Into Thin Air

"Nobody ever notices postmen somehow ... yet they have passions like other men, and even carry large bags where a small corpse can be stowed quite easily."

—Father Brown in "The Invisible Man" (1911)

This climactic observation in the Father Brown short story is the culmination of one of the first short stories I ever read that took on the theme of the vanishing corpse and the criminal. It is a theme that is fairly prevalent in crime fiction, but one that may be difficult to execute, especially because the limits of 'suspension of disbelief' are often stretched to unrealistic extents due to the dictates of the plot and to lend the 'wow' factor to it. "The Invisible Man" doesn't exactly dazzle with its plot—it is a rather linear, simple story with a slightly creepy sub-plot featuring headless cleaning robots/machines, the spirit of which would reemerge, later, with the automaton in John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge (1938). What the story does do well, without resorting to any complicated trickery, is the portrayal of the 'blind spot' in people's vision and perceptions, and how context and circumstance determine our observation of and reaction to a particular situation. It is a grounded, back-to-the-roots kind of approach that simply sticks to the fundamentals.

Building on these fundamentals, more sophisticated variants of the 'disappearing criminal and/or the transported corpse' theme would be plotted over the next few decades. It may not have been intentional but this year I have had the fortune to read three titles of relatively good acclaim that treat this theme to varying degrees of success. The first of these was The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) by Clayton Rawson, an author I was acquainted with having read his previous work, Death From a Top Hat (1938). A magician by profession, Rawson populated the pages of both novels with magical chicanery of all kind, but the execution is fundamentally different in the two novels. The Footprints on the Ceiling is replete, top to bottom, with a host of tricks and stagecraft that give Rawson an excuse to describe some engrossing magical secrets for the readers. The novel, however, has many more moving parts and character agendas compared to Death From a Top Hat, which is a more focussed read and dealt with perhaps only two or three well-defined set pieces. Consequentially, the minor mysteries in Death From a Top Hat take on a more superficial, showboating nature than in The Footprints on The Ceiling, where the lesser mysteries add to the excessively (and perhaps, irritatingly so) tangential nature of the narrative, yet stay integral to it because the culprit's actions can only be understood in relation to the individual actions and mutually negating deception of the rest of the other criminal characters surrounding the culprit. Whether they intend to or not, the sequence of events has the domino effect of covering up not only for their own selves but also the murderer in their midst. The device of 'covering up for another' can also be seen in a novel such as Seishi Yokomizo's The Inugami Curse, but there, it has a more direct bearing to the main plot than this one, and unfolds in a far less confounding manner than here.

The scale and the complexity of the plot also requires a breakneck pace to be employed early on in Rawson's work, which makes for a most pulpish and thriller-like read. Within the first few chapters, you have an ad for a haunted house that leads the detective, Merlini, and his journalist friend, Ross Harte, heading to Skelton Island. But, before they can even get to the island, Harte is ambushed ("Something that might easily have been the Chrysler building hit me on the top of the head, and was followed immediately by an elegant display of shooting stars in full Technicolor.") and there is a switcheroo involving suitcases and counterfeit guinea coins. Once they land, they come across the corpse of the heiress of the island, Linda Skelton, in an old, decrepit building, followed by an attempt on their own lives when said building is set on fire. Over the course of the night, Merlini, Harte and the readers come across an excessively suspicious cast of characters, there's gunfire, a jungle chase and all the boats are scuttled to prevent the escape of any character. All this goodness and more before the police even appear on the island.

One of the problems of a novel with too many moving parts concerns how the author manages to tie it all up with no loose ends, especially if the characters have diverse, personal motivations of their own that sometimes conflict with each other and manage to be congruent with each other at other times. Similar is the case with The Footprints on The Ceiling—and to his credit, Rawson is able to bring together the diverse narrative strands into a coherent whole, mostly by relying on page after page of exposition that describe magical trickery and scientific phenomena in equally excruciating detail. The effort is much appreciated, but it can be trying for a first-time reader unused to such a treatment. However, sprinkled in between are a few neatly and competently executed ideas—the mystery of the blue-skinned man, the mystery of the eponymous footprints on the ceiling and the segment involving decompression sickness which is actually the culmination of the independent actions of quite a few characters that ultimately claims the life of one of the Skelton siblings. On the flip side, the plethora of mysterious incidents, all to be explained by Merlini, ensures that certain events are simply glossed over. For instance, there are two separate instances in the novel that involve the disappearance and reappearance of corpses and which fulfill different narrative purposes. However, these are explained in a most desultory manner, while the motivations behind these actions seem almost superfluous to the needs of the core plot, existing seemingly to only complicate the story further.

