普通，ミステリーには探偵がつきものです。探偵でなくとも，中心になって謎を追求していく人物がいるというのが定石です。しかし，全く違う手法で描かれながらも秀逸で，しかも笑えるミステリーに出会いました。藤崎 翔さん著，「神様の裏の顔」です。
Usually, a detective is supposed to appear in a mystery. If not so, at least there is someone who takes the lead in pursuing the case. However, I met a mystery book which was written in a totally different way, besides it was excellent and also funny.
この物語は，ある人物の通夜が舞台になっています。故人である坪井誠造は，元中学校長であり，教え子からも，後輩教師からも，近所の人からも，そして我が子からも信頼される，まさに「神様」と呼ばれるにふさわしい人徳者でした。通夜の参列者一人一人の胸に去来するのは，教育者として，また，一人の人間としての理想像にとどまらず，現実の窮地を救ってくれた恩人としての坪井の姿でした。しかし，読経，焼香，法話と進む間，参列者たちは互いに顔を合わせ，言葉を交わす中で，一人一人の心に，坪井の言動に対する疑問符が浮かび始めます。やがて，その小さな疑いは，坪井所有のアパートの住人に対する盗聴疑惑，元教え子へのストーカー疑惑，あまつさえ後輩教師の息子や隣家の夫の殺人疑惑にまで発展し，神様と呼ばれた男の途方もない裏の顔が見えてきそうになるのですが……。
This story is set in a wake for a guy. The deceased Tsuboi Seizo was a former junior-high principal who was trusted by his students, by ex-colleagues, by neighbors, and by his own children, so he was a really good person deserving to be called a God. In people’s mind, Tsuboi was not only an ideal educator or an ideal human being but someone they owe something to because each of them was saved by him when they were in a difficult position in reality. However, while they go through a sutra-chanting, incense burning, and a sermon by a monk, they see each other, and speak to each other they begin to have tiny questions about what tsuboi said or did besides good memories. Soon that tiny suspicion consequently develops to such as suspicion of bugging rooms of his own apartment house, suspicion of stalking his ex-student, and, on top of that, suspicion of murdering his ex-colleague’s son or his neighbor’s husband revealing the terrible other side of his face, of someone who was called a God…….
読者を夢中にさせるこの話の凄みは，坪井の神様ぶりを，具体的なエピソードを通じて生き生きと克明に描き出す作者の力量にあります。坪井の神様ぶりを散々思い知らせた上で明かされる，彼の裏の顔らしきものは，笑えるくらい卑小で執拗で残忍です。実際，可笑しくって何度もクスクス笑いました。そして，神様の本当の顔を知りたくて，読者の興味は暴走モードに突入します。
The critical point of this story is the authors skills to depict what Tsuboi is like as a God through so many specific episodes vividly and punctiliously. What looks like Tsuboi’s another face, which is revealed after many episodes of Tsuboi as God, is so mean, tenacious and brutal that it is laughable. Actually I giggled so many times because it was hilarious. I bet readers badly wants to know what the God’s true face is like and they can’t keep their curiosity under control.
結末は意外にあっさりしているのですが，読んでいる間のワクワク感はトップクラスのミステリーです。
The ending is unexpectedly simple, but the sense of excitement you would feel while you read is, I bet, something incomparable.
