Knox Machine

From the "detective story" and "science fiction" labels I've added to the post, you might guess thatノックス・マシン (Knox Machine, 2013) by NORIZUKI Rintarou (法月綸太郎) is a science fiction detective story. In fact it is a collection of pure science fiction stories, which don't contain a proper mystery, but have golden age detective stories as their subject matter.

The title story ノックス・マシン ("Knox Machine", 2008) takes its inspiration from the ten commandments for detective stories that Ronald Knox wrote as part of the introduction to an anthology. In the mid twenty first century, computer creation of satisfying literature has become possible. Chin Loo, a Chinese researcher attempting to create new golden age style mysteries, uses Knox's rules as a central part of his modelling of the pattern of the story. The choice is politically questionable, because of the fifth law "no Chinaman shall figure in the story". Persevering despite disapproval Chin Loo succeeds in generating new puzzle mysteries; but it seems that his choice has condemned him to a life without career advancement, when he is unexpectedly and alarmingly summoned by senior figures in a government research program. Their interest, it turns out, lies in the fact that the time when Knox wrote his laws seems to be tied in to the possibility of time travel.

The second 引き立て役倶楽部の陰謀 ("The Supporting Characters' Club Conspiracy", 2009). Captain Hastings narrates how in 1939 a letter from Doctor Watson, the president of the Supporting Characters' Club, summoned him and other members to discuss what action needs to be taken in the light of a new affront to the honour of the society offered by Agatha Christie's forthcoming mystery. Their last intervention, following her publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, had gone as far as kidnapping. Now Watson seems ready to countenance even more extreme measures.

The third バベルの牢獄 ("The Jail of Babel" 2010) is not so directly concerned with detective stories, but again has a metafictional aspect.

The last, ("Knox Machine 2" 2013) is a sequel to "Knox Machine", this time centred on Ellery Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery and The Chinese Orange Mystery and the presence or absence of Queen's famous "challenge to the reader". The electronic library of the world's texts, managed by a powerful American corporation, is being attacked by sudden fires, and the source seems to be The Siamese Twin Mystery. Terrorists, it seems, have manipulated the text, creating an instability that spreads through the neighbouring books. The only solution seems to be a new kind of time travel, back into the book.

I have to admit that I didn't enjoy this much. I like a lot of science fiction and I like classic detective stories, but the mix did not work well for me. One problem is that the exposition overwhelms the story to a greater or lesser extent in all four stories, most of all in the title story and its sequel. The exposition of detective story history (on Knox, Christie and Queen) is readable enough, although I knew much of it already. The physics reads less well. It feels as though having invested so much effort in creating a scientific justification for the story, the author is treating his invention with too much respect. For detective story fans the second story is likely to be of more interest, demonstrating a surprisingly thorough knowledge of early and golden age detective stories, and offering a reflection on the way the genre changed in its choice of plot.

The Gymnasium Murder

体育館の殺人 (taiikukan no satsujin, The Gymnasium Murder, 2012) is a mystery novel by AOSAKI Yuugo (青崎有吾, born 1991). The publishers, Sougen Suiri, often have an invented English title on their cover, and in this case it is The Black Umbrella Mystery, which might suggest some similarity to the first Ellery Queen mysteries, such as The Roman Hat Mystery. If that was what they wanted to suggest, the suggestion is certainly warranted. Although the book is a locked room mystery, the style of detection involves a string of deductions around a single object, leading to criteria that narrow the field of suspects, very much in the style of The Dutch Shoe Mystery and particularly The Roman Hat Mystery.

The table tennis club and other sports clubs are using the old gymnasium of their high school. At one end of the hall is a stage, and unusually its curtain is down. When the theatre club arrives for its rehearsal they open the curtain. On the stage is the body of the president of the broadcasting club, stabbed in the back. The investigating police soon stumble on a puzzle: the doors at the stage end were both locked, so that the only exit was through the hall; but the president of the table tennis club claims that nobody had come through from the stage end since the victim entered. Since she had been alone in the gym for part of this time, they soon decide that she must be the killer. High school first year, 柚乃 (Yuno), who overhears their discussion, is convinced that her club president is innocent, and desperately seeks the help of secretive and eccentric schoolboy genius 裏染天馬 (URAZOME Tenma). She finds him in an unused club room, which he has turned into his own apartment and filled with toy figures of anime heroines. Urazome has no interest in school work or anything else except for anime and manga, to which he devotes all his time and money. 

