Last of the Steam-Powered Trains

Like the last of the good ol' choo-choo trains

Huff and puff 'till I blow this world away

And I'm gonna keep on rollin' till my dying day

I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains

—"Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", The Kinks, 1968

The Kinks' 1968 album, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, stands among the finest lyrical evocations of the vanishing English countryside. A personal favourite from the album is "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", the band's adaptation of the classic Howlin' Wolf song "Smokestack Lightning", in which vocalist Ray Davies pens a rollicking character study of a steam train in a museum reminiscing about its glory days when it huffed and puffed across the country. 

I was reminded of the song—and the album—as I came across a description of steam engine drivers in Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi Hakucho (originally published in 1960, translated as The Black Swan Mystery, 2024):

"In his faded blue overalls, the strap of his cap tight around his chin, a driver was sitting on his hard seat, his right hand gripping a lever, his eyes fixed on the two parallel rails illuminated by the headlights in front of him. The fireman beside him opened the firebox door with a clatter and shovelled in some coal. The violent vibrations of the engine had taken their toll on the driver’s stomach, and all the colour had drained from his face. Every time the fire door was opened, however, the burning red light would be cast on his cheeks, and for a moment his complexion would improve so much that he was almost unrecognizable. Driving a steam engine was much harder than driving an electric locomotive. And yet the reward for it was scant at best."

This is not without precedent of course. The opening stretches of The Black Swan Mystery feature elements I would not have expected in a work by Tetsuya Ayukawa—a fashionably rich woman outsmarting a blackmailer rather courteously, a workers' strike at a textile mill and negotiations to overcome the impasse, a religious cult pulling the strings, and more. Clever casting ensures that these events are mostly seen through the eyes of characters pertinent to the plot, but it is all very industrious and painstakingly, meticulously laid out. It is also quite unlike my impressions of Ayukawa from my previous encounter with him—in the short story collection, The Red Locked Room, consisting of a number of intricately and tightly plotted, yet highly imaginative, tales of crime and detection.

The Black Swan Mystery, on the other hand, unfolds as a rigorous police procedural, not marked by instinctive flashes of inspiration or brilliance, but instead by a physically exhausting process of following clues, links, red herrings, and other lines of enquiry. Tailing—once a tool of misdirection and building up suspense—becomes a necessary, widely accepted norm of investigation by this time whose utility is openly accepted by both the police force and the perpetrators of the crime. The act of physically following up on leads is used for another purpose here. As the characters move from place to place, we become privy to the evolving landscape of Japan (transitioning into a rapidly industrial one), and how individuals, families, neighbourhoods, social orders, systems (transport and education, for instance) and professions (most prominently, prostitution) trace their journeys across time and space. In it all, there's a sense of people looking to move on from their past, yet being inexorably caught up in it through forces and circumstances beyond their control:

"Onitsura just stared at the photo without replying. That Kayoko had once entered a ladies’ college only to suffer the fate of a prostitute, and that afterwards this fallen angel had seen yet another reversal of fortune, living in the lap of luxury because of her attachment to a man of great power and wealth, seemed to exemplify the wretched lot of so many young women who had been thrown into the chaos of post-war Japan and made to fend for themselves."

In this aspect, the novel resembles the works of another doyen of Japanese mystery fiction, Seichō Matsumoto, particularly those involving extensive train travel (see Inspector Imanishi Investigates and Points and Lines/Tokyo Express). It is also indicative of the enormous influence exerted by the shakai ha (or social) school of mystery championed by Matsumoto over Japanese mystery writing in those days. In fact, the modus operandi of the police investigation and its arrival at the solution would suggest that The Black Swan Mystery be primarily regarded as an extremely competent work of the shakai ha school.

But, of course, the work does not follow the course of a full-blown shakai ha mystery. A major difference is the fact that there is lesser focus on making out industrial society to be some monstrous evil entity exhorting people towards crime. It is also less obsessed with analysing the psychology of classes and crimes. 

