The Kindaichi Case Files: Demon God Ruins Murder Case

Back in August, I reviewed The Seiren Island Murder Case from The Kindaichi Case Files and turned out not only to be immensely enjoying, intricately-plotted detective story, but a top 10 candidate for a series best-of list – which encouraged to return to the series before too long. I was already eyeing Demon God Ruins Murder Case when two anonymous comments sold me on it as my next stop in the series. 

Demon God Ruins Murder Case originally appeared as a serial from March 19 to June 18, 1997, in Weekly Shōnen Magazine and is the 18th case in the first run of The Kindaichi Case Files known as the File Series. That was some cause for concern as the series was being (mainly) written by Yozaburo Kanari at the time. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of Kanari's occasional success stories, but he clearly had no idea how exactly to begin or end the story. More on that ending in a moment.

So the story opens a little chaotically, but the gist is that Hajime Kindaichi needs money and is offered a part-time by another student at Fudou High, Munakata Satsuki. It's an archaeological excavation job at her home village, Majin Village, situated in Izumo, Shimane Prefecture. The Majin Village is not, exactly, a typical village. Firstly, the only entrance to the village is a tunnel cutting through a mountain, which is the only way in and out. Secondly, the village is more of a private estate nestled in a mountain valley with only three houses. The House of Gems, The House of Daggers and The House of Seven Mirrors. There used to be a fourth place, The House of the Copper Bells, but it had burned down years ago. A place with a long, sacred history dating back to the time before Buddhism was brought to Japan, countless ancient artifacts have been excavated in the Majin Village, but the recent excavation attempts to locate four so-called cursed Demon Artifacts – worshiped "as magical items during earlier times." It's believed these Demon Artifacts were dedicated to the deity of curses, Magadori no Mikoto. Whoever "finds all four Demon Artifacts will become rich and famous." And possibly a little cursed.

During the Meiji Era, Satsuki's great-grandfather, Munakata Kichiemon, collected all four artifacts and became very successful, but there was a price to pay. Several family began to die and not from natural causes. So he decided to put the artifacts back to sleep, "burying them back in the ruins of this Majin Village," which is why the family build and moved to the family. The Majin Village is "a sealed village" to suppress "the terrifying powers of the Demon Artifacts" and Satsuki's family have now lived there for generations worshiping the very god that keeps them captive. However, the artifacts have an immeasurable value to the field of archaeology and Munakata Shirou, Satsuki's father and an archaeologist, assembled an excavation team to dig out the ruins. But in the middle or excavation, he died in a cave-in. So now a new attempt is made by the family to find those priceless artifacts.

Hajime Kindaichi, Miyuki Nanase and Saki go to the Majin Village where they find a mixed group of relatives, residents, servants and archaeologists. Firstly, there's Satsuki's aunt, Minatoya Asuka, who lives at the House of Gems with her husband, Minatoya Kanichi. They currently have a house guest, Yamato Takeru, who used to be one of Munakata Shirou two assistants. And he insisted on participating in the next attempt at excavating the historical treasures. Secondly, Edogawa Kenji is a well-known mystery novelist and current owner of the House of Daggers and gave a room to the second ex-assistant, Soga Toyohiro. Thirdly, Kunimori Akihiko, Professor of Archaeology at Tojoh University, who's a former research partner of Munakata Shirou and leads the current excavation party. And he brought along his own assistant, Toribeno Akira. Lastly, there's the household of Satsuki, but her mother has withdrawn from life years ago and now lives with face veiled in the upstairs rooms of the House of Seven Mirrors. So the most prominent characters from the House of Seven Mirrors are Satsuki and the two servants, Muranishi Yayoi and Tsukumo Iyo.

Kindaichi begins his part-time job by helping the archaeologists and the dig is a cave, known as Magadori's Seat, which has an opening sealed by a smooth and shiny stone door – named the mirror rock. There are two semicircular cavities in the mirror rock door that can be used as handles, by two people, to push the door open. One handle is covered with a panel that has a keyhole in it, which can be unlocked and removed. A safety precautionary to keep people away from the dig site. You can probably guess what a creative murderer can do with such a setting.

After the first day of work, the mirror rock is moved back into place and locked simply by replacing the panel on one of the cavity-handles. Kindaichi is entrusted to safeguard the key, but soon they discover Yamato Takeru has gone missing. A murder of crows is cawing and pecking away at the cave entrance. So the mirror rock is opened and inside they find Yamato Takeru's body, strangled to death, surrounded by the rotting crow cadavers. There's "no way to open the mirror rock without the key to the second handle" and that makes the stone chamber in Magadori's Seat "a perfectly locked room." This is indeed a really good and original locked room mystery. Not only in presentation! The story provided the problem with two very different, very original solutions to the problem, which are both (technically) correct without one turning out to be a false-solution. And how that works is something you have to find out for yourself. But it worked. My only complaint is that one clue to the second locked room solution really should have been displayed much earlier in the story.

