In this volume of The Case Files of Young Kindaichi, when Hajime and Miyuki travel to a mysterious village in order to investigate a prophet and a series of murders the killer torches their only escape, an old wooden bridge, and they’re isolated from the rest of the world…
(I can think of many examples of the latter in mystery manga and anime. And, you know what, the burned bridge thing never gets old.)
I wish this author would actually write some Young Kindaichi novelizations. He’d be great at it. Not that his own characters and premises are bad, though. I like the reluctant detective solving crimes not because she loves solving crimes but because she has Jessica Fletcheritis and merely wants to survive; with a non-Scooby Doo helping of the paranormal thrown into the mix. But I friggin’ love Kindaichi and this is very much a mystery after Hajime’s own heart.
THE CASE OF THE SOPHOMORE SLUMP?
I went in guns blazing but I was a little taken aback with this sequel. The last book set up the infamous zombie storyline and that’s completely dropped here. Such a shame. Instead, clairvoyance is the supernatural element. But it’s just not as fun. Maybe I should have re-read Death Among the Undead first but I recall that book foreshadowing if not more zombies then at least learning about the making of said zombies. And that’s not what we have here. There’s some stuff about the shadowy organization behind the zombies, though. I assume each novel will be a classic style locked room murder mystery livened up by INSERT PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (zombies and prophecy, for the first two books) until the final showdown with the Black Organization. I found myself actively missing the zombies long after I realized they were no-shows.
Non sequitur? Sure. The author has this strange style tic: a character will be delivering exposition via dialogue, then the next paragraph the narrator will continue it without missing a beat, and then it will switch back to dialogue in the next paragraph; rinse and repeat. Don’t know what if anything to make of it, really, except it gave me mild whiplash and seems a haphazard way to break up too much exposition.
I’m not gonna gripe about preposterous coincidences because that’s like complaining there’s an egg in your omelette, but some things did stretch credulity more than I’d like. And the revenge and reputation motivation for the whole thing didn’t make sense really. There were also some weird errors. For instance: “Tokino had begun to find her happiness outside Yoshimi, and had finally adopted a new attitude towards her abilities.” But Toiro is the one with abilities. But it can’t be a simple name swap mistake because Tokino is the one who found happiness outside Yoshimi. There were one or two others like that. Woes of translation, I presume. An arduous and often thankless task. (Thanks, Ho-Ling Wong.)
But, overall, this is a solid mystery. A solid mystery with a little something extra (albeit not zombies.) The paranormal elements again turning out to be real (not a spoiler as it’s the whole premise of the series) is fresh and fun, and here’s hoping this too gets a film adaptation. Thank you, LRI. More, please. Is there a third one of these?