The Frankenstein Factory (1975) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch was the King of Short Stories, the Man of a Thousand Tales of Mystery and Detection, but, during his five decade run, Hoch also wrote a handful of novel-length mysteries like The Shattered Raven (1969), The Blue Movie Murders (1973) and a three-novel series of science-fiction hybrid mysteries – generally known as the "Computer Cops" series. You read that right. They're the back tracing Cyber Police you were warned about!

Carl Crader and Earl Jazine work for the Computer Investigation Bureau, headquartered at the World Trade Center in New York, whose "investigations sometimes spill over into what might generally be called crimes of the new technology" in the 21st century. So the C.I.B. are the "experts on computers, lasers, holograms, cryosurgery" and "new technology" handling "crimes the regular police forces aren't equipped for." Crader is the head of the C.I.B. ("...reports directly to the President") and Jazine is his field agent. They appeared in only three novels, The Transvection Machine (1971), The Fellowship of the Hand (1973) and The Frankenstein Factory (1975).

This time, I've a good excuse/reason (take your pick) to unchronologically start at the end of the series. The Frankenstein Factory had been recommended several times over the years for its qualities as both a science-fiction mystery and clever pastiche of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939). That and the first two novels appear to be more science-fiction thrillers than science-fiction mysteries. The Frankenstein Factory seemed the safest choice and perhaps a candidate for that future followup to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries."

First of all, I skipped the first two novels making it a bit confusing when, exactly, The Frankenstein Factory is supposed to take place. The first chapter refers to "these early years of the twenty-first century," but, early on in the story, there were several hints the story could take place during the 2010s or even early 2020s – based on a reference to the fading memories of "the renewed moon flights of the late 1990s." And the age of one of the characters who took part in one of those return missions. But it became a lot clearer during the second-half and home stretch that it takes place roughly twenty-five years after the mid-to late 1970s. So probably somewhere around 2004, give or take a year. It could also be a bit later based on a references to that "seventy-year-old mystery novel by the British writer Agatha Christie," but that would still place the story within the 2000s. Now with that out of the way, let's take a look at the story.

The Frankenstein Factory begins with Earl Jazine traveling by hovercraft to Horseshoe Island, somewhere off the coast of Baja California, under the guise of medical photographer. Jazine has come to the island to film and document an experimental operation.

Dr. Lawrence Hobbes is the head of International Cryogenics Institute who freeze and store people's bodies "against a future time when they could be revived," but this goes hand-in-hand with their research into operating techniques at low temperatures. So underneath the research facility is also a cold storage vault with frozen bodies inside sealed cylinders. Dr. Hobbes is ready to take the next step and revive a young man who died of a brain tumor in the 1970s, but the tumor did a lot of damage to the body and other organs. So needs several organ transplants, brain included, before they can reanimate him. Dr. Hobbes assembled a crack medical team to carry out this secret and experimental operation. Dr. Freddy O'Connor, a brain surgeon, who had great success with brain transplants in animals. Dr. Eric MacKenzie, "only military surgeon to set foot on the moon thus far," and Philip Whalen assist him. This team is rounded out by Tony Cooper, a bone specialist, and Vera Morgan, a research chemist, who only arrived the day before Jazine. There are two more people on the island, the elderly Miss Emily Watson whose money has made the whole operation possible and a maid/cook, Hilda. And, well, there's the patient, or "shell body," who they call Frank.

The operation is a success, "we have heartbeat and pulse," but, while Frank is sleeping and recovering in the operating room, things begin to happen on the island. Miss Watson goes missing from her bedroom, leaving only a smear of blood behind, but she, or her body, is not found following a thorough search of the buildings and island – she had vanished from the island. However, this is not an impossible disappearance as has been suggested elsewhere. Miss Watson simply disappeared, but not impossibly, as the murderer could have thrown her body into the sea or buried it somewhere. That's not the solution to the disappearance, but it's not an impossible crime. Just a somewhat baffling disappearance, considering the circumstances and apparent lack of motive. But then the murder strikes a second time!

This time, they find the body and the killer stops trying to hide future victims. Even worse, the group finds they have been cut off from the mainland and marooned on the island until new supplies arrive by hovercraft. Jazine takes charge until then, but body count continues to rise as survivors, suspects and supplies dwindle. All the while, the rapidly dwindling survivors become suspicious and frightened of Frank apparently still sleeping in the operating room ("Hell, I'd much rather believe that Frank down there did it than consider the possibility that I'm sitting at a table with a murderer"). So did they create a modern-day Frankenstein's monster or is there a human hand behind it all?

Before getting to the plot, the science-fiction elements deserve a mention. It goes without saying Hoch's depiction of the early 2000s in 1975 is very different from what actually happened. For one, the World Trade Center is still standing, but the most obvious difference is absence of the internet and cell phones despite characters remarking how "everything's miniaturized these days" and "almost everything's done by machine." Jazine explains late in the story the C.I.B. tackles mostly "computer frauds" such as "stock-market rigging, insurance swindles, even some gimmicking of the race-track computers," but no crimes related to, what could be called, an internet – which does not detract from the novel at all. Just interesting to compare Hoch's vision of the early 2000s to what actually happened. Hoch's version of the early 2000s appears to be a lot calmer than our early 2000s, but hints through out the story makes it clear the world outside the green, sunny island has some dystopian characteristics. Some countries promote suicide among the elderly, while other countries want to ship their criminals and surplus population to colonies on Venus ("...Venus colony is still a good many years away"). Somehow, someway, they took laser guns away from Americans shortly after their introduction in the mid '90s and cities are covered in a thick, hazy layer of ozone purifiers sprayed from helicopters. On the up side, there are the advances in medicine and plans to construct searails to span the oceans. So that's something.

The science-fiction of this hybrid science-fiction mystery, beside the cryogenic and reanimation, functions mostly as story dressing. However, it gives The Frankenstein Factory a retro-futuristic, alternate history quality that's fun to speculate about. My take is that the humans in this universe tend to be slightly more pragmatic or utilitarian, tick less sociable, which is why there more interested in Venus colonies, searails and reversing death than an internet or smart phones. Not wholly unimportant, it gave what would otherwise have been an average "trapped on an island with a killer" mystery a distinct character of its own. Not that The Frankenstein Factory is a bad whodunit. You can leave it to Hoch to pen a fair play mystery involving experimental surgery, a reanimated corpse and laser guns. It's just that without a science-fiction trappings, The Frankenstein Factory would have come across as a pale imitation of Christie's And Then There Were None.

So it's unfortunate Hoch never really integrated those science-fiction components with the story's detective plot, because that would have made The Frankenstein Factory something more than this strange, zany send-up of Christie. Hoch wrote a good, old-fashioned murder mystery and a tale of science-fiction horror taking place simultaneously with the same cast of characters. That's why I kept second guessing myself even when only two suspects remained, because expected the science-fiction elements would some part or role to play in the solution. I had reasons to believe Frank was not the first person to have been reanimated, which needed to be kept under wraps for the outside world (perhaps that person was a murderer like was suggested of the brain donor). I had one name in mind (ROT13: "...vg tnir ure gur ybbx bs n lbhat tvey sebz gur 1970f") as that person being revealed as both a reanimated person and the killer would give the story a double, morbid twist for the prize of one. No such genre crossing twists, or solution, as Hoch only roamed around the borders and never crossed the line into full-blown hybrid mystery territory. That's a missed opportunity.