Other than that, the seemingly impossible murder at the dig site would have been enough to carry most detective stories, but the bodycounts in The Kindaichi Case Files almost never stops at just one.

The second death comes as quickly and unexpectedly as it's visually startling and gruesomely presented, but it unfortunately turned out to be nothing more than mere story-dressing with no relevance to the plot. It actually made me feel sorry the character had to die in such a spectacular way for absolutely nothing. If you kill a character in such a way, you have to make it count. Dammit, Kanari! You were so close to being consistent here. A third death in the House of Seven Mirrors introduces a new puzzle to the plot, namely a dying message, as the victim is found tightly clenching pieces of paper – torn pages from a daily wall calendar. Japanese dying messages tend to be language-based and almost never translate very well into another language, which is no different here. This time, I thought the dying message was solvable as the murderer was shown throughout the story either disguised as Magadori no Mikoto (yes, very Scooby Doo) or as a featureless shadow figure, but both times the murderer was coughing blood. I figured the victim could have been aware of this and tried to identify the attacker by pointing out the murderer's days are numbered. Well, I was wrong. The dying message turned out to be a language-based clue after all, but suppose an untranslatable clue is not something I can hold against Kanari. And, to be fair, Kanari held the plot together fairly well. 

Demon God Ruins Murder Case is a mostly well-plotted detective story that also include the archaeological search, or rather treasure hunt, to find the lost artifacts. That plot-thread made good use of the floor plan of the House of Seven Mirrors as a clue to the hiding place. However, the key-word here is mostly. Demon God Ruins Murder Case clearly shows the difference between Kanari and his much more talented co-writer, Seimaru Amagi. Kanari not only lacks Amagi's talent as a plotter, but also his confidence as a writer. I already mentioned the messy, almost contrived opening to get the story started, the inconsequential second death and withholding an important clue to the locked room until the last acceptable moment, but he also had no idea how to end the story. You can only interpreted the ending as divine intervention that allowed for a very convenient and happy ending. Nor did I care for that last-minute, feelgood surprise-twist about one of the other characters.

That being said, I can't deny Demon God Ruins Murder Case is among Kanari's better treatments of the series formula. I agree with the anonymous comments that there's "variation and nuance" to familiar tropes, stock motive and cast of characters, but, more than that, I simply found the idea of the double solution to the original locked room situation to be impressive. Never let it be said Kanari was treated unfairly on this blog!

So, while not among the top-tier titles in the series, Demon God Ruins Murder Case stands as a fairly solid, multi-layered and engrossing mystery with a surprising amount of originality and consistency from a writer I normally rate very lowly. There are some weak spots in the storytelling and plotting, but ended up being as pleasantly surprised as when discovering Kanari's The Headless Samurai defied all my expectations by being unaccountably excellent. I actually wanted to end this review with complimenting Amagi for dragging a good locked room mystery out of his writing partner, but I'll stop bashing Kanari now and say he did a good job here.

Anyway, sorry for this messy, rambling review, but cranked it out as it came to me and dumped it. No idea what's next, but probably something Christmas-themed.

The Kindaichi Case Files: Death TV by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato

I'm consistently about two months, give or take a week or two, ahead on schedule with enough blog-posts and reviews queued to occasionally slip away from the blog without it getting noticed, which every now and then runs into a scheduling problem – occasionally leaving a place open for an upcoming reprint, new release or translation. Something that doesn't always work out. This time, I was left with a week-sized hole in the November schedule and needed something to plug the gap. But what?

I considered doing another Q.E.D. review or perhaps redo and expand on my two old posts about detective stories lost to history, "The Locked Room Reader: A Selection of Lost Detective Stories" and "The Locked Room Reader: A Return to the Phantom Library," but decided to leave them for another time. I moved away this year from The Kindaichi Case Files to focus on Q.E.D. and wanted to briefly return to the former before trying to finish the latter in 2024. I wanted to revisit a volume from the original run of the series that has a story somewhat befitting for these cold, dark and short winter days.

To the Yozaburo Kanari fans among you who feel the icy clutch of despair, you can rest your mind. I'm not going to gift myself an early Christmas present by laying in on Kanari. So you won't hear me saying Kanari has all the creativity and originality of a "Jingle Bells" cover. I'm not going to waste a single word on telling you Kanari handles his plots with the skill and subtlety of an American Civil War surgeon treating a leg wound. Not a hint, nor a murmur, that an old, battered copy of Plotto (1928) would probably have made a better leadwriter for this series (Story by Plotto, Art by Fumiya Sato). This is going to be a fair and balanced review, like The Demon God Ruins Murder Case, but I've a ROT13 question at the end for those who believe Kanari got the short shrift for The Mummy's Curse – copying his homework from Soji Shimada's Senseijutsu satsujinjiken (The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, 1981). More on that in a moment.

