Introduction

Title: 『完全犯罪に猫は何匹必要か？』（かんぜんはんざいにねこはなんびきひつようか？）
Author: Tokuya Higashigawa (東川篤哉）
Published by 光文社文庫
458 pages.

This is the third novel in the Ikagawa series (烏賊川市シリーズ), a comical detective series featuring private detective Morio Ukai. Ukai might be the worst fictional detective I know, but he somehow manages to solve murder cases in spite of his dubious deductions.

Review

It took me some time to get into the story, but it turned out to be very good: a captivating murder mystery with alibis that are too good to be true and weird witness statements. I found the story excellent, but similarly to the second book of the story, I also did not always connect with scenes that only serve the comical aspect of the book.

This series feature two sets of characters: private detective Morio Ukai and his assistant Ryuhei Tomura on one side, and chief inspector Sunagawa and his subordinate detective Shiki on the other side.

I always found interesting that this series does not follow the pattern ”genius detective vs incompetent police officers”. Here the police detectives are actually quite good, and in this novel in particular, they are the ones who do all the job, and private detective Ukai looks more like a secondary character than the protagonist of the series.

I found the parts were we follow Sunagawa and Shiki to be much more interesting than the ones with Morio and Ryuhei. First, the police detectives are investigating a murder, whereas our private detective’s mission in this novel is to find a missing cat. Moreover, I found that some scenes featuring Morio Ukai and his team were often serving a comical purpose only and did not add much to the story.

When it comes to comical effects, I find that there are two types in this novel. The first type is when a scene that serves the plot and the investigation is told in a comical way. For example the scene when chief inspector Sunagawa asks witnesses to report on what they saw at different hours is described as if Sunagawa was an auctioneer trying to sell those said hours. I found this creative and very funny to read. The second type are scenes that are here just to add humour to the novel but which do not serve the story. For example, when Ukai fights with his landlady. I felt that this type of scenes would look great if the book was an anime, but I did not really enjoy reading them.

Overall, the murder case is excellent and engrossing, and while I found the humour partly good, partly unnecessary, it all comes down to a question of personal taste in the end. But comical effects aside, the author really has great ideas when it comes to writing murder mysteries, and this alone makes me want to continue the series.

Introduction

Title: 『密室に向かって撃て！』(みっしつにむかってうて)
Author: Tokuya HIGASHIGAWA (東川篤哉)
Published by 光文社文庫
354 pages

This is the second book in the series 烏賊川市 (Ikagawa), a humoristic, detective series. It is best to read the book in order as the second book refers to the first one at numerous times.

Short Review

Fans of the series and fans of the detective genre will enjoy it, but there are a lot of repetitions, and the humoristic scenes tend to take over the story at the cost of a more engrossing investigation.

Long Review

As much as I loved the first book of the series (密室の鍵貸します), I was a little disappointed in this second book.

Before starting this review, let me say that there are a lot of recurring characters in this second novel, and the book keeps hinting at what happened in the first novel 『密室の鍵貸します』. Fortunately, it does not reveal the solution to the first book, but it does reveals some developments that happen pretty late in the story, so I heartily recommend that you read this series in order.

As a fan of the first book, I was happy to meet the main characters of 密室の鍵貸します again in this second book. However, I found that the tone of the series had changed towards more humoristic scenes.

What bothered me is that some scenes are there in the unique purpose of being funny, but they don’t bring anything to the case. In the first novel, it was the way the investigation was conducted that was funny. It was the way it was told that brought humour to the detective story, not random scenes. In this novel however, we find ourselves with dialogues and situations that are introduced for humoristic purpose but slow down the pace of the novel.

I also found that the story takes forever to kick off. If you have read and enjoyed the first book of the series, you will still enjoy meeting the characters again and spend time with them, but still… I wish that we would get in the heart of the story quicker.

As for the investigation, it was good, but here again, I found that the importance given to comical effects hurt the “detective novel” part of the book. What I love the most in this series is how it breaks with codes of the genre: detective Ukai is not so much a 名探偵 as a 迷探偵, but I found that this concept was pushed to extremes here. As a result, I felt more frustrated than entertained, even though I had found this mechanic very exciting in the first novel.

Finally, there are a lot of repetitions in the story. I felt that the characters kept explaining the developments of the night of the murder over and over again.

To conclude, this novel is more on the humoristic side whereas the first one was more focused on the mystery side, which suited me better. The humour did not always work for me, and the tone was a little too light for my liking. This being said, it was overall an enjoyable read, and I will certainly continue the series.