The Lapis Lazuli Castle Murders (2002/2024) by Takekuni Kitayama (translated by Mitsuda Konno and cosmiicnana)

I suspect that most readers of this blog probably don’t know the name Takekuni Kitayama. Unless, that is, you play the Danganronpa series of games. Kitayama got his start writing novels in 1991 but didn’t really become prominent until his prequel Danganronpa Kirigiri novels. He would also work on New Danganronpa V3. But his start were the Castle books, a series of books that are connected not by recurring characters or a central detective, but by the recurring motif of seven cursed daggers, six headless knights, of fantastical settings. And, of course, by locked rooms.

And decapitations. Lots of decapitations.

Our chances of getting translations of his non-Danganronpa work were slim, but thankfully Mitsuda Konno and cosmiicnana stepped in to translate The “Lapis Lazuli Castle” Murders. Well, technically it’s human-edited MTL, but my understanding is that nana actually did contribute to the translation, and we’re going to focus on the “human-edited” part. I’d heard wonderful things about this book across the blogosphere, but would it hold up?

Japan, 1989. Kimiyo is a young woman who is a regular patron at a certain library, one so removed from civilization that it’s known as “The Library at the End of the World.” One day, a young man, Kito comes in and says, “Hey babe, you and me, we’re connected, reincarnations of a knight and his lady, doomed to kill each other with cursed daggers over and over again in an endless, brutal cycle, from which we cannot escape. There is no hope.”

Kito is very bad at pickup lines.

Kimiyo wants to dismiss it, but it is a very weird thing to lie about. And the library does have a weird dagger in the storeroom. And there are odd legends attached to it…

1243, France. Marie is the only daughter of Count Geoffrey, a brooding and possibly unstable lord who’s cooped up in the Lapis Lazuli Castle (“because of the bluish stones that made up the outer walls”). Marie has a cogent of knights at her disposal, led by the dashing Raine. Marie fears her father, suspecting that he had something to do with the disappearance of her mother. Marie saw the two of them enter a room, but when she entered, they had vanished. And then she saw footprints appear on the floor, one by one, heading into the wall. Raine is able to explain this but becomes the victim of a mystery himself. One night, Marie finds his helmet lying outside her bedroom. Come morning, the knights have all disappeared from the castle, seemingly slipping past the guards and leaving no footprints in the mud outside. They are found up a nearby river, their heads hacked off. What’s even weirder is that it would take a day’s journey to get to where their bodies were found, but all six knights were seen alive twelve hours before…

1916, Verdun. Jean is a French solider suffering through the horrors of trench warfare. Marie is now a nurse, and the two of them are looking for a way to break the endless cycle. Jean has other issues as well. He sees a German solider approaching, but when he gets close, Jean sees that he’s missing his head. One of his comrades reports another soldier’s head vanishing in an instant. He finds four bodies with their heads hacked off in a bunker, but they vanish in the seconds he takes his eyes off them.

And jumping between these periods is the nonbinary detective Snowy, someone who walks around “looking for chaos” to restore order. Luckily, there’s a lot of chaos to go around.

So, there’s a lot going on here. In spite of the long summary, the different periods are pretty well-segregated, keeping what could easily have been a sprawling mess under control. This is one of those books that’s all about the mystery. The back-and-forth between the characters is lively enough, but in the end, you’re reading this for the tricks.

They are, for the most part, good. I thought the WWI segment was the weakest in this regard. The explanation for the decapitations is okay, but the vanishing bodies are an anticlimax. Even Jean gripes about how the explanation doesn’t really help him out, "The answer gave me nothing.” The 1243 segment is pretty solid. The diagrams make it pretty clear what happened, I think, though it requires some specific knowledge to explain everything about the crimes. I love those diagrams though. And they’re very useful with the third set of murders in this book.

About two-thirds through, the Library at the End of the World becomes the stage for a brutal triple murder in a locked room that leaves two employees decapitated and another lying stabbed on the floor. Oddly, this one is solved pretty quickly after it happens, which is a shame because it’s the best one in the book. If I were to state the solution as bluntly as possible, it would sound stupid, but Kitayama makes it work. He’s helped in this by the diagrams, which make a confusing crime scene very clear. I looked at one and thought, “Hey, why is X like that?” and lo and behold, that was a clue. Even better is that there’s a very good reason—a very twisted reason—why the killer goes to so much effort to do it this way. I also like how Kitayama paces the explanations. He doesn’t just dump them all at the end but explains them at different points. (And Snowy isn’t the only one who gets the honors of summation.) Answering some of the mysteries keeps the book moving forward and prevents the climax from getting bogged down in explanations at the end, right when our heroes are facing the firing squad.

I do have a few issues. Like I said, this is not a book for those of you who want in-depth characterization or lyrical writing. The other major issue I had is with how reincarnation is handled. It’s hard to explain without spoilers, but I’ll try: If I were to tell you that a story revolves around reincarnation, you’d probably think that there are certain rules it operates under. I’m thinking of two in particular. Neither of them apply here. One of these twists is admittedly foreshadowed by dialogue earlier in the novel. The other twist came out of nowhere for me. I don’t know if reincarnation has other common themes in Japanese culture that would ground this twist better, but it really threw me at first. In fairness, I got over it, and Kitayama uses this violation in interesting ways, such as how it ties into the killer’s motive for all this bloodshed. And I liked how Snowy’s time jumping wasn’t just a fun gimmick but actually plays a role in the climax. For all my griping, Kitayama works the fantastical elements into the book instead of just using them as set dressing or as jumping off points for the rest of the story.

And the final map is a nice touch.

I can’t hate anything that swings for the fences like this. What we have here is a story with some eye-catching premises but with solid mysteries backing them. This is a roller coaster ride of a book, with ideas fired off left and right. There are a couple of duds, but the best land with the force of a mortar. Absolutely worth reading for locked room fans, or those who want to see some imagination in their crime fiction. Recommended.

The book can be read here. 

Other Reviews: The Case Files of Ho-Ling, Beneath the Stains of Time, To Solve a Mystery (under February), Puzzles, Riddles, and Murders, Fang's Mystery Blog (Chinese).