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For as long as he can remember, 16 year-old Hisataro Oba has found himself randomly, several times a month, caught in a time loop he dubs The Trap: waking up on the same day nine times in a row, with only the events of the final day of the loop becoming the canon version of the day for everyone else in existence. Having realised this, and in part as a coping mechanism, he has been able to exploit The Trap — cheat on a test, win a bet, etc. — but now things are different. Because now a murder has been committed and he would like, if possible, to avert it in the ninth and final version so that it does not become the reality for everyone else.
Jesse Kirkwood
#1213: The Noh Mask Murder (1949) by Akimitsu Takagi [trans. Jesse Kirkwood 2024]

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With their gloomy house in isolated woodland, overlooking a dreary bay and containing a mask from Japanese Noh theatre that is rumoured to carry a curse, it’s frankly amazing that no-one in the Chizui family — “[r]iven by mutual suspicion, hatred and a sheer failure to understand one another…” — has been found murdered in a locked room before. Thankfully, hard upon the return of Hiroyuki Ishikari to the area, ostensible head of the family Taijiro is found thus slain, and mystery fan Akimitsu Takagi is on hand to help dig to the bottom of the tangled skein that will see yet more of the clan wiped out in the days that follows. Though how much use he’ll be is up for debate.
#1149: Tokyo Express, a.k.a. Points and Lines (1958) by Seichō Matsumoto [trans. Jesse Kirkwood 2022]

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Let those who lament the — vastly overstated — train fixation of Freeman Wills Crofts take note: Tokyo Express (1958) by Seichō Matsumoto contains so much red-hot timetabling action that I half expected it to be written by someone called Bradshaw. And it’s fitting perhaps that such a small, quiet crime — a double suicide on a gloomy beach — should result in a quiet and low-key investigation, but for me there needs to be a little more to show for all the hours spent looking at the precise movements of trains, ferries, and more. The essential culmination of this is clever, but the route we take to get there could have used a few faster, twistier sections of track.