The Frankenstein Factory is unlikely to secure a place on my list of best and favorite hybrid mysteries, because the bar for hybrid mysteries has been set astronomically high, but long-time Hoch fans should take note of this rare, novel-length mystery from his hands. Hoch's The Frankenstein Factory is intriguing and not unrewarding mystery as long as you don't expect a classic like Christie's And Then There Were None or Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1953/54).

Locked and Loaded, Part 7: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories

So lately, I noticed an unaccountable, unacceptable dearth in locked room and impossible crime reviews which needed immediate correction to bring this blog back to its previous acceptable conditions, standards and core values – only one way to do it. There are actually two ways to do it, but the reprint of Pierre Boileau's Six crimes sans assassin (Six Crimes Without a Murderer, 1939) is not out for another six months. I decided to do another "Locked and Loaded" instead.

In 2020, I posted the first part of the extremely irregular "Locked and Loaded" series and have now compiled seven of them covering locked room and impossible crime stories covering a period of 118 years stretching from 1905 to 2023. You can read my reviews, not in chronological order, in "Locked and Loaded" part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. So let's start on part 7.

Fredric Brown's "The Djinn Murder," originally published in the January, 1944, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, begins when Professor John E. Trent, teaching Psychology IV (Abnormal), is approached by Harvey Glosterman – who really needs a specialist in the occult. Glosterman's retired brother, John Glosterman, collects "objects connected with primitive superstitions" like "old idols, spirit gongs, juju masks, voodoo drums" and recently brought a djinn bottle home from his travels. An earthenware bottle, "Seal of Solomon on the wax," supposedly emprisoning a very powerful, dangerous demon named Eydhebhe. John Glosterman foolishly broke the seal on the bottle and promptly vanished into thin air. However, the impossibility is not Glosterman's disappearance, but how he continued to communicate with his brother through "spirit rappings" coming from the study. Trent believes Glosterman was cleverly disposed and catches his killer by replicating the rapping sounds.

Now, ghostly tapping and other disembodied sounds tend be minor stuff when it comes to impossible crime fiction. Usually little more than small plot-thread or side issue explained away with variations of the same answers pulled from the spiritual medium's bag of tricks, but Brown offered an entirely new solution to the problem. Or, at least, one that's new to me. Still very minor stuff as both an impossible crime and detective story, but a very entertaining, pulp-style mystery.

Anthony Boucher's "The Anomaly of the Empty Man," first published in the April, 1952, issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, tries to take a page from John Dickson Carr's The Burning Court (1937) by presenting a puzzle with a logical and supernatural solution. "The Anomaly of the Empty Man" is told by a man named Lamb, but not sure if this the Martin Lamb from Boucher's The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937). Anyway, Inspector Abrahams calls Lamb to the apartment of James Stambaugh, collector of early operatic recordings and philanderer, who disappeared from the clothes he had been wearing ("...sucked dry of its fleshly tenant") – which is tighter impossibility than my description suggests ("...try slipping your foot out of a laced-up shoe and see if you can get that result"). What follows is a bit of a trip, but it boils down to Lamb being presented with two solutions to the problem. The supernatural solution comes from Dr. Verner believing the disappearance was caused by a haunted record from dead opera singer whom he believed carried The Death Wish ("men who knew her too well hungered no longer for life"). Inspector Abrahams found a much better, more convincing and really neat answer for how a man can be disappeared from inside his own suit of clothing. Needless to say, I prefer the inspector's solution over Dr. Verner's cursed record.

And no, the culprit was not a tall, green insect-like individual using his javelin-tipped tail as a sippy straw. If that had been Dr. Verner's alternative solution, I would have sided with him over Inspector Abrahams.

Joseph Commings "The Fraudulent Spirit" originally appeared in the September/October, 1960, issue of Mystery Digest (as by "Monte Craven") and reprinted in the anthology Wicked Spirits: Mysteries, Spine Chillers and Lost Tales of the Supernatural (2024). A few years before the story's opening, Mrs. Jasmine Leslie fell to her death from the outdoor terrace of her New York penthouse, twenty stories up, which the police dismissed as an unfortunate accident – because she had gardening gloves on and a a trowel was left on the terrace. Years later, Jasmine's widowed husband, Fergus Leslie, becomes engaged to Suzanne Dittner and falls under the spell of a spiritual medium, Mme. Olympe. She has done the usual routine with spirit writing appearing on the ceiling during a séance in a locked room, making objects drop out of thin air and claiming to have "greater levitation powers" than D.D. Home ("he floated in and outta upper windows of a house on Jermyn Street in London"). Mme. Olympe also needs money to start her own spiritualist movement and Leslie is willing to provide the funds, but only if she perform a truly convincing séance.

Suzanne Dittner turns to Lt. Barney Grant, of the NYPD, for help. Fortunately, Grant just so happens to have Senator Brooks U. Banner as a visitor. Banner is an old hand when it comes spiritual mediums and the fundamentally impossible, but, even better, Banner remembers Mme. Olympe when "she was dressed in a leopard-skin, leading a carnival parade on the biggest elephant at the Minnesota State Fair." So they attend the séance during which Jasmine's ghost appears on the terrace, disappears and reappears moments later on the terrace of the penthouse across the street! Not really an impossible situation involving levitation, but teleportation and not necessarily a bad one. Just a bit muddled in parts and that knocks it down a peg. "The Fraudulent Spirit" started out as a companion in miniature to Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit (1944), but ended up being a kindred spirit of David Renwick's Jonathan Creek series (ROT13: yvxr gur hfr bs na haxabja nppbzcyvpr gb perngr gur vzcbffvoyr fvghngvba). So while not one for the best-of list, "The Fraudulent Spirit" should not fail to entertain fans of these type of impossible crime stories involving séances, fraudulent mediums and ghostly murders.

Jeffry Scott's "The Brick Overcoat," originally published in the December, 1990, issue of EQMM, slowly moves away from the recurring themes of the previous three short stories, but not entirely as one, of two, impossibilities whispered threats – coming from nowhere. Jenny is working on reviving the once derelict Malreward Theater, currently between productions, which has seen its fair share of tragedy over its hundred year history. But did it pick up a few ghosts along the way? Jenny confides in Detective-Sergeant Nick Flinders she has heard a disembodied voice whisper a chilling threat, "I'll make you a brick overcoat," when she was all alone in the empty, locked theater. Nick Flinders is a hardened skeptic ("half the theaters in England are supposed to be haunted"), but promises to investigate and begins to comb through the old theater, "an untidy labyrinth of grimy brick cells," for answers. Flinders finds an answer, but is it the correct answer? It's enough to reassure Jenny, but Flinders soon returns to the theater when his half-answer could be the key to another case. A case in which a package unaccountably disappeared from a locked room. While more of a modern crime story than a traditional, fair play mystery, "The Brick Overcoat" is not a bad story at all and appreciated its classical trimmings.

