Aosaki was born on 28 June, 1991 – which makes him one of the youngest in the honkaku movement – in Kanazawa prefecture. When in Meiji University (Tōkyō), Aosaki tried to publish a light novel by applying to different prizes. Twice. He was rejected, but didn’t get dismayed and instead followed the advice of the critic, who wrote, “He’d rather make detective stories than light novels.” After a good preparation, he sent his first detective novel, Taiikukan no Satsujin/The Black Umbrella Mystery (The Gymnasium Murder) to the prestigious Ayukawa Tetsuya award, where the prize is publication. And he won, inaugurating his ‘Urazome Tenma’ series, now comprising two more novels and a short story collection. The jury member Ashibe Taku characterized the debutant’s work as not just honkaku, but a full revival of Ellery Queen’s mode of logical deduction and a novel that consciously challenges at every turn. Since then, Ashibe released 9 books in total and is not stopping, and his series are running in magazines.
But does he rise up to his reputation? In the story under question, we get acquainted with the two protagonists. Gotenba Tōri and Katanashi Hisame share the living roof and the detective agency they own, as their talents are somewhat complementary: while Tōri is a specialist in the impossible, the ‘HOW,’ as he puts it, being able to crack locked rooms and other ingenious tricks, Hisame personifies the inexplicable, the ‘WHY,’ with the ability to understand the hidden motives for the weirdest actions from the guilty side. Luckily for them, the case they get has both.
The duo is invited to the household of the painter, Kasumiga Hideo, for his landscapes known as ‘The Poet of the Sky,’ who died last night behind the locked door of his own studio in what is almost blatantly not a suicide. And, while this already gives the necessary impossibility, the case is further complicated by the uncanny discovery in the room: the six paintings by the late master which previously hang on the walls are taken out of their frames and thrown around the studio… but not before one, and only one of those was carefully and completely painted red over the image! But while Tōri sets to revealing the method behind locking the door, Hisame wonders what was the reasoning behind locking it in the first place: there is no dearth of suspects, and, as crime happened deep in the night with everyone sleeping, in the house with negligible security measures, and the fingerprints were carefully wiped, it seems there was decidedly no need in making everything more complex by creating a locked-room murder.
Let me say it: the story was delightful. The main characters represent a trope so familiar by countless examples in literature and especially the screen, with two guys in the same apartment, solving cases with a tiny hint of yaoi overtones (or maybe I’m overthinking it), but turning them equals instead of a detective and assistant, getting them on identical footage refreshes the dynamics quite a bit, allowing them both their moments of triumph over their better understanding of the case and frustration of being Watson-like unable to reach the truth through their different specialization. The case itself, however, took a fresh spin of the familiar locked room situation, taking something I saw in Halter and perhaps many other people and creating a tantalizingly close to reach but elusive solution. Instead if Queen, this story reminded me of Clayton Rawson, who’d been, I believe, very much satisfied with the final solution.
The best, probably, thing about this story is how skillfully it leads you away from the correct solution without sounding artificial. In this kind of stories, where some possible methods and styles are already invited by the situation itself, the job of eliminating the possible wrong solutions imagined by the reader can turn into a laborious task of listing new clue after new clue, breaking them one-by-one. This story, however, effortlessly quashes the whole classes of methods without being overt. I almost took it as a fault that the story under-uses one of the tools it gives (not being more specific), but after some consideration I come to a conclusion it was a literal spotlight, shining over the wrong part of the case and not letting to the correct one beforehand.
The other thing I enjoyed was the absence of extreme reliance on obscure trivia from various sciences; while there is something that could make reaching the solution easier and tad bit more fair if known beforehand, it is not something unguessable – and the best proof to that is that I literally researched the matter as soon as I encountered it and still missed the solution now almost dangling in front of me!
If that’s just the first story, I’m excited to learn how it continues and will definitely read on. Especially knowing the story number 2, Kami no Mijikaku Natta Shitai, was chosen as one of the best honkaku short stories of the year 2015.