Death TV was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from March 17 to May 26, 1993, under the title The Snow Yashka Murder Case and TokyoPop released an English translation in 2003. I remembered it as a surprisingly decent entry early on in the frist series, but not too difficult a task coming right alongside The Opera House Murders and The Mummy's Curse. So let's find out how well it stands up to a second glance.

Hajime Kindaichi has taken a part-time job at a local television station to kill time during the winter break, working as an extra and runner for Shock TV, which is "a hidden-camera show that plays pranks on celebrities." The "victims" for the latest episode are the actress Rie Kanou and the pop singer Reika Hayami. Death TV is, in fact, the introduction of two recurring characters, Reika Hayami and Superintendent Kengo Akechi, who's there to lend an air of authenticity to the prank. Shock TV lured the two celebrities to the village of Segoori, in the shadow of Taisetsu Mountain in Hokkaido, where the villa of the well-known, famously reclusive painter Issei Himuro stands – designed "as a museum to display his own work." So the gallery snaked around the house, surrounding the rooms in the center, which makes it the perfect location for a hidden-camera murder mystery patterned after the local legend of the Snow Demon. Rie Kanou and Reika Hayami are made to believe they're in the middle of a real-life Seishi Yokomizo mystery, but Kanou smells a typical Shock TV scam and so the crew have planned "a prank just for her." Only then things go horribly wrong.

The villa is divided in two parts, a main building and annex, which face each other, but a river and deep canyon sits between the two buildings. A bridge connecting the villa's two part washed away the previous summer and the only other bridge is a twenty minute drive away. Rie Kanou gets left behind in the annex together with the cameraman, Michio Akashi, while the cast and crew move to the main building to observe their victim through the hidden-cameras and setting off remote controlled special effects. Someone wearing the custom and mask of the legendary Snow Demon appears on their monitors. Whoever is behind the mask, the figure is carrying an ax. Only thing the cast and crew can do is watch helplessly as the Snow Demon plants the ax into Kanou's skull. The outside cameras picks up one last glimpse of the murderer as the Snow Demon vanished into the snowstorm ("leaving the villa quiet once more"). Michio Akashi is nowhere to be found and everyone else has an alibi as solid as permafrost. All of them being together twenty minutes away from the crime scene. Akashi is quickly found to have been innocent when his body turns inside a snowman clutching a dying message. And they're not the last to fall victim to the Snow Demon. The last murder is committed in a room with the door and windows locked from the inside.

However, the additional murders, dying message and locked room-trick are pretty much irrelevant to the plot. The dying message is not considered until the conclusion and the locked room-trick is an old dodge, which is surprising as this always makes work of its impossible crime. The whole story of Death TV is driven by two thing: the admittedly brilliant alibi-trick to the first murder and setting Superintendent Akechi up as a rival detective to Hajime Kindaichi (playing the Simon Brimmer to Kindaichi's Ellery Queen). Akechi is as trying and hard to like in his first appearance as Philo Vance in The Benson Murder Case (1926). A young, arrogant "career cop" who studied criminal psychology in the United States and due to his education, started as an assistant inspector instead of working his way up. And loves to refer to his time abroad ("of course, I've already seen many similar cases in Los Angeles"). Akechi challenges Kindaichi and Inspector Kenmochi, “to find out whose tactics are more effects,” which provided the plot with an opportunity to have Kindaichi bat away several false-solutions. Akechi becomes more palpable as a character in later appearances and even starred in his own spin-off series, but here served his purpose by playing the fallible detective who ends up getting a much deserved kick in the pance.

Regrettably, everything outside the central alibi-puzzle and rivalry between the two detective is subpar. I already mentioned the wasted dying message and routine locked room-trick, but the murderer stands out from the moment the murder is committed. Even if you don't know, exactly, how it was done, the story makes it very clear only that person could have done it. But then Kanari had to apply one of his famous, oh-so subtle plot-touches to the character of the murderer. So here comes my ROT13 question: fb lbh qrpvqr gb frg lbhe qrgrpgvir fgbel va n fcrpvnyyl qrfvtarq ivyyn, pbzcyrgr jvgu bqq nepuvgrpgheny naq ynaqfpncr srngherf, jurer n snzbhfyl erpyhfvir cnvagre yvirf uvqqra oruvaq fhatynffrf naq n snprznfx. Lbh unir n zheqrere jub'f nyzbfg vafhygvatyl boivbhf naq gur bayl guvat gung nfcrpg bs gur cybg unf tbvat sbe vgfrys vf n ernyyl bevtvany nyvov-gevpx. Jul purncra vg ol gelvat gb or gbathr-va-purrx pyrire ol anzvat gur zheqrere Nlngfhwv? I completely missed that the first time around, but now it stood out and it annoyed more than it probably should have. What really annoyed me was the motive. Not the repetitiveness of this overused motive, particularly in this series, but how the ending revealed the victims, relatively ordinary people, to have been almost comically evil ("scram, you brat"). I'm the last detective fan to complain about shallow characterization, but Jesus Christ, the only thing missing was them laughing maniacally among the burning wreckage.

