Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino

First published in Japan in 2021; published in translation by Minotaur Books on December 17, 2024

As American crime fiction once did, Japanese crime novels focus on mysteries that must be solved. Modern American crime novelists tend to focus on the elements of a thriller — fistfights, shootouts, chases — with less attention paid to unraveling a mystery. When American writers try to incorporate detection into their thrillers, they too often make a botch of it by favoring sensational reveals over credible puzzles.

Keigo Higashino has become one of crime fiction’s best mystery writers. His books move quickly but they aren’t action novels. Higashino writes traditional mysteries, planting clues that the reader will see in a different light after investigators piece them together.

Invisible Helix begins with a desperate mother who leaves her baby and a handmade doll at the gate of an orphanage. The baby’s father died during Hidemi Negishi’s pregnancy. Without the father’s income, Hidemi felt she had no choice but to give up the child.

In the present, Sonoka Shimauchi works in a flower shop. Her mother, Chizuko Shimauchi, was raised in the orphanage that later employed her. Chizuko raised Sonoka as a single mother. Chizuko met her best friend, children’s book author Nae Matsunaga, while working at the orphanage.

After Chizuko dies, Ryota Uetsuji comes to the flower shop to order floral arrangements for videos he’s shooting. Ryota begins to woo Sonoka and soon they are living together. When Ryota notices that Sonoka always sleeps next to a handmade doll, Sonoka explains that it belonged to her mother. If the doll seems like a Dickensian plot device, never expect the obvious from Higashino.

Things seem to be going well for Sonoka until Ryota begins to abuse her. When Ryota’s body is recovered from Tokyo Bay with a bullet hole in its back, Sonoka becomes the chief suspect. Sonoka promptly disappears with the help of a friend who knows that the police are coming for her. Sonoka’s disappearance hours before the police want to question her contributes to suspicion that she is a murderer.

The investigation of Ryota’s death falls to Chief Inspector Kusanagi, the co-protagonist of this series. He is assisted by his old friend, Professor Manabu Yukawa, whose ability to piece clues together until they form a solution earned him the nickname “Professor Galileo.”

One of Ryota’s most recent outgoing cellphone calls was to Hidemi Negishi, mama-san of a hostess bar known as VOWM. Kusanagi is assigned to interview Hidemi because he is “an aficionado of hostess clubs.” He brings Yukawa, who quickly discerns the true origin of the club’s name. A working knowledge of both Chinese and Japanese is required to figure it out. Fortunately for those of us who lack that knowledge, Yukawa explains how the odd name is relevant to the story.

As is customary in these books, Yukawa solves the mystery of Sonoka’s disappearance and of her husband’s murder in his own way, even if he has to go behind Kusanagi’s back to assure that his own version of justice is done. Yukawa even solves a mystery that changes his life, one that is tangentially related to the murder investigation. Maybe that’s a bit much, but the plot is otherwise nice and tidy, as a reader might expect of Japanese crime fiction.

Events unfold in ways that are different from those the reader will likely imagine. Higashino skillfully inspires erroneous conclusions about the identities of and relationships between key characters. The reader won’t learn the truth until the plot has twisted multiple times. Paragraph by paragraph, Higashino constructs the clever plot that his fans have come to expect.

Hostess clubs are an aspect of Japanese life that tend to fascinate Americans. The “Darwinian world of nightlife” in Japan isn’t explored in much depth, but it adds atmosphere to the story. The ending is in some respects a little sad, a bit touching, but the story is never marred by melodrama.

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The Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiiraki

Publsihed in Japan in 2019; published in translation by ‎ Grand Central Publishing on September 17, 2024

When Hatsu Yagi, at the age of 92, finds herself in a photography studio with no memory of her arrival, she realizes she is dead. The photographer, Hirasaka, tells her she is making a brief stop at the precise boundary between life and death on her way to an afterlife that he hasn’t experienced and thus cannot describe.

Hirasaka gives Hatsu large stacks of photographs, one photo of each day of her life, and asks her to select one from each year to attach to the lantern of memories. When her life flashes before her eyes as the lantern spins, she will see the scenes that she chooses before passing into the next stage.

