An artist is killed in a locked room. Upon investigating the room, a diary detailing a horrifying plan to kill his daughters in order to fulfill some ritual involving astrology and alchemy was found. On the following months, two more incidents occur fulfilling the plan of the artist from beyond the grave.

You have to get through a really unsettling and disgusting monologue at the start that sets up the crime but this one is really REALLY good. The interesting thing about this novel is that the crime has already occurred and Kiyoshi and Kazumi are solving a crime 43 years after it happened. The two also just had good chemistry and fun dialogue. This was also the first time I tried to solve the mystery as I was reading it. Usually I just go with the flow and see where the story takes me. But for this one, the author lets you know when he has given all the clues so I can't help but also test myself whether I can actually solve it... I didn't...I got the suspect right but some other details I think requires some leaps of logic from what was given to get it. None the less, glowing recommendation for this one!

A rich businessman, Kozaburo Hamamoto, hosts a Christmas party in his bizarre home called the Ice Floe Mansion, which was built near a cliff and is leaning on a slope (hence, the title). Beside it is a leaning tower where Hamamoto resides and sleeps. The tower can only be accessed through a drawbridge from the house. It has an overly complicated interior, which makes it a perfect location for a murder. Which, of course, shortly occurs during the first night of the party, and it's a seemingly "impossible" locked-room murder.

i'm not particularly a big fan of this book. This book has such long and elaborate setups for the mysteries that it feels too mechanical. i feel like the author was too focused on crafting the "impossible" murders; it led to the heart or human aspect of the story feeling too hollow. i didn't even try to attempt to solve this one, method-wise. You can kind of tell who the culprit is, but for how they did it, i was completely drawing a blank because there was information overload with the diagrams and the different theories of the detectives. But worst of all, i just didn't really care. Especially for the first victim, where you aren't given a reason to care at all since his mysteriousness is a part of the mystery.

Kiyoshi also appears only near the end, and his character feels a bit more odd in this one. i think there's somewhat of a shift in his character compared to the previous book, as he is weirder and more socially incompetent in this one. And the solutions… they're all so convoluted and don't really feel satisfying when you get to it. Really makes you wonder if somehow someone was able to guess the murder weapon cause there's no way you saw that coming...

i still thought it was an interesting read; the snowy setting and how it sort of leaned into the supernatural for a bit was nice, but i don't recommend this one, honestly...