○○○○○○○○殺人事件

by Yabusaka Hayasaka, 早坂 吝

アウトドアが趣味の公務員・沖らは、仮面の男・黒沼が所有する孤島での、夏休み恒例のオフ会へ。赤毛の女子高生が初参加するなか、孤島に着いた翌日、メンバーの二人が失踪、続いて殺人事件が。さらには意図不明の密室が連続し……。果たして犯人は？　そしてこの作品のタイトルとは？　「タイトル当て」でミステリランキングを席巻したネタバレ厳禁の第50回メフィスト賞受賞作

Paperback Shinsho

First published September 3, 2014

Reviews

[Genma496 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not many books have made me do a spit-take before. Hayasaka had a theme and he stuck to it, I gotta give him that.

[Sara M · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not only the worst book I've read this year: this is the worst book I've read in the last ten years at the very least.
Now, this will obviously contain spoilers, but for what it's worth, I honestly think it's better to read the spoilers now and be done with it than waste time on the actual book itself. Even apart from the crime plot, it's written like a not very good light novel - in fact, I have translated shounen mangas that were much better written than that.
But on to the spoilers! One, it is often said that the Golden Age crime fiction has little focus on the psychological aspect of the story. I've always felt that this is a somewhat unfair view. In any case, most writers of this period were able to write stories in which all events were largely psychologically probable, that is, you had no trouble believing that the murderers had reasons to murder - even when from your own point of view things such as reputation are hardly worth the hassle of a murder or two. Hayasaka belongs to a sort of post-post-Golden Age genre of crime writing, which is why this is relevant at all, and his main problem is that he is apparently completely unable to write characters with believable motivations: when I reached the point in the story where a doctor decided to kill an acquaintance who vaguely ressembled him because he found himself (doctor, not acquaintance) follow by yakuza when he'd botched an operation on a penis of a prominent member's son, I mostly just wanted to laugh.
In fact, I still do.
But of course one has very few expactations for an author for whom the height of characterisation, and I use the term very loosely, is having a character call a woman "bitch" instead of "she" to show how manly he is.
The second issue: the entire murder and in fact the entire mystery hinges on the author's flawed (this is a very charitable description, I feel) knowledge of human anatomy. This is how it goes: the characters are nudists, and thus would have nowhere to hide a weapon, apart in their vagina or in their anus. Now, the weapon is an ice-pick and quite honestly, I feel that persons dumb enough to stick dangerously pointy objects inside their rather delicate and softer body parts have no business committing murder in books, and I will stand by it. But the author insists that inserting an ice-pick into your anus or vagina would be easy enough to prove hours and hours later, because it would make both anus and the vagina looser. Oh lord! The book was originally written in 2014, and even if Hayasaka had no reliable sex education in school, he could have Googled it instead of relying on dumb, pseudoscientific drivel. He could have experimented, if he really was this curious, although again, I do not recommend inserting sharp and pointy objects into your anus/vagina for obvious reasons.
I was hoping for low-quality entertainment, instead I was hit full on the face with stupidity and ignorance of a kind that simply beggars belief. Don't do this to yourself, absolutely do not ever read this book. There are others.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

アリス・ザ・ワンダーキラーに続く、早坂作品2作目。
(探偵が早すぎる 上シリーズの作者と混同してた…)
ちょっと人を食った感じの作風なので（この作品の題名だってそうだ）、あまり期待せずに読み始めたけれど、よくあるミステリーものと高を括って読んでると、途中に作者が読者に語り掛けるシーンがあったりして、驚くことになる。
けれど、そういう奇をてらった感じの表現以外は、意外とちゃんとした、辻褄のあったミステリだった。
「解決編」を読んだ後で、問題個所をもう一回読むと、ちゃんと辻褄が合っていて(そういえば、↑「アリス～」でもそうだった)、文庫本版の解説を麻耶 雄嵩が書いているのも納得の作風。
※地の文にもちゃんと気を使ったミステリ、という意味で、この二人の作者の作風は似ている。

予想以上に楽しめたけれど、どうやらWikipedia曰く、この作品は「援交探偵 上木らいちシリーズ」の一作目らしいので…うん、ちょっと性的描写がドギツ過ぎて、もっと読みたい、とは思えない。
…というか、らいち(主人公はひたすら「ビッチ」と地の文で呼んでいて、嫌だった。性に奔放でもいいじゃん)が主人公なのか。びっくり。でも本書での活躍をみると、納得かも。

いつか誰かが話題にしたら一緒に盛り上がれるけれど、ジャンクフードのような作品なので、星３つ。
…何となく作者は女性な気がしてたが、男性らしい。解説で「彼」って言われてるし。
なんか昨今女性の書く作品の方が好きになってきたな。

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

emmmmm怎么说呢，这个脑洞，还是一如既往的清奇啊，虽然没有《彩虹牙刷》的时候那么清奇……

还是若无其事地把工口情节和推理搅合在一起，还是那么如天外飞仙一般的解释。“一本正经地胡说八道”早就不够形容这种感受了，非要说的话，大概是堪比陀螺那种“小时候看到怪兽和美女没有好结局的片子，于是立志要让自己梦想成真，最后真的梦想成真了”一般的任性和痛快吧……

故事上来说，跟《彩虹》比起来，前期显得平淡了点——其实整体都不算太有波澜，亮点（非常亮……）基本只在于对诡计本身的解读。

热裤+大腿袜+高跟鞋的这个打扮，也太宅男幻想了……

有一技之长，夺么重要。