One of the photos is faded because it’s such an important memory that Hatsu has worn it out by revisiting it so often. Hirasaka takes her back in time so she can take a new photo. She’ll be a ghost in the sense that others won’t see her, but she’s solid enough to take a picture.

When they travel to 1948, Hatsu tells Hirasaka the story of a small neighborhood in Tokyo where she worked as a nursery schoolteacher in a daycare that met in a field before it raised enough money to buy an old bus that would shelter the children when it rained. The story of her life is touching and sweet. The novel is in part a remembrance of the hard times that followed Japan’s defeat in the war, a life that was particularly difficult for all the children who died of dysentery.

Hirasaka’s next guest is Waniguchi, a criminal who was stabbed to death in his forties. The criminal tells an amusing story about an employee named Mouse who fixes things, although Mouse doesn’t understand the difference between broken and dead. Some things, Mouse will eventually learn, can’t be fixed. As Waniguichi’s lantern spins, he contemplates all the wrong choices he made, all the paths he took when different paths at life’s crossroads might have spared him a grisly death.

Hirasaka helps the dead decorate their lanterns with photographs, but he doesn’t remember his own life. He believes he lived a boring life, that he is unremembered, that he is destined to have a boring existence between life and death, without any meaning or purpose. He has a photograph of himself, but he doesn’t recognize the setting and it hasn’t sparked any memories of his life. This is a mystery that the story eventually explains. The explanation underscores the theme that a boring existence can nevertheless be special in ways we can’t imagine.

The last meeting recounted in the novel is with an abused little girl named Mitsuru. She died and visited Hirasaka, but he knows she is destined to return to life, only to die again at the hands of her tormenter. That might be the saddest thing I’ve ever read. As he interacts with the girl, he finds a way to manipulate the rules and, in so doing, changes his own fate.

The story’s characters are memorable (I particularly liked Mouse). The novel’s clever construction ties the characters together in surprising ways. The story illustrates the power of photography and the importance of capturing images that might erode in an unassisted memory. I don’t like to use clichéd descriptions like “enriching” and “life affirming,” but if I resorted to clichés, those would be apt descriptions of The Lantern of Lost Memories.

The story’s point, I think, is that most people live "well out of the spotlight." They have an “undistinguished existence” with “no stirring accomplishments or feats of valour,” ending their lives as people who “never expected to amount to much, and never had.” Yet Sanaka Hiiragi illustrates how even ordinary people make a difference. In the words of David Bowie, we can be heroes, just for one day. Or we can make bad choices and be left with a stack of memories we’d rather not have. Other writers have taught the same lesson, but rarely with the degree of empathy and intelligence that Hiiragi brings to this story.

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Mysterious Setting by Kazushige Abe

Published in Japan in 2006; published in translation by Pushkin Press on July 2, 2024

Kazushige Abe’s 2006 novel tells the story of a teenage girl who finds meaning in her brief life that she was denied when she realized she would never be a troubadour. Shiori had her heart set on being a troubadour ever since she looked up the word and decided that it described the life she wanted to live. It turned out to be a poor choice for a girl who is tone deaf and afraid to compose lyrics that don’t capture her true emotions as fully as the sounds that her audiences interpret as screeches. Maybe she's a young Yoko Ono.

The narrator learns Shiori’s story from an old man in a park. The narrator returns repeatedly until the old man brings the story to a resolution.

Shiori was tormented by her older sister’s brutal honesty. Her sister recognized that Shiori’s first boyfriend was only with her because she paid for his CDs when they went shopping.

Shiori shopped for cat food at a pet store. She became captivated by the parakeets. The birds seemed to be upset by her singing, although Shiori thought they were encouraging her. Shiori blames herself when things do not go well for Japanese birds.

Shiori makes no friends at music school (she refuses to sing or to compose lyrics) so she begins to correspond with random pen pals. One is a Peruvian drummer who invites her to hear his band. The other band members quickly realize that they can take advantage of Shiori’s generous and gullible nature. The Peruvian takes the story in a different direction when he entrusts Shiori with a suitcase nuke — or maybe it’s just a suitcase.

