Return of the Detectives

My reading is a little haphazard. Quite a few of the books I read are not specially chosen, but just those that happened to be available in second hand bookshops for the authors I was interested in. So 帰ってきた探偵たち (kaette kita tantei tachi, Return of the Detectives, 1992) by TAKAGI Akimitsu (高木 彬光) is the sequel to a book I haven't read 五人の探偵たち (gonin no tantei tachi, Five Detectives). Since that book was a selection of uncollected short stories about Takagi's various series detectives and this book is a second selection of the same, expectations should not be too high. The main reason for a story not to have appeared in a collection would be that it isn't very good, and the second helping would presumably be even weaker. Whatever the reason, the stories are in fact not that great, at best satisfactory, solid work.

朱の奇跡 (shu no kiseki, "Scarlet miracle" 1960) is one of the better stories. The detective here, public prosecutor ENDOU Shigemichi (遠藤茂道 ) is not strictly one of Takagi's series detectives. He appears in this one short story as a Tokyo public prosecutor. He then served as the basis for a different public prosecutor, because a Nagoya broadcaster wanted a Nagoya detective. The story is basically all about finding the trick the criminal used. Only three people in a small firm had access to the official stamp used when transferring money. After a large sum goes missing, only one of those does not have an alibi. Did one of the others have some way to make the transfer? Or was there some way someone else could get access to the seal? The public prosecutor role here reappears in the next two stories. Like District Attorneys in American detective stories, there is some involvement in the investigation, but most of the narrative follows the police as they follow various leads.

殺意の審判 (satsui no shinpan, "Judgement of intent to kill", 1961) stars public prosecutor CHIKAMATSU Shigemichi (近松茂), the revised version of ENDOU Shigemichi from the previous story. Here the police are investigating a crooked real estate developer who made his first money as a corrupt civil servant. His rejected pregnant girlfriend and a recently released prisoner who had been punished heavily for the crimes he shared with the unpunished victim look like viable suspects. Again this is a story about spotting the killer's trick. The trick itself uses a reassessment of evidence that I've met two times in Japanese detective stories, to better effect than here.

妄想の殺人 (mousou no satsujin "Delusion murder", 1970) stars public prosecutor KIRISHIMA Saburou (霧島三郎), who also appears in two of Takagi's novels that have been translated into English, Honeymoon to Nowhere and The Informer (both 1965), which I haven't read. Unlike the first two stories, this one has the detective involved from the beginning. As he asks a local policeman the way, he is interrupted by a man trying to confess to the murder of his wife. The policeman doesn't want to know. As he explains, the same man has been confessing to killing his wife every time he got drunk for months; and each time the police found the supposed victim alive and well. Later that evening on his way back from visiting his sister, Kirishima sees the same man back announcing a murder to the policeman; but this time he notices that there is blood on his clothes. 

The fourth story features Takagi's most famous detective, KAMIZU Kyousuke (神津恭介), a specialist in forensic medicine, but generally appearing in stories as a great detective whose advice is sought for particularly puzzling crimes. I've reviewed two Kamizu novels, the classic 人形はなぜ殺される (ningyou ha naze korosareru, Why Were the Dolls Killed? 1955), and 狐の密室 (Kitsune no misshitsu, Fox's locked room, 1977), a crossover with another series detective, OOMAEDA Eisaku　(大前田英策). The story in this collection, 怪盗七面相 (kaitou shichimensou, "Phantom thief seven faces" 1952), is part of a writing collaboration with six other writers who all pit their own series detectives against a master thief obviously modeled on EDOGAWA Ranpo's series villain, The Fiend with Twenty Faces  (kaitou nijuumensou, 怪人二十面相, 1936). The publishing idea was more interesting than the story for me in this case.

The last story, 悪魔の火祭り (akuma no himatsuri, "The Devil's Fire Festival", 1957) is much longer than the others and stars private detective OOMAEDA Eisaku whom I mentioned above. The younger sister of a woman getting divorced approaches Oomaeda to investigate the background. Her sister's husband had apparently made her tattoo her whole back and is now demanding that she leave him; given the disapproval of tattoos in Japanese society, that makes it impossible for her to remarry. Oomaeda makes some discoveries, but when he goes to announce them to his client, he finds her murdered, gripping in her hand the festival parasol from her home town of Aomori, a dying message somehow pointing to the killer. The most obvious suspect would then be her sister, whose tattoo featured a festival dancing girl with parasol; but she has an alibi. The second half of the story transfers to Aomori and its famous summer festival, which conveniently all the suspects are also visiting. There are good ideas in the mystery, but the actual dying message is fair but very dull.