In the Clutches of the Devil

Kill as Directed (1963) by Ellery Queen is, let's be real here, a mostly linear and predictable crime novel unlike most other works published under the name of Queen and as far as quality of storytelling goes, it's certainly not comparable in any way.

The story has two sides to it, one that's superficial and one that's going on in the backgrounds and is explained when the story reaches towards its end - but anyone should be able to see through it.

Doctor Harry (Harrison) Brown. A man in rather good shape from his sports years, thirty years old and considers himself a failure. That's our main character for Kill as Directed. He graduated two years before the start of the story and set up his own office, a private clinic in Central Par, New York, as soon as he could all for the sake of one thing - money. You see, Harry Brown grew up surrounded by rich people, by money, and got caught up with a sickness as he likes to call it - the obsession towards money and becoming rich, obsessed about having to make people see him living like a doctor with money, and he needs it quickly. He needs money when he's still young.
The $30 000 he got from his father's life insurance - all gone, and what's more, he's in huge debts all because he absolutely needs to drive in a new car to please the people. He needs a costy and wealthy environment created in his office for the patients - which he has none! Day after day Harry gets all the way from a couple to zero patients - someone with dirt in eye, another with an injured finger... Far from the road to the riches which he had imagined a doctor to have in his younger days.

As Harrison Brown sits in his office waiting for a call from a friend of his, Tony Mitchell, he thinks about the past two years and considers them completely wasted. His father, Simon Brown, timid like him, father like son, was a lawyer; a judge, whom introduced Tony (Anthony) to him seven years before the start of the book and they became friends. Tony's and Harry's ways separated quickly until four months ago they met suddenly again and they befriended. Harry explained his debt problems and money problems to Tony who was a lawyer at the time and his world turned upside down. Tony paid his debts by giving him a loan of five digit numbers of dollars, and introduced Harry to to people: a very influential and wealthy man way past his heydays named Kurt Gresham and Kurt's beautiful young wife Karen. Before the start of the story Harry had already been wrapped under Karen's finger, of her always repeating the same sentence: I love you. I love you.

The story begins as Harry heads home from the restaurant Big Dipper where he, Tony and Karen ate a costy meal of $150 like rich people always do - Harry left Tony to pay for it though - and after taking the beautiful Karen home, beyond the locked door of his apartment he finds a woman dressed up in black, a woman whom he had never seen before - "Who are you? How'd you get in here?" Harry asks? Well, the woman, Lynne Maxwell, won't answer because she's dead.

Now because I'm not selling a book here or trying to make people buy this one, the explanation for Lynne's body beyond the locked room is just because. There is no mystery to be cracked here. The story is based on trying to see everything from the criminal's eyes, or maybe it's the dual nature of the Devils in whose clutches Harry's gotten himself to, I guess, so there's quite a bit of dialogue that repeats information that you should already be aware of at that point in time, information that the characters think Harry does not know.

I'd say that the book tells a story about trust, friendship and love built up around money: Can it be real?

There are pretty much only four important characters in this story:

Harry (Harrison) Brown, a doctor who gets stuck to being the private doctor of a multimillionaire.
Tony (Anthony) Mitchell, a friend of Harry and the lawyer of Greshams.
Kurt Gresham, the rich big bad who wants to own everything, even the people around him, has heart problems which is why he needs constant doctor check-ups. He tries to get Harry onto his side.
And Karen Gresham, the wife of Kurt and the lover of Harry.

It's really not hard to guess how these characters are used in the story. They eat and dine and try to live like rich people - money,money,money,money. The root of all evil... Or what was it again.

The main gist of the actual story is an eternal classic just like locked room murders. Except this time it's not the readers solving the murders, it's them seeing the planning of it play out. How does Harry Brown, a timid guy who obeys law to a T, come up to a situation where he makes up his mind to carry out a murder for the better future?
The planning of the case is really simple:
 Kill mr. Gresham or get killed.
 Avoid any suspicion, in other words avoid killing via a way any doctor could use.
 And plan out the perfect time to strike.

The Finnish cover certainly looks great

That's all there is. The information on things such as the place and time for the murder were presented in a lackluster way, it's nothing groundbreaking and it's easy to remember everything since the beginning, but the act of carrying out the murder is not even considered until pretty much too late into the book as the book itself is very short, ~160 pages. Still, since everything about it was rather simplistic, the way it was, which is a mediocre story, played out at a decent pace I guess.