Two other issues hurt the novel even further. One is the lack of a map or diagram of the island and its various scenes of crime, which makes it difficult to picture some of the ingenious tricks such as the bullet 'that bends around walls' and the shootout at the climax of the novel that claims the lives of two of the cast, somewhat inexplicably and to the bewilderment of the rest of the characters and the readers. Even more than this is a logistical issue that I would perhaps terms as 'the problem of the starting point'. However well Rawson pulls off the connecting-the-threads act at the end, there's this persistent sense of jarring disconnect throughout. Much of it, I believe, has to do with the point at which the readers are introduced to the novel. As later events attest, the plans of many of the characters are already underway by the time Harte and Merlini land on the island, and even before Harte is attacked in the opening chapters. One could even argue that Harte and Merlini arrive when these plans have almost matured completely. What this results in is that we are deprived of the larger context because the novel is seen through Harte and Merlini's perspectives—and the reconstruction of the events prior to those in the novel, which are essential to understand the happenings in the present day, is simply conjecture on Merlini's part. While this lends to the excellent shock value of the work, for those looking to solve the incidents on their own rather than simply going along for the ride, it can be very frustrating because without the context of events past, the onslaught of the present events leads to constant cluelessness and befuddlement (what is happening? why is it happening?) and not always in a good way, even with the minor mysteries being explained over the course of the novel. I think the novel would have been better served if Rawson could have interspersed the narrative with individual perspectives from the suspects (first-person and/or otherwise) other than Harte and Merlini, casting light on their motivations and actions, their personal opinions of the fellow cast members and how their thoughts and plans were influenced by those of the other. It is a ploy that was used to devastating effect in Szu-Yen Lin's Death in the House of Rain—and in the case of The Footprints on The Ceiling, it could have successfully shifted the starting point to an earlier period, in the segments where the characters shared their perspectives and provided the necessary context, perhaps making for a fairer and more dynamic read.

***

A better example of a good starting point lies in Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit (1944), long touted to be one of the best locked-room mysteries ever written. Like Rawson, Talbot too was a magician with the result that Rim of the Pit is full of exquisite magical flourishes that set up an atmosphere of hair-raising, full-blown horror. But, it is not an all-out assault from the word go. A bit of breathing space at the start of the work allows readers to appreciate the background and context, while a few minor but striking incidents (such as the voice of a deceased person being heard over a frozen lake, eerie accordion music suddenly being played in a wooden lodge and threatening messages being left in door cracks) prepare one for the horror soon to unfold.

Things escalate—and brilliantly so, to a feverish pitch—when the cast gathers together in snowbound New England (Canada). Eight participants are invited by the Ogden family to attend a seance by one Irene Ogden in the Cabrioun, the two-floored log house built by Irene's former deceased husband—an elaborate ploy by Irene's current husband, Frank, to gain the 'permission' of Irene's deceased husband to open up a profitable stretch of a forest for the purpose of logging. The seance veers off in a most unpredictable direction when the spirit of Irene's former husband, who appears in the form of a Windigo (a mythological creature of evil in Native American cultures) and berates her vehemently before disappearing. To pile on the humiliation even further, one of the guests happens to be a magician called Vok who immediately sees through some of the other mysterious phenomena in the seance and denounces Irene as a fraud, leaving her a bundle of nerves. The only real mystery at this point is the appearance of the spirit.

A somewhat decent page-turner would probably have focussed on developing this singular plot point further in an engaging manner. But, in a masterpiece such as Rim of the Pit, the end of the seance marks the point where the story both springs into life all of a sudden and launches into overdrive. It is also at this point that the novel starts resembling The Footprints on The Ceiling in earnest, with the sheer number and diversity of impossibilities being presented to the reader in a dizzying, breakneck pace. Irene soon meets her end in a grisly manner in a locked room, mirrors are found smashed in the Cabrioun, footprints are discovered 'leading to nowhere' in an open snowfield, the Windigo makes an appearance again, Frank Ogden seemingly loses his mind and still manages to escape from a locked room, using the collective 'blind spot' of the onlookers (a throwback to Chestertonian aesthetics?) and is later found dead outside in the midst of a blizzard with no surrounding footprints. What helps Rim of the Pit compared to The Footprints on the Ceiling is its relative straightforward, linear narrative, with a marked paucity of character motivations and plans as far as their individual actions are concerned. That energy is instead expended in sustaining the ambience of horror, invited and uninvited, throughout the work. This is no mean feat given the fact that some of the impossibilities—such as that of the disappearance of the phantom in the seance, and the mysteries surrounding the smashing of the mirrors, the appearance of Irene Ogden's corpse in a locked room, the disappearance of Frank Ogden from a locked room—are great pieces of logical, rational misdirection and obfuscation that make use of positional and circumstantial awareness to distract readers and characters alike.