Simon Clark's "The Adventure of the Fallen Star" was originally written for Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (1997). I reviewed Clark's other Sherlock Holmes pastiche "The Climbing Man" (2015) back in 2021, which presented the Great Detective with a fresh corpse discovered inside a sealed, undisturbed 3000-year-old archaeological site – like it enough to track down this particular pastiche. Sherlock Holmes is asked a favor by Professor Charles Hardcastle, specialized in metallurgical sciences, who once helped him "lay to rest the matter of the golden bullet murders in King's Lynne." Professor Hardcastle is interested in "aerolites" (i.e. meteorites) and has a collection of them in his private laboratory at his home in Homestead. A particular meteorite had recently been taken from the locked laboratory and turned up again in his son's bedroom. Holmes is asked to look if there's something to the case, but, when he arrives with Watson, they find a half mad Hardcastle. The backstory of the meteorite reveals who's behind it all and why, but now how this person got through locked doors. And the answer to that question is a big meh.

Elizabeth Elwood's "The Chess Room," first published in the November/December, 2019, issue of EQMM, closes out this random selection on a high note. The first-half of the story introduces Chloe Helms, a cleaning lady, who works at the Hanover building owned by the wheelchair bound, octogenarian chess fanatic, Jacob Russell – who takes a liking to her. So "the Hanover grapevine buzzed with the rumor that she had become the latest threat to David's inheritance" and David, Jacob's son, is not amused ("the exact term he used was gold digger") causes nothing than misery for Chloe. This situation culminates with the pressure getting too much shooting himself inside his beloved chess room storing his collection of varied chess boards and pieces. Chloe was one of the people standing outside the door when the shot was heard and every other exit was either locked or under observation. The second-half takes a procedural approach to the locked room problem as Detective Constable Annie Blake and her team take charge. There's a part of the locked room-trick that hard, if not impossible, to anticipate, but loved the classically-styled twist.

So, all in all, not a spectacular haul, but not a thoroughly bad one either. When it comes to the locked rooms and impossible situations, only Boucher truly impressed and Brown scoring bonus points for originality. Elwood is a good, solid second. Commings' take on the miraculous levitation/transportation is fun, but too muddled to be really good. I enjoyed Scott's story more for its storytelling than its plotting and Clark's pastiche was meh. Let's hope that the next installment of randomly thrown together impossible crime stories uncovers a real gem, but next up is a classic locked room reprint.

The Ark (2022) by Haruo Yuki

When compiling and cobbling together "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries," I mulled over including a disaster-themed detective novel, but was not entirely sure whether disaster detectives counted as hybrid mysteries or not – decided not to include one. It only dilutes the concept if every detective story in which a mine explodes or a submarine is sunk with survivors aboard. Not to mention the knock-on effect of wartime novels suddenly qualifying as hybrid mysteries.

However, there are disaster detectives, rare as they are, in which the disaster is central to the story rushing along the plot. I suppose Ellery Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery (1933) is a good, early example of the disaster detective hybrid and it's impossible to ignore Nevada Barr's Firestorm (1996). So this issue needed further probing and why I looked forward to two translations Pushkin Vertigo announced last year as forthcoming.

Akane Araki's Konoyo no hate no satsujin (Murder at the End of the World, 2022) takes place during humanity's last three months as a civilization ending meteor hurls towards our planet, which should be out around late July or early August. Haruo Yuki's Hakobune (The Ark, 2022), translated by Jim Rion, had been out for a few months now and merges the classically-styled, closed circle whodunit with a survival thriller – arrival of my copy coincided with an interesting review. Countdown John reviewed Yuki's The Ark right after it was published and observed, "I think this qualifies as a hybrid mystery, in this case a cross between a classic mystery and a disaster movie." Agreed! The Ark is exactly the kind of disaster detective/thriller that works as a hybrid mystery, but let's start at the beginning.

The Ark begins when a group of former students and members of their university's hiking club reunite two years after graduating. Firstly, there's Shuichi Koshino, a system engineer, who narrates the story. Shuichi brought along his smartly dressed cousin, Shotaro, who's going to be Ellery Queen-like detective and not the infallible version. Other friends from the old hiking club are Sayaka Nouchi, a yoga teacher, Hana Takatsu, an office worker, Yuya Nishimura, vaguely doing something with fashion, Ryuhei and Mai Itoyama. They got married shortly after graduating. Yuya has hiked in the area before and had discovered an underground building in the mountains. A three floor, subterranean steel structure into a huge cavern with the whole structure following "the shape of a naturally occurring cave" giving it the form of an ark ("...like in the Old Testament?"). The place has a murky past possibly involving militant groups, cults and criminals. Yuya suggests they go explore The Ark, but has trouble finding the entrance to the tunnel. So it quite late when they finally find the entrance and bump into a family of three, the Yazakis, who were out hunting mushrooms when they got lost. They have to camp for the night inside The Ark.

During the night, the mountain is rocked by an earthquake that set the barricade boulder rolling and blocking the exit. The earthquake also caused the trickle of water that had already claimed the bottom floor to increase. So they were trapped for the time being, because there's a way out that comes with a huge moral dilemma: the boulder can be moved, but it would trap the person working the winch to be trapped alone inside a small, cavern-like room – no guarantee the rest can return in time with help. Who has to be sacrificed? Before they can even think about it, one of them is found strangled to death in a storeroom! So now they not only have to deal with being trapped, while the water is slowly rising, but one of them unquestionably being a murderer. Even more baffling is why commit murder under these dire circumstances, especially after finding out they need a sacrifice to escape?

What they need to do is find the killer and force that person to make the sacrifice, because they're going to be hanged for murder anyway. Fortunately, the Ark has a working generator with a weeks worth of fuel giving them some time to find the murderer and that's my sole gripe with The Ark. A detective story can be too much driven by coincidence, but The Ark is the only detective story driven entirely by convenience. The situation inside the Ark would have played out completely different had their been no lights or a way to keep their smartphones charges. Not to mention the left over supplies and tools scattered across the numerous room or the old, outdated, but still working security camera system guarding the blocked entrance and exit. However, convenient as the situation may for the purpose of the plot, Haruo Yuki used those plot conveniences to their full potential to tell this story.

So with about a week until fuel runs out and the water reaches them, Shuichi and Shotaro set out to find the murderer, but the first murder is just a plain murder. The storeroom "had not been locked from the inside, no article of clothing was missing for unexplained reasons, nothing in the room had been inexplicably turned upside down" and "no dying message." Only the baffling question why the murderer picked this moment to strike. While the first murder was "almost disappointingly free of puzzles," the second murder is a typical, gruesome shin honkaku slaying. Every action to killer took to be "simply mystifying." Why stab and decapitate a corpse? What happened to the head? Why dispose of the victim's belonging? And why kill when being trapped underground? Merely a few of the puzzling questions surrounding this second and third, arguably even stranger murder.