  I'm not sure that the planning of the events of certain culprits actually makes sense, realistically speaking, and the handling of all the characters towards the end, as well as the wrapping up of the story, felt very lackluster and cheap.
Well, maybe it was seen differently in the past than how I see it now. You know, before the era of computers and all the TV dramas. I decided to read the novel in a day as it is quite short, but mostly I do believe I wanted to just get it over with as I had read it before around four or so years ago but never got around to actually thinking it through and writing about it. So it was a quick re-read. At first I felt like I did not remember much of it but, surprisingly enough, I did. I remembered lines before they even happened, and this novel's not that memorable at all.

I guess the author tried to make the readers to consider questions such as do we really act as human beings with morals? how much has money changed us from being humans? as after finishing the story, the story somewhat tries to point out that there was only one human in the story - a certain coward who was being manipulated by everyone.

Subete ga F ni Naru: The Perfect Insider

"People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

 - Steve Jobs

Subete ga F ni Naru / Everything Becomes F: The Perfect Insider (2015) is an 11 episode long animated murder mystery series adapted from a 1996 japanese novel of the same name by Hiroshi Mori. Subete ga F ni Naru is part of a short story series named the S&M series where Professor Saikawa and his student Moe encounter and solve crimes.

The story begins with a diary, a man trying to figure out the fate and thoughts of a girl, while crying. The flashback of this man and the underaged girl continue throughout the show and are heavily part of the solution and understanding of the most important character in it. The story is a modernized version of the original story so it takes place in 2015 - new computers, a costy modern ferrari looking car, which a cheery youngish girl who happens to be extremely good at counting because she's apparently extremely smart; a person named Nishinosono Moe, is driving while on her way to Professor Saikawa Souhei's apartment. Saikawa, the chain smoker, is a rather apathetic glasses man who is good with computers and who stops to think all sorts of abstract questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? these three 'great' questions are ones that Saikawa wants to constantly think about.

Moe mentions that she had gone to the Magata Labs to meet up with a person named Magata Shiki, a genius programmer who has been rumored to have multiple different personalities. By the age of 11 Magata had claimed her doctorate. The rumours say that Magata killed her own parents. As Moe asks Magata about what really appened - she claims: "A doll killed them."
According to Saikawa, Magata now resides in a lab on the area of Himaka Island, in Mikawa Bay, conducting her researches. As Magata is highly praised by any other genius in the world, Saikawa claims that he wants to meet up with her for his abstract goal of "being able to leave this world."
The first episode ends as Moe reminiscenses back to the meeting with Magata Shiki as she asks one final question: "Who are you?" and Shiki seems surprised.

Moe and the professor travel to the island on a ship along with a group of other students - it's a field trip of sorts but it's not explained well enough for the watcher to mak. The lab workers have been working with Magata on the island for 15 years but here's the kicker - During that time the communication is done by a mic and a camera and what's more Magata has NEVER been outside since locking herself up, for 15 long years.

We learn couple of things in the second episode: the subsystem that runs the lab is named Deborah, the lab personnel have been trying to contact Magata but have not been able to get contact to her, and that Shiki has a younger sister.
As the people in the lab gather and are about to open Magata's door which has not been opened for 15 years, to check out whether she had collapsed, a weird... doll? appears as the door to Magata's office opens and the lights in the room keep flashing as the subsystem supposedly malfunctions, and the body starts moving forward. It's not a doll, it's the pure white body of Magata Shiki herself, dressed in a wedding dress. This is the best part of the entire show; suspense, tension, mystery.

A doctor over the scene checks her pulse and tells everyone that Dr. Magata Shiki was murdered. Her legs and arms were amputated and she was placed on a cart. Also the subsystem Deborah for some reason went out of control during the moment when the crime was exposed; it's almost as if it all had been timed. Also, according to witness statements no one went in and out of Magata's room.

As there is only one entrance; the door to Magata's room, and no one had gone in and out of it, the murderer has to be in, right? else it would be a locked room murder. Which it is.
The director of the lab, Shinso, arrives on a helicopter along with Magata's younger sister. Moe and the others ask him to contact the police with the helicopter's radio as the phones of the lab don't work and leave inside, but when they go back to the roof, the director is found dead; the radio has been destroyed and a knife is on his neck.

Here's the weird part of the story: it feels almost like the watcher should know these characters and what's going on, like the trip and the students on it - who are these? the case cast as well; every single one of them is absolutely forgettable, not even one-note, just background characters, at best. No one reacts to the horrifying murders realistically, they just eat cookies and sandwiches and drink coffee instead... There's barely any actual potential culprits to pick on in this story - they don't go over the potential suspects. The clues to be able to solve the case are laid out immediately after they happen as well, by episode 4 the extremely smart Moe and Saikawa should have been able to deduce what was going on with the case for the most part. There's an incredible lack of actual content in the episodes as well, as every last thing gets stretched out. The pacing of the series should fit three episodes, but this one is 11. Frankly there's ALOT of pretentious-feeling dialogue to stretch out the episodes.