I remembered Death TV as a surprisingly decent, early entry in the series and, as you can probably guess, it has not entirely stood up to a second reading. The plot rests entirely on breaking down the murderer's crafty alibi and the rivalry between Akechi and Kindaichi livens up what would otherwise have been a paint-by-numbers, shin honkaku-style detective story, but not enough to recommend it. And certainly not worth tracking down one of those ridiculously overpriced, secondhand copies of the TokyoPop translation.

The Kindaichi Case Files: The Headless Samurai by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato

Previously, I looked at a landmark novel of the Japanese detective story, Inugamike no ichizoku (The Inugami Clan, 1951) by Seishi Yokomizo and the detective on that case, Kosuke Kindaichi, is as iconic a figure in Japan as Sherlock Holmes is in the West – referred to some as the Columbo of the East. Yokomizo's famous detective has a well-known grandson, Hajime Kindaichi, who debuted in 1992 in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. A serialized mystery manga that has since spawned numerous manga-and anime series, light novels, video games, live action movies-and TV series and even had a crossover with Conan Edogawa from Detective Conan.

Originally, The Kindaichi Case Files was written by Yozaburo Kanari and my opinion of him, as a mystery writer, is somewhere at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Kanari would probably crack my top 3 of least favorite mystery writers and his hackwork has negatively colored my perception of the series.

Initially, I abandoned the series after only three (or so) volumes of the original series, which began with the uninspired The Opera House Murders that heavily leaned on ideas from Gaston Leroux's Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) and Le fantôme de l'opéra (The Phantom of the Opera, 1910) – fluffed up with an impossible crime trick cribbed from a G.K. Chesterton story. The Mummy's Curse is a poorly abridged version of Soji Shimada's Senseijutsu satsujinjinken (The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, 1981) bordering on plagiarism. I don't exactly remember my third one, but it could have been No Noose is Good Noose or The Legend of Lake Hiren, but they were both equally poor in plot and execution.

I abandoned The Kindaichi Case Files with no intention of ever returning, but than I ran across Ho-Ling Wong and he insisted there were quality detective stories in the series. So I reluctantly returned with varying degrees of success. The Graveyard Isle was incredibly weak and don't remember thinking too much of Treasure Isle either, but Death TV, The Magical Express and The Undying Butterfly were generally excellent. House of Wax was even superb and still my favorite entry in this series.

There are, however, a few holes in my reading of the English edition that were published in the West, because TokyoPop folded in 2011. One of these titles, The Headless Samurai, had been recommended to me by a commenter, Jonathan, on my review of The Prison Prep School Murder Case, a multi-part episode of the latest Kindaichi anime – claiming that the story was even better than The Magical Express and House of Wax. Naturally, I was skeptical and had a very good reason to be, which has to do with my reason for picking The Headless Samurai as my follow up to The Inugami Clan.

You see, what I read about the plot of The Headless Samurai made me suspect Kanari had been "borrowing" from Yokomizo's celebrated detective novel and was ready to tar-and-feather him for it. I even hired an angry mob with torches and pitchforks. I was fully prepared for a good, old-fashioned verbal lynching, but, as much as it pains me to say, I turned out to be wrong. Again. The Headless Samurai turned out to stand toe-to-toe with House of Wax and kind of liked what Kanari did with the plot and (visual) clueing. Don't get me wrong. Kanari is still a hack of the first water, but you have to give credit where credit's due, you know.

The Headless Samurai has Inspector Kenmochi traveling to the remote mountain village of Kuchinasi in the Gifu Prefecture to visit a childhood friend, Shino Tatsumi, who had married into a wealthy family, as the second wife of Kuranosuke Tatsumi, but after he passed away she started to receive threatening letters – all of them signed by "The Cursed Warrior." Kenmochi is accompanied by two familiar faces, Hajime Kindaichi and Nanase Miyuki.

There are a few superficial resemblances to The Inugami Clan in the opening stages of the story. One of these is a masked man, Saburo Akanuma, who they spot on the bus to the village and turns up again at the Tatsumi home as a guest of Shino. A second resemblance is the reading of the will, appointing Seimaru Tatsumi as the head of the family and "the heir to all its wealth," but the problem is that Seimaru is Shino's son who was adopted by her husband and an outsider – which means that his appointment comes at the expensive Ryunosuke, Moegi and Hayato. The three children from Kuranosuke's first marriage.

However, The Headless Samurai goes its own way after the setup and the plot is draped in a legend that has hung, like a dark cloud, over the village for centuries.