Haruo Yuki delivered some devilish clever answers to those questions, like why cut off the head of the second victim, but even better is the role the character's smartphones played though out their ordeal. I mentioned in the past how much I dislike the claim how advances in forensic science and technology in generally had made the traditionally-plotted, Golden Age-style detective novel obsolete. An argument Isaac Asimov demolished in the granddaddy of hybrid mysteries, The Caves of Steel (1953/54), but The Ark provides several practical and ingenious examples for our time. If you ever wondered what the greats from the Golden Age could have done with today's technology, The Ark should give you a pretty good idea. Where the plot and story excels is when the time has come to put everything together as Shotaro reveals the murder through an Ellery Queen-style chain of reasoning and deductions by going over identifiable action and step the killer took from the first to third murder. But then it's time to get out.

Anyone somewhat familiar with Japanese authors penchant for dark, bleak endings and tragic twists can feel something coming in the epilogue. I expected something normal and mundane. Something like the survivors emerging from the Ark to discover the earthquakes were caused by an apocalyptic event like a nuclear war or an asteroid strike, but I didn't see that twist coming. A cruel, beautiful twist making for an unforgettable ending. Even more impressive, the revelation in the epilogue serves as the finishing touch of perfection as it revealed the crimes to have been truly unique to that place and harrowing week inside the Ark. There was no other time or place where the motive for these murder could have arising except among that group of people trapped inside. So, yes, I enjoyed this one very much.

Haruo Yuki's The Ark is simply a plot-technical marvel of the 21st century detective novel with a time-honored approach to the age-old question of whodunit? Highly recommended!

I plan to do "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Translations from Pushkin Vertigo" sometime in the future, but picking just ten is, fittingly enough, going to be a bloodbath.

The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories (1971) by Edward D. Hoch

Decades before Crippen & Landru, Edward D. Hoch had about half a dozen collections of his voluminous detective fiction published, throughout the 1970s and '80s, covering only three of Hoch's lead detectives – namely Simon Ark, Jeffery Rand and Nick Velvet. Simon Ark was the first to get a solo collection with City of Brass (1971), while Rand and Velvet had to share the spotlight in The Spy and the Thief (1971). Velvet would get his own collection years later (The Thefts of Nick Velvet, 1978), but Rand had to wait nearly two decades for The Spy Who Read Latin (1990). Who didn't have to wait years, or decades, to get an additional collection was Ark.

The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories (1971) was published practically alongside City of Brass. A short, snappish collection of five Simon Ark short stories from the 1950s and comes with an introduction from the editor of The Locked Room Reader (1968), Hans Stefan Santesson. So these aren't only Hoch's earliest short stories, but also among the earliest stories from his first detective series. Some of these early stories provide a better, more interesting perspective on Ark's character than the later stories that I'm familiar with.

Simon Ark, an elderly, normal looking man, claims to be over a thousand years old Coptic priest ("would you believe it if I told you I walked the sands of Africa with Augustine...") condemned to wander the Earth seeking out and exorcising evil. And, one day, do battle with the Prince of Darkness himself. One of the stories from this collection gives a possible origin, "a strange Coptic priest in the first century after Christ," who wrote "a gospel glorifying the Lord" that was denounced a fraud and turned him into a man who could be sent neither to Heaven nor Hell – doomed to wander forever ("...until such time as God would decide his fate"). So, unless Ark is supposed to be stark raving mad, this series can filed under hybrid mysteries as having an immortal detective certainly makes it qualify as one. Anyway, this series takes place during the second-half of the previous century and combating evil in this world means taking on the role of unofficial investigator. However, Ark is an investigator with a classical bend and the evils he exorcises are the type of bizarre murders and impossible crimes that would have been more at home during the first-half of that century.

"Village of the Dead," originally appeared in the December, 1955, publication of Famous Detective Stories, introduces Simon Ark and his nameless narrator, but the ending suggests Hoch probably didn't intend it to be the first in a series. Nor it to be proper detective story. This first brings the narrator, a magazine writer, to the tiny, isolated mining village of Gidaz where the population was reduced from seventy-three to zero overnight in a mass suicide when every men, women and child flung themselves off a hundred foot cliff. Simon Ark meets the narrator at the edge of the cliff as they look down at the bodies on the rocks below. What attracted Ark to the scene is a strange man, Axidus, who appeared as a religious figure in Gidaz two years previously ("I knew him long ago, in North Africa, as St. Augustine did..."). Axidus wielded a great influence over the isolated people of the village, but how could he have had a hand in the mass suicide? And why? Is this Axidus the same person Axidus from history or perhaps an even greater evil? It's not a spoiler to say the answers to all these questions reveal a far lesser evil than the devil's devilry. More like a dark, grim version of Scooby Doo leaving some lingering questions unanswered (like how the culprit "had ever heard the odd story of Axidus in the first place"). The narrator's final lines about Ark, "never saw him again after that night, but I have the feeling that he’s still around somewhere," shows this was probably meant to be a one-off. Just note that the last Simon Ark story was published in 2008.

So, on a whole, a somewhat unusual story, but an interesting start and introduction to Hoch's first series. Yes, it's one of those weird coincidences I read "Village of the Dead" right after Motohiro Katou's "In the Year of Quantum Mechanics" from Q.E.D. iff vol. 1.

"The Hour of None," originally published in Fall 1957 issue of Double-Action Detective & Mystery Stories, brings Ark and his narrator to the monastery of Saint John of the Cross in West Virginia. Ark received a letter from an old acquaintance, Brother Ling, who wrote to him "that your old enemy Satan is walking among us, in the mind of one of my friends" and that he's "possibly in danger" – a fear not unjustified. Brother Ling is pushed from a church tower before Ark got to speak to him. So now they have to find his killer with three principle suspects, Father Michael, Father Joseph and Father Mark, who were brought back to the United States by Brother Ling after being held prisoners in China for years. So an intriguing premise and, when it comes to form, it feels more like a Simon Ark story than the previous one. A great backdrop and cast of characters, but found the plot and especially the solution lacking. Things gets better in the last three stories!

"The Witch is Dead," first published in the April, 1956, issue of Famous Detective Stories, takes place at Hudsonville College for Women in Westchester County during the second decade of the Atomic Age. Not a place for old world witchcraft and magic, but Mother Fortune was still "peering into a mammoth crystal ball and telling you just what you wanted to hear about yourself." Recently, Mother Fortune went medieval by placing a curse on the students ("...your school will be a campus of the dead") over an old injustice from decades ago. And not without effect. A mysterious, unidentifiable illness is hospitalizing one student, after another, which naturally lured Ark to the campus. This case is complicated when Mother Fortune "died as all good witches must" in a burst of flames while alone inside her locked trailer.

Now this is far from Hoch's best detective story or locked room mystery, however, it's the first genuine detective story from this collection with a glimpse of the emerging short story giant. Hoch casually dropped one of those brazen, tell-tale clues identifying both murderer and method.