However, what the novel does accomplish is the presentation of memory-based character sketches gleaned through conversations with diverse people (doctors, gardeners, corporate sector employees, housewives, railway conductors, religious shamans, pharmacists, among others) that are used to piece together the full picture. And, to go back to a point I had made earlier, it is here that I am most reminded of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. One can, for instance, in some ways juxtapose the essence of and sentiment behind a character's reminiscences of the pivotal Kayoko in the novel— 

"Kayoko and I were the best of friends ... We sat beside each other in class and always studied together. But that was only until we left school. I got married and became an ordinary housewife, whereas she—"

 and

"There she is after school, wearing make-up for the first time. During the war, they were so strict about it—if they caught you even putting on face cream at school, you’d get a ticking-off. I used to take so much pleasure in putting it on after we graduated. Kayoko looked so pretty with it, too…" 

with that of some lines in the album's song "Do You Remember Walter?": 

Yes, Walter was my mate.

But Walter, my old friend, where are you now?

and

Walter, isn't it a shame the way our little world has changed? 

Do you remember, Walter, how we said we'd fight the world so we'd be free? 

We'd save up all our money and we'd buy a boat and sail away to sea. 

But it was not to be.

I knew you then, but do I know you now? 

Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago. 

Walter, if you saw me now, you wouldn't even know my name.

I bet you're fat and married,

And you're always home in bed by half past eight.

And if I talked about the old times, you'd get bored  

And you'd have nothing more to say. 

Yes, people often change.

But memories of people can remain. 

An unexpected bonus, but delightfully welcome nonetheless. In fact, in hindsight, the act of the sympathetic Inspector Onitsura experiencing and solving the mystery indirectly—through the eyes, ears, and memories of others—brings some relief to the Inspector himself. Otherwise, this tale of a character's quest for freedom takes some very dark and tragic turns, bookended by a somewhat tender, moving climax that offers the space for the character to take charge of and narrate their own story, and not be explained away as a footnote in a chain of grand, deductive reasoning.

We are back to familiar ground when talking about the mysteries the book sets up. Tetsuya Ayukawa is known in Japanese mystery writing circles as a fierce exponent of the alibi deconstruction story—and The Black Swan Mystery is no different. The core mystery concerns the death of one Gosuke Nishinohata, the director of Towa Textiles, whose body was found next to train tracks, a bullet in his back. A plethora of scattered clues—an abandoned car, blood on a railway overpass, among others—point in different directions, while the motives and list of suspects are equally vast, owing to a large number of shadowy connections and incidents linked to the company: an ownership struggle within the company, labour unrest, Nishinohata's problematic past, ties to underworld figures, religious cults, and more. More incidents soon follow—a down-on-his-luck gardener is found poisoned at a railway station, an accident claims the lives of a voice actor (who claimed they had a solution to the mystery) and another employee of Towa Textiles, while the underground blackmailer is found dead in a forest on the outskirts of another city at the same time the company's workers had gone there to attend Nishinohata's funeral. It is all time-consuming, but is carried out rather assiduously and neatly in real time.

The police investigation responds in kind—and goes through the entire gamut of experiences following red herrings, obscure clues, circumstantial evidence, witness evidence, and combing through multiple dead-ends and breakthroughs. If there is one criticism to be laid, it is that we do not exactly witness the aftermath of the police's failures in the course of the investigation. The team seems excessively reliant on Onitsura and his mental acuity, the camaraderie between the officers remains virtually unaffected, while the officers on the ground carry on with a different thread of investigation, barely unaffected by the previous setbacks. As readers, we remain none the wiser on whether any punitive action, however perfunctory, was doled out—whether they were soundly rebuked, or some officers transferred to other teams/investigations, or whether the lack of success soured relationships between officers and hierarchies, and/or affected their morale, for some time. Certainly, a shakai ha treatment would have benefitted here.

As concerns the murders themselves, the one carried out on Nishinohata feels over-elaborate in its conception and setup on the one hand, its impact and execution stymied by the adversarial, coincidental circumstances on the other. The demise of the gardener, the voice actor, and the second Towa Textiles employee fall under the "unavoidable evil to advance plot ends" category.  However, I must reserve a high level of praise for the trick employed to kill the underground blackmailer, involving astute understanding use of train routes and schedules. It is also a poignant relic of the past—similar to the depressing motive behind the events of Matsumoto's Inspector Imanishi Investigates, the acts of the criminal in their original form can no longer be practically carried out today, as the schedules and the train configurations are no longer there. It is oddly comforting to note, however, that closer home, in my country of India, an almost similar trick can be pulled off today if I travel from my hometown to the eastern metropolis of Kolkata, because the required differences in train schedules and the divergent routes to reach a common destination still exist.

