Dr Fell nodded.
The Case of the Constant Suicides, by John Dickson Carr
“Yes,” he agreed. “Then what would you say if I were to tell you that Angus Campbell really committed suicide after all?”
“I should reply,” said Kathryn, “that I felt absolutely cheated!”
“May I submit,” Dr Fell added after a pause, “that this is the only explanation which fits all the facts?”
“Then if we’re not looking for a murderer —”
“Oh, my dear…! We are looking for a murderer!”
A review of An Eerie and Artless Enclosed World, volume 2 of the Sekai series
Warning: moderate spoilers ahead for the first two volumes of the Sekai series
Locked-rooms are impossible. While much was already made of the impossibility of mystery novels in a prior review, locked-rooms being impossible is not something that can be said in a purely literal sense. Many rooms have doors, and those doors can be locked. Without the notion of a locked-room, the concept of a prison cell would be entirely incoherent. Instead, the impossibility of locked-rooms is something which can only be asserted as a metaphorical phenomenon. There is no such thing as a murdered corpse which can be hermetically sealed in a chamber with no entry or exits. There are no such impossible crimes in this world. At the end of every mystery novel the super sleuth, no matter how amateurish they are, will cast away the illusion of the locked-room and make it clear to the audience that the apparently impossible phenomenon that they witnessed was nothing more than an ordinary crime. The notion of an extraordinary crime, an abnormal incident, is merely a trick of the mind created by the breaking of the world at the level of perception until what is seen differs sufficiently from reality. Reality always returns the abnormal to the normal, once the truth is revealed. Therefore, returning to the question of locked-rooms, even if a room containing a murdered corpse appears by all reasonable standards to prevent entry and exit of the culprit, we must accept the premise that no such room could exist. Even if an abnormal, impossible world appears before us, in due course the banality of reality will overcome that impossibility once the truth is revealed. Yet, perhaps, if we were to imagine the closest conditions to something akin to the impossible locked-room which we can allow to exist, we might get somewhere. If we were to reject the coincidence of a seemingly impossible crime, which breaks the perception of the world apart, and leaves us behind: we should instead imagine an enclosed space where the abnormal and impossible is protected from the truth-seekers who would seek to restore the unexceptional reality of the outside world. Even if it could only exist temporarily, such an enclosed world could be a kind of locked-room, a space where people really do behave in impossible ways, without resorting to illusions. In such a space, those caught up in these impossible acts would not be the culprits, but the victims. The culprit, in the true sense of the word, would only be the one who created this locked-room, this space containing the possibility of crimes that are impossible for residents of the ordinary, real world.
At least, the author’s face gave off such an impression.
An Eerie and Artless Enclosed World is a Japanese shinhonkaku style mystery novel written by Nisio, Isin and first published in 2007. It immediately sets itself apart from its ilk with its bizarre choice of setting for a murder mystery; it is not anywhere as trivial as a supernatural world, mind you, but a junior high school. In other words, this is a story about children. The cast here is too young to even star in a Nancy Drew story. Some may dispute that this setting is particularly abnormal, but one cannot dispute that any supernatural or fantastical setting imaginable is more obvious as a locale for murder than a junior high school.
Additionally, as the second volume of the Sekai — or World — series, this novel (which shall henceforth be known as merely An Enclosed World, for the sake of brevity) has the unenviable task of being the sequel to my favourite mystery novel ever written. Indeed, when I first finished its predecessor and wrote my review of it, I did not feel nearly that strongly about it even as I lavished it with praise. However, the more time I spent thinking about that book, the more it achieved the figurative gold medal. As a result, the bar was set insurmountably high for An Enclosed World — and given that fact, it did pretty damn well.
An Enclosed World stars Choushi Kushinaka, a student in his first year of junior high school (middle school). He lives day to day, enveloped in melancholy and ennui at the prospect of facing the air of seemingly inevitable, unchanging normalcy that faces him. As a result, he gravitates towards the most eccentric people in his life: The so-called three great weirdos, a group that includes his own sister; and of course, the supreme weirdo above even those three in the eccentricity hierarchy, Meiro Byouinzaka. Meiro is the younger cousin of Kuroneko Byouinzaka, the legendary detective character who first appeared in the prior novel. However, other than that familial connection, there is little to mark An Enclosed World as a sequel to Our Broken World, making for a very strange kind of follow-up story.