I get the impression that the target audience for this book is young teenagers who have not yet read much mystery fiction. Except for one meta-literary joke about 'fair play', all the cultural references seem to be to anime and manga. Most of these escaped me; but I didn't get the impression I was missing anything of value. They seemed simply part of the thin characterisation of Urazome as an otaku. The emphasis on Urazome's effortless intellectual superiority is another element that reads like something only a book for children would do.

Although the 'fair play' joke I mentioned touches on what some might consider improper misdirection, the mystery is very much fair play. All the elements needed to solve the mystery are presented openly and in many cases their significance is noted in advance of the final explanation. I'm not quite sure how good the reasoning is. There were points in the series of deductions where I thought that obvious alternatives were being missed, while a lot of time was being spent on ruling out possibilities that weren't very likely in the first place; but that's a criticism it probably shares with Ellery Queen's acknowledged classics. I didn't enjoy the deductions here as much as I enjoyed Ellery Queen. I'm not sure if that's because I actually was a teenager when I read Ellery Queen or because there was something slightly lacking here. It felt a little like we were creating Venn diagrams more than reading a story. In Ellery Queen the deductions often lead to a real surprise, and perhaps that was what was missing. 

The school setting felt like a deliberate reversal on the kinds of unusual setting favoured by Ellery Queen and others: a completely mundane world, in which every object, room and role is something everyone is familiar with. A few characters are more like types from popular literature than real people; but the only bit that was really far from everyday life was Urazome. I did slightly feel that a sharper observation of the everyday world might have made even that a bit more interesting.

This sounds a bit negative; but if you like classic puzzle detective stories, this is certainly one to try. I certainly expect I'll try another one in the series at some time. One point I liked was the confidence shown in giving us a full length novel with only one murder. Many writers, including the most famous, almost feel obliged to have at least two (Sayers and Crofts are the exceptions that spring to mind); but there is something pleasing to me when the whole book is about just one crime. 

You can read a different take on the same book at Ho-Ling's blog here.

Shots exchanged across the Atlantic

This post has major spoilers for Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers and The Greek Coffin Mystery by Ellery Queen. So read no further if you haven't read those yet.

Moebius Murder

メビウスの殺人 (mebius no satsujin, Moebius Murder, 1990) is the only book I've read by ABIKO Takemaru (我孫子 武丸, born 1962). It's a bit unfortunate that it's actually the third and last in a series.

HAYAMI Kyouzou (速水恭三) is a Tokyo policeman, his younger brother Shinji (慎二) runs a café, helped by their younger sister Ichio (一郎). The names are unusual: I imagine that there's some joke in them that I'd understand if I'd read the first book. Kyouzou is a little bit a figure of fun, serious, but intellectually lazy, tending to take the easiest explanation for any oddity he comes across in an investigation. Unlike Kyouzou, Shinji and Ichio are both fans of detective fiction and relate their discussions of the case to the patterns found in classic mysteries. Ichio wants things to be interesting and tends to favour fantastic explanations. Shinji too treats deductions as a game, but one he takes seriously.

The case here is a serial murder case; and Abiko is already playing with us in the very partial list of characters at the start of the book, which includes the name of the killer SHIINA Toshio (椎名俊夫). We follow Toshio in alternate sections; and it becomes clear that he is not alone. He seems to be playing some kind of game with an unknown figure that he met online, whom he only knows by the name Cat o' Nine Tails. What we don't understand is what the plan behind it all is. What links the various apparently unconnected victims? What do the pair of numbers that Toshio leaves by his victims mean?

Readers familiar with classic mystery will by now have guessed that this is a novel referencing Ellery Queen, particularly, but not exclusively, Cat of Many Tails (1949). As in that book, we have a hunt for a missing link and a depiction of a city reacting to a serial killer. The latter is a lot weaker here than my memory of what Ellery Queen did, partly because Abiko works a lot more with humour. The jokes are not always especially funny and they tend to undermine any tension in the story. The most interesting depiction is of online life in 1990, surprisingly modern in some respects, curiously different in others.

