Memory Fail: Q.E.D. vol. 47-49 by Motohiro Katou

The first, of two, stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Sun is Still Blazing," takes place at a secret and highly secured NSA research on a remote, isolated island near Indonesia – where an important file with research data went missing. And ended up destroyed. Only problem is that the research facility is tightly secured and closely scrutinized suggesting an inside job.

Was it the somewhat eccentric head researcher and "world-renowned expert in math and logic," Kurt Gidel? Or one of three members of his research staff, Carlos Balma, Walter Chapman and Judith Grey? Considering the stolen and destroyed data included sensitive, classified information, it was decided to hold an internal investigation in order to close the case as soon as possible. Sou Touma was asked to act as an independent investigator with Kana Mizuhara tagging along to the remote Indonesian island.

The theft of the file is something of an impossible crime. It apparently went missing in the meeting room, tightly secured, where Gidel and his staff gather to discuss ideas and work out problems on a blackboard. Gidel was sitting next to the backboard to listen to his staff members and judge their ideas, while the file rested on the blackboard's ledge. During their last meeting, the black book file was somehow swapped with a dummy file, miraculously smuggled out of the institute and destroyed – even though everyone was thoroughly searched. Another complication to the case is Gidel himself. A genius who only wanted "to sit back and relax at a beautiful island" to solve complicated math problems from a beach chair. He also provides a couple of confusing false-solutions and asks Touma if they were useful. Kana is ready to throttle him when answering, "yes, it was." What's most surprising is how simple, unvarnished and straight forward this story. No grand tricks. Touma's chain of deductions simply answers the three main questions: how was the file swapped, how was it stolen and whodunit with even the equally simple and unvarnished motive being a clue to the culprit's identity. A simple, straightforward, but good and effective little detective story.

Second story of Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Slope," is surprisingly a Kana Mizuhara-centric story hearkening back to her middle school days when she stood for a bullied classmate, Utagawa Aki. She returned to their first middle school reunion having become a promising young model with rising profile, but she always wanted to know why Kana trusted her unconditionally. Particularly during an embarrassing incident when a stolen video game was found in her desk. Kana was the only one believed in her innocence and stuck up for her, which saved her neck with the teacher. But why? Kana can't remember why she believed her. When Kana goes with a few other old classmates to her apartment an envelope with household money disappears, possibly mislaid by accident. But a thorough search of place turns up exactly nothing.

Kana calls Touma for help and advises her to search the apartment again, but, this time, she has to "search with the assumption that someone has hidden it deliberately" – not simply gotten lost or misplaced. Finding the missing money raises more questions than answers. However, the missing money is only a vehicle to tell Utagawa's backstory and why Kana believed her. A decent enough story, but not nearly as good or memorable as that other Kana Mizuhara-centric story, "Summer Time Capsule," from vol. 26. So, on a whole, these two stories aren't standouts of the series, but put together, they form a pretty solid volume.

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 48, "The Representative," begins with a police report of a
break-in at an empty house. When the police came to investigate, they discovered a bizarre scene: the body of man, partially wrapped in tarp, lying in the middle of a room next to an unfinished, half-dug hole in the floor. The victim is Kabuto Shigeki, a representative for authors, who worked for the Orange Copyright Agency. His most well-known client is a reclusive, bestselling author, Semi Ichika, whose Crater Bungee sold over a million copies. Kabuto Shigeki was about to receive the finished manuscript for his next book. Orange Copyright Agency, pressured by his publisher, is eager to get their hands on the manuscript, but Ichika is notoriously difficult to work with. And dislikes most of their staff members ("I tried too hard to impress him..."). So the new, young and completely inexperienced Tento Seiko gets to job of trying to handle and appease Ichika. She's friends with Mizuhara and Sou Touma eventually follows to "solve this series of unfortunate events," but not before another body is added to the tally.

"The Representative" is a really good detective story, nearly an inverted mystery, but there's a pleasing, craftily applied a nearly invisible layer to the whodunit. So to truly solve this story, the armchair detective has to find answer to all the questions. From the murky motive and behavior of the author to the condition in which the first victim was discovered. A possible contender to be included in part two "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D."

