Kotaro Isaka. Hotel Lucky Seven. NYC: The Overlook Press/ABRAMS, 2024.
Something like entering a movie theatre halfway through the plot? The first pages felt like I stepped into a latter-day comic book with a gang of happy-go-lucky sociopaths. Once I could start filling in the blanks, it seems that criminal mastermind Inui sent a motley crew called the Six to kill Kamino because she knows all his secret passwords. Kamino has an eidetic memory that works both for and against her; Inui used her as his personal assistant, until her very skill made her a liability—because she can’t forget anything. Checked into the Winton Palace Hotel where she hopes for safety, Kamino asks hacker Koko to plan a perfect getaway for her. Koko is a modest, kindly old woman who already hired two bodyguards, and is working to erase the hotel’s security cameras.
Winton Palace is also a scene of confusion by unlucky Nanao who appears to be a flunky working for Maria. He is ordered to deliver a painting, but goes to the wrong room. The man there assaults him and ends up dead. The right man in the correct room accepts delivery, urging Nanao to warn Maria at once that a hit is out on her. Nanao is desperate to flee the hotel before the unknown dead man is discovered, but manages to crush his phone during a chance encounter with a former colleague—who tries to kill him. Apparently we are to understand that “professional” means “hit man” and that Nanao is a professional known as Ladybug. Before Nanao can even reach the ground floor, he’s met Kamino in an elevator and more professional bodies pile up as some wild chases race from floor to floor.
Still with me? Downstairs the head of the country’s Information Bureau (think CIA) is dining with a reporter, unaware that someone has placed a hit on him. In a different hotel, two housekeeping maids called Blanket and Pillow are busy disposing of a man they’d just deftly murdered. And so on. It’s actually a master class in character duplicity and inventive plotting.
Snips
▪ In this sense, it did seem as though Inui thought of her primarily as a voice-activated recording device. (29)
▪ “These darts are smeared with poison. It’ll paralyze you as it circulates through your system.” (37)
▪ “Inui is tight with the police at all levels. He does a lot of work for politicians, after all.” (44)
▪ The moment he meets anyone, Kamakura makes an assessment: Are they more attractive than him? Do they have something he wants? (72)
▪ “There’s been a series of professionals found murdered. Both shoulders dislocated.” (91)
▪ “You say that, but he made you memorize all those passwords, and now he’s planning on erasing them by erasing you.” (109)
▪ With Soda, who just lost Cola, and Kamino, who just lost Koko, on either side of him, Nanao doesn’t quite know how to feel – it’s almost as if he should have lost an important person in his life, too. (171)
▪ “Oh, by the way, when we put Koko’s body in the bathtub, we found someone else already there.” (174)
▪ All I do these days is carry around corpses, he thinks, sighing. Where will he stash this one? Another bathroom, most likely. (236)
▪ “What kind of group is the Six?”
“They do wind work.”
“Wind work? They play instruments?”
“Blowguns.” (98)
Michael Campling. Murder Between the Tides. UK: Shadowstones Books, no date, no ISBN.
[Self-published?] Alan Hargreaves attends a writers’ retreat at the Regent Hotel in Newquay, convincing his non-writer neighbour Dan Corrigan to come along for a vacation. Dan is learning a dozen or so new names and faces among these mostly established, published authors and he observes their interactions bemusedly. To Dan, Alan’s friend Roz Hammond stands out—an artist as well as writer—and so does the arrogant, belligerent Edward Hatcher, a former MI6 agent whose pen name is Max Cardew. Organizer Dominic Rudge proposes a flexible schedule to accommodate their working hours and social time. Unexpectedly, most of the participants receive anonymous typed messages during the first day; they don’t make sense to anyone although Edward’s sounds like a threat.
Then all are baffled when Edward disappears on the first night, luggage gone too. The hotel is near a dangerous cliff that falls to a tide-ruled beach, and the fear is that he might have fallen. Alan and Dan go searching but instead of a body, they find one of Edward’s suitcases stashed outside. And discover that a paparazzi-type journalist, Charlie, has been stalking the man. The plot thickens accordingly next day when police bring news of Dominic’s death—his body found lying at the base of the cliff with hands tied. In a classic scene of misunderstanding, Roz is arrested, just when she was on the verge of exposing an old secret. Amateur sleuths Alan and Dan are trying to connect all these events, rushing around one step ahead of the cops; they make an entertaining pair.
Plenty of dialogue to push a decent plot, good writing, interesting characters; what’s not to like? Oh: maybe the limp conclusion. Campling’s website michaelcampling.com features a series of Devonshire Mysteries and a host of additional titles, so clearly he’s an experienced hand.
Bits
▪ “This is your fault, you idiot! If you’d done your job properly, this wouldn’t have happened.” (19)
▪ Roz moved in an oddly theatrical way, her back straight, her head held high and her arms swinging at her sides as if she were on stage in a West End musical. (34)
▪ The man was brimming with repressed rage. And anger, when it was constrained for too long, could break out in any number of ways. (38)
▪ Someone had threatened Edward, and either they’d driven him to despair, or they’d made good on their threat and done him harm. (84)
▪ “She prefers to keep herself to herself, but she’s quite a brave little thing.” Dominic smirked. (102)
▪ “People who can easily step outside of their personality can be dangerous, divorced from reality, unstable.” (152)
▪ “If we can find that typewriter, we can connect the notes with what happened to Rudge.” (167)
▪ “But his money makes Roz look like a calculating gold-digger, and that, my friend, means she’s lost all credibility.” (190)