"Sword for a Sinner," originally published in the October, 1959, issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine, is unquestionably the best story from this collection. This time, Ark travels to the tiny village of Santa Marta, somewhere on the state line between Colorado and New Mexico, where Father Hadden asked him for help on a personal matter – believing he can communicate with the dead. Before they can even get down to talk, Father Hadden is informed a murder has been committed at the morada of Sangre de Cristo in the mountains. The village has seen the revival of the Penitentes, or Brotherhood of Penitentes, who perform self-torture as an act of devotion ("...rites of self-scourging and crucifixion..."). A practice that was banned by the church, but the society with its various chapters continued to exist and practice. So when they go to the morada, they find one of the most bizarre murder scenes Hoch has ever created. A dark, dimly cellar room full of life-size crucifixes with living figures tied to them, "horribly fantastically alive," wearing nothing more than a white loin cloth and a black hood. One of these crucified, hooded men was run through with a Spanish sword! The victim, Glen Summer, runs the local bar, Oasis, which Father Hadden described as "a den of sin." So plenty of potential suspects and motives to go around, but the key to solving the case is figuring out how the murderer was able to stab the correct victim under those circumstances. Ark's answer to this question is beautifully simplistic and logically. Something that makes you want to kick yourself, if you missed it. Those few years of experience were already paying off by '59.

Finally, "The Judges of Hades," originally appearing in the February, 1957, issue of Crack Detective & Mystery Stories, which brings this collection full circle. Sort of. The nameless narrator receives a devastating telegram, "YOUR SISTER AND FATHER KILLED IN AUTO ACCIDENT," which brings him back home to Maple Shades, Indiana. A town sometimes known through a never-ending prank as Hades (“...since the boys are always painting over the sign”). Things get worse when he arrives as the police believes it was a murder-suicide by head-on collision, but who killed whom? The motive appears to stem from a family row when the narrator's father, a judge, ruled against his own son-in-law in a zoning battle. So he asks Ark to look into the case as a personal favor, but Ark becomes interested when learning the victim was known as one of the Judges of Hades. While not terribly complicated or especially challenging, "The Judges of Hades" is a decent enough detective story with perhaps the best part being how it succeeded in revealing absolutely nothing about the narrator himself. Well done, Hoch!

So how to rate The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories? There are only a handful of short stories here and only "Sword for a Sinner" cut it as a classic Hoch performance, which is normally a poor score for a short story collection – even for a short collection of five stories. However, I appreciated how Santesson decided to arrange and present the stories. Santesson didn't arrange the stories in order of publication, but placed them in such a way there's a pleasing uptick in quality with each passing story from the first to fourth story. And the last story simply compliments the first. That makes The Judges of Hades a great introduction to the character of Simon Ark. It also gives a fascinating glimpse of how Hoch developed as a plotter during his first years as a professional writer. A strong recommendation for long-time fans of Hoch and Ark, but, if you're new to Hoch or Ark, I recommend trying one of the recent Crippen & Landru collections. I recommend Funeral in the Fog (2020) or The Killer Everyone Knew (2023).

The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries

In 2021, John Pugmire's Locked Room International published Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017), translated by Ho-Ling Wong, which at the time made "enormous waves in the world of Japanese mystery fiction" not seen since the debuts of Soji Shimada and Yukito Ayatsuji – not without reason. Imamura's Death Among the Undead placed your typical, traditionally-plotted shin honkaku mystery in the middle of a zombie outbreak! Don't mistake it for a gimmick or novelty mystery. Imamura masterfully demonstrated fantastical elements can be inserted into the traditional, fair play detective story without ruining either. In fact, when handled correctly, it opens doors and unlocks new possibilities previously inaccessible to the normally grounded detective story.

Imamura's Death Among the Undead signaled a change and seems like the hybrid mystery's time has finally arrive, because it has been tried before. But never took root.

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) is not only the first (modern-ish) detective story and locked room mystery, but also the first mystery-horror hybrid on account of the solution. Another early example is Fitz-James O'Brien's "The Diamond Lens" (1858) blending mystery with fantasy. There are a few pre-Asimov attempts at science-fiction mysteries, but the only noteworthy example is Manly Wade Wellman's Devil's Planet (1942). David V. Reed's Murder in Space (1944) is irredeemably bad, while John Russell Fearn's The Master Must Die (1953) and The Lonely Astronomer (1954) are hampered by one of the most irritating detective characters ever created. They all offer an unimaginative, poverty stricken vision of the future with clunky robots and snail mail between planets. There is, of course, Randall Garrett's Too Many Magicians (1966), a fantasy mystery, but, as you probably know, I'm famously not a fan of it.

So beside a couple of noteworthy titles, even a few first-rate examples from Japan, the hybrid mystery didn't take off, until Imamura's Death Among the Undead. The translation also made the hybrid mystery a subject of interest around these parts of the mystery fandom and got bitten myself by the hybrid mystery bug, which could have been as serious as my locked room obsession saved only by a lack of material, not for a lack of trying! I have gone through enough hybrid mysteries now to compile a top 10 and there were enough good titles that some had to be left on the cutting room floor. I also left out a couple of titles, because I didn't want it seven or eight of the titles to be Japanese translations. For example, I left Imamura's Death Among the Undead off the list as it already made "Top 10 Best Translations & Reprints from Locked Room International" and have another zombie mystery to take its spot on this filler-post list. So along with future releases, there's more than enough left for a part two, if anyone's interested after this one. Let me know down below.

The Julius Caesar Murder Case (1935) by Wallace Irwin

In 1935, The Julius Caesar Murder Case was little more than an amusing curiosity, a cross between historical fiction and a pulp-style mystery, because historical mysteries didn't exist back then. Wallace Irwin is credited with writing one of the first "toga mysteries," but the book is essentially a parody of a genre that had yet to be born. The book is hilarious, written in the style of the pulps, following the star reporter of the Evening Tiber, Publius Manlius "Mannie" Scribo, who gets involved in the most notorious murder case of ancient Rome. If you love historical mysteries and have sense of humor, Irwin wrote The Julius Caesar Murder Case for you.

The Caves of Steel (1953/54) by Isaac Asimov

Considered by many to be the OG hybrid novel. At least, the first truly successful one as Asimov penned a triple masterpiece of detective fiction, science-fiction and dystopian rolled up into one classic – maybe one of the best post-Golden Age mysteries from the previous century. Most importantly, The Caves of Steel demolished the argument that advancements in science and technology made the traditional detective story obsolete before it was put forward. Asimov wrote a pure whodunit in a world full with AI robots, mind probes and space-faring breakaway civilizations. So its only shortcoming is not becoming a trendsetter that launched the hybrid mystery as a legitimate subgenre or off-shoot back in the '50s.

"The Closed Door" (1953) by Kendell Foster Crossen

The only short story on the list and a short story that should have been a novel-length mystery, because the premise and solution is brilliant. A story taking place on a space hotel constructed out of hundreds of different type of plastics to accommodate every life form in our galaxy. A murder of silicon-based alien is murdered inside a locked room during a galactic conference with the solution making almost perfect use of its future backdrop, which could have been the equal of Asimov's The Case of Steel had been a novella or novel-length. So had to include on the list.