It feels strange to conclude my thoughts on the note that The Black Swan Mystery reminds me more of Seichō Matsumoto's and Keikichi Ōsaka's works rather than Ayukawa's own short stories, as far as the themes are concerned. But, perhaps, that is where its charm and importance lies—not as an outright shakai ha or honkaku mystery, but as an instructive one seeking to bridge the gap between the two schools through an approach that is as much contemporary and fixed in its own time as much as it continues to memorialise a past people are seeking to leave behind, yet to which they find themselves inexplicably tied.

Living on Borrowed Time

In many ways, crime fiction is a very demanding genre. It is bound and defined by 'rules' that the author devises (though they may be broken by others later on). It also has to pander to popular demands—a gripping plot, solid, plausible motives, believable characters, social commentary, appropriate settings and atmosphere, and so on.

One of the criticisms levelled against the genre is that its practitioners sacrifice one of these elements excessively to enhance the effect of another. If the whodunnit aspect is brilliant, the motive can turn out to be pretty weak. If the howdunnit bit of the mystery is genius, the portrayal of characters may well be a dud. The result, in any of these cases, is likely to attract detractors more than admirers. Striking the right synergy or balance between these disparate elements is often difficult and tricky and the subject of much head-scratching among mystery authors. However, should this miracle be achieved, the end product can be a sheer delight.

Hong Kong's Chan Ho-Kei is a man who has donned several hats—he has worked as a software engineer, a game designer, a manga editor and a lecturer. As such, his name may have stayed unfamiliar to me forever were it not for the fact that he also happens to be the author of one of the most superlative efforts in detective fiction in recent years which I've had the pleasure of reading.

Ho-Kei's 2014 offering, 13.67 (a clever nod to the period the work spans—between 1967 and 2013), received a translation in 2016 with the rather ambiguous title of The Borrowed. In the book's six interlinked tales, Ho-Kei gives readers a retrospective look at the evolution of Hong Kong and its society over six decades—through the lens of crime, politics, detection and its police force. What's most striking is that this is one of those rare gems that successfully bridges the gap between the social school of mystery writing and the classic puzzle plot mystery that are so often at odds with each other. There's a lot of diversity in the stories too, sufficient to keep you hooked for many a day—besides the logical puzzle plot, there's something on offer for fans of police procedurals, hardboiled stories and those who like a hint of socio-political commentary in stories as well.

The protagonist of The Borrowed  is Kwan Chun-dok, former Superintendent of the Hong Kong Police who later became a consultant for the same. Renowned for his exceptional crime-solving abilities, he was bestowed many nicknames—'Crime-Solving Machine', 'Eye of Heaven', 'Genius Detective' (and Kwan's pick of the lot, 'Uncle Dok'—also a common Cantonese name for very miserly people). But, reading the first story ("The Truth Between Black and White", 2013), you'll be hard-pressed to believe that he could be that 'grand detective' from legend. For we first encounter him on his deathbed where he doesn't even have the ability to speak or write. Instead, Kwan's protégé, Inspector Sonny Lok, employs his services (as an 'armchair detective' of sorts) in a tricky case where an 'inside job' (a murder) is made to look like a robbery gone wrong. Kwan is able to deceptively 'solve' the case after he is hooked up to a device that analyses his brain waves, through which he is able to respond only with a YES or a NO to questions asked. It's a device I have seen once in an episode of that meme-worthy excuse of a detective show called C. I. D.—but rest assured, it has been executed with far greater finesse here.