What's really disappointing to me, however, is the denouement to the novel. A work so steeped in horror deserved a better ending, especially when one considers the 'false ending' where the remaining characters work in cahoots to cook up an overelaborate scenario to hoodwink the police who would investigate the incident. In the aftermath of this cover-up, however, in typical GAD fashion, the detective Rogan Kincaid bares it all (and how he did so) before the culprit in the midst of a most genteel conversation in a train-car—a starkly observable tonal shift for the worse, veering more towards the armchair-detective school of stories, and not at all befitting of its status as an excellent horror-detective story.

***

However, in terms of both quality and aesthetics, I think I am most biased towards John Sladek's Invisible Green (1977) as the best of the lot being discussed here. Now, let me clarify at the very outset that Invisible Green is a work quite unlike either Rim of the Pit and The Footprints on The Ceiling, and comparing them isn't exactly a fair practice on my part. What they do have in common, however, is a love for impossibilities and locked rooms, even though the way Invisible Green goes about expressing its admiration and then engineering its own twists on these tropes is very different from the treatments seen in the other two.

Invisible Green does not have a sudden spate of impossibility after impossibility as seen in Rim of the Pit, nor does it have excessive distractions in the form of too many divergent character motivations and plans (as was the case in The Footprints on The Ceiling). In fact, it has three distinct, well-defined scenarios with the rest of the incidents serving merely as misdirection/red herrings or to enhance the setting and purpose of these scenarios. All of them feature murders—one of them in almost locked-room conditions, another in impossible circumstances and a third featuring a clever subversion of locked-room mystery conventions.

For me, the best thing about Invisible Green was its pacing. For a relatively modern work, the setup is as classical as it gets—and befitting its nature, Sladek devotes both time and space to build up the eccentricities of each character, and to allow the plot to breathe, fester and develop. It starts in the past, with a meeting of the Seven Unravellers, a club of seven odd personalities, to whom "murder meant a game with rules" and "suspects with false alibis, clues becoming red herrings, and courtroom revelations". The cast is a diverse one—from word-game and logic puzzle aficionado Miss Dorothy Pharaoh and the conspiracy theorist and "crypto Nazi" Major Edgar Stokes (with his paranoia of a Communist takeover) to the bohemian artist Gervase Hyde (with his predilection for real crimes and the psychological angle), the violent police constable Frank Danby (with his love for "sensational news stories of shotgun murders"), the chemistry student Leonard Latimer Derek Portman (who had read "all the weightiest tomes" on forensic chemistry and "the stories of R. A. Freeman, ...  where a murderer is hanged by the evidence from a single speck of dust"), the solicitor's clerk Derek Portman (who "enjoyed cutting into the legal fabric of other murder mysteries") and finally, the good old baronet, Sir Anthony Fitch.

The scene soon shifts to more than 30 years later, when Miss Pharaoh sends out invitations for a reunion of the remaining members of the Seven Unravellers (Sir Anthony having long passed away) sometime in the 1970s. In the meantime, Major Stokes has grown even more paranoid of a Communist conspiracy targetting his life (which he does by deciphering 'clues' in the Times crossword and codes in a movie hall, no less!). His state concerns Miss Pharaoh, even more so when it transpires, through Stokes' own admission, that an invisible antagonist, Mr Green, is issuing threats to the major and offering money to him to move out of the house. Soon, his cat is murdered too. Thus it is that Miss Pharaoh invites her acquaintance Thackeray Phin, a detective whose sense of fashion leads Inspector Gaylord of the Scotland Yard to comment that he looked like "best man at a pimp's wedding".

Stokes dies of a heart attack in the hall toilet of his home as Phin observes the same fortified house with spiked windows and floors sprinkled with talcum powder to capture footprints. Yet, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the death was not a suicide or accidental. As Phin starts investigating this devilish incident, he discovers that the rest of the Unravellers have been the victims of certain non-malicious attacks, all linked to a common theme—colours. The investigation soon leads the Unravellers and Phin to Frank Danby's seaside residence. Here, Danby too is inexplicably stabbed to death while the exits were being watched, after saying "Who are you" presumably to his murderer, even though the possible suspects had been introduced to him only moments before. The third murder, that of Miss Pharaoh clubbed to death, reveals itself with the discovery of Miss Pharaoh's corpse in her own house, with the rest of the cast miles away at different locations.

So, the three core puzzles of the novel take up different challenges. The first is a classic locked-room setup, the solution to which is underplayed by Phin himself. But, it is no less stunning—and its functionality is borrowed in one of the story arcs of Seimaru Amagi's Tantei Gakuen Q (more specifically, the Q vs A storyline), even though the tool Amagi uses in his story is the one Sladek rejects in Invisible Green. The second one isn't really innovative and may even be considered a bit of a cheat by some, but to me, it's a wonderful case study in realising the difference between a simple observation based on what is visible and making the right interpretation based on the said observation, by also factoring in other contextual information gleaned before, which may not be immediately apparent in the current circumstance. Personally, however, I have the highest regard for the third incident. Not only is it a subversion of the locked-room trope with the corpse (and by extension, the assumed scene of crime) and nearly all the suspects seemingly in different locations at the time of commission, it also deliciously inserts the unbreakable alibi conundrum into the equation. The manner in which this particular incident is explained is perhaps the icing on top of the cake. Seen as a whole, the three problems and the overarching essence and rationale of Invisible Green evoke the spirits of John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie in sufficient measure.

