青い密室 名探偵・星影竜三全集 (2)

Short story collection of 8 works by Ayukawa Tetsuya and compiling all his short stories featuring the detective character Hoshikage Ryuuzou together with the first volume 赤い密室.

The Greek Coffin Mystery

After the famous art dealer Georg Khalkis dies caused by illness, his will turns out to be stolen. When the police, including Inspector Richard Queen and his son Ellery, arrive at the scene, Ellery suggests the will could only be found in Khalkis' coffin. However what turns out to be there is not the will but another corpse - and an obvious murder at that!

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...

エコール・ド・パリ殺人事件 レザルティスト・モウディ

Famous art dealer Akatsuki Hiroyuki is found stabbed by an army knife in a locked room of his own mansion/gallery. Door and window are locked, but a streak of the victim's blood is found on the window's lock and footprints in the sand of the garden below suggest an intruder's work. What would he gain from creating this locked room though? Is the key to solve this mystery concealed in Akatsuki's art book about the École de Paris?

ｆの魔弾

Hamasaka Kazuya is found in a completely locked apartment together with two corpses; the gun lying beside him and with gunpowder residue on his clothes. Even though Kazuya seems to hide something, he claims false accusation and asks his advocate to call for his old friend Minami Mikikaze whom he expects to solve this case. However after seeking out a person in America who seems to be related to the two victims, Mikikaze himself gets caught in a similar locked room scenario...

赤い密室 名探偵・星影竜三全集 (1)

Collection by Ayukawa Tetsuya who set the standard for the orthodox renaissance movement. This is the first of two volumes which gather all of the short stories featuring classical detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou; works that made me realize Ayukawas huge influence on late 80s and early 90s writers once again and even more.

りら荘事件

6 students visit Villa Lilac to spend their summer vacation when suddenly superintendent Yuki shows up and informs them about the corpse of a man wearing one of the students raincoats who was found under a cliff near the mansion with an ace of spades lying next to him. This incident is only a forewarning of a series of murders yet to come, each one attached with a new card and clouded in alibis. The police find themselves in a dead end which forces them to get the help of "amateur" detective Hoshikage Ryuuzou.

金雀枝荘の殺人

Tamiya Yasaburou brought his german wife Elisabeth over to Japan during the Meiji period and built a whole mansion for her. Their shared happiness did not last long though and she left him and their daughter returning to her homeland. Ever since the mansion has become a baneful stage for 2 murders with numerous victims.

1990: One year after 5 of their siblings/cousins and the mansion's caretaker were found dead after they seemingly killed each other while all of the mansion's exits were locked, Tamiya Anna, Rui, Otohiko, Touma and 2 uninvited guests meet at the crime scene to figure out what tragedy actually brought forth this strange incident.

メルカトルと美袋のための殺人

Mercator Ayu, who himself says his suberb and rapid skills as detective make him tend more towards short stories, and his friend Minagi Sanjou bring the reader 7 of their shared experiences. Most of these are indeed, as the title already hints at, crimes that are constituted the way they are due to Mercator's and/or Minagi's relatedness.

i(アイ)鏡に消えた殺人者

Novelist Sunamura Etsuko is found murdered in a locked room situation in her own apartment. Bloody footprints are left leading from her corpse over to a full-length mirror and disappearing in front of it on the very spot. What is also found at the crime scene is a manuscript of her autobiographic short story dealing with her fear of mirrors. Is her supposedly dead cousin Ai staring at her from inside the mirror...?