Inherit the Stars (1977) by James P. Hogan

Technically, Hogan's Inherit the Stars is a pure science-fiction novel, not a hybrid mystery, but the book secured a high-ranking spot on Tozai Mystery Best 100 and Ho-Ling posted a fascinating review on his blog – which caught the attention of our corner of the genre. What we found was a detective story on a celestial scale, presented as pure science-fiction, but the answer how a skeleton in a space suit ended up being buried on the moon thousands of years ago is a tour de force. I expected time travel shenanigans or a cross between the Piltdown hoax and the stories of lost Soviet cosmonauts, but never imagined anything like that. We have since appropriated Hogan's Inherit the Stars from the science genre. It's ours now!

Ikeru shikabane no shi (Death of the Living Dead, 1989) by Yamaguchi Masaya

This zombie mystery predates Imamura's Death Among the Undead by nearly three decades, however, Death of the Living Dead is an entirely different kind of zombie mystery. The zombies here aren't mindless ghouls hunting in packs, snack attacking everything that moves, because they're still in full possession of the personality and mental capacities. So they're literally the living dead and placing them in a traditional detective story places a completely new complexities on the Golden Age-style mystery with a great detective and cast of characters. Masaya's Death of the Living Dead probably is, conceptually, even better than Imamura's take on the zombie mystery and a genuine classic of the horror-mystery hybrid. It's a shame it's English debut was largely ignored to the point where the publisher gave up on future translations.

Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995) by Yasuhiko Nishizawa

The most recent translation on this list merges the detective story with the time loop dodge involving a high school student, Kyutaro, who regularly finds himself stuck in eight day time loops. Great when you need to ace a school exam, but not so much when a murder crops up during a loop. Even less so when the murder involves members of his own family! Like I said in my original review, if The Man Who Died Seven Times is not perfect, it's close enough.

By the way, I think the time loop device works really well when paired with the detective story, because it's basically the dueling/multiple narrative device on steroids. Yukito Ayatsuji could probably write one hell of a time loop mystery!

The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Tales (1997) by Edward D. Hoch

A western mystery is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of hybrid mysteries. Nothing more than a change of scenery and time period, historical mysteries than genre crossovers, but westerns are a genre with a Golden Age of its own – mixing westerns with mysteries counts in my book. Nobody did the western-mystery better than Edward D. Hoch in his long-running series of short stories about his gunslinging detective, Ben Snow, who has an uncanny resemblance to Billy the Kid. The Ripper of Storyville is a first-rate collection of short stories and probably the best Hoch collection published by Crippen & Landru without a single bad story. Maybe we'll finally get a second Ben Snow collection in 2027 to mark the 30th anniversary of the first collection. Fingers crossed!

Rurijou satsujin jiken (The "Lapis Lazuli" Castle Murders, 2002) by Takekuni Kitayama

Another early, Japanese experiment predating Imamura and not easily pigeonholed or briefly summarized. It can be described as an unadulterated flight of fancy in which cursed daggers bind the main characters together through a never-ending cycle of death and rebirth stretching from 13th century France and trenches of the First World War to a library in 1980s Japan. A hybrid mystery that has to be read to be believed and that goes double for the locked room mystery in the Library at the End of the World!

Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokai (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019) by Kie Houjou

I could have picked any of the three novels in Houjou's "Ryuuzen Clan" series for this list, because they're modern masterpieces and future classics. So why not go with the first one in the series? Like the title suggests, The Time Traveler's Hourglass involves time travel as Kamo Touma, a magazine writer, gets an opportunity to go back to the 1960s to prevent a tragedy that destroyed his wife's family. The plot is as sound a piece of craftsmanship as we come to expect from the Japanese shin honkaku writers, but what sets The Time Traveler's Hourglass apart is the heart and humanity underneath it all. To quote Mitsuda Madoy, "Houjou may write with the laser focus of a true Kyoto U. Mystery Club graduate, but there's a heart to her characters that I rare see even in non-mystery writers." It's time this series gets an official translation/release.

Black Lake Manor (2022) by Guy Morpuss

So, as you can see, the Japanese have already terribly spoiled me with their third wave shin honkaku hybrid mysteries, as well as some of its precursors, which is why I approached Black Lake Manor with skepticism and lowered expectations – considering the stiff competition it was up against. Morpuss and Black Lake Manor proved to be worthy competition to their Japanese counterparts. A web-like plot casually toying around with various timelines, time resets and hard light technology without the plot or story getting muddled. It's therefore unfortunate Morpuss is only interested at the moment in writing standalones and unlikely to return to this fascinating world he created anytime soon.

Like I stated, there's more than enough left to compile another list, but should note that not every hybrid mystery reviewed has been a success story. On the contrary!

For example, Asimov's series of short stories featuring Wendell Urth has a fantastic premise: an earthbound extraterrologist and armchair detective who uses Earth as the biggest, most comfortable armchair in our Solar System to ponder the mysteries of the universe – criminal or otherwise. Regrettably, the stories betrayed Asimov had been unable to mine the series full potential. Only the second story, "The Talking Stone" (1955), is any good. Ross Rocklynne and Arthur Jean Cox's The Asteroid Murder Case (1970/2011) has a razor thin plot ruining a genuinely original motive. Lawrence Block's The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown (2022) is a very entertaining fan pleaser, but the parallel universe angle is only there to have some fun with the main characters. André Bjerke's De dødes tjern (The Lake of the Dead, 1942) and Natsuhiko Kyogoku's Ubume no natsu (The Summer of the Ubume, 1994) blending of mystery, horror, folklore and the occult failed to capture my imagination.

Nevertheless, after several years of rooting around for these once too often dismissed hybrid mysteries, especially the Japanese variant, gave me a vision of the detective story's potential future. The hybrid mystery, a good, well-done hybrid mystery, simply offers too many new possibilities to the write and plot new, fresh and original detective fiction to leave it at the wayside again. They're also an open invitation to new or even outside talent. So can see the hybrid mystery following a similar trajectory as the historical mystery and police procedural in becoming an off-shoot/subgenre of its own. At least in Japan. But, if it catches on over here, I can see the hybrid becoming one of two dominant forms in our traditionalist corner of the genre in the decades ahead. The other being historical mysteries with a Golden Age or 20th century setting.

The Nature of Things: C.M.B. vol. 7-8 by Motohiro Katou

Following a short hiatus, I returned to the work of Motohiro Katou back in September with a review of C.M.B. vol. 5-6 and the intention was to have gone through the first ten volumes, before the end of the year, but just noticed I forgot to do C.M.B. vol. 7-8 last month – having reviewed Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 95 in October. So guess you can call that a return to tradition.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 7 differs from previous volumes in both the C.M.B. and Q.E.D. series, which normally contain two longish stories or occasionally a single long story (e.g. C.M.B. Vol. 4), but Katou this time tried his hands at four shorter stories. So the plots and storytelling tend to be smaller in complexity and scope than the longer stories. The result's as mixed and varied as the stories themselves.