So: The soundtrack is mediocre. OP and ED are decent. Animations are average at best with lack of colors, characters are garbage; only the 2 MC's are notable and the other is an edgelord and the other is a girl who is in love with the her sensei and the story is pretentious and tiring. On my re-watch I was absolutely done by episode seven even though I started it with open mind - the Magata flashbacks are different from what you'd be used to while watching anime but the handling of dialogue and information is terribly done. Ah on another note I noticed some similar tropes that are shared between this and Kubikiri Cycle another Light Novel murder mystery series; both of these handle pretentious dialogue and lack of information during investigations, both have main characters who contemplate hiding the murders from the police, those types of things on top of them both having the identical generic murder mystery settings.

Subete ga F ni Naru's story starts from 15 years ago - a very important number for the series other than 7 - it jumps between the past where the watcher learns of Magata Shiki's relationship with a pedo uncle as she entraps him, and the present day where the murder of Magata Shiki - behind locked doors - and the director - outdoors - have happened. Talking about the number 15, back then Magata Shiki killed her parents and created the lab where she's been for 15 years - the mystery of her "killing her parents?" is shown clearly by the end of episode 6 and never theorised (as in what really could have happened), which is very disappointing. There is one "reveal" to her killing her parents but it should be so obvious I almost forgot about it. The clueing in this story is 50/50 - most of it does make sense and some of it does not or are not presented in a way that allow for the watcher to come up with a conclusion. They handle the story in a way that they actually show or tell the answers before gathering the clues, however some of it also does not make sense such as the doctor checking Magata's corpse and not being able to tell the obvious thing that would instantly bring an answer to this case with a little bit of thinking.

It's a show that's dragged to no end, the drama with Moe's love towards Saikawa is terribly written in and the story is filled to the brim with stalling and pseudo-intellectual nonsense; instead of handling a mystery story with logical thinking and facts, the characters only consider what-ifs ad-nauseum, and worst of all: there's a looong sequence of terrible and slow engrish by the voice actors. The 11 episode anime version is not recommended. I advise people to check out the live action version for a considerably better pacing, even though even that gets some complaints about it from the watchers from what I've heard. Weird huh. 

Last Window: The Secret of Cape West

 "Victory comes from finding opporturnities in problems."
- Sun Zu

Today I've got a pretty damn good one and it's called Last Window: The Secret of Cape West, a good ~15 hour game and the sequel to Hotel Dusk: Room 215 but with only very little connections to that one. The game was developed by a company named Cing in 2010 on Nintendo DS which went bankrupt after the game's release. It`s a point-and-click type of adventure game however the story is an investigative type mystery similar to the Gyakuten Kenji games (Ace Attorney spinoff games about the prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, the second one happens to be my favourite out of the AA game series) - the style of this one is however nothing like it. To put it simply it's a mix of a visual novel (a book-type game) and you investigate in a rather old 3D style.

Last Window: The Secret of Cape West tells a rather cinematic story with neatly animated character models that are most likely traced over real life people moving. And it includes somewhat sluggish gameplay as well - not that it's bad, just slower than what we have in most of the games in the current generation of gaming consoles. The story is about living in a multistorey apartment named Cape West which used to be a hotel in the past, it tells about the the few people in it and the many mysteries connected to them all.

In 1980, a 34-year-old hard-boiled ex-detective named Kyle Hyde happens to get fired from his current salesman work due to his, hmm, passive attitude towards work, and to top it all even his apartment where he's on rent is getting sold off soon, and everyone on the apartment had gotten a notification letter about a week earlier but our main character happens not to read letters so he gets surprised, but worry not as there is still time, and it all takes place during later half of December and as it's nearing towards christmas, Kyle sees a mysterious woman in a black dress and a hat leave the apartment he lives in.
The story's timeline is pretty short, about a week, and during that timeframe our lazy salesman protagonist gets his detective intuition and senses back as he gets a letter from an unknown individual, claiming for him to find an item called Scarlet Star which disappeared 25 years ago and to give it to the culprit behind the murder 13 years ago. The reward of doing this act: The answers Kyle is looking for of his father's murder from 25 years ago.
A person named Rex Foster appears all of a sudden and goes around asking Kyle's acquaintance's who he is. Rex's presence sets other things afoot - different types of powerful criminal organisations which are never truly dealt with, are still heavily a part of this story and everything behind it.
Every chapter ends with reminiscing and remembering what events transpired earlier.
Well, there are quite a few past unsolved cases in this game - and to Kyle's surprise, his father, Chris Hyde, unlike the lawful Kyle, happened to be a safecracker, and to make the mystery deepen, Chris also happened to end up dead around that time, 25 years ago, his body found days later as he was shot to death, case left unsolved, and now the government suddenly opens it up.