Over 400 years ago, the village was visited by an army general, Kaneharu Hiiragi, who was badly defeated during the time of the battle of Sekigahara and came to Kuchinasi to seek refuge with his men. Upon his arrival, the general crowned himself leader of the village and attempted to drive out the village chief, but General Kaneharu was betrayed by his soldiers. They killed their master, presented the severed head as peace offering to the chief and settled down in the village. Only General Kaneharu placed a curse on them with his dying breath, "my spirit will wander the earth" and "you will never be free," which was followed by a series of decapitations of his former men.

So the frightened villages began to appease his spirit by erecting a shrine dedicated to him and headless statues were placed representing the victims. And the opening of the story showed that the suit of armor of General Kaneharu has disappeared.

The Cursed Warrior makes an entrance like a Scooby Doo villain, when he slashes through a paper screen with a katana, before disappearing and only an impossibly vanishing trail of sandal-prints on the veranda. However, this side-puzzle is quickly solved by Kindaichi, but the problem is that this reveals the person wearing the armor came from inside of the house. Ah, yes, detective stories are the thinking man's Scream.

This is followed by the impossible murder of the masked man, Saburo Akanuma, who is housed in the only available room at the time. A vault-like room hidden behind a hidden, revolving door that looks like a blank wall. The room itself has an iron door with a lock made in Germany, which comes with a unique, custom-made key that can't be duplicated and the only window is a narrow square with iron bars – looking out over a wide, steep cliff with a river below. One evening, Kindaichi gets a phone-call from Saburo asking to ask him if he really is "the grandson of the famous detective," because he wants to tells him the identity of the katana-wielding samurai.

Kindaichi and Shino go to the Saburo's room to have a word with him, but when they arrive in the passage they hear him scream out, "IT'S THE CURSED WARRIOR." Kindaichi tells Shino to fetch the keys and when they can finally open the door they're greeted by his headless corpse sitting in the silent, moonlit room.

A well-presented locked room problem with a good false solution by Kenmoichi, which fitted only one suspect, who promptly dies, but the actual explanation is practical, simple and believable. Clever and original enough to avoid being disappointing. And nicely contrasts with Kenmochi's solution.

However, the locked room mystery and its false solution are not the gemstones of the plot. An experienced mystery reader with a passing familiarity of the Japanese detective story will immediately suspect a classic, Eastern-style corpse-trick is being placed right under their nose, but not one you can easily unravel and the plot cleverly plays with the cast-iron certainties given by modern forensics and results in a beautiful piece of misdirection – which was nonetheless prominently foreshadowed in the artwork. This also gave the murderer an acceptable motive for all of the theatrics, because they were necessary to answer that age-old question. What to do with the body?

The Headless Samurai was surprisingly strong on motives, which is normally a weak aspect of the series, because the plot tend to be written around the eternal avenger-from-the-past theme. The murderer here had an entirely different motivation. A motive showing that old sins can cast long shadows, the cussedness of all things general and that blood will out. What drives the murderer also gives the story some nice clues and made for a dark, tragic conclusion.

So, all in all, The Headless Samurai was a pleasant surprise and, if I come across as overly enthusiastic, it's because I was determined to hate it going in. But I was proven wrong. I don't mind it at all when that happens. Kanari is still a hack though.

The Kindaichi Case Files: The Santa Slayings by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato

The Santa Slayings is the 7th volume in the original series of The Kindaichi Case Files, written by Yozaburo Kanari and illustrated by Fumiyo Sato, which was among the 17 volumes that received an official release in the West – published during the golden days of TokyoPop. I mentioned in a previous review that there were gaps in my reading of the American releases and The Santa Slayings was one of the gaps.

So what better time to finally read, to my knowledge, the only seasonally-themed mystery in the series than the week preceding Christmas?

The Santa Slayings opens with a bleak prologue telling the reader that, ten years previously, the body of an unidentified woman was found off the coast of Kushiro, Hokkaido, which marked "the beginning of a tragic case." A case that would conclude ten years to the day later.

Hajime Kindaichi is unexpectedly invited by Detective Kotaro Tawarada, who first appeared in the abysmal The Mummy's Curse, to attend a Mystery Night at an exclusive, Western-style hotel during Christmas. However, this gracious invitation is in actuality a plea for help. The hotel received a letter threatening that whoever dares to disturb, or spoil, the writer's sanctuary "a bloody death as retribution" awaits them on Christmas Eve – signed "The Red-Beared Santa Claus." A mysterious figure who rented Room 315 for ten years and lived there as a recluse, but vanished one day. Reportedly, he had died in an accident.

A second problem bugging Detective Tawarada is the presence of the coldly competent, hard-bitten Hokkaido Police Superintendent, Fuwa Narumi. Several weeks before, there was a joint investigation between Aomori and Hokkaido Police, but, when the case was successfully closed, she wrote in her report that "the case was hindered by the Aomori police." And this damaged their reputation. So Detective Tawarada is now burdened with proving the real worth of the Aomori police force.