"Locust" is the first of these four shorter stories and best described as an ecological mystery-thriller, of sorts, which takes place in one of those remote, mountainous villages named Yamanomizu – plagued and torn by several divisive issues. First of all, the village is divided over the plans to build a road to bring government money to the village and province, but half the village opposed the plans because they "feared that the forest would be torn down." Secondly, the province where the village is located has a plague of locusts and in three days, "the village and their crops will be attacked by the locusts." So the villagers in favor of the road want to spray everything from the fields to the forest with insecticide ("...going to be torn down anyways"). Thirdly, local children spotted a rare, beautiful bird in the forest, "never seen before," but nobody believes them. One of the kids heard of Sakaki Shinra, curator of Shinra's Museum of Antiquities, who takes Nanase Tatsuki to Yamanomizu. Shinra has a pretty good idea about the bird, but seems more interested in the locusts and, of course, someone tries to protect money making road project to give the story a mild touch of the thrillers. Not much of a detective story, plotwise, but the backdrop allowed for a few good, nicely drawn scenes towards the end.

The second story, "Iron Door," is a different story altogether! Mau Sugal, the black market broker, returns to the Museum of Antiquities to take Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki along on an unusual treasure hunt. She brings them to an abandoned factory with a once buried, now excavated bunker doubling as an army research laboratory during the Second World War. This leads to a long, dark passageway with a huge, heavy steel door at the end. A door that used to be opened with a motor, but the motor was destroyed when the place was closed and sealed. So now it takes the combined effort of three, or more, people to open it. Mau believes "there's some treasure behind this door," but she needs the other two to help her pry it open. When they do, they find an empty storeroom with the fresh corpse of an elderly man inside, 81-year-old Gomoku Shigetsuga. He turned up shortly after the place was excavated and unsealed to claim the place couldn't possibly be empty.

So while "Iron Door" is as long, or short, as "Locusts," it's a much denser story with a packed, nestling doll-like plot – stacking mystery upon mystery. Who trapped and killed the old man? How did the murderer opened, and closed, the door without help? What did the victim know about the wartime secrets buried in the bunker? And what happened to those secrets? Is there still something hidden in the bunker that the police overlooked? How does Mau figure in this case and why did she leave cartoon smoke after discovering the body? The answers to all these questions nicely dovetail together with the unusual impossible crime situation making it standout, but even better than the original, quasi-inverted take on the locked room mystery is the clearly written, cleverly hidden dying message. Maybe the best use of the hidden dying message since the Columbo episode Try and Catch Me (1977). The best story of the volume!

The third story, "In the Civic Pool," is not necessarily bad, but it has a threadbare plot and a very forgettable story. Tatsuki takes Shinra and some of her classmates to the public swimming pool where they become entangled in a series of mini-mysteries involving missing concert tickets, a water beetle supposedly "extinct in Tokyo" and figure in the swimming pool who disappears like a ghost when looking in its direction. All very simple mysteries with simple, straightforward answers. Only thing that really stood out is Shinra taking care of the water beetle, but other than that, Katou still has to figure out how to translate his trademark character-driven, slice-of-life puzzles to the one-chapter story format.

This volume ends on a high note with a pleasingly conventional mystery, “The Turk,” which is the famous chess playing automaton that toured and enraptured Europe in the 18th century. A replica of the Turk is currently part of Tagame Tatsuo's collection of antique “mechanized puppets” and Shinra, holder of the "C," "M," and "B" rings, has full access to the collection for his research – even gets to play to play the celebrated automaton. During their round of chess, the automaton fails while a robber smashes a display and gets away with three valuable puppets. Shinra promises to get back the antiques in exchange for the replica of the Turk. So the solution appears to entirely hinge on breaking down the alibi of the person who operated the automaton. Shinra reminds everyone the Turk is "not a mechanized puppet," but "more of a magic trick." Like I said, a pleasingly conventional detective story.

By the way, I liked Tatsuki's false-solution infusing the 18th century illusion of the chess playing automaton with modern technology.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 8 continues the format of vol. 7 with four shorter, one-chapter stories and the first story is “One Hundred and Thirty Million Victims.” Detective Inspector Takeshi receives a picture of an ant-lion accompanied by threatening letter promising that, "on November 6th, at 6 PM, I will enact my revenge. The 130 million people of Japan will be the victims." Takeshi goes to Shinra to use him as a soundboard and, pretty soon, a lead presents itself. A man by the name Yoshikawa Masahisa was arrested and convicted for a disgusting crime: robbing a young mother and kicking over the baby carriage, which injured the baby. So the media and public came down like a ton of bricks on him and his family. However, the real culprit was found years later and Yoshikawa Masahisa was released from prison without a word of apology from the media and public. The story is about trying to prevent someone from taking revenge, however, the ending showed that not everything is as it seems. A prescient ending at that for a story originally published in 2008 (likely had a magazine appearance in 2007). A good opening act!

"A Meteorite" is the second and my personal favorite story from this volume. Shinra travels to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a Russian operated spaceport in Kazakhstan, where "something cumbersome" crashed nearby and created a giant crater – a large meteorite. There are, however, two problems. Firstly, the representatives of Kazakhstan and Russia both stake claim the meteorite. Secondly, the meteorite itself has impossibly disappeared without a trace. Not only the meteorite has disappeared, but they couldn't find a bit of debris or single fragment of it at the impact site. Someone, somehow, cleaned out the entire site in a mere three days. And, given the circumstances, that's a Herculean task. What a great and original premise! Shinra also has to take a well-known meteorite hunter and the locals into consideration when answering these questions and arbitrate the outcome. Yes, the explanation how the impact site was cleaned out is as clever as it's cheeky. Simply a good, fun and original mystery.

The third story of this volume, "A Strange Tale from Kushino Mura," gets a little experimental. This story finds Shinra and Tatsuki on a skiing holiday, but, where the ski resort stands today, once stood a mountain settlement, Kushino Village. Shinra naturally gets interested in the backstory of this forgotten village and an old man tells them to visit the shrine, if they want to know more. A shrine dedicated to the cats that once saved the village and a faded backstory, barely legible, written on the wall mentioning demonic possessions, deaths within three days and a husband and wife ("...one of them died"). A short time later, Shinra and Tatsuki get caught in a blinding snow storm, on the advanced trail, that somehow flings them back into the past. On the day when Kushino Village was born into tragedy. So they have to figure out the source of the original tragedy to prevent another, but what gave the story a real chill is when Shinra realizes the truth behind their time-slip adventure (ROT13: n gvzr-ybbc va juvpu crbcyr “ercrngrqyl qvr, sberire”). Not exactly a classically-styled detective story, but this one is more about storytelling than laying out an elaborate plot. I enjoyed it.