Shiori is a lonely teen who has no talent for making friends. Even her family abandons her. But Shiori is true to herself. While the inclinations to which she is true might be unwise, Shiori will win hearts for standing her ground.

Mysterious Setting is odd and unpredictable, qualities that make the story a pleasure to read. Shiori is initially incapable of recognizing her faults and then is unable to stop blaming herself for them. There’s some of that in most of us, although Shiori’s tendency to take those qualities to an extreme generates the story’s dark humor.

The end of the old man’s story tests the boundaries of plausibility, but this isn’t a story the reader is meant to believe. Absurd situations fuel its humor while the dark ending makes Shiori even more likable.

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River's Edge by Kyoko Okazaki

First serialized in Japan in 1993 and 1994. Published in translation by Kodansha/Vertical Comics as a graphic novel on June 27, 2023.

Its publisher describes River’s Edge as “a celebrated work that shows the hardships and the realities of growing up as a teenager in early 90s Tokyo.” Ichiro Yamada’s hardships are harder than most. Boys beat up Yamada because he’s quiet — and probably because girls like him. They suspect (correctly) that he’s gay. Girls like Yamada because he’s stylish and has a pretty face.

Yamada is dating Kanna Tajima but she doesn’t know he’s gay. Yamada thinks he might start liking girls if he dates one. Not surprisingly, he only ends up hurting Tajima. Yamada should really tell Tajima that he's gay since she’s overdosing on teen angst about why Yamada isn’t getting physical with her. I guess teen angst knows no geographic or cultural boundaries.

Haruna Wakakusa rescues Yamada when her boyfriend Kannonzaki locks him inside his locker. Yamada confesses his secret to Wakakusa and they become friends, much to Kannonzaki’s displeasure.

Yamada found a dead body in a field (more of a skeleton at this point) and thinks of it as his “treasure.” There’s something about seeing a corpse that comforts him. The only other person who has discovered the skeleton is a pretty actress with an eating disorder named Kozue Yoshikawa. Kozue is strange in a warped and unpleasant way. Readers who don’t want to read about animal abuse might want to avoid this graphic novel, while nearly all readers will find Kozue’s interest in dead kittens to be unattractive. Wakakusa befriends homeless kittens, which makes it all the more strange that she isn’t repulsed when Kozue kisses her.

Wakakusa envies Rumi, a high school friend whose 38-year-old boyfriend buys her expensive cosmetics.  Wakakusa had sex with Kannonzaki just to experience sex (she finds it filled with “contradictions and mysteries”). Rumi has sex with him for fun (and is much more into it than Wakakusa) but she becomes pregnant, possibly by Kannonzaki. Now Wakakusa is ghosting Kannonzaki, which his ego can't handle despite having a second girl to use for sex. Naturally, Rumi has teen angst in the form of jealousy about Wakakusa.

Characters lose control and gruesome acts of violence occur the story’s second half. One is accompanied by this narrative explanation: “Tragedy doesn’t just occur at random. That’s not how it works. The truth is that it slowly, gradually prepares itself. In the midst of our stupid, boring daily lives, that’s how it comes, and when it happens, it’s like a balloon popping out of nowhere.” That passage sums of the graphic novel’s theme: life is boring until it becomes tragic, but both boredom and tragedy suck.

The story has some interesting insights, including a character’s observation that teenage girls gossip incessantly to avoid saying anything meaningful. The characters ruminate about death quite a bit, sometimes imagining they see ghosts. They don’t seem capable of imagining a future in which they are still alive, with new friends and new ways of seeing themselves, but that’s what it’s like to be a teen.

I’m not an art critic, but the comic is drawn in the simple, sketchy style I associate with Dagwood and similar comic strips. It’s sometimes difficult to tell characters apart, particularly when they are drawn without a face. The style didn’t bother me, but this isn’t a graphic novel that enhances the story with impressive art. At least the characters don’t have ridiculously big eyes.