What's even more pleasantly surprising is how contemporary the work feels for its time. The effort spent in delineating the characteristics of the culprit (to make them the 'right fit') and the 'modern' nature of the motive behind the crimes not only make Invisible Green a product of its time, it also lends a high degree of credulity and believability to the work. Add to this the wry, easy humour with which Sladek peppers this story (particularly in the climax, which, to me, replicated the chaotic energy and hilarity of the climax of Edmund Crispin's 1946 work, The Moving Toyshop)—and I think we have a work that is perhaps deserving of a higher rank than what Edward D. Hoch and other literary reviewers and experts gave it in their 1981 poll.

As a reader, one of the most satisfying achievements is to discover an author whose works leave you with the dual feelings of bliss and wanting more, at the same time. Early last year, I hadn't the foggiest idea of who John Sladek was or what his works were like. I do not believe in subscribing to reading goals, but Invisible Green might have, unwittingly, led me to have one for 2023.

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: Crime fiction: Three novels where we don’t see the solutions because of our blind spots)

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Tales of Gokumon Island

Seishi Yokomizo’s first Kosuke Kindaichi novel, The Honjin Murders, was serialised in the Houseki magazine between April and December 1946, but the story itself was set in pre-World War II Japan (more precisely, in 1937) in a rural farming community in distant Okayama. Just the following year (January 1947), Yokomizo would start serialising Death on Gokumon Island, the second Kindaichi adventure, which he would eventually complete in October 1948. Publication-wise, there’s not much of a gap between the two works; however, in storytelling terms, nearly a decade has passed, with the latter set after the conclusion of World War II (1946).

This passage of time is significant, especially as Death on Gokumon Island is steeped in local Japanese culture that mingles with the pervasive atmosphere of uncertainty and chaos in the aftermath of the war in unholy fashion. The predicament of Kindaichi (the sleuth) in the intervening period between 1937 and 1946 is an indication of this. He was drafted by the army and saw action in China, New Guinea and several other islands before returning to Tokyo, with the result that “the best years of his life became a kind of void”. As a matter of fact, it is the mysterious dying request of his wartime comrade that draws Kindaichi to Gokumon Island just as surely as a lighthouse beacon beckons a ship in choppy waters to safety.

Gokumon Island (translating to Hell’s Gate Island and/or Prison Gate Island), though, truly lives up to its moniker over the course of the novel. The groundwork for this is laid even before Kindaichi sets foot on the sinister and foreboding island. Yokomizo comes across as a gifted storyteller, and his skills express themselves not just in the plotting of fiendish puzzles but also in the way he describes the geography and history of the isolated (but not functionally so), insular Gokumon Island and its long tryst with criminals, pirates and the fishing community. This treatment is essential because of the ‘insider-outsider’ dynamic the novel sets up; it is essential for outsiders to understand the culture and the thinking of the islanders as well as the politics and powerplay between the residents and families to make an iota of sense of the events that happen on Gokumon Island. Yokomizo paints vivid portraits of all these aspects, often in lyrical, flavourful prose, allowing one to ‘live through’ the novel, even though for one looking to solve the mysteries, those important insights, revelations and throwbacks into the past may not be fairly or favorably timed.

The mysteries of Death on Gokumon Island revolve around the gruesome deaths of the three sisters of the aforementioned wartime friend of Kindaichi, Chimata Kito. Strangely enough, Chimata had an inkling of what would transpire even before he died on a repatriation vessel five days before he would have reached his Gokumon Island. On his deathbed, Chimata fervently requests Kindaichi to go to the island to save the three sisters—Tsukiyo (the eldest), Yukie and Hanako (the youngest). Kindaichi intends to keep his promise but completely fails to do so. The sisters are all killed in bizarre ways without rhyme and reason: Hanako is hung upside down from a plum tree on the grounds of a temple, Yukie’s corpse finds its way under a gigantic temple bell, while Tsukiyo is found dead in the garb of an ancient shamanic priestess within the prayer house in the compound of the head Kito household. Conceivably, only one explanation can suffice for all the happenings: insanity.

