Jack the Poetical Private

MORI Hiroshi (森 博嗣) started his career as a novelist with すべてがFになる (subete ga F ni naru, The Perfect Insider / Everything Becomes F, 1996), featuring SAIKAWA Souhei (犀川創平), a lecturer and researcher in a university architecture department, and NISHINOSONO Moe (西之園萌絵), the orphan daughter of a wealthy family, a student in the same department. The story was notable for its daringly unexpected locked room mystery and high technology setting; it won the Mephisto Prize and has been adapted into a manga, a television drama, and most recently an anime series. No-one would deny the daring of its approach to the locked room mystery; but I must admit that I thought the book wrote itself a large blank cheque in the assumptions behind what was plausible both for the characters and for the set up.  

詩的私的ジャック (shiteki shiteki jakku, Jack the Poetical Private, 1997) is a much more conventional detective story in the same series. It too has a locked room mystery, or rather several, as a series of victims are found in locked rooms in different universities, all stripped to their underwear with mysterious marks cut into their skin after death. So, as well as a locked room mystery, this starts looking like a "find the connexion" serial killer mystery. In fact the first two locked rooms are not taken very seriously as a puzzle for the reader, and the links between the various murders are also established early. The final locked room is kept as the main puzzle, although it is really hardly a locked room at all. The attention of the police and the amateur detectives is soon drawn to a drop out student at the university, now a rising pop star. The lyrics of one of the songs on his new album have a strange similarity to the crimes.

Like The Perfect Insider, the book reads easily; but I never felt much engagement with the characters. There was a little more Ellery Queen style deduction in the answer this time. Some of it (as often with this style) was not quite convincing; but there were also parts where Saikawa could offer a plausible, but not considered, explanation for oddities in the various crime scenes. The puzzle aspect of the book was very similar to what one might find in one of the more trick oriented golden age writers.

The book had a puzzle of a different kind. As in The Perfect Insider, Mori provides a list of characters, a very useful feature if you're reading Japanese and have difficulty with name kanji. But in both, the only characters listed are those in universities or research institutes. Other characters, such as policemen or servants, are not listed there. I think the first book did the same thing; and it seems very odd to me. Is there some reason for it?

God Save the Queen

森 博嗣 (MORI Hiroshi, born 1957) is a prolific and successful detective story writer, perhaps best known outside Japan for The Sky Crawlers (2002), the basis of an anime film with the same title (2008). I had read one book by him before I started the blog, his first novel すべてがFになる (Subete ga F ni naru, Everything Becomes F or The Perfect Insider, 1996). The first English title is the literal translation, the second is the English title printed on the book. Japanese detective stories often have an English translation of the title on the cover, even when the book itself has never been translated into English. In Mori's case, the English titles are often not literal translations, but a different, new title. The post title is the English title provided for 女王の百年密室 (Joou no hyakunen misshitsu, God Save the Queen, 2000); a more literal translation would be The Queen's Hundred Year Locked Room. Neither of these books has an English translation; but both had a manga adaption, which seems to have been published in a French translation by Soleil Manga. I haven't seen these myself, but the titles are F, The Perfect Insider (2006) and God Save the Queen (2006).

 Saeba Michiru is a reporter (or report writer) in the 22nd century, travelling with his 'partner' Roidy, an android. A navigation system breakdown leaves them stranded, unsure even exactly what country they are in. Luckily, there is a town nearby, one that has lived isolated from the world around it for a hundred years. The town is strangely peaceful, ruled ceremonially by a queen, who is said to be over fifty, but looks as if she is in her twenties. But the town has many oddities; and beyond its own mysteries it harbours a man who has some connexion to terrible events in Michiru's past.

During Michiru's visit, the queen's son is found strangled. As far as Michiru is concerned, he has been murdered, but the town's people see death as sleep and store the bodies in freezing chambers. Only Michiru sees the incident as something to investigate, and gets no helpful answers from the incurious witnesses. The book treats the murder as a locked room mystery, but really that depends on the witnesses and we get no encouragement to treat their answers as trustworthy. Neither the murder mystery nor the mystery of the town and its purpose is pursued in a purposeful way. In the end, the not very surprising answers are simply given to us. (Some incidental mysteries are hinted more subtly and may come as a surprise.) The book is probably best seen more as an extended exercise in melancholy than as a detective story or a work of science fiction.

You can read another blogger's opinions of the book here.