Hoshie to cement her alibi. You'll never be able to figure out the poisoning-trick, because it requires a specialized piece of knowledge. One part of the trick could potentially have killed the murderer. Cyanide is not something you want to have on your skin.

On a whole, a pretty decent, but not especially good, detective story. This series has had better stories and two of them preceded this one.

The last two chapters begin a story that will be concluded in the next volume and has Conan, Anita and the Junior Detective League a dark, empty house filled with fragments of mysterious piano music. And diary entries hinting that a murder has taken place.

All in all, this was a great volume opening with the beautifully-done Kappa story followed by a good locked room mystery and a passable inverted mystery. Ending with the promise of another good story. So I was very satisfied.

Modern Myths: "An Urban Legend Puzzle" (2001) by Rintaro Norizuki

Rintaro Norizuki is a Japanese mystery writer, a founding member of the shin honkaku (neo-orthodox) movement, who began, like so many writers in this movement, as a member of the Kyoto University Mystery Club – before officially debuting with Mippei kyoshitsu (The Locked Classroom, 1988). One of many Japanese detective novels I would like to see translated in the future.

The Exploits of Rintaro Norizuki

Norizuki is the current President of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan and has won several awards for his short stories and novels, which are heavily inspired and indebted to Ellery Queen.

The protagonist in most of his novels and short stories is his mystery writing namesake, Rintaro Norizuki, who forms a father-and-son detective team with his dad, Chief-Inspector Norizuki. However, this is only a superficial resemblance. Norizuki has garnered a reputation as a purveyor of extremely logical puzzles that can only be solved by logical reasoning. So no wonder our very own Ho-Ling Wong is quite a fan of the series.

Unfortunately, as of this writing, only two of his short stories have been translated into English in the past fifteen years. The most recent translation was the brilliant "Midori no tobira wa kiken" ("The Lure of the Green Door," 1991), published in English in the November, 2014, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and collected in The Realm of the Impossible (2017), which presented the reader with a brand-new solution to the locked room problem – making it the crown jewel of that anthology. Back in 2000s, "Toshi densetsu pazuru" ("An Urban Legend Puzzle," 2001) was translated and published in the January, 2004, issue of EQMM. The story was very well received and was later included in two anthologies, Passport to Crime (2007) and The Mammoth Book of International Crime (2009).

Somehow, "An Urban Legend Puzzle" has always managed to elude me, but finally decided to track down the story in order to relieve my insatiable hunger for more shin honkaku detective stories.

"An Urban Legend Puzzle" has a plot-structure I can't help but associate with G.K. Chesterton's "The Dagger with Wings," collected in The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926), in which the plot is slowly unfolded and dissected during a conversation between two characters. In this instance, Chief-Inspector Norizuki tells his son about a homicide case he has under investigation.

A second-year student in the Sciences Department at M-University, Matsunaga Toshiki, was stabbed to death with an ice pick in a one-room apartment in Matsubara, Setagaya Ward – shortly after a drinking party with other university students broke up. One of the students, Hirotani Aki, forgot her cell phone and returned to the apartment, but she found the door unlocked and the apartment was pitch-black. Aki assumed Toshiki had gone to bed and forgot to lock the door. So she didn't want to wake him up and searched around the apartment in the dark for her phone, before leaving quietly. 

 

On the following morning, a delivery man found the body of the student lying in "a pool of blood on the floor of the 8-tatami-mat-sized room" and a disturbing message was left in blood on the wall: "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?" Rintaro Norizuki recognizes the phrase from "a popular urban legend" and together they go over who of the students benefited, or were disadvantaged, from embellishing the murder with the urban legend motif. This makes for an interesting and original backdrop. They also test the alibis of the students and go over every possible scenario, which results in various false solutions getting smashed to pieces. And this is a very satisfactory approach to fans of detective stories that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

"An Urban Legend Puzzle" is a cleverly contrived, extremely logical story with a solution hinging breaking apart "a solid alibi," but the story is so logical and fair that an observant or long-time mystery reader can easily put the whole thing together – which is the only flaw in this otherwise great story. So not in the same league as the locked room classic "The Lure of the Green Door," but still an excellent specimen of the pure puzzle-plot detective story and the shin honkaku movement. I hope more of Rintaro Norizuki gets translated in the future.

On a final, somewhat related note: I've noticed for a long time that schools, universities and student characters are staples of shin honkaku, but Ho-Ling mentioned in his review of The Locked Classroom (linked above) that they're mainly staples of anime, manga and light novels – because they geared at a younger audience. However, you can still find them in your regular shin honkaku novels. Yukito Ayatsuji's Jakkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) and Alice Arisugawa's Koto pazuru (The Moai Island Puzzle, 1989) has characters that are members of university mystery clubs. Katsuhiko Takahashi's Sharaka satsujin jiken (The Case of the Sharaka Murders, 1983) is a scholary-cum-historical mystery with a university setting. One of Keigo Higashino's series-detectives is an assistant professor of physics.

So I have begun to wonder if this has anything to do with the influence from all those university mystery clubs that have produced so many of shin honkaku writers. Add the Japanese school-culture, with all its problems and ghost stories, and you have all the material you need for a detective story.