After this, the focus of the story shifts to the members of The Aprodia Theater Group, lead by the hated Suzue Bandai, who'll perform a two-part mystery play, but they immediately become the target of the red-bearded menace. Suzue Bandai receives a severed, but gift-wrapped, cat's head and their dressing room is thrashed. And that set the stage for murder.

During the final scene, the characters in the play share a toast, but the glass of the troupe leader contained cyanide and the police surveillance ensured nobody could have "snuck on to the stage to poison the glass" – which limited possibilities to "someone within the theater group." What follows is a series of murders, leaning heavily on some clever tricks, that carried the story. Starting with the poisoning-trick that made the murder on stage appear as if it was completely random. A trick that, in theory, only works with a very specific kind of victim, but a clever stunt nonetheless.

 

The third murder in the series is a tragic one and involved and involved Kindaichi personally, in more ways than one, when his roommate is murdered in Room 315 and Kindaichi is rendered unconscious by the murderer. So, when the door is opened, Kindaichi is placed under arrest, because he's the only one who could have committed the murder. The doors in the hotel have locks that can only be opened and locked with key cards, which automatically expire every twenty-four hours and the timing of the murder seems to exclude everyone except Kindaichi. A second aspect of the impossible murder is that Detective Tawarada saw the murderer standing in front of the window, of Room 315, five minutes pass midnight, but how did he manage to disappear from the locked room?

What makes this, plot-technically speaking, an interesting locked room problem is not the patchwork-trick, but how thoroughly the explanation broke down that locked room and the triple-layered motive justifying this elaborate setup – making this impossible murder a key-piece of the plot. Another noteworthy plot-thread is the one-hundred year history of Room 315. A grim history beginning with the suicide of the original hotel owner and the long occupation of the room by the red-bearded stranger, but it was never explained how this person was able to turn the whole room red.

So with a bag full of good tricks, false solutions and a surprising departure from the customary avenger-from-the-past motive, you would assume The Santa Slayings stands as one of the better, early titles in the series. Well, you're wrong. Remember, this is one of the volumes that was written by Yozaburo Kanari. And the poor sod was unable to keep the plot together during the denouement.

Despite all of the good or interesting plot-strands, Kanari thought it was necessary to add one more layer to the story. A layer allowing to add a surprise twist to the identity of the painfully obvious murderer, but this twist, coming out of nowhere, is so cringe-inducing ludicrous and unnecessary that it soured the whole story for me. I suspect this was only worked into the plot so that Kindaichi could have one of his moralizing speeches and emotionally break down the murderer in the last chapters. This is why I dislike Kanari so much. Watching him trying to plot and keep it together can be like watching a fly trying to get out of an open window.

I can only recommend The Santa Slayings to genuine fans of The Kindaichi Case Files, but advise everyone else to save themselves the money you'll likely have to spend in tracking down an overpriced, secondhand copy of the TokyoPop edition.

A Legendary Lepidopteron Flutters Above the Murky Waters

"The butterflies fluttered in the blackness, like ghosts wandering without a destination."

– Hajime Kindaichi (The Undying Butterflies, 1997)

You may remember that a few months ago, I posted a compendium of the strength and weaknesses of Yozaburo Kanari's The Kindaichi Case Files by impartially evaluating three volumes I labeled as good, bad and average, but my contempt for the author tainted the neutral tone I intended to adopt for the review. I won't waste time by trodding over ground covered in a previous blog entry, but will simply point you back to that post in case you want to know why I loath him and it's best you read that before continuing reading this one – in which I'll take another shot at putting my personal disdain aside and objectively critique two more titles from this series. I think I can hear someone sceptically mumbling in the back.

The books I opt for in this second-round are The Legend of Lake Hiren (1994) and The Undying Butterflies (1997), which, by themselves, have the framework of a standard, formulaic Kindaichi story, but combined they're lifted slightly above an average effort – as the murderer from the former story resurfaces in the latter and poses an interesting moral question at the end of the second volume.

Still Waters Run Deep

Typically, The Legend of Lake Hiren begins with Kindaichi and Miyuki scoring exclusive invitations to a sumptuous lakeside resort, located at the heart of a secluded valley enclosed by an immense, nearly impenetrable forest with a tottering footbridge as its only route leading back to the civilized world, where the participating members of the traveling group can earn themselves an exclusive and coveted membership once the place officially opens up for business. The participating members of the traveling group include, among other, a former high-school friend of Miyuki, a tacky reporter who goes out of his way to be offense, a kind-hearted doctor with a dark secret, a once promising artist with a morbid fascination for corpses and a gold-digging wife who isn't particular mournful about the sudden and violent passing of her husband – which provides a nice set-up for a good, old-fashioned whodunit.

