"One man's magic is another man's engineering. Supernatural is a null word."- Robert A. Heinlein
Yes, I'm way behind on reading the
marvelous, long-running Case Closed series and Gosho Aoyama wasn’t the
only contemporary queuing on the slopes of Mt.-to-be-Read, which is why there
has been an influx of posts on more recently published detective stories this
year. So here is, without further ado, the long overdue review of the forty-seventh
volume of Case Closed (a.k.a. Detective Conan).
Traditionally, the story opening the book
began in the final chapter of the previous volume and involved a woman, Tomoko
Kariya, enlisting Richard Moore to find her missing cell phone, but the
seemingly innocent request has tragic repercussions for his client – who's
found murdered inside her car parked near a bridge. The three main suspects all
claim to have been home at the time of the murder and a pair of housekeepers
affirm their statements, however, they all relay on three senses: sound, sight
and sense. Suspects were immersed in their respective occupations and were
either heard speaking, seen moving or being smelled smoking a pipe from behind
a sliding door.
Interestingly, Conan is repelled in
playing the manipulative detective on the sideline, guiding everyone to the
clues and their correct interpretation like a puppeteer, by a suspicious-minded
Rachel – slowly beginning to believe Edogawa Conan and Jimmy Kudo may be one
and the same person. There's a short chapter, functioning as an addendum for
this storyline, in which Conan goes through some comic book-style shenanigans to drag
a red herring across the trail. One of the few flaws (IMHO) in this series is Conan's
insistency to keep Rachel in the dark when, logically speaking, she would be
his most reliable ally in every difficulty thrown in his path over the course
of the series. But this one pet peeve of mine should reflect poorly on this
excellently plotted, well clued mystery and some of hints involving literature and the changes in society were splendid.
The next story is possibly my favorite
from this collection and, as unsurprisingly as pulling a quarter from thin air,
the plot revolves around a frame job that could only be pulled off by jumping
through time and space – which makes this an impossible crime story!
Conan, and his friends, finds Detective
Takagi gazing dreamingly at a brooch coveted by Sato (i.e. A Metropolitan Police
Love Story), but a man wearing a motorcycle helmet and brandishing a pistol shatters
the trance. Takagi identifies himself as a plainclothes policeman, but the robber
only laughs and sprints off – only to be cornered on top of a building. Rooftops
of high buildings in Japan are apparently fitted with fences for safety, but it
wouldn't deter a jumper and the robber takes the leap in front of their eyes. When
they look over the edge, mere seconds later, they see the body of the robber on
top of a truck.
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| Gosho Aoyama: Artist in Crime |
Slowly, but surely, the plot begins to
morph in an inverted mystery, which poses more questions than answers, because
they saw a man go over the fence and not a dummy being dragged over it with a
wire. If the death of the jewelry store robber was an elaborate murder
disguised as suicide, they now have to explain how his killer miraculously
disappeared mid-fall. And while Aoyama draws somewhat on his artistic license
as a comic book artist for the explanation (nobody would attempt this trick in
real-life), it demonstrates, once again, how you can play around with a
three-dimensional crime scene within a visual medium and I think stands
comparison with other impossible tricks of its kind. Not as simple (as it's
clever) as Edward D. Hoch's "The Long Way Down," but definitely better than the
two-part Jonathan Creek episode The Problem at Gallows Gate (1998)
– which has almost a similar set-up of plot and reportedly got rehashed in Sherlock.
I was also reminded of the second, seemingly impossible murder from Richard
Purtill's Murdercon (1982) and, reading back my review, and I commented then
on how that part of the plot reminded me of Case Closed and Jonathan
Creek.
Finally, Conan and Rachel are on a "double-date"
with Harley and Kazuha, but lugging a pair of young, bright sleuth hounds to an
otherwise spectacular magic show is bound to create a bored, armchair detective
version of Statler & Waldorf – laconically showing the plain
woodwork and mechanics behind the magic of stage illusions. Nonetheless, they
manage to befriend the magician, alongside his illusionist circle of friends,
who are on their way to the home of their teacher, a once famous magician
himself, who has been missing for the past ten years.
Not long after Conan and Harley passed
the threshold of the “Magician’s Castle,” a murderer strikes under the cover of
a blackout in one of the hallways and the victim, curiously enough, revealed
earlier to perform “The Resurrection of the Witch” as a throw at the mantle of
their teacher. The main trick is one I expected to be used for a locked room mystery
and, in a way, it was sort of an impossible trick, but Aoyama turned it to a
different angle with a good result. However, Aoyama obviously came up with the
trick first and plotted a story around it, which he began by retracing the
premise of a much earlier story and retouching it. Plot-thread about the missing
teacher is not resolved and the secret notes only exist to provide someone with
a motive. It’s still good and clever little detective story, but even I think kowtowing
to proper plotting has its limits. Still loved the opening part the most.
My other Case Closed/Detective Conan reviews:
Case Closed (a.k.a. Detective Conan), vol. 41
Case Closed (a.k.a. Detective Conan), vol. 42
Case Closed (a.k.a. Detective Conan), vol. 44
Case Closed (a.k.a. Detective Conan), vol. 45
Case Closed (a.k.a. Detective Conan), vol. 46
I liked the magician story the best, though I have to admit that I can't remember much of the Takagi story...
ReplyDeleteWhich might be because I've finished the newest volume (82) just two, three hours ago. As much as I love this series, I just can't remember all stories/tricks/characters that appear in all these volumes =_=
Oh, the magician story wasn't bad, but it was painfully noticeable everything was written around the trick in the hallway and the thread of the missing magician was of no consequence to the plot, because it was all about the trick. That's why I prefer the second story over the last one.
DeleteI had the same problem with remembering the volume with the story about the (amateur) magician/fans (one of them missing).