Invisible Weapons: Case Closed, vol. 81 by Gosho Aoyama

The 81st volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, known outside of the English-speaking world as Detective Conan, begins where the previous volume ended with Doc Agasa taking Conan and the Junior Detective League to the Flower Festival in the public park – where they meet Jodie Sterling to discuss the events from vol. 78. There is a pickpocket slinking through the crowd of cherry blossom viewers and Doc Agasa witnesses a murder when he came out of the restroom.

Doc Agasa thought he saw someone hammering a stake into the ground, "a silhouette" wearing "a hat and holding a thin stick about a foot long," who limped away and disappeared into the crowd. After the incident, Doc Agasa discovers the body of a woman. A notorious pickpocket the police has been after for some time, but a straightforward case of a pickpocket getting brutally mugged herself quickly turns into a much more complicated and tricky problem. The crime scene is a little distance away from the park, which is immediately closed off by the police and should trap the murderer inside. They retrieve the stolen, emptied wallets in the trashcans, netting them three potential suspects, but none of the three suspects have a limp or carrying "a foot-long stick." A weapon that's nowhere to be found in the park or shrine. And why did the three suspects talked to the Junior Detective League around the time of the murder?

The solution is a work of beauty as it craftily dovetails the nature of the invisible weapon with how it disposed, why Doc Agasa saw the murderer limping away and why it was necessary to talk to Conan and his friends – only one aspect of the motive seemed a little iffy. Other than that this is one of the better, pure detective stories in the series with an original take on the impossible problem and a plot-thread tied directly to the ongoing storyline. And, on top of that, the Junior Detective League were not completely useless here. A winner!

The second, three-chapter story, titled respectively "The Barroom Detective Takes a Case," "The Barroom Detective Makes a Deduction" and "The Barroom Detective Solves the Case," is a long overdue Richard Moore centric case. Richard Moore accepted a job from the bartender of the Blue Parrot, Yuzuki Fukui, who has been hearing a pop, "like a champagne bottle," which is always followed by "a citrus scent." So she assumed customers were sneaking in bottles, but she kept an eye on the clientele and didn't catch anyone drinking wine or champagne. The only customers who were always around when it happened was a corporate executive and three of his downtrodden underlings. Moore takes the case by sitting at the bar smoking cigarettes, drinking gimlets and butchering Raymond Chandler with his internal monologue ("my heart throbs to the cool rhythms of jazz on the speakers" and "she must think I'm the great sleuth Philip Marlowe").

Rachel sends Conan to the Blue Parrot to tell her father dinner is getting cold, but Conan arrives at the bar right at the time the executive is found dead slumped over the bar. Stabbed in the neck with something sharp and toxic. So the bar is searched and the three suspects patted down, but every possible weapon (like darts) turn out to be clean. Another so-called invisible weapon case ("just like the pickpocket case the other day") with the only difference that the trick here seemed needlessly complicated. Surely the same effect could have been achieved in a less risky, roundabout way. Nonetheless, a good, fun little story with a splendid ending giving Sleeping Moore's take on why he blackouts when he "solves" a case.

The third story, more or less, picks up immediately after the second story as Conan realizes something about the pickpocket case, which is now tied to the Hostage Case (vol. 65) and Mystery Train Case from the previously mentioned vol. 78 – bringing "Bourbon" and "Vermouth" back into the picture. Conan is soon wrapped up in another murder case when he and Rachel bump into Masumi Sera. Sera is hired by the older sister of school friend, Rumi Kitao, who's dating a senior college student, Kenya Settsu, but "rumor has it he's a player who's two-timing her with his ex," Waka Hashitani. Rumi asked Sera to check him out ("cheating... the private eye's bread and butter") and took the opportunity to recruit Rachel and Conan. This leads them to finding Waka's bludgeoned body in the chloroform fume filled bathroom of her apartment wearing nothing more than a towel and a mudpack.

Just like the first story, this has all the appearance of a routine story that can be found in every volume of the series, but there's more to the story than is apparent on the surface. Firstly, Sera acted wonderfully as a rival detective by proposing a false-solution, which was sound and convincing enough, but Conan has to correct her deductions (as Jimmy) over the phone by pointing out the dying message. A hidden, unsuspected dying message that nonetheless had been strongly hinted at throughout the story. Logically revealing the only person who could have done it. Secondly, the story reinforces the question how much Sera really knows, or suspects, regarding Conan's identity. And who's calling and texting? That question is (sort of) answered towards the end and during the next story, but it's an answer that raises more questions than it answers.

The fourth and final story is actually a complete one (hurrah) and brings Conan, Rachel, Serena and Sera to the bowling alley where they meet two school teachers. A third teacher had trouble holding his liquor, got into a fight and is now passed out in the car, but the troublesome gym teacher goes missing and is found sometime later inside a porta potty – as "a drowned corpse." A bizarre scene, to be sure, but, even without figuring out how the trick was done, because the method made the murderer standout. I appreciated the murderer's motive helped justify employing such a risky, complicated trick, but the Conan/Sera storyline is what gave the story its interest.

So very little to complain about except for the repetitive motive cropping up in all, but one, of the four stories. Other than that this another rock solid volume perfectly balancing the stronger, plot-driven standalone cases with the multiple, character-driven storylines stretching across the series.