Insanity is indeed the all-pervasive theme of the novel, but the diverse layers of madness that Yokomizo unravels are complex and worthy of admiration. It is also testament to the progress Yokomizo makes as an author between his first and second works. After the first murder, Kindaichi is puzzling over the nature of the crime and the need to stage it in such a lurid manner, he ruminates thus: 

"And there was the crux of the matter. Detective Kosuke Kindaichi had been pondering the exact same question. Was it simply the murderer showing off? Just like some novelists, trying to find a fresh story, think up the most excessively theatrical settings, had this murderer, just on a whim, painted this ghastly spectacle out of flesh and blood?

No, no, no.

Kosuke Kindaichi didn’t believe anything of the sort. He was convinced that the fact that Hanako’s corpse had been hung upside down on the tree held some kind of profound significance. It was crazy, utterly insane. But the whole of Gokumon Island itself had something crazy about it. The island’s peculiar ways must have had some profound effect on both the murderer’s motive and method."

This is as clear a statement of authorial intent as any you will ever find. With that reference to ‘excessively theatrical settings’, Yokomizo throws shade at his previous work and assures readers that Death on Gokumon Island will not be alike The Honjin Murders. It also paves the way for the eventual unveiling of the novel’s plot as a nursery-rhyme-themed serial murder (or, more appropriately, a haiku-themed one).

As stated earlier, madness forms the overarching theme of the novel, and the haiku-themed modus operandi is only one of the numerous layers. As the late Dr Sari Kawana mentions in her essay “With Rhyme and Reason: Yokomizo Seishi’s Postwar Murder Mysteries”, Gokumon Island takes after its predecessors in S. S. Van Dine’s The Bishop Murder Case (1929) and Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders (1935) and And Then There Were One (1939). More significantly, as stated in the essay, it is perhaps one of the earliest instances of the use of such a device in Japanese crime fiction, as it remained unused in the pre-War years. Kawana argues that World War II was the necessary prerequisite for authors such as Yokomizo to explore the potential of Western devices such as the nursery rhyme and adapt them for their own indigenous purposes. And as it transpires, the haikus navigate a weird, transitory world in Gokumon Island where several orders collide and mingle—and where order and reason make way for unreason and chaos.

The haikus, in a way, can be said to be the ‘will’ and legacy of a deceased patriarch of the Kito family, trying to ensure the longevity and ’purity’ of a family line and order that he helped set up. The aforesaid patriarch, for his own selfish purposes, undid an even older order rife with criminal and unlawful activities by identifying poverty as the root of all plagues on the island. An unintended side effect of the patriarch’s quest for prosperity is that it also leads other islanders to grow rich and rise in status. However, on the flip side, these developments also set up rival factions, conflicting loyalties, deeply troubled interpersonal relations and ultimately madness (particularly, in the case of the three sisters and their father and mother) in unforeseen ways. Perhaps, this also explains why Kindaichi completely misreads the affair till the very end and has such a tough time investigating and understanding the myriad ways and power structures and hierarchies (religious, political, familial and professional) of the island, and why he has to, ultimately and perhaps unsatisfactorily, depend primarily on his conversations with various ‘untrustworthy’ people (instead of more concrete evidence) to deduce whodunnit and howdunnit. After all, with the level of distrust among the people of the island, is it any real surprise they would also harbor suspicions about the sleuth, especially as he is an outsider? Though unwilling to state the purpose of his visit, it is through a revelation of his status as a renowned private detective that Kindaichi is finally able to stamp his authority as an ‘agent of order’.

Ironically, the haikus are meant to be a safeguard against the inevitable turmoil to be wrought by World War II. In effect, seen in the light of the patriarch’s intentions and the island’s own convoluted logic, the haikus are straightforward agents of order meant to ensure that the effects of the War do not adversely affect the lineage and succession of the main family. In execution though, things fall apart completely and sensationally so. The unprecedented chaos and turmoil brought about by World War II subsumes the entirety of Gokumon Island and especially its powerful personalities in a maddening miasma from which there is no way out. The greatest testament to this is the revelation at the end that the execution of the murders ensures the tragic failure of both the detective and the culprits. The real culprit ultimately turns out to be the vagaries of World War II that usher in a third age on Gokumon Island despite the insane (yet, at the same time, logical) efforts—an unforeseen age where prima facie, most of the remnants of the previous orders have perished with the demise of their practitioners and custodians.

Kawana’s instructive, thought-provoking essay mentioned earlier connects several strands of the novel with Yokomizo’s experiences of the war. Kawana cites Yokomizo’s own observations regarding how his stay in “feudal” Okayama (during the World War II years) and its obsession with “pedigree”, “clan” and lineage (“obsolete” terms in urban Japan by then) largely influenced his depictions of the complexities of the rural, isolated communities in works such as The Honjin Murders and Death on Gokumon Island. Kawana also mentions Yokomizo’s curious contention that rationality and consuming detective fiction could have saved Japan from the clutches of fascism and militarist ideologies. Seen in the light of these facts, Death on Gokumon Island certainly seems to make a socio-cultural and political statement against the nuisance of war. 