On a side note, "A Strange Tale from Kushino Mura" is not the first time-slip mystery to feature in Katou's detective fiction. "The Legacy of the Sage," from Q.E.D. vol. 19, transports Kana Mizuhara from 2004 to 1927 where she meets Sou Touma's historical double.

"The Statue of a Male Goat" is the fourth, and final, story from this volume. Shinra is drawing plans, in class, to redo the layout of his museum and he has the resources to do it ("...already hired a moving company"). Meanwhile, the owner of small, struggling moving company is offered a big sum of money to swap the titular statue from the museum's collection for a replica, but stealing from Shinra is not as easy as taking candy from a baby. Another fairly minor story, but always welcome a return to Shinra's museum.

So these eight stories from C.M.B. vol. 7 and 8 present the proverbial mixed bag of tricks. "Iron Door" is the obvious standout and my favorite for boringly predictable reasons with "The Turk" and "A Meteorite" following close behind. I liked "A Strange Tale from Kushino Mura," but more as a historical flight of fancy with criminal intent than as a proper detective story and "One Hundred and Thirty Million Victims" has a memorable conclusion. "Locusts" is mostly scenery, "In the Civic Pool" and "The Statue of a Male Goat" give little to comment on. Not bad, on a whole, considering Katou switched from longer to shorter stories as none of the stories are bad, but some work still needs to be done. I'm curious to see how Katou is going to continue these short, one-chapter stories in C.M.B. vol. 9 and 10 next year.

The Man Who Died Seven Times (1995) by Yasuhiko Nishizawa

Three months ago, Pushkin Vertigo released Yasuhiko Nishizawa's Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995), translated by Jesse Kirkwood, which is not only a very good, very unusual and original detective novel – one of my new all-time favorite detective novels. Not for any of the usual reasons most would expect from me. The Man Who Died Seven Times is at its core a fairly ordinary whodunit within a family circle without any bells and whistles, like locked rooms, unbreakable alibis and dying messages, except for one extraordinary detail.

Hisataro Oba, a.k.a. Kyutaro, is a 16-year-old high school student who has "the aura of some jaded old man" and people are always telling him he seems old for his age. That's because Kyutaro is, mentally speaking, years older than his classmates on account of experiencing frequent time loops lasting nine days. An unexplained, personal phenomena Kyutaro calls "the Trap" during which the same days repeats nine times. Kyutaro is the only one who's aware of the loop and can alter the events from the first loop ("the 'original' version of the day in question") to the final loop, but "whatever happens in the final loop becomes, for everyone else, the only version" of that day. And, for Kyutaro, the definitive version of that day. But without loosing his memories of the other versions. These time loops can happen "as often as a dozen times in one month, or only once in eight weeks."

Kyutaro used one of these time loops to ace the entrance exams for the exclusive Kaisei Academy, but the promise of a brilliant student delivered fluctuating results. Good results always depends on whether, or not, an exam coincides with a time loop. Beside cheating on his school exams, Kyutaro never had to deal with a serious situation, while stuck in the nine-day trap, until he goes to a New Year's family gathering at the mansion of his grandfather, Reijiro Fuchigami, and maiden aunt, Kotono. A fairly recently established tradition to repair family relations after the family fractured in several different branches following a fallout between Reijiro and two of his three daughters. Kamiji left home to pursue an academic career and married a young, promising student, Michiya Oba, who have three sons – Fujitaka, Yoshio and Kyutaro. The third and youngest daughter, Haruna Kanagae, followed suit and had two daughters, Mai and Runa. So that left Kotono, the second daughter, to look after their increasingly difficult father under dire circumstances, but their situation miraculously improved. A lucky windfall that turned their restaurant into a restaurant chain under the Edge Restaurant Group umbrella. So these New Year gatherings aren't only meant to get the family back together, but for Reijiro Fuchigami to pick a successor.

Nothing out of the ordinary happens, except for Kyutaro getting blackout drunk, when everyone goes home at the end of January 2nd, but Kyutaro wakes up back at his grandfather's house early in the morning of January 2nd. He has fallen into one the time loop traps. This time, the day ends in tragedy. Reijiro Fuchigami had spend this new version of January 2nd drinking by himself in the attic of the old annex building. There he was found murdered! What follows is a long, exhaustive day of police questioning and only Kyutaro knows the day is going to reset seven more times. And that his grandfather will be alive, and well, the next morning on the third version of January 2nd. And the next half dozen resets.

Kyutaro tries to prevent his grandfather from getting killed and protect one of his relatives from becoming a murderer, which turns out to be easier said than done even with multiple retries – like a number of stored lives in a game. Firstly, Kyutaro has to consider two outside candidates to inherit the company. Reijiro's assistant and driver, Ryuichi Tsuchiya, and Kotono's assistant, Emi Tomori. Secondly, the complicated, sometimes uncomfortably tangled family relationships from the simmering hatred between Reijiro's three daughters to cousins fooling around. Thirdly, Kyutaro has to do a lot of scheming, manipulating and maneuvering, but, try as he might, Reijiro dies in every loop ("He was dead. Of course he was"). This is the first time Kyutaro is trapped inside a loop with something as serious as a murder in the family. A murder that was not part of the original "schedule" of the day and not the only deviation on the original day that confounds Kyutaro.

Like I said, The Man Who Died Seven Times is not a detective story about the who, why and how, but how Kyutaro attempts to prevent a murder before the ninth loop makes it definite. Before the ninth loop, Kyutaro gets to see everyone he knows acts and respond differently under varying circumstances of that days. Sometimes the situation got very ugly, but, tragically, Kyutaro is the only one who remembers these alternate events of the eight loops. Showing the reader his jaded old man persona is not an act. However, The Man Who Died Seven Times is not a lightly-plotted, character-driven mystery employing the time loop device and the trappings of the detective story to explore the frayed relations between the various family members. That certainly is part of the story and plot, but the explanation for the murders of Reijiro Fuchigami and why he kept dying in every loop is genuinely clever. That last part is really key because what allowed this to work, so satisfyingly, is seeing it play out under different, manipulated circumstances, but always with the same confounding results. How that came about is simply brilliant.

So, if the story had ended there and then, I would have been more than satisfied, but some lingering questions and inconsistent details about Kyutaro's time loop experience remained. Those answers... no, that twist, bumped The Man Who Died Seven Times from merely an excellent take on the hybrid mystery to a masterpiece and personal favorite. That completely took me by surprise! This is not merely a good twist to end an even better detective novel, but the final touch to a very pleasing nestle doll pattern emerging from the overall story and plot. First you have an unvarnished, straightforward murder of the family patriarch, but within that simple framework there's Kyutaro reliving the same day nine times. His attempts to get a different outcome, and why he keeps failing, is what gives the plot its weight. Lastly, the twist on Kyutaro's time loop experience that gives yet another perspective on the previous versions of that early January day. If it's not perfect, it's close enough. Highly recommended!

Note for the curious: The Man Who Died Seven Times has had some interesting comparisons between Groundhog Day and various mystery writers, series and movies ("Groundhog Days meets Knives Out"), but the only comparison that would be on point is The Girl Who Leapt Through Time meets Case Closed.