 Kyle has a suspicious history himself as he had shot a co-worker during his time as a cop, the co-worker went missing after it and Kyle had quit his job. However Rex claims that despite all that, in the very same house that Kyle's living in, there's someone with a much shadier past than him. Talking about Rex, it's too bad that the company who made this game went bankrupt because they certainly had potential to make another one about Rex and his goals.

Now as the story starts, Kyle is a person who barely knows the eight other people living in his apartment but this story is about to be one of when a man starts to notice the bigger picture around him. A mysterious woman, a robbery, a death, an accidental fire alarm, Rex Foster, Marie whose brother died 13 years ago in a car accident where the breaks failed, and her husband died in an near-identical way half a year ago. This is suspected to be an insurance fraud by the insurance companies which Rex supposedly works for.. . . Many mysteries related to the small apartment he lives in. As the story progresses to its ending, the man who lived his monotonous life without talking to his neighbours manages to create friendships, save lives, find out deep secrets of everyone and figure out his own goal - and it's all connected in a well written manner as it does not feel forced, a nice handling of synergy is there which connects everything together. There's a decent reason to all of it, why is this one apartment which used to be the Cape West Hotel 13 years ago holding half a dozen murders connected to it and why is everyone acting so suspicious? Well, play the game to find out! However I will say this: The game goes in quite a different direction from what I expected it to, you see, you really get to understand the tenants. The characters that at first seem really annoying and off-putting, and Kyle's detective habits really don't help the case, become people that you get to know. And I really get it now - the meaning of this game and this story is about accepting the past.

Example of a case in the game, 13 years ago:

When the apartment was a hotel a party was held by the owners on the first floor of the building. The owner's wife, Kathy, had disappeared and the owner told the people to find her. She was soon found, well her dead body was, as she died due to a cyanide poisoning. The LAPD thought it to be a suicide but the poison container did not contain her fingerprints as well as her costy ring was taken by someone. Main problems that the investigators had were two: The poisoned bottle Kathy McGrath drank from went missing, and the huge number of guests to the party that came and left only made the process harder.
This, as well as certain other deaths related to Kathys are being handled in nice manner.

Now let's  talk about the music. The atmosphere it creates in this game is absolutely fantastic. The soundtrack for this game is one of my favourites in a handheld console, easily. Let's list some of these that you can check up on a site such as YouTube:
Clearing the Mist
Streets Have Memory
Gusty Town
Dancing Cat
Glass in the Hand
Town Dyed Purple
Sorrowful Night

Talking about some flaws,
As I mentioned before the gameplay could be a bit too slow, the camera angles are nonexistent as well and some of the information was hard to follow, too many unsolved murders related to this and that person make it feel tiring - because it's repetitive. I understand that keeping up mystery brings interest and a murder is much crazier than stealing (which does happen in this game - the Scarlet Star was stolen after all!) something or any other criminal act, but there should have been more variety.
Story starts off a bit too often at the beginning of the chapters as "I woke up from slumber" which I see as a generic and cliched, lazy way of starting a chapter. It does, however, fit the setting and how the events play out in this game; the man, Kyle, lives in the apartment and spends day after day trying to solve the case of the Scarlet Star and everything else connected to it.
I feel like the ending is too realistic as in things just have to happen. I wanted to talk with the other tenants. It's too bad they left. During the gameplay, remembering some of the events and the tenants's names was somehow very tiresome, however at the end of it all, it was a nice journey.
There's one part in particular near the ending where you have to find certain things which was really, really tiring, it's supposed to be the hardest thing to do in this game I guess but as far as gameplay and enjoyment goes - Z, z, z.

This was a beautiful game, I think. It's no masterpiece of anything but it had style and entertained me more than it did not due to its style which is not often seen in games.

Love to Hate - The Case of the Constant Suicides

"The price of being a sheep is boredom, the price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care."
- Hugh McLeod



The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) by John Dickson Carr is a classic whodunnit detective story with all the usual settings and tropes and whatnot. The story takes place during wartime where people have to put light blockers in front of their windows every night to avoid serious consequences.
 The book is bit above average in length but the character writing in the first 3/4 of the story felt very immersive so the pages just fly by.