The next story, "Fahya's Drawing Book," is undoubtedly a crime/detective story of today's age. It centers on a poor Moroccan child, Fahya, who's teenage cousin, Hamdan, has heard their uncle made a lot of money working in Spain and wants to join him – boarding a ship to smuggle him and others into Europe. Fahya's joins him as a stowaway, where she witnesses a murder from her hiding place, before the ship runs into the coast guard. That confrontation quickly dissolves into a shoot out killing seventeen people aboard the ship, but Fahya an Hamdan made it to the shore. Fahya disappearing from her home and the smuggling vessel has not gone unnoticed.

Alan Blade, the CEO of Alansoft, last appeared in "Disaster Man's Wedding" (vol. 34) when he got married to his secretary, Ellie, who founded a joined charity as part of their wedding gift. They wanted to provide a poor child from Africa with a scholarship to guarantee them an education and Ellie picked (surprise, surprise) Fahya. Alan brings Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara into the case to help find the little girl, but they're not the only ones looking for her. So an interesting enough premise for modern mystery, but nothing truly interesting emerges from it and feels more like a curiosity than anything else. Although I doubt that was the intention considering it tackles human trafficking, missing children and a shoot out on a boat with nearly twenty casualties. I was especially reminded of, what's perhaps, Edward D. Hoch's worst short story, "The Starkworth Atrocity" (1998), which tried to do something similar with even less impressive results. Sadly, this volume ends with one of the weakest stories in the series.

Regrettably, Q.E.D. vol. 49 is rather weak on a whole, but the first story, "Unrelated Cases," has its moments. Stanley Lau and Sammy Chow are the leaders of two opposing criminal organizations who have decided to meet at a dinner in Hong Kong, but the place is shot up and their bodyguards immediately form a human shield around the two mob bosses. Someone, somehow, shot Sammy Chow through the heart while surrounded by his bodyguards. The shot came from a deserted, dead end alleyway. Some time later in Japan, Tomashino Kyohei, a college student, is roped by his criminally optimistic friend, Sasaki Tatsuoka, to take some money from his workplace to help them along. When the arrive on the 21st floor of a dark, empty building, they discover Lau and his men torturing and killing a man. They managed to escape from the building, but now they have band of gangsters after them. Tomashino Kyohei's younger brother, Haruhiko, asks his school friends, Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara, to help them out.

I said this story has it's moments and there are exactly two. Firstly, the impossible shooting of Sammy Chow in Hong Kong. It's a fine demonstration of the advantages a visual medium like manga (comics) has over prose when dealing with locked room murders, impossible crimes and complicated tricks, because it's just fun to see the murder being carried out during the flashback – fun enough to almost overlook how preposterous the trick really is. I think the trick would have worked better in a less risky, more controlled environment like a theatrical stage or movie set. Secondly, the final confrontation between Touma and Lau. Hardboiled brains, indeed! So not the best story in the series, nor anywhere near the bottom.

"Love Story" closes out Q.E.D. vol. 49 and is another heart-shaped, character-driven puzzles, but not an especially memorable one and struggled to remember anything about it as soon as I finished it. The main gist of the story is an unfinished, 45-year-old movie shot by the movie club of a private college starring a college student who's spitting image of Kana Mizuhara. How very Gosho Aoyama of you, Katou. Nearly half a century, two of the since then married, now elderly club members bump into Kana and the urge is immediately there to finish the movie. Only for the man to die of a heart attack while editing the movie. And he leaves behind some questions. This one just didn't capture my attention. Katou has done these human puzzle stories better before.

So an unfortunate weak ending to the penultimate volume in the series. Even more unfortunate, the overall quality of these three volumes is fairly weak. Only good two stories are "The Sun is Still Blazing" and "The Representative." "The Slope" is a fairly decent character piece and "Unrelated Cases" has, as said before, its moments. But the same can't be said of "Fahya's Drawing Book" or "Love Story." Let's hope I can end this series on an optimistic note with the coming review of Q.E.D. vol. 50.