Yet, even as it lacks an emphasis on literal continuity, An Enclosed World is one of the most strikingly appropriate and innovatively written sequels I have had the pleasure of reading in a long time. While Samatoki was a dense and sophisticated narrator, Choushi is immediately distinguished by his light-hearted and vibrantly comedic perspective. Both styles influence the core of their respective texts. While Our Broken World is a gripping and dense read, An Enclosed World is a breezy and emotionally varied experience. By way of a John Dickson Carr comparison, An Enclosed World is to Our Broken World as The Case of the Constant Suicides is to The Hollow Man; even while An Enclosed World is a particular pleasure to read, with a style that is so surprising and fun that it keeps you turning the pages with great ease, it is hard to deny that Our Broken World is the one that most deserves to be remembered as a classic.
However, where An Enclosed World even surpasses its John Dickson Carr sibling (The Case of the Constant Suicides) is in its ability to deliver a great deal of substance even within this breezy, flowing structure. In its demonstration of an alternate use of the motif of normalcy, it not only builds on its own themes, but enriches those of its prequel. Samatoki sees normalcy as a tool that protects his inability to face substantive change. He is a compulsive problem solver, who will go to extreme lengths to protect his endless status quo that allows him to keep his own identity ambiguous in service of his sister, and his other questionable relationships. Choushi, in contrast, antagonises normalcy. He sees change as the only means to escape his own melancholy and pettiness. Without change, Choushi cannot see how an individual is allowed to have agency.
Agency is also a constant, linked theme in both novels. The reason Samatoki sees abnormalcy as such a challenge is because it prevents his compulsive agency that is deployed to protect the world of ambiguity he would rather preserve: When the world breaks into the normal and the abnormal, he feels left behind by the abnormal pieces that race forward and leave him behind. Choushi feels enclosed and trapped by the normalcy that dictates his world and feels that he will only be able to achieve the agency he desires if he is able to transform his world into an abnormal space. In both cases, Nisio paints an intriguing picture of the relationship between the individual and their surroundings through the use of these particular metaphors. And while Our Broken World is the more exemplary novel, they both complement one another to build a whole that is more than the sum of their parts.
The puzzling puzzler missteps and how it still works
Even while it is worth applauding the use of characters and themes in An Enclosed World, these are just the foundations of a structure that is most valuable as a whole. While one might use such words when describing the essentials of good, fundamental storytelling, they are hardly enough to be a standout piece of media — otherwise we would have no need for genre or innovation, just telling a story well would be enough. In other words, past a certain point, it is not enough to have a story that is well told but is just not worth telling. This, unfortunately, is the key difference between An Enclosed World and Our Broken World.
This is purely a difference in magnitude rather than direction. The events of An Enclosed World are interesting, but they could afford to be much more so. The mystery itself, one of the core features of a good whodunit story, manages to feel comparatively flat and uninspired when placed next to the other parts of the novel. The physical trick behind the crime leads to little potential for interesting sleuthing, and it falls prey to the worst of the late Queen problem when it leaves a clue which proves to be essential in identifying the culprit until the very end of the investigation. Indeed, the culprit was in fact impossible to identify prior to this particular clue, flying in the face of any spirit of fair play — an unfortunate misstep when fair play could be found aplenty in the previous novel.
However, An Enclosed World makes the most of this awkward mystery structure. While the reveal itself is lacklustre, the investigation is intriguing and enjoyable to follow along with. And, even while the novel missteps into the worst of the late Queen problem, it also deploys it as best as it can in other ways. The final act reveal of the true motives behind the actions of several characters makes for a satisfying conclusion in lieu of a truly compelling physical mystery puzzle. It is particularly noteworthy that this final reveal neatly demonstrates the best synthesis of the mystery plot, themes, and characters that is seen throughout its pages. And that aspect, at least, is a strength.
