The Detective Mythos Series

Stories

## Complete in One Volume

IC:

I☆ The universe. Of the universe.

II☆ Keeping harmony; everything in right order.

III☆ Vast and boundless.

IV☆ Very wide.

V☆ A term used by the French poet Valéry. In literature, it stands for the feeling stirred when poetry passes beyond the things of the earth—

The elite of the Japan Detective Club (JDC)

Karasujō Sōji, Director-General of the JDC / concentrated inquiry

Strike the heart of the case, fix on its vital point, and carry out transcendent deduction.

Tōsennin, Captain of Squad One / swift deduction

Gather the necessary information and draw the truth out of it.

Tsukumo Jūkyū, Vice-Captain of Squad One / spirit-attuned reasoning

Unfold the deduction through dialectical thought.

Shiranui Zenzō, Squad One / skeptical deduction

Doubt to the limit, and reason again and again.

Ryūgūjōnosuke, Squad One / uncanny deduction

Unbound by common sense, he uses wit to find the answer.

Kirika Mai, Squad One / elimination deduction

Eliminate every hypothesis that cannot stand, and pursue the truth.

Amagi Hyōma, Squad One / undercover deduction

Hoshino Tae (Ōmonji’s younger sister)

Hyōkimiyā Yūya, Squad Two / statistical deduction

Inushu Yasha (private detective)

The old steed still in the stall dreams of a thousand li;

Ryosho Takuji (Inspector / Chief of Investigation)

Hirai Mo (the twin elder sister)

IC End-of-the-Century Detective Myth: Flow & Water—

Look down upon the case, and think in a natural way.

Mamiya Teru (staff, Phantom Castle reception)

IC End-of-the-Century Detective Myth, Preface

Sometimes a chance encounter will change a life past all measuring. Not only an encounter with a person—an encounter with a book is the same. I believe that what one gains from reading a book, for a person going on……

## Complete in One Volume

Murder Within

The key to the locked-room door has been found.

The sky has stopped its crying, as if it were about to smile through tears.

The sun shows its face through a thin seam in the low gray cloud.

Glaring light cuts the cold winter air and spills onto the ground.

A person in a tracksuit and jeans, a baseball cap on their head and sunglasses on their face (man? woman?), turns their eyes to the sky, a faint smile at the bright corner of the mouth.

They settle the heavy envelope more firmly in their hands and pass through the post office’s automatic doors.

Written on the automatic doors: “Juraku Post Office.”

Inside, three older women who look like housewives stand in line before the window.

A boy who looks like a university student stands at the ATM that offers cash withdrawals, working the machine.

“This way, please.” Seeing the thick envelope in that person’s hands, the woman clerk speaks.

The person goes to the window that handles mail and gives the kraft-paper envelope to the woman clerk.

The heavy weight passes into the clerk’s slender hands.

Whatever is inside seems like a dictionary or something of that kind; all four corners bulge.

“—Is it a book?”

The clerk looks at the person. A little short, if a man; tall, if a woman.

Because of the sunglasses, the clerk cannot read the expression.

The fine-boned face gives off an androgynous charm.

The person shakes their head slightly and, in a clear voice, says quietly, “……No. Ichikan Express.”

The woman clerk nods, lifts the envelope in both hands, and sets it……

## Complete in One Volume

J0KER: Clear, Preface

The book you are now reading—*JOKER Old Testament Detective Myth: Clear*—is the first half of the novel *JOKER Old Testament Detective Myth*. The second half is *JOKER Old Testament Detective Myth: Cool*. The linking of “Clear” → “Cool” is the same as “Volume One” → “Volume Two,” so they cannot be read backward, “Cool” → “Clear.”

Why not the form “Volume One” → “Volume Two,” but “Clear” → “Cool”? I am sure a great many people will wonder, so let me explain.

This work, *JOKER Old Testament Detective Myth*, and *IC End-of-the-Century Detective Myth*, collected at the same time in the Kodansha Bunko, are like sisters (or brothers), bound tightly together. When works share a world, the principal characters overlap, the time set inside the works agrees, and the whole runs as one. The incidents happen first in *JOKER Old Testament Detective Myth*, yet the book issued first in the Kodansha novel edition is *IC End-of-the-Century Detective Myth*. It does not matter which you begin with. *IC End-of-the-Century Detective Myth* and *JOKER Old Testament Detective Myth* are, of course, each an interesting story on its own…… Only, when you read the two works as one unit, a special way of reading can give you an aftertaste you might never meet in a lifetime. The present writer does not use “Volume One” and “Volume Two,” but marks *JOKER Old Testament Detective Myth* in the mode of “Clear” and “Cool,” and in the same way with “……

## Complete in One Volume

JOKER Old Testament Detective Myth: Cool

“JOKER”:

I☆ An actor in the theater of the absurd.

II☆ One who jokes; one who likes mischief.

III☆ An arrogant person; a person who is disliked.

IV☆ Stratagem; a swindler.

V☆ The wild card in a deck, the deadliest card that may serve as trump…… In divination, a sign of misfortune.

The elite of the Japan Detective Club (JDC)

Karasujō Sōji

Director-General of the JDC / concentrated inquiry

Strike the heart of the case, fix on its vital point, and carry out transcendent deduction.

Hasennin

Captain of Squad One / swift deduction

Gather the necessary information and draw the truth out of it.

Tsukumo Jūkyū

Vice-Captain of Squad One / spirit-attuned reasoning

Unfold the deduction through dialectical thought.

Shiranui Zenzō

Squad One / skeptical deduction

Doubt to the limit, and reason again and again.

To reason in a daze is, of necessity, to drift from the truth—

Tōsen Yamiko (private detective)

Kyōbun Kanshi (patrol officer)

Hoshino Tae (Ōmonji’s younger sister)

Mizuno Kazuma (mystery writer)

LONELYQUEEN (detective of the international legislative detective-machine DOLL)

Dakushoin Ryūsui (mystery writer)

Captain of Squad Two / grasping the truth in dreams

Chapter Four: The Fourfold Killing in the Demon Border (continued)

Minase Nagisa (writer)

Takabe Yū (member of the Mystery Fiction Research Society)

Search through the subconscious, and wake to the truth.

Amagiri Tōka

Asō Mao (part-time worker)

Pyramid · Mizuno

Tsukumo Nemu

64 Wonders

Shōki Toshiharu (Director of Criminal Affairs, Metropolitan Police)

Chapter Five: Lament for the Mirror Broken in Endless Night

Hyōsenninsai (an enigmatic old man)

70 The Solution · Act One

Omo Yumehiko (writer)

56 “For the sake of……