In fact, interweaving these real-life elements, ideologies and cultural elements against the backdrop of a war and its aftermath and then positing rationality against the forces of chaos caused by an unholy combination of the war and older world orders makes Gokumon Island very much a product of its times. Not surprisingly then, a number of elements have not aged well—the uncomfortable omnipresence of patriarch worship, the brusque, rough-edged manner in which the topic of mental health is portrayed, almost ‘villainized’ and the blatant sexism in some parts of the novel will surely stick out as sore thumbs, even though they are meant to be representative of the age in which the novel is set. A particularly egregious example can be seen in the setup of Tsukiyo’s murder where a lighthearted, banter-filled conversation assumes problematic proportions due to the manner in which the issue of female sexual consent is discussed; one can well imagine such sections having a trigger warning or a red flag (literally) to caution readers in the 21st century.

Even with the shocking nature of commentary in quite a few passages, it is understandable why Death on Gokumon Island became a ‘beloved classic’ for Japanese readers. It may be difficult for audiences outside Japan to understand its merits beyond that of a mystery novel without the necessary context, but for a Japanese readership, several aspects of it must have resonated deeply with them when it was serialised. The hyperlocal setting, the dedicated effort in setting up a fictional, but recognisable, almost authentic Japanese landscape modeled on the aesthetics of wabi (transience and beauty), sabi (imperfection) and yūgen (profound subtlety), showcasing the insider-outsider dichotomy, the nuanced use of religion, politics, fishing, and theater in setting up a convincing mystery that can be termed as organically ‘Japanese’—these may have been some of the attractions and hooks that also mirrored the state of contemporary Japan back then. Above all, Death on Gokumon Island has literary value beyond its sensationalist roots, as the use of haikus by Matsuo Bashō and Takarai Kikaku well illustrates. The novel’s real strength lies in its beautiful, lyrical, character-driven approach, with sketches and dialogues that propel the narrative, provide motives for the cast, shine a broad light on the complex past and present of a fictional island, and scathingly, tragically indict the monster threatening both fictional and real Japan at that time—a world war.  

(This post was published on the Scroll website with the following title: For whom the bell tolls: tales of murder and madness on the fictional Gokumon Island)

Random Observations: Gimmicks in Crime Fiction

It may be, ultimately, a matter of preference, but, much like professional wrestling, I enjoy my crime fiction a lot more when there are gimmicks involved. This is especially true in the case of a long-running series, where I need that extra incentive to stay invested. What I usually look for in a series are the following: a sense of continuity however slight, and, more importantly, consistency (the cast staying true to its established characters/features, barring exceptional/strongly reasoned-out circumstances; an authorial style and voice that fits the ambience of the work and its purpose, without drastic changes or too much flitting around or unexplained/needless experimentation; no execution of a convenient, contrived plot device or deus ex machina seemingly out of nowhere as a surprising plot twist but which undoes all the groundwork laid before that point). Which is why I find it easier to think of a work's merits and the author's crafts in terms of the gimmicks introduced and the way they are treated.

In my opinion, gimmicks are, broadly speaking, identifiable, distinguishable elements that constitute an author's trademark, prima facie, at the time they were published. The disclaimer about the time of publication is an important one as gimmicks are also the fundamental, building blocks of crime fiction tropes. Which is to say, any unique aspect (say, for instance, the introduction of the locked room mystery in Israel Zangwill's The Big Bow Mystery) is particularly prone to capturing the imagination of future authors, and if it proves to be popular enough, the more the likelihood of said aspect to be borrowed and replicated (albeit, in different ways). This accounts for the dual and peculiarly paradoxical nature of gimmicks: from a microscopic viewpoint, the elements have to be unique enough for them to be recognised as an author's trademark; from a macroscopic perspective, however, they can be a part of an already established, pre-existing, overarching trope or sub-genre.

As far as my reading of the genre is concerned, I have noticed authors to establish gimmicks predominantly in two ways:

• Characterisation
• Plotting and narrative structuring  

Characterisation

One of the simpler ways in which authors establish gimmicks is by bestowing their protagonists (usually the sleuths) with a strong visual identity. Sherlock Holmes, arguably the world's most popular private detective till date, is introduced in A Study in Scarlet as a man "over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller." Furthermore, he had "sharp and piercing" eyes and a "thin, hawk-like nose" that "gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision." A study in contrast would be Agatha Christie's creation, Hercule Poirot, described in The Mysterious Affair at Styles as "hardly more than five feet four inches", with a head "exactly the shape of an egg" and a "very stiff and military moustache." Another remarkable aspect of his appearance was the "neatness of his appearance"—in the words of Captain Hastings, "a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound." Nero Wolfe, a perfectly hilarious embodiment of the 'armchair detective' set in a world of pulp fiction, is essentially defined by his inability to physically move around—according to his long-serving assistant Archie Goodwin, Wolfe weighs "a seventh of a ton" who "limits his physical movements to what he regards as the irreducible essentials." 