Even with its formalist origins, mystery writing is hardly an exact science — even the best writers fail to produce more than a few truly original or interesting tricks over the course of their career. Even the venerated Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, wrote several classics that stood the test of time without particularly compelling tricks to distinguish themselves: The A.B.C. Murders, And Then There Were None (arguably), Murder at the Links, and Evil Under the Sun being just a few such examples. However, while such stories cannot be the peak of the genre, they can still come together to be exceptional novels in their own right. Such is the case with An Enclosed World. It is easy to excuse plotting missteps when the unremarkable mysteries told in such cases build upon the other strengths of the text. Even if the mystery is insufficient to confound and amuse savvy readers on its own, it is a piece of a whole that comes together with sufficient gusto to compensate nicely. Choushi’s quest to achieve abnormalcy is the driving force of the read, not the question of who killed who.
Speaking of formalism, the notion of layered narratives is a core facet of mystery writing. Every good mystery story has two distinct worlds that are presented in parallel: the world as it seems, and the world as it really is. In Russian formalism, these are called the syuzhet, or plot, and the fabula, or fable, respectively. The plot is an illusory notion of the events of the story which is constructed due to the biased perspective of the audience, in the plot hides many narrative tricks, unreliable narrators, and other devious weapons by which the audience can be prevented from understanding the truth. The fable refers to the true events which the plot purports to show, or in other words, the canon and objective sequence of events. In some genres, the plot is more or less accurate to the fable, but this is almost never so in a mystery. In fact, the act of detection in fiction is more or less the act of recognising the discrepancies in the plot and restoring the order of the world by joining it to the reality of the fable.
It is no surprise, with these concepts explained, that Our Broken World was the story of Samatoki, a compulsive problem-solver, having the plot of his own life break away from the fable, and seeking to restore the severed connection between the two in order to regain his agency. Choushi on the other hand has no interest in the disconnection of the layered worlds of a mystery story. A mystery story in his eyes is merely a means to achieving his sought-after world of abnormality. In this context, one could argue that the honest and straightforward solution to the murder mystery of An Enclosed World is part of the point: Choushi does not seek to break the world in two with an impossible murder mystery. He does seek to separate the plot and fable. Instead, Choushi’s real goal is the creation of a space where murders are not mysterious or impossible, he desires an alteration of the fable such he can live in an exceptional fictional world without altering the plot through mere illusions. He is an honest culprit — no wonder he happily confesses all of this to the detective when pressed.
Even so, it was just too unnatural — they all killed people way too easily. I wouldn’t have noticed if this was a mystery novel… in such things, people die, the victims are killed, the culprits kill — we go in expecting murders to happen, so we have to accept that premise blindly. But you see, Kushinaka — in reality people don’t kill others so easily. Be it an accident or on purpose — people don’t kill, Kushinaka.
Kuroneko Byouinzaka, An Eerie and Artless Enclosed World
So, the only question left is the result: Where does Choushi’s journey leave him at the end? Failure is the inevitable answer. While Choushi successfully crafts an eerie and artless enclosed world where the fable is able to become truly abnormal for a time, it is only temporary. After the slightest pressure it all collapses into the normality that Choushi despises: Even if he is able to overcome Meiro, he is no match for the great detective Kuroneko Byouinzaka. However, the general thrust of the series has come into sharp focus: The Sekai series not only tells mystery stories but also tells the stories of how the abnormality of such stories shakes the world around them — whether broken or enclosed. This cannot help but leave one eager to see these questions all come together as a series, when if the second novel did not match the first as a standalone product.
Or at least, Meiro Byouinzaka’s eyes on the cover of the novel seemed to say something like all of that.
Bonus thoughts
- I managed to keep up the John Dickson Carr theme to these reviews this time, but it seems like the next volume is going for a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. That should challenge the commitment of this blog’s anti-Sherlockian crusade.
- Some may notice that the book reviews on this blog do not bother giving any kind of score or specific recommendations or advice, because I think such things are complete nonsense. However, the previous novel in this series gets a glowing recommendation, and I do recommend this entry as well. This is shaping up to be a real contender for my favourite mystery series overall.