However, the threat of a menacing murder, lurking from the shadows of the valley as the victims are snatched from their midst, one after another, apparently does indeed seem to come from the outside of the confines of their closed circle – as an alarming radio broadcast notified the public at large that a demented mass murderer escaped from his jail cell. The killer was an avid movie fan who snapped and massacred thirteen people in a single night while dressed as Jason Voorhees, and the vale is beginning to sense his presence when a body turns up with his face torn-off!

Someone torching down the bridge and them uncovering a second, face-less body stuffed in the fridge rapidly follows this. Kindaichi reasons from the facts that the murderer is now "sealed" in with them and that none of their food was stolen must mean that the escaped madman is a clever ruse and that the actual slayer is among them – and here's where Kanari's blatant incompetence as a mystery writer comes into play.

Only a novice would've missed the significance of the shredded faces, a supposed act of random savagery that makes the murderer stand out like a sore thumb, but this could've been solved by taking the personality and modus operandi of the mass murderer into the equation to mislead the reader. The ax-wielding maniac is supposed to be a fiendish movie freak who emulates his on-screen idols and the fact that he neglected to swipe any food from their fridge, after being on the run through the forest for nearly a week without provisions, could've easily been explained away by suggesting that he fed himself with the flesh of the victims – which just so happens to be Hannibal Lecter's favorite snack.

This would've neatly obscured the true motive for mutilating the features of the victims, but then again, what else was I expecting from someone who can only produce an inspired idea when he has a book to copy it from – and the remainder of the story is pretty much what you'd expect from a hack like him who desperately clings to his formula. However, I have to give him props for the way in which he handled the final scene with the murderer who wasn't impressed at all with Kindaichi's attempt at an emo-speech and the semi-original twist he spun on the motive that he loves regurgitating over and over again.

All in all, this is a pretty average entry in the series, impaired by missed opportunities and a lack of truly inspired ideas, and its only saving grace is that it's associated with The Undying Butterflies – as the murderer resurfaces in that story after the murky depths of Lake Hiren swallowed this persons body and was presumed dead.

Note of warning: one of the panels in this story contains a rogue's gallery of murderers from previous cases. The reader is warned. 

The House of the Butterflies

Well, after a stretch of time, in which Kindaichi bumped into a number of murderers, the memories of the grim episode at Lake Hiren begin to dim and accumulate a layer of dust in the attic known as the human brain, but one day he's confronted with a magazine article on a dilettante scholar who rediscovered a rare species of butterfly – and a snapshot depicts the savant standing next to the person he unmasked as the one who was responsible for butchering four people at the lakeside resort.

In tow of a reporter, Kindaichi and Miyuki make a journey to the family mansion of the savant, where thousands of invaluable butterflies swarm the heavily guarded premises, and come face to face with the murderer who found employment as an assistant to the residents patriarch, but claims to have no recollection of a prior life – ever since being dragged from a river. Whether this is true or not, it's unequivocal that this individual is neck deep in another murder case when someone begins killing off the members of the family and leave them pinned like butterflies – beginning with the family's 12-year-old daughter!

The death of a child, coupled with a motive that is accompanied with a minor, but nifty, twist gives this story a decidedly dark tone. Unfortunately, this atmosphere of doom and gloom amounts to nothing more than a thin film covering a familiar exterior as the plot goes through the motions of a standard Kindaichi story – which makes it possible for regular readers to identify the culprit without even glancing at the given clues.

What lifts this story above its basic plot is the inclusion of a murderer from a previous volume, whose hands are undeniably stained with blood but who may be innocent of these butterfly-murders and perhaps even morphed into a completely different person due to the amnesia suffered during a traumatic escape, and a really clever trick to create a unbreakable alibi. Even though he probably nicked that part of the plot from another detective story. Yeah, when it comes to Kanari's hackwork I'm a cynic.

On the whole, The Legend of Lake Hiren and The Undying Butterflies are pretty average fares when tackled separately, but read back-to-back the characters managed to wrestle the plots loose from Kanari's death grip of mediocrity and deliver an overall decent enough story. But more could've been done with them had they been put down on paper by more capable hands guided by a brain possessive of a shred of imagination.  

And thus ends another shoddily written review. I really have to up my game starting with the next blog post. By the way, did I succeed in objectively looking at these stories?! ;)

End Game

"Just like there's no perfect tactic in Go, there's no perfect trick for a criminal."

- Hajime Kindaichi

In the tail of comments on my previous review, the subject of (Japanese) anime was brought up and Ho-Ling suggested Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi Return), which can be streamed (for free) on Crunchyroll.

Some of you long-time readers might remember my rants about one of the writers, Yozaburo Kanari, who has all the creativity of an echoing well and his copy-paste plots prevented me from fully enjoying the original run of the series, but other parts of the series was written by Seimaru Amagi – who wrote the excellent Tantei Gakuen Kyu (Detective Academy Q). According to Ho-Ling, the plotting of this new Kindaichi series is "generally much closer to one of those longer Detective Academy Q stories." So why not give the series a third shot now that Kanari is out of the picture?

