Extra Nate: Death on Gokumon Island

We’re back with Extra Nate! I’m attempting to clean up my quarter 1 obligations. I’m giving myself little rewards for finishing out each quarter and for anything I miss, I’m going to run a mile. I’m currently dying of allergies with the sudden shift from winter, to spring, then summer, then back to spring, and (if the weather report is to be believed) back to winter again before going back to spring. All in the past 2 weeks. What I’m saying is, my allergies are goign to make my already shitty cardio even shittier. I can’t run a mile right now. So I better finish these blogs.

I’ve struggled with what I want to talk about with Death on Gokumon Island until recently. These books were originally released about 2 years apart from one another. But Death on Gokumon Island worked so much more for me than Honjin Murders. My star rating doesn’t really reflect that. That’s probably because I enjoyed the journey of both books but the big mystery reveal at the end kind fo fell flat for HM where it didn’t for DoGI. I wanted to explore that a bit more.

As you may know (if you’re reading this blog I assume you listened to the episodes, otherwise I don’t know what you’re here for) HM was a locked-room murder mystery. After reading at least 2-3 of these, I realize they are not for me. There is almost always some weird contrivance or something stupid that occurs so that the murder can occur without it just being cheating. I don’t think you can possibly guess how these work in specific terms. Only stating “there was a stupid Rube Goldberg machine” which is almost always true.

In HM, the killer was never in doubt in my mind. I was 99% sure it was the husband who killed his wife and then killed himself. I was 100% sure when his brother was “attacked” because I was entirely sure his brother attacked himself and accidentally cut too deep, like the failure that he is. The mystery was then: how did the husband do it with the room being locked (stupid Rube Goldberg machine), where did this mysterious ugly partially-fingerless man come into the story, and what was the motivation behind it?

I think it’s that second point that really struck me in an annoying way. I know that mystery novels (and really all media) have some form of coincedence or some level of disbelief that we have to suspend. This is true to varying degrees. The fact that the man had nothing to do with the story, but was cleaverly used by the husband (and his stupid brother) as a scape-goat, was neat. I liekd that aspect. It shows that they’re clever and devious and we need a special detective like Kosuke to come in and solve the mystery rather than just some random local detective. The thing that got me, was that the weird guy just… died. He died of exhaustion. Which is convenient because nobody can track him down. He also died nearby which is convenient because Kosuke found him. I really don’t like this.

You already have a dumb Rube Goldberg machine. I have to just take that as the bad with the good. But the coincedence of the guy not being found because he dropped dead of dehydration only after he first got everybody talking about the weirdo looking for the Honjin… I dunno. I don’t think I could fully suspend my disbelief at that. I don’t think it’s something I could have guessed either. I almost woudl have preferred if the younger brother had killed him. Everything else in the story would essentially stay the same, only there would be some intent and it woudl show the depths that the murderers were willing to go to frame this guy for the murders, rather than random chance. I dunno, this might just be a me problem.

DoGI pleasantly surprised me. I expected a dumb Rube Goldberg machine to be how Hannako was killed and strung up. Only that didn’t happen and I was pretty happy with the way it did go down. I expected the pirate that swam to the island, who was the scape-goat in this book, to just die randomly on his own. He didn’t, he was deliberately killed by the conspirators because he had seen the Priest kill Hannako and the Priest couldn’t risk the pirate mouthing off to the police when he was captured. The fact that the sisters kept dying despite everyone seemingly using the buddy system and no one single person being left alone with all 3 sisters was great when you started realizing that there wasn’t just one killer. There were three. One of whom was being very intentional about throwing Kosuke off of the scent and diverting everyone’s attention at every possible moment.

Maybe that’s why it resonated with me more? The pirate being there was “random” but it was taken advantage of by the killers AND it was a loose end the killers needed to actively and intentionally wrap-up. There wasn’t a Rube Goldberg machine but instead a conspiracy among 3 different people. Finally, maybe the fact that I wasn’t sure who had done it until the very end contributed to my feeling of satisfaction.

These are just my musings. Maybe I shoudl examine a bunch more mystery books from across the spectrum and start synthesizing what I like vs. what I don’t. I’ve read more mystery books through this podcast than I have in a very very long time so this might be something I continue to revisit with each new mystery book we read.