Given the astonishing richness of the visual markers in these descriptions, it's little surprise then that multiple adaptations of these popular works have often stayed as true to the original work as possible, as far as the portrayal of the lead detective is concerned. Consequentially, the actors essaying these roles have also become household names among crime fiction aficionados and beyond (in some cases)—for instance, Basil Rathbone's and Jeremy Brett's Holmes, David Suchet's and Peter Ustinov's Poirot, Maury Chaykin's Wolfe, among many, many others. 

If a character struck gold, such as is the case with Holmes, it could also end up serving as an inspiration for new and upcoming authors. The Max Carrados stories by Ernest Bramahm, which, 1914 onwards, shared space in the Strand Magazine alongside Doyle's Holmes, are a case in point. The distinguishing feature of Carrados is his blindness that has somehow heightened his other senses exceptionally—the unique premise of a 20th-century Daredevil, if you will. He is able to 'read' print and detect coin forgeries through the sense of touch with equal expertise, while his elevated perception enables him to make masterly deductions and hunt down nefarious criminals. Like Holmes, he also happens to be an authority in a somewhat esoteric, specialised field—numismatics.

But, strong visual descriptors are not the only way in which authors set up gimmicks. Mannerisms, character itches and eccentricities can be equally useful as guides. Baroness Orczy's Old Man in the Corner, another detective of the Holmesian school and perhaps one of the earliest armchair detectives, has a habit of tying pieces of string into extremely complicated knots at the height of his excitement, leading his captive audience to offer a ball of yarn as an incentive to start his explanations. For sources to base his deductions on, he relies on sensationalist newspaper accounts and has a penchant for attending the most crowded court gatherings ever. Seishi Yokomizo's sleuth, Kosuke Kindaichi, who is otherwise recognisable by his serge hakama outfit and a felt hat, often stammers and violently scratches his wild and unruly hair when confronted with an inexplicable puzzle. As another favourite ploy by authors to lend their creations a definite identity, catchphrases too fall in this very same category. Memorable as they may be in their initial form, personally speaking, I am thoroughly entertained when popular catchphrases and utterances/explanations are cleverly and funnily parodied/pastiched—such a treatment seems to me to be a subtle acknowledgement of a character's legacy while being cheeky about it in a good-natured way.

Other ways in which characters gain unique identities include their professions—for instance, magician (in the cases of Clayton Rawson's Merlini, David Renwick's Jonathan Creek and Bengali author Bimal Kar's Kinkar Kishore Ray), professor (in the case of R. Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke), astrologer (in the case of Soji Shimada's Kiyoshi Mitarai), among others. In the same vein but on a slightly different note, John Dickson Carr's Chestertonian sleuth Dr Gideon Fell is the author of some unconventional treatises—The Drinking Customs of England From The Earliest Days, Romances of the Seventeenth Century and another on the supernatural in English fiction. 

Yet another technique involves providing revealing insights into the lives and daily struggles of the investigators, portraying them as human figures and not solely rational, analytical, deduction supermachines. Such a treatment has been a staple particularly in the world of Scandinavian crime fiction, from Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck series to Henning Mankell's Wallander stories and more besides, where the extremely sobering depressing realities of the lives of the policemen and detectives serve to add to the bleakness quotient of the works. An obligatory reference must also be made to Russian author Boris Akunin's supremely entertaining Erast Fandorin novels, in which the protagonist goes through what I like to term as an 'emotional blue screen of death' in almost every one of the works. In comparison, Bengali author Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay's Byomkesh Bakshi enjoys a refreshingly normal and relatively happy family life—one marked, mostly, by progressive arguments and discussions with his friend and his wife.  

Plotting and narrative structuring

In the Richard-Levinson-and-William-Link-produced Ellery Queen TV series, one of my favourite detective shows of all time, there are two challenges issued to the viewers—one at the very beginning and the other by the fourth-wall-breaking Ellery Queen, essayed by Jim Hutton, at a point he believes he has gathered all the evidence and connected all the threads of the matter. This simple addition was a wonderful twist and an intellectually stimulating exercise that did away with the tried-and-tested trope of the sleuth having to 'spoonfeed' everything at the end, without giving the audience an opportunity to exercise their "little grey cells". It is this format that has stayed with me the most; this, despite the extremely commendable nature of the puzzles themselves.

The same duo of Levinson and Link were behind the excellent series Columbo that turned the traditional whodunnit on its head and instead presented engaging howdunnits and inverted mysteries. Viewers were shown the  criminal acts within the first half of each episode with the identity of the culprit being no secret; instead, the audience had to correctly identify the loopholes in the modus operandi and the way in which Lieutenant Columbo was most likely to indict the criminal. The success of this series, in turn, led renowned playwright  Kōki Mitani to create an equally absorbing Japanese version of Columbo called Furuhata Ninzaburō.