Fans of Japanese manga and/or teenage angst might understand why River’s Edge is a “celebrated work.” I can only say that the story is sufficiently interesting (in part because Japanese culture is interesting) that I remained engaged from chapter to chapter.

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The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Tagaki

First published in Japan in 1949; published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo on June 4, 2024

Locked room mysteries are an abundant staple of Japanese crime fiction. The Noh Mask Murder is a classic example. Akimitsu Takagi published the novel shortly after World War II. A protagonist alludes to Japan’s collective shame, but the story is about murder rather than war or politics.

Akimitsu Takagi is the novel’s initial narrator. In 1946, he tells his old friend Koichi Yanagi about his idea of writing a detective story based on his firsthand account of solving an actual crime, making the novel a detective memoir. Koichi is staying at the mansion of Taijiro Chizui, whose father was a professor and also Koichi’s mentor. Taijiro’s father died of a heart attack ten years earlier. Unfortunately for the Chizui family, he may have hidden a family fortune before he died.

By chance, Koichi encounters another old friend outside Taijiro’s mansion. The friend is now a public prosecutor. They see a demon in one of the mansion’s windows and meet with Taijiro to investigate. They discover that the demon is actually a fearsome Noh mask that, according to legend, was cursed by a Noh actor.

Akimitsu gets his chance to investigate a crime when Koichi gives his name to Taijiro. Taijiro phones Koichi and tells him he has learned who is behind the mask. Akimitsu agrees to meet him immediately. Unfortunately, an “invisible killer” takes Taijiro’s life before Akimitsu can meet with him.

Taijiro died inside a locked bedroom from an apparent heart attack. The Noh mask was found on the floor. The body has been sprinkled with jasmine-scented perfume. Someone had ordered the delivery of three coffins in advance of Taijiro’s death. Before long, three coffins fall short of the family’s needs.

Akimitsu cannot solve the crimes, but the public prosecutor eventually sends him a journal — a detective memoir — that unravels the mystery. The journal was written by Koichi. After he provides a lesson in Noh theater and reviews the literature of locked room mysteries, Koichi introduces members of the Chizui family, including a madwoman who plays the piano and a monstrous man named Rintaro who scorns humanity. Only Sawako seems normal, but at 28, never permitted to love or marry, she is expected to be the lady of the house, little more than a glorified maid. Sawako’s dreams about the mask put her in fear for Koichi’s life.

One of the armchair detectives favors Sawako as the prime suspect. The other believes Rintaro to be the culprit, yet suspects abound. Several clues are found in a poem in the madwoman’s diary. A note written in shorthand provides another. An STD provides a clue that adds the possibility of incest to a dark plot. A key clue is in the phrase (repeated by two ill-fated characters) “eighty-eight in eighty-two” followed by the word Portia.

Koichi works out the locked room mystery, deduces how each victim was made to die from a heart attack, and discovers the killer’s identity while a third of the story remains to be told. The novel ends with a letter from the prosecutor, written after Koichi finished his journal, that adds a twist to Koichi’s account of the murder. A postscript to the letter adds a final surprising revelation that completes the story. As is common in Japanese mysteries, the plot is intricate and no plot threads are left dangling.

Greed or revenge are the likely motives for the murders, depending upon the killer’s identity. Takagi offers philosophical discussions about the difference between revenge and justice, illustrated with examples from feudal Japan, including the 47 Ronin. Takagi leaves it to the reader to decide whether revenge might justify the killings (or some of them) that fill the pages of The Noh Mask Murder.

Crime fiction fans don’t need to be locked room mystery fans to appreciate The Noh Mask Murder. The locked room is almost a sideshow. The story is akin to the traditional mystery in which all the suspects are assembled in a room while the detective talks through the clues and reveals the killer’s identity. Takagi provides enough suspects to keep the reader guessing as Koichi works his way through the possibilities. It is the ending, however, that gives the mystery its classic nature by forcing the reader to rethink an apparently sound solution to the killer’s identity.

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