The heart of the story is an interesting game of wits between murderer and investigators. Parts of the puzzle are very satisfactory. As to the solution at the end, I liked it in one sense. I had considered the identity of the Toshio's online friend (given the small cast, there are not that many red herrings, and it would have been irritating if it had turned out to be one of them); but the motivation of this character, which I hadn't considered, made a good story, I thought. On the other hand, this last part is at best hinted, not fully clued.

Snow Locked Room

I read 雪密室 (Yuki Misshitsu, Snow Locked Room, 1989) by 法月綸太郎 (NORIZUKI Rintarou, born 1964) a while ago. So this is really just an account of my impressions from reading it.

Police superintendant NORIZUKI Sadao (法月貞雄) is one of several guests invited to the guest house Getsushokusou in the mountains in midwinter. The invitation is the work of a woman who takes pleasure in discovering other people's secrets and blackmailing them into dancing to her tune. When she is found hanged in the separate house in the grounds, the local police want to treat it as suicide, especially since there is untrodden snow all round this annexe and the only key a murderer could have used seems to be inside the annexe. But Norizuki is sure that this is murder. Locked rooms are beyond his abilities, though. So he calls in the help of his son, detective story writer NORIZUKI Rintarou ( 法月綸太郎).

The locked room puzzle here probably sounds familiar; and Rintarou himself mention's Carter Dickson's The White Priory Murders (1934) as soon as he hears of what had happened. The solution there does not work here, though, as Rintarou's policeman father remarks. On the other hand, one could say that the solution when we do find it uses elements from this and another mystery with a similar setup. It's perhaps not surprising that Ho-Ling in his review thinks that 'the locked room is not very original'. I actually like it a lot. Most locked rooms in the end are a matter of clever new combinations, and this one seemed very satisfactory. It's also very neatly constructed, so that the reader can have the pleasure of solving half of the trick without necessarily getting the full solution. More than that, we accept the solution to most locked room mysteries, because it's the only one that explains the impossibility. Norizuki here manages to have a solution that is reached by deduction, which in turn leads to a further deduction which allows him to identify the criminal, very much in the style of early Ellery Queen mysteries.

The similarities to Ellery Queen will probably already have struck you as you read the plot description: a team of policeman father and amateur detective son; an author with the same name as the hero. This is a deliberate homage of course. The father son team is very reminiscent of Ellery Queen novels and is really very well done.

There are things I don't like in the book. In some respects it feels overegged, with an abundance of side plots and the provision of a tragic backstory that fits very uncomfortably into the book. But it was one of the Japanese mysteries that most made me want to read more from the writer. Strange that I haven't got round to it yet. I have The Adventures of Norizuki Rintarou waiting on my shelf; I just need to get the energy to read a set of short stories.

There's a J'lit page on Norizuki Rintarou here.

The Island Puzzle

I talked about a book in ARISUGAWA Alice's "Writer Alice" series last week, here. Now I've finished reading one of the "Student Alice" books, 孤島パズル (The Island Puzzle, 1989), the second in the series (and the only one I've read). In this series Arisugawa is a member of the Eito University Detective Fiction Research Club, and the detective is the club president, EGAMI Jirou (江神二郎). The club has a new female member ARIMA Maria (有馬麻里亜), and at her invitation Egami and Arisugawa are going to the Arima family's house on an isolated island. Maria's grandfather had had a great love for puzzles; and he had hidden a fortune in diamonds for whoever could solve the clues and find them. The last person to try, Maria's cousin ARIMA Hideto (有馬英人), thought he had got a good line on them; but on the same day that he said this he was found drowned in the island's bay, apparently in a night swimming accident. The club members' search starts as a pleasant island holiday, but is soon interrupted by murder, as two members of the Arima family are found shot in a room closed with a latch from the inside, although the rifle that shot them is not in the room.

As in the other series there are a lot of elements familiar from Ellery Queen: a dying message; a challenge to the reader; a solution depending on a chain of deductions. Come to think of it, treasure hunts are a rather common feature of Ellery Queen's stories if I remember rightly. This one certainly adds to the amusement. The locked room is not a very Queenish element of course. It's not much of a locked room either (quite often reading Japanese detective stories, I feel I should add a "locked room of sorts" label to the blog tags). I like Ellery Queen's complex deductions a lot, even if I never feel convinced that they're all that watertight. I was not such a fan of the one in this book. Part of the problem is that it's a little dull. Before we even get to the murder in question, our minds have been focused on the various ways of getting around the island. And then, the various elements are so artificial: you can get from A to B in x minutes rowing, y minutes cycling, z minutes walking; the three bicycles were seen at this hour and this hour and this hour, only two of them were seen at this hour etc.