Dr. Alan Campbell (many doctorates in this story) is about to leave on a train to Scotland and decides to leave his train room for a quick bite at a nearby restaurant after getting his packages in the room. The first chapter. Alan reminisces about his passion - debating and critiquing opinions about historical elements for months on end on newspaper articles. Due to this passion Alan Campbell has a person he really hates more than anyone in the world due to this person talking back to his debates without giving up. The person is known as K. I. Campbell - has a similar last name to Alan's but is only a distant cousin of him. This debating character trait which is brought up multiple times in this story just for characters' personalities' sake, and although this particular part of Alan's and the secondary MC's characters' K. I. Campbell's habits is brought up a bit too much in this story, it was not that hard to read through luckily. Never got stuck to having to force myself to read through the pages.

Alan is a new doctorate in his 35's years of age. He's scottish in family origins but has never been to Scotland personally.

Alan was set on a certain journey which is why a person of his caliber had decided to take a long train trip to nowhere, well, it's also his vacation time as well, He had gotten a letter of invitation from Scotland saying: "Shiran castle, Inveraray, Loch Vyne." Alan's goal is to visit the castle where Angus Campbell had died. A murder? A suicide? That's what's being debated.

As Alan heads back to his carriage room from the restaurant, he sees a beautiful woman who happens to be in her mid 20's in his room which says reserved for Campbell on a small board outside of it. Yes, this woman is Alan's most hated person Dr. K. I. Campbell.

The Case of the Constant Suicides has a very lively cast of characters. Some of the liveliest I've come across in novel format and they would work very well on either comic book or animated format - not so much on live action due to the comical aspect of the story. The dialogue between Kathryn and Alan seems unfitting for realistic people to say.

Kirstie MacTavish, a maid
MC's: Alan Campbell, secondary Kathryn Campbell
Angus Campbell, suicide, accident or murder.
Alistair Duncan, a lawyer
Ms. Elspat Campbell, not really even a Campbell
Charles E. Swan, an unlucky reporter called to Shiran by Elspat
Walter Chapman an insurance man
Dr. Gideon Fell - the detective


Angus Campbell had taken many different life insurances totaling up to 35 000 pounds - despite his old age he had managed to get all of them due to his good health. He took his latest insurance from mr. Chapman's company just three days before his death. However all of the insurances become null if he had done a suicide.

The case of Angus's death is a locked-room case, if it were a murder. The basics are simple:
During the day of the incident mr. Campbell had a serious argument with a man named Alec Forbes who could be a killer. Getting Alec out of the house took effort and Angus went to sleep at 10 pm.
Angus tended to sleep at the top of one of the towers that contain a room. The door to the room was locked from the inside. There are people who absolutely believe it's a murder and people who can see it only as a suicide. Many points of views of different mysteries and facts are neatly laid out by dr. Fell.

Early the next morning Angus's corpse was found, fallen down from the tower - broken spine and many other injuries being the cause of his death. He was not under any drugs or meds so his death being an accident is not likely. What's more is that Angus's death is identical to another Campbell's death from a long time ago.

It's impossible to get into the room of the tower - the room can't be entered through the window 18 meters from the ground level, or the roof which cannot be walked on. Also due to the maid's testament of the evening when Angus went to sleep, there was no one in the room.

What makes the case crazier as well as a possible murder, other than semantics, is the appearance of 1) a mysterious large suitcase-type of thing created of leather and metal; a box for moving dogs around in trains, had appeared under the bed of the late mr. Campbell during the night of the murder. The box was not under the bed the evening before, confirmed by two maids, and the door had to be broken through to get in the day after, and 2) a disappearing notebook where Angus would write every night on as he would burn the notebook at the end of each year.


As the book says it's the case of the constant suicides so more cases are to come but Dr. Fell effectively solves everything quickly, very quickly, along the way.  I can't really say that it's possible for us to come to the logical conclusion of most of these tricks in the book; some of them are simple, some just need knowledge of things. However there are a good amount of small mysteries about how characters act that do make very much sense but never really come to mind. You have to think about the kinds of characters they actually are to come up with the answers, which is nice.
I believe especially that in the third case that a Queen-styled showing (at the beginning of the book) of the room would have been useful. Still, Carr's Case of the Constant suicides happens to be one of the more enjoyable stories I've read due to Carr's ability to write interesting characters who are funny and enjoyable to follow. The end-up with the importance of these characters ended up being lacking as well as the amount of possible culprits felt off but what can you do? Albeit generic in ideas, it's a nice story for what it was.