隻眼の少女

Student Taneda Shizuma visits the secluded hot spring village Sugarumura to commit an allegedly romantic suicide. Before his awaited first snow falls though, he encounters the detective-in-training Misasagi Mikage, a 17 year old girl who wants to succeed the name of her deceased mother, a rumored and famous great detective. Soon they wind up in serial murders in the Kotosaki family, the religiously rooted governing family of the village. Mikage sets out for her first case and points out the correct culprit at last. Or so it seems until Shizuma visits the village once more 18 years later...

Since the table of contents already gives away that the book consists of two parts, the first playing in 1985 and the second in 2003, I guess it's safe to say that it's no spoiler that this novel broaches the issue of the arbitrariness of deductions and logic and presents multiple ultimately false solutions over the course (this is not even the suprising point of this novel). And it was awesome at that, which is why I certainly understand why this book got praised by fellow authors and critics and placed 1st in the Orthodox Mystery Best 2011 and won both the Orthodox Mystery Award and the Mytery Writers of Japan Award. Even the false solutions require a fair amount of deductions and don't seem entirely inappropriate at first. It shows that Maya Yutaka put a lot of thought in his new representative work. Most time when the Kotosaki do not talk about their family issues and worries the dialogues are spent on thought processes and deductions and you really become engrossed in the protagonists' situation and with each false solution you care more for them.

Here lies the delicate point of the book though. The characters are even more anime-esque than in Maya's other works and they are not better off in the Yokomizo-esque setting. Personally I could not care less as the dialogues are still witty and snappy enough for my taste and I felt entertained throughout the whole novel. Whether the setting and the characters are realistic seldom gets focus in my rating, but I guess this is a rather significant point of criticism for a certain kind of other readers that did not find out about orthodox detective fiction via popular culture. I liked the characters and therefore I was also moved by the outcome of the plot, even considering I could foresee certain aspects having read other works by Maya Yutaka.

So I guess it's difficult to enjoy the plot if this is not your kind of setting, but there's no doubt that Maya crafted an interesting mystery novel with a distinct thematic focus on the detective figure and his corresponding hardships shouldering almost unfairly high anticipation, as well as the delicate issue of deductions and the arbitrariness of clues. Maya deserves to be praised for this even if the rest is not your cup of tea.

Now excuse me while I'm off trying to finally get my hands on a satisfying copy of Ellery Queen's The Greek Coffin Mystery...