Ho-Ling recommended several episodes with enticing sounding titles, such as The Prison Prep School Murder Case and The Death March of Young Kindaichi, but settled for a short, two-part episode: The Blood Pool Hall Murder. I figured a shorter story would be a nice way to get into the series and the background of the story captured my interest.

First of all, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the series, the protagonist is a high school student, Hajime Kindaichi, who comes across as a lazy goof and an underachiever, but he's a genius with a staggering IQ of 180 – which he probably inherited from his famous grandfather, Kosuke Kindaichi. Some of you might recognize that name as the detective from Seichi Yokomizo's celebrated Inugamike no ichizoku (The Inugami Clan, 1951) and you would be right. Kindaichi used to evoke his name, early on in the series, but this resulted in some copyright issues and now only refers to a famous grandfather (i.e. "I swear it on my grandfather's name").

Kindaichi is also one of the biggest murder magnets in all of detective-fiction, rivaling Jessica Fletcher, Conan Edogawa and the English county of Midsomer for the number one spot, which is perfectly demonstrated in The Blood Pool Hall Murder. After all, who would have thought a competitive game of Go between two rivaling school teams would end with the death of one of the players?

Once a year, the rivaling Go Clubs of Fudou High and Kaiou Academy hold a multi-day tournament with the three best players from each club, but the former has seen its membership dwindling and are short one players – bringing the high school detective into the picture. Kindaichi was taught to play Go by his grandfather and is added to the team consisting of the only two remaining members of the club, Kosumi Yukari and Kaihou Manabu. And their opponents are serious and tense bunch of students.

Mitsuishi Isao is the slightly arrogant, serious-minded captain of Kaiou Go Club, but his hopes to train as a professional player were dashed when he beaten at the Insei exam by the second member of his team. Amamoto Kaori is already well-known as a female player and has the skill-set required to become a professional player. The final member is a shy, withdrawn young man, Hoshi Keima, who was the former junior champion of Reversi.

So, on the surface, the tense atmosphere appears to be nothing more than the byproduct of the usual rivalries dominating the world of Go and the first part of the story is, somewhat, reminiscent of a regular episode from Hikaru no Go. However, that all changes in the final ten minutes when one of the players, Hoshi, briefly disappears. Hoshi is nowhere to be found. Until someone notices a sinister message, spelled out with black and white Go stones, in the garden pond: "Hoshi is dead in the Blood Pool Room." And that's where they found his body, flung over an upturned game board, with marks around his throat.

 

"Hoshi is dead in the Blood Pool Room"

There is, however, one problem: the murder room was checked several minutes before the message in the pond was found, which means the body was placed there within a five-minute window and that makes the murder a quasi-impossible crime – since everyone had an alibi for that period. I really had some internal arguing with myself whether or not this episode qualified as an impossible crime story.

Back in March, I responded to a blog-post by The Reader is Warned, titled "But is it a Locked Room Mystery? The case of the impossible alibi," in which I said that an alibi story can only be considered an impossibility under one very strenuous condition: the alibi should not merely rely on witnesses (who can be misled) or items (such as theater or movie tickets), but the murderer should appear to have been physically incapable of having carried out the crime. I gave a rather famous Agatha Christie novel as an example and referred to an episode from Monk in which the culprit was in a coma at the time of the crime, but David Renwick also wrote several interesting variations on the impossible alibi for Jonathan Creek – e.g. Time Waits for Norman (1998) and Miracle in Crooked Lane (1999).

I believe the alibi-trick tiptoed the line between a regular alibi-trick and an impossible crime, but tilted a bit too much to the former to be considered an impossibility (as it relies on the item bit). However, the trick is clever piece of misdirection. Sure, the killer played a dangerous game by relying too much on everyone's assumptions and predicting their movements, but, purely as a plot-driven detective, it's pretty clever and satisfying.

One other thing that should be mentioned is the Go-themed dying message: Hoshi's body was found with his hands tied behind his back and he had been stuffed away somewhere before he was murdered. Somehow, he was able to stuff his pocket with a certain amount of black and white Go stones. Usually, Japanese dying messages and codes are hard to translate, but the color-coded dying clue here is pretty much universal and works in every language. I really wanted to kick myself for having missed the obvious message those stones tried to convey.

I had a good idea who the murderer was, but not exactly how the alibi-trick was done or how the victim's dying message confirmed my suspicion.

So, all in all, The Blood Pool Hall Murder was a nice way to get back into this series and looking forward now to the larger, four-part episodes with some proper locked room mysteries. You can expect me to return to this series before too long. 

But, for now, I want to end this review with an important question directly related to the Kindaichi series: when will Ho-Ling finally renounce Kanari and all his hackiness?