Murderous Intent

Murderous Intent is the second book in Japanese author Tokuya Higashigawa's Koiwaza Academy series, originally titled Satsui wa Kanarazu Sando Aru. The story takes place at Koiwaza Academy: the perpetually losing baseball club first encounters a bizarre case of stolen bases (the bags themselves), and club president Hiroyuki Tsuchiyama turns to the school's famously unreliable detective club for help, only to be turned away by club president Ryuji Tamagawa and vice president Kyosuke Yabashi on the grounds that "the case is too small." The base-theft case remains unsolved, but a chain of events follows—the detective club's trio stumbles onto the scene of a locked-room murder at the ballpark and ends up investigated by the police as suspects. To clear their names, they must solve the locked-room mystery themselves; just as the investigation advances, a second murder follows. The whole book is structured around baseball terminology, with chapters titled "Play Ball," "Opening Innings," "Middle Innings," "Lucky 7," "Middle Innings," "Extra Innings," and "Game Over," combining the fervor of school baseball with lighthearted orthodox puzzle-solving. Among the trio, Tamagawa is the cook, Yabashi claims to be from Kansai, and second-year member Akasaka Michi serves as narrator, continuing Higashigawa's signature comic-style character setup: beneath the breezy, absurd dialogue and banter lies a trick that obeys the rules of orthodox mystery and plays fair with the reader.