The point of mentioning these three diverse shows is to highlight the fact that in crime fiction the way a story unfolds and the manner in which the narrative is laid out may well be the difference between a good piece of fiction and a great one. In its heyday, the so-called Golden Age of Detective Fiction was hailed for the intellectual quotient it brought to the table. However, the stories were also zealously faithful to rules set up by a close circle of authors comprising the Detection Club. And, thus it is that one encounters some familiar sequences and setups in a Golden Age work—a fair distribution of clues, red herrings galore, and the obligatory denouement scene where the sleuth gathers all parties concerned, shows off their deductions and then goes on to expose and denounce the culprit. And yet, one wonders how a work such as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that subverted one of the most important cardinal rules of the time outshone and had greater longevity than the numerous others that stayed faithful to the literary conventions of the era, only to largely forgotten in the subsequent eras (till a favourable time of rediscovery unearths them again). Experimenting with rules and conventions, though risky, can be rewarding. For instance, Baroness Orczy's The Old Man in the Corner and Gladys Mitchell's Mrs Bradley stories occupy morally grey areas where often, the rule of law isn't followed to the t, and the protagonist often praises the perpetrator's ability to hoodwink the police and the law, even going to the point of shielding them from their comeuppance—a potential novelty for readers too familiar with the 'goody-two-shoes' nature of fictional investigators.

Gimmicks or tropes established via plotting and narrative structuring, therefore, exhibit a cyclical and paradoxical nature. They arise in response to—often in opposition to—the conventions of a particular era or style, then gain legitimacy, later establishing themselves in the mainstream firmly enough to contribute their own to the world of tropes. The hardboiled genre, focusing more on the gritty, soul-crushing work of ordinary gumshoes in extremely harsh, unforgiving and hostile environment than anything, evolved as a counterpoint to the excessive liberties taken by authors of traditional whodunnits and the figure of the 'great, grand detective', both of which 'threatened' to take the genre away from more realistic moorings to far-fetched flights of unchecked imagination and fancy. The police procedural, on the other hand, is a more introspective genre reflecting widely on the nature of crime itself, its origins, its implications and the effects it has on society across different strata. The immensely popular psychological thriller veers into a different territory, often endeavouring to provide an understanding and a vivid picture of the inner workings and motivations of a criminal mind. In this, and especially the way in which it has developed in the 21st century, it can even be said that psychological thrillers share more similarities with true crime than fiction itself.

Intersections

The discussion above shouldn't be taken to mean that the two aspects are worlds apart without any possibility of crossing paths with each other. There exist gimmicks that advance the cause of both—Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, the two works I have talked about the most on this blog till date, are illustrative examples. One of the central points of the Detective Conan series is that of a detective being shrunk, literally, into the size of a kindergarten student. Taking up this fantastical premise, the manga's plot advances with the readers still awaiting its resolution of whether Conan is able to revert to his original body, while exacting justice on the organisation responsible for his plight—a perfect example of a very particular character detail propelling the plot of a work for above 1,000 episodes/chapters. The latest iteration of the Kindaichi series does this slightly differently. Long-time fans will undoubtedly be aware of Hajime Kindaichi's trademark catchphrase, "In the name of my grandfather", which, as a teenager, he uttered every single time before resolving to solve a case. However, in a recent series featuring the adventures of Kindaichi as a 37 year old, it turns out that the detective, now moonlighting as a corporate-sector worker, no longer wishes to be involved in any mysteries. The circumstances surrounding this radical shift in his character have not been revealed yet, forming one of the forces that is driving the plot forward for now. 

A reverse example of a plot detail influencing characterisation further down the line can be found in the Erast Fandorin series. In the first novel, The Winter Queen, certain events at the very end drastically alter Fandorin's constitution, physically as well as mentally. The reader comes to witness the character's change prominently several times in the series, but it all ties back to the first novel whose events also influence Fandorin's decisions and actions in the fourth novel, The Death of Achilles.

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Gimmicks, therefore, serve multiple purposes: as a unique identifier, a useful analytical tool, a foundational element of a trope, and much more. Personally, though, the reason I find gimmicks to be most relatable is because I find them to be one of the more entertaining and 'realistic' elements of detective and crime fiction. In our daily lives, we are all victims of our own habits, each of us unconsciously or subconsciously inhabiting a gimmick (or gimmicks) that are noticeable only when the more extreme traits surface. It is, perhaps, only natural that crime fiction, with its roots in an imagined reconstruction or an approximate simulation of all-too-human observations, ratiocinisation and deduction, would aspire to do the same with gimmicks.