Another mild irritation was what you might call the orphaned clue. I mean the kind of clue which only becomes a clue in combination with another piece of information, which we then don't get until the culprit makes their confession.

Reading this, it sounds like I didn't enjoy the book very much, but I wasn't bored reading it or dissatisfied at the end. You can see someone else's opinion of it here. (Update: Oh, and another one here.)

I started to make the list of characters I usually make for reading detective stories; but then I noticed that the publishers for once had done it for me (except for those members of the club who only appear in the preface).

Incidentally I suspect a western reader's largest puzzle reading the book will be, 'How come the female characters are doing all the housework?'

[UPDATE 2016: There is now an English translation by Ho-Ling Wong, published by Locked Room International, The Moai Island Puzzle.]

Death in Nara by the Sea

Ellery Queen is an important figure in the world of Japanese detective stories. Among modern writers, two in particular show his influence. 法月 綸太郎 (NORIZUKI Rintarou, born 1964) writes stories about a detective story writer NORIZUKI Rintarou, who helps his father, a police inspector, solve cases. 有栖川 有栖 (ARISUGAWA Arisu, or Alice, born 1959, real name 上原 正英, UEHARA Masahide) also has a character with the same name in the detective stories he writes, though in this case Arisugawa is the narrator and also plays the Watson role rather than the detective. The one Norizuki book that I have read had a much more "Queenish" feel than what I have found in Arisugawa books; but Arisugawa too both makes use of favourite Ellery Queen elements (like "dying messages" and elimination of suspects) and also demonstrates allegiance in titles like his first novel, 月光ゲーム Yの悲劇'88 (Moonlight Game, The Tragedy of Y '88, 1989) and his short story collections, which have nation + puzzle titles like the first Queen novels, e. g. ロシア紅茶の謎 (The Russian Tea Puzzle, 1994).

I spoke of  Arisugawa as a character in the books; but it might be more correct to say that he is two characters. There are two different series, the Student Alice series that starts with 月光ゲーム and  the Author Alice series that starts with The Forty-sixth Locked Room (46番目の密室, 1992). In the  Student Alice series, Arisugawa is a law student in the university's detective fiction club, in the Author Alice series, he is a professional mystery writer. The detectives are different too. In the Author Alice series, it is HIMURA Hideo (火村 英生), a lecturer in criminology.  

Death in Nara by the Sea (海のある奈良に死す, 1995)  is from the Author Alice series and like the more famous 46番目の密室, it concerns the death of another detective story writer. Arisugawa, visiting his publishers for discussions over his new novel, meets fellow writer AKABOSHI Gaku (赤星楽). Akaboshi is just off to "Nara by the Sea" for research, he says. The phrase is one of those "Athens of the North" type expressions used to sell a town, in this case the coastal town of Obama. The next day his dead body is found floating in the sea off Obama. Looking for traces of Akaboshi, Himura and Arisugawa search the area for stories connected with a mermaid, referenced in the title of the book Akaboshi was writing.

46番目の密室 has some metaliterary reflection on the locked room mystery. 海のある奈良に死す might be seen as playing with the idea of the "travel mystery". Travel mysteries are a genre (or perhaps two genres) in Japan. The name is used particularly for stories, set in a tourist destination, where to solve the mystery the detective has to learn about the points of interest of the area. It is also used for stories which depend on travel related alibis. Some stories mix alibi breaking and tourism, as does this one. The main trick is no novelty, but the play on generic expectations perhaps makes it stronger. A second murder has a method which to my eyes is about as realistic as "he killed him using mental death rays".

In sum it's one of the weaker mysteries that I've read. Also, this may be a problem of my Japanese competence, but in the Arisugawa books I have read, the characters don't really come across. It's not just that they're two dimensional. Plenty of detective stories have characters with no depth, who are still at least lively puppets. In Arisugawa many of the characters come across as smaller than life.

The Solution Depends ...

Pocket Books edition of The New Adventures of Ellery Queen from 1945.

Spoilers after the break.