One of my most favourite things about this book is that it actually follows up on threads and hints that are left dangling before the reader in another story. Characters and locations reappear in multiple stories—and it may perhaps be possible for those truly curious to chart a map of Hong Kong and its changes through the decades, relying on the descriptions here. Apple, the brains behind the unique medical instrument in the first tale, is a central character in the second story ("Prisoner's Honour", 2003). Set in the midst of gang warfare and featuring triads, "Prisoner's Honour" takes a harrowing look at the Hong Kong underworld and also reveals the seedier aspects of the entertainment world. It takes a hardboiled approach but delivers a surprisingly logical conclusion that also carries with it an element of hope for a better future. With its message of hope and elements of social realism, this story is similar to the fifth story  ("Borrowed Place", 1977) where Kwan has to solve the case of the kidnapping of a British child (apparently for ransom money) while also having to deal with rising tensions between the police and other law enforcement agencies, as well as the increasing conflicts between the local and international cadres among the police.

Lok's beginnings and his relationship with mentor Kwan are explored in the third ("The Longest Day", 1997) and the fourth story ("The Balance of Themis", 1989). Both plots focus on Kwan's relentless pursuit of his ultimate nemesis, Shek Boon-tim, and are, arguably, the crème de la crème of the lot. Set against the backdrop of the British handover of Hong Kong, "The Longest Day" opens with convict Shek Boon-tim evading and escaping guards en route to the hospital. As if this wasn't disastrous enough for his last day in the police force, Kwan also has to help his disciple Lok in solving the case of acid bomb attacks before more damage is done, both to innocent bystanders and the police force's image. A number of curious but seemingly unrelated incidents may grab the reader's attention, but the neat, rational manner in which Kwan ties it all, with one central incident as the focal point, is testament to Ho-Kei's consummate skill as a plotter of the highest order.

At this point, it should be evident that Ho-Kei expends much of his efforts unravelling the fraught nature of relations between Hong Kong's various law enforcement agencies and the extent to which they become mired in corruption in each decade. Nowhere is this more apparent than in "The Balance of Themis", perhaps the darkest story in this collection. A stake-out mission to capture one of the Shek brothers, Shek Boon-sing, and their gang, goes horribly wrong in the enormous residential building, Ka Fai Mansions, where they are holed up, leaving six bystanders and three criminals dead, and several policemen injured. But all is not what it seems and a message on a pager warning the criminals suggests the presence of a mole within the police team. The way in which Kwan subverts the established sequence of events completely and unearths the real motive behind all that happened should be a lesson for crime-fiction writers in the art of judicious clue- and information-management and revelation at the correct juncture. Above all, the helping hand that Kwan extends to the rookie Lok (after the events of the failed mission) and his solemn vow to capture the other Shek who escaped and clean up the police force make it hard for one to not root for Kwan Chun-dok.

In the last story ("Borrowed Time", 1967), the reader is transported to 1967 Hong Kong, a summer that saw violent protests and riots in the region. Here, the rookie Kwan, as a beat/patrol cop, is able to thwart a few planned bomb attacks with the crucial help (and brains) of a 'stranger', who becomes a person of interest and whistleblower. The socio-political setting is vibrant and it thrives in atmosphere, but this is, by no means, a traditional puzzle plot story. Kwan even becomes an unwitting 'criminal' towards the end. Still, it is a vital chapter in Kwan's life and career that has a curious circularity about it, when one thinks, retrospectively, of the characters he keeps encountering. You'll of course need to read till the last page to figure out its surprising connection with the first story which is set nearly five decades apart.

The one sore note in the book is the uneven portrayal/representation of women in the stories. The first two stories have strong, empowering women who have their own arcs of redemption and play influential roles in the events of each. However, the fourth and fifth stories have women who have downright tertiary roles. Worse, they are stereotyped and fulfill patriarchal roles and functions that will strike a nerve among many readers today. I do not know if Ho-Kei was trying to say something about the way Hong Kong's society treated women, even those from the upper middle class, in those days, but it could have definitely been handled with more sensitivity and maturity.

The reverse-chronological narrative adds a distinct charm to the book—in many parts, it feels like viewing a vivid, historical and socio-political portrait of Hong Kong, only backwards. While that's definitely one way to enjoy it, a more stimulating and entertaining way to read it would be to work out the many refreshing ways in which the stories, occupying certain points in times past, form different pairs, triads (or even more) with each other. The commonalities may be diverse—the themes addressed, concurring character arcs and intersecting storylines, among others—but this singular exercise, I believe, is essential if one is to derive maximum joy from it.

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: Can a detective novel study the evolution of a city through its history of crime and detection?)